Chapter IV

MEN AS PATHFINDERDERS
OF THE SPECIES

Is it possible for an electron to be better than a positron? Can the North Pole be more important than the South Pole? Can one of the alternate angles be more graceful than the other? Is it possible that woman’s role in the process of reproduction were bigger than that of man? Of course, not. The objective actual opposites (unlike the historical opposites, which are related as the old and the new) are always equivalent. The only trick with it is that the people’s consciousness can picture one of the opposites with bright and vivid colors and keep the other one in the shade, obscure. What about our picture?

Yes, there is evidently an imbalance. Frankly speaking, woman in our description looks much more respectable than man. A selective socially oriented creature is opposed to some omnivorous active biologically oriented being. Maybe, the author got carried away and lost his head? We know, it happens when a man contemplates a woman. But no, we have to assure you that our idea was to do what we have done. It is not an arbitrary choice to emphasize firstly the woman’s role and only then pass to the man’s part in the process of reproduction of life. This order is supposed by the fundamental difference of sexes, that we have already analyzed. We are referring to women’s uniformity and men’s diversity. It is always more secure to choose a monolithic column as a starting point rather than to start building a conception proceeding from a scattered crowd.

Now, having evaluated the women’s contribution to the progress of the species, we are passing to the men’s input. Although we make an accent on men in this chapter, it will not make us take women out of the context. As earlier, we will stick to contrasting the opposites. The leitmotif of the chapter will be the function of the male sex that we have put in the title.

Have you ever been in an expedition to some unknown lands or even to the Moon? If not, anyway, you have heard a lot about the specifics of these extraordinary activities.

An explorer can save a great number of people. Like all of us, he knows the price of life, but can and has to give it away if the circumstances demand it. He or she confronts unexpected, new and dangerous things and takes big risks. An explorer probes, uses some technical devices. His or her reports can adjust the strategy of the center.

Actually, we are now speaking about men, or, if you wish, males. We are describing the pathfinding, adjusting, and renewing function of the male sex. What we are going to do is to analyze its aspects in the order we listed them in the previous paragraph. But first, we need to finish up with one theme we have started before. We hope it will make a good bridge to pass to the matters of the present chapter.

Before, we have noted that in the principle one single male, in case he bears the appropriate potential qualities, can save the species in a critical situation.  Of course, really if it came to such critical circumstances, the species’ chances would be extremely small. A species on the verge of extinction, if it is not cared for artificially in a zoo or a National Park, will rather be saved by a miracle, than by this last male hero. If an only single male could easily rescue the species from extinction, there would be no way for the natural selection of species. It is also clear, that if a female took the mission of saving the species in the similar extreme peril the chances would be close to zero.

The reality would prove to be like this. There is nothing to add. However, theoretical elaboration of the extremums can be very useful. In the previous chapter proceeding from extreme conditions we explained why fighting for quantity and supply of quality is linked to the male sex. The “great providence of nature” consists in combining in the male being the possibility of replicating and the necessity of adjusting the species to the changing environment.

In the present chapter we will use the extreme situations described above to discover one more dialectical pair. It has to deal with features that reflect men’s and women’s attitude  (which is actually subconscious) to their own being, life, and health. By the way, we briefly referred to these features at the very beginning of our investigation.

Let us carry out two mental and, moreover, fantastic experiments.

In the first one we will leave on Earth all the women and only one normal healthy man. Let us think that the rest just disappeared by a wave of a wand. No doubt, that is a critical situation. Mankind cries for rescue. It is useless to explain what way will be chosen. The man is going to be guarded from illnesses, injuries, snakebites, meteorite falls, and whatever can stop him from his replicating activity, which he would start right away.

In the second experiment there will all the men and only one woman on the whole planet, who is young, healthy, and… attractive. Let her choose in this catastrophic situation the man of the highest quality. She will be super protected. And in nine months the Earth will have one more man. Even if a girl is born, she will have to grow up until she can join her mother.

Now you must be expecting us to ask: in what experiment is there a higher possibility of preserving the civilization? However, we will put this question in a different way. We will ask: which sex cares more for its health? Or generally: what is men’s and women’s attitude to the value called life?

