Men and Women Working Out When to Make Babies is What Gave Us Our Intelligence — Here is Why
Without the need to work out the best time to procreate, intelligence could never have been born
What if I said that every woman alive can thank the existence of men for their intelligence, and vice versa, every man can thank the existence of women for theirs, and all because we have to work out how to get along with each other, and mate with each other, what if I said that? Would you believe me or think me mad?
Most would probably think the latter, but I assure you it’s the truth.
Working out the right time to have sex takes intelligence — that’s why all sexually reproducing species have a form of intelligence
Every sexually reproducing species could be classed as a group of procreation machines i.e. their primary function is to reproduce, and the way sexually reproducing species do that is by having sex. So, technically speaking, you could say that humans are sex machines.
No jokes, that’s a real thing.
Anyway, in terms of what fuels our desire to procreate: the desire to survive. In terms of what fuels our desire to survive, nobody has a clue. Something, who knows. But we all desire to live and the way to live if you are a sexually reproducing species is to procreate.
This is why all sexually reproducing species have developed both biological and psychological systems to motivate us to have sex, but only at the right times.
But when is the right time I hear you say?
The right time is the time that is most optimal for increasing the survival chances of offspring. However, here is the thing, in a species that reproduces asexually, an individual only has to work out when is the right time for they themselves to produce offspring, but in a sexually reproducing species, two separate individuals, so a male and a female, have to come together and work out when is the best time to procreate.
That means in an asexually reproducing species, there is no need to get to know anyone other than yourself or to be accountable to anyone other than yourself, but in a sexually reproducing species, there is a need to get to know others and be accountable to them.
This is the genius of sexual reproduction, it takes intelligence to get to know someone other than yourself, which means sexual reproduction inspires the evolution of intelligence.
The need to know each other creates intelligence
All sexually reproducing species are more intelligent than asexually reproducing species, this is because all sexually reproducing species have to form enough intelligence to be able to talk sex with one another.
This intelligence leads many sexually reproducing species to form social groups, from ants to bees, to lions, to dolphins, to chimpanzees, to humans, to much more. Forming social groups leads to higher levels of required intelligence due to them leading to a greater need to get to know others.
So, the need for males and females to socialise so they can work out when is the best time to procreate can lead a species to form enough intelligence to start forming social networks, which increases their intelligence further by creating a need in both males and females to get to know a greater number of others.
That means the more people we need to know, and the better we need to know these people, the more intelligence we need and so the more intelligent we get.
Yep, I know, crazy, but that’s the power of getting to know people, the more people we need to know, the more intelligence we need to be able to talk sex with all those people.
Yes, talk sex with all these people, that is why we develop language, to talk sex.
Except of course humans are the most intelligent and by a good distance, which begs the question of why us and not others, or perhaps to put it more bluntly, why is our sex talk a.k.a. language forms, so much more advanced than all other species?
Why human language a.k.a. sex talk is so advanced
The deeper you need to know someone on an individual level, the more intelligent you become; however, social groups don’t require a deep knowledge of others, they only require a superficial knowledge of others. That means social groups never form a need to learn to be truly accountable to each other on a deeper level. This matters.
Here is why, the path to high levels of intelligence is not just about getting to know others, it is about learning how to be accountable to others, and on an individual level at that. That means the more you need to be accountable to people at the individual level, the more intelligent you need to be.
However, if you are in a social group that is not pair-bonded, then all you need to learn is how to be accountable to the group, how to operate in the group, and how to protect the group’s interests. That means you don’t need to know anyone on a deeper level.
This is why groups can function brilliantly even if people cannot speak the same language, let alone know each other. For example, a group of people could come together all speaking different languages and yet, if each knew how to play football, they could create two teams and play football without any trouble.
This is why social groups in the animal kingdom do not lead to human levels of intelligence, such intelligence is not required to operate in a social group. For example, chimpanzees, to form their social groups all they need to know is how to play football, and to play football, they don’t need to know each other on a deeper level.
If they don’t need to know each other on deeper levels, they don’t need advanced communication forms, all they need is very basic communication forms.
However, imagine if numerous football teams had to come together and unite into a larger football team, imagine how much more complex things would become if that was the case.
Step forth human language, the only known means to deal with this level of complexity.
Groups working together are a lot more complex than individuals doing so
Geese form bonded pairs, but not groups of bonded pairs, as such, they don’t need to get to know each other on an individual level well enough to need an advanced language. Chimpanzees form a social group of non-bonded pairs, but they seldom merge groups, as such, they don’t need to form advanced language because they don’t need to get to know each other on individual level well enough to need advanced language.
However, humans are different, we do, and this is because we have evolved to form groups of bonded male and female pairs a.k.a. groups of families.
Yep, the reason the cognitive revolution happened and the English language along with all other languages exist is that we started forming groups of families.
To understand why this matters, take a nation, how long does it take one nation to negotiate anything with another, and why does it take so long? The answer is of course because each nation has its own interests, interests that it will have spent a lot of time identifying before coming to the table.
That means you need a lot more knowledge about your own group to form a group of nations than you do to form just a nation. This is because the more you know about your own group, the more you can protect their interests while merging with the new group.
