Poll: Your stance on monogamy?

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DanDeFool

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Aug 19, 2009
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Giest4life said:
RebellionXXI said:
Giest4life said:
RebellionXXI said:
Giest4life said:
dathwampeer said:
Giest4life said:
dathwampeer said:
Giest4life said:
dathwampeer said:
Giest4life said:
dathwampeer said:
Giest4life said:
Monogamy is the last vestiges of a dying human race--the race of the "last men," as Nietzsche called them. There is nothing good, noble, and praiseworthy about monogamy. Just as there is nothing special with polygamy.

dathwampeer said:
If we were meant to be monogamous we wouldn't have any desire to cheat.

Simple as.

Penguins don't cheat, in-fact most of the time when one's partner dies. It will simply never mate again. Some die soon after, thoughts are from grief. Wanna know why? Because they were born to be monogamous.
Be careful with that, sir. When you say "we" how sure are you that you speak for 100% of the human populace, the dead, the living, and those that are not yet conceived? I'd be careful with generalizations like that....
It's human nature to be at the very least curious about having sex with other people. Even if someone doesn't cheat, there is a 100% chance that at some point during any relationship they've had. That they have looked at another prospective mate in sexual way. whether or not they act upon it is another matter.

What I am sure of is that monogamy, especially as far as males are concerned, is counter intuitive as far as survival of the species goes. Atleast in a primitive situation. Spreading your genes to as many mates as possible gives you a greater chance of special survival.

That's not so important now. But old habits are hard to kick. Especially ones that are ingrained on you at a genetic level.

I generalise because it's true.
Again, sir. Do you know if it's true for the 100% of those--even males--that have yet to be, those that are, and those that were? It's a disturbing trend that I've seen amongst humans: the trend to state their observations as the "truth."
you're not observant for pointing out the fact that I'm not every human to have ever existed. Is it also right to say that you don't know that every human is born with blood because you haven't tested every human to prove this? I think I choose to believe in hormones over inane philosophical prattle.

Just because you can't prove something to be statistically true doesn't mean it isn't.
If you must know, statistically, nothing is true, because nothing can really be tested to it's fullest. Name me a study in which the sample is the whole human population. A quick search of "statistics" on wikipedia should have yield you the results you need.

Only the ignorant call it "inane philosophical prattle." I guess, you need to fill in the hole in your, so called, "knowledge."
*woosh* right over your head.

That was kind of my point.

And biologically speaking.... yes... what I'm saying is true.

You don't stop being attracted to other people once you're in a relationship. There is no biological proof to suggest anything to that nature. In-fact oxytocin (the chemical linked with human bonding) begins to fade dramatically after only a few years. And rises once again when you find a new partner.

So yes. I'm going to continue calling what you're saying inane philosophical prattle. Because it doesn't mean anything. It's just a blatant fact that has no relevance to my point, dressed up as something poignant.

The fact that I'm not every human to have ever existed doesn't mean that what we know human biology is wrong. Again. Simply because I can't statistically prove something doesn't mean it's wrong... :/
Again, there is no single biological phenomenon that is universal. Every hormone secreted, every brain function, every twitch of the muscle, every beat of the heart is different in every single one of us. You know, the inconvenient word we use to describe everything that doesn't fit our narrative: mutation.

To prove my point, I heard it on npr, last week, this recorded mental patient who would reach orgasm at the sight of pins---yes, pins!

Though I regret I can't remember the exact name of the patient or the therapist who attended, and recorded that guy.
Ever heard the expression. 'The exceptions that prove the rule.' It is of course going to be true that there are anomalies, we're talking about biology here. Not factory crafted beings. For 99% of the population hormones are going to have the exact same effect. There may be slight differences in the process and length of time involved. But they all do the same thing.


There are bound to be those who are considered mentally retarded. And/or haven't reached sexual maturity. They won't have the desire for sex atall. I thought it was clear that I was talking about normal humans. Not the handicapped exceptions.

When someone is talking about the absolute in a discussion like this. They don't mean (including the anomalies.) If I rephrase 'Everyone' To 'Every healthy (mentally and physically) human.' Will you STFU?

I thought that would have been blatantly obvious and readily available to anyone reading. Clearly not.
You have superbly demonstrated the all-too-human folly: "they" are the exception, you are the rule. There are no "anomalies," it is only your ignorance that fails to see what really is. The human brain fears that which it cannot understand--and label--thus we label these as "exceptions" to the rule to prove a point. The fact is, you and nor any science cannot "prove" anything. There will always be "exceptions."

