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Would you believe that chimpanzees have sex for "money"? The parallels within human society could be significant. Read More
nice article
nice article
Resource distribution
First of, going for food with a virtual stranger of the opposite sex to size up sexual compatibility is a distinctively American way of getting together, and other cultures have very different "coupling" strategies.
I think this (relatively new) tradition is at least in part influenced by the American landscape of public places as commercial enterprises, so you have to go out and pay for something, food or some service, if you want to use that public space (since you don't want to meet at your home). So you go out for food (and pay for it) and you go for a movie, or rollerskating, or a boat trip or what not, and you pay for it.
But secondly, your theory assumes that males are often or always in charge of food resources, and women have to provide some service to get part of it. In most animal species, and also in most economic models, - hunters/ gatherers, agricultural, industrial - female humans have provided a great part of those resources for themselves and their offspring.
Choosing a mate is therefore, in most cultures, and species, concerned with more than just the depositing of sperm, which after all secures neither the individual partners' survival, nor their offspring's, and is for most living creatures only a small part of their lives.
You're right of course
> But secondly, your theory assumes that males are often or always
> in charge of food resources, and women have to provide some
> service to get part of it. ...in most economic models ... female
> humans have provided a great part of those resources for
> themselves and their offspring.
And that's why, as strictly material resources have become much less important to females, their rather idiosyncratic psychological needs have risen to the forefront to largely take their place -- because females always want *something* in addition to "just sex".
Or, as Sean Penn so astutely put it, when talking to Charlie Rose about all the beautiful women he'd dated: I capitalized on their perversions!
I see a big portion of the increasingly problematic nature of relationships these days as being fundamentally due to this shift, and the fact that males tend to be much better at the relatively cut-and-dried business of material resource acquisition than at the sort of psychological expertise being called for.
Dining Out
Going for food with a virtual stranger is one way of sizing up that stranger's ability to provide - if the stranger is the one who's paying.It may be a distinctively American way custom, but it is basically no different than informing a prospective father-in-law about the size of your family's goat herd.
In species where childrearing takes a significant amount of time and resource, relationships often tend to be about more than just sex.
Really like your articles
Alex,
Your posts here are really excellent. This makes me want to go get a PhD in Psychology. Thanks.
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