Why flowers are like girls

If a pollinator such as a bee is very pleased with a flower he has been to, he will be especially on the prowl for other plants of the same species, because he knows they are likely to have the flowers he most wants. It thus stands to reason that the more his experience with the plant he visited first was pleasant to him, the more he will tend to land on the flowers of other plants of the species immediately after they open, before their nectar, etc., gets taken by another—his prior pleasant experience will cause him to be especially on the prowl for similar flowers. After a very pleasing flower experience, he will preferentially (more often) check out the flowers of the same species, so that he can get them right after they open, lest an interloper gets the treat before he does. Accordingly, the sooner a flower is landed on after opening, the more likely the pollinator came from a flower especially effective at encouraging insects to spread its pollen to other flowers, and thus the more likely the pollinator came from a plant especially effective at spreading its pollen thoroughly and efficiently. Of course, it is in the self-interest of a plant to be pollinated by pollen coding for a plant especially effective at spreading its pollen thoroughly and efficiently. If the female parts of a flower can especially select for pollen especially talented at penetrating freshly opened flowers, that's an advantage to the plant. By a plant having flowers especially delicate and full of the fragile characteristics more typical of flowers freshly opened, the flower can especially select for sperm in (genetically identical to the sperm) pollen tubes especially effective at penetrating youthful stigmas and styles, as serves the interest of the plant—such sperm will tend to code for flowers especially desired by pollinators. Indeed, if a pollen tube is especially effective at fertilizing freshly opened, delicate flowers, likely it is so because it evolved thus because so many of its ancestors had pollen tubes that especially needed to fertilize freshly-opened flowers, likely on account of the same ancestors being so much desired by bees, etc., as to cause the latter to especially be on the prowl for flowers of the same species, so as to be landed on so soon as they open.

On balance, gamete selection is even more important in plants than in animals. Plants have alternation of generations, alternating between a diploid sporophyte generation and a haploid gametophyte generation. In animals the haploid generation is produced directly from meiosis in the diploid generation, and is nothing more than a sperm or an egg, scarcely to be considered an organism. In plants, the product of the diploid organism is not directly eggs or sperms but rather spores—the products of meiosis are spores. These haploid spores are genetically identical to the eggs or sperm they will ultimately produce, but they mitotically grow into something multicellular and rather complex, the gametophyte, before sperms and eggs are produced. In mosses what the spores grow into, the gametophyte, is actually larger than the diploid generation, and is what is commonly recognized as the plant. In ferns, the gametophyte typically looks like a fingernail-sized plant that one can find by scrounging around wet places.

In flowering plants, the male gametophyte is the pollen grain, which contains two cells: a vegetative cell, which becomes the pollen tube that upon pollination burrows into the style to the embryo sac, and a generative cell contained in the vegetative cell that (typically after pollination) splits into two sperm cells (in flowering plants, the sperm cells don't have flagella) that undergo fertilization; all these cells are genetically identical. The female gametophyte is the embryo sac. The embryo sac most frequently contains seven cells. Three cells are located near the micropyle, the opening which the pollen tube breaks into antecedent to releasing its two sperm; one of these cells is the egg, the other two, the synergids, flank the egg like guardians. Three more cells, the antipodals, are located on the opposite end of the embryo sac, decaying without serving any obvious purpose. Finally, in the middle of the embryo sac is a large central cell that has two nuclei, the polar nuclei. What is strange about fertilization in most flowering plants is that it is a double fertilization. One sperm combines with the egg cell, becoming the embryo that grows into an adult plant. The other sperm combines with the cell containing the two polar nuclei to form a primary endosperm cell that is triploid; i.e., it contains three of each chromosome, only one of which is from the father; this cell typically divides mitotically to form the endosperm of the seed, which usually is only important in seed development and germination. Oftentimes the developing embryo obtains nutrient from the endosperm. For instance, in wheat seeds the embryo, which constitutes the wheat germ, develops into a wheat plant, absorbing when in the seed nutrients from the endosperm, which is the material that furnishes white flour and constitutes most of the seed.

Anyway, it is apparently quite clear that many genes of the pollen tubes are expressed haploidly, and so the characteristics of the pollen tube are determined at least in part by which particular genes the pollen grain has obtained from its parent. There presumably arises, therefore, a haploid competition between genes possessed by pollen tubes (which as mentioned are identical to the genes possessed by the genetically identical sperm within them). Genes that code for pollen tubes especially talented at penetrating newly opened flowers are what an insect-pollinated flowering plant most needs to be fertilized by, and so one would expect flowers, or at least the female parts of flowers, to tend especially to be delicate-looking, having physical characteristics similar to a flower that could only be freshly opened.

Haploid competition just in itself isn't necessarily beneficial. First of all, much haploid competition might arise between pollen grains coming from the same plant. To the extent haploid competition is typically of this sort—between haplotypes arising from the same plant—one would expect no direct benefit to a plant fertilized subsequent to this competition. True, a plant fertilized by a strong pollen tube may be more likely to win out in distant generations when pollen more related to it is competing with pollen less related to it. But more immediately, in the next generation, there will be competition between pollen produced by the child which is more related to the child's mother and pollen produced which is more related to the child's father; to succeed more in this latter competition, it is advantageous for the mother to have been fertilized by weak pollen tubes. As in animals, to the extent competition between gametes mainly involves competition between gametes produced by the same individual, there is no direct benefit to being fertilized by gametes having strong haploid chracteristics; indeed, as I have done, one can show mathematically that the two effects cancel out to the extent the differences in pollen haploid characteristics are small.

One advantage of haploid competition is that it reduces meiotic drive; i.e., if characteristics of sperm and eggs are determined by the diploid genome, there might be expected to arise genes which diploidly code for killing or hurting gametes that don't contain the genes, giving the genes advantages (such genes are known to exist in fruit flies) over their competitors. Over time these selfish genetic elements can lead to reduced fertility, and meaningful sperm competition between sperm from different individuals is probably the only way of preventing this sort of thing if indeed sperm development is determined diploidly. (In particular, if sperm development is essentially determined just diploidly in humans, a matter of controversy, this can give females a reason to be promiscuous, i.e., to have sex with several males at the same time to ensure the most fertile one succeeds. But I think sperm development in humans often is haploidly regulated, leading to meaningful intraejaculate sperm competition, and so I'd say female humans are by nature generally very hesitant to be promiscuous in this way.)

To really determine whether haploid competition between male gametes produced by an individual subsequently benefits another individual fertilized by one of these gametes, one must look at what diploid characteristics are likely to be selected for by the competition. Oftentimes one allele of a gene might be more fit than another when coding haploidly and less fit when coding diploidly. In fact, if haploid competition is general and always more or less selective of the same characteristics, one would expect this to be the typical situation because the situation allows for long-term stability in allele frequencies, and so is a situation that can last for a long time. On the other hand, if one allele is more fit than another both when coding haploidly and when coding diploidly, the more fit allele is likely to before long more-or-less completely displace the latter allele in the population (except possibly if the hybrid condition is more fit diploidly than either homozygous state); and of course if an allele is less fit in every way, it will probably die out fairly quickly. Anyway, if haploid competition is something that occurs generally, and if the haploid condition is not akin to the diploid condition (as is especially the case with plants like the flowering plants, which have relatively simple gametophytes), one would expect haploid fitness to be contrary to diploid fitness. The more natural selection selects for, all else equal, the less well it can select for any particular thing. It is no accident, presumably, that the majority of plants have evolved over the last few hundreds of millions of years to have sporophytes more complicated and substantial than the gametophytes; moreover, gametophytes no longer have to have the many characteristics necessary for surviving as an independent plant. In flowering plants, in particular, gametophytes are pampered, the female gametophyte developing in an ovule of its mother plant, and the male gametophyte having only to push its sperm through the style into the receptive ovary once it has landed on the stigma. Still, if the particulars of pollination suggest pollen from a particular plant is a certain way, more is going on than just competition between gametes which during pollination are generally better at fertilizing flowers than its competitors are and gametes which during pollination are generally worse at fertilizing flowers than its competitors are. In particular, if pollen lands on a flower right after it opens, there will be competition between pollen grains especially effective at fertilizing when they land on stigmas of just-opened flowers and pollen grains especially effective at fertilizing flowers when they land on stigmas of long-opened flowers; the former sort of pollen grain is more likely to help code for diploid plants whose flowers encourage pollinators to do what the plants need, and is thus what a plant more needs its egg to be fertilized by.

