There are only a few directions the brain can evolve:
- Neoteny (delay of maturity, retention of childlike features, giving more time for cognitive development).
… a) developmental specialization (sense, physical, social, abstract), which for some reason we tend to vary in.
… b) Prefrontal, cortical, inhibition (agency) – appears to be neotonic in origin.
… c) Intelligence (I won’t get into that here) but there are many underlying variables including neocortical volume.
The big 5/6 personality traits, and measured differences in brain volume and function can be described by these dimensions.
- Sex: feminine and masculine, and this happens in early development.
The differences in gender distributions of the big 5/6 (called ‘factors’, and their subfactors can be described by masculine and feminine differences, which are largely reduced to agreeableness, assertiveness, risk.
We call these two resulting moral biases conservative (masculine pack) and liberal (feminine herd). And they reflect the different evolutionary strategies of males and females.
Even so, all of us exist on a spectrum from the female mind to the male mind. There are pack (masculine minded) women, herd (feminine) minded men.
Mental illness, anti social behavior, cognitive biases, moral intuition, use of language, vary consistently along this spectrum with very simple tests identifying the sex of the brain – regardless of sexual attraction, which is a developmental success or failure.
One of the differences in cognitive biases between men and women is that men see differences and are slightly better at generalizing observations, and women the opposite at seeing similarity and individual empathy. This is our division of labor, and again – all of us are somewhere on this spectrum of masculine to feminine biases. And the cause of these differences is well understood, not only in hormones and developmental rehearsal of different biases, but in the structure of information processed in the brain, where one side (female) is language empathy and prey focused, and the other is action, objectivity, and predator focused.
SO WHAT DO WE DO?
We were speciating into regional human groups when we discovered farming. We were forced to compromise with each other during farming. Farming is over and we are now wealthy enough to pursue our genetic biases (interests, strategies) and so we must separate between masculine (suburban and rural hunters) and feminine (urban gatherers) and there is no reason not to.
We are simply able to afford specialization.
It’s time to return to speciation and stop fighting our instincts as different animals returning to speciation now that the agrarian era is over.