You, your mentality rather, is the reason man is not yet the "ubermensch."
I have one problem with what you are saying.

If biology works so differently for every person on the planet, why do most people bond, mate, and reproduce in roughly the same way?

If significant differences in biology and arousal were the rule, rather than the exception, it seems to me that mating just wouldn't work. There wouldn't be any reliable way for any one human to attract any other human as their mate.

Keep in mind, in terms of the evolutionary history of human beings, metal pins are a relatively recent invention. If that guy was only aroused by pins in 80,000 BC, would he have been able to find a mate and reproduce?

What dathwampeer is trying to say is not that everyone should be the same, or that everyone is the same. He's saying that human beings fit on a bell curve. Most people's anatomy works the same way, and most people respond predictably to biological impulses. Some people are not 'average' or 'normal', in that their biology works slightly differently.

In other words, pin guy may get aroused by unusual stimuli, but the actual feelings of arousal he experiences are probably not too different than anybody else's.

Try thinking about it this way. If everybody's biology was radically different, then how does modern medicine work? How can aspirin be succesfully marketed as an anti-inflammatory if it only works for a very small portion of the population, because only their biology is specifically tuned to allow aspirin to work? How can doctors routinely administer anesthesia, if the anesthetics they use only work for a small group of individuals?

Clearly, this is not the case. Most people's biology works about the same. There are variations (some men like tits, and some men prefer asses), ther are people who fall outside the mean (some people are allergic to aspirin; good luck with that headache), and some people who are outliers (like the guy who can only get it up if he gets stabbed with a sharp object, or whatever).

As for man becoming the "ubermensch", doesn't that involve the creation of a superior race by ELIMINATING all of the outliers, and bringing mankind into a state of consistent perfection? How does that philosophy jive with accepting the outliers as normal? Maybe you can explain that to me.
Basically, your post leads up to the explanation: modern medicine works. Does it? It has a higher percentage of "success" than ancient medicine. But it doesn't work--not to it's 100% claim. Name one pill, surgery, therapy, medicine, treatment, diagnosis for, forget 100% of the population--a hundred percent of people it's applied to.
No, the point of my post WAS NOT that modern medicine works ALL THE TIME (and you'd probably have a hard time finding any doctors who would make that claim. I DID say that some treatments don't work for some people (If you had actually bothered to read my post carefully, you would have noticed that I mentioned some people are allergic to aspirin - an excellent example of that fact).

The point of my post is that most people are about the same in terms of their biology, and that bringing up one random guy who blows his load whenever someone stabs him with a pointy stick doesn't prove that such extreme variances in sexual behavior are the rule and not the exception.

I was using the capabilities of modern medicine to demonstrate this point; if radical biological differences were the rule and not the exception, modern medicine WOULD NOT WORK AT ALL, because it would be impossible to predict what a particular chemical's effects would be on even a small portion of the population.

In reality, most people respond to common drugs in about the same way, and most people have their vital organs in about the same relative locations on their body. Human beings, biologically speaking, fit on a bell curve. Most people are in the middle. Only a small percentage of the population has radically different biology, and that also applies to sexual behavior.

And you didn't answer my question about the ubermensch. I've never read Nietzsche, so I don't know anything about his philosophy other than the very basic tenets.
I apologize for overlooking the ubermensch reference, in truth, it's a really complicated thing. But it's kind of the ideal, an "overman" a person who conquers man.

Also, again, I'm taking about proof. The point that something doesn't work for everything--so you admit--is proof that we really don't have knowledge. We have fragments what resembles knowledge, which we use to replenish our bruised ego. Since modern science is fallible, all I'm saying is that don't hold too much faith in it--there will be a time when people wiser than us will, too, cast it down and write about us in history books as we do of the Greek mythos.

We should not dismiss these things as mere "technicalities," because nothing remains proven while there is a contradiction. Because we then progress on things based on assumptions, which only take us further away from the "truth." But yes, I do agree: Suum Cuique. To each his own.
I'm not 'dismissing' anything. The fact that pin-guy exists (not to mention people with a lot of other weird sexual predilections) is certainly a significant reality.

Still, sometimes we don't need all the details about reality to have a functional understanding of it.

Think about a road map. All it has on it are roads, locations, and major landmarks. You can navigate just fine by it. It doesn't matter if it's missing the individual bushes, trees, stop signs, and the names of all the families that live in every house, it's still a good map.

Of course, we should always strive to learn more about reality, and figure out how all the deviations fit into the big picture. Still, sometimes you don't need a perfect understanding to get things done and make predictions that work most of the time. I don't need to know about all the little quantum fluctuations that occur in my laptop's CPU as it cranks out operations; I just need to know what buttons to press to make it do what I want it to do.