It is interesting to observe how double fertilization might encourage flowers that select for pollen especially effective at fertilizing newly opened flowers, resulting in a kind of race in plants to have flowers that are the most delicate and freshly-opened looking. As mentioned, if gamete selection wouldn't be expected to positively select at all for some diploid quality, gamete selection in fact will on balance negatively select for it, basically because it is a lot to expect something to code positively for both diploid and general haploid traits. Take having genes that code fitly for fully-developed seed endosperm. There is no immediately obvious reason why a pollinator landing on a certain type of flower is likely to be a pollinator that has come from a flower on a plant that as a seed had unusually fit endosperm. Let us in this paragraph assume that in fact there is no reason. In particular, if a bee lands on a flower that is freshly-opened, we shall assume that it doesn't really say anything whatsoever about whether the plant the bee came from had unusually fit endosperm as a seed. If a flower encourages meaningful haploid competition between the pollen tubes from the pollen grains that land on it, it would accordingly more tend to encourage fertilization by pollen grains that on balance have less fit endosperm. But on account of double fertilization, in most flowering plants the endosperm is only one-third coded for by the paternal genome. A plant doesn't suffer as much by encouraging gamete selection during its fertilization if the deleterious effects such selection is likely to have on the endosperm of its seeds is only 2/3 as important as it would be if endosperm were produced diploidly by cells having equal genetic material from both parents. Since about half the benefit of mating slightly more diploidly fit genetic material occurs from more successful children, and since the other half accrues later from more successful more distant descendants, one would expect on account of endosperm being coded triploidly about a 1/6 reduction in the harm from selecting for less fit endosperm that arises from encouraging gamete competition during fertilization. It's well, though, to look at the exceptions. A few angiosperms (i.e., flowering plants) possess endosperm that is equally coded for by both the maternal and paternal germ line. Most of these exceptions occur among the most basal angiosperms such as water lilies (Nymphaeales) and bay starvine (Austrobaileyales). Strangely, though, the most basal angiosperm, Amborella, has endosperm encoded more typical to how ordinary angiosperms are encoded (the egg sac apparently is 8-celled and 9-nucleate rather than 7-celled and 8-nucleate as is most common). Anyway, those exceptions are more-or-less where one might expect them, occuring very early in angiosperm development. Almost all the other cases where endosperm is encoded equally from both germ lines occur in the Onagraceae, the evening primrose family. This would be quite a blow to the theory, since that family contains many extremely delicate-looking and beautiful flowers like Gaura and Fuchsia. But this is a case where the exception helps to prove by the rule because as it turns out there is a very particular oddity about that family which could easily afford an explanation. Commonly in this family but in no other is the ability to form permanent structural heterozygotes, i.e., hybrids between different species or with a plant with translocated chromosomes in which the hybrids produce only similar hybrid offspring. The best I can understand it from what I have read of the literature available to me, the non-matching chromosomes form two connected rings rather than many pairs, producing organisms where chromosomes rather than pairing off come together in bundles making a pair of rings; with sufficient mismatch there can be no individual pairing but just two paired rings, each ring containing a member of each chromosome pair (I believe this is called a Renner complex), so in many ways the chromosomes behave like there is but one pair of chromosomes. A reasonable inference is that presumably the Onagraceae have some sort of higher approach to translocations, etc., and interspecies gene transfer that most other organisms lack, and a natural explanation for why a triploid endosperm is not present is that this higher approach somehow conflicts with chromosomes tripling up in endosperm, as wouldn't be at all surprising inasmuch as structurally the higher approach involves how the chromosomes line up with each other.

(I hope I haven't given too great an impression of my understanding what is going on with the Onagraceae—I'm a believer that finding the important truths of biology mostly involves understanding accepted biology at a basic level worthy of a smart high school student and then being extremely logical and occupied in making deductions from that, from observed phenomena (including one's own emotions and reflections), and from one's basic understandings of other topics, but I'd say what is going on with the Onagraceae would be an exception that involves much deeper study of biology than I or above average high school biology graduates have undertaken.)

But there is something more glaring that needs explaining. True, the most primitive flowering plant is believed to have had endosperm coded equally by the paternal and maternal genome. However, in non-flowering seed plants, i.e., gymnosperms, endosperm is coded (haploidly) just by the maternal genome. In non-flowering plants, that the haploid selection between male gametes tends to code for endosperm with inferior characteristics is of no signficance to the survival or reproductive fitness of a diploid plant that arises from such a gamete fertilizing an egg. To a plant fertilized by a male gamete coding for inferior endosperm, the disadvantage would be half what it would be if endosperm were coded half maternally and half paternally. Indeed, the immediate disadvantage of a seed with less fit endosperm would disappear entirely, whereas the equally significant belated disadvantage (arising from future generations having seeds with endosperm less fit on average) would be exactly what it otherwise would have been. One could do better than a 1/6 reduction from the harm of male gamete selection encouraging inferior endosperm—one could have a 1/2 reduction as in gymnosperms. If male gamete selection is indeed (as my theory of the significance of the delicacy of flowers suggests) more important in angiosperms than gymnosperms, How could flowering plants manage? Why wouldn't it be the conifers that have delicate flowers rather than cones so tough that sometimes they'll stay on a tree for decades? Is that gymnosperms lack flowers as injurious to my theory of the significance of the delicacy of flowers as getting hit on the head by a not-at-all-delicate 20-pound bunya-bunya cone could be to an unwary Australian?

Why is it the flowering plants that have the delicate flowers rather than the pine trees or some other group of plants that has endosperm coded haploidly by the maternally derived genome of the seed? I admit this question stymied me for about nine months. True, such an endosperm may not be what scientists view as the condition of the most primitive flowering plants, but considering that it's the state of gymnosperms it would be odd to think flowering plants wouldn't have evolved to be that way were it useful for them to be so. A satisfactory answer occurred to me a few weeks ago.

There are various functions to the seed that endosperm can play. It's most notable function is perhaps as a nutrient-storage tissue. But in some plants this storage role is not important; for instance, nutrient storage can occur mainly in a perisperm genetically identical to the mother plant of the seed. Similarly, the nutrients of the endosperm can attract birds, chipmunks, etc., to eat the seed, which could end up being a good thing for the plant because a few seeds might be swallowed whole or stored and then forgotten to sprout later. But in many plants, as in fruit, it is maternal material surrounding the seed which typically gives to animals macronutrients, the seed itself being dispersed (e.g., swallowed) without being digested. Endosperm tissue can also play a role in regulating dormancy and germination; i.e., in deciding how and when the seed sprouts. This latter function would seem to be a probable cause for why endosperm is not identical to the maternal (diploid) tissue that surrounds the seed; indeed, were the endosperm to contain genetic material that is distinct from any that is contained in the embryo, evolution of proper sprouting behavior would be discouraged. Finally, and most importantly for our purposes, endosperm tissue is believed to be involved in obtaining nutrients from the mother plant. The role of extracting nutrients from the mother plant is important for our purposes because in fact one can easily imagine that an endosperm effective at extracting much rich nutrient from a young ovule may be entirely different from an endosperm better at extracting rich nutrient from an older ovule, e.g., an ovule fertilized when the flower containing it is already old. And if this imagining is true, then something extraordinary would happen. What's clear, on account of endosperm containing genetic material derived paternally from pollen, but not especially spectacular, is that pollen which fertilizes freshly opened flowers would of course tend to also tend to code for a (useful) ability to extract nutrients when in young ovules—organisms tend to evolve what is most useful for them, and if one trait tends to cause another trait to be useful, one would expect an association between them. But similarly, pollen coding for characteristics that tend to cause it to fertilize older flowers would be expected to be especially effective at extracting nutrients from older ovules, and so it is not as though the advantage for one kind of pollen would not be balanced by a different advantage in the pollen with opposite tendencies—at first glance there probably wouldn't seem to be anything spectacular going on. But there is something much more than this going on. A flowering plant typically produces many seeds. The seeds produced in young flowers that gain the right sort of nutrient will tend to have endosperm with DNA that codes for extracting much rich nutrient from the mother plant when in young ovules. And (at least in most flowering plants) two-thirds of this DNA comes from the mother plant. There is a competition among seeds, and the seeds that tend to do best will be those that especially contain the sort of DNA from the mother plant that codes for an ability to extract nutrient especially well when inside young ovules. But as we have seen, this sort of DNA will also tend to be that sort of DNA that codes for an ability to effectively fertilize young flowers, which be exactly the sort of DNA that it is best for a plant to be fertilized by. What's spectacular is that the competition between female gametophytes (in differing ovules) that occurs in the female plant will ensure that viable seeds from young flowers will not only tend to contain the more insect-attracting DNA from the father plant but also the more insect-attracting DNA from the mother plant. By endosperm having both maternally and paternally derived components, the flower characteristics that make insects go on the prowl for flowers of that species--characteristics that plants need in its flowers--are selected for not only by selection that occurs between pollen grains but also by selection that occurs between the embryo sacs. If endosperm were coded for merely from DNA derived maternally, as in gymnosperms, an endosperm especially effective at extracting nutrients when in young ovules would not be directly suggestive of a tendency to cause insects to especially go on the prowl for flowers of the same species—rather it would be suggestive of a tendency to produce flowers that when fertilized are quickly fertilized; the latter tendency does not seem especially impressive if impressive at all; e.g., it could be merely a sign of a plant with flowers that are so weak or vulnerable to being devoured by insect pests or rot as to not last long. By endosperm being coded for by genetic material of both maternal and paternal origin, aggregation of desirous traits causing effective insect pollination is presumably greatly magnified, as is obviously of great benefit to a plant species.

