I was cruising around in my Bimmer coupe this morning and thinking about sex.
It's unhealthy. I was thinking of a subject from recent postings on newsgroups - which means that newsgroups are spilling into 'real life'. I really have to stop. But still the point is a very interesting one.
After an energetic exchange with helenuhm at soc.culture.korean, and inspired by Drydem's post at soc.culture.china on how to upgrade the NSX to a fake Ferrari in Japan, I was left with a question of why men, especially younger guys, love cars, and why women *pretend* not to get it.
I was also struck by why some older people of both sexes only see cars as utility vehicles used for getting from point A to point B. And why I personally think of it more as a drifting toy (and less of a drag toy......as the 330Ci doesn't go fast enough.......shucks) and much less as a status symbol.......until some university friends helpfully oriented me to reality.
But why? RichAsianKid's not-so-original hypothesis: Sexual selection.
What are the most important things or "vectors" in life? In biological terms, it's fitness and fecundity. Fitness is Darwianian survival; fecundity is the ability to mate and multiply fruitfully.
See this very readable Wikipedia entry:
In fact, even the human brain may be considered as such - not because of historical survival value in the Pleistocene, but perhaps because of so-called runaway selection and the above Handicap Principle. This is also addressed in the Wikipedia entry above. A girlfriend of mine reiterated the clich=E9d adage that the sexiest organ is the brain.
Then, in the field of economics, there is this idea of conspicuous consumption, as promulgated by Veblen's Theory of the Leisure class in 1899. In modern urban societies, where strangers come and go, people increasingly advertise their wealth by ornamenting themselves with costly luxuries to demonstrate their status and for show.
And if they can get away with it: perhaps to fake it: like upgrading from an Acura NSX to a Ferrari, as drydem indicated.
Men only need a few minutes of recreational sex and 2 ounces of s**en Women need nine months of procreational sex and 2 gallons of breast milk
Some sort of paternal investment may be called for to balance out the biological equation! So women get to choose. But there needs to be a sieve with sufficient discriminatory ability to weed out real the men vs boyz........getting a suit from Brooks Brothers vs a pleated tee from Walmart is not of much discriminatory power. Ask men how much they have, and they lie. Diamonds, until recently, however, don't lie.
And this explains why cars are so important for young guys. Like antlers of deer and the peacock's tail, it is a conspicuous - and until now, difficult to fake - display of a male's financial health, and status, and hence marketability and perhaps innate biological quality.
(By the way, there is *nothing* to be ashamed of the Acura NSX. I'd drive it gladly...though the chassis is too 1990s, and yes it's overpriced [even *I* say that]. But since cars are now possible to fake, then this additional noise factor will need to be factored in the future....)
The two male-female worldviews are simply different, and feminists will be soooo very delighted I'm sure: men shoot (no pun there) for quantity, and women shoot for quality.
Not surprisingly cars are less meaningful in North America - they are cheaper and practically everyone can afford a car, and thus the discriminatory ability and hence their utility as an index of measure of the financial fitness of a male is correspondingly less. In upper middle class circles and near-rich circles cars have lost their discriminatory value as ornaments: *everyone* can afford a "luxury" car, and differences reflect utility value and personal tastes, like whether one prefers blue to green, not financial capability. Guys who love driving and drifting may get a, say, BMW, and those who love offroad utility may get a Hummer.
And that explains why women don't buy flashy cars - men don't dig rich but post-menopausal old women. They are of little reproductive value. Men's efforts may well be directed at additional matings with younger, poorer but fertile women.
And that's why older people (of both sexes) don't need or want flashy cars either. They're past their age of reproduction, and are not driven by the same biological imperative.
I now love my bimmer even more. In selected circles of course. I never thought of this topic so explicitly in evolutionary terms before, but I now realize that cars are more than just toys.
Think of cars as courtship in motion. Or if you prefer, mating gear.
That is, the love of cars is firmly grounded in biological reality.
And that's just common sense. ;)