The same holds true for the monogamy discussion. Maybe you can't say monogamy is good or bad for everyone, but most people know enough about human relationships from watching other people interact, and from their own experiences, to think about what might work best for most people.

Of course, it's entirely possible that, even with such experiences, a person might not have enough information to make a decision that would actually work in reality, just like a city map from 1950 probably wouldn't do you much good when navigating in the present day. But even then, just because a person doesn't know enough right now to come up with a good idea, doesn't mean they can't get to that point eventually.

The concept of there being an absolute truth isn't really a practical concept, because we'll never know all the facts about anything. We usually just have to make due with what understanding we have. When our understanding is adequate, we get good results. When it isn't, we get bad results, and start learning more until our understanding improves.

And yes, a lot of the time, bad results come out of bad assumptions, and we have to revise those assumptions before we can start going towards better understanding. It's a constant process.

But once again, just because you don't have a perfect understanding about how something works doesn't mean your understanding is invalid. Sometimes saying something is "generally true" when it's true for 90% of cases isn't invalid, so long as you recognize the other 10% and take it into consideration when making decisions.
 

Atmos Duality

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Mar 3, 2010
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50% divorce rate... and that's just with one partner.
Just based on a jealousy model alone, polygamy won't work without coercion and submission.

Unless you just want a harem of sex-slaves, rather than getting to know the actual person.
Then polygamy is great.
 

Giest4life

The Saucepan Man
Feb 13, 2010
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RebellionXXI said:
Giest4life said:
RebellionXXI said:
Giest4life said:
RebellionXXI said:
Giest4life said:
dathwampeer said:
Giest4life said:
dathwampeer said:
Giest4life said:
dathwampeer said:
Giest4life said:
dathwampeer said:
Giest4life said:
Monogamy is the last vestiges of a dying human race--the race of the "last men," as Nietzsche called them. There is nothing good, noble, and praiseworthy about monogamy. Just as there is nothing special with polygamy.

dathwampeer said:
If we were meant to be monogamous we wouldn't have any desire to cheat.

Simple as.

Penguins don't cheat, in-fact most of the time when one's partner dies. It will simply never mate again. Some die soon after, thoughts are from grief. Wanna know why? Because they were born to be monogamous.
Be careful with that, sir. When you say "we" how sure are you that you speak for 100% of the human populace, the dead, the living, and those that are not yet conceived? I'd be careful with generalizations like that....
It's human nature to be at the very least curious about having sex with other people. Even if someone doesn't cheat, there is a 100% chance that at some point during any relationship they've had. That they have looked at another prospective mate in sexual way. whether or not they act upon it is another matter.

What I am sure of is that monogamy, especially as far as males are concerned, is counter intuitive as far as survival of the species goes. Atleast in a primitive situation. Spreading your genes to as many mates as possible gives you a greater chance of special survival.

That's not so important now. But old habits are hard to kick. Especially ones that are ingrained on you at a genetic level.

I generalise because it's true.
Again, sir. Do you know if it's true for the 100% of those--even males--that have yet to be, those that are, and those that were? It's a disturbing trend that I've seen amongst humans: the trend to state their observations as the "truth."
you're not observant for pointing out the fact that I'm not every human to have ever existed. Is it also right to say that you don't know that every human is born with blood because you haven't tested every human to prove this? I think I choose to believe in hormones over inane philosophical prattle.

Just because you can't prove something to be statistically true doesn't mean it isn't.
If you must know, statistically, nothing is true, because nothing can really be tested to it's fullest. Name me a study in which the sample is the whole human population. A quick search of "statistics" on wikipedia should have yield you the results you need.

Only the ignorant call it "inane philosophical prattle." I guess, you need to fill in the hole in your, so called, "knowledge."
*woosh* right over your head.

That was kind of my point.

And biologically speaking.... yes... what I'm saying is true.

You don't stop being attracted to other people once you're in a relationship. There is no biological proof to suggest anything to that nature. In-fact oxytocin (the chemical linked with human bonding) begins to fade dramatically after only a few years. And rises once again when you find a new partner.

So yes. I'm going to continue calling what you're saying inane philosophical prattle. Because it doesn't mean anything. It's just a blatant fact that has no relevance to my point, dressed up as something poignant.

The fact that I'm not every human to have ever existed doesn't mean that what we know human biology is wrong. Again. Simply because I can't statistically prove something doesn't mean it's wrong... :/
Again, there is no single biological phenomenon that is universal. Every hormone secreted, every brain function, every twitch of the muscle, every beat of the heart is different in every single one of us. You know, the inconvenient word we use to describe everything that doesn't fit our narrative: mutation.