An interesting case is wind-pollinated flowers (which in angiosperms are technically flowers, but which don't tend to resemble flowers, and so often when the context is clear in non-technical discussions people don't consider them flowers). Pollen tube competition in any sort of flower, whether it be typically pollinated by wind or insects, would be expected to greatly increase not only aggregation of traits effective at fertilizing freshly-opened flowers but also aggregation of traits effective at fertilizing long-opened flowers. In wind pollinated flowers, what is likely impressive in a pollen is that it came from a long distance, which suggests the right sort of survival characteristics and impressive kite-like qualities allowing it to travel aloft great distances; it's also more useful from the prospect of obtaining new genetic combinations. And clearly if pollen comes from great distances it is more likely to arrive late. So whereas in insect pollinated flowers, the impressive pollen is that which lands on recently opened flowers, in wind pollinated flowers, the exact opposite probably tends to be the case; i.e., the impressive pollen is that which lands on long-opened flowers. This could explain why wind-pollinated flowers tend to not be delicate-looking or as though they are going to great lengths to be physically comparable to freshly-opened flowers; in fact, I suppose quite the contrary.

I should point out that another very relevant consideration involves seed dispersal. It is rather typical for gymnosperms to be long-lived. Moreover, their seeds mostly do not fall or travel far from the plant, whereas their pollen, being mostly wind-borne, can travel great distances. Such a plant is especially effective at forcing the creatures about it to behave towards its seeds in harmony with its desires. Suppose such a gymnosperm, say, a conifer, arises with a new tendency which tends to destroy the health of those animals who munch on its seeds sufficiently to make them not viable or which tends to give health benefits to those who swallow its seeds such as to be passed along in (nutrient-rich) dung. If long-lived, as typical, the conifer will have time to benefit by benefitting the animals that treat it correctly or harming the animals that tend to treat it incorrectly. Similarly, the descendants of the conifer will benefit as well from the selection of animals undertaken by its ancestor, but clearly the benefit will be greatest when the descent line is more maternal than through pollen. Why? Because seeds don't land as far from the mother tree as pollen lands from the father tree, and so in the former case the animals are more likely to be the same. The interesting point is that if the selective quality of the seed is contained in the endosperm, i.e., if there be a trait in half (the endosperm of) the seeds with the relevant selective quality, then all the progeny of the selective plant which possess seeds with the selective quality will be near the selective plant, the reason being that the endosperm is not coded for paternally. Thus, the extent to which conifers would be able to force animals to live in harmony with its seed-dispersal needs via endosperm characteristics would be less if endosperm were coded for partly paternally, since the effects on the animals would then be somewhat more spread out and hence diluted.

Anyway, considering all the evidence, a likely explanation for why flowers tend to be delicate-looking is that the more a flower physically resembles a freshly-opened flower, the more the flower will select for pollen that codes for flowers that especially tend to have what pollinator want (which makes pollinators spreading pollen from it tend to land on other flowers of the species right after the latter flowers open). It is interesting to observe that this situation would tend to amplify its significance on account of positive feedback. If a plant has very delicate flowers, that will tend to be the sort of plant in which delicacy of flower has helped select for what pollinators want (or else delicacy of flowers wouldn't have evolved). Such a plant tends to genetically aggregate (in fertilization events involving fertilization of freshly-opened flowers) the qualities pollinators most want, which must be expected to increase the speed and effectiveness with which traits desirable to pollinators would evolve in flowers. Accordingly, angiosperms having separated from gymnosperms for about 200 million years now, pollinators would be expected by now to have evolved to especially prefer species with delicate, beautiful flowers reminiscent of evanescence. This would increase further the tendency of delicacy to be involved in flowers. But the preference is actually presumably more than that. A flower could attract a pollinator by emitting something the pollinator wants but doesn't need. E.g., the flower could emit something that makes the pollinator high in a way that is unnaturally pleasant. (Indeed, I rather expect this is what cannibis does because I have heard that the high of cannibis is concentrated in its flower and that growers can get more "high" in their plant by making sure no pollen hits it, as if when the plant gets desperate, the plant emits more "high".) Obviously, this is a situation that isn't going to benefit the pollinator any more than the junkie. But if a flower is beautiful as opposed to some ugly weed appendage (as the marijuana "flower" rather seems to me from what I have seen on television or from photographs), well, the beauty is a sign of meaningful selection of sperm tubes suited to penetrating freshly-opened flowers. And selection of diploid traits indirectly through haploid selection is a kind of resurrecting in freshly-opened flowers the successes of its freshly-fertilized ancestors. Smearing out like so much pollen upon a petal the beneficial consequences upon natural selection of a flower having gotten fertilized at its fragile opening does spread the benefits from one generation to those of distant descendants. The rewards of youthful love of a flower in the here-and-now is but a multifaceted reflection of the pleasures more directly attributed to youthful flowers of generations long-since past.

A plant whose flowers evolve honestly by ever increasing the efficiency of the real rewards it gives its pollinators profits the most from having pretty, girl-like flowers, for then when a pollinator lands on youthful flower, the flower is not just reliving the pleasures freshly fertilized flowers experienced in the distant past. It is also experiencing a pleasure that is even greater now, because those past pleasures, the flower visits of ancient pasts, weren't just what the pollinators wanted, but what the pollinator needed. For a flower to forgo somewhat the extent to which the simple fact of whether it has attracted a pollinator determines its prospects in order to more be able to relive pleasures of past generations from pollinators distributing pollen as pollen was distributed most efficiently in times ago—this is more rewarding when what ago attracted, benefited (in comparison to what could most attract in the here-and-now). Where is the reward in being able to attract what no longer exists because your ancestors cared not for them but to take? Bees, etc., attracted thus suffered. They are dead and without descendants. Their wings but specks of slightest non-nothingness in piles of greater forest detritus. Pretty flowers, on the other hand, are especially likely to be pleasant in the most real sense—they are beautiful partly from being what pollinators need.

But the beauty of a flower transcends its usefulness to pollinators. To humans, pretty flowers are beautiful rather like girls. People tend to forget that they, too, have evolved. The wise observer observes not only perceptions from without, namely sensations, but also perceptions from within, namely reflections. I can't help thinking that if people but would look inside themselves they would see intuitively that, yes, pretty flowers are like girls. Unfortunately, for all the good in science there are but too many practitioners who feel that there is something admirable about ignoring feelings, etc., from being subjective or some such. Let there be no mistake about why people deride one's own subjective. The subjective is not derided because it be more suspect, but because people lie more about it, so there be no test of whether the subjective of an other is real other than tests that suggest the other has an honest character or whether one has a similar subjective. If you feel girls are like flowers, I suggest that is your common sense. If you feel girls are like flowers, it is incumbent upon you to understand why you feel that way, and if you don't bother, you are ignoring data, the data that you feel that way, and the data is the interior evidence that is the most certain data you can have about human nature. Any science that believes in ignoring most certain data is no science worth respecting, and scientists who do otherwise are idiotically unthoughtfully parroting dogma or lying because ambition causes them to excessively praise just those beliefs which they can most easily convince others as being true. Unfortunately, science is full of people who don't care so much about truth as about convincing the elites who distribute rewards that they have new truths they aren't lying about. It's easier to lie from subjective truth. Anyway, subjectively to me flowers are like girls, and I wouldn't be surprised if they are subjectively like that to you as well. I shall explain why in fact they really are like girls.

Sperm selection in flowers is quite analogous to sperm selection in humans. In particular, the sort of competition that occurs in a pollinated flower between pollen tubes all coming from pollen from the same plant is analogous to intraejaculate sperm selection, i.e., to the competition that occurs between the sperm of one ejaculate (as opposed to interejaculae sperm competition, which involves competition between sperm from several males in promiscuous females). The direct effect of a pollinated plant or non-promiscuous girl selecting for sperm that is more talented at fertilizing (during pollination or sex) is that the descendants created by the act of reproduction are more likely to be similarly talented at fertilizing. This selection implies a short-term disadvantage to the fertilized individual, because next-generation sperm from a child created by the fertilization will tend to be more successful if it contains much genetic material from its parental sperm rather than from its parental egg (and the egg unlike the pollen comes from the fertilized individual). But in subsequent generations, there will be an advantage, because in grandchildren and beyond, assuming no inbreeding, genes have alleles such that at most one of the two is descended from an original parent but not both, so there is no competition between the original parents. In fact, because of genetic linkage, a fit allele from the original father will benefit alleles of linked genes that happen to be from the original mother (as can happen if an odd number of crossings-over occurred between the two genes during meiosis occuring in the first generation subsequent to the original generation). The benefit in distant generations to being fertilized by sperm fit in intraejaculate sperm selection more or less exactly cancels the harm in the original generation, just as the case in plants vis-a-vis competition between pollen tubes. Accordingly, just as in plants, whether the haploid competition between male gametes from the same individual is beneficial depends on whether the characteristics of the reproductive act might be supposed to select for male gametes coding for desirous diploidcharacteristics.

