During courtship, males evince complex stereotyped behaviors… no, we’re not talking about anyone you know, but about male fruit flies, in whose brains courtship activates a couple of dozen neurons.
In order to move past stereotypes and ensure the advancement of the species, Homo sapiens must (or should, anyway) engage quite a few more neurons, and above all activate several types of creative behavior. Indeed, courtship has an important evolutionary function, thanks to the double mechanism of sexual selection identified by Darwin: on the one hand, the extravagant display that characterizes competition among males, and on the other the selection of the best specimen by the females. However, when Darwin moves from theory to practice in this regard, he becomes somewhat clumsy.
For certain radical evolutionists, seduction is the ultimate goal not only of the conspicuous peacock’s fan, but of the better part of human artistic production, of music, humor and even consumer habits.
Cyrano de Bergerac knew this well (here in the comedic version of Steve Martin), embodying the extent to which the whole question of mating is rather complicated for us humans. Much more so than for a fruit fly. But also more thrilling and, emotionally speaking, more dangerous.
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