It would be mind boggling if pain killers were connected to dropping male fertility.
It might even explain why so many cultures had rites to male adulthood involving extreme pain.
It might even explain why so many cultures had rites to male adulthood involving extreme pain.
[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/7p2ubq/wp_a...
Especially since modern cultural change seems to have a tendency to be driven by the youngest politically-aware cohorts. Not a lot of time to acquire wisdom that might prevent that, if you're so young you haven't even collected enough knowledge yet.
http://www.astro.sunysb.edu/fwalter/AST389/TEXTS/Nightfall.h...
Unless you believe that the rites were created to address the problem of "one day, there will be analgesics with antiandrogen effects, so we'll have a few centuries of practice at enduring extreme pain", then I don't see how there could be any connection.
Right. And a notable trend among those cultures is that they are all nearly extinct. So much for their fertility.
Of course this observation could biased due to my own ignorance. I only remember, like, 3 such cultures, and they were your typical African/Amazonian/Aboriginal tribes that still live in near-neolithic conditions.
Is there any industrialized culture that still follows such rituals?
Even if you pick something like Boxing or similar contact sports where the goal is to intentionally hurt your opponent, it is still a far-cry from sticking your hand into a whiting mass of animals that have the most painful bite ever recorded.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraponera_clavata#Initiation_...
The cultures that are dominant today aren't dominant due to mere reproductive success. Ironically, fertility is low in almost all developed nations.
One of its more interesting applications is as a pathway to mystical experiences. In the Christian tradition for example one uses one's own pain to come into a kind of spiritual alignment with Christ's experience and in that way become closer to God.
I'm not particularly familiar with other spiritual traditions, but I'd be shocked if every single major one doesn't have some kind of mystical algetic praxis.
it is a bit of a medical mystery because the trend cannot be fully explained by lifestyle factors like weight gain.
I recall mentioning some research into the effects of food/organics preservatives (namely Parabens) and low testosterone: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12419695