1 definition by Drake Icn
Even as phylogenetic memories theoretically should be unimportant in our 'high standing' species, it can be interesting to know that humans is the creature with the highest number of phylogenetic memories identified, and in fact, much of what we regard as morals and ethics, allegedly results from our much valued ability to reason, are in fact instincts. For instance, it is in virtually any society socially accepted to demean and belittle women who have sex with many men, but a man who have sex with many women is respected and admired. This has an evolutional reason, if a woman is promiscous the potential father does not know whether the offspring really is his or not and lose interest in spending time and energy for ensuring the welfare of the child, and a potential father who invests his time taking care of someone elses offspring instead of focusing on finding a faithful woman and raise women for himself is less likely to procreate. The behavior of shunning and belittling such women is favored; the behavior of being attracted to and protecting such women is not favored. As a result, since most men will have instincts telling them to shun these women, the societies ethics, which is a compromise of what most individuals can agree upon as acceptable behavior, will tell us to shun such women, and indeed, in early litterature work such as the bible, you will find instructions to stone these women to the death. The woman is even shunned by other women, because a promiscous woman might entace the other womans man, leading to the man investing less time in the welfare of the other woman and more time in the promiscious woman. If a man have many women however, the women who stays with him does not run the risk of investing time taking care of someone elses offspring; a woman can usually be fairly certain that the child she gives birth to really is her child. While this popular man perhaps must share his time on all his women, the disadvantage in the form of less time spend on ensuring welfare this carries with it is compensated by the fact that if a man is popular with women likely have superior genetical qualities and the woman is more tolerant of the males behavior than a male would be of a woman behaving the same way. But should not other men shun this man, stealing women away from them? They do not, they are interested in adapting the behavior of the popular man so that they themselves might have many women, in fact many religions, such as islam, allow men to have several wives. The man in question will have a high social standing amongst both genders, while a woman expressing the exakt same behavior will be shunned.
by Drake Icn November 19, 2007