Human Races And Blacks example essay topic

"Our Cheating Hearts" by Robert Wright was the most intriguing of the three articles, and it tried to enlighten the reader on the complex and sometimes confusing issue of human relationships. Wright is an evolutionary psychologist who feels that the brain like any other organ has changed throughout the evolution of time. Just as any other animal, a human's main objective in life is to pass on our genes, and if we cannot do this with our significant other than many humans will deem cheating as a viable option. Wright does not encourage people to cheat but in the article it does seem that he regards cheating as almost the rational thing to do.

As much as I do not want to agree with him I feel as though he makes a convincing argument. Wright looks at the issue in a scientific way and says cheating is a perfectly logical and justifiable behavior because the desire to pass on one's genes is the most basic component in nature and life. Therefore, what better way then to attempt reproduction as many times with as many mates as possible. I agree with Wright's contention that men are much more inclined to have a sexual fling than women and that men do not seem to consider intelligence as a factor when looking for a sex partner, but I feel that his argument is not as complete as it should be. I believe that in order to understand why some men and women cheat and some do not we first must understand the context in which their decisions are being made.

Other external factors such as place of work and attractiveness of the male or female are factors that were never discussed. If a married man or women at a workplace works with a vast number of the opposite sex than he / she is obviously more prone to cheating. In addition, if a man or women is of above average attractiveness than I would surmise he / she is more susceptible to cheating because of opportunities being proposed. As much as it pains me to say I feel that most men and women if given the prospect would cheat on there significant others. I think the numbers are too low because cheating happens when chance meets opportunity, and a large number of times this does not happen.

Simply put some men and women do not have the opportunity to cheat because there environment does not allow them to interact with the opposite sex or they are merely not desirable. I found it unusual to learn that when men cheat this does not mean they are unhappy. Dr. Joyce Hamilton Berry, a clinical psychologist says that. 'When I counsel clients, I compare male infidelity to a man walking into the kitchen and seeing a chocolate cake sitting on the counter.

It looks good; it smells good. He is not hungry, but he will eat the cake anyway. I thought that was a great analogy and that man sometimes cheat when they see a woman who is attractive and appears to be interested, even though there is nothing lacking in their marital relationships, they initiate affairs anyway. I found it very interesting that women tend to cheat on there spouse more during time of ovulation when they are most likely to be pregnant. That is a scary thought that many fathers could conceivably be raising children that were not sired by them. I certainly do not think we should solve this problem by demanding the children of past relationships to be killed like the Yanomamo's of South America do.

However, I do think that DNA testing should be less expensive so that many families could end the doubt of who is truly the parent. Under the section as to why women cheat I thought the author failed to mention a few obvious reasons that women are starting to catch up to males when it comes to cheating. Sex researchers agree that today more women are committing adultery than ever before. Over the last twenty years more and more women are entering the workforce and working outside the home alongside men, oftentimes in office environments that are charged with sexual electricity.

It seems as though some women could get involved in extramarital affairs because they are lonely, others because they want to escape the monotony of marriage. Still others are motivated to cheat due to revenge after they find out about there husband's infidelity. I find the different types of jealously that males and females display when they are caught cheating rather interesting. Evolutionary psychologists such as David Buss hypothesized men and women would differ psychologically in the weight given to cues that trigger jealousy. A man's jealousy has been thought to focus on sexual infidelity because a long-term partner's sexual infidelity jeopardizes his certainty in fatherhood, placing him at risk of investing in another man's offspring. A woman's jealousy has been hypothesized to focus the long-term diversion of a man's commitment, such as his emotional involvement with another woman.

(Bunk, 1996) I completely agree with Wright's argument that the movies and Hollywood glorify adultery and do not help the cause to maintain a traditional family. Moreover, everywhere you look on television you see someone like Tony Soprano making infidelity look like the norm with no consequences involved. I feel that the ease at which one can access pornographic material in today's society is also hurting the family unit as well. The internet which now has over 300,000 pornographic websites gives married people a warped sense of reality. I particularly liked how Wright ended his article by saying that humans are the most multifaceted and complex animals on the earth, but none the less we are still animals. People sometimes forget we are still animals, and are subject to the same weaknesses that are inherently human.

We have the capacity to be moral creatures but in many instances for one reason or another we are not. I feel that the Rushton article is very fascinating, but I can't say that I agree with many of his arguments. The article touches on a ideas such as altruism, IQ, and genetics but the most compelling to me is the fact that Rushton claims he can explain the differences in races using his r / K theory. Rushton discusses many taboo matters that I feel almost border on racism. I think this way because the definition of race is extremely subjective and there is no basis for deciding which traits to use in any classification system. Consequently, one can pick and choose traits about any race at will until result suit the researcher's purpose.

This is why estimates of the number of different races vary so widely, because there is no such thing as a distinct race. There is also usually more variation in a trait within races than between them. Ruston himself even acknowledged this as being true when he said that 'no claim is made that races are discrete groups". Rushton believes there is a consistent pattern of human racial differences. The three primary human racial groups are the Orientals, Blacks, and Caucasians.

He believes they show significant average differences in such characteristics as intelligence, brain size, and strength of sex drive, reproductive potency, and sociability. On each of these variables, the groups are aligned in the order: Orientals, Caucasians, and Blacks. Rushton asserts that Orientals are more intelligent, have larger brains for their body size, have less sex drive, and work harder; and Caucasians on average bear the same relationship to blacks. The group differences are not large, but they are demonstrable. He proposes an evolutionary explanation based on the life history theory.

