Chapter III

WOMEN AS FIGHTERS
FOR THE QUALITY OF POSTERITY

We have made a way of two chapters. It brought us already to a certain boundary. As you remember, the opposite sexual qualities we chose to start with were activeness and passiveness. These features appeared to be very apparent, so we did not have to prove that activeness is a masculine, and passiveness is a feminine quality. The other pairs of opposites appeared to be less evident, however noticeable for an eagle eye. Here and there, in fiction or in a heart-to-heart talk we come (either occasionally, or aiming to generalize) to such conclusions as: men are prone to point at their business success; women tend to attract attention by their appearance; the first are fascinated by beauty; the second give in for reliability and decency; men’s all way of life is aimed at offering themselves; women are to choose the one out of a number of candidates.

We hope our readers will find all these facts more or less evident.

From our part, we have to say that on this stage of our investigation our goal was not to discover America.  Our cabotage navigation had a different purpose. The tasks we were solving have been the following. Firstly, we had to determine the initial rather a representative number of the opposite features. Secondly, we found it necessary to provide the oppositions with certain argumentation. Thirdly, we have started to build a system. Getting out to the open sea will be a test for the usefulness of these prior operations.

The history of the sexual knowledge seems to date back to the time when people recognized themselves as men and women. The noted differences between sexes have been reflected in myths and legends, incarnated in dances, festivals and games. Comparing masculine and feminine origins poets, writers, and artists have been revealing new words and colors. Great ancient, medieval, and modern thinkers again and again have been recurring to the exciting theme of sex, sometimes reaching utmost heights.

Goethe wrote: “As the descendants of Pandora, to beautiful children the desirable gift has been allotted of charming and enticing, and more through Nature, with half-purpose, than through affection, and indeed with malice, of gathering men around them, whereby they often run the risk, like the magician’s apprentice, of being frightened by the flood of their admirers. And then at last a choice must be made, one must lead home the bride.” [Goethe’s Autobiography. Poetry And Truth. From My Own Life. Translated by R.O. Moon. Public Affairs Press. Washington D.C., 1949. P. 684].

What a keen and precise observation! Here it is, the theory! Though it was written almost two centuries ago. We must admit that women have not changed much since that time.

In fact, in this short fragment Goethe expressed the algorithm of sexual behavior. Not only of women, but of men as well. For the two sexes are inseparable. Look into the mirror of symmetry – and you will see what happens to the disconsolate admirer who faces a descendant of Pandora and  (like, unfortunately, it usually happens) has to at once drop out of a race.

This must be the utmost height one can reach observing some natural phenomenon. We do not refer to the artistic values or imperfections of Goethe’s prose. What we are concerned about is the philosophical side of the text, seen as the reflection of existence. Being an artist Goethe took his “beautiful children” from real life experience. He just described what he saw without looking through time at what was going to be the result of the love play neither in the next generation, nor in the long run. The least we mean is to reproach the great German writer. A poet is not supposed to be a scholar. He knows better what to write about. The method that was in use even with the most powerful minds of that time – no matter whether they were philosophers, scientists, writers, or artists – did not permit them to get beyond the limits of the present existence. Within the dominant approach they were not supposed to find out the reasons and deduce consequences.

However, time made people search for new approaches.

Goethe had the fate of living and creating his works at the very start of one of the greatest revolutions in human cognition.  He reached the very boundary that we have come to so far in our investigation. Actually, it is a historic boundary, which separates two epochs. That was the moment when human thought – pushed forward by the formation of the dynamic and practical bourgeois society, yet constricted by empirics and metaphysics – got to seek for the new ways of reflecting the reality. Goethe’s Faust has already a number of brilliant dialectical guesses. Then comes Hegel bringing to philosophy a dialectical system. It would not take much time till his two great countrymen would fuse dialectics with materialism.  Science turns from descriptionism to the exploration of the content. The subject of inquiry that was static starts to be seen in its change. The question: “What is taking place in some sphere of being or cognition?” gives way to such questions as: “Why does it happen like this?” and “Which way is the development vectored?”

