Attraction is programming
Are your feelings and cravings real, or have you been programmed to feel so?
Science tells us that the modern human species (Homo sapiens) did not exist on Earth until approximately 300,000 years ago.
The oldest known fossils of our species were discovered in Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, and date back to this timeframe.
While our physical traits, such as a large braincase and a small face, were established by 300,000 years ago, the development of “behavioral modernity”, such as complex cave art, advanced tools, and agriculture, occurred much more recently, between 50,000 and 12,000 years ago.
Before this time, we are told through fossils and archaeological evidence that archaic humans, numerous earlier hominid species, extinct mammals, and dinosaurs occupied the Earth over a history spanning 4.5 billion years.
Have you seen some of the skeletal structures of these archaic humans? Do they look like what would be pleasing to behold in the flesh?
Some of them possess very strange, comically shaped heads and backs, totally different from the charming skeletal frame of modern humans. Unless, of course, there is nothing inherently “charming” about the modern human form, and perhaps the pleasantness we perceive in our present structures exists only in our minds because we are the ones experiencing it.
Do you think ants look ugly to themselves?
You’ve watched movies about aliens. Do you think they don’t “fall for” and drool over the beauty within their own species?
Possibly, if they were able to look at modern humans, they too would be bewildered by how strange we appear.
My point is that beauty is subjective.
Most often, it is only the beings having the experience who can perceive beauty in their own way.
I just remembered what we were taught about how fowls attract the opposite sex.
When you see a cock spread its feathers and move around a hen in what appears to be a very foolish way—to us, of course.
But that ‘dance’ you’re watching, which looks incredibly nonsensical, because how does spreading feathers and moving around like a “lunatic” translate into sexual attraction?
Yet what you call nonsensical is exactly what attraction means to the hen. The spreading and shaking of the feathers, circling the hen, vocal sounds (crowing or clucking variations), showing dominance and vitality, etc., that’s how the hen evaluates the male.
This behavior is part of sexual selection, where traits or behaviors evolve not because they are “practical,” but because they increase mating success. It is a biological signaling system, not a subjective attraction experience like humans imagine.
The rooster is essentially communicating health, strength, genetic fitness, dominance, and status, among other traits.
The hen is responding to signals her nervous system is biologically tuned to detect.
In the same way, women naturally appreciate masculine men who demonstrate strong leadership and authority qualities, as well as the ability to provide emotional, physical, and overall security.
Of course, many women may not consciously recognize that this is what informs their attraction to a particular male. They often attribute it to various biological signaling systems that evolution has developed within us. But at the base of all those chemical processes, a “natural” woman fundamentally seeks to be led rightly. This, of course, is also programming, but that is not the focus here.
Rather, the point I am making here is that attraction is not purely “logical.” It is programmed behavior shaped by evolution. Different species have different “attraction languages.”
And the lack of objectivity surrounding attraction—and even many other things that we describe as what we like, and also what is likeable in different species—is essentially what makes those things inherently TRANSIENT.
In the same way that a person can be intensely attracted to another because of physical beauty, height, or perceived masculinity, the hen is swept off its feet by the “dance” the cock performs.
We are beings of programming.
And it’s okay to live in the present and appreciate what your current species identifies as beautiful, lovely, and good.
But know that most of our references, meanings, and assumptions are terribly contextual. They exist largely within the framework of our minds and imaginations, and it is a mistake to become LOST in them. It is a mistake to define REALITY by what is transient and subjective.
We’ve been told and conditioned to find beauty in certain qualities, and that is why they sound like music to our ears, not because they possess any objective significance in themselves.
Your cravings, ambitions, body build, carriage, likes, dislikes, and sense of meaning are all contextual to your present existence.
In essence, many of them are either not real, real but far removed from the original, or entirely fabricated to provide us with temporary experiences in the here and now.
So learn to look beyond everything you currently call reality.
We will not always have these bodies. Therefore, if all your “hope” and “confidence” is in your appearance and adornments, we can safely say that you are setting yourself up for a miserable life, or afterlife.
I won’t fail to admit that it is incredibly difficult to ignore your feelings, your body, and the immediacy of the present moment, and to attempt to live from some supposed transcendental state of consciousness.
And I am not even suggesting that you do.
I am only saying that this is not the whole of who you are, and this is not necessarily all that God made—unless you can prove that archaic humans were not also created by God.
Which humans did Adam belong to?
Which of these different human species did Jesus come to die for?
Is science wrong?
What is real, and what is fake?
The questions may never end.
So live in the present, certainly, but do not become lost in it. Then, when this present age passes away—as many civilizations and former “presents” have already passed away—you may remain relevant in whatever comes next.