To prove my point, I heard it on npr, last week, this recorded mental patient who would reach orgasm at the sight of pins---yes, pins!

Though I regret I can't remember the exact name of the patient or the therapist who attended, and recorded that guy.
Ever heard the expression. 'The exceptions that prove the rule.' It is of course going to be true that there are anomalies, we're talking about biology here. Not factory crafted beings. For 99% of the population hormones are going to have the exact same effect. There may be slight differences in the process and length of time involved. But they all do the same thing.


There are bound to be those who are considered mentally retarded. And/or haven't reached sexual maturity. They won't have the desire for sex atall. I thought it was clear that I was talking about normal humans. Not the handicapped exceptions.

When someone is talking about the absolute in a discussion like this. They don't mean (including the anomalies.) If I rephrase 'Everyone' To 'Every healthy (mentally and physically) human.' Will you STFU?

I thought that would have been blatantly obvious and readily available to anyone reading. Clearly not.
You have superbly demonstrated the all-too-human folly: "they" are the exception, you are the rule. There are no "anomalies," it is only your ignorance that fails to see what really is. The human brain fears that which it cannot understand--and label--thus we label these as "exceptions" to the rule to prove a point. The fact is, you and nor any science cannot "prove" anything. There will always be "exceptions."

You, your mentality rather, is the reason man is not yet the "ubermensch."
I have one problem with what you are saying.

If biology works so differently for every person on the planet, why do most people bond, mate, and reproduce in roughly the same way?

If significant differences in biology and arousal were the rule, rather than the exception, it seems to me that mating just wouldn't work. There wouldn't be any reliable way for any one human to attract any other human as their mate.

Keep in mind, in terms of the evolutionary history of human beings, metal pins are a relatively recent invention. If that guy was only aroused by pins in 80,000 BC, would he have been able to find a mate and reproduce?

What dathwampeer is trying to say is not that everyone should be the same, or that everyone is the same. He's saying that human beings fit on a bell curve. Most people's anatomy works the same way, and most people respond predictably to biological impulses. Some people are not 'average' or 'normal', in that their biology works slightly differently.

In other words, pin guy may get aroused by unusual stimuli, but the actual feelings of arousal he experiences are probably not too different than anybody else's.

Try thinking about it this way. If everybody's biology was radically different, then how does modern medicine work? How can aspirin be succesfully marketed as an anti-inflammatory if it only works for a very small portion of the population, because only their biology is specifically tuned to allow aspirin to work? How can doctors routinely administer anesthesia, if the anesthetics they use only work for a small group of individuals?

Clearly, this is not the case. Most people's biology works about the same. There are variations (some men like tits, and some men prefer asses), ther are people who fall outside the mean (some people are allergic to aspirin; good luck with that headache), and some people who are outliers (like the guy who can only get it up if he gets stabbed with a sharp object, or whatever).

As for man becoming the "ubermensch", doesn't that involve the creation of a superior race by ELIMINATING all of the outliers, and bringing mankind into a state of consistent perfection? How does that philosophy jive with accepting the outliers as normal? Maybe you can explain that to me.
Basically, your post leads up to the explanation: modern medicine works. Does it? It has a higher percentage of "success" than ancient medicine. But it doesn't work--not to it's 100% claim. Name one pill, surgery, therapy, medicine, treatment, diagnosis for, forget 100% of the population--a hundred percent of people it's applied to.
No, the point of my post WAS NOT that modern medicine works ALL THE TIME (and you'd probably have a hard time finding any doctors who would make that claim. I DID say that some treatments don't work for some people (If you had actually bothered to read my post carefully, you would have noticed that I mentioned some people are allergic to aspirin - an excellent example of that fact).

The point of my post is that most people are about the same in terms of their biology, and that bringing up one random guy who blows his load whenever someone stabs him with a pointy stick doesn't prove that such extreme variances in sexual behavior are the rule and not the exception.

I was using the capabilities of modern medicine to demonstrate this point; if radical biological differences were the rule and not the exception, modern medicine WOULD NOT WORK AT ALL, because it would be impossible to predict what a particular chemical's effects would be on even a small portion of the population.

In reality, most people respond to common drugs in about the same way, and most people have their vital organs in about the same relative locations on their body. Human beings, biologically speaking, fit on a bell curve. Most people are in the middle. Only a small percentage of the population has radically different biology, and that also applies to sexual behavior.

