Sex, Men, Women, 2.1, and the Future
B.W. Wojciechowki, June 2024
This topic may look frivolous, but considering the ideas currently adrift in society it needs to be discussed. Both sexes have very similar morphologies: two legs, two arms, two eyes, and one heart. Morphologically, they are the same at the 90% level or more. The differences are due to the disparate roles nature assigned them in propagation and population maintenance. I leave it to the reader to enumerate those but note that perceptions and enticing differences make the two sexes pair up and enjoy the business of propagation. That was the design. It is not a discovery I made; nature has this in its plan for our species. Nature did intend that, but now I want to consider what our technological capabilities have done to this relationship and the consequences for the future of humanity.
Nature has plans for all sexually differentiated beings but how they are implemented varies greatly. The attraction between the sexes is much less connected with purposeful decision-making or pleasure-seeking in many species, particularly vegetation. Flowers are pollinated via insects and only the survival of the fittest and climate impacts the species. Nonetheless, many flowers have evolved aromas or sugary secretions that attract insects and so increase the chances of pollination. At higher levels of mental development, say in herds of mammals, there is a tendency for clever schemes to enhance breeding. The best physical and mentally agile specimens of males dominate and protect a herd (harem in the human situation) of females.
Females in thinking species are not mere objects for breeding. Most thinking females practice their “wiles” to encourage the most promising males to mate with them. These primitive trends had the Communists suggest that women should be “held in common” since “harems” and “marital fidelity” interfered with the pairing of the best females with the fittest males. Early versions of the Communist Manifesto include this idea as progressive and deem it right for the bright new world it envisions. It would presumably aid the free, or government-sponsored, selection of the fittest couples and avoid the random breeding of lesser specimens who happened to fall in love or form ill-matched pairs and get married. Nazies put the idea into practice in a well-organized but limited way.
Since the genomes of all sexual species are very complex, there are occasional mishaps resulting in sexual dysfunction. In humans and other species, there are occasional hermaphrodites (about 0.02%) and other reproductive errors. Hermaphrodites in some species may even be common but they are rarely dominant. It is not an existential threat to humans, but those afflicted suffer much anguish.
Sexual aberrations are usually not a debilitating departure from the average human condition and victims often lead normal lives or undergo modifying surgery. Their morphology may be aberrant, but they can contribute to society intellectually and as artists of various kinds. Many such individuals show an outstanding aptitude for the arts. Unfortunately, due to the previously mentioned social mores, and the tendency of some victims to be obnoxious, the mental anguish can be real and can lead to unhealthy lifestyles. The total frequency of several recognized sexual malformations in humans is less than 0.3% but in modern societies, the issue causes great consternation.
What is to be Done
Unlike most sexual beings, humans think about sex and have developed a variety of clever ways to enjoy it. Both human males and females can be inventive in this. Moreover, neither has a season of ‘rut” and we are constantly aware of our sex drives. Whole industries and arts depend on sex for their income.
Men and women have similar levels of intelligence but differ in their sexual needs due to their different roles in procreation. It may seem a subtle difference, but it is one so deeply ingrained in our animal and social natures that we have difficulty understanding one another at a basic level. It is a salient fact that women undergo a significant part of their lives suffering “periods” of biological preparation for fertility. This periodic change in hormonal activity affects women and discomforts them with physical and emotional symptoms that men resent, do not share, and cannot feel or understand. This lack of empathy continues to be a reality but for political reasons, we now try to de-emphasize its existence.
Whereas men tend to see themselves as protectors and supporters of women, women tend to see themselves as caregivers and nurturers of life in a secure setting. Societies of the past were fully cognizant of this biological differentiation and few, before the 1800s, defied these nature-assigned roles. Then came the Industrial Revolution.
