Entertainment expresses emotions. Effective entertainers emotionally connect with their audiences.
Entertainment integrates limbic brain emotions with cerebral cortex imagination. When an entertainer
expresses an old emotion in a new way, we applaud.
Other animals do the same mating rituals generation after generation. E.g., peahens never get
bored watching peacocks showoff their tail feathers. Like peahens, older women enjoy 300-yearold
operas. But young women want only new music, the latest clothes, and the coolest actors.
Their greatest put-down is "that’s so ten minutes ago."
Effective entertainers have integrated brains. Conversely, to improve your brain integration, develop
your entertainment skills.
Entertaining men attract women. When a man’s performance makes a woman feel emotionally
connected, her limbic brain tells her that she’s in a long-termrelationship with him.
A woman with an integrated brain responds, "I want a long-term relationship with this man. I’ll
buy his CDs (or watch his movies). I’ll feel as if I’ve known him for years."
A woman with a poorly integrated brain might try to have a physical relationship with the man,
even though her cerebral cortex tells her that he’ll never commit to a relationship with her. In a
conflicted brain, the older area wins.
Entertainment skills can make women ignore a man’s faults. E.g., Woody Allen’s sense of humor
attracts women, even though he’s small, scrawny, and married his stepdaughter.26 (At least he’s
a family man.)
25
Women’s Entertainment Skills
Male entertainers, in general, have both male and female fans. Female entertainers, until recently,
had only female fans, and had fewer fans than male entertainers. E.g., your local ballet
company has fewer fans than your professional basketball team.
Masculine individuals (generally, but not always, men) use entertainment skills to attract sexual
partners. Feminine individuals (generally, but not always, women) use entertainment skills to
keep a partner in a long-termrelationship.
E.g., a woman who makes her husband laugh each day, and makes his heart ache when she sings
lullabies to their children, has a husband who’s not going to leave her.
Legendary King Shahryar took a new woman to bed each night, and then killed each woman in
the morning. One woman saved herself by telling a story with a cliffhanger ending. Shahrazad
kept this up night after night, spinning Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Sinbad the Sailor, and
other stories into One Thousand and One Arabian Nights (circa A.D. 1000).
Truth and Lying in Art and Entertainment
Entertainment skills increase reproductive success so effectively (i.e., getwomen to have sex with
men, and get men to stay with women) that sexual selection for entertainment skills may have
driven our ancestors to evolve larger cerebral cortexes.27
Art and entertainment are lies, from the point of view of the liar. E.g., when an actor playing
Hamlet says that he’s going to kill his stepfather, the actor isn’t threatening his stepfather’s life. A
painter creates an image that looks real, but isn’t. A poem makes us visualize a scene we don’t
see. Novels and movies take us into a worlds we’ve never experienced.
But art and entertainment are truthful, from the point of view of the audience. Effective artists
and entertainers communicate emotions that "strike a chord" in the listener or viewer. They tell
the truth not about themselves–e.g., you don’t want to know that an actor is afraid of forgetting
his lines, or is hoping that a movie producer might be in the audience and offer him a betterpaying
job–but instead quiet their own emotions and emote the audience’s feelings.
Religion and Evolution
Art, entertainment, religion, and reproductive success are entwined. Religious men and women
sing in church or synagogue, dramatically recite Bible stories, dance at rituals, etc. Most societies
encourage religious men, e.g., rabbis, to marry and produce large families. Men prefer to marry
religious women, because they’re more likely to be sexually faithful.
Our ancestors’ sexual preference for partners with deeply moving emotional skills may have
driven them to evolve brains capable of spiritual thought. I.e., evolution enabled humans to
think spirituality, and, conversely, spiritual thinking may have driven human evolution.
Consumerism as Runaway Sexual Selection
For our ancestral fathers, entertainment was "do it yourself." Dinner was killing and roasting an
animal. After dinner, they played music, danced, or told epics of their heroes.
Now consider what happens in modern courtship. We take our dates to restaurants where we
pay professional chefs to cook them great food, or to dance clubs where professional musicians
excite their auditory systems, or to films where professional actors entertain them with vicarious
adventures. The chefs, musicians, and actors do not actually have sex with our dates. They just
get paid. We get the sex if the date goes well. Of course, we still have to talk in modern courtship,
and we still have to look reasonably good. But the market economy shifts much of the courtship
effort from us to professionals. To pay the professionals, we have to make money, which means
getting a job. The better our education, the better our job, the more money we make, and the
better the vicarious courtshipwe can afford. Consumerism turns the tables on ancestral patterns
of human courtship.a Consumerism hotwires our brains’ relationship circuits. Cars, shopping malls, television, and
Julia Schultz’s Playboy poses hit these neural circuits.
Women are especially susceptible to consumerism. E.g., on eBay, women described 11% of their
shoes as "sexy."Men described only 0.005% of their shoes as "sexy."
Consumerism makes us work longer hours to buy more stuff for our mates. Women have less
time to exercise and look attractive. Men have less time to practice entertainment skills. Couples
have less time together.
The effects of consumerism range from environmental destruction to anti-American hatred.
Runaway consumerism–not war, crime, or disease–is the greatest threat to human survival. Focus
on relationships, not buying stuff. You’ll be happier and your grandchildren will have a
planet to live on.
