Evolution and Traditional Sexual Morality

In the period since Darwin, people in the West have come to believe that they are essentially animals like other animals. But perhaps partly because of a profound and unreasoning sense that people are also qualitatively different, the same people have perversely turned their backs on the most basic principles which govern animal life and have always (until now) governed human life.

The moral values of a society may be regarded as evolutionary strategies. A society needs to devise and enforce moral standards which help it to survive. No society can survive unless it favours the reproductive success of its members. So we find that the most fundamental human moral values are not exclusive to one human society or one religion. They are to be found in all but the most decadent societies. They may well be instinctive; perhaps at any rate they go back to the very beginning of human societies. They have survived because they harmonise with the three fundamental biological needs of the human animal: to survive, to reproduce, to ensure as far as possible the survival and reproductive success of one's offspring.

Some of them may appear unfamiliar in the Western twenty-first century context; nevertheless they would have appeared normal to most human societies in the past and are typical of all those contemporary societies which are still expanding in population.

In traditional human morality as in nature, the purpose of sexual love is reproduction. Mistakes are often made, relationships do not always succeed, but the goal of sexual love has to be a fruitful long-term relationship. Sexual activity which by its nature cannot lead to this goal is excusable in the experimental period of adolescence but in the longer term cannot benefit the species. Abortion has almost always been regarded as wrong. Contraception was not usually socially acceptable until decreased infant mortality made it inescapable. Homosexuality has often been subject to severe penalties.

Human children need a long period of parental care. During this period they need love, guidance and discipline. In the early stages they need a very high level of input from the mother, in the later stages a lesser but still great input from both parents. Animals care for and protect only their own offspring. Therefore humanity has usually believed that the parental relationship should be a stable and permanent marriage. It is for the sake of the children that lifelong marriage exists.

Sexual activity outside the parental relationship has been regarded as dangerous if it damages the parental relationship and hence the lives of the next generation. But it has also been instinctively recognised that the "double standard" has a biological basis. A man's promiscuity may  increase his chances of reproductive success; a woman's normally does not, and may make it more difficult for her to bring up the children she has. So societies have often turned a blind eye to promiscuous males, whilst condemning their promiscuous female partners.

Infidelity in a woman has always attracted severe condemnation because it has harmful biological effects. What matters, from the biological point of view, is the care of the children; and a wife's infidelity or even suspected infidelity can damage their lives. Like other male animals, human fathers cannot be trusted to care for children who do not (or perhaps may not) carry their genes. So there must be no question of a wife's infidelity, because a husband who doubts his wife's fidelity cannot be certain her children are his and may withhold the love and protection their children need.

By contrast a mother's love for her children is not affected by her husband's infidelity. A mother always knows who her children are and loves them; her husband's fidelity or infidelity make little difference to her parental love. So whatever the tensions and stresses caused to the parental relationship, male infidelity matters less.

Motherhood has high qualitative intensity; for a woman to give birth to a child is a turning point in her life, creating an inescapable long-term responsibility. So a young female must not allow herself to become pregnant without the assured support of the child's father. Parents therefore have always been believed to have a responsibility to guide their children in the direction of successful and fruitful marriages: in the case of daughters, this means that they must protect them from irresponsible relationships which may result in pregnancy. Female virginity has always been valued and the existence of the hymen may suggest that it has been valued since an early stage of human evolution.

Restraints on young men have also traditionally been strong. In past societies, marriage was normally only possible for the young man who had proved that he was capable of assuming adult responsibilities. In societies where defence against wild animals or human enemies was likely to be his most important duty, he was perhaps required to kill a bull or a lion single-handed. In traditional European societies, he had to prove his ability to make a living sufficient to support a family. In both cases, a natural link was established between male sexual fulfilment and the acceptance of responsibilities.

These principles, so well-founded in the biological nature of humanity and taken for granted in human societies for so long, are now no longer fashionable. The result is simply impending extinction. Already, European birth rates are very low and populations are being rapidly replaced in their homelands by incomers, mainly from Asia, who still in many cases adhere to more traditional values.

The reader may feel (even if he or she follows the logic of this argument) that the traditional morality is stern and puritanical and hard to follow. But the communities of the past (and the growing populations of the present) have treated it as at least an ideal, because it is in harmony with human reproductive psychology. Young women instinctively shy away from physical involvement until they feel sure of a man. Young men often feel desperate to achieve that involvement, at all costs and almost with any woman; but when the opportunity occurs, their bodies often fail to cooperate effectively if the relationship is not the right one.

The traditional morality may appear hard to follow, not because our bodies rebel against it, but because it conflicts with values ceaselessly promulgated by our debased modern media and then reinforced by peer-group pressure. There is a conflict; but it is not a conflict between promiscuous instinct and restraining morality. It is a conflict between the cautious morality of the body, in harmony with human reproductive needs, and the way that the media now appear to expect us to behave. The media have got it wrong; there is no higher ideal and no greater source of human happiness, than a happy, faithful and fruitful marriage.

Of course, civilized moral issues are more complex than the simple code suggested above. We have to adapt traditional values to the conditions of our own lives in the present. Nevertheless the natural harmony between the old morality and the requirements of animal survival - and the practical results of putting the values of our ancestors so completely aside - suggest that we should not dismiss their customs as quaint relics of the past.

Our ancestors believed that we shared many of our functions and instincts with the other animals. They were content to accept this close similarity because they also believed that people were in another way profoundly different. We post-Darwinians may find it easier to accept our animal nature if we remember also that it is not incompatible with the very distinctive and unusual identity of our species.

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