Monday, September 28, 2015

Praise Venus!

Oh man, figure drawing is so much fun!




I've never had the chance to draw anyone in the nude, which is a shame. But rarely do I draw from reference anyway. Which of course is a mistake, as I've written before. I can only imagine it would be even more fun with a live model.

Is it because I get to stare at a naked person? Probably. I mean, it's naive to claim otherwise. In reality, sex is the sole human motivator, and Venus is our muse. Well, not sex in itself, but rather procreation.

I'll explain. There exists a theory which states that everything an individual does can be linked to the primal urge of reproduction. To make, and raise, babies. It's in everything we do.

Why do we build careers? Why do we develop skills? Why do we hit the gym? Why do we bother organize our days? What is it that makes us want money?

To make ourselves more competitive in the market of partners. To entice a strong mate, to bear or seed strong children. To build a foundation for securing a future for those children. We do these things, because we think some skills are more valuable than others in impressing a partner. Because we think playing the guitar, or ukulele, or being good at drawing, will impress someone. A partner. How? Well. Times change. Hunting isn't how we make our living anymore.

We do good things, because we believe that other's will help us in turn, when we need it. We might even treat goodness itself as a competition. For the final goal, of course, of passing on our genes.

Even our fear of death is, ironically, linked to the creation of new life. Surviving is really only important because it's required. For anything. And everything IS for the sake of fucking. For children. It makes evolutionary sense to be deathly afraid of what comes after.

It's really interesting, and frankly, quite frigthening. It's a terrible thought that humans would be so simple. It's a truth that isn't easy to accept - It implies the falsehood of true passion, goodness. Really, it eliminates everything that separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. It's not something that you'd want to believe in. But it's definitely in the way humans are wired.

Or, well, that's the theory. It's notoriously difficult to dispute, but I invite anyone and everyone to do so in the comment section!

6 comments:

  1. (Part 1)

    If you think it's a terrible thought to accept, I might be able to relieve some worries about this subject. I find it quite easy to dispute this theory, but then again, I've studied quite a bit of human psychology, to a large extent on my own time too.

    My biggest problem is that "sexuality is everything" is too limited a sentiment. It is definitely part of what drives us, but something can indeed be simplified to a fault, which I can quite confidently say that this premise is. To begin with, we need to understand that though psychology has its base in science, it can only explain how a human (if we study human pyschology) tends to function when presented with a certain situation. What the "meaning" of the result is, is up for us to decide for ourselves. We could say that the fact that we do something for sex, means that we do it for eventual procreation. But we can always go further, and say that we procreate to preserve our entire species. But even from there, we could go in any direction, and decide a different starting (or ending) point. It's like the question "what is the meaning of life?"

    It has no real answer for everyone; people will always differ to some extent on how they feel about this. In the same way, it's a difficult claim to say that the meaning of life for everyone is to procreate. I'll go deeper into this later, but for now, I think that rather, the claim that everything we do, we do for procreation is much more difficult to prove, than it is to disprove.

    Firstly, let's take a look at the motivation of a human. Usually, you will find that there are some primal urges that take the first priority for most people. If there is immediate danger; we most likely won't focus on our sexual lust. If we are literally starving so that we're on the verge of death, we won't be able to pay attention even to immediate dangers. Unless that danger is the lack of air, in which case we will first do our very best to gain access to some air, before we can even think about much else.
    Now, we can claim that as you said, we want to survive in order to have sex later. It's very similar to the claim of everything that we do, is motivated by a selfish desire in the end. We do a favor, in order to receive a favor later. And if not that, as you said, we can simply be addicted to the feeling that we get when we know we've been helpul; aka, selfish. But once again, I think we need to set some kind of a limit, as we do to so many other things. This entire thought process is based on a fallacy in our way of thinking. You see, while everything we do can be traced to being selfish, we could just as easily make the opposite argument; nothing we do is selfish. Because every action will in some way both help yourself, and someone else in some way, as well as do the opposite; be unhelpful (do harm) to both you, and someone else. We could say that you are selfish all the time, in order to survive and be able to procreate, so that the entire species will in the end survive; aka, not selfish. So with this line of thinking, we get back to the procreation again. But not even that holds up imo.

