News a while back that a local university president had resigned over inappropriate texting had us once more shaking our heads in puzzlement.

Though the communications weren’t specifically identified as sexual in nature, the suspicion is unavoidable. What is it with presumably mature middle-aged men who let primeval hormonal urges overwhelm common sense? When it involves Hollywood moguls, prominent religious leaders, educators, politicians, corporate tycoons, athletes or rock stars, peccadilloes are titillating fodder for the media. But you’ve got to suspect that stories that make headlines are merely the tip of the iceberg.

Men are obsessed with sex long after it serves a need to perpetuate the species. This is a vestigial evolutionary characteristic that has outlived its usefulness. In the infancy of the human race, life spans may have been shorter, and lives were certainly fraught with threats to survival.

Infant mortality, territorial wars and the hazards of hunting mastodons to feed the tribe all contributed to higher mortality. Lengthy years of fertility and the urge to procreate served homo sapien survival well.

But we have long since fulfilled the divine imperative to go forth and multiply. Economists see nothing but doom as countries like Japan, South Korea and China experience declining birth rates and shrinking populations. Our own nation adds $5 billion a day to an astronomical national debt, with an illusion that population and economic growth will pay it down. Economies are houses of cards and growth is the mortar.

But Earth itself is telling us a very different story. From the waters beneath us to the soil that sustains us to the air we breathe and the atmosphere that protects life from cosmic annihilation, nature is screaming “Enough.” In 1800, global population was about 1 billion. Today, a mere 200 years later, it is 8 billion. We are pushing our earthly home to the limits of sustainability.

Natural resources, clean water and fertile soils are not evenly distributed across the world.

Some nations live on the brink of starvation while others battle an epidemic of obesity. Some nations sit on a treasure trove of resources, while others sit on barren rock or sand. We are challenged enough trading resources for survival without worrying about growing our populations.

Think how much more productive preachers and teachers and producers and politicians and coaches and CEOs would be if hormonal urges spanned about a dozen years — say 22 to 34 — and then simply disappeared. Better yet would be if during these reproductive years female pheromones stimulated male urges for just two or three weeks out of the year. The other 50 weeks, humans could be about the business of living without distraction.

Evolution isn’t likely to fix outdated human behavior with the urgency needed. We seem destined to live long into the future with men behaving badly. Biblical admonitions aren’t much help. King David was probably the worst sexual scoundrel in the Good Book.

But today preachers simply extol him as an example of God using imperfect people to accomplish great things. Women rising up to declare “we’re not standing for it any more” is a step in the right direction. Disgrace and punishment for egregious behavior is long overdue. Speaking personally, I’d have been better served skipping algebra and taking a course in “treating others with respect.”

And I know I’m not alone. The daily news confirms it.

— Community Columnist Dale Wyngarden is a resident of the city of Holland. He can be reached at wyngarden@ameritech.net.