The human mind on autopilot, can be a fascinating, dangerous and disgusting thing. By “autopilot” I mean operating without questioning one’s behavior, driven by basic instincts for survival, sex and tribalism. This is often typified to alarming perfection at high school and college parties in the western world. There are many more examples of autopilot behavior than just that, but a typical teenage/young adult party is where I have experience so that is where I will talk from.
The peacock spider (or Maratus Volans) is a fascinating species of spider where the males have large protrusions emanating from their bodies (insert a drawing of the spider here and make a snarky remark about how my lazy ass couldn’t find a free image of one online so I had to draw one). It is thought that these protrusions not only play no role in the individual’s survival, they are in fact a hindrance to the individuals survival. And yet, despite that, females will prefer to mate with males that have the largest protrusions. The theory for this is that if the male has a survival hindering body part and is still able to survive, that must mean that the rest of his genetics are strong and worthy of producing babies with.
What does this all have to do with high school parties? At parties, those teenagers operating on autopilot (about a 99-100% percentage of the total) will adhere to the following well spoken rules:
- Drinking as much as possible is encouraged and socially enforced, a requirement to be a member of the tribe
- If an individual adheres to rule #1 and is unable to hold their liquor (black-out, vomiting etc.) they are ousted from the tribe
- Drinking significantly less than one is capable of “handling” (or God forbid not at all) is severely frowned upon and will result in humiliating ousting from the tribe
Thus the only way to conventionally make it as a member of the tribe, is to drink as much as possible without blacking out. This is more commonly enforced in males, and I am firmly of the belief that the reason for these quite hypocritical rules is sexual selection.
It is no secret to the majority of people (even if they won’t openly admit it), that alcohol is poison. Of course it can also make you feel good, but the poison part is what is important here. The reason the males of the party are encouraged to drink (i.e. poison their bodies) is to test their genetics, or sexual fitness. If a male drinks a lot and is unable to hold their liquor, subconsciously the people at the party will assess his sexual fitness to be inadequate for mating. What may be slightly better for him would be to not drink at all, (or drink very little) because then at least the jury would still be out. But in practice this method has very minor benefits if any – strictly in relation to tribal acceptance (I’m not referring to health here).
The best outcome for the new tribe initiate would be to drink as much as possible and still be able to function like a mostly normal human being. Essentially this is intentionally poisoning the body to test if the genetics/sexual fitness of the body is strong. Like the peacock spider, if the hindrance (bodily protrusions or alcohol) is still able to make the individual survive, then that means their genetics are likely suitable for mating.