Ancestral Mating Strategies VS Modern Mating - Mads Larsen

Why is it useful or interesting to study mating ideologies at all?

It is the foundation of all social orders. We like to think that politics, philosophy, all those big subjects are what it's all about, but at the foundation, it's how men and women reproduce. Um, and upon that, everything else rests. So, if that falls apart, our societies fall apart too.

Why does mating need an ideology to sit over it at all? It's a, it's a physical activity. Like, why the need for a story and what it means and how we should do it?

Because we've so- we've changed so much from our ancestral environment. Um, having people commit to pair bonding for decades and to providing for offspring, to dedicate the resources that that requires needs a lot of coercion. We have our biological impulses, but they do not align very well with modern demands for mating. So, we need, in addition to that, an ideology that compels people to mate, that coerces them, uh, that makes them think that it's their duty to, uh, to pair bond and have children. And the ideology we have now is, compared to previous ideologies, very weak in that regard. We now have an ideology where this has become completely voluntary and where it's, uh, you can make a good case for why perhaps you shouldn't have children, and that's a rather unique situation.

I like the use of the word coercion there.

Oh, absolutely. Biological and cultural coercion. It's a huge sacrifice to reproduce and to ha- to make peop- make enough people do that to a significant extent, now that we also have, uh, effective contraception, it's really difficult.

Right. So, what is it that's changed primarily in terms of the demands on mating and resource supply in the modern world, or even in the developed world, compared with 10,000, 50,000 years ago?

(laughs) So much. Um, there are several factors. Contraception is huge. Before you just needed to wanted to copulate, and if you did that enough, you'd have children. And then you'd be, uh, coerced by your communities to pair bond and take care of that children- that child until it's, uh, big enough. Uh, in the modern world, so we've now made, uh, we've deconnected copulation from reproduction. And also in these, uh, industrialized environments we have, children have become much more expensive. Instead of being free labor, they're a huge cost. Also, we have an ideology that over the past millennium has become more and more individualistic. So, we're not necessarily convinced that God is forcing us to have children because that is the meaning of life. Uh, we now think that perhaps being single and traveling and taking care of ourselves is more important than putting more children out into the world. And in addition, um, at the moment, we have this, uh, uh, quite, uh, significant uncertainty about the future that also disincentivizes reproduction.