And you didn't answer my question about the ubermensch. I've never read Nietzsche, so I don't know anything about his philosophy other than the very basic tenets.
I apologize for overlooking the ubermensch reference, in truth, it's a really complicated thing. But it's kind of the ideal, an "overman" a person who conquers man.

Also, again, I'm taking about proof. The point that something doesn't work for everything--so you admit--is proof that we really don't have knowledge. We have fragments what resembles knowledge, which we use to replenish our bruised ego. Since modern science is fallible, all I'm saying is that don't hold too much faith in it--there will be a time when people wiser than us will, too, cast it down and write about us in history books as we do of the Greek mythos.

We should not dismiss these things as mere "technicalities," because nothing remains proven while there is a contradiction. Because we then progress on things based on assumptions, which only take us further away from the "truth." But yes, I do agree: Suum Cuique. To each his own.
I'm not 'dismissing' anything. The fact that pin-guy exists (not to mention people with a lot of other weird sexual predilections) is certainly a significant reality.

Still, sometimes we don't need all the details about reality to have a functional understanding of it.

Think about a road map. All it has on it are roads, locations, and major landmarks. You can navigate just fine by it. It doesn't matter if it's missing the individual bushes, trees, stop signs, and the names of all the families that live in every house, it's still a good map.

Of course, we should always strive to learn more about reality, and figure out how all the deviations fit into the big picture. Still, sometimes you don't need a perfect understanding to get things done and make predictions that work most of the time. I don't need to know about all the little quantum fluctuations that occur in my laptop's CPU as it cranks out operations; I just need to know what buttons to press to make it do what I want it to do.

The same holds true for the monogamy discussion. Maybe you can't say monogamy is good or bad for everyone, but most people know enough about human relationships from watching other people interact, and from their own experiences, to think about what might work best for most people.

Of course, it's entirely possible that, even with such experiences, a person might not have enough information to make a decision that would actually work in reality, just like a city map from 1950 probably wouldn't do you much good when navigating in the present day. But even then, just because a person doesn't know enough right now to come up with a good idea, doesn't mean they can't get to that point eventually.

The concept of there being an absolute truth isn't really a practical concept, because we'll never know all the facts about anything. We usually just have to make due with what understanding we have. When our understanding is adequate, we get good results. When it isn't, we get bad results, and start learning more until our understanding improves.

And yes, a lot of the time, bad results come out of bad assumptions, and we have to revise those assumptions before we can start going towards better understanding. It's a constant process.

But once again, just because you don't have a perfect understanding about how something works doesn't mean your understanding is invalid. Sometimes saying something is "generally true" when it's true for 90% of cases isn't invalid, so long as you recognize the other 10% and take it into consideration when making decisions.
What's most curious about your argument is that you insist upon your point while admitting you don't have "enough knowledge." But that is the epistemological question: what do we know? Nothing I--nor any amount of "proof"--will dissuade you from your skewed perception of reality. And i say skewed because it seems so this way.

I will let you have the last word.
 

Exosus

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Jun 24, 2008
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Why is there no option for "To each their own?" If you want multiple partners, have them. If you want a single partner, that's great too. If you want to lock yourself up alone and bathe in royal jelly while writing allegorical fiction about the wrong-headedness of universal reproduction, I will support you in that. What people do with their genitals is no concern of mine (or anyone else's).
 

Pravus

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Nov 10, 2010
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Oh, boy. Here we go.

Pre-agricultural man has absolutely no concept of monogamy or sexual fidelity. None, zero, zilch. Like agriculture, man invented the concept of monogamy as a way of further commodifying our basic needs under the (then) false assumption that resources (even sexual) were limited. Monogamy and marriage is bred of an extremely sexist impetus, where women were expected to barter their sexuality in exchange for food and protection, which are unnecessary concerns in a (natural) egalitarian setting. For that matter, paternal certainty and the import we place on lineage is an invention that also sprung into existence to establish the passing of property, in response to agriculture, which itself is an arguably unnatural occurrence in our species, and was in all likelihood the product not of limited resources but of megalomania, an outlier behavior that spread through greed and violence (which are sociopathic behaviors, and for the purposes of this discussion: "not natural human behavior" but learned, for most), and not through any evolutionary impulse. Behaviorally, yes, the illusion of scarcity makes us hoarding, jealous, violent people. This goes against our very nature, and this entire problem (monogamy IS one of the problems) stems from the invention of agriculture.

I know that these are hard pills to swallow, but bear with me.