When a young female has sex, her body may well select for totally different sperm than an older female would. Could such be an appropriate encouragement for young females to have sex when young, while still just girls, just as insect-pollinated flowers probably tend to benefit from being fertilized early? In girls more than flowers, I'd say it depends. If a male is deceptive, then since girls are easily deceived (compared with women), and since (or else he wouldn't be very much deceptive) he is not likely to be obviously deceptive, any sex he has with a girl is likely merely a result of having deceived her, and it is a strong disadvantage for a girl to have sex with him, and an even stronger disadvantage for her to have sex with him in a way that encourages intraejaculate sperm selection. Indeed, if a male deceives girls into sex, his ancestors who had sex with girls were likely also to have had sex with them by deceiving them. And it is a lame (and bad) trait to have had reproductive success by deception of the most deceivable; were such people what girls need to have sex with, those people wouldn't need to use deception. A girl definitely would not like to select for that sort of sperm. But though deceptions and a tendency to deceive mates are not things that in themselves are easy to judge (or they wouldn't exist), a tendency to be moral is something that is fairly easy to judge—if a moral nature were not something fairly easy to judge, there would be no advantage to being a moral person equal to the disadvantage of the sacrifice it entails and so there wouldn't be moral persons, the advantage of being a moral person being that fellow moral people will tend to love you unselfishly because they (rightly) judge you moral. Moreover, moral people, mainly dealing morally with the fellow moral people they most associate and mate with, do not have much occasion or ability to deceive. A very moral per son might indeed be someone even a girl could feel confident in recognizing as a moral person, and accordingly, she could feel confident that he would not deceive her. If a girl wants to have sex with an obviously morally good male at a young age, this is strongly suggestive of her feeling so confident of his worth that she need not take time considering whether she might find one more beautiful or pleasant. He may be less desirable than what she unbiasedly thinks, but then, he not being deceptive, he may with similar expectation be even be more desirable. Moreover, his ancestors, likely sharing to a large degree his moral nature would also not be expected to have deceived girls into sex subsequent to having sex with girls. Accordingly, a girl selecting for that part of a good male's DNA especially effective at fertilizing young girls in all likelihood is selecting for the most beautiful and naturally pleasant part of his genome. Sure, it is disastrous for a girl to have sex and more particularly lustful sperm-selecting sex with a bad male. But this sort of thing, if government really believed in family values rather than forcing their own values on families, can be greatly prevented just by giving parents the power to veto the sexual relationships of their daughters that with parental permission would be permissible (as should be the case with even adolescent girls, in my opinion, but which is not). One of the main driving forces behind the evolution of morality is probably the tendency for girls to want sex with very morally good males, and for instraejaculate sperm selection in such situations to select for his best tendencies. By excessively restricting girls when young from having meaningful sex with good, beautiful males, either by outright prohibition or by ensuring young people are too poor to raise children, society is probably removing a significant fraction of the reward that females can obtain by having sex with virtuous males, as clearly could be very bad for the evolution of moral virtue. Also, society is thwarting tendencies that would speed up evolution in good people by lengthening the time period between generations in good people—again, this couldn't be good for evolution of higher moral traits. The interested reader may find further discussion of this phenomenon in previous blog posts and my online (and getting somewhat old) book, Exact Morality for Today.

Many people would seem to behave as they intuitively see a beautiful reproductive similarity between girls and flowers. At weddings there are flower girls, not flower grandmas. And most women very much want to be thought of as young, not as old, and so men on special occasions give their beloveds flowers. Actually, the symbolism might be a little more direct, since having sex with young females while having sex with an older female could make the male absorb girl-produced lust or even occasion sperm-mixing between the females that could increase the chances that the older female would be fertilized by a sperm especially effective at prospering and fertilizing in young females. Perhaps what at least some women would prefer to a dozen roses would be a dozen girls for their husband to have sex with while having sex with her, an obvious impossibility given our present laws. Oh well, perhaps giving a clear scientific account of all my revolutionary theories about the beautiful relation between girls and flowers could at least make me more worthy of attention than a gift of cut flowers, especially considering it is not good for flowers to get cut.

More about girls being like cats or dogs

Let me first summarize my last post, before making a few additional comments and clarifications. First, girls can be attracted to a male who cleanly controls them merely by not having loving feelings for them unless they do what he demands; in particular, they are very much attracted to males who tend to force girls to be themselves, a very useful trait in males who are naturally desired by girls. Second, girls are very much afraid of being hurt by being controlled in wrong way, i.e., by becoming addicted to depravity. Third, girls, to make sure they are not addicted to a male on account of sexual depravity (which is essentially a love potion), when in love often having the cat-like tendency to feel cruel hateful things toward other males just to make sure the sordid love potion of sexual depravity (semen in the digestive system) hasn't rendered them incapable of hating. Fourth, when girls are controlled, the importance of differentiating whether the control is clean and beautiful or sordid and ugly is so important, girls in that situation are especially likely to test their love with cat-like cruel imaginings. Fifth, it follows that males controlling girls might quite easily force them to do violent things, since just a sense of being controlled in any way might encourage the girls to do the violent things. Sixth, it is a dangerous not very good thing that males should be able to force girls to do violent hateful things to people; this is probably largely why cats tend to be solitary and not much willing to be controlled. Seventh, girls often have the dog-like tendency to enjoy their lover controlling other girls, since skanky females on the contrary want all the addiction to themselves, and so fight over depravity like winos over a bottle of wine. Eighth, girls experiencing this dog-like tendency to enjoy a male cleanly controlling others very much enjoy their lover being merciful to the other girls he controls., especially in his feelings toward them, such feelings affecting everyone (including themselves) in the relationship. Ninth, it follows that girls in dog-mode feel male mercifulness goes along well with male control. But, tenth, a male forcing girls to be mean are being controlling but the opposite of merciful. So, eleventh, girls in dog mode are repulsed by males trying to force girls to be mean. So, twelfth, it is important if girls in cat mode, i.e., girls imagining cruel things to test love, are sufficiently dog-like as to allow themselves to be controlled, that society appreciates girls also being dog in the sense that they enjoy other girls being controlled mercifully; else warlike males could have so much power to dominate girls as to force them to excess violence.

The key point, perhaps, in understanding these observations is that it is possible for a girl to feel hate and love at the same time (for different people), but that it is difficult or impossible to simultaneously feel mercy and its opposite, a feeling of cruel mercilessness. Indeed, this makes sense inasmuch as frequently hated people attack loved people, and in such situations both the hate and the love can together encourage appropriate response, e.g., destruction or disempowering of the hated person to bring cessation of hostilities. But mercy and cruelty tend to be emotions people have when they themselves already have the power (to acquit or hate). It is less the case that there be some third person who will immediately be affected by the decision of which emotion to let hold sway. Anyway, one may look into one's own self to determine whether mercy and cruelty be compatible emotions; looking inside myself they don't much seem compatible in the sense that I can't have both simultaneously. Thus, if a girl enjoying a male's control over others empathetically enjoys his mercy towards those he controls, she couldn't simultaneously empathize with any cruel emotions he might have in forcing girls to be cruel. True, if the cat-like girl really took pleasure in being mean, then, yeah, it would in some sense be merciful of him to allow her to be pleased by her being mean, and so that might be something a dog-like girl could appreciate, but if the cat-like girl didn't naturally enjoy the violence, well, it wouldn't be merciful of him in any way to force her to be violent, which is the big danger. A male can't cleanly force a girl to be violent without risking repulsing observing girls in dog-mode, a very good and important thing insofar as preventing some sort of evil apocalypse. However (in some age where human sacrifice is common), a male could impress dog-like observing girls by restricting the cat-like girls' tendency toward violence sufficiently as to give a powerful impression of his control, while still occasionally allowing the cat-like girl to be violent when she most wants (where his mercy towards her would trump his mercy toward the victim). In societies where human sacrifice is something that happens regularly girls probably naturally have a somewhat greater taste for clean sadism than would be right in itself or what male's tend to have, which actually is not a bad thing since it ensures that girls in dog-mode have the right, moral attitude toward males who control cleanly sadistic girls.

Notice that if a girl is in cat mode, then if there be a female in dog mode enjoying her, well, the girl in cat mode has to be controlled to be much of an enjoyment. So on balance, being in dog mode might be something more expected of a wife or someone not controlled. That may well be counter-intuitive, though, because the male sympathizing with the female in cat mode is so significant.

Another interesting point is that it might be tricky or take a good while for a girl to switch from cat mode to dog mode. If a girl feels cruelty and love simultaneously, then if she later switches and feels mercy and control simultaneously, well, an obvious explanation for that switch is that she has been sodomized. Accordingly, since clean girls don't want emotions sodomized people have, that is not a switch a girl would likely want to do, at least not for a good while since having sex or perhaps even for a good while after seriously fantasizing about sex. I can't see offhand similar problems in switching from dog-mode to cat-mode (beyond the sense it might be awkward to return).

I suppose some readers might think my observations rather creepy or crazy. After all, there is no human sacrifice allowed nowadays, so why would anyone be that concerned about it? Maybe they'll think I want to start a human sacrifice cult or some such. As I have pointed out, human sacrifice is something that is unusually inappropriate nowadays since there is much interaction between genetically diverse people of fairly recent origin. It is important that selection, whether natural, sexual, or whatever (e.g., caused by human sacrifice) be slow, to allow for much mixing of genetic material. There's much beautiful, good genetic material next to ugly, evil genetic material. Selecting strongly against the bad genetic material will destroy much that is good. Human sacrifice is particularly bad nowadays. Even capital punishment of the worst convicted criminals is something one can reasonably argue against as just not worth it. And of course, hardly anybody nowadays is arguing for human sacrifice, etc. Even if a girl were to think human sacrifice the right thing nowadays, she would not be turned on by actually doing that since (as mentioned in last post and earlier), girls if the least bit afraid don't enjoy being sadistic. (And girls killing is dangerous for them in a society that disapproves of it.) Even if they knew they could get away with some violence, they still couldn't enjoy it, because they'd know that being the sort to want violence would make them so creepy-looking, few would feel safe being their friends or co-workers.

