The popular dating website has tens of millions of users around the globe and claims that the marriages it engenders last longer and are more contented than normal. It bases its matches between singles on compatibility traits. “This is the problem”, one genetics researcher, Dr. Tsung Foo of Apple Fertility Clinic, a new app for the iPhone, professes, “since compatibility is not a natural human species mating trait. That is not how sex works.”
Geneticists argue that it will inevitably lead to species homogeneity in generations to come which will threaten extinction. How? Personality compatibility is realized only when there is sameness regarding human attributes.
If an individual is attracted to and paired with another with the same attributes this will result in the genes of those attributes being dominant, thus eliminating genes of unlike attributes – especially if the children take up the practice of compatibility mating, and owing to the success of eHarmony this is very likely. Without crossbreeding of dissimilar attributes the gene pool will shrink.
“This is the point of sex”, says Foo, “for the sake of species survival the largest and most diverse gene pool is desired. That means steering away from homogeneity. It is a fundamental rule of Natural Selection.”
If a person and his mate are allergic to strenuous outdoor athletic activities and have developed optimally functional typing abilities with their originally prehensile thumbs by texting continuously throughout the day on smart phones, it is likely these traits will be passed on to their children. And they probably will be attracted to mates who also have these attributes. Faster and more agile thumb ability will be an advantage in species competition with the advance of texting technology.
But these possibly larger, many jointed, more specialized thumbs will not be able to help the future development of Homo sapiens as they would actually be awkward in other, more vital situations such as opening frozen food containers or operating microwave buttons.
Of course microwaves will be modified with touch pads that would be conducive to thumb use and thus technology would alleviate many hardships. The more dangerous scenario would be the serious threats to survival that would require outdoor physical exertion and use of gardening implements such as hoes and shovels that require grasping which would be next to impossible with specialized thumbs for texting. Future generations will be incapable of performing the labor necessary to grow the food that appears in the supermarket frozen food case.
Does this mean that if someone finds that special mate that also likes Barry Manilow songs and believes Jesus walked on water wearing Birkenstocks, marries and procreates, their children will like and believe the same? Not necessarily, but quite likely since psychological makeup within the same gene pool has a strong probability of inheritance. The result can be devastating for our species.
Not just that Barry Manilow’s singing will live on into infinity and Birkenstocks will take over haut couture, but emphasis on diversity for survival will be trumped and we will be left vulnerable. “If humans seek individual compatibility, breeding those traits will result in amassing together homogenous sub-groups who think and feel alike,” Tsung Foo asserts.
“These sub-groups would enlarge as more individuals would find their home within them and continued to breed. In time, under the pressure of competition, only a few would dominate. But ultimately, individuals within these large sub-groups would become as similar as say, Bison. The sub-group populations will be as vulnerable as them. Sure Bison are handsome creatures that have the same tastes in food and lifestyles, and did very well proliferating to a dominant species position on the open plains in huge numbers. But look where they are today.”
Does Nature want us to look for so close a compatible mate? Not if you consider my parents, or probably yours. They did speak the same language, which at times appeared to be the only question they would answer compatibly on eHarmony’s questionnaire.
Myfather would no sooner expect my mother to share an afternoon together out in the garage under the hood of the family car, than my mother would think of dragging along my father shopping at Macy’s or help with stuffing a turkey. She was fond of dancing the night away and he of playing poker with the company of whiskey and cigars. They even argued. They were compatible at the bare minimum and were actually incompatible in many other areas. It may have not been smooth all the time, and that didn‘t bother them. Hitting the bumps caused them to hold on to each other tighter.
According to geneticists harmony is fine, but we are attracted to “otherness” – difference, opposition (obvious in opposite sex), strengths to our weaknesses and weakness to our strengths. Friction is needed for the sparks of passion to ignite. And this has driven the mating process since Adam and Eve (Did he share her hobby and fascination with Herpetology?).
Natural Selection is served by uniting diverse genes producing diverse offspring insuring survival of the species. Now seriously, what man really likes pina coladas and getting caught in the rain? Think about it. If he does like getting caught in the rain, and perhaps waxing the hair off his body, following Ashton Kushner’s Tweets and decorating cakes, maybe who he is looking for is not a sexual mate but an intimate buddy.
If eHarmony persists compatibility will sublimate physical attraction in the mating relationship to fall under its command thus taming base instinct and primal intuition. The need for similarity will reign over how hot the potential mate is. The gene pool will diminish and weaken and be unprepared for environmental challenges. Mutants will be produced of course, but they will remain outside the status quo, which will be vulnerable to any attack by viruses or solar flares. The future of our species will be placed in jeopardy.