The Red Queen_ Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature - Matt Ridley [3]
This book is an inquiry into the nature of that human nature. Its theme is that it is impossible to understand human nature without understanding how it evolved; and that it is impossible to understand how it evolved without understanding how human sexuality evolved. For the central theme of our evolution has been sexual.
Why sex? Surely there are other features of human nature than this one overexposed and troublesome procreative pastime? True enough, but reproduction is the sole goal for which human beings are designed; everything else is a means to that end. Human beings inherit tendencies to survive, to eat, to think, to speak and so on. But above all, they inherit a tendency to reproduce. Those of their predecessors that reproduced passed on their characteristics to their offspring; those that remained barren did not. Therefore, anything which increased the chances of a person reproducing successfully was passed on at the expense of everything else. We can confidently assert that there is nothing in our natures that was not carefully ‘chosen’ in this way for its ability to contribute to eventual reproductive success.
This seems an astonishingly hubristic claim. It seems to deny free will, ignore those who choose chastity and portray human beings as programmed robots bent only on procreation. It seems to imply that Mozart and Shakespeare were motivated only by sex. Yet I know of no other way that human nature can have developed, except by evolution, and there is now overwhelming evidence that there is no other way for evolution to work except by competitive reproduction. Those strains that reproduce persist; those that do not reproduce die out. The ability to reproduce is what makes living things different from rocks. Besides, there is nothing inconsistent with free will or even chastity in this view of life. Human beings, I believe, thrive according to their ability to take initiatives and exercise individual talent. But free will was not created for fun; there was a reason that evolution handed our ancestors the ability to take initiatives and the reason was that free will and initiative are means to satisfy ambition, to compete with fellow human beings, to deal with life’s emergencies, and so eventually to be in a better position to reproduce and rear children than human beings who do not reproduce. Therefore free will itself is only any good to the extent that it contributes to eventual reproduction.
Look at it another way. If a student is brilliant but terrible in examinations – if, say, she simply collapses with nervousness at the very thought of an exam – then her brilliance will count for nothing in a course that is tested by a single examination at the end of term. Likewise, if an animal is brilliant at survival, has an efficient metabolism, resists all diseases, learns faster than its competitors and lives to a ripe old age, but is infertile, then its superior genes are simply not available to be passed on. Everything can be inherited except sterility. Consequently, if we are to understand how human nature evolved, the very core of our inquiry must be reproduction, for reproductive success is the examination that all human genes must pass if they are not to be squeezed out by natural selection. Hence I am going to argue that there are very few features of the human psyche and nature that can be understood without reference to reproduction. I begin with sexuality itself. Reproduction is not synonymous with sex; there are many asexual ways to reproduce. But reproducing sexually must improve an individual’s reproductive success or else sex would not persist. I end with intelligence, the