Objectively, as we see, the woman’s life is pricier. Still, a person, not an abstract one, but a living man or a woman has only one life, so he or she must estimate it at the same high price. It is hard to think otherwise. However, it turns out to be that knowing it not, men and women treat their unique nonrenewable gift with a different grade of care. In the long run, men’s and women’s view of the world, or better say, perception of the world, reflects the actual objective order of things. The sexual differentiation leaves a mark even on the attitude to the worthiest gift a person possesses. Here, as well, the being determines… no, not the consciousness, but – as sexes is a biological phenomenon – subconscious behavior and instincts.

Women are more attentive to their health. They visit doctors more often and for less important issues than men.  It refers both to body and soul conditions. Psychotherapists know that depression is mainly a feminine disease. Three quarters of people suffering from depression in all the countries, regardless of level of life, culture or religion, are women [See Вышинский Н. Депрессия в конце XX века. [Vyshinsky N. Depression in the end of the XXth century] // Наука и жизнь. 1995. № 5. С. 46]. In fact, for men the syndromes of depression are not less typical. The point is that women attach more significance to them, more often find themselves sick, and see the doctors. As we know, the representatives of the female sex are oriented at the future, aimed at a long-term result, the way to which lies through carrying, birth, feeding, taking care, bringing up and educating the child. Women are not indifferent to the past. And depressive pessimistic mood, rather than any other psychical deviation, is in contradiction with the future, the sense and the meaning of life.

Men, who care for the process, take it easier. The fact of the depressive condition (we are not referring to the clinical course) is of less importance for men. Men are mostly satisfied by one-time self-curing acts, such as drinking alcohol, smoking, playing games, socializing with friends, or identifying themselves with a lucky hero of an action movie. The same remedies may be used by them both as antidepressants and means of relaxation after extreme activities, which we have spoken about in the first chapter. Yet, extreme activities themselves can serve as perfect antidepressants.

Men do not care for trifles. They do not hurry to see a doctor even if they have chronic and neglected diseases. Yet, the truth is that men, being more reactive and less flexible (being less capable of adjustment), do not stay too long on Earth if they get a grave disease. We will have to come back to this dismal difference.

For now, let us state that fighters for quantity/suppliers of quality care mostly for the present moment of being, while fighters for quality/suppliers of quantity care for the whole of being in the long run.  The first are less preoccupied by their health, the second are highly concerned about it. The men’s hymn should have the words: “Join the dance and let it happen, put tomorrow’s cares right out of your mind”. For the women’s hymn we could offer the words: “ I love you, life, and hope, you love me too.” Life must really love women. They live longer than men.

We have come to these conclusions due to the two mental experiments we have carried out.

Let us review them: we tried to find out, which sex would make a better rescuer of the mankind? With the conditions we put, it would be surely the male sex. In such a role man rather performs as a fighter for quantity, than as a supplier of quality. But it is due to a fantastically catastrophic situation that one of the two male facets appeared to be exaggerated and eclipsed the other.

Under normal circumstances fight for quantity and conducting of quality are pretty balanced. Man normally performs his replicating activity, and with the same regularity passes on to the future the biological and social traits necessary for the progress.  In his second job woman helps him performing the sexual selection. The life reproducing mechanism works, the species is adjusted to the environment and thus develops itself. Normally, man does not save the species. The “task” of the male sex is to avoid the catastrophe and find the path of the optimal development. Men (males) blindly adjust the species to the changes.

The adjustment function is linked to the male sex. As a sex men possess material that potentially contains future.  Unlike that of women, there is a very wide range of men. They offer an assortment of qualities. After women have filtered it, a new range would be created in men of the new generation. The young men will pass through the natural selection, which is more severe for the scattered sex, and women will choose from those who survive. Again, a range of human – biological and social – features will be transported to the future. It will be a different, new range, meeting the latest requirements of the environment. And so on and so forth. Qualities (innovations) are introduced through men (males).

