The Maladaption of Biologically Mature Humans

The Rural Urban Divide

Rural and urban culture always seems to fundamentally differ. It's beyond the usual variation - there's something deeper happening, recurring patterns like members operate with completely different mental frameworks. There are a lot of other ways this gets cut up. In the U.S. this is basically a red-vs-blue thing. Paine thinks of it as a continental v.s. nautical empires. the Bible thinks of it as farmers vs herdsmen

Here's a unusual framing: Rural people develop to full biological and cognitive maturity faster. Urban people develop to full adulthood slower, unevenly in traits, and tend to value neoteny.

This isn't a "one side is better" situation. Neotany clearly has huge advantages both for the individual and the society. Think about the traits we typically associate with “full maturity” in chimpanzees - becoming more territorial, more hierarchical, less curious, less playful, focused on reproduction and for male chimps on both guarding female chimpsGuarding them from both harm and other breeding partners. Sound familiar? It's essentially the conservative psychological profile. Meanwhile, the liberal mindset tend to maintain childlike traits such as openness and playfulness for longer. It also maintains adolescent traits such as questioning of authority (trying to overturn the system to get opportunities to rise in it), and opportunistic mating (casual sex). All of that against a background of delayed family formation.

This isn't about maturity in the sense of responsibility or wisdom. It's about actual developmental patterns that might be getting hastened or delayed depending on our environment.Or also based on self selection. Someone who isn't maturing at the rate demanded of them by the farm can simply move to the city. Similarly when my Peter-pan butt was ready for kids in my very late 30's I moved out to the suburbs

What Does “Biologically Mature” Actually Mean?

When I talk about "Biologically Mature," I need to distinguish between multiple traits that are called "maturity."

First, there's what I'll call Biologically Mature Adulthood (BMA) - the completion of our programmed biological development as primates. Just as puberty introduces a new set of adolescent drives (sexual interest, risk-taking, social status concerns), there appears to be a second wave of biological drives that emerge around mid-20's to mid-30s in our society. These "adult drives" include stronger but more settled territorial instincts, more pronounced in-group preference, heightened resource acquisition motivation, and parental instincts that go beyond opportunistic sexuality There are a few other less behavioral things I see as part of BMA. I notice that in pain tolerance increases for example, increased tribalism, and a drop in openness.

Think about how puberty transforms a child - new hormones trigger new behaviors regardless of intellectual development. Similarly, these adult drives come online later in life, with significantly more variation and unevenness than puberty. Some people never seem to develop certain adult drives, while others experience them intensely in their early twenties. This variability might be both genetic and environmental. For many, having children seems to trigger a cascade of these adult drives; for others, they emerge gradually through other life experiences.

If the full expression of these traits sounds similar to describing adult chimpanzees or adult wolves, that's not accidental. Other pack mammals show many of these same transitions as they mature.

Critically BMA doesn't necessarily align with or conflict with the other trait's we blend into the general idea of "maturity". Traits like the ability to make wise decisions, to step back from a situation and see it from a less emotional or impulsive angle, or to consider failure modes and consequences. Let's call these traits "Cognitive Prudence & Responsibility" or just "Prudence".

The brain's frontal cortex, responsible for impulse control, long-term planning, and complex moral reasoning, doesn't fully develop until around age 25-28 for men and 23-25 for women. Though this is clearly biological, it is not what I'm talking about as part of "Biologically Mature AdulthoodThis is confusing to the point where I want to rename the entire concept of BMA, but I can't quite figure out what to move it to", and aligns better with Prudence.

There's also practical capability and self-sufficiency to consider. This dimension varies enormously based on environment and cultural expectations. In some societies, teenagers manage complex responsibilities like childcare, hunting, or farming. In others, people in their thirties may still be developing core life management skills.

For the vast majority of human history, these developmental tracks - BMA & Prudence - were more tightly synchronized in any given culture than they seem to be today. Environmental pressures ensured that people who reached adulthood quickly developed practical skills, while cultural structures provided frameworks for wisdom development that would reliably be applicable for the rest of your adult life.

