Expensive Signals in the Internet

A friend of mine has found a new partner via internet. She had published an advertisement and now her life is navigating towards changes. She looks simultaneously content, excited and hesitant. I was curious to hear what has happened so far: "I wanted him to be tall, dark-haired and robust. He isn´t. He is fair-haired, medium-sized and thin. I felt disappointed, but started weighing the facts. I realized that I myself might not be perfect either and decided to go ahead."

It would be very, very interesting to know what would have happened if women had chosen their mating partners via internet from the very beginning of the existence of the mankind. So far we have chosen our partners in the same way as the peacock hens do. They look at the size, shape and colour of the tail.

The peacock hen knows that the more impressive the tail, the more difficult it is for the cock to stay alive. The big tail makes looking for food complicated. A colourful tail looks also delicious on the menú of the fox, tiger and other big cats. From the point of view of peacock´s survival the big tail means a serious handicap. The peacock hen does not think short-sightedly of her own benefit. If it did, she would choose a cock with the least striking tail. That would ensure that she won´t become an instant widow. Now she chooses the cock that has the biggest and most colourful tail just because it is so difficult and dangerous to carry. The choice is based on the simple message sent by the cock: "I´m so strong and peacockwise intelligent that I can afford a handicap like this. It is difficult to carry and impossible to hide, but it is exactly therefore I´m worth choosing. I´m special. My genes have extra value."

To be attractive in the eyes of the opposite sex you need to do something difficult. You need to send messages showing that you have extra capacities - a good sense of humour, artistic talent, a relaxed attitude towards life and its hazzles. No matter what it is, it has to tell that you need not use your last bits and pieces of energy just for the simple day-to-day survival. You have excessive vitality. You can afford to waste it.

Tor Norretranders´ book Homo generosus - seksiä, taidetta ja bisnestä (ISBN: 951-884-383-X, Danish original Det generose menneske: En naturhistorie om at umage giver mage) is an eye-opener. Norretranders uses the term kallis signaali, an expensive signal, for the peacock´s tail. According to his theory life is not simply survival of the fittest. Natural selection did not make us as we are. The present animal life is result of all the choices females have made. Decisive is not what is done, decisive is that a female registers it to be difficult in the same way as carrying a beautifully developed peacock´s tail is.

Norretranders compares the human brain with the peacock´s tail. The brain is first of all a sexual attraction, a profuse show of efficiency, a gigantic waste of resources. We have brain just to show to the opposite sex that we are worth getting to know and having as a mate. In the case of human beings both men and women make choices. Both of us use the brain to send expensive signals telling the opposite sex that we have excessive resources, we can afford this and that.

What does this have to do with my friend and the man she has met via internet? When she was young, she got married with a man that was tall, dark-haired and robust, she had three handsome boys and a beautiful girl with him, and not too soon the man realised that the marriage did not suit him, he left and she was left to take care of the children. Now that the children are grown up, she has studied and got a university degree. She is a highly appreciated professional in her field. And without internet she would make the same choice she did when young - tall, dark-haired and robust. However, now she learnt to know a different kind of expensive signal first - a proof of the existence of profuse energy and the gigantic waste of resources...

If most people, or all people in the world had made their mating choices based on that specific expensive signal, what would humans look like, how would we act today, what type of problems would we have, what kind of suggestions for their solution?

What will normal life in Finland look like in twenty, forty years´ time if most of the young people first learn to love the brain power and just after that the looks of the other person? Or maybe that does not matter. All people are beautiful when young. Maybe the internet is just for the second choices.