Nude Flesh

Now that I have your attention…don’t you just love Studio 360 on NPR?  I really enjoy this program; it really pushes my Muse to reach out and think deeply about creative experiences.

Today’s program covered The Nude in art – in particular, I found artist Damali Ayo’s exhibit, Flesh-Tone Series #1, particularly intriguing.  You can read up on Ayo’s approach to creating this series at her website; just click on the link to Exhibits at the bottom of her page.

In a nutshell, Ayo went to a number of hardware stores and asked to have parts of her body matched for paint colors, then used that to create a selection of samples on primarily wood bases.

Fascinating, really, that there were so many different reactions to her request and even more interpretations of the color of her flesh.  It’s as if this were an experiment to document the range of differentiation in human experience of qualia – which in turn may even influence our reactions to other humans of all colors.

In what shade would you see me, I’m left to wonder?  What shade of flesh do I see myself?

If there’s so many interpretations, why does it matter at all except as an expression of art?

12:17:56 PM    comment []

For filchyboy (and anyone else interested)…

Good stuff you’re exploring with your post Darwin’s Mate Competition; I’ve been thinking about it all evening.

A suggestion for you: please keep a very open mind with Schlain’s work.  After reading his Alphabet-Goddess piece, I struggled with his premise that women’s decline in power in society came about as a result of the rise of the written word.

Something doesn’t quite gel about his premise for me; there’s a timing issue that makes little sense.  There’s also a major difference in the kinds of writing – words, alphabet versus symbols, pictographs – that occurs across human societies.  Women’s power should have correlated more closely with the emergence of these different types of writings and yet it didn’t.

Another example of an incongruity: William Calvin’s work on brain size development in relation to climate makes much sense, whereas Schlain’s claim that female sexual selection led to increases in brain size development makes less sense.  It would be difficult to attribute brain size solely or in major part one sex’s selection when it benefits the entire genome.  Perhaps because it does fall to both genders to work towards the same goal that stimulators for brain size development is less than obvious.

One other issue in reading across these texts to keep in mind is that genetics encodes certain innate machine-level memetics (yeah, I know, we don’t see eye-to-eye on that term).  A male’s theory may well be biased by his own genes – and vice versa for females. (Schlain may be close to that point in his Alphabet and the Goddess, but not quite spot on; he attributes it to differences between brains by gender.)  Roughgarden is an interesting case because there is the chance that theories she’s proposed may be based in the programming of both genders.

In my mind, homosexuality plays an important role in the survival of the human species.  It’s inborn/hardwired and not just a fluke of genetics since it affects more than 10% of the species.   I’m left to wonder whether during times of environmental stress (where a locale may not support the potential population numbers) that homosexuality increases.  Homosexuals don’t breed in the same proportion as heteros, placing lower demands on the population – yet they can contribute to the development of a fewer number of offspring (directly or indirectly).  If hetero/breeders are under pressure to provide for offspring, homosexuals can preserve the foundations of culture that keep the society together.  Look to the wider acceptance of homosexuality in earlier or primitive cultures and the roles which they typically assumed; this was incredibly important to survival or it wouldn’t have happened in this fashion.  (Look at the way “Queer Eye” works: the Fab Five prep an otherwise unappetizing hetero candidate to make him more acceptable to a breeding female.   Look at how willing the subject is to receive these administrations -- they’re to his benefit as a breeder.  It’s madly successful not just because of the humor, but the underlying unconscious subtext.  Is this really a stretch over earlier and other contributions gays made to hetero society?)

Further, I speculate as more resources (meaning less stress on cultures) for survival became available (wide-open areas of the western hemisphere), homosexuality was less acceptable because it was less necessary to the hetero society (and breeding to increase the population was more important).

Nature abhors waste; that which is unnecessary recedes and is repressed into the genome for future use.  Homosexuality is necessary; it behooves us as a species to find out why and make the most of its purpose for our species benefit.

In regards to the articles you linked featuring Roughgarden’s comments: nah, I don’t think it is female manipulation of power, nor are resources (better parenting) chosen over genes by females.  Good god, how many times have you known of a woman who got pregnant by some impoverished schmuck, then raised the child on her own?  Legion.  And why is it women foam over gorgeous male movie stars (who may have both preferred genes and wealth)?  Is it at all possible that the accumulation of resources or access to them is also inherently based in genes -- therefore selection based on resources (and power, where equal to access to resources) is also about genes?

It’s not that simple to control the other half of the genome by preference, since males have found ways to compensate for controls that females have used for now hundred-thousand-plus years.  There’s always an ebb-and-flow of compensating mechanisms.

[Jeez.  That really gets my goat, that it’s just control of men, power over men and their resources.  You couldn’t get me anywhere near Steve Forbes…or George Bush; completely unappetizing specimens regardless of rank or resources or power.  Eeewww.]

In this case, I do wonder which portion of Roughgarden’s unconscious is speaking – is it the hardwired male genes, or the biochemical software which shapes the opinion?  Why not ask women why they select the men they do?

Bisexuals and folks who are on the curve between all-the-way hetero and not-at-all are probably more interesting to study because they may actively exercise the decision to be or not to be one or the other of hetero/homo at any time.  What is it that trips the act of choice?  Perhaps they are the real subjects to be studied to find the purpose of homosexuality in a society.

7:20:02 AM    comment []