But guess what, nations are groups of nations, and those nations within nations are similarly made up of groups of nations, and this process goes on and on until we get to the smallest nation of all, a family a.k.a. the founding nation.
Yep, nations started as pair-bonded couples, so families, negotiating with other families to create mutually beneficial social groups, and the groups just kept getting larger, and the larger they got, the more the individual families that made them up needed to know their family members so that they could better protect their interests in the continuing mergers.
In terms of what is the prime interest at the heart of all families: when is the best time to procreate.
Yep, nation-building is all about talking sex, which means our path to intelligence ran as follows:
Males and females started talking sex to work out when to make babies, this led males and females to start getting to know each other, they used this knowledge to start forming groups of individuals to protect each other while making babies, which further fuelled males and females getting to know each other, then they used this knowledge to start forming bonded pairs (a.k.a. families) to protect each other while making babies, which further fuelled males and females need to get to know each other, then those families started uniting with other families to better protect children, which further fuelled males and females need to get to know each other.
Do you see the process, the more males and females need to get to know each other on a deeper level, the more intelligence and as such advanced forms of communication we need.
That means at the heart of the need for intelligence, is the need for males and females to get to know each other and work out when is the best time to procreate.
No jokes, that is real, men and women’s need to talk sex is at the heart of our intelligence, which means truly, men and women could never have formed intelligence without each other.
But here’s the thing, what this means is that intelligence cannot be borne without one thing, consent.
Consent is at the heart of the human survival mechanism
Imagine an ancestral man who does not abide by the rules of consent, and instead goes around taking every female he can anytime he wants. Here is what will happen, because the females will be having children at poor times, the majority of his offspring and the females bearing them will likely die, as such, his genetics will die out.
It doesn’t even matter if the man thinks that he is choosing a wise time for the women to get pregnant, a woman knows her body and herself better than anyone else, meaning statistically speaking she will always know the best time she is able to survive a pregnancy, as such, only the males who put faith in women’s power to know when to have children will see their children survive.
However, the flipside is also true, if a woman wants to procreate but a man does not wish to do so, it would be self-defeating for that woman to force that man to do so simply because if the man did not want to do so, inevitably, there must be a good reason.
This is why the vast vast vast majority of men abide by the rules of consent, it is also why the vast vast vast majority of women abide by the rules of consent, consent is the path to survival. As such, the great survivors of history are the men and women who abide by the rules of consent.
And this is not a virtue signalling statement, this is a real thing which is seen across all species. Those who survive are those who abide by the rules of consent, at least their species' version of it, those who don’t, are the ones who don’t.
This is why the rules of consent, so a species’ sexual selection practices, are so important to its survival chances, it is also why mating practices are so complex throughout the animal kingdom: the more complex the system, the greater the chances a species will survive.
But here is the amazing thing, the more complex the system, the more intelligent the species and guess which species has the most advanced version of sex and consent.
You guessed it, the most intelligent species on the planet. Us.
Consent is the driving force of human intelligence
If you don’t desire to find a mate, your species will never form intelligence because the only known way to form intelligence is to form a need to learn about another and be accountable to another, and the only known reason that leads a species to form a need to learn about another and be accountable to another is the need to have sex to survive. That means what drives intelligence is a man’s need to learn about the interests of a woman so that he can respect and protect those interests, and a woman’s need to learn about the interests of a man so that she can respect and protect those interests. This is because learning to respect and protect each other’s interests is the path to survival.
Here is the craziest thing of all, because we now live in nations which have been made up from merging millions of families, our nations set the rules of consent instead of our family, but those rules were created from the very act of merging all those families, which means our mating practices a.k.a our rules of consent, are built based upon the vested interests of millions of families uniting.
That means males and females coming together and working out the best time to procreate, and then teaching when is the best time to their families, has created our world.
Yep, schools are basically places where nations, a.k.a. families, teach their children how to talk sex a.k.a. when is the best time to procreate. English, maths, history, you name it, just advanced tools to talk procreation.
That means sex and consent are the driving force of advancement, and the more families that merge together, the more advanced we will become.
Final words
It may sound like I am preaching the importance of consent, and that I have an ulterior motive in writing this in trying to sell the importance of consent. But let’s be honest here, the people who need to be taught about consent are never going to read this, and even if they did, they would likely scoff at it — sad but true.
No, this post truly is about the origins of human intelligence and how sex and consent are at the heart of it. Genuinely, the push-pull dynamic between men and women when choosing when and where and who to have sex with, and how that drives us to need to get to know each other so that we can protect each other’s interests, has been and likely will forever continue to be the driving force of human intelligence.
Crazy, I know, but true. That means genuinely the better men and women get at knowing each other and being accountable to each other, the more advanced our societies will become, which means if you wish to drive human intelligence and advancement, start learning about others.
It really is that simple.
That’s all from me, thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this, you may also enjoy the following:
We Live in a World of Males and Females — Here Is Why
Four Fascinating Facts about How Men and Women Have Evolved to Work Together
Women Tampering with Contraception to Try to Get Pregnant Is More Common Than You Think
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