    For one thing, there are people who sacrifice their lives to save the life of someone else. Probably what most people would call a noble death. That is; surviving is not always on the top of our priority list, and if we don't survive, we can't have sex. That said, the sex drive is a strong drive indeed. Because of this, many radical Islamists probably do indeed think that their sacrifice is for the sake of 72 virgins in their afterlife. But there are people who don't believe in that, who still sacrifice themselves, by for example jumping on top of a grenade, to protect their friends. Whether that is a selfish or unselfish act, is up to the people that are/were involved, or simply know about the situation, to decide. Point being, it's probably not for the sake of sex.

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  2. (Part 2)

    Also, it's always faulty to only approach human functionality from only one persepective, in this case, from a biological one. Because indeed, we are complicated creatures, even though we may have a rather simple initial coding. What else would be the sake of learning and evolution, if not to improve the imperfect code we're born with? This too is for the best of the species, usually, but not necessarily for the act of procreation itself, though eventually, what we learn will leave its traces on our primal code. And we've also been capable of creating weapons that could literally kill every single human being on this planet. I don't think that that has arisen from the will to fuck. Of course, biology is merely a concept, or rather, a name we've given to an unconscious phenomenon, which means that it isn't capable of thinking whatsoever, so it couldn't predict that a species could get too far in evolution for their own best. But a human can predict this, because in several ways, we have indeed risen above what you'd think of as standard biological patterns. These patterns are still left in us, but we also possess the cabalitiy of making a conscious (conscious being the key word) decision of going against our primal urges. It's not rare to see people deny sex, even if they'd be attracted to that person. And it's not always something that is motivated by the fact that you can have sex later. Even if the world was to end tomorrow, I know that a lot of people would deny sex even when offered (although they might be attraced to the offering person [As I'm sure you know though, we tend to be more attracted to people with a very different set of genes from us, because that will more often than not result in healthy babies]), because of other convictions, be they logical or not; point being, biology isn't everything. There are the social, and psychological aspects as well. They all interact with each other, but in the end, are very separate forces.

    To make things even more plain, let's take a look at homosexuality. Though it may be possible in the rather near future for same sex couples to procreate despite earlier limitations, it has been pretty commonly understood that you won't receive children by having intercourse with a member of your own sex. Sure, some of these couples adopt children, and still help society by raising a child. But there are many couples, heterosexual ones too, that never have been, and never will be interested in raising a child, for a multitude of reasons. Some may feel they're not equipped with the tools a parent needs, some may think themselves not wanting of the responsibility, and others just might not like children.
    I mean, there are stories of mothers throwing their children out of 5th story windows, so raising a child certainly doesn't seem to be top priority for all people.

    And neither is sex.
    I'm sure you've heard about asexuality. Now, I don't know how many people actually are asexual, and what that really means from a biological perspective, as the concept seems so disconnected from my own experiences as a very sexual human being. But whatever causes it, be it an unusual set of hormone levels (which is the case for some people), a deciscion never to have sex, or a genuine disinterest in/no bodily or emotional response to anything related to sexuality, I don't think it's relevant for the sake of the argument, which is that sex and sexuality is clearly not the main motivator for such people.

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  3. (Part 3)

    Apart from all this, there are so many complex situations and responses, on so many levels, to different situations humans face, or could potentially face, that indeed, tracing everything back to sexuality is way too simple, and seems rather unimaginative. You can always trace anything back to annything if you try, but that doesn't mean that it makes sense. You can also make up your own understanding of the word "sexuality" like Freud did, which allowed him to base almost all of his theories around sexaulity. Too bad for him that no one (sane) really believes in his theories in this day and age.

    Another interesting thing to note is that if you go far back into the history of life, no species whatsoever reproduced through sex, and this alone, makes it pretty much impossible to assume that this is the basis of all that which we do. Becuase other functionalities that non-sexual life forms possessed, like motoric control and the will to survive, are still left in us humans; the cerbellum is probably what's considered to be among the very oldest parts of our brain, from an evolutionary standpoint, and its main functions are to monitor our movement, as well as account for our initial responses to feelings such as fear of danger. It is also what connects our brain to our spinal cord, which in turn allows our reflexes to be so incredibly fast, as there's no need for all information to even pass through the brain until after a reflex is executed.

