"Are we designed to be sexual omnivores?"

I loved this talk. Take a few minutes and watch it. This guy, Christopher Ryan, is quite an interesting person. 

There are a few sentences in his talk which I really like to quote:

"To argue that our ancestors were sexual omnivores is no more a criticism of monogamy than to argue that our ancestors were dietary omnivores is a criticism of vegetarianism. You can chose to be a vegetarian but don't think just because you made that decision bacon suddenly stops smelling good."

"It's time we move beyond Mars and Venus because the truth is that men are from Africa and women are from Africa."

I also liked the quote mentioned in the video by E. O. Wilson:

"All that we can surmise of human kind's genetic history argues for a more liberal sexual morality, in which sexual practices are to be regarded first as binding devices and only second as means of procreation."

I didn't know much about Female Copulatory Vocalization in other primates. Ryan doesn't explain much about it in this talk. I read about it after watching the video and realized wow! It is really interesting how correlated FCV seems to be with promiscuity in different ape species. You might find this article by Ryan in Psychology Today informative. 

Well, I will end with this quote by Arthur Schopenhauer that Ryan mentions answering the question at the end of the talk: 

"Man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills."

I liked this quote a lot. I finally found a saying to convey what I generally think about free will through it!

I have started to read about this whole concept of Victorian morality more. I might write about it in future... 

her

Such a great few months it was for movie lovers. I really liked American Hustle as I did like the previous movie by this guy David O. Russel; Silver Linings Playbook I mean. I just lovvve both Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper. I've only seen these two movies by Russel so far but thinking to watch some other ones. Anyone in!??! In this post though I'm going to write about her. 

Well, I guess almost everyone knows the premise. A guy falls in love with his OS. After all it is sci-fi and you can find some scenes that seem really too unrealistic or superficial. Some people might find some scenes a bit creepy too. I agree the scene the guy and his OS named Samantha, "had sex together" to me was a bit stupid maybe. He could have worked more on that scene or even could have totally escaped from putting his foot in that puddle. For example he could let them talk about some last night that they had sex without showing anything, just dialogues and then leave the rest to the audience imagination*. 

Something else is also interesting to me. So before having sex with the OS, one night the guy can't fall asleep and all he has to do is take his phone and find someone random online and they would talk a bit to turn each other on and then masturbate. Something very similar to what some people do in online chatrooms these days. I doubt if anyone finds what happens in that scene very weird. It's not allien since we have been exposed to something very similar for quite a while. Interactive porn websites and channels are there to turn people on... Later in the movie, almost the same thing happens with the OS. They talk and have sex. The OS is way more normal and believable than the girl he talked with on the phone a few nights before. Samantha won't ask him to "choke her with the dead cat by the bed"!!! 

It's interesting and weird at the same time that we find it important whether the female voice talking to the guy belongs to a human or an OS. It's all about our mindsets, right!? It's ironic how calling someone totally random and talking to them is not alien to us just because we have been practicing something very similar for a few years now. It's amazing to me how our moral and social paradigms can change over the course of a few years but it's hard for us to foresee and connect to a small perturbation to the imperatives we have at the moment.  

Overall I really liked the movie. It was a bit long for me. Though I have this problem with most of the movies! Joaquin Phoenix did a great great job. He almost carries the whole load of the acting for the most part of the two-hour movie.  

I talked with a friend afterwards and he mentioned an interesting point. The fact that you never know how technology is changing human relationships, intimate and sexual relationships included. Then he gave a good example. That there are people these days who argue having a pet** is what many people need not having a baby. That if you don't want to continue living through passing on copies of your genes for whatever reason you've got, you still can meet some of your needs with less work and effort. You can still love a creature which would love you back and would depend on you. Some emotions are going on there between you two and after all you don't have to send them to school or college. Maybe one day human emotional relationships change in a way that they would be more fulfilling to us while less time and energy consuming comparing to what we are used to these days. You never know what future brings mankind or maybe the other way around, you never know what kinda future mankind creates or both! 

Watch this video. I really really liked it. They talk to public figures and ask them about their thoughts on the movie and emotional intimate relationships in general. It's interesting to hear what they think. You can find a comedian, an author, a psychotherapist, a producer, ... Don't miss it!

_______________________________________________________________________


*/ Maybe a little bit out of context and maybe not, Abbas Kiarostami, the international well known Iranian director has a great quote which I really love: 

"I want to create the type of cinema that shows by not showing. This is very different from most movies nowadays, which are not literally pornographic but are in essence pornographic, because they show so much that they take away any possibility of imagining things for ourselves. My aim is to give the chance to create as much as possible in our minds, through creativity and imagination. I want to tap the hidden information that's within yourself and that you probably didn't even know existed inside you."


**/ On a different note I remember how I was impressed by a part in Milan Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being", where he describes the emotional relationship between a human and a dog. There is a very nice movie based on the book, which I strongly recommend. As always at least to me the book is way more interesting but one cannot deny the good quality of the movie.  

