In 2020, JD Vance appeared on a podcast hosted by Eric Weinstein. Here Vance uttered the "yes" heard round the political world. The two were discussing grandparents. (And yes, we can all agree that the relationship between grandparents and their offspring's offspring can be a wonderful one.)
Indeed (for context), the whole Weinstein sentence, is "That [child rearing assistance] is the whole purpose of the postmenopausal female in theory."
One thing I find fascinating about that wording is that Vance actually interrupted the sentence, to say "yes," BEFORE the host got out the phrase "in theory". Thus he suggests that for him anyway what he is agreeing with is not just a theory but a settled fact.
Hmmmm. So for those postmenopausal women without children and grandchildren -- call Dr. Kevorkian. You have no purpose left. Or -- another thought --make it your immediate purpose to beat Trump-Vance. After that is done (and of course we'll have to stay vigilant against trickery through Jan. 20th) -- after that, invent your own purpose, which is after all more-or-less the human condition.
The Trump-Vance crowd wonder why the word "weird" has stuck? That simple word "yes" should explain it. This is not helpful weirdness -- like "how weird was it of Louis Pasteur to guess that the fermentation of grapes and the infection of the human bloodstream are analogous processes!" It is not even neutral weirdness. Like the weird guy on the street corner who makes motions like he's playing an invisible keyboard and humming. You might instinctively shy away from the display but he's harmless. No, this one is a malignant weirdness. You-have-no-purpose weirdness directed at a large chunk of the electorate.
Yet let us try to be generous. Could Weinstein, and by extension the bestower of that "yes" upon Weinstein, have had any valuable thought?
Well, we might consider how matters would stand if Weinstein had said, "that's the whole adaptive significance of menopause". I say this with the deference fully appropriate for someone with nearly complete ignorance of the biology involved, but it is my understanding that a sharp demarcation between fertility and infertility in the aging process of females is rare among species. Sticking to the mammals, and doing a little googling, I gather than only six out of 5000 known mammalian species have a sharp demarcation. Humans are the only primate among them. The others are species of .... whales! Whales, like humans, are a very social species. [They are also intelligent, and they obviously have us beat there.]
So, whales and humans reached what is in some respects a similar situation through very different evolutionary paths. That might lead one to suspect that there is adaptive significance to it. Thinking of the so-called "selfish gene," one might speculate ("in theory" as Weinstein helpfully reminds us) that menopause emerges because the dangerous-world prospects of certain gene lines are advanced by taking females beyond a certain age out of child-bearing and into the 'business' of helping to care for the most vulnerable youngest bearers of those genes. This is a speculation, but not an unreasonable one.
Had Weinstein said that, and had Vance said "yes" to that, there would be little to discuss. It still would have been presumptuous to say "that is the whole adaptive value of menopause," but not wildly so, and saying "yes" to a host's presumptive-but-understandable rambling is surely no great offense.
But: guess what? we aren't in the forest primaeval. We are not swimming about in need of plankton and in danger of sharks, either. We are each born into the highly artificial world of metallic structures and occupational specialization and friggin' space flight that all the generations of our species before us have willy-nilly created for us. And in this world, the notion of 'purpose' is very much detached from adaptive significance. And whoever you are, dear reader, your purpose is your own and incommensurable with mine.
That ends my little exercise in generosity. These two clowns -- one of them running for high office -- may possibly have meant something inoffensive, but what they ended up saying was and is highly offensive.
Voters have difficult decisions to make, even in the best of times. This not one of the best, IMHO. The Trump-Vance ticket was first a question mark, which somehow morphed into an exclamation point. Much of America remains stuck in Middle America, bound up arcane traditionalism and longing for a past society it understands recognizes as the America. Vance is a symbolic figure, albeit flawed. Trump is a huckster (I am being polite). They are a good mix for the intended outcome. They are also an example of contextual reality. Very little surprises me anymore.
ReplyDeleteThe key sentence in your post is "And in this world, the notion of 'purpose' is very much detached from adaptive significance." Although I am at least as ignorant of the biology involved as you are, let's consider this scenario. Millions of years ago, two types of human women existed. One type remained fertile her entire life, and the other experienced menopause. Which would be more likely to increase the reproduction of the species? The question almost answers itself: the women who remain fertile would have more babies and thereby directly increase the reproduction of the species. Those who experienced menopause might or might not assist in the care of their grandchildren or other children, and, because, as you say, "the notion of 'purpose' is very much detached from adaptive significance," those who experienced menopause would not be more likely to survive because of the possibility that they would use their free time to assist in the care of their grandchildren or other children.
