One of the best movies I’ve ever seen in a long while was Children of Men starring Clive Owen. In the movie, set twenty-five years from now, Man has gone sterile and the world in turn has gone to hell and a hand basket. No one knows why, but women can’t get pregnant anymore.

I bring this up because I was recently talking to a friend from San Francisco when she stated that the rich men she and her friends have dated are different from middle class men.

How so, I asked?

She said that the rich men don’t “need” women and are happy to share this with the women they date. According to my friend, if women don’t like this, the rich guy will politely show them the door. According to my friend, rich men are upfront and honest with the fact that they’re only in it for the “fun”.

My friend pointed out that rich men don’t need their lovers to perform the traditional wifely duties. They can get someone to do their laundry, cook their food, and raise their kids. They can even get someone to have their kids!

The other interesting thing is that today’s rich men don’t go forth and spread their seed like rich men of centuries past. Until recently, rich men have always sought to procreate with as many women as possible(whether married to the women or not) in order to pass on their genetic code to the next generation. In this way, they preserved their legacy. In the middle east for example, rich men could take on as many wives as they could afford.
Yet, today’s rich men refuse to bond with today’s women in oder to pass on their genetic code through their offspring!

How could this be?

I think the answer is deceptively simple. The rich men of today can leave their legacy like no men in history have ever been able to do. Through the internet and incredible networking applications like Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and many others, rich men can leave a permanent footprint on millions of people. In a sense, men can pass themselves on through their networks without having to commit to a woman.

What’s more, this is done virally. The most children a man ever had was just over 1000. For those thousand to spread out into the world and in turn spread his genetic footprint would take generations. Today, Google, Yahoo, YouTube and the like can spread an idea to millions in a matter of seconds.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that the rich men of today really aren’t different. They’ve simply found a much simpler and trouble free way to spread their legacy. A much bigger question that comes to mind is how long until middle class men start thinking the same way? Will this lead to fewer pregnancies? Will this lead to the end of love? Could this be the end of us?

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