We evolved in a setting where reproductive sex was secondary to sex as a vehicle for social bonding and tension release. In no setting without agriculture (and, for that matter, without gender inequality) does monogamous pair-bonding occur naturally. Agricultural man is a relatively new age for man, and comprises just 10,000 years of our 200,000 year history, and that's not even factoring in the many hundreds of thousands of years prior, linking us most notably to the ultra-egalitarian and sexually promiscuous Bonobos, whose very survival (like early man's) was contingent on the impulses to share not only food but sex as well. These same impulses survive in us today, but we are a very very repressed species whose social conditioning puts us at odds with ourselves constantly.

Let me address the hyperbole that is "agricultural man" and the absurdity that I can purport to say what man was like over 10,000 years ago. To this very day, over a 100 seemingly-disparate tribes exist throughout the world who share some very fundamental things in common, the most important among them is their lack of agriculture. Like early man, they exist today in the most natural setting imaginable, where megalomania and hoarding and sexual stinginess were regarded as detrimental behavior to society, and such individuals are outcast or swiftly punished. Most of these tribes have no words for our concept of marriage (and it baffles them greatly), no words for the concept of war or even murder. When everything (people included) is shared, there is absolutely no need for violence or sexual jealousy, impulses that we fight every single day (which should be indicative enough that "we're doing it wrong"). These fiercely egalitarian tribes behave the way they do because it maximizes not only their chances of survival (when everyone truly cares about each other, and children don't even know who their "real" father is), but because a sexually promiscuous lifestyle reaps so many social AND health benefits.

Marriage is not a human universal. It's a logical development when resources seem scarce and we want to ensure that our offspring are the sole owners of our property, but this is far from a natural impulse. Like the bonobo, human females are the only other species who remain sexually receptive throughout all cycles of menstruation. Like the bonobo, instances of bisexuality are not outliers but are, in fact, the norm, and studies testing what individuals SAY they're attracted to and what their genitalia is saying have shown that bisexuality is more of a rule than an exception. If marriage and offspring bearing are naturally occurring in our species, bisexuality would not even exist. And yet, here it is.

So, the idea of monogamy is especially baffling in the face of female orgasm. Let's overlook the fact that group sex is the most sought after porn by far, and instead look at a simple truth: women take far longer to reach orgasm than men. The reason for this is that, again, we evolved in a setting where women had multiple sexual partners simultaneously, and it was (and really, still is) utterly necessary for several men to do their thing for all individuals involved to reap the full benefits of the sexual experience. Did you know that the uhh, "sounds" a female makes while mating are (like our bonobo cousins) meant only to arouse and bring other men into the equation? Did you know that the first and last spurts of male ejaculate contains a spermicide so that we can "compete" in reproduction after ejaculation and certainly not before? Did you know that the simple act of genitalia plunging and thrusting removes something like 80% of ejaculate? Remember what I said about hunter-gatherer tribes not having paternity certainty, and how children were raised in an environment where every male in the tribe cared for them as their own? This is how prehistoric man developed and what our bodies are still fine-tuned to respond to.

We have a genetic predilection for sexual novelty, and we are absolutely unable to stay sexually excited with one partner without a variety of tricks like, say, closing your eyes and imagining another partner, or role-playing, or using all sorts of jump-start techniques to make the act exciting again. Sexual dysfunction is a misdiagnoses, and we wrongly assume that something is wrong with us or our partner. Our bodies are telling us something. They're not saying "you picked the wrong person to mate with" or even "spread the seed" or "make babies." They're saying we need to socially bond with many others and that we were meant to do this in the most intimate settings.

All the different schools of thought and terminology we use to describe differing sexual behaviors aren't helping the matter. We are meant, as a species, to love and care for those around us, and both men and women have a need not only for physical and sexual intimacy from those around them, but a need for novelty as well. Like the Muoso tribe, I call it friendship, and the idea of romantic foreverness is never naturally factored into my attraction and egalitarian impulses.

Blah blah, I could gab about this for days. Read "Sex at Dawn" if you want to continue the discussion with all the science weighed in rather than conjecture of what the people immediately around us are doing.

tl,dr: "It's wrong, it goes against our base animal instincts."
 

baiaishan

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Sep 29, 2009
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I'm in the "whatever floats your boat" category. As long as everyone in the relationship is on the same page, honest, and happy with the situation, what's the harm?

Also, in response to the above poster-- yes, that may be true for many people, perhaps even most people. It may have been true in the past, but there are quite a few people who do things that "go against our base animal instincts." For instance, a relatively recent study suggests that more intelligent people are more likely to have "evolutionarily novel traits." Check out this summary:
http://www.physorg.com/news186236813.html

So I don't think you can just write off monogamy as completely unnatural and leave the discussion there. Monogamy works for some people, regardless of how pre-agrarian societies handled sexuality.
 