Discoveries of Marx and Engels, Morgan, Schliemann, Darwin, Mendel, Mendeleev, Popov made a revolution in the people’s understanding of the world they live in. Then came the 20th century passing on the baton to Einstein, Fridman, Hubble, Wiener.  It was a second birth of physics, cosmology, mathematics, chemistry, biology, and social sciences. However, the knowledge about sexes was preserved disorderly and amorphous. In 1965 a cyberneticist Vigen Geodakyan started to assault this almost the last bulwark of metaphysics and empirics.

Dear reader, our investigation has led us to the very boundary that separates empiric knowledge about sexes from scientific philosophical systematic concept. Following the route made by the pioneer we are ready to go to the open sea in full sail of dialectics!

We have to overcome the static view of sexes and find links between sexual interaction and the reasons and consequences of this interaction. We cannot limit our look to the present of a man and a woman; their relationship is to be viewed as a stage in a process of a larger scale.

So the task looks clear. But how shall we start to solve it? We have already laid several stones at the foundation of our system. From what side shall we start building the higher level of our construction?  Let us try the method that has already proved useful. We are going to express what we have found out in a really concise manner, reducing it to a few words. As a rule, this helps to refine the search and almost automatically determine the query. By the way, why do not we use the algorithm proposed by Goethe? Let us compress it as much as we can. So what do we get?

Woman attracts men to choose from them…

What kind of man is she going to choose? And why? What for?

No doubt, she is going to choose a good one, the best one, decent and reliable… We know what the feminine ideal is. What for? To live happily ever after. That is true, still this is a worldly truth. We have settled on searching the philosophical one.

What is the difference between worldly and philosophical approach? Firstly, the philosophical approach is incomparably wider. Secondly, it demands looking at the subject matter in its development. Thirdly, the philosophical approach cares first and foremost for the objective side of the phenomenon. This means that we exceed the bounds of personal life of a man and a woman and look at the results of their interaction within the evolution of the species. Let us not forget that we have widened our scope even beyond the Homo Sapiens species and are disposed to cover this territory.

Life is the constant change of generations.  Having passed through Earth existence one generation gives way to the other. People, animals and plants are born, live their lives and die. This conveyer has been working without stop for billions of years.  The number of individuals, which is impossible to imagine, has gone to nonexistence once having seen the light and having passed the gift of life to the others. Those who live now are on the waiting list. A sinister picture, is it not? So cruel, wasteful, regretful. Hasn’t this thought ever penetrated your mind when the everyday routine was interrupted by a moment of reflection about eternity? Haven’t you ever asked yourself: is it possible to be in a different way?

No, it is not possible. This is the way of existence of all living things. Each individual acts not on its own volition, but according to a rigid program recorded in its genes. The program is adjusted to the environment. And the environment changes. Sooner or later the program will collide with the environment. Death will come. One could live a hundred, thousand, ten thousand years, but it will come anyway. To continue the lifeline one has to leave and emit to the future with the next generation a number (the bigger the better) of various programs. To emit them blindfolded, at random, for no individual knows what change of the environment is going to come. The environment will choose the acceptable and the optimal program. The rest together with their carriers are going to be mowed down by the person with a scythe that we all know. The new generation using the same mechanism of random mutations will move the life conveyer one step forward. On and on and on in the very same way. Thus, the lives of now living are paid by the lives of their predecessors as well as by the lives of their coevals, who are not compatible with the environment.

Actually, in theory, if we omit a number of provisos, it is possible for the individuals to live forever. Eternal existence is thinkable in an absolutely steady environment, which does not demand adjustment, for the reason of absence of changes. However, this alternative is purely fantastic, for the way of existence of the living creatures is development. The real scenario would be the eternal being of genetically changing individuals. More than that, this is the scenario of the future. However, the detailed consideration of it lies beyond our investigation as well as it lies beyond the biological form of matter [For more information on life, immortality and post-biological form of matter, see our book Искрин В.И. Новая психология [Iskrin V. New Psychology]. – СПб., 1998.

As we know, the person with a scythe has a colleague armed with a different tool. We are speaking about woman who culls out people (only male) by her natural choosing predestination. She is more benevolent. The selection she performs consists in debarring from the reproduction those men who do not fit into her ideal or, at least, into some acceptable norm. Objectively those men carry the qualities that do not meet the requirements of the present and, what is more important, of the future that grows out of the present. Those men are carriers of non-progressive qualities. As for woman, she takes the progressive, positive men and having children with the chosen one brings to the future generation his good qualities adding to them those of herself.

