Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Lois & Clark Fanfic FDK: On The Other Hand, 112 and 113/?

Jumping a bit ahead here....

From part 115:

How interesting. Lois is going to ask Clark why he loves Lana more than her.

The standard response is that it's wrong to ask such a question, because you are not responsible for your feelings when you are in love. You love just because. Because your heart has set its sight on this other person. And that is all there is to it.

Well, my colleague Arnost Rusek, who is so extremely interested in biological explanations for everything, begs to differ. Arnost claims that in many cases, we are ruled by our genes. They, our genes, really have only one desire: they want us to send them, our genes, into the future by procreating, by having babies. But that's not all: our genes also want us to have babies with the 'best' possible person (or persons).

Our genes want us to make the 'best' babies we can, the sort of babies that have the best chances of procreating themselves. Therefore, our genes are always on the lookout for such a more-or-less perfect mate for us. And when they, our genes, spot such a highly desirable mate for us, they make us fall head over heels in love with that person. That way they make us want to have sex with that person, and if we obey our genes and do have sex with the object of our genes' desire, we may indeed end up having a baby with that person.

I believe that Arnost's theory does have merits. Think about it. It is almost impossible to be very much in love with a person and not want to have sex with that person, isn't it?

You may object that, yes, you do want to have sex with the person you are in love with, but you do not necessarily want to have his babies (or her babies if you are a guy). But that is because our genes are so primitive and so unaware of modern technologies. Our genes don't know that there are contraceptives. So while our genes insist that we are in love and want to have sex, our cool heads can choose not to have sex with that person in spite of our infatuation, or else we can choose to have sex but use contraceptives. That way we are only partly ruled by our genes.

But I think Arnost is right when he says that falling in love with a person is at least mostly about our genes having spotted a person that they want us to have babies with.

(And this is the difference between being 'in love' and 'liking' and 'loving': To be 'in love' means that you want to have sex and babies with a person, to like that person means to approve of and appreciate that person and to like being in that person's company, and to 'love' menas that you want to do what you can to make that person happy.)

Arnost says that this is why some women want to have sex with men who are irresponsible rascals or worse. Such men are often charming. Men who are worse than rascals, men who are downright criminal, sometimes ooze power. Many women like that. If they have sex with such a man and have his son, a son who resembles his father, then maybe the son will be as charming and irresistible as his father was, and that way the son may have babies with a lot of different women and give his mom a lot of grandchildren.

However, men like these - the rascals and the criminals - are often very bad at providing for their children. Why should they stay with just one woman? Remember that we are talking about men who really are charming, at least to many women. Instead of staying with one woman to take care of her and her children, they can leave her pretty much as soon as they have impregnated her and move on to impregnate more women. Such men can end up having a dozen children or more and never taking care of a single one of their children.

But the pregnant woman needs someone who is going to take care of her and her child (or children). According to Arnost, the best thing for her is to find a staid, reliable, dependable man who will take care of her, and then she can cheat on him with charming guys and have their kids instead of her husband's.

I know, it sounds awful. I too was shocked when Arnost first explained it to me. I absolutely don't believe that all women will do that - indeed, I know that not all women will do that. But I also believe that quite a few women will.

As for men, Arnost says, they most of all want to have as many children as possible. A woman can't realistically have more than twenty children, and usually her body can't deal with having a lot more than ten. But a man can have literally hundreds of children, if he has access to a sufficient number of women. That is why some men are such incredible womanizers, Arnost says. And that is why many men are looking for voluptuous twenty-year-old girls even when the men themselves are in their seventies or older - because their genes still insist that they impregnate more women, and the more obviously voluptuously fertile a woman is, the easier it should be to impregnate her. And that, says Arnost, is why men prefer young women.

Of course, the rich old playboy may end up just having sex with his newest girlfriend instead of making babies with her. His genes forgot to tell him not to use birth control.

All of this is quite depressing, because this way of looking at the human race certainly shows humanity from a pretty sordid side. But like I said, not all men and not all women are like that or act like that.

Let's return to Lois and Clark and OTOH. Clark is in love with Lana. Why, though? Is it only a hangup, a fixation? Arnost tells me that blond hair signals a higher level of female fertility, but I really don't know if that is true. But is that why Clark is in love with Lana and not with Lois? Because Lois hasn't got Lana's blond hair? That just can't be it, can it? Then what is it? Is it that Lana reminds him of his childhood and his innocence? And he shares so many memories with her? Well, if so, then he and Lana have grown apart during the two years he has been married to Lois. Now he shares many memories with Lois that he doesn't share with Lana.

Don't tell me that Clark just wants to 'diversify'? Well, he already has two kids with Lois, and now his genes tell him it's time to have a few babies with Lana????

Clark has no reason to believe that Lana is more fertile than Lois, or that she should be better at giving him babies. Goodness, Lois has become pregnant every time he has made love to her. Lana, on the other hand, has had a miscarriage.

So why is Clark in love with Lana but not with Lois? I look forward to the answer. But maybe Clark isn't going to answer Lois's question, in the same way that he didn't answer Sam's?

Ann