This blog, despite its martial focus, maintains a scientific philosophy. In other words, only observable, quantifiable events are relevant to discussion of the martial way. If it can't be seen and counted, it doesn't matter to our analysis.
As mentioned previously, sex is a topic which has generated particular disharmony due to its zero sum nature. Only one man's genes can be transmitted by one woman in each birth. This relation inevitably results in winners and losers of the mating game. In other words, the act of reproduction itself is inherently both sexist and unequal, because the acts of penetration, birth, and ejaculation all imply exclusive and immutable gender roles. This dissatisfaction is further complicated by different strategies of reproduction.
All political conflicts surrounding sex relate to the fluidity of reproduction strategies unique to the human species. Just as human beings can change their fighting style from Tiger to Crane Kenpo depending on strategy, mating strategies are flexible. Such fluidity is acquired through verbal behavior, which enables human beings to alter their responses to direct contingencies by responding to verbal rules acquired indirectly through interactions with other humans. In ecological terms, two reproductive strategies are relevant to understanding human sexual politics: K-selected strategies or carrying capacity selection, and r-selected strategies or quantity selection.
r-selected reproduction consists of producing an excess of offspring above and beyond the carrying capacity for the species, or the maximum number of a species which can be sustained indefinitely in a given environment. Each individual offspring has a correspondingly low probability of surviving to reproduce. Examples of species which instinctively follow this strategy include rodents, insects, and other organisms which survive through quantity of life rather than quality of life. Characteristics of these species include physical smallness, great fecundity or sexual excess, promiscuity, mobility, short lives, and above all, minimal investment in offspring. In these species, it is acceptable for the majority of offspring to die, so long as the lineage continues.
K-selected reproduction consists of producing a relative few offspring well below carrying capacity, each of which has a relatively high probability of surviving to reproduce. Examples of instinctively K-selected species include whales, elephants, and other organisms which invest greatly in the quality of offspring. Characteristics include physical size and development, limited sexuality and sometimes monogamy, tendency to occupy a home area or birthing area, long lives, and maximal investment in offspring. These species create offspring with a high probability of reproduction per individual.
These typographies are messy when applied across species, as some species such as sea turtles blend the two categories by reproducing in excess, investing minimally, followed by long living offspring with a high chance of reproduction. The picture becomes even more complicated when applied to humans, who can change reproduction strategies depending on verbal rules.
Human communities are the ultimate result of human reproductive strategies, and the type of strategy adopted will result in characteristic outcomes which can be seen across human history.
r-selecting communities tend to select quantity of children over quality of childhood. Communities of these sorts tend to replace nuclear families with loose associations of peers who control sex, the raising of children, and the mobility of the group. These peer groups are ever expanding and individuals within the groups see themselves as cosmopolitans, inviting diverse individuals who all feast at the same sexual smorgasbord. As well, these collectivities are not geographically confined, but consist of nomads who roam across borders and have no respect for national or family affiliations. These collectivities tend toward matriarchy as a rule, placing children in the care of promiscuous mothers, who invite a revolving door of male suitors, any of whom could be a father, depending on her ovulation cycle. Instead of men competing for mates and investing in offspring, they play a game of chance with their genes and raise all children in common with the rest of the group. Therefore, father involvement is replaced with community child rearing. Violence is an inevitable outcome of this strategy, particularly when limited resources result in vicious competition. Because r-selecting communities do not need to value private property, frugality, and individual rights, they deplete the resources of their communities until all members are left fighting over leftovers. This depletion takes the form of government welfare, money from K-selecting parents, donations, robbery, and other means of extracting money without contributing to one's society. Examples of the r-selecting strategy are evident in the American underclass of perpetual welfare recipients, Burning Man "burners," gang members, free wheeling hippies, unemployed drifters, drug users, Gypsies, radical anarchic communes, and other groups where easy sex, zero responsibility, low parent investment, and parasitic income are the norms.
The advantages of r-selection become evident during times of social uncertainty, violence, and poverty where investing in offspring is impossible or highly punished by a changing, hostile environment which kills a large proportion of individual organisms. In these times, producing a surplus of children can increase the odds of species continuation, even if every individual child lives a short, brutal, competitive life. r-selected individuals tend to criticize K-selected individuals as arrogant, exclusive, snobby, elitist, suckers, and other terms relating to over-investment in family and children and underinvestment in communal sex and hedonism. In the defense of r-selecting culture, the sex is better and more various, even if a relative few individuals are able to enjoy it.
K-selecting communities, in contrast to r-selecting communities, select quality of childhood over number of children. The nuclear family becomes the default social structure for raising children and sex is controlled by family marriage arrangements. These groups are inherently exclusive, seeking to maximize the resources available to guarantee a high standard of living for all offspring in a limited area. As such, creation of a surplus of resources is valued more highly than the act of sex, which occurs at a later age after resource accumulation in the form of education and earned income has already begun. Sex is enjoyed in the context of a monogamous relationship for the ultimate purpose of creating and investing in offspring. Patriarchy is the norm, which results in a culture of male achievement and pursuance of respect to attract a single, high quality woman and compete vigorously with other males for exclusive sexual access. Monogamous marriage is seen as the traditional ending to this competition which is traditionally followed by offspring who are given a surplus of resources to help secure their healthy and happy childhoods. Each child is likely to reproduce, but may come to feel entitled to their parents' surplus wealth, resulting in a shift to an r-selecting reproductive strategy during puberty if the family does not teach the value of the K-selecting reproductive strategy which produced the surplus in the first place. Therefore, gratitude and ingratitude relate directly to reproductive strategies and socialization. Examples of K-selecting societies include Western families, Oriental families, Jewish families, and other traditional structures of lineage and inheritance.
The advantages of K-selection are seen in times of excess, when every individual is guaranteed a high chance of reproductive success and a correspondingly high quality of life. The downside to this strategy is the inevitable boredom and ennui which accompany stable patterns of reinforcement, however this boredom may be preferred by those who have experienced the chaos and dehumanization common to r-selecting groups. K-selecting individuals tend to criticize r-selecting types as uncivilized, crude, vicious, undiscriminating, irresponsible, ungrateful, and libertine.
The two types of sexual selection strategies result in characteristic body types with martial relevance. r-selecting martial artists tend to be physically underdeveloped and dependent on tricks to achieve victory. As such, they will be advantaged in wind, water, and other soft arts. K-selecting martial artists, due to physical development of muscular strength and endurance, tend to be advantaged in fire, earth, and other hard martial arts for direct confrontations.
With respect to the martial way, K-selecting cultures are preferred, as the martial way involves dedicating resources to one's personal development, irrespective of sex. For young men, martial arts take the form of competition with other men to attain the attention of high value females. For older men and married men, martial arts take the form of protecting what one has invested from r-selecting individuals who might seek to deplete resources. For r-selecting individuals, the martial arts take the single form of being more efficient at stealing the resources of others and avoiding justice. Whatever one's preferred role, the martial arts are a powerful tool to achieve one's goals.
Ultimately, the tension between r and K-selection is as old as human verbal behavior and will dictate the best ways for a warrior to proceed in choosing the manner of their own death.
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