What will happen to the range of qualities if the environment starts to change faster than usual, if the conditions dramatically grow worse? The range must get wider. A wider assortment of qualities must be emitted to the threatening uncertainty of the future. There must be a certain surplus of the new features. As man is the carrier of qualities, there must be more boys born in the next generation than it is with the usual gradual environmental changes. At this point death will have a big job to do. The useless qualities, together with their carriers, will be culled out. In this blindly conducted process a lot of daring explorers, sent to the unknown areas, will sacrifice their lives. Still, at this price the situation will be remedied. Then women will start the sexual selection. In case the conditions get better, the range of the qualities can be narrowed, and fewer boys are supposed to be born.

Our readers will say that this is a beautiful hypothesis. But to make a theory out of it, one needs to prove that as the conditions grow worse the percentage of males grows among the newborn babies. As demographists say, there must be a rise of the secondary sex ratio (the ratio of the newborn males to the newborn females). We have more than necessary sources at our disposal pointing at this cause-and-effect relation.  We will try to develop the proof within the philosophical approach, not referring to the psychobiochemical mechanism of the sex ratio growth. It is beyond our plans and competence. For now, we will give just one illustration.

Studying the influence of the cattle food on the secondary sex ratio, E. M. Vladimirskaya discovered that in the years when the cattle got normal rations, the huge sample she considered gave the ratio of 102.0 (102 bull-calves were born for every 100 heifers). In the war years, when food supplies were really low, the sex ratio of the population zoomed up to 125.2 [See Бедный М.С. Мальчик или девочка [Bedny M.S. Boy or Girl.]. – М., 1987. С. 20]. This is a pretty significant growth not to think about it as fortuity.

Worsening conditions bring not only an afflux of the male sex, but also bigger male casualties. It is quite clear. Bad conditions cut the wings of the wide male spectrum. The monolith female sex bears fewer losses. In other words, under critical circumstances more boys are born, and also more men perish both among young and adult ones. Geodakyan called this phenomenon the “rise of the male turnover” [Геодакян В. Два пола. Зачем и почему? [Geodakyan V. Two sexes. What for and why?] // Наука и жизнь. 1966. № 3. С. 104. Also see Геодакян В. О структуре эволюционных систем [Geodakyan V. On the structure of evolutionary systems.] // Проблемы кибернетики. 1972. Вып. 25. C. 87]. We call it the increase of rotation.

The rotation of males (men) as it is, and its increase under critical circumstances is the law of functioning and development of life (biological form of matter), which is divided into the two opposite sexes. Through rotation the male sex introduces novelties, adjusts the movement of the system, and finds the optimal line of development. The male sex personifies variability, renewal, introduction of new features, and the revolutionary trend.

The opposite of the male sex, the rotor, is the female sex, the stator. In order to make this opposition clearer, we preferred the word “rotation” to the Geodakyan’s “turnover”.  The dynamic, active male being is balanced by the static and passive female nature. The female sex is the base that makes the rotation possible. It personifies fastness, preservation (heredity in biology), and the conservative trend [See Геодакян В. Два пола. Зачем и почему? [Geodakyan V. Two sexes. What for and why?] // Наука и жизнь. 1966. № 3. С. 101]. When passing on the social information woman communicates to the child what is called the social historical practice and the public morals. Man adds his own new touches to these lumps of tradition. These touches correspond with the progressive changes.

We have related the male sex to the renewal, variability, and revolutionary trends.  Does it mean that on the individual level a man can be called a revolutionary? On no account. On the individual level man is to stick strongly to his own specificity, yielding not a little bit of his peculiarity. Otherwise he will not be able to duplicate his uniqueness and to manifest his masculinity. On the individual level man is a conservator. We do not need to prove that men are more obstinate, uncompromising, adamant, stubborn and, so to say, sharp-cornered in what they think and do. It is clear that man has to assert only his social and psychical singularity. He has no power over genetics. Although, the time when he will be able to is not far off.  Personal conservatism is a manifestation of diversity of the male sex.

