Jackpot! I found this article, Author Offers Theory on Gray Matter of Love, in the New York Times last week. When I tried to think about what people “fundamentally want in life” back on May 28th (food,
health,
shelter,
safety,
security, sex), I couldn’t figure out where cultural pursuits fit in. Culture (music, visual arts, literature, etc.) seems natural and has been with us for a long, long time, so I’m felt a need to find a place for it on my list. This article explains that it basically fall under “sex.” A theory that makes sense to me: those who have time to learn the lute must have spare time on their hands, so playing the lute is showing off that you’ve easily secured the food, health, shelter, etc. stuff…
Q. So creativity becomes a “fitness indicator,” a way to strut one’s quality, precisely because it is so wasteful and expensive?
A. Once mate choice identifies a trait as informative about something, that trait is going to be under strong selection to amplify its appearance.
Those who invest the most energy, the most maintenance time, the most genes, into growing the trait, will attract the most mates. One of the book’s main ideas is that the human traits of art, music and creativity are in there by design, as fitness indicators.