Next Friday, December 11th, at 3 pm I will be delivering a talk at St. Francis College entitled “Highly-creative baby-breeding idea propagators: what human (re)productive choices mean for the future of our species“. The talk is a synopsis of a large section of my book-in-progress Breeders, Propagators, & Creators: Culture, Biology, and the Future of Human Evolution .
I’ll talk about human phenotypes that lead to zero reproductive output:
…what it means to be a “breeder” (my reclaimed term for those of us who biologically reproduce):
…what it means to be a “propagator” (my repurposed term for the spread of cultural ideas that all of us participate in):
…and what it means to be a “creator” (my repurposed term for those of us who introduce novel cultural variants into the existing pool of human ideas):
The main focus of my talk will be the trade-off that all humans face between breeding, propagating, and creating. I will present what we know about how different people negotiate this tradeoff, and explore what the extant diversity of human (re)productive strategies means — if anything — for the future evolution of our species.
I am grateful to Gregory F. Tague for setting up this talk. I hope to see you there!