Sexual selection narrows down the field of the natural selection. The number of deaths gets smaller, because the reproduction of high-quality men helps to reduce the “genetic spoilage”. Progress gets less wasteful and more efficient. Looks like a pretty nice nature’s gadget!

Apparently, genetic channel would bring to the future only biological features. Social qualities are transmitted through upbringing and education.

Woman is in charge of transmission through this second channel only in the exploitation society. Of course, in case she is not deprived of her choosing role. In a monogamous family father, having given at once his biological features to his children more or less regularly inculcates in them the social norms, using such means as his own example, moral teaching, or his belt. In collectivist societies it is all different. In the primitive society the man and the woman (“husband” and “wife”) belong to different gentes. The gens is exogamous [The concept of exogamous gens, as an institution common to all barbarians until the entry into civilization, was introduced by Lewis Morgan (1818-1881), an American ethnologist, the author of Ancient Society, or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery through Barbarism to Civilization (1877) who proved that exogamous gens was the basis of all primitive societies]. Children stay in the gens of their mother, and get from the father nothing but biological qualities. By the way, within group marriage the father cannot be determined for certain, nor anyone means to look for him.  So father can pass on to his children only dispositions for the social traits that can be either realized or not, due to the circumstances. Inside the gens the young generation inherits skills, customs, norms of behavior and moral from the older generation: their kin mothers, aunts and uncles, but not their biological fathers. So there exists a channel of social inheritance. Human society is impossible without it. But is this channel regulated by anyone?

It turns out to be that it is. The social qualities are passed on to the children not by everyone, but only by the selected congeners. Who selects them? You will find the answer at the end of our book. Then we are going to demonstrate that besides death and woman there exists one more selector. As for the collectivist society of the future, then there will a system of social and biological inheritance in principle similar to the primitive society. For now we just put off these problems till the final part of our investigation.

Female animals perform the same function as women. Of course, they convey to the future only biological qualities, chosen by them from the males’ offers. The other difference between social and animal world has to deal with males’ role. Male animals compete with each other in their biological values and thus make the female’s choice easier, sometimes narrowed down to one individual. By the way, in asocial not very civilized communities when it comes to a conflict men can also leave the woman without any choice. It seems like such a form of sexual selection played a considerable part at the beginning of human history.

We managed to encounter the word that was missing in the algorithm of woman’s sexual behavior. Subjectively choosing a “decent and reliable” one, objectively a woman performs the choice of such a man whose posterity would be of high quality, which means a cumulative quality meeting the requirements of natural and social environment. The means of reaching this goal is attracting the possible largest number of men and choosing the carrier of progressive quality out of rather a wide range (male sex is diverse). Woman chooses a high-quality man indispensably basing on his social characteristics. Unlike female animal fighting for the biological progress, woman fights first and foremost for the social development.  Naturally, with equal social parameters an average woman would prefer a healthy man to a sick one, a strong one to a weak, a handsome one to an ugly.

Working on her choice woman does not calculate the rate of their decency and reliability. There are no formulas for that. She acts by intuition, basing herself on the feminine ideal of a man and socially formed concepts. It is known that if a girl hesitates making her choice, she is asked if she would like to have a child from this man. Giving an answer first of all to herself, she solves the problem and, what is important for us, shows the objective meaning of the choice.

The choice is also influenced by the circumstances. One thing is being a student of Police Academy or working with a men’s crew at a missile construction department. An absolutely different thing would be giving injections to feeble retired people, or after a certain age boundary being buried at the bottom of library stocks with no company but mice and book characters. You must remember, how in the Devchata [The movie directed by Yu. Chulyukin, 1961, where the action takes place in a Siberian timber-felling site. Young people come to work there from different parts of the country. Devchata are the girls who stay together in a barrack, work hard and by their enthusiasm and passion create a warm and friendly atmosphere] movie Nadya, a “middle aged” girl, “chooses” Ksan Ksanych, who is despite of being kind of old and bald, and a bit stingy, still is a positive person, plus, as Nadya’s friend says, “does not smoke, does not drink, and works hard”. “What is so surprising? They have their love”, she says. And then another girl Anfisa reveals the prose of life: “You know what? Nadya is at the point of turning 28. One, you know, would marry a goat, not just Ksan Ksanych.”