Modern environments, both between nations and across the urban/rural divide, have created an unprecedented divergence between these developmental tracks. Rural environments activate adult drives earlier and more completely, while urban environments delay or even partially suppress some of these drives, potentially providing extended time for development of "prudence".

It also seems likely that given the absurdly fast pace of change, and the incredibly wide level of exposure, BMA traits are often counterproductive, while neoteny is actually more effective.

III. The Rural vs Urban Gap

All of modern life delays Biologically Mature Adulthood compared to our evolutionary baseline. If we look at hunter-gatherer societies or historical agricultural communities, people typically had their first children in their mid-teens and fully took on adult roles and behaviors shortly thereafter. The CDC reports that the mean age at first birth is consistently lower in rural counties compared to metropolitan areas, with some rural areas averaging first births among women as young as 22-23 years old compared to 28-30 in major cities. My wife's grandmother in rural India had her first child at 15 and this was considered normal and ideal.

Rural America isn't some kind of throwback to our ancestral environment - it's just less delayed than urban America. The difference isn't about different modes of development but different degrees of delay from our biological baseline. Wealth By both global and historical standards. I'm not saying the rural are doing well financially, but I think we forget the grinding poverty that used to be nearly universal., long lifespans and extended educationI also need to point out, attending college for women absolutely obliterates the rural / urban divide as a predictor for age at first child. It's way more relevant, but doesn't wash out the urban / rural effect entirely all seem to contribute to Neoteny.

Urban environments push these delays even further. Cities remove people from natural cycles, replace tangible work with abstract careers, and create age-segregated social worlds. Without regular contact with birth, death, and natural consequences, cues that might normally activate territorial instincts, resource acquisition drives, and parenting behaviors arrive later or in weaker forms. This connects directly back to something I wrote decades ago: Simbi / Ajara Memetic Theory. Simbi ideologies, which emphasize social stability and longevity, align well with fast life history strategies. They provide a framework for growing up quickly and reliably. Ajaran ideologies, which emphasize openness, change, and lower reproductive rates, create space for extended neoteny and delayed maturation. The crucial insight here isn't that one pathway is superior – it's that humans have evolved the flexibility to pursue different developmental trajectories based on memetic manipulation.

This has huge downstream effects on culture, similar to how a population where puberty happened at age 8 versus age 12 would develop completely different social patterns. When a significant portion of your population maintains pre-BMA psychology well into their 30s, you get fundamentally different social and political dynamics.

IV. Fast vs Slow Life History:

Life cycles can be divided into two major stages: growth and reproduction. These two cannot take place at the same time, so once reproduction has begun, growth usually ends.[9] This shift is important because it can also affect other aspects of an organism's life, such as the organization of its group or its social interactions.

To borrow a framework from biology to understand these differences more systematically, we can use Life History Theory. It's a fascinating framework for understanding how organisms allocate energy between growth, maintenance, and reproduction based on environmental cues. Usually the comparison is made between species but, as so often is the case, humans seem to display an almost inter-species level of variety after applying culture.

The oversimplified L.H.T. spectrum runs from “fast” to “slow” life histories: Fast life history means reaching BMA faster, reproducing earlier and more frequently, investing less in each offspring, and generally having a shorter lifespan. This strategy emerges in unpredictable or harsh environments where delaying reproduction might mean missing your chance entirely.

Slow life history means delaying maturation, reproducing later and less frequently, investing heavily in fewer offspring, and living longer. This emerges in stable, resource-rich environments where quality trumps quantity. What's fascinating is how neatly this maps onto our urban/rural divide.

Rural environments historically signaled conditions that triggered faster life histories – more physical hardship In this case we are talking about really low levels of "hardship", things like working outdoors or having to do exhausting manual labor, less consistent resources, more exposure to birth and death thru animal husbandry.

Urban environments, with their abundance of calories and indoor life and work, tend to trigger slower life histories. The chronic flavors of "harsh" in urban environments tend to be disease and pollution. It's not clear that either of these would be an obvious trigger for a "fast life history" strategy.

