It is difficult to pin down any biological mechanism from the study referenced in this article, but it is interesting that those girls who consume high amounts of sugar become fertile earlier. Earlier age at first intercourse, or earlier sexualization of young, are r-strategy traits, designed to facilitate greater total reproductive rates. Here, girls who experience something one would associate with free resource availability (high blood sugar and associated insulin levels) begin to become sexually mature earlier in life. I’m not surprised. Simulating free resource availability changes the very nature of man, promoting every element of the r-strategy.
Interestingly earlier age of menarche has long been known to be associated with paternal abandonment and subsequent promiscuity, likely through genetics. I’d imagine, based on other readings indicating r-strategist humans may be more adaptable strategy-wise than K’s, that among all girls, those genetically predisposed to earlier menarche had a much greater response to sugary drinks, while those less genetically predisposed to earlier menarche had less of a response. I would also assume epigenetics has an unseen hand here as well, with the effects increasing over subsequent generations.
It will take a short while of resource shortage to change this, and according to this article, we may be approaching just such a point, especially since peak food doesn’t even begin to contemplate a collapse in confidence in our currencies, and the associated economic turmoil that will produce.
Crazy, horny, panicky, weird, insane, angry, fearful, cowardly r-strategists, borne of a perfect storm of genes, epigenetics, and conditioning, are about to run face first into a K-selection they are horrified by – and cannot escape from. Will they successfully pit K-strategists against each other and live? Will the K-strategists turn their backs upon the r’s, as the savages pick their low-hanging fruit, killing r-strategists horrifically? These are the periods when events occur which subsequent generations will be transfixed by for millennia. Invigorating, terrifying, or come combination of the above, in the next two decades, we are about to make history.
OT: But it seems a few years ago Clint Eastwood poked Michael Moore in the Amygdala and the fat bastard (or “fastard”) still obsesses over it:
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/01/30/10-years-later-it-seems-michael-moore-is-still-bothered-by-the-words-clint-eastwood-allegedly-said-to-him/?utm_source=TheBlaze.com&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=story&utm_content=10-years-later-it-seems-michael-moore-is-still-bothered-by-the-words-clint-eastwood-allegedly-said-to-him
Yeah, Eastwood apparently made Moore feel small and impotent, and Moore is still hurting. It makes it all the worse when Eastwood makes a patriotic movie, and then sees it begin smashing every record. Anger, envy, fear – it is all there.
Photoperiod (including artificial lighting) also influences puberty.
Sorry for going OT. I hope you will excuse me as I ask this question
What can a man like myself do in my daily life short of joining the military do to stimulate my amygdala to such an extent that it causes my psychology to shift to K-type or go even further across the spectrum?
Personally I would want to turn out to be like the Korean war veteran you referenced but modern society does not give much opportunity to become like him.
Your analysis is dead on in this article, it is interesting that environmental changes can have such an impact on a person’s psychology.
It’s tough to say. r vs K is really adaptation to the environment, so if you are in an r-environment, being K can be a disadvantage, kind of like Dave Chappelle’s, “When keeping it real goes wrong,” but more subtle. So I think you need some r when times are good.
Truly getting K seems to require a truly harsh environment that you would normally want to avoid, and which may be difficult to get, short of having people who are a very real threat to your survival. That said, I think some of us are designed for the K-environment. There is something pleasantly clarifying about an environment where survival is the metric of success, and you don’t even begin to worry about appealing to the vague and ephemeral fancies of a bunch of brain-addled morons. Yes, I could die tomorrow, but at least I’m not in an environment where you can’t even tell if you are failing or not where the metric of success is the fickle opinions of imbeciles.
It’s kind of like, if you are r, you’re worried about pointless shit like do the idiots like me? As you go K, you are delighted just to be surviving, and enjoying the moment, and all that pointless shit becomes vastly less important to you. Notice, the “nicer” environment is the one where you don’t have to worry about survival, but in my experience, too much of that can make your brain less happy.
So how do you do it in normal boring life? Maybe join a martial arts club that is highly aggressive, and dangerous. Join a volunteer firefighting house and see if you can get it that way. Embrace doing unpleasant things for friends who are loyal to you. I’d recommend against pissing off the government to the point they send wet-work operatives to liquidate you, but I’d imagine that would have the desired effect too. You won’t be worried about whether the fat girl at work misinterpreted your joke about whales, if you make it in your front door alive, and live to see your favorite TV Show that night.
It is like addiction, I guess (and involves the same gene, DRD4 7R). r is like pure pleasure, and it is nice, but it wears on you over time, and eventually even the most pure pleasure becomes unsatisfying, and everything else becomes truly horrid. If you are an addict, there is no way to get to the best life possible, short of going cold turkey, and enduring what is probably the most horrific experience.
Likewise, K requires an unpleasant stress that makes you afraid, focuses you on something dangerous (but manageable), and which you really wouldn’t voluntarily take on if you had the choice. As you feel the fear, don’t focus on it and freak out. Feel the fear, embrace it, and try to tell yourself it is a good feeling, because it is changing something deep in your head. It is, and those changes are not conscious logical changes you will make yourself, but a deeper change in how you relate to the world, and how you focus on the parts of it in front of you – what the “you” who you have never even seen, deep inside of you, will focus on, and what the you deep inside of you will ignore.
It is a worthwhile change, but I think it is tough to get absent certain very unpleasant experiences being forced upon you by circumstances beyond your control. My guess is in the next two decades, a lot of us will get those circumstances. The key will be viewing the stress not as something horrid to get away from, but as something good to embrace, so it can change you.
I guess if I’m reading this, I’m probably K-selected.
But I wonder, how much R I have in me.
Wald
We’ve all got some, to adapt to what is among the most r times in human history. I’m not even sure a little isn’t good. I’m not sure what extreme K would be like.
That makes a lot of sense. I used to worry for a time that I might be a narcissist.
At this point, I’d think that I have narcissistic tendencies, adopted through copying what I must to carry on in this maladaptive world.
Wald