Genetics, culture work together to drive us to pursue what we want

By David McElroy · December 24, 2017

Some people believe holidays change people, but I think they’re far more likely to bring out what’s already inside — for good or for bad. Holidays that center around family frequently tell me who someone really is.

I pay more attention to children than most adults do. I watch families. I talk with children when I can. I take them seriously and I play with them frivolously. I love their world and I love the ways in which they can change how I see my own world.

That’s never more true than around Christmas.

Whether children are from families which are religious or not, there seems to be something magical that takes over around this time. (I presume the same is true in cultures where there are other religious and cultural traditions, but my experience is in an American Christian cultural context.)

Something I experience in these children at this time changes me — or at least brings out something in a stronger way that’s always there.

I watch happy children singing Christmas songs for parents and grandparents. I watch their eyes light up as they talk about stories they’ve learned, whether it’s about Jesus or Santa or the Grinch. Some of the excitement is about what they hope to receive, but there’s definitely something more.

It’s as though they experience a certain kind of magic in this season — and it rubs off on some of the lucky ones around them who pay attention.

Nothing makes me want children of my own the way this season does. I can’t rationally explain that. In fact, I can tell you why the rational thing is to avoid having children. They’re expensive. They’re a lot of work. They put a lot of things in your life on hold (if you spend enough time with them). And no matter how you raise your children, it’s possible you’ll end up with your heart broken — and you might not even be able to understand why, even when it’s clearly explained to you.

But something in me needs to create life and raise happy, healthy children — and I have very specific instinctive ideas about the sort of woman I have to reproduce with. I can’t explain where those strong convictions came from. I can’t justify that they’re right. I certainly can’t force them to become reality.

I just know — in the most secret part of my heart — what is right and what ought to be. There are times when what you know is right trumps all reason and all other logical desires and conclusion.

Around this time of year, the urge to make this a reality becomes more like an obsession. I’m driven to do whatever is necessary to build the reality I see so clearly in those images in my heart.

Maybe I’m not alone in this. Just today, I ran across a journal article that shows people across 129 countries (where data are available) become more interested in sex and reproduction at the times of their culture’s equivalent of our Christmas season. In a paper called “Human Sexual Cycles are Driven by Culture and Match Collective Moods,” five researchers show in dry statistical language that this is true.

On the surface, it’s about sex, but on a deeper level, it’s really about sex as a means of expressing a desire to fulfill a genetic and cultural imperative to reproduce. In language that’s not so dry and statistical, it really means there’s something about this time of year that makes us even more likely to want to become what we already want to be — and what I want is to be a husband to the right woman and father of our children.

This season makes some people bigger jerks than usual. It makes other people more greedy than ever. It makes some people put on airs to try to impress other people with their wealth and social position. It makes some people eager to drink alcohol and consume other recreational drugs — in attempts to escape what they are or to find some sort of pleasure they can’t find in their sober states.

Whatever people are — whatever people want — they seem to become that much more of that right now.

This season fills me with the longing for children — and all the things which come with that in my mind’s eye.

This isn’t a sudden revelation for me and it’s not news to anyone who knows me well. But it’s not a rational desire or goal. It’s not like a desire for a nice house or better clothes or shiny gadgets. It’s more like the desire for air or food or water.

It’s a fierce desire to fulfill one of the key reasons I’m alive.

Many people have no such desire to reproduce. And even some of the ones who want children in a theoretical sense have no interest in doing the difficult work of nurturing them in healthy ways once they’re born. I have no objection to people not having children. In fact, many children would be better off without being born to certain parents. (The most important decision you ever make for your children is who the other parent will be — and many people fail to take that decision seriously enough.)

I’m not saying everybody ought to have kids. I’m just saying that I need children. Something in my genes drives me toward that — and the study I read today makes it clear that culture drives others to feel this way, too.

On this Christmas Eve, I know plenty of people who are enjoying spending time with their children, delighting in the wonder that these young children are experiencing. I envy them. Now that stores and restaurants are closed — and church services are finished for the evening — I’m at home alone with a dog and a bunch of cats.

I love my little zoo, but they can’t take the place of what both genetics and culture are driving me toward. I want this every single day of the year, but at this time above all, I need to be a husband and father.

That’s the part of me that gets magnified right now, because it’s who I am in my heart.

Merry Christmas to everybody, but especially those children who are experiencing the magic which I long to experience with kids of my own.

Share on Social Networks

I have no use for the theocratic and repressive government of Iran. The people who run the country are cruel at best and evil at worst. The Iranian people deserve freedom. But I have no personal quarrel with anybody in Iran. While I’m not thrilled about a future Iranian government having nuclear weapons, I’m just as concerned about nukes in the hands of politicians in Israel, Pakistan, India, China and Russia. I’m not even thrilled with the U.S., Britain and France having them, either, because I don’t trust any politicians to be responsible with such terrible weapons. All I can say with certainty is that American taxpayers have no business attacking Iran, especially since we’re being forced to pay for this attack in order to benefit the politicians of Israel — and nobody else. If Middle Eastern countries want to fight among themselves, that’s none of my business. It’s not the business of the U.S. government, either. I have no quarrel with anybody in Iran — and having the government which claims to represent me launch an unprovoked attack against a sovereign country will only make all Americans less safe in the near future. This attack is poorly conceived and morally unjustified. Remember that when the Iranians launch attacks that we will then condemn as “terrorism.” What the U.S. is doing right now looks like terrorism to me. And let’s not forget that the attack is the latest in a long line of unconstitutional wars by various U.S. presidents — who have no legal power to declare war on their own, according to the U.S. Constitution.

A child having a tantrum understands only one thing: Did I get my way or not? He doesn’t understand the issues involved. He doesn’t understand the reasons that went into a decision. He doesn’t understand any of the things that mature and reasonable adults have to understand in order to live healthy lives. By his reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to strike down his disastrous tariff scheme, Donald Trump shows himself to be — once more — a screaming child having a tantrum. Outside the world of mob bosses who expect to get their way every time, normal adults don’t act this way, but Trump isn’t normal. He’s an angry and vengeful man who has narcissistic personality disorder. And we are in danger as a result. Trump doesn’t understand the legal issues involved in this ruling. He doesn’t understand economics. He doesn’t understand rule of law. He doesn’t understand that he can ever be wrong. All he understands is that he didn’t get his way. And he is now a narcissistic and raging little boy who also happens to hold life-and-death power over most humans on this planet. He’s dangerous — and the system which gives him that power is even more dangerous.

Is it an attempt to blur the gender line between men and women? Or is it some weird tribute to the traditional Scottish kilt? It’s hard to say, but fashion designers keep pushing for men to wear skirts in the last few years. Both men and women in modern fashion seem oddly androgynous, as though it would be offensive for a man to look manly or for a woman to look feminine. A CNN article about the latest fashions from Paris caught my attention Monday and left me wondering about the ugly clothes the designers are hawking. If a man wants to wear a skirt — or a kilt — that’s OK with me, but I’ll stick with a traditional dark suit with a white shirt and tie. (Well, when I’m not wearing t-shirts and sweats, of course.) I always wonder who actually buys the outlandish garb from fashion designers anyway. I would be humiliated to be seen in any of this stuff, but I obviously have no sense of high fashion.

If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Related Posts