Sexual Competition + Concentrated Overpopulation = Unsustainability

Here are some disordered thoughts. Feedback and constructive and polite criticism is very welcome.

I've been thinking a lot recently about the connections between population densities, culture, innate human behaviour and environmental sustainability. In fact that last item should really be called human sustainability because the environment exists with or without us and sustains itself regardless.

To understand this one must reject notions of progress. It cannot be stated firmly enough that there is no conception of progress (here meaning improvement over time) in Darwin's theory of evolution. Adaptation does not have a subjective bias and is not concerned with comfort but rather with base survival.

Whilst humans have no doubt benefited from advances in technology that have allowed us as a species to live longer on average and to live more comfortably than before (at least for a small number of the world's population - e.g. toothpaste, medicine, ACs, heaters, oil based vehicles etc) and although we perceive this as progress, humans have not in recent years any more evolved to fit their environment as they have evolved to try to and shape their environment to fit their perceived physical and psychological needs.

If anything, we as a species are now more distant and estranged from our environment than ever before. Rather than try to understand the infinitely complex algorithm that is our global environment we are instead utterly slave to our impulse to reproduction and meeting our physical and psychological needs. Each advance in understanding our role in this system comes painfully slowly and at huge cost to us all in terms of sustainable use of resources. Partly of course this comes down to an individual's inability to perceive relationships between factors that happen on scales that are hard for humans to perceive. Even if we do perceive them, the tendency is to say that this is too big an issue and too much out of our individual control to do anything about it. But something else also lies behind our blind ransacking of the world's resources and common heritage.

Sexual competition between humans during the period of each individual's peak fertility necessitates that each individual will try to maximise resource consumption that will best enable them to compete for mates and the ability to produce offspring. Individuals will not likely forgo their own mating opportunities in order to consciously preserve their environment.

Human sexual competition is a dialectical system. Female sexual competition affects male sexual competition and in reverse. The male-female ratio in a given site is also a major influence upon the severity and method of that competition. One last key influence is the limited time span of female fertility. This induces males and females to concentrate a vast amount of effort into resource acquisition between the ages of 15 and 45 years of age. Add to that mix technology and you have an explosive equation of resource annihilation.

Between the ages of 15 and 45, males are driven by a need to achieve mating opportunities. At the same time, females are driven by a need to select mates that will not only provide offspring but, in our current gender culture, provide a steady supply of resources to enable females to raise offspring. Feminist ideology might wish to unshackle women from 'the kitchen sink' but by doing so it inadvertently increases competition for resources. Instead of mostly males competing for resources to supply to females, now both males and females are competing with each other for resources to meet their individual needs. This has exponentially increased pressure on resource acquisition. I do not wish either sex to be constrained into predefined and narrow gendered roles but at the same time I recognise that innate biological engines still drive males and female together - the reason being the need to reproduce ourselves.

Since females are the sex that builds and carries the baby, males are left with providing sperm and resources. Families are the product of the recognition of this biological division of roles.

Communities of humans mediate the intensity of this partnership. If all couplings are individual of communities then communities can no longer provide caring roles that reduce the competition for resources.

Gosh, what am I saying? Well, I guess that communities and extended families are important factors that reduce resource competition by reducing the pressure upon single couplings to provide all their needs themselves. If grandparents and uncles and aunts help each other and successive generations, then new families will not have to consume as much to achieve stable and better conditions for new generations.

This is not good for business. Our current business models are based upon a conception of ever expanding growth. That means creating not only new markets but also new consumers for new, but not necessarily needed, products - in turn adding consumption pressure to finite resources.

Both males and females are trapped in a system of gendered consumption that appeals to the individual and their fears and desires. Slow and steady growth is rejected in favor of a rate of production and consumption which our environment cannot sustain over the long run.

Living in cities might seem efficient for humans but in fact they are huge resource holes that do not replace the resources they consume. This generates higher demand which in turn generates conflict as cities and states seek more resources to sustain themselves

Finally, as each male and female seeks to consume only for their single coupling in the absence of extended community and familial support networks, more resources are drained from a finite supply.

This is why new family couples are often the most reluctant to effect changes to lifestyle and consumption that will increase sustainability for communities as a whole. Today's dictum is 'I'm looking out for my family only and I can't afford to do otherwise'. Social pressure acts to induce these families to be defensive to suggestions that they perhaps act in ways that might benefit the wider environment. Ask a mother or father to reduce their consumption and you will likely get the reply that they are doing what's best for their children. However, is living unsustainably really benefiting their children when their children will be the ones paying for it in terms of environmental destruction and unstable economics?.

A single male or female without offspring who questions this mode of existence inevitably gets dismissed as 'not understanding the real world'. How many times have I heard the excuse, and yes it is an excuse, that when I have kids I 'will understand'. I will understand, I am told, that it is inevitable that I will feel that same way about needing to wildly consume to meet my family's needs. Mothers are particularly vulnerable to this socially generated and culturally supported perceived need to consume to appear as a good parent. We are so concerned about the social judgment of others that we will attack anyone who suggests we scale back our consumption to meet wider needs. Thus many new mothers and fathers put their 'family needs' before the needs of their community for a sustainable environment and resource consumption. Add to this a culture of conspicuous consumption and you can say goodbye to sustainability.

Our lifespans are short. We thus concentrate our efforts on meeting our own needs in the here and now. Both males and females will not willingly reduce their ability to compete for partners and resources without a sense that all others are doing the same. We need an epistemological revolution before everyone really starts to put long-term needs before short-term desires but our lives are too short and hectic for people to concentrate and coordinate their activities and consumption patterns to meet wider environmental needs.

We also have a gendered culture that posits females as beauty objects and males as status objects. Sexual competition reinforces this dynamic. Males acquire resources to acquire status to make themselves more attractive to females. Females select on the basis of status and confidence of males. Females are unwilling generally to select on a basis of rational choice, trusting a more emotional and biological basis of choice over other means. Males in turn prefer to select on the basis of appearance, wasting valuable resources as they spend time and effort chasing unsuitable partners, psychologically and otherwise. Social pressure and business generated unrealistic ideals add to this wasteful process.

Females are not innately necessarily any more emotional or less rational then males. Both sexes have the same capacity for emotion and reason but are trapped in gendered consumption patterns dictated by social norms.

The end result is a constant cycle of increasing unsustainability.