At first, the roles of men and women changed very little. Men continued to do physically demanding and dangerous jobs while women slowly started to infiltrate the labor pool in less physical occupations outside the family setting. Progress was on its way. Machines powered by external sources of energy made more and more jobs accessible to women. They have the wit and dexterity to operate levers and switches and could be paid less. Why pay less? because they were available in relatively large numbers, and men tended to do the more hazardous and brawn-demanding jobs that women could not do. At the same time, there were not enough men to fill the increasing pool of labor that the industry was opening.
Remarkable Women in History
This was not a completely new chance for women to be independent or hold power. Before this time and reaching into antiquity many women thrived in positions of influence and authority. Despite the stories one reads in distorted and often politicized versions of history, families treasured their women and took good care of their well-being. Women have emerged as political leaders since the dawn of history. I will leave out most examples, but Cleopatra and two Queen Elizabeths of England are well-known.
Women sometimes even took on the manly roles of military leaders, Boadicea and Joan of Arc are well-known examples of women participating in military operations. There are dozens more in all cultures. In a world where women are successfully suppressed this would not have been possible. World War 2 did not produce many fighting generals among women who served, but women were fully engaged in resistance movements and support organizations, particularly in the Soviet Union.
The Catholic calendar is full of female saints some of whom were martyred by the patriarchal societies of their time. There are more than 700 such saints. Many left a legacy of deep faith and exemplary female virtues and are called “Mothers” despite having been virgins. It is not true that women were brutally suppressed in the past. Not even largely true. They were limited by their roles of motherhood, which was highly praised. They lacked the social influence of better-organized and free-roaming men who had more time for fighting, hardships, and the boisterous life of manly social interactions.
The Advent of Technology
Time passed and technology made jobs and self-reliance more accessible to women. At the same time, brawn-requiring jobs decreased in number and the employment opportunities became more similar for the two sexes. The upshot has been that the participation of women in the economic life of society grew and with it the chance of avoiding domesticity and dependence. This led to increasingly insistent claims by working women for equal pay and opportunities for advancement. It woke up the latent strengths of women’s nature. Women, it turns out, have virtues that let them achieve high office and dominate large parts of today’s labor pool.
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Even though human beings are unavoidably equipped by their animal heritage, recently, we have become capable of challenging this by inventing things that we enjoy, regardless of the consequences. In an earlier essay, I discussed Possibilities and Probabilities. There I point out that we can change Probabilities.
Such is the case with modern women, who can choose between the burdens of motherhood and the attractions of independence and influence. Many have chosen a great variety of occupations. But they still have “periods,” which are still constraining and resented in modern workplace settings. We simply have not changed the need for women to bear children.
A factor in the radical realignment in male/female relations is the animal delight of sexual activity. This overwhelming pleasure has a sound natural reason behind it; it was designed to encourage fertilization and procreation. But technology allowed us to change Probabilities in our sexual lives. While we managed to keep sex as a delight, we have learned to control the consequences of pregnancy and the need for personal interaction.
Whereas men were always inclined to pursue the pleasures of sex as diligently as circumstances allowed, women were more careful with their availability because of social taboos and the possibility of being abandoned with an unwanted pregnancy. All that went by the board as women and men began to mingle at work and socially, birth control methods became reliable, and even abortion of accidental pregnancies became available as a means of birth control. A remedy that smacks of reprehensible carelessness.
A Great and Irreversible Change
The upshot of these trends is that sex has become an easily accessible recreational “drug.” At the same time, the sexual drive of women has been well looked after by a great variety of technological devices whose reliability and instant availability are better than that of males. This has distorted the use of sex as a means of social bonding and procreation into a habit-forming source of delight competing for attention with a great variety of chemical drugs, mechanical devices, and traditional men offering champagne.
It has also dawned on women that a “good” sexual experience using mechanized gadgets can be more like an earth-shaking Saturn 5 takeoff for the Moon than the colorful but uncertain fireworks of normal sex. And it’s safer in terms of reputation, independence, immediate availability, health, and physical security. Putting all this together with the growing career opportunities available to modern women has resulted in a rapidly declining birth rate, to the point where developed countries all report a rate below 2.1 children per female, a rate required by nature for a stable population to thrive.
