Reproduction | Masturbation

Like all organisms, we are reproducing machines. The human form was selected to reproduce itself. Everything about the human form serves the ultimate purpose of reproduction in some way. That includes the emotions that drive our actions. We evolved to act in ways that lead to reproduction.

Consider eating, for example. The proximate function of eating is to get the energy and matter needed to survive, grow as a child, and be strong as an adult. Eating isn’t directly linked to reproduction. But to reproduce, you need to survive, grow up, and be strong as an adult. Ultimately, eating serves the biological purpose of reproduction.

Hunger is the emotion that drives the behavior of eating. Functionally, we eat to get energy and matter. Causally, we eat because we are hungry. The emotion of hunger was created by evolution to drive the behavior of eating, because eating is necessary for reproduction.

Every emotion drives some behavior that is instrumental to reproduction. Here are some other examples. Thirst drives us to consume water, which we need to survive, and thus to reproduce. Fear motivates us to avoid injury and death, which is instrumental to survival, and thus to reproduction. Lust drives us to have sex, which is directly linked to reproduction. Love for our children causes us to take care of them, which is instrumental to reproduction. Curiosity drives us to acquire knowledge, which increases our ability to act effectively in the world, which enables us to survive and (ultimately) to reproduce.

All of our emotions have functions that are derived from the purpose of reproduction, because our emotions evolved by natural selection, and reproduction is the basis of selection.

However, we are not compelled by our emotions to reproduce. Every emotion is instrumental to reproduction, but emotions do not necessarily make you want to reproduce. There is no reproduction drive. Instead, we have drives that motivate specific behaviors, such as eating or having sex, that solve specific biological problems. Together, those drives caused our ancestors to reproduce.

Emotions are ad hoc, heuristic and stimulus dependent. They don’t work in every situation or environment. At best, they roughly approximate reproductive utility. Because they are stimulus dependent, they can be tricked by artificial stimuli. In some cases, emotions produce maladaptive behavior.

Human emotions worked in the ancestral environment. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here. In that environment, they generated adaptive behavior most of the time. They caused people to reproduce. But modern civilization is very different from the ancestral environment. Our emotions do not work very well in the modern world. In this environment, human emotions often prevent people from reproducing. They make people choose not to reproduce.

There is a strange irony to this. We created modern civilization to satisfy our desires, and yet our desires are not adapted to it. When we change the world to fit our desires, we often (paradoxically) make our desires less adaptive.

Now, what is masturbation?

In the most literal and specific sense, masturbation is fake sex. It satisfies lust but has no reproductive utility.

We can metaphorically extend the concept of masturbation to other behaviors that satisfy emotions but have no reproductive utility.

For example, suppose that a man has sex with a woman who is on the birth control pill. The sex act satisfies his lust, but it has no reproductive utility. It has the emotional effect of sex, but not the biological effect that the emotion evolved to produce: the conception of a child. Sex with birth control is fake sex. It is masturbation.

I don’t want to oversimplify things. There are situations in which sex with birth control could be instrumental to reproduction. It could be part of developing a long-term relationship that eventually produces children. Sex with birth control isn’t always masturbatory, but it often is. Fertility rates are below replacement in the developed world, because birth control is being used in a masturbatory way.

Birth control is a way of tricking our emotions. It creates an emotional illusion. Birth control makes an event feel like sex when it isn’t really sex. The person using birth control is not consciously deceived. But he is deceiving himself at a deeper level.

The concept of masturbation can be extended further. Consider the woman who reads romance novels and watches romantic movies, but never goes on a date. She is masturbating. She is substituting fantasy love affairs for a real love affair. The woman who has cats instead of children is deceiving her maternal instincts. Cute cats and dogs are fetish objects that replace children. The man who plays video games is jerking off his will to power. The man with a fantasy girlfriend (a “waifu”) is jerking off his desire to pair-bond with a real woman.

Reproduction is the biological purpose of life. The brain’s function is to generate adaptive behavior. Any behavior that does not contribute to reproduction can be viewed as masturbation. By that definition, almost everything we do in the modern world is masturbation. We are jerking off our emotions. We are living simulated lives.

There are three big differences between modern civilization and the ancestral environment. The first is that we no longer struggle to survive. The second is that we have effective means of birth control. The third is that we have new types of artificial stimuli, such as porn, video games and TV shows. The industrial, sexual and information revolutions have created a new environment, to which our emotions are not adapted.

Modern civilization gives us more agency. We don’t need to struggle to survive. We can control our reproduction. We have more agency. This new agency is not harmful in itself, but it creates new problems of choice. Our emotions are not adapted to this new condition, so they don’t generate adaptive choices. This is further compounded by technology that gives us new ways to deceive our emotions with artificial stimuli. We not only have more control over our lives, we have more control over our minds.

People are using this new agency to masturbate. They are fapping away their lives.

Modern civilization doesn’t make people happy. Nothing can make us happy, because our emotions did not evolve to produce happiness. They evolved to make us reproduce. Making it easier to satisfy certain emotions did not produce a utopia of happiness. It just changed what people do. If survival needs are easily obtained, then sexual and social desires become more important.

The effect of the modern environment on the human animal is analogous to putting a car up on blocks, so that the wheels don’t touch the road. The engine can still run, and the wheels can spin faster without resistance, but the car doesn’t go anywhere. Modern man is spinning his psychological wheels, but going nowhere biologically.

Even if you choose not to reproduce, you are still a reproducing machine. You have the emotions of a reproducing machine. If you do not reproduce, you will still go through the motions of a reproducing machine. You will act out a simulation of adaptive behavior.

As a reproducing machine, there are really only two things that you can do: reproduce or masturbate.