Rise of Patriarchal Society - VIII

In Part -V of this series, I discussed how the conservative view of male preeminence was borne out of  misunderstanding of the sexual reproduction. In this view, women have no part in creation of life apart from acting as incubators. The life is complete in male 'seed'.

This was the prevalent view in many patriarchal societies, which also led to lower respect for females. I would argue the logical result was that the intercourse itself was an act between two unequals thus a low activity. The most respectful man in  some of the said societies was the one who had taken the vow of celibacy.

What about the opposite end of the spectrum? How do libertines consider females and the sexual activity based on their interpretation of creation?
                                               
I couldn't get much information on the net whether the dynamics of fertilization was known during Marquis de Sade's time or in the 18th century.However, his libertine novel 'Philosophy in the Bedroom' has a character, Madame de Saint-Ange, explaining foetus as a fusion of male and female seeds. But she continues that the foetus owes its existence completely to sperm. The female seed doesn't create but only furthers the creation. Another character Dolmance expands on this and says we owe absolutely nothing to our mothers as we are completely formed of our sire's blood.                                                                                                       
This libertine philosophy shows at the end of the day it has to twist sexual reproduction in such a way that women don't have any respect in the act. Is this really required for a libertine? We need to observe the respect mothers get in conservative societies.
                                   
Many conservative societies are known to respect mothers in a way that mask their womanhood. One cannot ascribe any sexuality to her as that would immediately make her lower. But the founding fathers of these philosophies lived hundreds of years before the advancements of bio sciences. It's interesting to see, libertines of a more enlightened era had to take refuge of the same philosophy to support their sexual libertinism. They had used the same 'male is the true creator' argument to denigrate women in a way that mask their motherhood.
                                                   
This example shows, sexual abstinence and sexual libertinism, even though sound opposite, were, in fact, born out of the same ignorance. Both are attributes of pure patriarchal thought. However, the comparison is not strictly true as the influence of these two interpretations are not the same. While conservatism has been ritualized and legalized (and slowly being corrected in the modern era), libertinism has remained individualistic.

Reference:
1. Philosophy in the Bedroom, by Marquis de Sade

The Moral Individual - iii

I have discussed innate morality of human beings in this series of blog posts. I had come to a conclusion that there is no innate morality and it's just a result of feedback loop in humans based on experience of pain. Let us examine the steps involved in this.

- Feeling of pain - a trait
- Keeping memory of pain - a trait
- Observation (of another suffering) - a trait      
- feedback - a faculty
      - perception of another suffering - a basic trait
      - matching perception with memory - maybe a basic trait
- Resultant empathy - a character

I would define,
a character is a combination of traits and faculties resulting in a meaningful behaviour where,
a trait is determined by genes,
a faculty is a latent phenomenon determined by traits

So, basically babies are field programmable trait arrays (FPTA) for a character. I suppose, even 'speech' is a character because it also requires some of the basic traits and feedback faculties.

Random Thoughts - X

I used to wonder why skin colour has not homogenized among castes in South India. I suppose the reason could be that cousin marriages didn't allow such a phenomenon. The mixing of light or dark skinned persons need not be on regular basis and the change in one generation was masked by endogamy of successive generations within the family. With cross cousin marriages losing favour, I suppose the indisputable dark skin colour will become ubiquitous in future.

Origins of Indians: Vesion 8.4.3

According to Pontus Skoglunda and Mattias Jakobssona, in their paper Archaic human ancestry in East Asia;

The genetic difference between Neandertals and Denisovans is roughly as great as the maximal level of variation among us modern humans.

I suppose that further supports the opinion that the Denisovan remains found was actually predominantly Neanderthal.

Via Science Daily

Battle of the Sexes - ix_a

It seems the mystic questions in the previous post were the outcome of my inability to grasp the knowledge or plain misunderstanding. I said;

Men trying to match up is understandable but why do women try to match down? What are those restrictions at cell level?

Based on the information in the article;

Men must increase gene expression on their lone X-chromosome to match the two X's possessed by women. A new study explains just how men manage to do that.

In mammals, cells therefore work to emphasize, or "upregulate," the lone X-chromosome in males and de-emphasize, or "downregulate," the extra X-chromosome in females.

However, it appears the both male and female X-chromosomes are upregulated (male X-> 2X and females 2X->4X). But females downregulate their upregulaged X-chromosomes (thus 2X same as males). From the new study;

Women have two X chromosomes, while men have one X and one Y. The lack of a 'back up' copy of the X chromosome in males contributes to many disorders that have long been observed to occur more often in males, such as hemophilia, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and certain types of color blindness. Having only one copy of X and two copies of every other chromosome also creates a more fundamental problem -- with any other chromosome, the gene number imbalance resulting from having only one copy would be lethal. How can males survive with only one X?
Biologists have been debating how organisms and cells manage the imbalance between X and other chromosomes for years, with the dominant theory being that both sexes up-regulate the expression of X-linked genes, essentially doubling their expression to "2X" in males and "4X" in females. Then, to correct the imbalance that now appears in females (since they have the equivalent of "4" Xs now and 2 of every other chromosome), females then 'turn off' one of the hyperactive X chromosomes, resulting in a balanced "2X" expression of those genes across both sexes.

That doesn't lead to philosophical pondeings over the implications. Science sometimes acts as a dampener to imaginatively inclined imbecile.

Via Science Daily