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Meeting Minutes for July 12, 2000; #72. An announcement was made about the 1st Annual Freethought Families Picnic for July 16, 12:30PM @ Hager Park in Jenison. Jackie Carpenter is coordinating this and future family activities. For suggestions or more information about this and future events, contact Jackie at: rubenesque68@triton.net. If anyone would be willing and able to bring refreshments for the July 26, August 9 or August 23 FAOWM meetings, please contact me, C.A. LaRue: calart@hotmail.com and let me know. Thank you! July 23 will be the next Adopt-A-Highway gathering for our group to do highway litter pick-up under our group name. Meet @ the Citgo gas station, 5000 Plainfield NE @ 10AM. Your help would be appreciated. Parking passes @ the Ellis lot across from the Calkins Science Bldg. where we meet, are validated by getting them stamped @ the meetings, so that parking remeins free for those in attendance. If you have suggestions for topics and/or are interested in moderating a discussion; if you have questions, want to check out links, look up items in our archives, want an updated membership directory, or if you wish to join our email discussion list, visit our website: http://my.voyager.net/freethought. There have been a couple changes in the upcoming meeting topics. Here is the most current list of the next 5 topics & dates: >JULY 26: "Secular Weddings & Funerals" moderated by Jeff Seaver. >AUGUST 9: "Naturalistic Ethics" moderated by William Merriman. >AUGUST 23: "medical Bioethics" moderated by Herman Sullivan. >SEPTEMBER 13: "Integrating Medicine & Psychology" moderated by Robert W. >Collins, PhD, PC. >SEPTEMBER 27: "Home Schooling" moderated by Jackie Carpenter. All meetings are at the GRCC calkins Science Bldg., downtown GR @ 7PM. This meeting's topic was "Polygamy; A Natural History" presented by Dr. Gregory Forbes. The theme was that polygamy is the rule rather than the exception in animals, so why do humans try to resist this evolutionary trend? Dr. Forbes passed out sheets containing definitions of bonding strategies and pertinent data on species that are exemplified by these different approaches. He also provided overheads of the outline for his presentation. Forbes, the director of the GRCC Science Education Center, began by looking into the rational reasons that humans might wish to avoid premarital sex (a discussion topic from another meeting), including limiting sexually transmitted diseases (STD's) and unwanted pregnancies. Why, he asked, don't we send our offspring out with information and condoms to achieve this end? Dr. Forbes clearly stated that he was not advocating promiscuity or polygamy, but rather exploring with us how we break the trend of the rest of the natural world by our notion of monogamy; bucking billions of years of evolution. The ultimate goal of organisms is to propogate their own genes into future generations. One consideration is having viable offspring and shrewd mate choices toward that end. As a side note here, Dr. Forbes was clear in conveying that this is an unconscious occurrence, built by evolution- not actual calculations and deliberations made by the organism. Sexual selection is a powerful force in phenotypic character development in males as seen, for example, in the ouitlandish tail of the peacock (such a "costly" and extravagant endowment displays the robust health of the male, which the peahen might pass along to her offspring should she mate with him. Humans are no strangers to display, to advertise wealth, health, or other indicators of fitness and success. An example was given of, all other things being equal, if two males show up at a females doorstep; one with a BMW, the other driving a Yugo- the female will likely choose the owner of the "Beemer." In other meetings we have broached the subject of human displays for factors of attractiveness, using different tools, but toward the same end as other animals. We talked of the uncertainty-- the "crap shoot"- of insuring that viable offspring will result from mate selection based on external phenotypic markers. What is fit for one environment at one time might be detrimental (or merely less well adapted) at another environment and time. Some ultimately disasterous manifestation of an organism's genotype can be expressed under certain pressures or are otherwise hidden @ the time of mate selection. This is considered one reason why polygamy is the strategy of choice for the Earth's biota-- if one invests all one's resources in one mate, rather than spreading farther and wider, one is less likely to have a greater number of viable offspring as well as limiting the variety of genetic combinations and variety. One positive aspect of monogamy is that it increases parenting and nurturing of one's genetic investment. A way that many species get around this is to use serial monogamy as a strategy. This is the sequential breeding with a mate for a single or a limited number of matings before a new mate is found. This is also seen in humans, though not usually expressed in this way. Much of the competitiveness between males, and female strategies seen in humans is likely, according to this presentation, an adaptation of our polygamous nature, but bound up in a monogamous social structure. Infanticide was another item touched on by Forbes; with the reality of brutal nature contrasting to the Disney-fied version so often popularly depicted. The killing of the offspring potentially by another mate not only eliminates the perpetuation of another's gene- line, but also gets the female ready to reproduce sooner, since lactation ceases quicker w/o the nursing infants. Again, in humans, we see statistical support for a significantly higher amount of violence and infanticide toward step-children. There was an interesting list given of ways that both sexes of various species have evolved ways to get their own genes into the next generation while knocking out a competitor's chances for the same. Each maneuver is countered by another one. Among these are scent markers to repel another individual's mating the same female, the adaptation of the sperm plug to halt another's "seed" from reaching the ovum and the counter adaptation of the male genital appendage that can remove said plug (which the female is more than happy to oblige in), a copiously flooding sperm volume to overwhelm another male's ejaculate and the differentiation of sperm are other examples. In this last-mentioned example, one variety of sperm is not destinerd to reach the oviducts, but to remain back in order to terminate all other competitor's sperm. The multiple orgasm capability in females is seen as arising from this tendency for more than one mate to attempt to breed with them. The role of resources was brought up in connection with polygamy or monogamy as adaptations. Many species that practice monogamy do so because of their smaller group size, due to limited resources (it's diet, environment, etc.)But it was noted that, if the environment changes, creating a more abundant food supply, that increses the group size, then the tendency becomes polygamy. Also many animals that were once thought to be monogamous, were later discovered to be so only in a serial (successive) way, if at all, upon further research. As to humankind, we talked about different societies in the past and present that practiced polygamy, the way that leaders would spread the message of monogamy to the masses but practice polygamy themselves, about the role of emoptional attachment and the euphoric "rush" of human love, etc. One member mentioned how some research shows that the intensity level of infatuation correlates to the creation of offspring and getting them to a viable level of development. Also discussed is how our current state of life, with more women in the workforce, the greatly reduced stigma of divorce, the nature/nurture conundrum, and other factors are affecting and affected by our natural tendencies toward polygamy. William Merriman passed around a card entitled: "The Evolution of the Human Family; An Overview of the Evidence and Reasoning Supporting Innate Monogamy in Humans" with the website http://www.iserv.net/~merriman/pairbond.htm given. This site and a litany of points he vocalized were in contradiction to the thesis given by Dr. Forbes. Forbes countered what he could recall from the cascade of data that Merriman presented. This disagreement provided interesting reasoning on both sides of the issue of the natural or unnatural state of human monogamy to be mulled over. Recorder: Charles LaRue |
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