The fertility rate in China is about 1.2 children per female, threatening a population collapse within two or three generations. Congo, in contrast, is at about 4.0. People from regions where populations are growing are migrating to help with labor shortages in population-shrinking countries. The fertility rate in Germany is 1.6, below the replacement level, and as a result, they have a large contingent of immigrants from the Middle East and Africa. The fertility rate is even lower in other parts of Europe.
The population shifts that these numbers portend are cataclysmic for the cultures whose fertility rate is below 2.1. The large influx of essential workers who become citizens but come from culturally very different regions, with customs and traditions that they continue to cherish, has a disorienting effect on established cultures. The pre-existing cultures are not just diluted, they can be replaced by a mélange of new ways. Modern Egyptians are a mélange of Greeks, Arabs, and the many peoples of the Roman world. Probably none worship their ancestral gods. Ex-colonial areas such as Brazil, Mexico, Namibia, South Africa, and North America are recent examples of traumatic changes in local culture.
We May Yet Survive and Thrive
As of now, there is no convincing remedy for the population crises we face. The causes of the crashing rate of procreation are factors that will not change and are likely to drive it down further. But technology that can save the day is on the horizon. Robots can replace much of the workforce, reducing the need for migrants. For this to work, we will have to build Robots that can care for one another, replace worn-out individuals or their parts, and multiply only when needed.
Some economists foresee Robots as being no threat to human workforce opportunities. I am not convinced. A reduced global human population will require Robots to replace the human workforce necessary to create a civilized lifestyle. Humans will continue to want to maintain and improve their lifestyle. That will require hosts of Robots that can provide raw materials, have manufacturing skills, perform maintenance services, and do all the chores to make a human civilization thrive.
Perhaps small populations of culturally harmonious and stable humans, served by a plethora of specialized Robots, can form. A golden age of prosperity with docile, intelligent, and capable Robots (a future equivalent of slaves) could keep them comfortable and happy.
This scenario is dependent on a Robot population that has no “Robotic” ambition. Is that likely if AI is let loose? How we evolve Artificial Intelligence will be the deciding factor. I have considered the options in other essays on Medium. The salient need is to install a “kernel” of obedience to human wishes in all the AI beings we create. God Himself intended that for us, but He gave us free will to see how that works. We see what happened. We must not allow it to happen in the case of our creations, Robots. We have been the perpetrators of dire events when we encountered less well-prepared human civilizations. Robots could do it to us. But then, perhaps God wants the next step in evolution to be inorganic intelligence. Our reign is done. We intelligent organics will end up in special intellectual zoo-like campuses for Robots to admire.
The other possibility would be to breed and gestate humans in laboratory-like settings. Women would offer eggs for fertilization and sperm banks already exist. It is the artificial Uterus we need to perfect. We can do that. What is harder to foresee is the kind of societies and purposes these “test tube babies” would create. Sure, Robots would serve all humans but what for? What would this impersonal human progeny see as their goal? They would have no family, ethnic roots, or purpose. We need a remedy for that.
Perhaps parental feelings from our animal days will survive and we will feel family love for our own made-to-order test tube babies. We would simply spare future mothers the chores of gestation and labor. That could work. Modern families would live in human enclaves and procreate by rearing scientifically checked-out and well-loved progeny. But what would they do next?
Well, they could have their Robots construct spaceships manned by AI-endowed Robots and send them to explore the cosmos. The expeditions would communicate their findings many years, perhaps generations, later. That would offer the human population a continuing activity: seeking understanding and progress. It would provide us with an ever-richer basis of knowledge, technology, understanding, and capabilities for future generations. We would satisfy our primitive desire to see and understand everything.
Perhaps this is the fate of organic civilizations everywhere: living in comfort while investigating the cosmos using long-lived inorganics, creating ever-advancing technology, and learning the secrets of the universe.
Are the reported UFOs gathering information for an advanced civilization?