So woman does not always have a choice. One of her inherent qualities is not always realized. Here we are not speaking about feminine natural choosing capacity, which we discussed above. We refer to another quality, which we would call womanly selectiveness. While the choosing capacity points at the objective mission of making a choice; selectiveness refers to the subjective possibility of choosing. To choose one has to be picky. Surely, woman is pretty good at it. Being socially oriented she looks at the scattered array of men comparing and evaluating. Man, on the contrary, goes crazy about biological characteristics and often turns to be totally unscrupulous about a woman’s social traits. Quite a different story refers to her breasts, legs, or hair. Still, to have an understanding of people means to be able to look into their inner world, to see their soul, to know, for instance, that some person is kind and honest, while the other one is evil and hypocritical.

Woman is to be picky objectively, for men are particular and diverse. As for men, they have no big need of this quality, for women are averaged, more or less alike each other.

Choosing her partner and – now we can add – being picky in it, woman basically looks at social traits, though not forgetting about biology.

This statement would sound just perfect if it had not been for one physical trait that is nothing of less importance for a woman than honesty, sincerity, valor, or selflessness. Yes, you are right, we are speaking about stature. But is it of vital importance?

We dare say, it is. And now we will explain why. Let us consider two possible scenarios of the sexual selection.

In case the biological environment is changing steadily and gradually, woman chooses the progressive qualities embodied in their carrier – the man – and having children with him transfers the qualities to the future. As humans are relatively independent from the natural environment, woman gives secondary importance to biology. This is the first scenario, the one we have been considering above.

In case natural environment dramatically starts to get worse, there seems to be a need of urgent measures. Otherwise there would be no time to get adjusted. The biological qualities must be taken from the second position to the first one. How can it be done? One possible way is to introduce novelties that could be of use tomorrow. But this can be done only at random, as no one can say what kind of change is going to happen. Or there is another way: accelerating the speed of introducing new features. The selection would then be intensified and the species would be able to get adjusted to the environment. This way is more unfailing.

In what manner is it possible to raise the speed of introducing the innovations? The only possibility is increasing the number of generations per time unit, for instance, per 100 years. This means shortening the time until people reach the age of puberty. Therefore, the sexual selection has to be aimed at culling out those men who have matured later, and can pass on this quality to the next generations. Intensifying the selection (of course not knowing about it; this is a spontaneous process) woman does not ask a man if he has matured at 11 or 15 years old.  She takes a note of it with her eyes (not with her mind!), as the time of puberty and the stature and are closely linked together. Woman chooses a tall man, and, which is more important, the one who has matured early. So she transmits these qualities to the future. Acceleration grows faster and the puberty age gets younger. Selection intensifies together with acceleration. The adjustment of the species catches up with the drastic, almost catastrophic changes of the environment.  This is the second scenario, the one which is taking place nowadays.

What kind of catastrophic changes do we refer to? Those known as ecological crisis. Acceleration is the reaction of Homo Sapiens species to the drastic pernicious change of the environment. This change is caused by the disparity between the old way of development of natural resources and the productive forces that have outrun this old way. The crisis of the old social relations and of the relations between the society and nature is inevitable while the new social system is being born. Acceleration happens to be one of the features of the turning point, which is taking place nowadays.

It is clear that ecological problems cannot be solved by acceleration. It is nothing but a biological, animal reaction. The way out is supposed to lie within social development, which requires revolutionary changes of social and socio-natural relations.

What mechanism gets the acceleration process started? Why do women start to prefer men who have matured younger? There is no other way to find the explanation rather than considering the environmental changes.

During social cataclysms the natural selection is the most ferocious among young immature men. Famine, cold, loss of the bread-winner, the hardships caused by the mass migrations, insanitariness, epidemics of childhood diseases – all these things damage first of all the youngest part of the population. Those males survive who are either robust enough, or find themselves in better conditions. Still, among the survivors there is a group formed by those who have been able to race at a fast pace through the dangerous childhood period. As a result, in the male part of the population (in the female part as well, but to a less degree for the reason of women’s lower reactivity) there appears a tendency of being ready for sexual contacts at younger age. Maturity gets younger. So women cannot but record this circumstance in their male ideal. The ideal always grows out of the objective reality. Desirable man gets not only socially positive, but also tall.

