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  1. "Yes, I call it nothing," said Valentine. "We human beings are no different. It may not be a
  2. virus, but we still spend most of our time acting out our genetic destiny. Take the
  3. differences between males and females. Males naturally tend toward a broadcast strategy
  4. of reproduction. Since males make an almost infinite supply of sperm and it costs them
  5. nothing to deploy it--"
  6. "Not nothing," said Ender.
  7. "Nothing," said Valentine, "just to deploy it. Their most sensible reproductive strategy is
  8. to deposit it in every available female-- and to make special efforts to deposit it in the
  9. healthiest females, the ones most likely to bring their offspring to adulthood. A male does
  10. best, reproductively, if he wanders and copulates as widely as possible."
  11. "I've done the wandering," said Ender. "Somehow I missed out on the copulating."
  12. "I'm speaking of overall trends," said Valentine. "There are always strange individuals
  13. who don't follow the norms. The female strategy is just the opposite, Planter. Instead of
  14. millions and millions of sperm, they only have one egg a month, and each child
  15. represents an enormous investment of effort. So females need stability. They need to be
  16. sure there'll always be plenty of food. We also spend large amounts of time relatively
  17. helpless, unable to find or gather food. Far from being wanderers, we females need to
  18. establish and stay. If we can't get that, then our next best strategy is to mate with the
  19. strongest and healthiest possible males. But best of all is to get a strong healthy male
  20. who'll stay and provide, instead of wandering and copulating at will.
  21. "So there are two pressures on males. The one is to spread their seed, violently if
  22. necessary. The other is to be attractive to females by being stable providers-- by
  23. suppressing and containing the need to wander and the tendency to use force. Likewise,
  24. there are two pressures on females. The one is to get the seed of the strongest, most virile
  25. males so their infants will have good genes, which would make the violent, forceful males
  26. attractive to them. The other is to get the protection of the most stable males, nonviolent
  27. males, so their infants will be protected and provided for and as many as possible will
  28. reach adulthood.
  29. "Our whole history, all that I've ever found in all my wanderings as an itinerant historian
  30. before I finally unhooked myself from this reproductively unavailable brother of mine
  31. and had a family-- it can all be interpreted as people blindly acting out those genetic
  32. strategies. We get pulled in those two directions.
  33. "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
  34. abolish violence and promote permanence of ownership and enforce contracts-- those
  35. represent the primary female strategy, the taming of the male.
  36. "And the tribes of wandering barbarians outside the reach of civilization, those follow the
  37. mainly male strategy. Spread the seed. Within the tribe, the strongest, most dominant
  38. males take possession of the best females, either through formal polygamy or spur-ofthe-moment
  39. copulations that the other males are powerless to resist. But those lowstatus
  40. males are kept in line because the leaders take them to war and let them rape and
  41. pillage their brains out when they win a victory. They act out sexual desirability by
  42. proving themselves in combat, and then kill all the rival males and copulate with their
  43. widowed females when they win. Hideous, monstrous behavior-- but also a viable actingout
  44. of the genetic strategy."
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