The New Campfire: Looking to evolutionary biology to help us navigate the modern world
by Heather Shayne Blakeslee & Walter Foley
EXCERPT //
Modern humans live in a hyper-novel world. Our ancient biology and psychology are often stress-tested by situations our ancestors would never have faced, causing us to create new cultural norms as we go. It can leave us feeling unsettled, unmoored, and anxious when the landscape no longer looks like the map we’ve been consulting—and when we feel we’re navigating on our own.
How do we manage mate selection in a world where dating apps have overtaken the atrophied opportunities for real-life interaction? Can you trust that popular online commentator, even though you’ll never see the whites of their eyes? What should we eat? Where should we live and how?
With all this uncertainty in a rapidly changing environment, what’s a well-intentioned Homo sapiens to do?
In their book, A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century: Evolution and the Challenges of Modern Life, evolutionary biologists Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein make the case that our bodies and brains are in tension with the world we’ve created—and it’s making us crazy. They argue that we should simultaneously consult our deeper cultural record for lessons that might render us more healthy, happy, and sane as individuals, families, and communities, and use our collective consciousness to handle new threats and opportunities.
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[During RQ’s interview, Heying describes] how making art could be a sexual selection strategy for both males and females of our species.
“Because we appear to be more monogamous than any of our other closest relatives—gibbons are an exception to this—sexual selection appears to have been acting on both of the sexes [in similar ways],” she says.
Heying explains that, unlike bowerbirds, both human sexes might try to put on a display to win mates. “We have not just male-male competition but also female-female competition, and we have not just female choice but also male choice. And what that means is that anything that might be sexually selected for, things like creativity in music, in other arts, in wordplay—in any of these things—will be manifest in both sexes.”
What does creativity have to do with sexual selection?
“Well,” she says, “if creativity is adaptive in the world, it will likely be attractive to potential mates, and therefore be part of what we are selecting each other for.”
And what about dating apps? Good or bad?
“Dating apps are a really good way of sorting mates,” Weinstein says, “and the way you do it is: You don’t date people who use them.”
“Said the guy who hasn’t been on the market since the late ’80s,” counters Heying.
“Yeah, fair enough.”
But it’s something that’s on their minds. Heying and Weinstein are the parents of two teenage boys, whom they are presently in conversation with about the ethics of sex and partnership. They’ve encouraged their children to be somewhat conservative in this domain: “You shouldn’t have sex with somebody who you know isn’t a long-term prospect” is their basic advice to their sons and anyone else. Even if it’s unlikely that you’ll be paired for life with the next person you do choose to sleep with, they say, it’s best not to begin with the premise that it will be a short-term fling.
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