But to assume that future ages will be like our own is indeed an assumption. Clearly when there is much recent genetic mixing between genetically diverse ethnicities (as is happening nowadays) this leads to a great deal of genetic heterozygosity between homologous chromosomes in individuals. Clearly in such a situation genetic mixing is appropriate; i.e., crossover rates need to be high for humanity as a whole to prosper or just to do the beautiful thing. Since (another one of my theories) genetic crossover tends to be encouraged by lust, it makes sense that we are entering a lustful age. Eventually, after there has been much mixing, that is when selection should ideally increase. So it makes sense that eventually, after many centuries of high levels of lust, some epigenetic markers or some such left behind by all this lust will encourage in people a desire for rapid selection. This rapid selection could encourage society to become less strictly monogamous and, just maybe, such as to want human sacrifice or something similar. Eventually, the diversity will decrease to the point that people become not lustful, after a long enough time of which people will revert to a more pro-marriage age that almost definitely eschews human sacrifice. Anyway, my guess is that typical human societies nowadays tend to be between the pro-marriage, low selection age and the lustful age. Anyway, we are still probably about an eighth of a cycle before we get above average desires for selection, and about three-eighths of a cycle before we would be at the time where rapid selection and human sacrifice might be most common. (Actually, since what allows the genetic mixing is the non-cyclic sudden advance in human travel technologies, it is somewhat misleading to think of the phenomenon as purely cyclic—clearly a better model would be preferable—but still the cyclic model is useful for getting an idea of what might happen.) I'm not saying that human sacrifice or something similar will necessarily happen. In particular, maybe the mere fact that there are so many more people moving about so easily will have some sort of complex effect. But I really think it is presumptuous to believe that human sacrifice, ritual murders, etc., being common in the distant future is not at least a significant possibility. And ideally, the time is now for humanity to think about the morality of such human sacrifice in these distant ages. For of one thing one may rest assured. If people actually get so they want human sacrifice to an appreciable degree, they certainly are not going to be as devoid of selfish motives that might encourage false morality and bad etiquette than is the case now, when human sacrifice, being essentially something irrelevant to this age, no one has hardly any selfish motives to consider one way as opposed to another.

Another reason to think about girls having cat-like cruelty is that even in societies like ours essentially devoid of human sacrifice, etc., girls may still like to fantasize about being cruel just to make sure they can (because they haven't been rendered incapable of hating on account of being screwed up by sodomy, i.e. (in my definition) addictive semen in the digestive system, or by some other love potion); especially will they tend to do this when feeling controlled. It is quite important that society have some understanding of this. Oh sure, it seems reasonable that if only sodomy could be done away with altogether, then eventually, there would be no advantage to girls having sex while having feelings that sodomized people don't tend to have, and so I suppose eventually cruelty would be sexually dull to them. But good luck with so effectively convincing people that sodomy is evil that sodomy disappears. And I don't know, I'm doubtful that an age of lust sounds like the sort of age where sodomy would most be expected to disappear, so again, good luck.

What I interpret as the wispy older lower-level spiritual influences and the very-real younger higher-level transcendental influences on my person compel me somewhat beyond my own curiosity and the moral considerations discussed to wrap myself into this topic, as I suppose makes sense. I admit, the feelings that might come to me as if from some immanent God very much related to this universe we live in don't seem to be much concerned one way or other. And I'm afraid there's an obvious explanation for this, which I hope is wrong. The universes at a higher level, like those at a lower, are not in time with ours. Whatever wispy or totally real connections exist between our universes and others may be directly to ages that could need my advice. But here, in this place, nothing I say will do any great good unless later in distant age, when what I have considered herein becomes very mportant, my then ancient writings or what they have influenced are lifted off the dusty top shelf of wise persons there and consulted like some mythic magic tale. Whether that will happen has less to do with me than others, and if there is a God of this universe, perhaps he is not optimistic, but he is content to keep his peace, for there is more than what is here. Of course, all of this paragraph is just highly speculative interpretation based on my personal best guess at theology, which guess is likely ridiculously full of errors and holes. Anyway, what I do know is I have religious-like dreamy feelings that what I have considered here be important, and similarly I have occasionally had religious-like feelings of extreme reality (like getting banged up side the head by a feeling) of similar import, but the feelings that remind me of prayer somehow are ghostly silent when I debate whether to consider such things. Interpret it as one will.

That cat-like emotions and dog-like emotions clash could save humanity someday.

Something I first mentioned (rather awkwardly looking back) a few years ago in this blog is that if a girl from a nefarious addiction wrongly feels that she is in love with someone, she will likely find it difficult to hate. Whatever sodomy-introduced chemical is causing her to feel like she is in love with the object under consideration will presumably tend to make her feel love more easily than hate, as if under the influence of a love potion or possessed of "beer goggles" (through which according to the college jokes around in the eighties all guys look great). Accordingly, girls may well often relax themselves when in throes of love by having sadistic feelings toward other males. For various reasons I believe I first explained carefully here, there are considerations that would tend rather strongly to prevent girls from actually acting on these sadistic tendencies, unless by-and-large the people in the society desired human sacrifice (not really the case at all in societies like ours with much recent coming together of genetically diverse people). The key point is that girls are naturally hesitant to commit violence in the context of a relationship that they are frightened about. So they wouldn't want to be actually violent if they were sadistic from fear. And though it be the case that a girl might enjoy sadism just because she wants to have the kind of sex that a screwed-up girl couldn't have (a girl having emotions one way might select for a different kind of sperm than her having emotions another way), if this were the case, she wouldn't want to be at all scared while being sadistic, because often guys are scary because they really are nefarious people worth being scared about. And killing people for sadism or any other reason is (except in a society where your job is human-sacrifice priestess or whatever) dangerous because it is illegal not to mention something that the victims would tend to resist. In particular, in our society this female-sadism I mention is essentially just fantasy, as evinced by how rarely females murder compare with males. Very rarely, (the most prominent example I can think of being Mary Bell), some very abused confused girl might actually commit a murder where it's pretty obvious these sadistic tendencies are prominent motivators, but rather clearly it is very rare even among female murderers. Cats probably have these sadistic tendencies to a greater degree than humans.

Last year it occurred to me that there is nevertheless a significant danger associated with girls' sadistic tendencies: girls might more tend to be sadistic when they feel like they are being controlled. The more a girl is controlled, the more a test to see whether the control is sordid be relevant; and so, in particular, at least at first glance, the more a girl be controlled, the more she might consider her sadism as something she would want to feel as a test or just because that would make a big difference emotionally in her from a skank girl controlled by sordidness. There would be a very real danger that a girl might be especially willing to be forced by a male controlling her into performing violence. If a girl gets even slightly confused between enjoying committing violence because she'd get punished else and enjoying committing violence because just because (she can), well, a kind of abominable male using depravity might force her into committing abominations or into helping with the abominations he plans. And even with respect to a clean male, the power he might have over a female could be something he could employ selfishly. It's dangerous to assume that just because a male is virtuous ordinarily that he would be virtuous if he had extreme power. In particular, clean virtuous males, just by varying their loving feelings by way of reward and punishment can be very good at forcing girls to be themselves. But on the face of it, girls being themselves can be very sadistic indeed. Not that the danger is particularly great now, what with human sacrifice being extremely unpopular nowadays, but perhaps in the distant future if people don't realize the danger of males forcing girls to do violent things, that could cause some sort of evil apocalypse. If a male loving beauty be a sufficiently emotional thing, maybe girls would love male love of beauty sufficiently that they often couldn't be forced into doing non-beautiful atrocities, but it would be prudent to not assume such. I sensed last year that there was some sort of additional consideration, reminding me of spectator sports somehow, that, at least if understood properly, would be just the thing to save humanity, but I wasn't quite able then to figure it out so it made much sense. I believe I finally have a much better grasp of the phenomenon.