Artina89

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Oct 27, 2008
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I personally don't want to be in a polygamous relationship, I just want to devote my time to one person, however, if other people want to be in a polygamous relationship (as long as it is consensual) they can, as long as they don't force their views on me they can do what the hell they want as far as I am concerned.
 

Orekoya

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Sep 24, 2008
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THEMILKMAN said:
Monogamy poll, blah blah blah
Uh, to avoid all this non-sense in the past pages, I'm going to just mention that Bullshit [http://www.sho.com/site/ptbs/home.do] episode on Traditional [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npB4XfBTICA] Family Values [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09_49KL6pgM] which covered this and other family value issues.
 

Pravus

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Baiaishan, articles like that are definitely part of the problem, and it's important to note the many flaws in Kanazawa's very confirmation-biased arguments.

1. For starters, the vast majority of these studies are conducted strictly amongst college-aged students (for course credit) in so-called First World countries. This one cites "Young adults" as its area of focus, which (in the case of confirmation-bias studies such as this one) NEVER includes an actually diverse sample of humans, and completely and conveniently ignores still-existing egalitarian hunter-gatherer tribal people whose responses would utterly invalidate the data. This is Flinstonization to the highest degree.

2. We can't care for an "indefinite number of genetically unrelated strangers." That's really not a possibility. IQ and liberalism won't change that fact. In a natural setting, tribes that exceed approximately 150 members split into two separate tribes. The brain capacity to care for more people than that is not in us, and this is arguably why communism and egalitarianism simply can't work in present day society. There are far too many people, and it's impossible to really truly care whose resources you're taking away if you'll never even meet the person. This is why leaders and politicians constantly hoard resources when they become further separated from their society, because it's so easy to be a sociopath when you don't know who you're affecting.

I'd argue that our expanding population was the impetus behind the arts, and especially storytelling, to remind us of our similarities through the practice of empathy, which is as innate an impulse as they come. These reminders bind us in a way that is otherwise impossible, because there are simply too many strangers among us. But it's not at all "genetically novel" to care about those around us (but there are limits), or to learn to care about strangers through sharing and empathy. That's the setting we evolved in, and not the other way around. Speaking of which...

3. Kanazawa assumes a setting in which women have ALWAYS been restricted sexually (which, again, completely ignores the [if anything] matriarchal leanings of still existing hunter-gatherer tribes today), and this is utterly false both in terms of our biology and our pre-agricultural history. All unbiased signs point to humans having evolved in a multi-male multi-female mating setting, and applying the mating practices of gorillas to humans (who share a far more recent genetic ancestor with bonobos [conveniently ignored in confirmation bias arguments]) is absurd, and becomes an apples to oranges sort of comparison rather than a Granny Smith to Gala comparison. Restricting female libido is a relatively new invention in the history of man (and again, far from ALL of mankind). Women are NOT innately monogamous, as Kanazawa and most others would have us believe. And that's all it is: a belief.

Certainly, to each his own. But I have to address the "it feels right" or "that's just what we do" folks. Feeling isn't fact. "What we do" isn't what we all do. Monogamy unarguably goes against our nature and is extremely troublesome to our health and our cohesiveness as a people.

Now, whether the alternative I suggest is better is another issue entirely, given our enormous population, given the problem of scarcity and anonymity. Marriage and monogamy may well be your best option for happiness in the world as it presently exists at large. Probably, yeah. But I think we ought to know why it's extremely difficult, or an outright failure of a system, and we ought to listen to what our bodies are telling us and make the most informed decisions.

Blah blah.
 

DanDeFool

Elite Member
Aug 19, 2009
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Giest4life said:
RebellionXXI said:
Giest4life said:
RebellionXXI said:
Giest4life said:
RebellionXXI said:
Giest4life said:
dathwampeer said:
Giest4life said:
dathwampeer said:
Giest4life said:
dathwampeer said:
Giest4life said:
dathwampeer said:
Giest4life said:
Monogamy is the last vestiges of a dying human race--the race of the "last men," as Nietzsche called them. There is nothing good, noble, and praiseworthy about monogamy. Just as there is nothing special with polygamy.

dathwampeer said:
If we were meant to be monogamous we wouldn't have any desire to cheat.

Simple as.

