Sublime

Then, in 1962, the Scottish ecologist V. C. Wynne-Edwards, a careful observer of his country’s native red grouse, concluded that these birds sometimes sacrificed their reproductive privileges to keep their flock from starvation. The grouse, Wynne-Edwards contended, gauged the amount of food the moors could provide each year and adjusted their behav

More important, it seemed that men switched to more casual sex when they were in the minority – when women were forced to compete for men and, as a result, could exert less power over them.

The thesis that we are all nothing more than vehicles for a number of “selfish genes” has accordingly entered deeply into the simian gabble of academic life, where together with materialism and moral relativism it now seems as self-evident as the law of affirmative action.

Several types of evidence suggest our pre-agricultural (prehistoric) ancestors lived in groups where most mature individuals would have had several ongoing sexual relationships at any given time. Though often casual, these relationships were not random or meaningless. Quite the opposite: they reinforced crucial social ties holding these highly inte

In communities around the world in which there is a surplus, or perceived surplus, of women, men pursue a mating strategy geared towards multiple casual relationships.

absent birth control, promiscuity is good for men, who procreate almost without cost, and dangerous to women, to whom the entire burden of child-rearing gets shifted.

20. Sahlins (1972), p. 37. 21. http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2009/04/the-exchange-david-plotz.html.

Evolutionary psychologists add that early human evolution conferred an advantage on individuals who showed an interest in each other’s activities.