An academic sort of thread...

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Okay so.. since my postulations on why certain things are the way they are aren't exactly welcome in other threads.. I thought I'd just start one here.

I'm by no means an Evolutionary Psychology proponent, Darwinian selection proponent, or anything else.. I'm very interdisciplinary when it comes to grappling with big ideas.. my specific interest is akin to Arnold J. Toybee or Oswald Spengler.. the Philosophy of History and Society rather than just straight up history.. History is an excercise in interpreting facts.. where as Historical Philosophy is more akin to asking Why those facts are the way they are...

So.. Since I have nothing better to do and I really am itching to burn up some serious character space..

Basically speaking there isn't a shortage of either gender on the planet.. humans are very evenly distributed in most parts of the world barring some odd places like Williston North Dakota or China.. there are reasons for those places being the way they are and they are economic and cultural. But basically speaking theres a pretty good 1/1 ratio of males to female humans on planet earth. Please don't shoot me for getting the numbers wrong.. I'm only estimating.. not looking to do serious data analysis here. I'm not even going to insult the board by insinuating I'm covering every possible aspect of this.. so if you can think of something I've missed please add it!

Now, knowing that, You'd think it would be easy enough to find a mate.. after all.. if theres 50/50 it means theres some one out there for everybody.. that's not true and a variety of factors are responsible for this. There are "Natural" reasons and there are "Cultural" reasons.

Sexual dimorphism.. meaning all the people who don't fall into the binary male-female sexual graph.. this accounts for a fairly decently sized percentage of the entire human population is some alternative sexuality, be that gay, lesbian, transgendered, bisexual or asexual. Maybe about 700 million or so people worldwide.. that's a pretty good chunk to be honest.. Okay so that's 1 thing that begins to chip away.. meaning that for each one of those that is a m-m or f-f paired couple.. you've got other people of either gender who are now potentially without mates.

The Grey Horde in "The West" where most of the posters on this forum live.. the population is OOOOOOOOOOLLLLDDD like really old.. Like really heavily skews to the right in a histogram Old. Some countries like Japan even more so than others.. They skew so far to the 'Old' column they are worried about having enough young people to even look after all the elderly people in a few years. Add to this that the middle aged and younger people in these countries, barring the United States as a fluke, simply aren't having enough kids to even stabilize the populations in these countries. So that removes a HUGE number of potential mates for the young people that do exist. Not only that but part of the reason why the younger generations aren't having more kids is that they cannot afford to have more kids becuase the oooooold people are living longer and are having to work longer in before they retire.. that or the jobs they held are simply being done away with when they retire.. leaving their kids and grandkids without good jobs and steady pay... exacerbating the problem of the rapidly growing cone shaped population pyramid.

These two problems above do remove serious portions of a given population, but they also roughly even out.. they are more useful in terms of shrinking down the population of M-F binary mate selection to managable levels than anything else. It's all well and good to say that there's 7 billion people one earth.. but that 25% of them are elderly, 15% are of an alternative sexuality and another 10% are under age.. so what we basically are doing is cutting down the population to say.. 3.5 billion people who are looking for alternative sex mates and who fall within the range of 18 - 50.

Geography, This is a big problem in the US, Australia, Canada and other huge countries because of how spread out everyone is.. It's really really bad in parts of the US which have seen significant, unplanned and unrestricted growth in the last 30-50 years. Basically suburbs and Exoburbs are TERRIBLE places to meet new people because people don't actually do anything in those areas except sleep and store their s**t. They commute into the cities for work, they commute into the cities to watch shows or movies or go to clubs.. and then they drive home. Most of these places exist in cultural vacuums and the people who live in the survive by dashing into the car from the house to be transported to some place "Interesting" where they want to visit but not live. One need only plug in a rural zip code into an online dating site to see how sparse the choices are. This leads to another interesting problem, one which will start us off with the cultural aspects of mate selection.

Aesthetics , this is a purely cultural thing and each culture, sub culture and individual has their own view of it.. but there are some fairly strong over arching cultural ideals of what constitutes something or someone who is aesthetically pleasing. For men in the West, Height is a very very big deal, and I'd say it's probably as big of a deal for men as Weight is for women. Simply put, Western Culture lauds tall men and skinny women. A guy can be Heavy, so long as he's tall. A Woman can be short, so long as she's thing. The problem is that both are issues which are partly Natural (Biological) and partly Societal (Economic). If you come from a geographic area with lots of tall people, or your ancestors did, chances are you are going to be tall. If your parents were both short, and your a guy, chances are you're just plain f****d, studies indicate shorter males earn nearly 10% less over their lifetime than taller counter parts.

