Some Brief Remarks on Social/Sexual Mores with a Pseudo-Darwinian Gloss, Followed by Some Irresponsible Questions and Speculations
Sexual morality operates at a level that can legitimately be described as Darwinian. Societies that exist in environments where sexual promiscuity brings a high risk of debilitating disease evolve stronger social prohibitions against promiscuity. Societies that are more insulated from those risks develop a freer attitude about matters sexual.
Those social prohibitions are usually encoded within the local religion which, if it metastasizes, can carry those encoded puritanical mores to areas where their survival value may be more or less moot.
Of course, once the path of modern-world disease vectors crosses the path of a previously insulated society, that society can very quickly find that their relaxed sociosexual attitudes now present a survival hazard. History has witnessed many sad cases of an opportunistic epidemic decimating a hitherto carefree population whose sociological histories for various reasons never necessitated the creation of insulating layers of sexual prudery.
Speaking of AIDS, did they ever figure out where it came from? Last I checked in on the debate, the leading theories were that it either crossed into the human population when someone had sex with a monkey, or it was created in a USAMRIID lab for a splendid array of hypothetical nefarious purposes.
My guess is that the truth lies somewhere between the two.
Those social prohibitions are usually encoded within the local religion which, if it metastasizes, can carry those encoded puritanical mores to areas where their survival value may be more or less moot.
Of course, once the path of modern-world disease vectors crosses the path of a previously insulated society, that society can very quickly find that their relaxed sociosexual attitudes now present a survival hazard. History has witnessed many sad cases of an opportunistic epidemic decimating a hitherto carefree population whose sociological histories for various reasons never necessitated the creation of insulating layers of sexual prudery.
Speaking of AIDS, did they ever figure out where it came from? Last I checked in on the debate, the leading theories were that it either crossed into the human population when someone had sex with a monkey, or it was created in a USAMRIID lab for a splendid array of hypothetical nefarious purposes.
My guess is that the truth lies somewhere between the two.
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