Environmental Factors that Accelerate Biological Mature Adulthood

When considering what pushes individuals toward Biological Mature Adulthood, a few stand out. Unlike mere aging or gradual cognitive maturation, BMA is marked by the activation of deep-rooted primal drives, which can emerge suddenly in response to specific life events and social contexts.

Exposure to mortality seems to accelerate BMA . People who encounter death—whether through working in healthcare, attending funerals, or facing personal loss—often experience a profound reevaluation of priorities. It seems like this generally shifts people towards wanting children.

Supporting this, a 2008 study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that reminders of mortality significantly heightened the desire for children, particularly among individuals previously uncertain about parenthood:

men, but not women, desired more children after mortality salience compared with various control conditions ... when the compatibility of having children and a career was made salient, female participants responded to mortality salience with an increased number of desired children. Taken together, the findings suggest that a desire for offspring can function as a terror management defense mechanism.

The military seems to accelerate BMA consistently as well. This may be self selection, or it might be intentional, but the structured, hierarchical, and challenging nature of military life rapidly matches primal adult behaviors. It seems likely Discipline, exposure to extreme stress, responsibility for group welfare, and survival scenarios all could hasten developmental BMA. It also seems possible that something about the group living and drilling arrangements might accelerate the swap. This is also a perfect example of why I need to distinguish the "prudent" part of BMA. Think of the 21 year old jarhead who comes back from a tour ready to have babies, but also ready to get drunk in Vegas and blow his live savings

Marriage — or possibly prolonged cohabitation — often correlates with accelerated BMA. These commitments demand long-term cooperative planning, resource-sharing, and often lead to caregiving responsibilities, creating social contexts ripe for triggering primal adult drives. It may be the wedding ceremony itself, the practical realities of cohabitation and shared responsibilities, or just continues exposure to pheromones but it seems like something accelerates BMA.

Another environmental trigger for BMA seems like consistent interaction across generations. Modern, age-segregated societies frequently isolate young adults from older generations and young children, particularly in urban professional contexts. Regular engagement with infants, kids, or elders seems to trigger something, possibly due to mortality awareness.

The Environment That Rewards Prolonged Childhood

Some extended neoteny is clearly adaptive for humans from an evolutionary standpoint. The question is when it has been pushed too far, to the point where it is maladaptive. We can see a similar dynamic in hight or bodyweight. In general for humans taller is better, but at the historically extreme heights we have reached as a society, it's actually shorter people who live longer . It seems like modern urban humanity has overshot.

What is the prize we get for delaying Biologically Mature Adulthood? Modern knowledge economies disproportionately reward exactly the traits associated with juvenile development: creativity, play, exploration, and openness to constant change. Googles office is intentionally styled like a children's playground. So we see additional career advancement and all the status perks that come with it are on the table.

More subtly we get the newest tech. Though anyone is allowed to, for instance, use an LLM, the reality is that most of those who have fully matured won't, at least until they are dragged into it kicking and screaming. For another example consider the 60 year old who just still struggles to really get much out of their smartphone.

I'm suggesting that willingness to learn new tech is a biological capacity issue, and not entirely a choice. If half population around you got to have smart phones, and the other half didn't. The have-nots would lead meaningfully disadvantaged lives, not just in the form of career opportunities.

Cities create dense networks where neotenous behaviors thrive – where challenging tradition is celebrated rather than punished, where novel ideas and identities can find critical mass, and where play can be monetized more effectively than serious production. The entire economic and social structure of modern cities has become a greenhouse for prolonged adolescence.

Neotany also rewards with a lot of fun. Recreational sexuality, new food, new music, new drugsIt's worth mentioning that LSD in particular is noted to durably increase the openness trait. Basically dropping acid causes increases some facets of neoteny, in addition to being lots of fun. The lack of grinding and restrictive responsibilities. Perhaps more importantly though Neonate rewards with tribal fluidity. It's easier to make friends who are different, to see thru a changing circumstance, and to decide not to go to war, literally or metaphorically. When we are surrounded by people from other cultures, the largest "cultural group" is those who haven't crystalized into a specific culture completely yet.