I Have a Dream

I have a dream today, well actually tonight! 

I have a dream that one day all grown up people around me will be communicable. That all of them, at least the ones that I have the most interactions with, will already be in the "adult ego state". 

I have a dream that one day the very presumption of every human interaction will be "I'm OK, You're Ok". 

I have a dream that one day we all will be trying our bests in "staying Ok" and we will be helping each other in getting more than OK!  

I have a dream today!



P.S. This is insane! I realized Google's Doodle just now, like half an hour after writing this post, and boy! It's Martin Luther King Jr. day tomorrow (probably will already be today once I update the post with the postscript). I was kinda imitating his format of "I Have a Dream" just cuz I thought it was cool. Such a coincidence! 

The Trimates

Today's* google doodle celebrated the 82nd birthday of Dian Fossey, one of the three ladies famously known as Leakey's angels or the trimates, the name coined by Leakey himself. These three ladies were encouraged and supported by Louis Leakey to study primates in their habitats. Jane Goodall is the first one of the trimates who studied chimpanzees for over 45 years. The second one, Dian Fossey studied the mountain gorillas for about 18 years and she is not alive anymore. The third trimate, Birute Galdikas studied orangutans. Previously I just had read about Jane Goodall's work. I've learned about her probably in one of Robert Sapolsky's lectures. I used to follow his course "Human Behavioral Biology" online. I guess I had already given links to some of his lectures and interviews in one of the previous posts. 

From left to right: Birute Galdikas, Jane Gooodall and Dian Fossey

*/ Yesterday's since till I'll publish this post it'll be already past midnight. Dian Fossey's birthday is on Jan 16th.

I really can't resist sharing some of these fantastic photos here:

Jane Goodall and her chimpanzees

Dian Fossey and her gorillas

Birute Galdikas and her orangutans 

and once again "The Trimates"

From left to right: Jane Gooodall, Dian Fossey and Birute Galdikas

Long Distance Parent-ship?!

Today I was taking a break between reading two scientific papers to read this article. Later my officemate told me one of the postdocs in our group has his family, his wife and two kids, back in Hong Kong. His daughter is three years old now and the son is just two months old. He has been away from his family for the last three years. Then he told me this story which was extremely shocking and sad. Apparently he had gone home when the daughter was just born or a few months old and then he didn't go home for a long long time until she was like about two years old. Almost all the interactions the kid had with her daddy till the age of two, at least the ones she could recall, had been through the Skype and the laptop monitor. He gets home and realizes that the kid doesn't recognize him. The kid thinks daddy has to be in the laptop. It takes the parents a few weeks to make her understand that this human being next to her is the same daddy so that she stops calling the laptop daddy!!! 

Recalled this video. I'm not going to argue how insane I think what this parents did is. Just to get an interesting video (!) which would be watched and shared a lot?! Why would you do that to your kid?! Anyways the kid in this video doesn't recognize her father after he gets rid of his huge beard and she really feels unsafe and insecure when he hold her. Imagine how hard and complicated was what our postdoc's daughter went through. She has seen daddy as a face on the laptop for at least one year and now this guy wants to hold her and asks her to call him daddy. 

The Heavy Burden of Secrets; Would you carry it for me?!

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Please don't expect other people to carry the heavy burden of keeping your secrets absolutely to themselves, if you already failed to carry it yourselves. 

Thank you very much in advance! 

Yours sincerely,

Wisher Writer

To her and the intense sweetness and sourness that her friendship brings all along! *

Intense friendships are like sandpapers I was thinking. Dealing with intense people is not easy at all; So much conflict, so much friction most of the time. In most cases though I feel interacting with intense people results in one getting kind of polished, you know. It's like a sandpaper which softens your roughnesses, refines you, makes you glossier in your social interactions. The less abrasive you are, the less conflicts you are going to get into with other people, the smoother your friendships and relationships go on. In retrospect I see how much I've changed in my life through interacting and befriending intense people despite the initial inertia I have always had towards getting close to these type of characters. I guess this inertia comes from the fact that after all I really try to avoid drama and dramatic people as much as I can. Although it is inevitable and almost impossible to avoid drama completely but I've realized the less drama I am involved in or aware of, the happier I am. On the other hand the other day I was telling C, I feel like intense people live more. By "more" I mean they experience higher levels of joy as well as higher levels of pain. The amplitude, the peaks and valleys of the feelings and sensations they experience is usually bigger than what non-intense people do. What is life after all!? How would you squeeze more out of life?! I really don't know but sometimes I think maybe, and just maybe, a gauge or meter can be one which measures the number as well as the intensity of the emotions and sensations someone goes through during her/his living.

Is it just me or is it a typical Iranian thing to think immediately of pomegranate and only pomegranate when thinking of sweetness and sourness together?! :D

*/ This is what I thought of and wrote under a photo of mine, taken by N, which I shared on Facebook. I kinda like this sentence and my view especially since it happened to me so spontaneously. So proud of myself, ha?!?! :P