Women on the individual level are opposed to men. The representatives of the conservative sex are flexible, plastic, compliant, easier adaptable, roundish and smooth in their mind and behavior. It is quite possible to make a small coup in a woman’s mind. Only through the individual flexibility and versatility woman can manifest her averageness, which is one of the basic characteristics of the female sex.

If we look at animals with highly developed psychical functions and complicated behavior, we will see the same picture as with people. Individual conservatism is inherent in males, while flexibility is natural for females. Keep this in mind if you plan to arrange a rendezvous between your pussycat and her groom. Get her in the pet carrier and call the tomcat you are coming. Otherwise, if the tomcat is brought to your home, he will surely spend long hours under the wardrobe, and probably will suffer some grave consequences of a stress. Studying macaques’ behavior Japanese scientists proved that those whom it takes the longest time to learn something new are adult males [Файнберг Л. От обезьяны к человеку. [Fainberg L. From monkey to human.] // Наука и жизнь. 1982. №5. С. 73].

Form corresponds the content. This is a common philosophical truth. Please, do not accuse us of philosophical primitivism, for what we are going to say is really so. Body shapes of men and women are in complete accordance with their internal features. Rozanov, a Russian philosopher, made some investigations on this issue. He wrote, “Ideally the male soul is rigid, stiff, put up, advancing, moving on, pushing, overcoming… But does not it all look like a word picture of what men shamefully cover with their hand! Now let us look at the woman. The ideal of her personality, behavior, life and the whole outline of her soul is tenderness, softness, compliancy, suppleness. But these are just the qualities of her genitals.” [Розанов В.В. Люди лунного света [Rozanov V.V. People of the moonlight]. – М., 1990. С. 39-40]. Let us also look at body, arms, face contours. Are they not in harmony with the male and female personality? The harmony of corporal, genital, psychical, and behavioral features is not arbitrary. Otherwise, men and women could make use of their personalities wherever and with whomsoever, but not with each other. Conversely, if there were no accordance and harmony, they could apply their bodies wherever, but not in their interaction. However, in this situation there would be neither men, nor women. Not any of the dialectical pairs can be thrown away without entailing consequences, catastrophic for the sexes.

Let us come back to rotation. How can it be increased? We have answered: through increasing the percentage of newborn boys. Still, this is only one of the ways rotation can be increased. We have to call it the extensive way. It supposes widening of the stream of qualities emitted to the future. The medium of the extensification is man. As a reaction to the negative environmental changes he produces more boys compared to the normal conditions. Thus, he widens the assortment of qualities to be selected from in the new different conditions.

There is another – intensive – way of increasing the rotation. It consists in a faster (compared to normal conditions) change of generations. In this case the stream of qualities is not widened, but sped up.  The medium of the intensification is woman, who chooses early-matured men for the reproduction. Yes, you are quite right, we have already come across this means of adaptation to a critical situation. Now we can say that acceleration works for the increase of rotation.

The intensive way to increase rotation is likely to be an emergency measure. If woman interferes in the masculine job of adjustment and intensifies the supply of qualities, the species seems to have reached the deadly border. Later on we will see how in another state of emergency, man pays his debt back and partly takes the feminine task of supplying the quantity. The functions of the sexes are opposite not absolutely, but relatively. They compose a dialectical unity, which implies a certain interpenetration of the opposite characteristics. One of the cases of such interpenetration we saw dealing with the pair activeness–passiveness. We even dedicated the whole chapter to feminine activeness and masculine passiveness. Besides, this chapter is important methodologically. Unable to analyze all the pairs of opposite features, we used the activeness—passiveness pair both to demonstrate the dialectical unity of opposites, and to show the scientific method of their analysis.

In the previous chapter we studied the starting mechanism of the intensive rotation. Now we are concerned about the extensive way. Men are predestined to keep track of environmental changes. But how?  To perform monitoring one needs some indicators extended into the environment. Are men equipped with such? Let us look at them.

Have not you ever been surprised about one circumstance? Males of the top species of the evolution pyramid have their gamete producing organs outside. It seems to be some strange whim of nature. Was not it possible to borrow some space from the liver, kidneys, stomach, and intestines and save some place (they do not need a lot) for such important organs? It is not safe to be outside!

