Wednesday 3 November 2004

Cultural creativity is all about scoring sex

'The most dramatic examples of human culture, such as ritual, music, art, ideology, and language-play, seem like energetically expensive wastes of time, to someone thinking in terms of the survival of the fittest.
[...]
The costs and aesthetics of cultural behaviour that make it so inexplicable in survival terms make it perfect as a set of reliable fitness indicators that help advertise one’s superiority over sexual competitors.'
from Geoffrey F. Miller: 'Sexual Selection For Cultural Displays'

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