Friday, January 15, 2010

Of love and bestiality...

There are some things that we humans just take as fact, without really considering the why and how. Okay, there are a LOT of things like that, but I'm mainly thinking about things in our heads. These things aren't readily definable, and aren't necessarily based on logic or reason. In most cases, we can guess as to a why, but very rarely the what. Here are some examples of what I'm talking about:

  • Bestiality
  • Pedophilia
  • Scat (poop fetish, not singing really fast nonsense)
  • Killing another human
  • Stealing
Most normal, healthy humans have an aversion to all of these things. But what causes that aversion? A really good guess to the "why" would be evolution. Obviously we wouldn't have had as many babies by screwing horses, nor would we have had long blood lines by screwing babies. Scat and killing each other obviously shortens lifespan, and stealing hinders progress and cohesion as a society.

But treating this theory of why as an explanation is folly since it doesn't address the what. We accept this answer because we're used to other, similar answers where, when the why is identified, the what just falls into place.

Take, for example, a "Bridge Out" sign. Why is the sign there? Obviously because the bridge is out. We neglect to mention that the sign is actually there because someone went and put it there. In this case, it doesn't matter because that much is obvious...but not everything works like that.

The action is not always readily explained by the reaction.

So there must be something, some part of the human mind, that makes these things unacceptable. Or something. But it goes further. What about these "facts of life":

  • Love
  • Attraction
  • Luck
There's not even much of a why to explain these. Sure, love and attraction could be explained as evolutionary traits as well, but they would make just as much sense being absent. Without love and attraction, we'd be a lot more likely to go around screwing everybody, which would lead to more babies, more diverse DNA...all good things from an evolutionary standpoint.

Luck...I got nothing on that one.