An entirely different sort of way a girl can feel relaxed about her love for a male involves her feelings toward other girls. A girl who is addicted to a male is likely to very much dislike his controlling other girls. Skanky girls, if at all sophisticated, tend to want all the control to themselves. It would be like a drunk seeing another girl totally savoring a particularly nasty addictive brew. Yes, seeing the other girl so totally intoxicated might make her want the brew somewhat, but she'd do her best to get the whole bottle, and would not be at all pleased by the other girl drinking it. But a clean, intelligently sophisticated girl tends to be turned on by a male controlling other girls in non-depraved ways. Sex with girls tends to select for spermatozoa effective at fertilizing young females. Accordingly, any behavior in a male that suggests he tends to behave toward girls in a way that is very rewarding if he should have sex with a girl, well, that is a sort of thing a girl very much tends to find sexy. It's rewarding, if a male has a non-deceptive virtuous nature, for a female to have sex with him in a way that selects for sperm effective at fertilizing young females, and it's even more rewarding to have sex with him that selects for sperm effective at fertilizing and controlling young females. In truth, controlling young females can be quite rewarding, yet beautiful, because if a guy can force girls having sex with himself to be themselves—to use their own analytical faculties and emotions in judging him rather than just accepting what dogma has to say about him—then other girls will find their affection much more impressive and worthy of being copied than would be the case (say) with conformist groupy girls. I ask you, reader, to look inside yourselves to inquire whether you haven't seen gaggles of girls all copying each other, resulting in a harsh kind of positive feedback phenomenon as if really there is no one or hardly anyone in the gaggle actually using any brains or internal direct feelings to evaluate guys. I daresay, those are not beautiful or even useful role models. A real male wants girls to love him because she naturally wants to, because those are the girls whose love for him is most impressive, and even to a typical conformist girl such girls as don't blindly copy would be what she would prefer copying (until he forces them to be themselves in turn, but not before a while has past for her to be thoroughly acquainted with him). Actually, it is beautiful for girls to take encouragement to be themselves, because in the long-run it encourages the evolution of effective mate-evaluation skills in females. Unfortunately, long-run considerations are the very sorts of things that the ordinary forces encouraging morals fail to encourage sufficiently, because those are benefits mainly to distant descendants, and such distant descendants are but slightly related. It may be good for males to force girls to be themselves, but males can't do so for the sake of beauty or goodness; accordingly and fortunately, what amounts to almost the same thing, desirable males force girls to be themselves from pleasure (the pleasure of the males), which works out about as well.

There's much confusion about how proper it be to enjoy sex. Obviously there is nothing improper about being pleased by sex, else the world is rather doomed because people who have fit children through sex more tend to have been pleased by sex. Also, sex is probably the most important way females love males; love is largely pleasing loved people and in particular (at least in females) pleasing loved people through sex, and if such pleasure is bad, well, love is at least half bad as well, which be absurd. But there are different ways of behaving emotionally towards sex pleasure. One can truly focus on the pleasure of sex, i.e., enjoy (let us define the word that way since the alternative "lust for" I define in a more technical sense) sex, as though pleasant sex be something one desires greatly, or one can accept the pleasure of sex without dwelling on it, as though it be an appreciated gift that is not something one has tried hard to obtain. It is most fitting as regards sex that people strive for the emotions that unselfish people tend to have, the reason being that different emotions probably affect sperm competition and development differently. Particularly is it important that the emotions be right when intraejaculate sperm selection is encouraged, as tends to be the case, I posit, when much female lust has been involved, as tends to be the case, I posit, when there are young females or several females involved. But even when sperm competition is not encouraged, emotions such as holiness could globally encourage or discourage such things as genetic crossover during sperm development. Emotions matter in sex. At best, they should be unselfish.

Females tend to automatically care for their children, while it is not nearly as much the case with males. It is more unselfish for a female to want sex because she finds it pleasant than to want it because she thinks the sex partner will care well for her children. Of course, a female (or male) could decide to not be motivated by pleasure at all, but sacrifices outside the mating context are dangerous, because only when rewards are given through mutual children will there be much reason to suppose an association between sensitivity toward character and a tendency to not deceive mates about one's character. And this association is key if morality is to evolve, since an other's sensitivity toward one's own character is a much easier thing to judge directly than whether one be deceived as to what the other's character be. The most important love is not some sort of totally unselfish charity, an imprudent approach if taken to extremes, it's just a tendency to (enjoyably) create and raise mutual children with a person who is worthy of it as opposed to someone who is not. Anyway, females tend to love by having sex with someone they love well—accordingly, good females should tend to enjoy sex. Males tend to love by caring for children from a well-loved female (when they could be chasing down mistresses, etc.)—accordingly a good male tends to enjoy seeing the children he has with his spouse do well and is rightly hesitant to enjoy sex much. Good males should not fear being pleased by sex but should not enjoy it so much in the sense that it is something they should really focus on emotionally or try much to get. There's a dangerous sort of analogy with food. Food is a pleasure one needs, but how one's brain feels when eating something fulfilling it is not particularly something one should wallow in because eating can be addictive (probably because the gut and teeth bacteria are forever trying to encourage one to eat an enormous amount for them). The reason for males to not immerse themselves emotionally in the pleasure of sex has nothing to do with sex being addictive, but all too often confused males, influenced by lies from females trying to obtain unselfish love they don't deserve and from males trying to equate the depraved pleasures they are pushing with unselfish sex pleasure, and having an impression of the truth that sodomy (addiction to semen in the digestive system) is addictive, will believe that sex can be addictive. Males have to think and fantasize about just how pleasant sex be, because else they may not appreciate that beautiful and virtuous females tend to please through sex and are thus such pleasing females should be loved best, but too often they think there desire for such fantasy be some sort of sign sex pleasure be addictive temptation. Mostly I have always loved best unselfish females who put sexual pleasure ahead of money, but occasionally, especially as an undergraduate with its prevailing culture of drunken dissolute sexuality, I would sort of look grouchily or grumbly at some of what in retrospect were some of the most deserving females, a stupid rudeness I very much regret looking back. It is sooo important for young people, nay, all people, to be clear-headed about what constitutes depravity (sodomy and to a lesser extent other addictions) and to distinguish that from sex pleasure.

But in truth there are subtle complications. Sex pleasure tends to be something unselfish for females to want, but girls and the better sort of females when having sex essentially always deserve to have sex in a way that is selfishly pleasing to them. People are very foggy about this. Great males tend to have holy, pious emotions, which emotions sexually please females the most. But these males are not being sacrificial in this respect. Rather, the particular part of the male genome which mediates cross-over frequency (which frequency is reduced in males by holiness, imao) has evolved to encourage crossover when the male be less great or when the female considered be less great, this being good for the human genome as a whole and no sacrifice to the particular part of the male genome which mediates it. Anyway, even those sex pleasures in girls that actually are selfish for girls to want nevertheless rightly tend to be something they should enjoy and immerse themselves in—they really aren't pleasures that hurt the male partner, but rather distant descendants less likely to be good than their children with the appropriately pious guy. (But of course sodomy pleasure is not sex pleasure, and should be avoided by girls like plague, the young being most susceptible to having their sensibilities warped by it.) As mentioned in a previous blog post, that sex pleasure in females is partly breast-related probably largely has to do with girls not being confused by the appropriateness of being sexually selfish in this sense.

Another complication is that the pleasure which males take in controlling females in clean ways is something suggestive of his goodness. Few humans get it, but in truth, when males force girls to do what they want just by not having loving emotions else, the males should enjoy this control—they should immerse themselves in it. Ordinary sex pleasure is not something good males should emotionally immerse themselves in particularly, especially in its seeking aspects. But if a male can make girls do what he wants in clean ways suggestive of his goodness, that really suggests as mentioned earlier that he is a stud. He's the sort who likely forces girls to be themselves. Girls will want him much more if he be the sort of person who can cleanly make girls do what he wants. What's more, if he's emotional about it, i.e., if he enjoys his control by immersing himself in those emotions, then, well, his emotions may will select for that part of his DNA that turns girls on the most. That's how he should be. Of course, it is also very important that his controlling emotions be clean and graceful, because girls want that (and will rightly try to encourage him to be that way), since it is equally important that his emotions not be like that of a (also controlling) sodomizer. This is partly why it be best for a male to not control his wife emotionally, as I have explained in previous blog posts. The contrast between there being a free bird-like female and controlled girls is more suggestive of a right sort of male, it seems to me; also, a wife being especially chosen as virtuous would presumably very much tend to be unselfish anyway if the male be good, so controlling her amounts to a pointless requirement that would only serve to make less fortunate wives (likely having less virtuous husbands) less what they should be or something like that.

Everything I have said so far is basically just preliminary to my main point. It is important that girls be willing to enjoy other girls being controlled in clean ways. A problem is that all too typically, girls think they are somehow being cat-like cruel by so doing. Girls, if being themselves, will enjoy the helpless look in another girl's eyes as they sense the latter's helplessness in being controlled by the love from a guy. If intelligently sophisticated, this enjoyment will be relaxing to them, because they will know skanks, wanting all the control to themselves, would not be that way. It is not a coincidence that dogs, unlike most cats, are pack animals. If even typically confused or naïve in their sophistication, girls are likely to seek to engage in some cruel cat-like behavior toward other girls as a result of their tendency to enjoy males controlling them. I believe I have seen several instances of really pretty girls, girls much less likely to make such mistakes than typical girls, some of the best girls one ever is likely to meet, who I feel have done cruel cat-like things to other girls just because they assumed they had some inner cat demanding it. It's pretty harmless (except to relationships that otherwise might be) if the guy they like is not a bad male, because a male with decency would be shocked, but lots of males are not good, and lots of females are not nearly so good. (Vaguely, I feel a sign that a female has been a victim of such a phenomenon is that she will likely often tend to hide her beauty, which somehow by way of causing underestimation makes getting back easier should another pseudo cat-strike attempt occur or be somewhat in danger of repeating.) But even none of this is the main danger. The main danger is that somehow general confusion in this area will lead eventually to some apocalyptic catastrophe. But I must be more sacred and rested before discussing the matter further.

