Re: Memes and sexuality

From: Kenneth Van Oost (Kenneth.Van.Oost@village.uunet.be)
Date: Thu Jul 13 2000 - 20:16:09 BST

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    From: "Kenneth Van Oost" <Kenneth.Van.Oost@village.uunet.be>
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    Subject: Re: Memes and sexuality
    Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2000 21:16:09 +0200
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    ----- Original Message -----
    From: Aaron Lynch <aaron@mcs.net>
    To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
    Sent: Tuesday, July 11, 2000 6:14 PM
    Subject: Re: Memes and sexuality

    > At 08:41 AM 7/11/00 -0400, Lawrence H. de Bivort wrote:
    >
    > >I wonder if the repression of overt sexuality among humans comes to a
    > >certain extent from a desire to put some distance between ourselves and
    > >'mere' animals, to prove to ourselves that we are not 'animals.'
    > >
    > >- Lawrence
    >
    > Lawrence,
    >
    > I suspect that the tendency to view sexuality as a "lower animal" drive
    > results from the proliferation of intense taboos rather than the other way
    > around. In Thought Contagion, I have expressed a variety of hypotheses
    > about how such taboos tend to cause more reproduction and higher child
    > inculcation rates, and that the taboos are a result of simple propagation
    > forces acting over long periods of time. Rodney Stark, in The Rise of
    > Christianity has found evidence that reproduction differentials indeed
    > played a part in the early spread of sexually repressive Christianity.

    Aaron, do you mean that those sexual taboos are caused in some conscient
    way in order to ' control ' child rates !?
    Is this a memetic process !?
    Have people thought about that, or is it something genetical or something
    out of the blue !?

    I know f.e. that female lions can ' control ' the gender of their whelps.
    If there are less females to support the group in general, (females hunt),
    the
    little ones would be more females. Are there enough females, the gender
    choise is made genetically.

    Is this a process relevant to humans, if not, how do we explain the lack of
    it !? It would be interesting to confront those ideas againt the background
    of Islam, where males are ' better of ' or against beliefsystems in India,
    where
    new born girls are murdered...

    Regards,

    Kenneth

    ( I am, because we are)

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