The theory assumes that each race has evolved a characteristic life history adapted to the particular ecological problems encountered by its ancestors. These strategies are organized along a continuum from K-strategies to R-strategies. K-strategies emphasize high levels of parental care and social complexity, while r-strategies emphasize mating behavior and high reproductive rates. Compared to other species, humans are K-strategists. Based on the data Rushton reports that Orientals are the most K-strategizing of the human races, and blacks are the most r-strategizing.

According to Rushton, r-strategies evolve in environments in which the population is kept where there are more resources for survival than there are members of the population to use them. So, when there are abundant resources, organisms are better off producing many offspring and letting them fend for themselves; when the environment is difficult, organisms are better off putting their resources into equipping each offspring to survive. So his reasoning is that. Blacks evolved in Africa in an abundant but unpredictable environment that favored reproduction over nurturance, relative to other human populations.

The harsh environment of Asia in which Orientals evolved favored more nurturing, socialization, and greater intellectual capacity. Caucasian evolution in Eurasia imposed intermediate pressures. One of Rushton's points that I agree with and found interesting were his views as to why people with similar genetic traits tend to flock together. In Ruthton's book Race, Evolution, and Behavior he tries to present the reason as to why similar people tend to seek one another out and to provide mutually supportive environments. He does not believe in the old saying that sometimes "opposites attract". His theory is called the genetic similarity theory.

Rushton shows that genes influence why people tend to marry and associate with others like themselves. The important pull of genetic similarity can be felt in small groups and even large ones. The reason people like and seek genetic similarity and fear and avoid dissimilarity is to be found in the sociobiology of altruism. He feels and I agree that altruism toward genetically similar others evolved in order to help replicate similar genes.

Fear of others nationalities are seen as the dark side of human altruism. Because ethnic nationalism is part of human nature, the world may face an unending series of disturbances as more and more peoples rise to ethnic self-consciousness. Kim Hill who is an adversary of Ruston's work points out that Rushton is inconsistent in his arguments about how cranial capacity relates to IQ. Rushton believes that races with big brains have higher IQs because they have big brains. This argument won't work with sex differences. The problem is that while males tend to have larger brains than females, Ruston's data show no sex difference in IQ scores.

He resolves this inconsistency y saying that that despite their smaller brains, women may be as intelligent as men because their brains are more densely packed with neurons. Therefore, when it comes to brain size and IQ, as Rushton himself argues, size isn't everything. Theories generated in race research may be the most difficult to study in the field of psychology, and it is probably unlikely to be truly understood by anyone. When one delves into the issues that Rushton studies he is bound to be met with criticism. Even he is quoted as saying "The evolutionary psychology of race differences has become the most politically incorrect topic in the world today". What I liked most about Gould's assessment of Sociobiology is the way he discussed both sides of the issue.

Gould writes that most of Sociobiology is adaptive story telling based on the persistent power of natural selection. To me this seems like nothing more than speculation. Science is supposed to relay on empirical evidence to prove an argument, not on arbitrary stories. Gould would call these stories just-so stories. Gould himself said evolution is telling us just-so stories, yet we are expected to regard them as scientific and to draw far fetched conclusions.

I do agree that the existence of adaptive behaviors say very little about the genetic basic of natural selection. The example of reciprocal altruism is clearly adaptive in my mind. Having this trait would definitely increase an individual's chance of having his genes represented in the next generation than if he did not display this trait. Sociobiology extended from Darwinian insights about bodies to behavior, and may be thought of as having revived the old controversy about nature and nurture. Sociobiology explores the biological basis of all social behavior, including morality. Sociobiologists are claiming that all moral and religious systems, exist simply because they help promote the survival and reproduction of the group. E.O. Wilson, a Harvard biologist and major advocate of sociobiology, claims that a fully evolutionary world view will eventually overcome both traditional religion and any other secular ideology.

I feel that the science of sociobiology has many loopholes in it. First, human society from the beginning of time has been shaped by evolutionary processes. Human societies exist in their present form because they work, or at least have worked in the past, not because they are based on any kind of revelation. Prior experiences have given human begins insight as to how culture works. Sociobiologists believe that all behavior is selfish in nature, and that altruism is not a real. I have to believe that some people are genuinely moral people.

Proof of this is that all parents love there children because love is an effective means of raising effective reproducers. In Wilson's book, On Human Nature he says that "no species, ours included, possesses a purpose beyond the imperatives created by its own genetic history (i. e., evolution)... we have no particular place to go. The species lacks any goal external to its own biological nature". He is saying that since humans have been shaped by evolution alone, they have no purpose beyond survival and reproduction. This is an unpleasant thought to say that the human's only goal in life is to survive and reproduce. Dr. Raymond Bolin gives an example that I think exemplifies my point.

He asked a student, 'Let's suppose that I am dead and in the ground, and the de composers are doing their thing. What difference does it make to me now whether I have reproduced or not?' His point was that if death is the end that cares whether or not I have reproduced? The student answered by answered, 'Well, I guess that it doesn't matter at all. ' So it seems as though if the only purpose in life is to survive and reproduce, then is really an illusion.

(High K, 200 l) It just doesn't sit well with me by explaining an event by saying that genes for it existed, and were selected for it. So hypothetically, if the stock market drops, investors seeking an explanation in the newspapers may find a headline like this: "Selling Pressure Causes Stock Drop". That doesn't help, it simply re-describes the happening. I would want a reason why it dropped, or perhaps an Alan Greenspan speech. "Genes arose and were selected for" merely asserts that the phenomenon appeared, then became more common an adaptation". (Against, 2001).

The rather new topic of Sociobiology has an impact of many disciplines beyond the realm of Psychology and Science. It seems as thought a Sociobiologist could explain any event in life by putting an evolutionary skew on it. Although I don't agree with many of the main ideas within sociobiology it attempts to explain why groups of animals behave the way they do, and I do believe that is important.