by Scott Hoge
(Click here to download this essay)
I wrote this essay to challenge the commonly-held belief, possibly inspired by many societal themes including religion and ball sport, that larger body size adds to a man's objective value.
Imagine a society where males compete for access to females in martial arts tournaments. In general, bigger, stronger men are better able to defend themselves against potential predators, safer from physical assault by other men, and more resistant to forces of nature. They can also lift and carry heavier materials as well as reach greater heights. Due to the obvious benefits of strength for personal survival, we might imagine that in such a society, where men become larger and larger by winning fights in order to mate, the optimal evolutionary strategy is followed. But I will argue that that is not necessarily so. What benefits personal survival may not benefit group survival, and the advantages of larger size come with their consequences.
What Are the Consequences of Being Large?
To begin with, growing larger reduces the size of Earth and the quantity of available resources in comparison to us. Growing smaller, in contrast, makes Earth and all its resources larger. As Earth increases in size, so does every apple, every tree, and every square inch of land, giving us more food and more space for more people to fit together on the same planet, in turn allowing more people to enjoy the world.
With more people on one planet, we would have far more opportunities to expand our knowledge and make advances in technology for a more peaceful, luxurious existence. Additionally, in a smaller body signals would travel less distance at the same speed, and there is even a good chance that we could think and act more quickly relative to Earth's aging, effectively slowing time down and allowing us a longer stay on a planet that may not be around forever. Bugs preen, squirrels chew, and lizards run at lightning speed—why do you think that is? If the 'small body hypothesis' turns out to be correct, then these animals actually witness time moving slower, as would we, if we became smaller.
What Happened to Sport?
In this essay, I have discussed only one form of competition: battles of strength among individuals. If we allowed unequal groups to compete -- say, two small against one large, or three against five, or thirteen against eight -- the story would be different, but in traditional competitive games we do not allow this, and fitness here is again reduced to the strength of an individual.
The truth is that there are weaknesses in large size in addition to strengths. If you are large and muscular, you take up more space and eat more food. By taking up more space (unless you are smarter) you grant less opportunities to make discoveries and advances in technology. Sure, a strong man could overpower a weaker man in an unarmed fight, but not only would such an assault be just plain mean, but the survival conflict of mating with someone smaller is remedied by simply having more children.
I have not by any means shown that smaller people are more fit or desirable as mating partners, but I have refuted an argument that they are less so. This means that individual size, favored by fist-fights and traditional competitive sport, is not necessarily an indicator of their fitness and that such arguments are insufficient grounds to reject them.
What does the future hold for us? Perhaps our culture will find smaller size more attractive in virtue of its evolutionary advantages, and we will get smaller. Or maybe someone will come along and show us that it's better to be larger. It seems even more agreeable to me that there should be a dual attraction toward the small and the large for the advantages each, so that neither side of the spectrum is exclusively sought after, or left out, in what would be an unfair game of brutal competition.
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