    I could write even more about this subject, as it is both interesting, and easy to talk about, but I think I've made my points clear enough.
    In summary, sexuality is indeed an important motivatior for most human beings, but it is naive to assume it's the only, or even the main drive behind all of our actions. In the end, while it can be frightening to think of how simple our basic coding can seem, it's just something we're given to build upon for the rest of our lives, allowing the more conscious of us to even affect the direction we're moving in to quite an extent. All this said, I am very aware that much of what we do, is because of subconscious decisions we've made without even realizing, which is another subject that can be very interesting to discuss, and has strong ties to the discussion about freedom of will, and whether we even possess such a thing.

    Thanks for writing this blog post! It's very rare that I'd disagree with something you write to such an extent, but I honestly appreciate the thought process you consequently ignited in me, as I've been too focused on other things such as music to really write something substantial lately. I think that as a dedicated musician, I feel like I've moved past the point of where my main goal is to impress people, very long ago. I mean, sure. That has always been a part of it. But the longer I've played, the smaller that will to impress becomes; while I do like gratification, I mostly play and make music because I selfishly enjoy doing so myself. Surely, this too is because of some subconscious reason, but given the nature of it, and how I feel, I really doubt that it's mainly sexual; rather, not much at all.

    Either way, interesting entry. Sorry for the comment(s) that's longer than the post itself. But I will totally steal this comment from over here, and paste it into a blog post of my own, which I'll upload today or tomorrow. As I said, I haven't really gotten to write much anything lately, so now that I wrote something, I'll take as much use of it as possible.

    Don't worry about leaving a long response just because it's a long comment though! I'd just like to hear whether what I said has impacted the way you think about this subject at all, or not ;)

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    Replies
    1. For part one:

      I believe most of our "primal" urges exist to protect, indirectly or directly, offspring. Some urges, like our urges to learn, to discover, exist in order to prepare us for having and raising children, indeed for us to stop being children on our own. The urge to care for others and be emphatic is absolutely paramount for our species raising our slow growing children effectively. Without this urge, there couldn't exist any feelings of family. Our protectiveness over others is part of flock behaviour (The flock will care for our children. Throwing oneself over a grenade to save others is the same urge acting, even though it may seem a confusing thing to do.), and also a byproduct of the evolutionarily necessary emphatic ability, which exists to create the strong bond between parent, mother perhaps specifically, and child.

      Doing things that makes us feel good is important for mental health and stability, both of which are important in aspects of the fine-tuned babymakers we are. It is gratifying, because it serves an evolutionary function. We don't have feelings for nothing, we have them specifically to be more effective in raising children. In the world we live in today, the reward system that rules these feelings is broken, because the step from nomad life is too large, and stimuli is too trivial. When we see a happy face, we get happy. We wan't to repeat what we did, because it makes us happy. Back in the day when our reward system wasn't completely broken, that would mean something.

      A honor death is simply short-hand gain winning over gain in the long run. This does not mean that short-hand reward is a stronger motivator, because it still doesn't govern how we act in general. But if you really believe that you get 72 virgins the moment you die, why live? In that world, there's no difference between the living and the dead, save the 72 women. And believe me, there's a reason 72 women bites harder than 72 cars, pianos, or whatever else may be someones so called "passion in life".

      Moving on to part two:

      Creating weapons of mass destruction is a means to gain power. We want power, because it enables us to procreate. But humans aren't perfect. Our strong desire for power can lead to horrible, misguided things that have nothing with procreation to do, but there's still only one reason we wan't power in the first place. Power translates directly to a competitive edge.

      The existence of homosexuality doesn't disprove anything. Sure, it breaks the babymaking system on an individual level, but the same urges still govern a homosexuals behaviour. The same urges that exist to hone the babymaking system. Sex is, still, indirectly the biggest motivator, because it governs what urges we have in the first place.

      Onwards...

      Sure, we have other urges, we have other motivators, and they seemingly have nothing to do with sex. It may not seem that simple, but to my way of reasoning, everything still revolves around the act of having children and furthering the group. Not necessarily our species, even, but our group, and our genes. It's in every part of our behaviour, one way or another.