In other news, one of my teeth, the only tooth that has caused me much problem or had a root canal, has failed a root canal for the third time and will have to be removed (and later replaced by an implant is the plan). Mostly, I don't think the (ugly) abscess is significantly nefariously influencing me or my emotions or thoughts, but I don't know for sure. I look forward (sort of) to the tooth being removed in a few weeks. And my B12 level I had checked and is slightly low, so I am suddenly taking B12, which may be making me weird. I don't know about that either. Anyway, there are a couple things making me wondering whether I might be less pure and sacred now, even though just prior to all this I felt I was beginning to come to terms with the center of something of sacred importance that needed to be discussed promptly. So I may prudently back off this issue slightly for a while more than I normally would. (It is normally prudent to discuss ideas vaguely or not vaguely about apocalypse or catastrophe rather quickly lest people think one is hiding things for sinister purposes.)

Okay, it is the next day, about 24 hours after I finished writing the last few paragraphs; now it's here on the 25^th day of February of 2013, and I have finally left the brambles of the rambling and recalled what it was that I was originally writing about. One more point that I need to stress before coming to my intended point is that cat-like cruelty and female-dog-like appreciation of male power over his bitches, well, clash. If someone were to actually perform some act of violence to make sure she still can hate and thus be not under the influence of the love-potion of sodomy, well, the consequence to the victim would likely be akin to the result that a mouse experiences when tortured to death by a calico thinking about her Tom and their kittens. On the other hand, if a girl enjoys the clean power of a male over some female he is also having sex with, well, that will make her want to be closer and she will enjoy the helpless look in her eyes and very much want his victory, but what exactly will his victory imply for the girl with the helpless eyes? If she be obedient, then he will love her emotionally in the way she wants most to be loved—that's the way his control works—a pretty good recompense for being forced to be herself or whatever it is that the controlling male wants to force her to do. Huuuuge difference, really, between defeat meaning ending up tortured to death and defeat meaning being loved emotionally in the way the victim most wants to be loved. What's more, the onlooker females sharing sex with the male directly very much need him to be emotionally loving to the other females, and in particular those he controls. Male emotions matter because they influence sperm development—not just the development of the particular sperm destined to the female under consideration, but all his sperm, no matter what female the sperm be destined for (especially does this remark apply to holiness emotions; I'm not as sure of the extent to which it applies to eternal-togetherness emotions). Similarly, all the females will very much want the male to control his mistresses in a very clean elegant way most different from the way a sodomizer controls. Sodomy and clean control both represent control and the males who engage in these things both tend to enjoy them. It's very important that stupid sophistication or worldliness (or anything else that might cause improper emotional conflation) not cause the controlling male to have much of the sordid emotions that a sodomizer would have—that would ruin sperm selection inasmuch as sodomy is the last thing a girl needs. (In fact, it is known, or at least I recall reading it, that prostaglandin fractions in male semen vary from time to time and individual to individual, so yeah.) Sure, the other females would lust at the girl's defeat, but they'd also lust for the defeat being a very clean non-sordid thing. The victim would likely very much appreciate all the ballet-like influences of all the other females trying to make sure the controller controls in the right, clean way—not only clean in the sense that no sodomy is involved, but also clean in the more particular sense that no sodomizing male emotions are involved. Mice, on the other hand, do not much appreciate the paws that torture them to death. —Again, huuuuge difference, the difference between being surrounded by girls being ballerina-like in encouraging your controlling lover to control you gracefully as you would most want (or least resent) and being sadistically clawed to death by kitties. Emotionally, you can't enjoyably be cat and dog at the same time because there's such a clash. I crave leave in the next paragraph to give an illustrative example. I shall use cats rather than dogs because growing up we had cats as pets (I've never lived with a dog except for short periods when visiting relatives).

Suppose Tom cat ruling over his calicoes were to tell one of his subjects: "I desire food. Torture me some mice to death and … purrrrr ... bring them to me, or I won't have loving feelings for you anymore." This would be a very strange thing since cats are not amenable to being ruled, but suppose somehow it were to happen. (That cats don't talk is a less problematic supposition, since in the wild what would presumably happen is that the male would exert his control merely by having more loving feelings when the calicoes bring him mice. ...They'd get the picture.) An onlooker calico, if she sees a captivated calico slinking off to get mice as demanded, well, she might, after moving her ears about to sense whether other cats are about, skulkily sneakily kind of enjoy his having such power (such enjoyment being dog-like it is not what a cat would tend to be proud of), but when coming to the part where the mouse is getting killed, she'd really be in a quandary. She'd really have to choose between enjoying the helpless I'm-in agony-and-going-to-die look of the mouse or the helplessly captivated look of the mouse-slayer. The emotions would clash horrrrribly. And that is a very good thing, because it is dangerous for males to be able to force females into committing violence. Remember, the more a female feels she is controlled, the more she is likely to feel the need to test whether she can be cruel, because being controlled can be a sign of being under the influence of sodomy. As long as females are in tune with their dog side, the control exerted by males toward sadism could actually be a good thing. Females can be excessively cruel when motivated by cat-like anti-sodomy sadistic feelings. But males aren't as much that way—if they are violent they are so for totally different reasons, probably. It is hard for a male to force a part-dog female into committing violence because of the way dog and cat clash. But a male could I'm thinking force a part-dog female into not-committing violence—into being more merciful and less homicidal, without females being unable to enjoy his exertion of power or unable to enjoy what cruelty he allows. Nothing wrong with that given how sadistic females can be. Would so doing make the female more enjoy what violence he allows? Maybe, yeah, I'm guessing so, but even that is not clear or quite as much the case as one might think because enjoying a male's clean control and power over other females is such a relaxing thing to females—so much contrary to what a skank who wants to all the control to herself would want—it could at least theoretically get to the point where his control of females on balance and on average makes females less scared of him or otherwise desirous of testing her ability to hate, notwithstanding control is also something sodomizers do.

Anyway, it is very important that in a society where an appreciable number of females are controlled cleanly by males that females appreciate that "dog" part of them that enjoys other females being cleanly controlled. If the typical response by girls to a controlling male is all cat—a test to see whether there still exists a capacity to hate and feel cruelty, well, males would have too much ability to force girls into being cruel. The more a girl is being forced to be cruel, the more she would try to test to see whether she enjoys being cruel, and so such force might could be exerted too readily. And of course, a female determining whether she enjoys other females being controlled by a male is a test in itself, a powerful one that in itself discourages dangerous nasty people from exerting power to the extent females interpret their emotions about the test reasonably with intelligent sophistication. It accordingly is important that in a sense girls be into enjoying male victory over other girls—rather like girls cheering at spectator sports. But then in spectator sports guys are usually competing against fellow guys, so maybe my post giving my original intimations about the solution was more confused than I had expected. Important, too, I offhand suppose, that guys have practice at good sportsmanship and not being violent to impress cheerleaders pretending they like violent males more than they do, but that would be something entirely else to think about.

I had wanted to give a stronger impression that the issue I am talking about may well be the most important one in saving the world from evil apocalypse, especially in some distant future age where human sacrifice might be commonplace as it has been in the past. Perhaps it would be more appropriately modest to say it is the most important one that the powers that be (for if there are powers that be, there's a kind of logic to this being just the sort of thing they especially care about, rather as a parent's influence is especially appropriate when it comes to protecting a child from great harm) have given me leave to consider or insight about. But I feel no urgency here to make my case more clearly, since such greater clarity is not in my head yet. An interested intelligent reader having perused this and having a passing acquaintance of the other main writings I've put on internet should now have a grasp of the issues here with an exactness and organization tolerably as well as what is in my head, which is the only urgency I feel as regards apocalyptic matters, dwelling on which would cast a suspicious aura about me if I weren't thus promptly open about my main conclusions.

I would acknowledge someone who a long-time ago gave me such feelings about this matter that they have ever been a reservoir of insight long before I even had a clue what the matter was that the insights were about. I can't help thinking that even at a young age she was some extremely moral virtuous genius when it comes to what I am talking about in this post. Whatever mistakes I'm inclined to think she might have made elsewhere, she must have been amazingly perfect there, and like I said, I think this is a matter of utmost importance. It took me about this long to have more than a clue, whereas I suppose it's reasonable to assume she must have already been there or somewhere close, albeit perhaps on some mystery magic level or something that I admittedly don't get.