ReplyDeleteSuppose woman A in your scenario has two children before she reaches age X. Being on the gene line for which age X is no limit, she has another child thereafter. Meanwhile, woman B also has two children before age X. On her gene line, she now has menopause. Woman A's two children then each have two children each. Woman A is not available to assist in raising them, because she is busy with her new pregnancy, then her new baby. Woman B's two children also have grandchildren, and for them she becomes a doting and protective nanny. She keeps them away from the great saber-toothed tiger incursion two years after the Great Frost. It is not obvious to me that Woman A's progeny will be faring better, say another two generations out, than Woman B's.
DeleteTrue, but the question is whether natural selection could select Woman B because of her potential to become a doting and protective nanny. I think that natural selection would select her grandchildren, and, if they passed on her menopause gene, then, yes, natural selection would indirectly be selecting Woman B.
ReplyDeleteBut Woman B's grandchildren are not necessarily in competition with Woman A's additional children. They could both survive and pass on both Woman B's menopause gene and Woman A's gene that enables her to continue to give birth in her later years. Although Woman A would not be available to protect her grandchildren from saber-tooth tigers and other dangers, she would produce more children. We can't know whether the number of her additional children who survive would outnumber the number of her grandchildren who die because she cannot protect them from saber-tooth tigers and other dangers.
We don't know. Indeed. It is all speculative. Here is a recent (2019) scholarly article on the general subject. (Let me know if you can make anything out of it.) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31818941/
DeleteNo, I could not figure it out. It tasted like word salad, which mostly never conveys meaning for anyone who did not toss the salad in the first place. Look, I *get* that philosophy is under attack, maybe as never before in a very long history. That is discouraging. But, consider this: we are in the midst of a time when almost no one will entertain doubt and uncertainty. This means almost no one has interest in philosophy. And those who place confidence in crooks and charlatans, get what they deserve.
DeleteThe origin of *con man* goes back a bit. Con stood for confidence...not crook...even though, as it soon emerged, they were one and the same. Some historical figure said: never give a sucker an even break. I don't know if that was PT Barnum or WC Fields. Let me know if you know.
You're right that "con man" is an abbreviation for "confidence man." but a confidence man was a crook. See Herman Melville's novel, "The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade." According to the "Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins," "Just after the Civil War, one of the most common frauds in America was the sale of fake gold mine stock in the West.... Investors were often reluctant to advance funds without examining the property ... and swindlers asked their victims to make a small investment in advance 'just as a gesture of confidence,' deposits that they quickly absconded with."
DeleteAccording to that same encyclopedia, the origin of "Never give a sucker an even break" is unknown, but W.C. Fields starred in a 1941 movie of that name.
Yes, you are right. I remember the film now. What Barnum may have said was something like *there's a sucker born every minute*.Whether he was right is, if not accurate, at least on the same acreage.
DeleteHello. I read the abstract on whales. Not sure the theory fits us, but have discussed such matters with associates, notably the evolutionary *quirk* of Bonobos. They do not kill each other. One might ask: how smart/wise/ *conscious* are Cetaceans? Our, uh, evidence suggests sea mammals are very smart. Godfrey-Smith has found similar evidence in cephalopods.Back to the mammal notion, we can correlate the behaviors of whales with dolphins porpoises and such. There is an ecological, evolutionary fit here, seems to me. But, well,I don't know much.
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ReplyDeleteRegarding Henry's remarks. My family produced many progeny...on both sides and over several generations. I had six great uncles and at least that many great aunts, all of whom are deceased, far as I know. The deal was something like: have many, because many will die. That rationale, with other pressures, caused a split on my maternal grandmother's side of the pool.
ReplyDeleteGrandad bailed and went to California. I met him a decade or so later because I wanted his side of things. Got it in less than three days:poor health, too many children and too little money. Bill just could not sustain all of that. Had he tried to do so, I would never have met him, as an adult, In 1969.