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    2. (Part 4)

      I don't necessarily disagree with anything you said, and I myself too allowed for many of these thoughts in the mini essey which I wrote as well by playing around with them for a short while. That said, I don't think it's the way we should look at things, because I could analyze everything we do, as being motivated for our drive to achieve whatever, and come with just as many points. The fact that this is possible, means that rather than the procreational drive being behind everything we do, the procreational drive CAN be looked at as being behind everything we do.
      But using the same kind of logic that you used for your arguments, I could argue that we do everything based on our drive for achieving happiness, or any negative emotion as well. While having a general well being is good if you want an optimal situation to have sex in, sex also makes you feel good and improves your general well being (as can your children, and the knowledge that humanity is going somewhere might make us feel great). They are not mutually exclusive, which makes it impossible to say which one is the trigger and which one is the goal.

      So what I'm arguing for is not that sexuality cannot possibly be looked at as our primary drive, but more that I don't think it's relevant that it can be, but rather if it should be, or if something else can be as well, like all the other motivators out there.
      Especially because of sex disinterested people, I'd say that the claim if anything would be better if it only included raising new generations, as that is something that even people who have no observable sex drive can do; that is, the goal being to strengthen our species. But even that is not always true. Also, the same goes for wanting power; sure. Some people might want power to get laid, or do something even more grandiose, but at the same time, a rapist might rape in order to feel powerful. And not all power hungry people have cared much for sex either, even though the majority has. There are just too many exceptions to this theory, for it to be appliccable to everyone. One of the qualities in pyschological research that is held as the most important, is whether a theory is generalizable to all people, which I don't feel that this theory is. This, in my eyes, is an icomplete theory, that needs completion from our other drives to be able to describe how or why a human functions. That is how the science of psychology has evolved to systemise things, for them to be as accurate and easily understandable as possible. If anything, I'd like to entertain this idea of procreation being a drive behind everything in the end, more as a philosophical muse than a complete psychological theory based in science.

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    3. (Part 5)

      Because of this, our drive to procreate, while definitly important, shouldn't be something you keep going back to from every other drive we have just because you can (except, as I said, as an interesting thought game). Because you can go back to every other drive from the drive to procreate as well: A woman 100 years ago may want to have sex with a man in order to secure a safe living, which you might say is only so that she later can provide this for her children, aka. Procreate. But then again, I can just as easily say that she wants the child so that the child will provide for her when she is old and fragile.
      Rather than everything revolving around the act of furthening the group, everything CAN be viewed as revolving around the act of furthening the group (and furthening the group can again be good for you for subconscious selfishness alone, which only give more power to the theory that everything we do is selfish instead, which really, is not too far from being a polar opposite). It's an important difference.
      Because of this entiry structure, the argument loses a lot of credibility to me; it has become an unfalsifiable hypothesis. But the fact that you can't disprove anything, is far from being the same as the thing being right. Because the fact that "everything we do is because we as a species want to serve God". You can't really disprove it, and anything you say against it, could be easily explained as only being part of it all.

      But as I've said, I don't disagree that sexuality and the drive to evolve is important to us. However, I find "Sex is, still, indirectly the biggest motivator..." to be an interesting statement, because the word "biggest", and "indirectly" seem to work (not entirely) but slightly against each other. And the same can be said for so many other drives, like my previous example; happiness. It's like counting with infinities. It's annoying, but doable. If many drives could be said to be the most important, the more drives you add to the equation, the less of the equation every individual drive would take. And I think that you really need to factor those other drives in there just as strongly, becuase they all have the same essential properties, so there is no reason to treat them differently.

      But it's okay that you disagree, I won't argue anymore after this, as we don't really seem to disagree on much else that is substantial, except for in which way you should approach the information that we already have. And no way of looking at it will really change the reality of the other ones either, which is pretty interesting, as the viewpoints aren't mutually exclusive either. This is why I chose to focus more on dragging the analysis back from the observation about people, to an observation about how you and I seem to apporach the very words we use, as well as our entire way of thinking about the subject; because that is where it seems like the difference between us on this particular topic is. In the end, I don't think that anyone could claim honestly that either one of us is ultimately right or wrong, as we just come from different viewpoints about the same thing.

      I just want to strenghten that if you really wanted to apply such a theory as this to a real situation in order to do something about that situation or use it for gain in the future, you would want to analyze that situation from more viewpoints then the one (not only biological viewpoint, but really, focusing on only part of our biology), in order to have the most effective approach.

      Once again, sorry, but I'm pretty sure you know by now that I seem to have a severe disability when it comes to keeping a point short and concise :p


      Thank you for reading :3

      I hope you're doing well and that you find your studies interesting :)

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