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So, is the human scrotum half-empty or half-full?
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Christopher Ryan |
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In March of 1558, Andahazi tells us that Colombo proudly reported his "discovery" of the clitoris to the dean of his faculty.6 As Jonathan Margolis speculates in O: The Intimate History of the Orgasm, the response was probably not what Colombo had anticipated. The professor was "arrested in his classroom within days, accused of heresy, blasphemy, witchcraft and Satanism, put on trial and imprisoned. His manuscripts were confiscated, and his..
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Christopher Ryan |
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Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, for example, might be a bit less certain in his gloomy assessment of human nature: "Be warned that if you wish, as I do, to build a society in which individuals cooperate generously and unselfishly towards a common good, you can expect little help from biological nature. Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish."10 Maybe, but cooperation runs deep in our species too. Re..
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Christopher Ryan |
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This is the moment too many couples struggle in vain to avoid or ignore--even to the point of choosing bitter divorce and fractured family over the daunting task of confronting the sky together, with all the "confident girders" behind them in the past." --
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Christopher Ryan |
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Human beings and bonobos use eroticism for pleasure, for solidifying friendship, and for cementing a deal (recall that historically, marriage is more akin to a corporate merger than a declaration of eternal love). For these two species (and apparently only these two species), nonreproductive sex is "natural," a defining characteristic.5"
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Christopher Ryan |
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By projecting recent post-agricultural preoccupations with female fidelity into their vision of prehistory, many theorists have Flint-stonized their way right into a cul-de-sac. Modern man's seemingly instinctive impulse to control women's sexuality is not an intrinsic feature of human nature. It is a response to specific historical socioeconomic conditions--conditions very different from those in which our species evolved. This is key to u..
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Christopher Ryan |
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Lo que nos enriquece no es lo que poseemos, sino aquello de lo que podemos prescindir. IMMANUEL KANT
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Christopher Ryan |
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No group-living nonhuman primate is monogamous, and adultery has been documented in every human culture studied--including those in which fornicators are routinely stoned to death. In light of all this bloody retribution, it's hard to see how monogamy comes "naturally" to our species. Why would so many risk their reputations, families, careers--even presidential legacies--for something that runs against human nature? Were monogamy an ancien..
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Christopher Ryan |
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The overwhelming consensus is that egalitarian social organization is the de-facto system for foraging societies in all environments. In fact, no other system could work for foraging societies. Compulsory sharing is simply the best way to distribute risk to everyone's benefit: participation mandatory. Pragmatic? Yes. Noble? Hardly. We believe this sharing behavior extended to sex as well. A great deal of research from primatology, anthropol..
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Christopher Ryan |
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We're all members of one tribe or another--bonded by culture, family, religion, class, education, employment, team affiliation, or any number of other criteria. An essential first step in discerning the cultural from the human is what mythologist Joseph Campbell called detribalization. We have to recognize the various tribes we belong to and begin extricating ourselves from the unexamined assumptions each of them mistakes for the truth.
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Christopher Ryan |
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the world's most primitive people have few possessions, but they are not poor. Poverty is not a certain small amount of goods, nor is it just a relation between means and ends; above all it is a relation between people. Poverty is a social status. As such it is the invention of civilization.
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Christopher Ryan |
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We are enriched not by what we possess, but by what we can do without.
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Christopher Ryan |
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Clearly, the biggest loser (aside from slaves, perhaps) in the agricultural revolution was the human female, who went from occupying a central, respected role in foraging societies to becoming another possession for a man to earn and defend, along with his house, slaves, and livestock.
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Christopher Ryan |
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Our model might strike you as absurd, salacious, insulting, scandalous, fascinating, depressing, illuminating, or obvious. But whether or not you are comfortable with what we present here, we hope you'll keep reading. We are not advocating any particular response to the information we've put together. Frankly, we're not sure what to do with it ourselves.
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Christopher Ryan |
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Malthus concluded that poverty is as inescapable as the wind and the rain. Nobody's fault. Just the way it is. This conclusion was very popular with the wealthy and powerful, who were understandably eager to make sense of their good fortune and justify the suffering of the poor as an unavoidable fact of life.
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Christopher Ryan |
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What if we didn't all grow up hearing that true love is obsessive and possessive? What if, like the Mosuo, we revered the dignity and autonomy of those we loved? What if, in other words, sex, love, and economic security were as available to us as they were to our ancestors?
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Christopher Ryan |
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No hace falta amenazar de muerte a ninguna criatura para que obre conforme a su propia naturaleza.
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Christopher Ryan |
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There's an old story about the trial of a man charged with biting off another man's finger in a fight. An eyewitness took the stand. The defense attorney asked, "Did you actually see my client bite off the finger?" The witness said, "Well, no, I didn't." "Aha!" said the attorney with a smug smile. "How then can you claim he bit off the man's finger?" "Well," replied the witness, "I saw him spit it out." --
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Christopher Ryan |
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Modern men and women are obsessed with the sexual; it is the only realm of primordial adventure still left to most of us. Like apes in a zoo, we spend our energies on the one field of play remaining; human lives otherwise are pretty well caged in by the walls, bars, chains, and locked gates of our industrial culture.
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Christopher Ryan |
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nonreproductive sex is "natural," a defining characteristic.5 Does all this frivolous sex make our species sound "animalistic"? It shouldn't. The animal world is full of species that have sex only during widely spaced intervals when the female is ovulating. Only two species can do it week in and week out for nonreproductive reasons: one human, the other very humanlike. Sex for pleasure with various partners is therefore more "human" than an..
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Christopher Ryan |
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Among foragers, where property is shared, poverty tends to be a nonissue. In his classic book Stone Age Economics, anthropologist Marshall Sahlins explains that "the world's most primitive people have few possessions, but they are not poor. Poverty is not a certain small amount of goods, nor is it just a relation between means and ends; above all it is a relation between people. Poverty is a social status. As such it is the invention of civ..
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Christopher Ryan |
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Por que iba a ser nuestra maldad el bagaje de un pasado simiesco, y nuestra bondad, exclusivamente humana? ?Por que no hemos de buscar la continuidad con otros animales tambien para nuestros atributos <>? STEPHEN JAY GOULD
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Christopher Ryan |