The Reality Method 2.0

Archive for the ‘polyandry’ Category

Science books come and go; but a precious few are so bold, witty and well-researched as to remain popular favorites long after the science in them is no longer cutting-edge.

Matt Ridley’s The Red Queen is one such book. Originally published almost 15 years ago, it still retains value as a thoroughly-researched science book that has the verve to challenge politically-correct conventional wisdom (including feminism) — and not in a politicized or polarized way, but by building its arguments from well-established science.

And make no mistake: The Red Queen is a science book, even though you’ll quickly forget that fact as you warm up to Ridley’s inviting, understandable prose.

Eminently readable, this book is nevertheless invaluable to the modern man, inasmuch as it shows the way to understanding the stark — and starkly logical — reality that lies behind the murky PC status quo of modern dating and relationship life.

Key Concepts and Investigations
The titular “Red Queen” is the name of a theory that describes an evolutionary “arms race” between parasite and host, predator and prey, and even humans — specifically men and women.

The term Red Queen refers to the character in Lewis Carrol’s Through The Looking Glass, who has to keep running to stay in the same place. The idea is that a similar situation exists in the “arms race” of sexual selection that goes on between men and women, to the interest of defeating internal predators as well as ensuring the immortality of autocratic genes.

The back cover of the book says it well: “In the process, The Red Queen answers dozens of other riddles of human nature and culture — including why men propose marriage, the method behind our maddening notions of beauty, and the disquieting fact that a woman is more likely to conceive a child by an adulterous lover than by her husband.”

But even this synopsis is impoverished. The book uses the “Red Queen” concept as a point of departure for many more relevant topics, including:

From Topminnows to Modern Women
The book starts from a very simple, even innocuous, opening question: “Why sex?” In other words, why should mammals (especially apes) go to the trouble of having sex at all, when asexual reproduction by budding or cloning offer distinct advantages over sex?

From this seemingly innocuous beginning, Ridley proceeds through a close inspection of what feels like damn near the entire animal kingdom, and their individual habits with regards to sex, asex, and mating. Readers be warned; Ridley does spend the better part of the first 2/3rds of this book on this Jungle Book-type journey; when I first read the book, many years ago, I got somewhat impatient, because I couldn’t wait for him to start talking about men and women, and so I didn’t pay much attention to the first 2/3rds of the book.

But this was a mistake, for that journey through the animal kingdom lays an important groundwork: if only to demonstrate how bizarre, precocious, and pointed our own mating habits are.

The payoff is worth the journey. What Ridley arrives at such a chillingly accurate description of modern dating and relationship life that you can’t help but be impressed, and even enlightened, by the raft of scientific studies that support assumptions you might have made about women (and men) since childhood. It’s a case of science confirming common (but unpopular) sense — and never before has that confirmation felt quite so satisfying.

For a student of human psychology, or anyone who has had experiences (good or bad) in dating and relationships, this book is chock full of “Eureka!” moments. It simply does so much to explain the foibles and frustrations we have all gone through in dealing with women and ourselves in relationships — more than this Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus crap, more than anything by “Dr” Laura or “Dr” Phil (and as an aside, some research has shown that most “relationship advice” book are damaging and unhelpful).

This is a “relationship advice” book for Men — not because it deigns to give “advice” on a background of phony degrees (a la John Gray “Ph.D”) — but because it tears back the perceptual curtain of socially-approved PC rhetoric with sound, valid, peer-reviewed studies and allows one to glimpse The Matrix running behind the modern dating and relationships world.

Select Quotes
But enough of my own yakking. The book speaks best for itself, so I’ll step aside and let it speak, on topics as diverse and illuminating as

….the seed of truth in the accusation of woman as “manipulative”…

…Deep in the mind of the modern woman is the same basic hunter-gatherer calculator, too recently evolved to have changed much…Men are to be exploited as providers of paternal care, wealth, and genes.

…empirical study of infidelity….

In a block of flats in Liverpool, [researchers] found by genetic tests that fewer than four in every five people were the sons of their ostensible fathers…

…on the evolutionary basis of “the beauty myth”…

[Researcher] Low thinks women who gained fat [on their breasts and hips] may have deceived men into thinking they had milkful breasts and wide hip bones. Men fell for it — because the cost of distinguishing fat from heavy breasts or of distinguishing fat from wide hips was just too great, and the opportunity to do so was lacking. Men have counterattacked….by “demanding” small waists as proof…that there is little subcutaneous fat, but women have easily overcome by keeping waists slim even while gaining fat elsewhere.

…on feminism…

There is a contradiction at the heart of feminism, one that few feminists have acknowledged…

…on why there is a good reason for women to be more social and empathic than men…

A woman is dependent on her social intuition and skills for success at making allies within the tribe, manipulating men into helping her, judging potential mates, and advancing the cause of her children.

…on Religion and sex…

…This is presumably the reason the early Church became so obsessed with matters of sex. It recognized sexual competition to be one of the principle causes of murder and mayhem. The gradual synonymy of sex and sin in Christendom is surely based more on the fact that sex often leads to trouble rather than that there is anything inherently sinful about sex.

TRQ: A Classic, Recommended
By now it should be clear that I can’t recommend this book enough. There’s a reason it features prominently on the websites of many dating and seduction service providers: it lays out a scientific rationale for a modern male understanding of the world. It takes on feminism without being misogynistic. And it fits into our common-sense understanding of what’s constantly going on around us, even if we as men are told to ignore and disregard it.

It is also thoroughly researched; it features extensive chapter-by-chapter citations, as well as a voluminous bibliography and matching index. This was not a work of scholarship taken lightly. Matt Ridley does not purport to be a scientist OR a Doctor — he is a journalist by training, but his journalist’s knack for weaving disparate facts into sound cohesive conclusions absolutely make this book.

I bought my copy of the book used; by now, after several readings, it’s hopelessly dog-eared, yellowed and marked up. But given how cheap even a new copy is, it’s the one book on men and women I will say you can’t afford to miss.

Ridley’s humility sells the book for him: in the epilogue, he flat-out states “Half the ideas in this book are probably wrong.”

As a student of sexual psychology and human nature, I doubt that statement; but if it must be true, I think I know which half.