Videos for week six - Homosexuality and Evolution

 Before watching the video linked for this week's post, I wanted to take note of my thoughts on the topic just to avoid any sort of bias. My thoughts on homosexuality and evolution aren't too much to share as I have always been an ally to the homosexual community and I believe in evolution. Although when combining those two topics new perspectives and opinions are formed. I have not been too informed on the evolution of homosexuality, but now that I'm thinking about it I do have a peaked interest as it can relate to modern time evolution of homosexuality or B.C. evolution of homosexuality, especially along the lines of the first perspective or third perspective as both contain different variants fo empathy and shame. I say that those perspectives have those variants because through periods of time the outlook of not just human evolution but homosexuality has raised debatable responses. 

As I began watching the TedTalk I was automatically intrigued as the speaker, James O'Keefe, began to make really interesting points in his speech. The first was how he described homosexuality in evolution as " a trait that tough to go extinct in a few generations" but through cultures and many animal species "homosexuality has been a small but distinct subgroup" which allows one to come to the conclusion that homosexuality is not a genetic error because natural selection would have been removed it from the gene pool. The pointing out of homosexuality being a subgroup never occurred to me that the trait would have possibly died out due to 80% being most likely to reproduce children. The discussion of homosexuality having always been around is something that is so fascinating to me because it seems as though everything on this planet wants to reproduce and live so badly yet why is there a trait that denies exactly that. Another one of my favorite quotes from the talk is "The recipe for a successful human culture is a synergy of many different ingredients" which further explains his statement before the quote where he notified that if all males were homosexual that it of course wouldn't work out and if all males were warriors then there will always be war. The quote simply yet strongly explains how homosexuals bring people together emotionally due to their high awareness of emotional intelligence. Continuing with the topic of needing different ingredients for human culture, O'Keefe discusses epigenetics and how it has the power to change our genetic expression to fit what currently needs to be met once born. For example, James used a picture of twin ants and there were very big noticeable differences between the two even though they were twins. One ant was very small and would go get food and critical think while the other was huge and brawny and made for protection. The conclusion made from this is again that epigenetics are so strong that they will decide what is necessary for a successful survival rate. 

I could honestly talk about this TedTalk for hours as I was truly captivated by the information I was receiving. The thought of a human body- a woman's body, nonetheless, can know when and how to naturally form a byproduct of birth control to reduce overpopulation by simply changing a child's sexual preference is flabbergasting. Knowing that our world is so quick to hate homosexuality and there even is the possibility of death for being gay is something that truly makes me describe our world as silly. Silly because of how much we hate things that nature has disposed to us for our survival, and how quick people are to do it too. After watching the TedTalk my opinions on homosexuality and evolution have truly stayed the same but have expanded to a sense of understanding not just from empathy but from the knowledge of mother nature knows exactly what she's doing.