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- "Yes, I call it nothing," said Valentine. "We human beings are no different. It may not be a
- virus, but we still spend most of our time acting out our genetic destiny. Take the
- differences between males and females. Males naturally tend toward a broadcast strategy
- of reproduction. Since males make an almost infinite supply of sperm and it costs them
- nothing to deploy it--"
- "Not nothing," said Ender.
- "Nothing," said Valentine, "just to deploy it. Their most sensible reproductive strategy is
- to deposit it in every available female-- and to make special efforts to deposit it in the
- healthiest females, the ones most likely to bring their offspring to adulthood. A male does
- best, reproductively, if he wanders and copulates as widely as possible."
- "I've done the wandering," said Ender. "Somehow I missed out on the copulating."
- "I'm speaking of overall trends," said Valentine. "There are always strange individuals
- who don't follow the norms. The female strategy is just the opposite, Planter. Instead of
- millions and millions of sperm, they only have one egg a month, and each child
- represents an enormous investment of effort. So females need stability. They need to be
- sure there'll always be plenty of food. We also spend large amounts of time relatively
- helpless, unable to find or gather food. Far from being wanderers, we females need to
- establish and stay. If we can't get that, then our next best strategy is to mate with the
- strongest and healthiest possible males. But best of all is to get a strong healthy male
- who'll stay and provide, instead of wandering and copulating at will.
- "So there are two pressures on males. The one is to spread their seed, violently if
- necessary. The other is to be attractive to females by being stable providers-- by
- suppressing and containing the need to wander and the tendency to use force. Likewise,
- there are two pressures on females. The one is to get the seed of the strongest, most virile
- males so their infants will have good genes, which would make the violent, forceful males
- attractive to them. The other is to get the protection of the most stable males, nonviolent
- males, so their infants will be protected and provided for and as many as possible will
- reach adulthood.
- "Our whole history, all that I've ever found in all my wanderings as an itinerant historian
- before I finally unhooked myself from this reproductively unavailable brother of mine
- and had a family-- it can all be interpreted as people blindly acting out those genetic
- strategies. We get pulled in those two directions.
- "Our great civilizations are nothing more than social machines to create the ideal femalesetting, where a woman can count on stability; our legal and moral codes that try to
- abolish violence and promote permanence of ownership and enforce contracts-- those
- represent the primary female strategy, the taming of the male.
- "And the tribes of wandering barbarians outside the reach of civilization, those follow the
- mainly male strategy. Spread the seed. Within the tribe, the strongest, most dominant
- males take possession of the best females, either through formal polygamy or spur-ofthe-moment
- copulations that the other males are powerless to resist. But those lowstatus
- males are kept in line because the leaders take them to war and let them rape and
- pillage their brains out when they win a victory. They act out sexual desirability by
- proving themselves in combat, and then kill all the rival males and copulate with their
- widowed females when they win. Hideous, monstrous behavior-- but also a viable actingout
- of the genetic strategy."
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