Normally hypergamy is eugenic. That is what it is for, that is its telos, that is almost the definition of hypergamy. Yet it is very noticeable that a successful natural is frequently poor, perhaps usually poor, and often rather stupid. A loser, except he is a big winner with girls.
Consider the peacock. Glorious tails are so big and heavy that they are bad for the species, bad for the race, would be bad for clan and family if peacocks had clans and families, which they do not. Females tend to want what other females want.
Suppose females tend to go for X, where X is initially a good indicator of health and fitness, where females selecting males on X is initially eugenic. If other females select X, it is good to have sons with lots of X, so a female should select X if other females select X, even if X has ceased to be a good indicator of health and fitness. Selection for X tends to become more and more extreme, even if it ceases to be a good indicator of fitness. Sexual selection tends to become driven by unreasonable and rather arbitrary female fashions.
Humans and chimps murder, hunt, eat meat, and, unlike most animals, make war. The only other mammals I know of that make war are the lemming and the naked mole rat. I expect there are plenty of others that I have not heard of, but war is, for obvious reasons, a rare characteristic. We may therefore conclude that the common ancestor of man and chimp was violent, ate meat, and made war.
War requires loyalty and comradeship. You love your comrades, you will kill for them, and risk death for them. Humans are killer apes, but our specialty is loyalty, friendship, and cooperation.
Humans are not only smart, thus good at cooperating, but have physical adaptions for cooperation. Our eyes have whites, which make it harder for us to hide and make us more vulnerable to UV damage, but makes it easier for one human to tell what another human is looking at. Our throats are modified for a wider range of sounds in ways that make it considerably easier for us to choke. Humans are more specialized for cooperating than chimps.
The common ancestor of man and chimp lived in the jungle, but being the meanest sons of bitches in the jungle, some of them decided to wander out on the plains. Since they were the slowest sprinters on the plains, we may conclude that they were dangerous enough to take care of predators. The theory that the first of our ancestors to go on the plains were timid gentle herbivores was not very plausible even back in the days when we thought that chimps were timid gentle herbivores. If you cannot climb out of reach of carnivores, and you cannot sprint very well, what are you going to do?. A child or a female is going to stick with the males, a male is going to stick with his comrades.
Plus out on the plains, there is more meat and less fruit, more hunting, less gathering. So females are more dependent on males. So more patriarchy, more specialization for violence, more specialization for cooperative violence, and, with more patriarchy, more war. We became smarter in the course of thousands of genocides. Conversely, primitive humans that live in jungles tend to evolve to become more like chimps. In the jungle, females don’t need male support and can kick their kids out at four to gather for themselves. Cooperation in large groups of men is less important in the jungles, where the individual male tends to individually predate on women and children, and so humans of that ancestry are not very good at cooperative endeavors – much better than any other animal, but not as good as their plains dwelling relatives.
Large groups of males quickly sort out their status hierarchy, after a bit of status jousting that is usually too subtle for women to understand, and thereafter treat each other with respect. The private crisply salutes the officer, the officer salutes back slightly less crisply.
Women in contrast never sort out their status hierarchy, and are always plotting against each other and undermining each other, so that it is difficult for large female groups to work together.
To women, this standard smart male cooperation all looks like submissiveness, looks like being low man on the totem pole, because this stuff just goes over their heads. To her, it looks as if the officer and the private are both kissing each other’s asses, so she wants:
See the way he walks down the street
Watch the way he shuffles his feet
My, he holds his head up high
When he goes walking by, he’s my guy
When he holds my hand, I’m so proud
Cause he’s not just one of the crowd
My baby’s always the one to try the things they’ve never done
And just because of that, they say
He’s a rebel and he’ll never ever be any good
He’s a rebel ’cause he never ever does what he should
But just because he doesn’t do what everybody else does
That’s no reason why I can’t give him all my love
He’s always good to me, always treats me tenderly
Cause he’s not a rebel, oh, no, no, no
He’s not a rebel, oh, no, no, no, to me
If they don’t like him that way
They won’t like me after today
I’ll be standing right by his side when they say
He’s a rebel and he’ll never ever be any good
He’s a rebel ’cause he never ever does what he should
Just because he doesn’t do what everybody else does
That’s no reason why we can’t share a love
By and large, he really will never ever be any good, for for men to get stuff done, have to work well with other men. By and large, he is a rebel because stupid – if he was a smart rebel he would be rebelling in ways less visible and more subtle than shuffling his feet.
But if all women tend to make the same mistake, then in a woman’s interests to make the same mistake as other women commonly make, for the sake of sexy sons
Because female sexual selection for X tends to go over the top, tends to become unreasonably extreme, because females tend to select for even more of what other females are selecting for, tends to be fashion driven, selecting for men who are at the top of the male hierarchy leads to selecting for men who do not display submissive behaviors, which leads to her selecting for the rebel who shuffles his feet, when she should be selecting for the officer whose reply salute is slightly less crisp than that of the private, which leads to her selecting guys at the bottom of the male hierarchy, rather than the top.
This post inspired by the movie “Zulu”, where all the characters, British, Boer, or Zulu, were ridiculously manly except for the preacher and his daughter, and the preacher’s daughter entirely failed to notice.