V. The Demographic Death Spiral of Extended Adolescence

The most glaring consequence of extended neoteny is the demographic cliff we're racing toward. Urban birth rates have plummeted well below replacement level, with my own city San Francisco being virtually childless. San Francisco has the lowest percentage of children of any major American city - around 13%. The average first birth age here is 32! My wife and I had our child when she was in her 40s

This isn't just an American phenomenon. Urban culture has long followed the same pattern – Tokyo, Berlin, Seoul – all have incredibly low birth rates. It's not just a modern phenomenon either: Ancient Rome couldn't sustain its population through births alone, and neither could 19th century London. Most ancient cities sucked in citizens along with livestock. We can go a step further, and take the perspective of against the grain that cities used to basically have to go on slaving raids to populate themselves as they chewed through citizens The pattern is clear: the more urbanized a population becomes, the fewer children they produce.

This reminds me of those trematode parasites that infect certain sea snails. The parasites make the snails develop thicker shells, live longer, and become more resistant to predators – seeming improvements in every way – except the infected snails become sterile. The parasites have hijacked the snails' development to benefit themselves, but the evolutionary dead end is obvious.I explored this idea as a memetic infection pattern a long time ago in the first thing I ever wrote Simbi - Ajara memetic theory. In the memetic version it's not so black and white as with the trematode's, it's more of a shift along the r/K axis

Urban neoteny operates similarly. Extended adolescence produces individuals who are more creative, adaptable, less violent, and possibly happier in many ways – all while being far less reproductive.

VII. Urban BMAs: Different Expression, Same Drives

Cities don't import just any humans though - they specifically import young adults, typically those who have passed adolescence but have not yet become BMAs. This creates a fascinating cycle: young adults move to urban centers, often for college and experience extended developmental delays, They typically stay until they become BMAs and then migrate to suburbs or back to a rural environment to have children.

What happens to those who reach BMA but remain in urban environments? They develop a distinctive psychology that displays all of the same maturation traits, but often in a more abstracted way.

Urban BMAs channel territorial drives into property values and neighborhood "character" such as NIBYism and HOAs. Their tribal instincts find expression through school districts, local politics, as well as ferocious Blue Tribe affiliation. The hierarchical impulses that might make a rural counterpart join a church leadership team instead direct them toward HOA boards, PTA presidencies, or corporate management.

Perhaps most interesting is what happens to the famous urban "openness" once BMA activates. What emerges isn't continued exploration but a cosmopolitanism that is a "cosplay of openness" - legitimate worldliness within a widely expansive but ultimately bounded comfort zone that was established during their high openness pre-BMA years.

An urban BMA who proudly takes friends to a new Ethiopian restaurant isn't displaying ongoing openness to novel experiences - they're operating within a familiar territory they established years earlier. They built a much larger teritory during their extended exploratory phase but their biological drives are still going to lock them inside it. This explains why the same person who has "tried everything" in their 20s might react with deep resistance to lab-grown meat, transgenderism, novel housing models, or self driving cars in their 40s.

This pattern creates a peculiar politics: urban BMAs often support diversity while fighting fiercely against any changes to their neighborhood's character or their children's school zones. They've simply found more "prudent" and cosmopolitan expressions for the same territorial and tribal drives that operate more openly in rural contexts.

Economically, urban BMAs tend to be higher income (necessary given urban child-rearing costs), have fewer children than rural counterparts, and invest heavily in those children's educational and enrichment activities. They're intensely focused on local issues that affect their territory and tribe - schools, parks, safety, development - while often maintaining progressive positions on abstract national issues that don't directly impact their immediate environment.

Understanding this pattern helps explain why urban-rural political divisions aren't simply about different values but about different expressions of the same fundamental drives that have kicked in at different ages, and in different environments. The urban BMA hasn't abandoned tribal, territorial, or hierarchical instincts - they've just expressing them differently and later.

