The following was not written by me. I found it on a comment thread of a blog about a year ago. I responded, which response will be found in the next post.
Consider this hypothesis:
Perhaps this is cultural knowledge that we once possessed but lost through lack of use. Think atrophy of the appendix. Except that maybe we did need it, but it just takes “historic timescale” (ie, several generations) for the conditions which necessitated the development to reassert themselves.
Consider the possibility that much of the “culture war” may very well be the necessity of this behavior pattern. Words like “puritanism”, “feminism”, “tolerance”, “gay marriage” and so on are manifestations of the evolution of these behavioral patterns. Only some of these behavioral patterns are encoded in genes – others are social norms, “memes”, but they evolve all the same.
Did puritanism once exist for a reason? Will we soon rediscover what that reason was?
Consider that we may be witnessing global competition between different social constructs, with names like “Sharia” or “Western” and others. Western may have scientific advantages, while Sharia may have reproductive advantages.
Ultimately, we are very small participants in a very large game/marketplace/experiment. The outcome will be interesting,
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