The Evolution of Sex… Revolution at Michigan State
Michigan State football… four players kicked off the team for sexual improprieties (perhaps crimes… time will tell) and one assistant coach gone.
Sex and young men and women… always problematic, the eternal challenge: “Hang down your head, Tom Dooley.” The survival of our species depends upon sex and young men and women. As the great historian Will Durant says in his fine book The Lessons of History… nature does not care about the welfare of individuals within the species; nature cares only about the survival of the species and, therefore nature smiles upon multiple births and more and more procreation and thereafter for nature… it’s just “survival of the fittest” to insure the strength of the species and its ability to survive. That is still the rule for the animal kingdom today.
But man has spiritually evolved (through the message of the Jesus and through the message of the prophets, I suspect) and changed the rule of nature and “survival of the fittest” to a modern day rule that says, we must concern ourselves with not only the species, but with the rights of the individual members within the species. Under nature’s law, neither Beethoven, Helen Keller, Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles or Andrea Bocelli (handicapped as they were) would survive. They lose nature’s “survival of the fittest” battle because they are not physically equipped to survive. They couldn’t hear or they couldn’t see, so they couldn’t escape the threats to their survival. But, under man’s modern rule that protects the rights of the individuals within the species, they all survive and go on to great success.
But, a caveat… much of the nature’s “evolutionary urge” to procreate, procreate, procreate and keep on procreating for the benefit of survival of the species still remains today in the “evolutionary psyche” of modern man. We call it “sex drive” and it varies in intensity from man to man and woman to woman depending upon (I suspect) their DNA and varying amounts of testosterone and estrogen.
Therefore, in our modern world, there still exists as part of man’s evolutionary past an overwhelming urge (some would say “irresistible impulse”) to engage in sex, engage in sex, engage in sex and keep on procreating and procreating and keep on strengthening the species with multiple births and larger and larger populations. This left-over “evolutionary psyche” of rampant procreation has left us with a host of modern day problems even though modern man is no longer a pregnancy machine, herd animal. These modern day problems include non-consensual sex, miscommunication… young men with one agenda and young women with another agenda, broken relationships and broken hearts, lack of knowledge re birth control, unwanted pregnancies, termination of pregnancies, right to life, religious taboos, double standards and more.
What the hell is a father or mother or Football Coach suppose to do??? control all of this??? control the overwhelming urges of evolution and nature??? Impossible. Anyone who tells you that it’s just “mind over matter” is either a eunuch or is “sophomoric” or both. Would that it were that simple. Man is not that far removed (evolutionary speaking) from the animal kingdom that impregnates every female it can in the herd, and, if you think otherwise, I think you fail to grasp the overwhelmingness of the sexual urge in young men.
All you can do as a Football Coach is try to recruit the right athlete from the right family (a roll of the dice many times) and then set the culture, the culture that tries to stop young men from physically/sexually abusing women (and women from taking emotional advantage of men). But, the sexual urge is evolutionary and is so much stronger in young men than words or the setting of culture. All you can do is hope and pray that no one takes physical or emotional advantage of anyone else.
The last 20 years of technology have changed the world forever. Yet the last 2000 years of the pursuit of understanding life have brought very little insight into the ongoing sexual dichotomy between the overwhelming, evolutionary urge to procreate and the accompanying need to control that urge… varying, of course, with the amount of testosterone in any given male.
Despite the best laid plans of Mice and Men and Football Coaches, when it comes to the sexual urges of procreation… predicting (or controlling) the sexual behavior of athletes and non-athletes alike is always a roll of the dice… perhaps, even a “fool’s errand.”
Written by Fred Lauck.
