Quote:
Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
There are strong evolutionary reasons for these predispositions, just as there are strong evolutionary reasons why men in every culture on the planet favour young and healthy mates. They're both reproductive strategies, exhibited universally among humans in every culture and level of development.
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There's no doubt in my mind that this is true, and denying the inherent biological differences between the sexes is one of the more obnoxious aspects of the blank slate attitude taken by many people in the past... what, two decades? Evolutionary psychology is an important field that's had needless roadblocks thrown in its way at every opportunity by the worst of academia. So while your caveat about your subscription to what can only be called "reality" is probably appreciated by some people, it isn't even really a matter of what you believe. You might as well have said, "I subscribe to the theory of evolution".
But at the same time, there are plenty of biological predispositions that are ingrained in us through selection over a hundred thousand years that societal progress have outpaced, and it'll take thousands of years more to select out naturally. There's no need, in the modern context, for this tendency, and it's counterproductive just as our poorly developed prefrontal cortexes are a hinderance to our ability to deal with one another. As you say, you've described the underlying rationale for peoples' behaviour, but would you concede that that description isn't normative at this point?