Where does the desire to mate come from?

JustDave said:
I said before but want to add more to it now. A single cell doesn't know what it's doing. It just divides because that's what it does. The fact that it creates another cell is coincidental. But it's a coincidence that perpetuates itself. Human bodies do similar things. We produce insulin to process sugar. We don't have a desire to do that. We just do it. Like cell division, it's a handy coincidence that perpetuates the species.
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I would not call it a coincidence though. For easier understanding, I would call it another of the gazillion features of the organism and its cells, or "the nature of the organism".

The nature of the organism is to "seek". In this case, to seek survival (by multiplying). It's also why our hearts are beating.

The authors of Genesis were pretty insightful when they said:
"Be fruitful, and multiply." --Genesis 1:28

Don't mean to be didactic, just my stupid opinion.
 

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bobcat said:
I appreciate the reply, and perhaps I'm getting too inquisitive here, but it still leaves me with the original question. For me, the instinct to reproduce coming from instinct isn't very satisfying. I will try to re-phrase.

How does a single cell organism understand that it's reproduction is essential or necessary? Why wouldn't it just exist and die? Where does any desire to replicate come from? How could it, and why would it have any desire to replicate at all? Still puzzled. :unsure:
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A single cell organism doesn't have a concept of reproduction. It has no reasoning, it just does. It doesn't have a desire to reproduce, it just goes through a process that includes dividing. If it didn't, then it would be gone forever.

It reminds me that 99.9% of creatures that have ever been on this planet are now extinct. It just is.
 
Those who fail to mate, bear children, and raise them simply die out - leaving those who have the innate motivation to survive.

This happens at a fundamental level, not through rumination and strategy. We're in the midst of a mass culling right now, since living in crowded conditions suppresses survival behavior by ramping up selfish desperation and the feeling there is no purpose besides a sybaritic lifestyle.
 

VaughanJB said:
It reminds me that 99.9% of creatures that have ever been on this planet are now extinct. It just is.
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A bit off topic, but that is the exact figure I have been given. Did you get it from A Brief History of Nearly Everything? It's the only time I've seen that issue referenced. It's one of the few claims Bill Bryson makes without giving a source, but it's probably in the ball park given that very few species have left behind evidence of their existence in the fossil record.

If someone asked me what the strangest animal was, I would probably think of a kangaroo first. But with the millions of animals we don't know about that have existed, kangaroos would probably seem as normal as a living creature can get.
 
dilettante said:
Those who fail to mate, bear children, and raise them simply die out - leaving those who have the innate motivation to survive.

This happens at a fundamental level, not through rumination and strategy. We're in the midst of a mass culling right now, since living in crowded conditions suppresses survival behavior by ramping up selfish desperation and the feeling there is no purpose besides a sybaritic lifestyle.
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It's the Rat Syndrome. We're goin' down,
 
dusty said:
thanks for saying that. Iwanted to.

It takes a male to make a woman a 'ho' and any other word you can call her. So if you make a 'ho' what does that make you??
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A pimp? Then he's a pimp, so what? She's still a ho.
I believe you are mistaken. It does not take a male to make a ho, she can manage that on her own, I imagine.
When we are at the age of consent and able-bodied it is time to think of ourselves as adults and stop blaming everyone else for our predicaments, if they are predicaments. Maybe they're not.
 
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gruntlabor said:
It's the Rat Syndrome. We're goin' down,
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Self centered indulgence is a weakness of spirit, community and just plain getting along. The pandemic proved what wusses we are. Whether real, not real (covid) not my point. Our reaction was immaturity to a problem. Self indulgence separates us as a society. What would we do with a REAL problem? I shudder to think, and therefore won't.
 
Dave03 said:
Wanton sexual escapades? I'll have you know that's my wife you're talking about.
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Three of us were taking a trip in a car. My friend said he had read somewhere that a man confessed that he lusted after his own wife, and then asked in disbelief, "How could anyone lust after his own wife? I mean after your own wife? That's disgusting." The other guy in the car said, "I do it all the time," and I agreed. Not all of us are pure of mind and without sin. We are nasty little buggers.
 
mating-toads-andy-stuart.jpg
 
bobcat said:
How does a single cell organism understand that it's reproduction is essential or necessary? Why wouldn't it just exist and die? Where does any desire to replicate come from? How could it, and why would it have any desire to replicate at all? Still puzzled. :unsure:
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I don't know the original source of the 99.9% claim. This is a good read though: https://www.quora.com/How-did-scien...et-are-now-extinct-How-accurate-is-that-claim

As to the quoted text - it doesn't understand reproduction is essential. For single cell organisms, there's only what it does. There's no reasoning, understanding, thinking about it, and so on. A given environment that supports a type of life will support that life, until it no longer supports it and it dies out. There is no desire, just a process.
 
VaughanJB said:
I don't know the original source of the 99.9% claim. This is a good read though: https://www.quora.com/How-did-scien...et-are-now-extinct-How-accurate-is-that-claim

As to the quoted text - it doesn't understand reproduction is essential. For single cell organisms, there's only what it does. There's no reasoning, understanding, thinking about it, and so on. A given environment that supports a type of life will support that life, until it no longer supports it and it dies out. There is no desire, just a process.
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Well, at some point in time desire arose, because we have it today in most species. Courting behavior doesn't happen by accident or chance. It is a deliberate act. So somewhere along the line it seems to have become necessary or preferrable to self-replication with no desire.
 
Comes from the same place the desire to breathe, eat, heart to beat, socialize: drive to survive in the future.
 

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