Humans that wear clothes do so because the societies that they live in have done it that way for a long. It's a tradition, it's cultural. Peer pressure etc...
The relevant questions are:
-Why did we start wearing clothes in the first place?
I imagine there are different answers to this for different cultures/societies. Some climatic, some religious perhaps
-Why don't we make a conscious decision not to wear clothes now?
Some people do, most just follow along like sheep and different people may have different other reasons. We are all conscious intelligent beings and can make up our own minds individually. Or follow like sheep. I'm not looking for a evolutionary or biological reason.
As far as I can tell the human species has always covered, or partly covered, themselves. I'm talking even before Abraham's time (the supposedly common ancestor of the Judeo/Christian/Islamic religions). My question then is, apart from religious considerations, why did we evolve differently from other species in that they didn't evolve the need or ability to cover up and we did?
Okay, so apart from the moral issues around nudity and sexuality, it became part of our culture after people started wearing them for practical reasons. People probably eventually found themselves wearing clothes often as it was a comfortable thing to do, particularly once you became used to being insulated from the weather. If everyone else is often wearing clothes, it eventually starts to become a truly cultural thing where you wear clothes because you're part of a society that wears clothes. It becomes symbolic of being part of a society and perhaps you're looked upon as an outsider, or at least a bit strange or stupid, if you don't wear clothes. This then progresses to the point where people use their clothes to express themselves, such as to indicate social status.
This was hit on the knocker early when someone said to keep warm. We wouldn't have survived an ice age without covering up. Our hair is too short and thin to properly keep us warm, so we used animal hides and so forth to compensate. Somewhere along the line it became inappropriate within some cultures to not wear clothing, a mindset that no doubt came from the holders of the moral compass - religious people. Look back at the tale of Adam and Eve, they were naked in the garden but once expelled, they came to know shame and this covered up
They're all good, reasonable answers. But still skirting around the edges a little, I feel.
The human species covers the whole planet but there are hardly any places, if any at all, where we would be comfortable without cover. True?
The same cannot be said for any of the other species who have evolved to adapt to their surroundings without need of artificial cover.
Lloyd Pye and many others say its because we are human/alien genetic hybrids and as such we are not completely suited to the environment.
Personally, I'm open to this theory but I fully understand that others may not be.
All species require cover when conditions are unsuitable. We have managed to circumvent this to an extent by creating clothes for ourselves, which gives us more flexibility in how much time we can spend outside, and the environments in which we can live.
But don't most other species have some sort of covering anyway.....birds have feathers, fish have scales, most mammals have fur of some description.
Maybe our wearing clothes came as a result of our evolution as a species seeing us lose our fur/hair covering and so we needed artificial covering to protect us from the elements/
But don't most other species have some sort of covering anyway.....birds have feathers, fish have scales, most mammals have fur of some description.
Maybe our wearing clothes came as a result of our evolution as a species seeing us lose our fur/hair covering and so we needed artificial covering to protect us from the elements/
Doesn't answer where modesty comes from, but protection (from other than the elements) is a good one.
The modesty bit is very interesting, as if you visit nudist beaches in Europe, and can survive the first hour or so, you actually stop noticing that people have no clothes on. At first, you actually want to tell some of the people to put clothes on, but amazing to me that after a while, you can stand and have a conversation with a very lovely looking lady and not get aroused. I once went into a hot springs spa in South Korea and it was after I walked in that I saw everyone else was naked. I was the embarassed one that made everyone else feel uncomfortable until I took all the gear off.
So i reckon modesty is all about how we are conditioned to think in our society.
But don't most other species have some sort of covering anyway.....birds have feathers, fish have scales, most mammals have fur of some description.
Maybe our wearing clothes came as a result of our evolution as a species seeing us lose our fur/hair covering and so we needed artificial covering to protect us from the elements/
We are originally adapted to running long distances around the plains of Africa. We therefore have a high aerobic capacity (when fit), an efficient gait, and a virtually unparallelled ability to offload heat through sweating, which is made more efficient by having minimal body hair. Not suited to colder climates, but this didn't matter so much once we started wearing clothes.
FWIW, I'm not ruling out Vinnie D as the hacker who leaked the photos yesterday. Seems a bit weird that he starts this thread, then the photos are leaked a few days later.