Is B.M.A. Just Elevated Oxytocin Levels?

When I went looking for a clear biological marker of full adulthood After I had written this whole thing! I swear I wrote this all and then went looking for a bio-marker and was like... Oh holy crap Roxy fits really well , oxytocin repeatedly matched, seeming to cause most of the traits I think of as belonging to BMA. Often dubbed the "love hormone," oxytocin famously fosters emotional bonds. It's the molecule that makes you feel loving and protective of those around you.

Oxytocin is believed to play a significant role in social bonding, sexual reproduction, childbirth, and the period after childbirth.

Labor is actually caused by a huge surge of Oxytocin, in fact the way they induce labor in pregnancy when your late is to simply give you Oxytocin.I briefly dated a former natal nurse. Apparently in the ward they were pretty sloppy about loading up the Oxytocin as it was considered safe, and frequently got skin exposure, not to mention all the babies. She told me that the personality shift she saw while in that job was super dramatic, and that it was acknowledged and discussed by all the nurses. As a helpful side benefit oxytocin also increases your pain tolerance as well. It's not over with delivery though. Seeing and smelling Babies cause both men and women to release large quantities of it as does breastfeeding, and any form of caregiving. That's any form of caregiving at all, such as for romantic partners, or aging parents.

It feels great and heightens protective behaviors, vigilance, and social sensitivity. Less well known, oxytocin also strongly influences territoriality, social cohesion, and in-group preference—traits. Oxytocin enhances cooperation within groups but simultaneously makes individuals wary or even aggressive toward outsiders.

One striking difference between young adults and biologically mature adults is the shift from exploration and risk-taking toward territoriality and resource protection.

Animal research clearly shows elevated oxytocin linked to increased territorial behaviors. Human studies mirror this, suggesting oxytocin heightens attachment to familiar places, reinforcing a sense of "home."

This matches the observation that young urban adults frequently relocate for opportunities, whereas older individuals become deeply invested in local communities, obsessing over home values, school districts, and neighborhood safety.

Oxytocin administration studies repeatedly demonstrate enhanced in-group loyalty:

Intranasal oxytocin administration increases trust, empathy, and generosity within groups but can simultaneously amplify distrust and defensive behaviors towards perceived outsiders.

Several cultural rituals and social structures I think of as inducing BMA correlate with elevated oxytocin:

- Military Cohesion: Military training focuses heavily on unit cohesion, involving synchronized physical and emotional experiences—activities shown to significantly raise oxytocin levels. Soldiers' strong loyalty and territoriality might largely be oxytocin-mediated adaptations to intense, repeated social bonding under stress.

- Marriage and Long-term Bonds: People in committed long-term relationships have higher baseline oxytocin levels than single individuals. The public rituals associated with marriage—like weddings themselves—can trigger large, sustained oxytocin releases, reinforcing pair-bond stability and commitment.

- Religious Rituals and Community Bonds: Group rituals such as singing, prayer, communal meals, and synchronized movement reliably elevate oxytocin levels, promoting stronger in-group identities and social cohesion. This likely explains why deeply religious individuals frequently display characteristics associated with biological maturity—community stability, loyalty, and heightened territorial instincts.

Does Low Oxytocin Maintain Neoteny?

Elevated oxytocin causes all the traits I see as matching BMA, but as far as I can tell is basically a temporary hormonal change. Could persistently low oxytocin levels keep people in an extended neotenous state? The idea here is that by NEVER being exposed to the perspective induced by oxytocin one never internalizes any of that perspective as reasonable.

Urban environments, characterized by transient relationships, fewer communal rituals, and reduced caregiving responsibilities, and a general absence of children, produce virtually none of the oxytocin elevating events. This aligns with observations that urban dwellers tend toward delayed maturity, characterized by extended openness, novelty-seeking, and globalist rather than local or national identities.

As the say in the literature:

more research is needed