It is dangerous indeed. And placing the testicles outside was another great providence of nature. The wise nature made the gamete-producing factory at the same time the indicator extended into the environment. For an individual, human or animal, such location is evidently unsafe. But the “public” role of these organs is much more important than the individual vulnerability. More than that, in a certain sense vulnerability is the “public” function of these organs.

The gametes themselves, which are potentially the next generation, record the changes of the environment (such as temperature, humidity, fluxes of radiation, etc.) and respond to them with mutations. Then they set off for the future in order to check if their peculiar characteristics would fit the new conditions. So the environmental impact is a part of the reproduction technology.

If the pressure of the environment trespasses a certain limit, there will be more boys among the explorers-pathfinders, or, to be precise, there will be more Y-sperm cells.  As we know, males are the bearers of qualities.

It is during the stage of the environment indication, which is combined with the gamete production, that the range of qualities in the offspring, as well as the sex ratio, is determined. These two features – the range and the sex ratio – are regularly renewed. It is known, that male gametes are produced throughout the childbearing age, and each portion does not take a very long time to get ready. This is the only way to keep up with the changes.

Now it looks clear why the male organs, where the new generation is being formed, are external and vulnerable and their casing is thin. An explorer has to take risks for the common cause.

With women, females, everything is quite opposite. The conservative sex, which personifies the fastness tendency, is to hide the gametes it produces in the depth of the body, possibly farther from all kinds of impacts. There is no need to renew the cells. So eggs are formed once for the whole life.

Now, if you please, count eight paragraphs back. That is when looking for indicators we suggested just to look at men. Then we did not mean just the organ, which man, as Rozanov put it, “shamefully covers with his hand”. We were looking at the whole of the man, in all his glory. The man himself is an indicator. He perceives the environment with his body and psyche.  The information from outside is being transformed into neural impulses, then takes its biochemical, hormonal form, and is brought to the gamete factory. As a result, the environmental changes recorded through this channel, along with those recorded directly, influence the range of the potential future qualities and the sex ratio.

However, is it appropriate to call man an indicator without any reservations?  We will be right to do this if one more condition is met and linked to man. It is indispensable for an indicator to be oriented, or better, extended into the environment.  Is man coming out with open arms to meet the environment and its new and extreme manifestations in particular? No doubt, he does, he just rushes forward, being obstinate and ingenious on his way. Well, we have already mentioned this facet of the masculine activeness. In the first chapter we asked: what necessity pushes men to extreme activities and pungent emotions? It took us some time answering, still, now the answer is right here. In brief, it is the nature of the sex that makes men reach for the new, unknown and pungent. For a more complete explanation, it is the objective necessity to perform the indication of the environment for the purpose of adjusting the movement of the species and conducting the species’ progress.

One would be a poor indicator if he were expecting the news from outside hiding inside the four walls with doors and windows locked and his eyes and ears tightly closed. We mean that the indication of the environment can be linked only to the active sex.

It is not enough to be just an indicator. There is no big use in it if the device is not really sensitive. It must have caught the reader’s attention that we have mentioned a couple of times that men are more reactive than women. It is really so. Let us look at the objective data to prove it.

The Swedish scientists we have already referred to measured the adrenaline level of men and women in different stressful situations. They made four experiments.

In the first one there were industrial workers aged 35. The stressor was an intellect test. It turned out to be that during this test the secretion of adrenaline with men rose almost by twice, while with women it even slightly fell. The level of adrenaline during the rest of time and routine activities was taken as the control standard in all four experiments. Then there proved to be no difference in adrenaline secretion between sexes.

In the second experiment there were university students aged 25 taking an attention test. In this case the level of adrenaline rose more than by twice with men, and also slightly fell with women. It looks like for women working with tests was nothing but another routine job.

The same students took part in the third experiment, when they were giving blood for examination. This time the stimulus caused a minor stress with women. However, girl students got just a little adrenaline rise, while their mates of the male sex got it one and a half times more than usual.