It seems that in Europe this process dates back to the epoch of primary accumulation of capital and in the less developed part of the world to the time of colonization. Proletarianization and its accompanying circumstances, such as separation from the family, big population density, the absence of property of the sexual partners, worked for the earlier start of the reproduction. Very impressive and truthful sources depicting the horrors of the early wild capitalism are the books Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens and The situation of the working class in England by Friedrich Engels.

We did not aim at covering the problem of acceleration within the present investigation. We just as briefly as possible set out our theoretical views in order to explain the women’s demand for the stature of their partners. As for the acceleration, a lot of unsolved questions still remain a mystery. For instance, in some countries (Turkey, India, Senegal, Colombia) there is no record of acceleration at all. In Chile in the recent years the average stature has even decreased.  These exclusions wait to be explained. In Germany, which is according to the authors of the article is ecologically favorable, the process of acceleration seems to have terminated [Акселерация в Германии закончилась. [Acceleration in Germany has finished] // Наука и жизнь. 1992. № 5-6. С.14]. It would be very interesting to know what do women from the countries listed above think about the stature of their partner. How has their opinion been changing? Unfortunately, we do not have these data available.

As we have found out, woman is the fighter for the quality. For what does man fight then? Logically thinking, for the quantity. Being a specific, somewhat unique creature of nature, he strives to pass on to the posterity his particularity, his difference. Who knows, maybe the features that he has, and other men do not, will form the quality meeting the requirements of the environment in the future. Of course, man is unaware of this and does not think about it. Sex is a biological feature, and men's striving for duplicating, making a maximum number of their copies (which is physiologically possible) is actually an animal instinct. The endeavor for producing the bigger number of offsprings is an inherent natural trait of the male sex, no matter if it is a human, an animal, or a plant producing huge amounts of pollen. Every man, no matter whether he is good or bad, regressive or progressive, tries to duplicate himself (his specific quality) the more times as possible. This trait perfectly corresponds with man’s activeness.

On the other hand, women, who are averaged and unified, perfectly match men’s issuing business. One does not have a big problem choosing from the universal sex, just do it: issue a copy, and it will be passed to the future.

Men are craving for replicating themselves and are always ready for it. The woman’s task is to choose from those proposing themselves the one who would be worthy and of high enough quality for the future.

We have discovered one more dialectical pair: that is men’s aspiration to produce the possibly bigger quantity of offsprings, and the women’s ambition to produce a high-quality posterity. These two goals are mutually complementary.

In this key concept we totally agree with Geodakyan [Геодакян В. Два пола. Зачем и почему? [Geodakyan V. Two sexes. What for and why?] // Наука и жизнь. 1996. № 3. С. 100-101]. Our only difference, to our opinion, is the approach. We build our inferences (not only in this question, but in the whole investigation) sticking to the historic and philosophic approach, while our colleague uses the cybernetic methods. There is nothing bad in it. The reader will only benefit from comparing the two ways of thinking.

Before resuming our journey, we are going to revise our conclusion on men’s and women’s relation to the quantity and the quality of the posterity. We will do that with the help of Solzhenitsin and one of his characters Rubin. Discussing the eternal topic of men’s and women’s differences Rubin states, “ Here is the great providence of nature. Man is rather indifferent to the quality of women, while he inexplicably craves for the quantity. Thanks to this circumstance, rather few women stay completely unclaimed.” The other participant of the discussion Kondrashiov, goes on with the idea, “And women care for quality, if you please. Their unfaithfulness is a search for quality. And this is the way posterity is improved.” [Солженицин А. В круге первом. – М., 1990. С. 423-424]. Is it not brilliant? We could not keep from including this observation in the chapter.

Let us now take one more step forward. Men (males) fight for quantity, women (females) fight for quality. Still, to fight and to strive is half the deal. To have a result there is to be a “parcel” sent to the future. Let us take a look at men and women as at suppliers of the posterity rather than fighters for it. Does this function correspond to the categories of quantity and quality? It surely does. Any man as a representative of the scattered sex having contact with a woman supplies to the future his peculiarity, his specific quality. Man chosen by a woman supplies to the future not his quality as such, but as a progressive trait or an innovation. Woman producing posterity does it in a certain quantity. She supplies quantity. If she chooses a high quality man, if the nature suggests her this very choice, one can say, she supplies the quantity of quality.

