Sex

I was rereading some older Dawkins this week and wondered why no one ever talked about sex in our evolutionary process. I’m sure that almost all creatures here on earth enjoy sex in some way or another, but there are very few creatures that seem to do the act solely for pleasure. So I wonder when in our evolutionary process we humans learned to enjoy it and if it one of the reasons that we are the dominate creatures here on earth?

Surely the enjoyment of sex has lead to more procreation, but it is the other aspects that seem to really have a more salient root in the argument. Think of a young you, about 13, and how you dealt with the feelings budding inside of you. Were you uncomfortable? Sacred? Confused? Distant? Was it because of love, lust, or just a general sense that something was going on and you weren’t sure how to deal with it?

Now I would like to be a romantic and say that it was purely love, but I think that evolution would have mixed love and the need for sex together. That is to say, how often do you yearn for a love that is not physical? Is not touching, kissing, holding, caressing, and sex one of the main driving factors?

So where does that leave us? Is love and sex to thank just as much as our opposable thumbs and larger brains? Could they be an outcome of our desires? Are we a deeper evolved species because we yearn for the emotional and sexual gratification of each other? And does our continued progress in intellectual evolution come from our desire to show that young 13 year old us that we have the will to understand the cosmos, if just to prove that we might someday have the potential of understanding those who we are attracted to?