Pretty much the same situation was recorded with 13-year-old school children that were doing mental arithmetic [Франкенхаузер М.,Едман М. Мужчина, женщина и стресс [Frankenhauser M., Edman M. Man, woman and the stress] // Наука и жизнь. 1991. № 5. С. 57.].

American researchers having studied almost 11 thousand outpatient cards of the employees of some big bank, found out that men who have business flights even once a year see psychotherapist or psychologist by 80 per cent more often than those who stay working at their regular place. The female employees of the same bank, who also fly on business, see the psychologist only in 18 per cent more cases compared to their home-staying colleagues. The author of the research trying to explain such a big difference between men and women, suggests that possibly the female psyche takes long flights easier, than male [See В командировках только женщины [On business trips just women] // Наука и жизнь. 1997. № 12. С. 21].

Apparently, long flights are not the point.  Woman on the whole is more flexible and adjustable, and less reactive, than man. She is not predestined to pave the way to the future. The hardships of the pathfinding job fall on man. And in the areas where he acts, where he comes across the new and unseen, he needs a gift of a keener reaction. There, in order to adjust the movement, he would need to probe; there he would run a high possibility of losses… We are not going to enumerate all the duties of the pathfinder of the species, for we have already listed them at the beginning of the chapter. Now it is time to make conclusions.

1. Men and women give a different grade of importance to the nonrenewable gift of life. Men, oriented at the present moment of being, as a rule, neglect their health and see the doctors less often than women. Women, as history- and perspective-oriented beings, are incomparably more attentive to their health; a doctor appointment does not seem to them something unusual.

Life, from its part, meets their ambitions. It has no big mercy upon men, being benevolent  to women. The first live shorter lives than the second.

2. The differences mentioned above proceed from the male function of supplying quality to the future, and the female function of supplying quantity. Researching the aspect of “fighters” and “suppliers” in this chapter we have discovered that the male sex personifies the tendency of variability, and represents the revolutionary trend. Males, performing the rotation of qualities, experience and introduce innovations, adjust the movement of the system, permanently leading it out to the optimum line and keeping it there. The female sex, on the contrary, represents the fastness tendency, the conservative trend. Women are to preserve the accumulated biological and social heritage.

3. On the individual level a man, belonging to the revolutionary sex, acts as a conservator. The inherent male traits are stiffness, obstinacy, rigidity, stubbornness… Woman, being a representative of the conservative trend, on the individual level acts as a pliant, in a certain sense revolutionary (open to changes) being. Among the traits of the female personality, we have to name softness, compliancy, suppleness, understanding…

Male and female personalities are in accordance with their corporal constitution.

4. Men are more reactive than women. Their high reactivity makes it possible for men to effectively perform the indication of the environment. Keenly perceiving its changes, men form the range of the qualities and the sex ratio of the future generation, i.e. adjust on-the-fly the movement of the system (the species). Women give the impetus of the long-term stable movement and provide the persistence of the system.

5. Also we have to note the two ways of the rotation of qualities we have discovered: the extensive and the intensive way. The first one takes place in more or less normal conditions and is linked to the male sex. This kind of rotation responds rapidly, on-the-fly, to the minor changes of the environment. The second way goes into action under catastrophic conditions, when women have to join men in the job of adjusting the qualities of the species to the extreme situation.  The mechanism of the intensive rotation takes rather long time of critical conditions to get started. As we go on with our investigation we will focus on the “male” type of rotation, or to be precise, its diverse manifestations, the so-called phenomena. We will not consider separately the “female” type of rotation, for it has been working during decades in the same form.

These were the conclusions of the present chapter.  However, the time has come for the “interim audit” of the whole investigation. What have we managed to do? To put it briefly, we have analyzed the opposite qualities of the sexes, linked the pairs of qualities together, and, actually, found out what the sexes are, and what their natural predestination is. So we are about to finish the module of the book dedicated to the dialectics of sexes. Next chapter is going to focus on one problem, which is of great importance: why there appeared the bipolar – sexual – way of reproduction?

The following chapters are currently being translated