Does it seem to be a neat weave of opposites? Woman fighting for quality supplies quantity. Man fighting for quantity supplies quality. Dialectics is a nice thing. So is the reality, though. However, the method we are applying to the reality proves to be not of the least importance.

There surges a problem. Why are quantity and quality linked with sexes the way they are and not vice versa? It has to deal with the circumstance that potentially a male can pass on his specific trait to all the posterity of a population. A female is rather limited in her reproductive abilities by the child-bearing, feeding, bringing up and other issues. If it comes to a critical situation one male, yet possessing the necessary predispositions, is able to rescue a species from extinction. This is the reason why the transporting of quality is linked to the sex able and willing to produce a maximum number of his replicas. We cannot but exclaim together with the character of Solzhenitsin: “Here is the great providence of nature!”

The division of conducting functions between males and females (so that males conduct quality and females conduct quantity) has its temporal facet. The time contributed by the two sexes in the reproduction process in incomparable. Male actually confines himself to a one-time brief operation, while female performs a long-term job. There is an exclusion made up by species with external fertilization: the most part of fish, lampreys, Crustacea, and Amphibia. With these species it turns out to be that the “labor contribution” of males and females is rather equal. The exclusion does not undermine the rule. The water inhabitants have a lower grade of sexual differentiation of functions compared to, say, birds or mammals. The tasks of the species correction are solved due to very high productivity of females, therefore, first and foremost, due to natural selection. It is much later that in the course of evolution sexual selection segregates from the natural selection. As for now, let us leave these historical evolutionary problems for further investigations.

Looking at people we see incomparable labor contributions of the two sexes. We are referring rather to psychological and educational efforts than to physiological, which is obvious. In the biological interaction of sexes man is more attracted by the process, while woman is looking at the result of it. Speaking in the absolute, man is momentary, fleeting; and woman is forward-looking and prescient. Let us come back to the test of a woman’s choice that suggests her to ask herself if she wishes to have a child from that man. Her choice is right if she does. Now we can add that it is right as long as she is looking at the future and evaluating the process considering the result.

In the first chapter we noted that men tend to figure things out on the spot, and women have their decisions already made. We were then speaking about answering the question “who makes the choice of the partner?” We suggested that women are more focused on the future and more responsible. It really turns to be so. These features ensue from the character of the sex, fighting for quality. Quality implies responsibility, foresight, stability, and constancy.  And quantity… We are not going to list the features it implies in order not to make men mad at us. This chapter has been pretty full of picking on them.

Naming the womanly traits linked with the fight for quality we get beyond the sexual relationship. In her life in general, in taking care of kids, in work, in personal contacts woman is more diligent and responsible. Woman is rather than man prone to make plans and organize something with a long-term outlook. Bringing up children she is able to maintain her policy, patient enough to reach the results gradually. The reader will notice that everything mentioned above correlates with woman’s attitude to nature as a whole. It does, and more than that. It means that we have just discovered another facet of women's way of development of the environment.

Man, both in the sexual relationships and in the child-educating process (and wider, in his impact upon nature) is more likely to use the “injection” technique. He changes persistence and benevolence for the stick and the carrot method. Is it good or bad? If the stick is a real stick and the carrot is for breakfast, lunch, dinner and supper it does not sound too good. In case it does not come to the extreme and the injections are regular and not overdosed, it is normal. This is in the nature of the male sex.

Summing up the chapter, let us contrast the male nature with that of the female.

Our collection grew up by three new dialectical pairs.

1. We have learned that women fighting for the quality of the posterity are the suppliers of quantity. Men fighting for quantity supply quality.

2. Women are more selective than men. Choosing the best one out of a number of quality suppliers they compare and evaluate men’s personal features. The representatives of the opposite sex are less selective and in a certain sense omnivorous. As a rule, attracted by a woman’s aspect, men underestimate her as a person.

3. In their relationships with men women are more prescient and responsible, more concerned about the result. Men, on the contrary, are momentary, irresponsible and interested rather in process. The same features characterize men and women beyond their sexual interaction. Women treat the past with the similar attention as the future. Men do not care being taken away by their memories. Women can be called “historians”, while men are “promoters”.

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