Entertainment integrates limbic brain emotions with cerebral cortex imagination. When an entertainer
expresses an old emotion in a new way, we applaud.
Other animals do the same mating rituals generation after generation. E.g., peahens never get
bored watching peacocks showoff their tail feathers. Like peahens, older women enjoy 300-yearold
operas. But young women want only new music, the latest clothes, and the coolest actors.
Their greatest put-down is "that’s so ten minutes ago."
Effective entertainers have integrated brains. Conversely, to improve your brain integration, develop
your entertainment skills.
Entertaining men attract women. When a man’s performance makes a woman feel emotionally
connected, her limbic brain tells her that she’s in a long-termrelationship with him.
A woman with an integrated brain responds, "I want a long-term relationship with this man. I’ll
buy his CDs (or watch his movies). I’ll feel as if I’ve known him for years."
A woman with a poorly integrated brain might try to have a physical relationship with the man,
even though her cerebral cortex tells her that he’ll never commit to a relationship with her. In a
conflicted brain, the older area wins.
Entertainment skills can make women ignore a man’s faults. E.g., Woody Allen’s sense of humor
attracts women, even though he’s small, scrawny, and married his stepdaughter.26 (At least he’s
a family man.)
25
Women’s Entertainment Skills
Male entertainers, in general, have both male and female fans. Female entertainers, until recently,
had only female fans, and had fewer fans than male entertainers. E.g., your local ballet
company has fewer fans than your professional basketball team.
Masculine individuals (generally, but not always, men) use entertainment skills to attract sexual
partners. Feminine individuals (generally, but not always, women) use entertainment skills to
keep a partner in a long-termrelationship.
E.g., a woman who makes her husband laugh each day, and makes his heart ache when she sings
lullabies to their children, has a husband who’s not going to leave her.
Legendary King Shahryar took a new woman to bed each night, and then killed each woman in
the morning. One woman saved herself by telling a story with a cliffhanger ending. Shahrazad
kept this up night after night, spinning Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Sinbad the Sailor, and
other stories into One Thousand and One Arabian Nights (circa A.D. 1000).
Truth and Lying in Art and Entertainment
Entertainment skills increase reproductive success so effectively (i.e., getwomen to have sex with
men, and get men to stay with women) that sexual selection for entertainment skills may have
driven our ancestors to evolve larger cerebral cortexes.27
Art and entertainment are lies, from the point of view of the liar. E.g., when an actor playing
Hamlet says that he’s going to kill his stepfather, the actor isn’t threatening his stepfather’s life. A
painter creates an image that looks real, but isn’t. A poem makes us visualize a scene we don’t
see. Novels and movies take us into a worlds we’ve never experienced.
But art and entertainment are truthful, from the point of view of the audience. Effective artists
and entertainers communicate emotions that "strike a chord" in the listener or viewer. They tell
the truth not about themselves–e.g., you don’t want to know that an actor is afraid of forgetting
his lines, or is hoping that a movie producer might be in the audience and offer him a betterpaying
job–but instead quiet their own emotions and emote the audience’s feelings.
Religion and Evolution
Art, entertainment, religion, and reproductive success are entwined. Religious men and women
sing in church or synagogue, dramatically recite Bible stories, dance at rituals, etc. Most societies
encourage religious men, e.g., rabbis, to marry and produce large families. Men prefer to marry
religious women, because they’re more likely to be sexually faithful.
Our ancestors’ sexual preference for partners with deeply moving emotional skills may have
driven them to evolve brains capable of spiritual thought. I.e., evolution enabled humans to
think spirituality, and, conversely, spiritual thinking may have driven human evolution.
Consumerism as Runaway Sexual Selection
For our ancestral fathers, entertainment was "do it yourself." Dinner was killing and roasting an
animal. After dinner, they played music, danced, or told epics of their heroes.
Now consider what happens in modern courtship. We take our dates to restaurants where we
pay professional chefs to cook them great food, or to dance clubs where professional musicians
excite their auditory systems, or to films where professional actors entertain them with vicarious
adventures. The chefs, musicians, and actors do not actually have sex with our dates. They just
get paid. We get the sex if the date goes well. Of course, we still have to talk in modern courtship,
and we still have to look reasonably good. But the market economy shifts much of the courtship
effort from us to professionals. To pay the professionals, we have to make money, which means
getting a job. The better our education, the better our job, the more money we make, and the
better the vicarious courtshipwe can afford. Consumerism turns the tables on ancestral patterns
of human courtship.a Consumerism hotwires our brains’ relationship circuits. Cars, shopping malls, television, and
Julia Schultz’s Playboy poses hit these neural circuits.
Women are especially susceptible to consumerism. E.g., on eBay, women described 11% of their
shoes as "sexy."Men described only 0.005% of their shoes as "sexy."
Consumerism makes us work longer hours to buy more stuff for our mates. Women have less
time to exercise and look attractive. Men have less time to practice entertainment skills. Couples
have less time together.
The effects of consumerism range from environmental destruction to anti-American hatred.
Runaway consumerism–not war, crime, or disease–is the greatest threat to human survival. Focus
on relationships, not buying stuff. You’ll be happier and your grandchildren will have a
planet to live on.
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