Stupid Old Man

Today in my biology class, we watched a video on psychological evolution. The scientists set up this experiment to test olfactory senses. The experiment called for a group of young men to wear the same white t-shirt for several days without washing it. As the days past, their unique biological "musk" was infused into the shirt. Then, a bunch of ladies were asked to smell the shirts and see which one they found more appealing. As it turns out, ladies found shirts from young men with opposite biological genes more appealing. This means many different things including ethnicity. But they found them more appealing because when people with different genes mate the offspring are more diversified and therefore "stronger" than the parents. The smaller the difference in genes, the weaker the offspring's genes will be. This explains why children whose parents are different races are healthier and, to some degree, more attractive than those from the parents of the same race. So the women are smelling a mate who would provide the strongest offspring. And while the appeal is subconscious, it is strong and convincing nontheless. This isn't a case for "opposites attract" though because this is based around science while that idea is based around nonsense.

Anyway, after watching the video all I could think about was that stupid old man from those eHarmony commercials. You know the guy. He stresses "compatibility" in relationships. Some degree of me believes him but I still see him as a stupid old man who profits off of love, which to me seems terribly morbid.

But it's funny. Our culture does stress compatibility in relationships yet nature stresses difference. Subconsciously we may find someone appealing from either sight, smell, touch, or taste, yet our brain is telling us that another person is better because said person is more like ourselves. Perhaps this is why everyone is so fucked up. We are being pulled in so many goddamn directions we just don't know what to do. Thanks, life.