Biology, and Love and Glory

Love and glory are of the fundamental attributes of God and reality. Love is unconditional whereas glory is earned respect, or conditional love. They are deeply intertwined and complementary.

The mysterious and profound relationship between love and glory has something to do with the mysterious and profound relationship between men and women.

Women’s primary identity is as mothers, a status that is available to all without righteousness or desert. Men’s primary identity is as priesthood holders, a status that is as fragile as bubbles and as conditional as if-then logic.

The connection also exists biologically. Biologically men must prove themselves, whereas women are intrinsically valuable. As Bruce Charlton explains:

All young healthy women are valued, all have significant power – because all are significantly desirable and desired.

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(The situation is very different for young men. To be a man is to be part of a zero-sum game. If a man does not have valued qualities then he is not valued – is indeed despised – and is indeed regarded as, is treated as, disposable. Which, biologically and economically – although certainly not religiously – he is.)

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This difference between young men and women is probably mostly for biological reasons described by Robert Trivers in relation to investment of resources in offspring. Over many generations of our ancestors women invested differentially vastly more resources into children than men (9 months pregnancy, a few years of feeding, and several years of total care); and this deeply shaped human psychology. By contrast, one man could provide all the necessary investment to make as many babies as required, and only economically-valuable men were necessary for their upbringing.

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Young healthy women have the greatest reproductive potential – they can expect to have the most babies and stay well to look after them until the offspring have ceased to be dependent.

That is why visual and behavioural cues signalling ‘young and healthy’ in a woman = what we term beautiful, desirable, sexy.

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Anyway, this means that the attractiveness of young healthy women is a gift; it is not something earned or striven-for.

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As so often, reality is reflected in Nursery Rhymes!

Men must prove themselves:

Jack be nimble, Jack be quick!
Jack jump-over the candlestick!

Whereas for an exceptionally beautiful, healthy young woman…

Goldilocks, Goldilocks wilt thou be mine?
Thou shalt not wash dishes, nor yet feed the swine.
But sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam.
And feed-upon strawberries, sugar and cream.

The eternal complements of love and glory give meaning to these biological realities. Our nature is not an accident. The old, old ways of man with maid are, in a way, written across the heavens and imbued into the syllables of time.