To close, we believe the following may be of interest to the genders, the men and their consorts. As already said, men prefer their ladies in portable hardware sizes and in software forms that need protection, anti-viruses, backup facilities, etc. Luckily, the women, either independently or lockstep, prefer men who are “muscular” like beasts. It is this evolutionary lineup that explains and in fact justifies why women rightly, even if not righteously, prefer the men with the more money or power and not their more plebian brothers.
What have we just said? It is that it is the master of the money game that carries home the jackpot trophies – the select brides that are pretty enough to consort the gods. A mutant aspect of this is called the Genevieve syndrome. This is where ancient but rich dandies beat the young but poorer stags to carry away the princesses of the day for consorts. And the fact of this is as ancient as Ajumiri.
Anyway, the other details are as follows: At our historical beginning or initial conditions, it was muscle and beastliness that the men needed to purchase prosperity and protection. And the excess of those, the men offered their chase, the women, spouses. And the ladies outgunned, ladies have fats, not muscles, bought into the arrangement.
In other words, the physically most fearsome men had the pick of the fairest damsels. The rest of the men settled for the plainer, the tokunbo maidens. That is, in prehistoric times, muscle was the currency of trade and negotiation. You fancied a thing and you had the muscle, you seized it. And that was the iron lore.
And then came a certain Englishman called Charles Darwin, and in tow his apostles. Thanks to them, we came to knowledge that the world is in a state of change, of evolution, even if as it is an unobserved dynamic. According to Darwin, it is all in the effort to propagate ourselves, our genes. In other words, we are all in the battle to make eternity (with the saints?) even if only through our descendants.
One of these Darwinian changes is in the currency, the mode of negotiation. Historically, while the “ancient regime” negotiated with muscle and raw manliness, modern man has turned to money as a currency of relationships. And this we may remind ourselves includes trade and industry. That is to say, in evolutionary terms, even as it is perhaps unobserved, muscle and beastliness have mutated and emerged into a new form. And this new form is money, the currency units.
Thus if we “carbon dated” human history, it can be said we have had three ages of evolution or civilisation. First, there is The Might is Right or Prehistoric Age. Second, there is The Trade by Barter or Negotiated Age. Lastly, there is The [subsisting] Money or Transactional Age. In all these, it is meet we recall a fact. It is all about man interacting and interfacing with one another.
The key point is that currency modes are man-made, socio-biological tools. They are the fabrications of man as a conscious being. Muscle [and in some sense barter] is a congenital endowment, it comes with birth.
Perhaps, what immediately should be clear to all of us is that human systems are in search for the ease of interactions and transactions. It is this search that led to the use of muscle to settle difficulties, to negotiate relations, in the first place. And later it evolved or muted into organisations/barter and later again into money/transactional systems. That is, from muscle to barter to currency units is to be understood as a socio-biological evolutionary odyssey of the same tool, whatever else it be.
As with tools, none is perfect of its own. But, seen from their evolutionary point of view, one may be more perfect or adapted, than the other. In other words, it is not implausible that money as transactional tools may yet evolve or mutate further into something else. The whole idea of evolution is to achieve zero or optimal transactional costs in a given ecology or society. Negotiating and living together as siblings, lovers, colleagues, countries, etc, in any system come with costs. Evolution is in the task of driving these transactional costs towards zero and away from infinitude.
In other words, the evolution of the age of muscle to the age of organisation and money has implications. One of it is that today there is largely only one [dominant] currency of negotiation and interaction. And it is money or power. For ease of analysis, money and power can be taken as fungible or just the same.
The other consequence of this is that muscle as a currency of negotiation, interactions and purchases has atrophied out of existence, almost.
But evolution does not happen in one sector. Evolution is ecological, a mesh of change and dynamics. Thus the age of organisation has seen man invent not only money but other instruments, like bombs, guns, etc. Initially those who had it – the maxim guns, etc, used it as prehistoric men used muscles. This explains how British thugs, for instance, ran over swathes of Africa and other territories and gummed them together as countries, without regard to the natives. For instance, that we have Nigeria and India today is a creation of British thugs masquerading as civilisers or colonisers.
And just like its older muscle cousin, the “maxim-gun colonialism” has also atrophied away, “evolved” into extinction. No such overt colonialisms exist today. Why? In evolutionary terms, it is that the age of muscle has evolved unto the age of organisations, of currencies.
The superiority of money as a tool of negotiation over muscles are as follows. First of all, money is, perhaps, historically and evolutionarily, the most portable and moveable and fungible of assets. It thus can hire the police and other protections as near as home and as far away as Israel. Money also is not just wealth, it is itself a measure of wealth. That is, money has and can command an agency head above those of mere muscles or barter. In other words, whether intended or not, money is a more efficient, more adaptive form of muscle and prosperity.
Let us recap. In the beginning, women consorted and comforted those with the most muscles who offered the best protection and prosperity in town. And that was in the days when lizards were few and the universe was a jungle. And the fact or habit of this choice lasted for millions of years, through prehistoric times and beyond. That is, the feminine choice for muscle, a socio-biological gene, became a [Darwinian] meme, a socio-biologically acquired habit that is almost genetically fixed. Thus that choice or preferment of women for men of muscles is now wired into them “memetically.”
This is where the danger lurks. To unwire genetics or memes is even more precarious than to introduce species into new habitats. It may work but if it doesn’t, it may attract more terrible plagues than the Bible ever imagined. In fact, it may facilitate the second coming of Christ, which no man or woman really wants now. So, women and men, being reasonable beings, are stuck to the state of affairs as is. It is that, to negotiate in the commodities or art or even lovers’ markets, you got to have the cash connections. Meanwhile we are headed to The Lion House, in search of further inspiration. To be concluded. Ahiazuwa.
Re: The University-Media Complex… book reading party
Our latest book reading went off famously and stayed the distance equally so. It was a fullly enthusiastic and participative house. This is with great thanks to the intellectual stormy petrel, Odia Ofeimun. Odia, noted for not taking prisoners even when there are no wars, brought his gospel of Awoism into the curriculum, even if a little out of order. Of course, he had his match in Ikechukwu Amaechi, publisher of The Niche. As if to make sure Odia did not “corrupt or co-opt” the youths, historian and public relations impresario, Chude Oduenyi, who flew in from Owerri for the occasion, captivated the house with the historicity of it all. But not everything can be resolved in one hot session of brilliant minds. So, we all decided to cool it off till another day.
Special mention must be made of a special group of attendees. They are the members of a the WhatsApp Book Forum group. They came in their numbers. The Book Forum is a book-loving group made up of Nigerians, professionals, scholars, students from across the globe. And one of us, Azeez Wemimo, actually flew in from Canada. It was fun to jam live and direct. Special thanks must go to beauty queen, Ms. Cynthia Amulunanma Nwalieji, Ms Maureen Chigbuo, Dr. Luke Onyekakeyah of The Guardian, and to Toyin Akinosho and Jahman Anikulapo and the CORA team for the wonderful things they do.