From: Jason Spencer (spencer@ualberta.ca)
Date: Wed Apr 21 1999 - 17:09:29 MDT
James Rogers <jamesr@best.com> writes:
>
>Having two genders is an important part of the survival strategy for many
>species. Our biology and psychology is well-adapted to this the two-gender
>survival strategy.
>
>Moving humans to a single gender for both sexes could have a long-term
>impact on the survivability of the species. After all, every aspect of
>both genders is extremely useful under some circumstance. Having two
>genders allows a species to embody multiple conflicting characteristics,
>which appears to be a strategy to maximize adaptability; to a certain
>extent, differences between cultures would seem to be a manifestion of a
>selection process among the large number of characteristics found across
>both genders.
I'm not sure that culture has been around long enough for such adaptations
to have taken hold. The gender differences are largely due (directly and
indirectly) to a differential energy investment in the raising of offspring.
Culture is a New Trick whose attributes have emerged from these gender
differences that already existed. (Over evolutionary time, culture may not
turn out to be beneficial for our species at all as we can see from the
various disaster scenarios discussed on the list - it's a gamble, just like
every evolutionary innovation.)
I'm all for diversity of personality types, but gender differences per se
most likely will not be needed in the period of intense auto-evolution that
we are approaching.
-- Jason Spencer spencer@ualberta.ca http://www.ualberta.ca/~spencer/
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