The net value of an individual to another individual, you for example, is a complicated matter comprising the value as a co-operator and the degree of threat that the other person presents to you as a competitor. In a random street interaction today in most countries the mutually perceived value as co-operators is low, and the degree of threat is high. Just how low and how high varies from place to place, but the structure is now universal.
But, if it transpires that there is an increasing likelihood of further interaction, the perceived value as a co-operator rises, and the threat subsides from an acute to a diffused chronic state.
Subtracting the threat from the potential benefit as co-operator gives the perceived net value of that individual. I suggest, and this is an observation, that the net value of one randomly selected individual in the UK population to another similarly selected is probably zero or less.
However, from one component aspect, that of sexual interaction, the calculation may produce different results. The value to a male of a randomly selected female is much higher than that of a randomly selected male since all fertile females are potential reproductive opportunities. The value of a randomly selected male to a female is presumably lower, but still somewhat higher as a sexual partner than considered on another axis of value. – For example, the randomly selected male may offer additional genetic value over that currently available from the present mate. Furthermore, the female perspective may enhance the realisable value of unknown and genetically undesirable males because of the potential of manipulating them with the offer, never to be fulfilled, of successful reproduction, thus obtaining support or resources.
In the light of these two points, it is worth asking whether large societies are held together by sex or the potential of sex. We might thus hypothesise that: It is the value of random strangers of the opposite sex as potential reproductive partners renders the male and female halves of the population tolerant of one another and constitutes the principal perceived value in the population at large. As for the rest, "All Men are Enemies" and "Women Beware Women", but pacific core prevents wider deflagration.
This view would explain why modern cultural representations are even more heavily tilted towards the subject of sexual access than the representations common in previous periods, and this is to say a great deal since pictorial, sculptural, literary and oral cultural materials in all societies and over all periods are dominated by the subject of sexual access. – In the modern period all other subjects are pushed to the extreme margin. We are quite obsessed with sex because it alone holds us together.
The view outlined here may also go some way to explaining why sexual freedom has become a leftist, socialist or collectivist policy, leaving pro-family politicians to seem anti-social and rightist, when as a matter of demonstrable fact the disadvantaged male championed by the left has the most to lose from the erosion of moral and institutional restraints on sexual behaviour since he is unable to compete.
Superficial logic might lead one to expect that sexual freedom would be a rightist, individualist policy, but it plainly hasn’t. If, on the other hand, sex is almost the only factor pacifying large societies, and creating a degree of mutual tolerance that mitigates general competition, then it will obviously be adopted by the left.
This view may also have some bearing on the extraordinary and historically unprecedented power of women in large societies, and may even tell us something about what seems to be an elevated level of male homosexuality in large populations as compared to smaller ones.