Sex is funny. There, I said it. It’s messy, awkward, fleeting, and yet somehow, it’s been the catalyst for wars, betrayals, empires rising and falling, and probably at least half of every major historical scandal. For something that lasts, on average, what 30 minutes? An hour or two on a good day? Sex sure does hold a disproportionate amount of power over human history.
Let’s be honest..... if aliens ever invaded, they’d take one look at us, watch a few episodes of a reality show, and say, "Wait, wait, so you guys built civilizations, conquered lands, invented electricity… and you still get into fights over who gets to rub up against whom? Seriously?" ...and then they’d turn around and leave, thoroughly unimpressed with our evolutionary progress.
Think about it. The human race has gone to war over gold, oil, religion, but time and time again, the real motivator hiding beneath all those grand justifications is just some form of desire. The kind that starts with longing glances and ends with bloodshed. For all our supposed advancements, we still function on the same primal instincts as creatures that fling their own feces.
History proves this over and over again.
Helen of Troy? "The face that launched a thousand ships." Was it because of her witty personality? Her economic policy? No, it was because some guy couldn’t control his primal urge. Boom. War.
Henry VIII? The man upended an entire country’s religion because he wanted to sleep with someone new. Boom. War.
Genghis Khan? A man who conquered half the known world and, in doing so, made himself the ancestor of something like 16 million people today. Not for ideological reasons. Not for trade. Just for… well… sex.
Don’t think for a second that this kind of absurdity is a relic of the past. No, the primal chaos of lust still drives everything from personal feuds to geopolitical tensions. Even in modern times, politicians risk their entire careers for an affair. Celebrities sabotage million-dollar deals over their inability to control an urge that, again, lasts mere minutes.
It’s the ultimate irony of human evolution. We can manipulate atoms. We can build quantum computers. We can explore space. But the second someone’s crush flirts with someone else, we revert to our Neanderthal wiring. "Me want. Me angry. Me smash."
At least actual Neanderthals had an excuse. They didn’t have philosophy or self-help books or centuries of recorded human failure to learn from. We do, yet we keep making the same mistakes. It’s embarrassing.
Take chimps, for example. They fight for mates. They throw tantrums, and when one chimp takes another chimp’s partner, what happens? Chaos. Sound familiar?
Now, take jellyfish. Literal brainless blobs floating in the ocean. They’ve existed for 600 million years without starting a single war over an ex. So, in a way, aren’t they more evolved than us?
I like to think that when we die, we’ll finally get the punchline to this grand joke. We’ll look back at our earthly selves, full of frustration and obsession over something that was so, so temporary. Imagine getting to the afterlife and realizing that sexual jealousy was just a cosmic prank played on primates with too much brainpower and not enough self-control.
Maybe there’s some celestial administrator waiting with a clipboard, shaking their head in disappointment. “Congratulations! You spent your life fighting over mating rights just like an orangutan. Please proceed to Level Two, where we introduce you to… emotional intelligence.”
Because that’s the real evolutionary leap, isn’t it? It’s not about how many partners someone can get. It’s about not caring when someone else does. The moment humanity figures that out, we might actually be worthy of all the technology we’ve built.
Until then, we remain just a slightly more well-dressed version of cavemen, fighting wars over something that, in the grand scheme of existence, is little more than an inside joke of the universe.
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