A public service is needed for the unlucky in love

Countless men and women who would make good parents have missed the boat because they have failed to find the right partner. Why have they failed? The reason is that for the great majority, finding the right partner is dependent on being at the right place at the right time. That is a lottery.

But biology is telling single people to stop setting yourselves up to be victims of circumstances. Biology is telling single people to accommodate your DNA’s ambitions and engage a matchmaker.

DNA has ambitions? Isn’t that taking anthropomorphism too far? Not according to the lateral-thinking biologist Richard Dawkins. He says that your body (and as a consequence your mind) is being subjugated by a molecule which has the goal to be immortal. As it could be about 500 million years old, it is doing okay so far.

But we know that there is no goal in the evolutionary process. Evolution occurs when the chance of a species’ survival is a little more than the chance of it not surviving. On the level of the individual, anything, good or bad, can happen at anytime. 

That is the very big picture. On the smaller stage there does seem to be a goal. We observe that a plant has roots, stem, leaves, and flowers purely to enable seeds to be generated. The plant seems to exist to reproduce. It may not be a goal by design, but we can imagine that there is a goal because a set path is being travelled towards an end result.

As living organisms, the same rule applies to us. You have legs, arms, eyes and ears purely to get the next generation going. Once your babies have been born and you can protect them long enough to learn to survive by themselves, your purpose in life is over. The fact that you use your legs, arms, eyes and ears to play tennis is incidental.

Looking through Dawkins’ anthropomorphic window, we can say that your DNA ‘wants’ you to stay viable long enough for it to pass from your aging body into a younger body. If you do not have children, then you need not have been born. That may not be the usual way you see your very important self - but that is the way it is.

To maximise its chances of survival, the DNA molecule is common to all living organisms. The human body just happens to be one of the many vehicles it employs. Along the DNA molecule is a string of genes. The genes are the commands that dictate if the body being built will be a two-meter high red-haired male human with a big nose or a brown and white female Fox Terrier with a bad temper.

The movement of every molecule, atom and sub-atomic particle in your body is ultimately under the direction of your DNA because that is the super molecule (composed of maybe 13 billion atoms), which occupies your every cell that has a nucleus. Thus, it builds and maintains the stage where all organic activity is played out. Even if it has no mind of its own, it still is the conductor - the big boss.

Look for DNA’s selfish tactics - and you will find them

There are very few black and white rules in biology. Mostly there are just shades of grey. There are going to be males and females who are not at all interested in parenting. However, in DNA’s ‘big statistical picture’, if there is going to be disinterest, then it is more important that less women have no interest in parenting than men, because in one day a single man can, theoretically, be the cause of up to 50 pregnancies - while a female can carry a pregnancy to term only once every nine months. Men are, thus, relatively unimportant in DNA’s ‘thinking’. So, we observe that more men are disinterested in having children than there are disinterested women.     

Homo sapiensis a highly social species of animal - but it is not to create a modern economy. The DNA-driven objective is to create a supportive community structure for babies to survive into young adulthood. It may not seem that those who maintain our mining industry are ultimately working for the survival of human DNA - but, on balance, they are. 

We observe that in all animals, the male pursues and the female chooses. That choice is based on her need for security. She subconsciously chooses the male who she feels can protect herself and her progeny. The female’s focus on security is DNA-driven. This is the reason that so many attractive women marry relatively powerful men - regardless of the man’s appearance. This is the reason that so many women stay with abusive partners.

Why do teenagers feel indestructible? It is for good reason. The DNA-generated self-repair mechanisms in young bodies are robust so that they can reach reproductive age and live long enough to get their progeny up to reproductive age.

If this is so, then it should follow that if DNA is totally focused on being passed on to the next generation, then a woman should expire soon after menopause. But all that DNA needs is to ensure that the mechanisms are in place for reproduction when young. Why should it bother to create a mechanism to switch everything off when not young? Decline is left to occur through natural wear and tear. The woman’s liver, lungs, kidneys, and so on, which she needed to get the next generation going, are so efficient that their own momentum keeps them rolling along for years afterwards. But, this efficiency is good in one way and not so good in another. If too old to be a mother, your DNA has not closed down the organic mechanisms to cause emotional havoc. After menopause, you can still fall madly in love and feel like dying when rejected.

It is through romantic love that DNA transfers its own ‘hopes’ via the mechanisms of its own making to the host human’s mind. It does not care that when it takes over the mind with romantic love, the damage to the subjugated mind can be terrible when the euphoria crashes into the blackest of holes.

DNA is ruthless. All that matters to it is that more of the species reproduce than not reproduce. If you are lonely or sexually frustrated - then too bad. How can we combat DNA’s bad attitude - and even assist DNA’s ambitions in the process?

Enter the state

There is something upon which we all agree: the sole reason for a government’s existence is to minimise the problems associated with its citizens’ existence. That obligation would surely apply to the central problem of life - which biology tells us is to find a suitable mate.

So, I am saying that the state is actually obliged to enter into an area that has always been assumed to be none of its business - because it has mistakenly regarded the matching of man with woman as being an individual’s problem - and not the huge social (and even economic) problem that it is. The state must become involved in the central problem of life by providing a matchmaking service. The state’s involvement would automatically build a public perception that engaging a matchmaker is not shameful, but is a good life-management practice.

While some adjust to the childless life without any significant problem, a feeling of failure can have serious psychological and even consequential physical effects in others. Thus, as it is a health issue, the service should be within the public health services. Psychology as a science has come a long way and has a lot to offer.

Many are attempting to make their own luck by using the internet. But the all-important third party is missing in internet dating. A third party is crucial as none of us can objectively recognise our limitations when either star-struck or feeling desperate.

As a supposedly compassionate society, we cannot stand by and allow a very time-wasting hit-or-miss process being played out as our fellow humans strive to solve the central problem in their lives.  All of us need our lives managed for us - regardless of how smart we think we are.