There are biological reasons for being over weight or obesity, but also large economic reasons for it. If you are in a rural or exurban area without access to a lot of education and health resources.. chances are you won't have a lot of marketable skills, won't have the ability to commute into the city.. and thus won't have access to a great deal of money. As was already indicated with shorter males' earning power, a similar thing exists with rural people or inner city people who come from poor educational backgrounds. If you're parents struggled constantly with money, chances are you will also. There are opportunities to escape this.. but quite a lot of people don't... So you have not a lot of money but you're hungry.. what do you do.. buy a lot of cheap processed foods and eat them. What do you do with your free time that you're not working? Well you don't have money so you can't go and do much.. and you also live in an area which is potentially not safe or is cut off from cultural amenities.. so you sit and watch tv.. while you're sitting watching tv.. you're also likely snacking.. since highly processed foods tend to have the annoying habit of making you want to eat more of them.. next thing you know.. you're overweight.. or if this is the example you've set, your kids are overweight.. Hello stigma. Heaven forbid you'r a short, overweight guy, (double mockery, but you might still be able to get by if you set your sights low enough) or an overweight woman of any stripe, which is basically going to make you a shoe-in for mistreatment by society. So these two things are sort of unforgivable sins in modern western society.. as I said before individual experience WILL vary.. but as a cultural norm you're breaking serious taboos. Another thing which will likely be impacted by this is dental hygiene.. Teeth decay. Period. It doesn't matter how well you brush or floss or whatever else have you.. Teeth Decay.. Human lifespan has doubled and is getting closer and closer to tripling over the last 200,000 years or so but our teeth are still pretty much convinced we only need to use them for about 25 years or so. There's a reason why you get your first set and lose your first set entirely by the time you're 12.. and then just have to make do with your second set afterwords.. Tooth Decay is further accelerated by poor diet.. mainly by excessive consumption of overly sweetened foods and especially soft drinks. Tooth Decay is linked to all sorts of other medical problems from heart disease to diabetes (again, linked heavily to the diet problem).. but aesthetically especially in the US, we are sold the idea that only a PERFECTLY straight perfectly white set of teeth is aesthetically attractive.. so people who are missing teeth or have off colour or crooked teeth are considered of all things, less dependable and less trustworthy.. so the people who are already have a hard time economically are given yet another blow to their ability to make money and thus improve their lives or at least the lives of their children.

Economics, Now we get down to the really nitty gritty bit. Money.. well.. specifically economics. The West, and I am dealing primarily with it.. is a nominally capitalist society.. that means we place value on things.. what sorts of things? all sorts of things.. things like.. aesthetics! Meaning that if you're already poor and already from a geographically isolated area (be that due to miles of concrete and dilapidated buildings and gang bangers or that you live 30 miles from the nearest city) society actually values you less due to the aesthetic problems you've already got. If you're a short male, you earn less money, and are then more likely to gain weight and are then thus 3 times as likely to not be able to get a date.. You're Short, Broke and Fat? If your a woman who's broke it maybe doesn't matter so much so long as you're still "Pretty" (Your individual mileage will vary, based on ALL of the preceeding factors I've listed) you can get buy on not a lot of money so long as you are willing to use your body as a bargaining chip. It's pretty, it's in demand, you live in a demand based economy, may some f****r pay for it through the nose. If your a woman who doesn't have that resource.. well you're a woman so you already are earning about 10% less than even the short guys.. so that means you're earning about 20% less than the tall guys and if your overweight you can forget being able to land a whole host of different jobs.. add in the fact that people resent you for not being skinny.. without ever considering all the factors that are work. This also means that you are pretty much going to be fairly far down most guys lists of potential mates.. since economically they figure if they are going to have to pay for everything (another societal thing) they figure they want as much bang for their buck as possible. This idea of "Pay for Play" also begins to leak into a lot of guys ideas of how relationships form. They have money, they buy the woman things, but they aren't buying things for the person per say.. they are buying things so that the person reciprocates with sex. The reason for this is simple, access to sex, especially in terms of dealing with 'Attractive' women.. is totally in their control in all cases except physical violence. Women control who has access to the sex, guys vie to gain access to it.. supply and demand.. Needless to say if you're less conventially aesthetically pleasing in terms of your culture.. you can't demand as much for access to sex.. thats where the whole "I'm not that kind of girl" ... "But you must be!" joke comes from.. meaning if your overweight or unatractive you can't demand very much for access to your resources.. it's the same sort of thinking that leads western countries to be able to take horrible advantage of poor countries that have lots of natural resources "Some one will stop you" "Nobody Cares about Africa!"...

All these things and we haven't even gotten to personality.. which is ultimately informed by EVERY single one of these previous things. I'll do that next time.