Evolution of pedophilia

Many are accused of normalizing pedophilia, as it could be normalized. Pedophilia is normal and has been normal through the evolution of mankind. Evolution is not a myth either, and everything that evolution created is normal.

It started around 1.8 million years ago, when the first human brain size increase happened. The forest disappeared and with it the safety of tree branches. Big cats preyed onto the ancestors who had to survive in the resulting savannah. The ancestors had to live in bigger groups or die alone. Major obstacles to living in larger groups are fear and aggression. Hence, our ancestors had to get rid of these two.

The famous russian silver fox experiment did just that. They collected wild foxes from fur farms for the breeding experiment. Only the 10% friendliest foxes were selected for the next generation. Due to this rigorous selection they obtained domesticated foxes after few decades. Something similar happened to our ancestors, and it is called self-domestication. Any preferential treatment of those less aggressive exerts the same selective pressure as the selection by the experimenters, albeit at a much lesser magnitude.

As Belyaev (he started the russian silver fox experiment) noticed, domestication has a destabilizing effect. The timing of developmental processes is disturbed and leads to neoteny. The socialization period gets extended and the fear instinct manifests itself at a much later time or not at all. Evolution up to that point had endowed our ancestors with a range of instincts. They functioned like hard-wired methods for solving the challenges the individual encounters in a typical life. Then, domestication weakened all instincts. That poses both a problem and an opportunity. The hard-wired instincts had to be replaced by learned behavior. Domesticated animals lose the ability to tackle wildlife problems, since food and shelter is provided by humans. On the other side, they learn to interact with humans.

Solitary animals are aggressive to every other animal except to the opposite sex during mating season. The mating instinct kicks in and the love hormone oxytocin prevents aggression. Like a reflex the characteristics of the opposite sex cause a sexual arousal. This instinct too gets weakened during domestication. Attraction to a large degree gets learned during childhood. Some say that men are replacing their mothers with wives. The truth to it is that children have learned to deal with a certain personality and later in life tend to find partners that match this personality. This works by an erotization of clues that indicate a comforting environment.

However, living without instincts is not possible. There has to be a mechanism in place that starts the learning process. Moreover, not everything can be learned or is teached. Belyaev noticed that about 30 to 40% of is female fox population failed to breed or did not show maternal care to the litter. Does this sound familiar? Clearly, domestication process has gone too far in those foxes and they lost a necessary instinct.

Is there a mechanism in place that prevents the loss of necessary instincts? It happens, but no on a personal level. If the mating instinct fails to manifest, then it means the end to the genes of that person. Evolution pushes mankind to have less and less instinct until some have less than necessary. They are not forced towards the opposite sex and the erotization happens to other clues of comforting company. Let's be honest, the company of children is refreshing. Who doesn't like children?

Are pedophiles sick?

No! They are normal, but not average. Nobel prize winners are normal, but not average with respect to intelligence. Pedophiles are not average with respect to sexual desire. Nothing causes pedophilia. Something causes heterosexuality.

The sexual desire in average people is driven by innate behavior (instinct), it is said that the sexual instinct is the strongest in humans. But humans are losing instincts in the course of evolution.

If one gets food poisoning, it affects the inner ear. The horizon does not move before our eyes as our ears indicate. That is how we feel the effects of food poisoning, and we become nauseated and throw up. On a ship, when we lose the horizon and the felt movements do not correspond to our vision, our body recognized food poisoning and we throw up. When we sit on an airplane and the airplane starts moving without any outside view indicating it, some people get panic and try to leave the place. Some innate behavior is good, while others like fear of flying affects us negatively. Hence, during evolution we got less and less affected by innate behavior and had to replace the guiding effect of innate behavior by learned behavior - we got intelligent.

During puberty, average boys start feeling a very strong attraction towards same aged girls. Girls experience something like that too, where they get flattered by the strange attraction of boys. Average boys start behaving irrationally, ignoring advices and prohibitions. Everybody says they should concentrate on their studies, pals demand them to spend time with them. Parents are concerned wrt. STD's ... And they do sexting, because they might score. These are the effect of a strong mating instinct. Every unexplainable consistent irrational behavior probably is an instinct. The human brain has evolved and many processes have been broken down into smaller pieces. The mating instinct probably now is a combination of an attraction and an erotization part. 

In pedophiles, the mating instinct seems to have become too weak. Prenatal insults can prevent the manifestation of innate behavior (instincts). Boys are supposed to play in a certain way, also called gender conform. They should prefer certain toys, and if they do not, chances are that they become homosexuals (or other paraphilic). All MRI studies find something that is not average in pedophiles and similar. They also have found non-average responses in hormones. Pedophiles are not average, pretty much like the overly intelligent nobel prize winners. But they are normal!

With respect to the sexual mating instinct, pedophiles are on the low end of the distribution - just like stupid people, or short people. When pedophiles start loving someone, it was someone whose company was comforting. The problem with society is, that they have made this love impossible. The more distance they put between pedophiles and the children they love, the less they see them as subjects with a personality and more as sexual lust objects. If all you want is to put your dick in a bum, then you have gone the whole mile and lost out on the refreshing company of children.

Not all pedophile-labeled people are like this. There are antisocial psychopath who kill children. There are dads and stepdads who don't get enough of the love they need from their wives. There are arrogant men who travel to third world countries to buy child sex, because money buys everything.