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.

Neoteny, gut feeling, and dwindling human instincts

Human have a free will, right? My gut feeling tells me no. The field of psychology is a science that figures out what makes humans tick. If humans had a free will, we would just snap out of a deep depression and be happy at will. Psychologist wouldn't have a job to go to. It simply does not work that way. There is even a book about the science of fear. It shows how gut feeling interferes with rational thinking and even leads to riskier behavior.

The human gut feeling are the remains of fully functional instincts. Instincts guide behavior in animals, the perceived situation triggers one or another response. Reflexes are more simpler, sensory input leads to a motoric action. Instincts are like an advanced version of it.

Instincts are good for animals, but not so good for humans. We live in a more complicated world, where our actions should not solely be guided by gut feelings. As mentioned in the book, our gut feeling might be a disadvantage. In difference to animals, humans possess rational thinking, which leads to better outcomes.

Neoteny is an explanation for the dwindling human instincts. While most animals are born with a fully myelinated brain, humans are not. Those animals join the flock after a short rest following birth and show instinctive behavior. Newborn humans show few reflexes and very few instincts.

Neoteny works by slowing down maturation of the affected parts up to the point of standstill. The processes responsible for development simply work at a slower speed. Myelination of the human brain does not happen in uterus, it takes many years of human life. During this time, we learn how to cope with the challenges our environment throws at us, and we develop strategies for survival. Those strategies can work along with our instincts or work against them.

Neoteny appeared due to evolution. This means the maturation processes were faster in some individuals, and slower in others. Those small variations are enough to give an advantage to the ones going into the right direction. Moreover, not all maturation processes are slowed down equally. Compared with chimpanzees the body needs like 3 times the amount to mature, while the brain needs several more times.

Rebellion during the teenage years are a good example for instincts. The irrational behavior is exactly that: irrational. It often is attributed to raging hormones, but is better explained by instincts. The orientation towards age peers and conforming to their pressure is more important than obedience to parents. Even more important is the attraction towards the opposite sex. Parents might forbid it and age peers might ridicule one, nevertheless the opposite sex must be conquered. Some teenagers are more obsessed with it than others. This is so irrational, that instincts must be responsible for that. We all know how teenagers behave who were gifted with more than the usual amount of teenagers instincts.

Those, who have a lesser amount of teenage instincts, will behave according to the learned norms and conform to requests. Since the current society wants to keep adolescents immature for a prolonged time, those children will stay children. Stunted psychological or emotional development is real. There are several theories why this happens, but i'm missing the role instincts play. One very important instinct is the heterosexual mating instinct. If that one does not manifest, then the genes don't make it into the next generation. This is the disadvantage that evolution uses to stop the dwindling instincts from disappearing altogether.

Since i'm always seeking the connection to pedophilia, this is no exception. Quite too often i found on the internet the notion that boylovers see themselves as emotionally young. One even wrote that it is tiring to pretend to be an adult all the time. If one feels himself as a teenaged boy, one probably is stunted in his emotional development. It might be as simple as this. The heterosexual mating instinct is too weak in pedophiles. The obstacles for a normal heterosexual relationships offer too much a resistance for this instinct to overcome. Those obstacles might come in different forms. Sometimes the family environment is diametral to the romantic advances of the child, sometimes it is just missed opportunities. Common factor is the absence of "raging hormones".

Sexuality is like the tip of an iceberg

This is a picture of mine that emerged some time ago. Sexuality does not exist on its own, but it heavily connected the innermost emotions and needs a person has. It is like the tip of an iceberg. There is so much hidden underneath and it determines what shows up.

Those guys, who tried to convert homosexuals, tried to destroy the tip. And like in case of an iceberg, another part shows up. In reality, removing the tip of an iceberg only makes it's orientation more stable. Conversion therapy attacked the part that is only a consequence. In many senses the iceberg behaves like the heads of Hydra.

The current picture of sexuality as a fixed point along the axis from pure-homosexual to pure-heterosexual is simply wrong. I see sexuality like a multi-directional thing. Humans love every possible group of people more or less. Loving one group does not automatically mean no love for other groups. Its like beams of different length fastened to the center of an iceberg, which determines the shape of it.

Quite often, when i read biographies of person with non-heterosexual orientation, i find many things wrong in their family lives. Even Stephen Fry commented in his "out there" series that he did not come from a "normal" family. Boylovers also report about the lack of some emotional attachment in their childhood.

Sexuality was and is so imperatively important for the survival of mankind that the mechanisms of sexuality must have been hard wired at the lowest level, hence much below the consciousness. The nature of ones sexuality is not a choice. But i don't think that it is random or without any purpose, it does not happen by accident. There is this picture of homosexuals that the other part makes them a whole; they complete each other. Hence one could think of homosexuality as the search of a companion that reduces ones own perceived deficits. I said perceived, because those might not be real ones, but something indoctrinated in childhood.

The case with childlovers of all kind might be similar. We love girls and boys, whether small, peripubertal, or teenagers, only from the same race with traits similar to our own or exotic, all this to a more or less degree. Hence, we are dealing with an universe of childlovers. Also here sexuality towards children is only the tip of the iceberg. For some reason those adults are drawn to children, the main reason is hidden underneath the surface - since procreation is ruled out, it's basically not about having sex.

Some find children attractive, because adults are so mean, especially women. The current stigmatization works like a charm - similar to removing the tip of an iceberg, making it just much more stable.

I find the name sexology as a term for a science hilarious, since it is not a separate field if one follows my picture. How they can just deal with sexuality and ignore everything else, is completely incomprehensible to me. James, the guru, is looking at brain structure and erections, while others look at brain activity when it is exposed to nice pictures. This seems a dead end, at least to me. In order to understand sexuality, one has to discover the motives, what gives satisfaction besides orgasm.

My conclusion: if one wants to cure the sexuality of people, one has to dive and work on the parts underneath. Sexology researchers entertain the idea that sexuality is fluid, but so far have failed at making it work. From what i understand, it will be a lot of work, if not futile.