Happy Christmas

I haven't posted in a while, so I thought that I would add a poem that I started writing Friday, November 9, and finished the next day. For no fathomable reason, the general idea of the poem came to me as I was shopping at COSTCO for groceries and driving to and from there (Friday, I guess). The poem doesn't make much sense, but it is poetical so I post it. I should say that when I try to find meaning to the pieces of the poem, it not infrequently suggests things to me that I don't believe, actually. I like to consider myself a scrupulously honest person, so this rather bothered me and made me reluctant to post it. However, when the poem came to me and as I was writing it, it to an unusually large degree felt like I wasn't actually writing it, and more like I was writing down what some spiritual influence was telling me. Whether there are such spiritual things from without I don't claim to know, but it felt like there was such a thing at the time, a muse from beyond as it were, and so if you are the skeptical sort who doesn't believe in spiritual muses, instead make whatever inferences you will from the fact that it felt like something was guiding me when I was writing it (though some of the poem writing felt like me). As a general rule for myself, and as something I would suggest as a general rule for others, I take random spiritual influences quite skeptically, basically for the same reasons as I am skeptical of witchcraft and excessively polytheistic religion. However, the poem is beautiful to me, and though the spirits of the void presumably aren't equal on average to the spirits associated with actual people, it's to show a small-minded prejudiced sort of bigotry to not appreciate beauty from external spirit when such beauty is evident. Perhaps the muse knows that I am wrong about some matters, or perhaps the poem is true on levels I haven't had occasion to discover, rather like a prophecy in a Shakespeare play which gets interpreted by a fool one way but then ends up meaning something totally different. Ha, who knows, maybe some of the smoke from the forest fire then on Pilot Mountain (sacred to the Saura Indians and the beautifulest place about near Winston-Salem) had some weird spiritual influence on me notwithstanding I couldn't detect the smoke. Also, I was just beginning to have a terrible sore throat that lasted about a week, the only sickness I have had in a couple years or so; moreover, I was unusually tired from having worked a 14 hour day as an election worker on election day (Tuesday). I couldn't find a good definition for what a lens-piece is, by the way, but the phrase sounds good in the poem.

I don't remember writing a poem with dialogue in it before, which makes for punctuation difficulties. Perhaps in the future after thinking about what schemes are standard or better, I will change the punctuation, since it is rather haphazard and the one thing about the poem that I feel now I might should try to improve.
 

The trip to Dragon Island

''Get in, get in,

the rowboat takes off in two.

I wouldn't tarry...

If I were you.''

The oarsman removes his pocketwatch

from his breast-coat pocket.

That's right, he's wearing a breast-coat.

The second hand ticks around

as he does observe it.

He lifts his hand

slowly.

And then,

Suddenly!

He drops it.

He looks deep into the passenger's eyes,

She is his only passenger.

"We're casting off."

"It is time."

He puts the right oar in the right oarlock.

He strokes one oar two strokes around.

The boat turns.

He puts the left oar in the left oarlock.

He strokes two oar one stroke straight.

The boat is on its course.

The boat man he needs not look back

for he has been there before and remembers it well,

the girl on the cliff begging him back,

because men don't do those sort of things.

Well, he remembers where she was,

and how if he's pointed straight at her

as he is rowing away

he knows full well where he will end up.

Dragon Island.

Many a time he has

made the trip since

Always resolute,

always indifferent.

He tell the girl something.

"We are going to Dragon Island. You know?"

She responds not.

She just smiles.

How convenient, the rowman thinks,

that a girl smiling, almost laughing, at the silly looks so very similar

in every way

to a girl having so much fun.

Were it any other way,

What would her friends think?

He stops the oars and the water of the lake

drips in drops on both sides

from the blades

as they are rested above the water.

He wipes his brow with the back of his hand

very right after

He looks at her again,

"You know, it is very convenient..."

He's so knowing, she thinks.

He looks--

so deep.

What could he be thinking?

She smiles some even more.

He stares deep into her eyes.

He has something to say of great import!

"Because Dragon Island is where the magic gown be."

Slowly and leisurely he places the oar tips upon the sea,

rowing away once again,

so slowly at first,

exactly as before a minute after.

"Yeah. We are going to Dragon Island.

And we are going...unconcernedly.

Oh yeah.

Un-con-cern-ed-ly"

He laughs, he turns his head,

Har-har-har-aye-arrgh-har-hai-ho!

She looks where he is looking,

Unicorns be frolicking on the lakeshore!

Rubbing their horns together it is a sight.

But not for him.

"Them 'corns, many a time I have a seen 'em"

he says. They are after all but the normalest thing about."

"About!"

he says.

"That reminds me (slurring he does),

This trip is to dragon island.

Did you know?"

archly this time,

"that soon

We will be there?"

She smiles broadly,

"Well, I guess I kind of figured it,

because there is an island not

15 feet from the front of the boat

and you are never one to stop rowing for long."

"Excellent!"

He exclaims.

"Indeed it is really true then.

Soon..,

soon,

and we will be there."

He gives two strokes more.

Puts the oars up

and Holds his right hand up before her,

palm facing,

a gesture to stop.

Obviously it be of great importance

Exactly how this boat is exited

and what precisely be the demeanor of those exiting

at the time that they be a exiting.

He tries to convey this in his glance.

This is the island where there is a place

with an attic

where the magic robe is....

He wants to tell her this

but he doesn't really know how.

All he does is put his hands back on the oar,

pulling their handles up toward the back

to fold the oars in place.

He looks straight down

the small amount of sea

about his feet

He sees eternity there

and doesn't know what to do

So he just stares there

Knowing he wishes more sacred he could be.

But there is nothing else to do at this point but to look up at her

and tell her they must get out even as imperfect though he is,

because this is where the magic gown be.

"We must first survey the island",

he says,

"before setting foot."

Because of the dragons? she suggests,

somewhat expectantly.

No, he says,

as he lifts his right hand not in a stopping gesture

but as if to cut the fog in two.

"This is where the dragon lives,"

He pauses to lift his hand up and down several times as his hand gets higher and higher, then slowly drops it, then raises it up and down a smaller distance and then lets it fall.

"but it's not where the dragon is....

First we must prepare ourselves for whatever contingencies might arise.

Would you be so kind as to open the locker just behind you there on your left (it was on her right) and remove my log book.

Thank you, it's just there, yes, yes."

And so he writes,

LOG.

1stday 6:36 pm 42 seconds.

Arrival at shore of Dragon Island. One passenger. Seas normal. Trip uneventful. Those who may read this know that until sunset I shall the island observe with telescope. Thereupon we shall disembark, heading to the place deemed most boring. We shall return with the magic robe. Expected length of journey: 15 minutes. When we return, having obtained robe, I will explain to passenger what we needed to do to obtain magic robe. She will explain to me all about life as I row us back.

"The theodolite lens-piece, child."

"The foot-locker...in the foot-locker."

He surveys the island, observing carefully the foliage to determine where the most boring trees are.

There, over there, he says, do you see something?

"No, " she says.

"Upon the branch of the magic boring tree.

What do you see?"

He hands the theodolite lens-piece.

"Uh, some sort of bird?"

"Exactly right, the magic bird on the magic boring tree."

"Let me see," she says,

again,

she's strangely spellfast.

He know that look well, too,

he learns more from that than from

the fuzzy bird image.

He reads her face.

He gets out his compass

while writing some calculations in his log book.

Triangulating, he knows just where to go.

He sees something there, a tiny stump

with a rope above,

floating in the air.

"See that rope there?"

He asks.

"That's where we need to go."

The girl is transfixed.

A magic place indeed is this

Dragon Island.

He takes her by the arm as she disembarks,

his ankles wet in the water.

She scrambles right out

more spry than he, actually.

He looks at the shore philosophically,

and rubs his hair back like it's a problem,

she's running right off turning back when almost there.

He slowly plods off toward her

Thinking about his life and all that he has seen.

His distant past,

the girl on the shore,

the bird that's always somewhere else.

Upon closer inspection the cord heading up,

up to the sky,

5.6ft off stump-center be.

He finds a nearby stick.

Would you make an X there please?

She does.

He pulls the cord and the stairs come down.

They climb the stairs,

he's in an attic

and she follows right after.

He's oh-so tired now.

He sits down in a chair,

facing the stairs as she finishes ascending.

His eyes are twisting about, his tongue he stick out,

he dies

for three seconds

and then comes back,

teetering at first, but then,

there has become the magic robe in the box.

And right after,

he's back.

Back to his usual self,

just like he knew he'd be.

Here is a map I drew of the island area, fairly reflecting how I visualized it:

I know my drawing is quite bad. Handwriting is the one subject I could never get an outstanding grade at during elementary school. I am not nearly so good at art as I am at poetry. I have done better, though. Here are the three best things I've ever drawn, to demonstrate that I am (or at least have been) not totally as bad a drawer as when I drew the map.

I drew this dog with the owl not long after starting high school. I remember the dog I sketched from a photo of a dog in the World Book Encyclopedia. I don't know why the owl looks like he has a mustache.

I drew my left hand when I was a freshman at UNC, in 1984. I was simultaneously taking Art History, I think the class which grade-wise I did worst in as an undergraduate.

I drew this sketch of Joseph Conrad, apparently on August 3, 1997, when I was 31. I guess it would look okay, except carelessly I chopped off the top of his head like I was the Queen of Hearts but couldn't aim right. It was taken from this photo, which was on the cover of one his books that I had.


I have had intimations at various times that it would be very important to draw better, but it is terribly exhausting to me, I don't know why. I don't know if exhaustion is the best way of putting it, though. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that doing art feels terribly formidable or daunting. In many ways I don't actually have a good memory for faces, though I can remember the emotional impression people make in me extremely well; doubtless art would improve my ability to remember faces and their expressions, probably mainly why it would be advantageous for me to be a better artist. I think the importance of fashion is underrated as well, which may be another reason it would be well if I were better at art (but I'm not), since it is hard for me to imagine myself really appreciating fashion while not having drawing skills.