Music, arts and fashion have periods of fame and fall into past. While many of their ideas and interpretations still apply, they steadily loose accuracy in describing the world. It is very hard to come to think of something that has not lost meaning as a result of time elapsing. Then why can’t evolution happen as such? Evolution must adapt to context and situation to succeed in creating stable strategies. A species can’t expect to survive if it spends its energy forever in the development of claws past the point of their necessity. Evolution won’t work for a specimen if it always acts on the same specific parts and in one method, and so therefore the whole concept and its explanation can only be treated as generalizations.
Paternal involvement, according to gene interest, kicks into the text on chapter 8. It is very interesting, for this chapter not only treats with a single survival machine, but with interests of various carrying the same genes. It first talks about resources available for a mother to invest in the offspring, of which the following are some: “Food is the obvious one, together with the effort expended in gathering food, since this in itself costs the mother something. Risk of protecting young from predators is another resource which the mother can ‘spend’ or refuse to spend. Energy and time devoted to nest or home maintenance, protection from the elements, and, in some species, time spent in teaching children, are valuable resources which a parent can allocate to children, equally or unequally as she ‘chooses’ (123).” These resources and their employment, as referred to by Dawkins, connote a survivalist behavior of selfish parents. It is only necessary to sit in front of an Animal Planet documentary to realize how true the previous stands, and how animal parents employ them. They employ their resources in a way as to maximize the preservation of genes. Accordingly, a small child will be put on priority before the mother, as long as he has at least half the chance of surviving, for his chance of safeguarding her genes is much greater as a result of a young age.
The so called paternal instinct is, then, nonexistent in the animal kingdom as we understand it. A brown bear will care for her cups, feed, and protect them only as long as the bet is one worth taking, where the preservation of her genes is at stake. How similar, or different, are humans then in according to parental senses. We are all brought up to believe in something called “unconditional love,” or unending and disinterested love, as an altruistic behavior. Human society strays from the path of animal in many ways. Humans have not the possibilities to have dozens of children, at least in the majority of the cases, and must therefore value each of their children to a greater degree. Let’s say a reasonable number of children are two or three, although it may vary according to location and interpretation. A human mother then has to ensure the survival of her genes in two or three individuals, while a rabbit may have hundreds of bodies into which her genes go. The comparison is obvious: the human must ensure the survivability of all her children by whichever means possible as the only sustainable survival for her genes.
Resources available and necessary for the purpose are similar for both animal and human parents, the context is not. This theme is worth extending into the different social conditionings that affect human survival, but the extent of such is worth its own writing. As of now the real question should point towards generalizations and some number examples, which is what the text suggests, but I can’t help wondering: Is paternal condition in humans really altruistic as we are taught to believe, or does it come down to simple insurance of the survival of a “selfish gene”?
Paternal involvement, according to gene interest, kicks into the text on chapter 8. It is very interesting, for this chapter not only treats with a single survival machine, but with interests of various carrying the same genes. It first talks about resources available for a mother to invest in the offspring, of which the following are some: “Food is the obvious one, together with the effort expended in gathering food, since this in itself costs the mother something. Risk of protecting young from predators is another resource which the mother can ‘spend’ or refuse to spend. Energy and time devoted to nest or home maintenance, protection from the elements, and, in some species, time spent in teaching children, are valuable resources which a parent can allocate to children, equally or unequally as she ‘chooses’ (123).” These resources and their employment, as referred to by Dawkins, connote a survivalist behavior of selfish parents. It is only necessary to sit in front of an Animal Planet documentary to realize how true the previous stands, and how animal parents employ them. They employ their resources in a way as to maximize the preservation of genes. Accordingly, a small child will be put on priority before the mother, as long as he has at least half the chance of surviving, for his chance of safeguarding her genes is much greater as a result of a young age.
The so called paternal instinct is, then, nonexistent in the animal kingdom as we understand it. A brown bear will care for her cups, feed, and protect them only as long as the bet is one worth taking, where the preservation of her genes is at stake. How similar, or different, are humans then in according to parental senses. We are all brought up to believe in something called “unconditional love,” or unending and disinterested love, as an altruistic behavior. Human society strays from the path of animal in many ways. Humans have not the possibilities to have dozens of children, at least in the majority of the cases, and must therefore value each of their children to a greater degree. Let’s say a reasonable number of children are two or three, although it may vary according to location and interpretation. A human mother then has to ensure the survival of her genes in two or three individuals, while a rabbit may have hundreds of bodies into which her genes go. The comparison is obvious: the human must ensure the survivability of all her children by whichever means possible as the only sustainable survival for her genes.
Resources available and necessary for the purpose are similar for both animal and human parents, the context is not. This theme is worth extending into the different social conditionings that affect human survival, but the extent of such is worth its own writing. As of now the real question should point towards generalizations and some number examples, which is what the text suggests, but I can’t help wondering: Is paternal condition in humans really altruistic as we are taught to believe, or does it come down to simple insurance of the survival of a “selfish gene”?
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