Rewrite: Mental Models that Organise The Bodily System
The human body is a an open biological system that is designed to learn and adapt to its environment. It learns and adapts to survive its natural surroundings, and it participates in the process of natural selection by doing so. The body’s adaptations are accumulated in genetic data over millennia and is passed onto each successive generation.
In this sense, the Mental Model that organises the Human Body is that of reproduction and continuation of the process of passing “human” genes.
However, the Human Body is after all not only a physiologically open, but a psychologically open system as well. Hence, we see that often the body is organised according to mental models that are far too complicated to be summarised as passing off the genes.
While genetic progress shows how the body learns over millennia of evolution, human behaviour also adapts to issues and desires within a single life and hence different mental models or organising bodily-sexual behaviour can be seen. Some of such mental models are briefly discussed as follows:
1.) Religious Celibacy
Many religious systems all over the world — such as Hinduism and Christianity — promote the idea of abstinence. This conscious refrain from sexual indulgence is often seen as a devotion to self-control, “purity” and meditation. Regardless of the merit behind these beliefs, it is true that they are followed by many across the world and have been followed since very long periods of time. When considering religious celibacy, the mental model that appears to organise bodily behaviour seems to be guided not merely from an evolutionary/reproduction viewpoint. In other words, the reproductive system is not seen as a means of procreating or furthering human survival, instead the urges associated with this system are to be controlled for “higher living”
2.) Queerness
The imagination of sexuality as a spectrum has furthered the discussions surrounding sex and procreation. Imagining sexual activity outside heteronormative trends allows us to understand that mental models that organise such bodily-sexual-physical behaviour are far more diverse than that of simple procreation. Procreation is optional within the queer conception of sex, and hence the mental model that seems to organise sexual behaviour along this spectrum seems to be that of using the body as an expressive agent, instead of a utilitarian procreative tool.
3.) Eco Anxiety
Eco Anxiety is a current trend, wherein people chose to not procreate because of impeding climate crises. People who experience eco anxiety choose not to procreate because they believe that adding to the current population will only increase the pressures upon the earth’s (already exhausted) resources. Hence, in a response to climate change, eco anxious mental models decide not to procreate. One difference that needs to be noted is that while celibates refrain from sex entirely, eco anxious people may indulge in sex but refrain from procreation.
Conclusion
Hence, while the larger mental model behind millennia of genetic evolution seems to guide the body to act as an agent of reproduction, it will be dishonest to say that the body interacts with its contemporary challenges and needs and is hence not bound entirely by the need to procreate.
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Sources
https://thenounproject.com/search/?q=Human%20Reproductive%20System&i=2747020
https://thenounproject.com/search/?q=Human%20Reproductive%20System%20Male&i=2747014
https://www.hinduwebsite.com/hinduism/essays/brahmacharya.asp