Penguins don't cheat, in-fact most of the time when one's partner dies. It will simply never mate again. Some die soon after, thoughts are from grief. Wanna know why? Because they were born to be monogamous.
Be careful with that, sir. When you say "we" how sure are you that you speak for 100% of the human populace, the dead, the living, and those that are not yet conceived? I'd be careful with generalizations like that....
It's human nature to be at the very least curious about having sex with other people. Even if someone doesn't cheat, there is a 100% chance that at some point during any relationship they've had. That they have looked at another prospective mate in sexual way. whether or not they act upon it is another matter.

What I am sure of is that monogamy, especially as far as males are concerned, is counter intuitive as far as survival of the species goes. Atleast in a primitive situation. Spreading your genes to as many mates as possible gives you a greater chance of special survival.

That's not so important now. But old habits are hard to kick. Especially ones that are ingrained on you at a genetic level.

I generalise because it's true.
Again, sir. Do you know if it's true for the 100% of those--even males--that have yet to be, those that are, and those that were? It's a disturbing trend that I've seen amongst humans: the trend to state their observations as the "truth."
you're not observant for pointing out the fact that I'm not every human to have ever existed. Is it also right to say that you don't know that every human is born with blood because you haven't tested every human to prove this? I think I choose to believe in hormones over inane philosophical prattle.

Just because you can't prove something to be statistically true doesn't mean it isn't.
If you must know, statistically, nothing is true, because nothing can really be tested to it's fullest. Name me a study in which the sample is the whole human population. A quick search of "statistics" on wikipedia should have yield you the results you need.

Only the ignorant call it "inane philosophical prattle." I guess, you need to fill in the hole in your, so called, "knowledge."
*woosh* right over your head.

That was kind of my point.

And biologically speaking.... yes... what I'm saying is true.

You don't stop being attracted to other people once you're in a relationship. There is no biological proof to suggest anything to that nature. In-fact oxytocin (the chemical linked with human bonding) begins to fade dramatically after only a few years. And rises once again when you find a new partner.

So yes. I'm going to continue calling what you're saying inane philosophical prattle. Because it doesn't mean anything. It's just a blatant fact that has no relevance to my point, dressed up as something poignant.

The fact that I'm not every human to have ever existed doesn't mean that what we know human biology is wrong. Again. Simply because I can't statistically prove something doesn't mean it's wrong... :/
Again, there is no single biological phenomenon that is universal. Every hormone secreted, every brain function, every twitch of the muscle, every beat of the heart is different in every single one of us. You know, the inconvenient word we use to describe everything that doesn't fit our narrative: mutation.

To prove my point, I heard it on npr, last week, this recorded mental patient who would reach orgasm at the sight of pins---yes, pins!

Though I regret I can't remember the exact name of the patient or the therapist who attended, and recorded that guy.
Ever heard the expression. 'The exceptions that prove the rule.' It is of course going to be true that there are anomalies, we're talking about biology here. Not factory crafted beings. For 99% of the population hormones are going to have the exact same effect. There may be slight differences in the process and length of time involved. But they all do the same thing.


There are bound to be those who are considered mentally retarded. And/or haven't reached sexual maturity. They won't have the desire for sex atall. I thought it was clear that I was talking about normal humans. Not the handicapped exceptions.

When someone is talking about the absolute in a discussion like this. They don't mean (including the anomalies.) If I rephrase 'Everyone' To 'Every healthy (mentally and physically) human.' Will you STFU?

I thought that would have been blatantly obvious and readily available to anyone reading. Clearly not.
You have superbly demonstrated the all-too-human folly: "they" are the exception, you are the rule. There are no "anomalies," it is only your ignorance that fails to see what really is. The human brain fears that which it cannot understand--and label--thus we label these as "exceptions" to the rule to prove a point. The fact is, you and nor any science cannot "prove" anything. There will always be "exceptions."

You, your mentality rather, is the reason man is not yet the "ubermensch."
I have one problem with what you are saying.

If biology works so differently for every person on the planet, why do most people bond, mate, and reproduce in roughly the same way?

If significant differences in biology and arousal were the rule, rather than the exception, it seems to me that mating just wouldn't work. There wouldn't be any reliable way for any one human to attract any other human as their mate.

Keep in mind, in terms of the evolutionary history of human beings, metal pins are a relatively recent invention. If that guy was only aroused by pins in 80,000 BC, would he have been able to find a mate and reproduce?

What dathwampeer is trying to say is not that everyone should be the same, or that everyone is the same. He's saying that human beings fit on a bell curve. Most people's anatomy works the same way, and most people respond predictably to biological impulses. Some people are not 'average' or 'normal', in that their biology works slightly differently.

In other words, pin guy may get aroused by unusual stimuli, but the actual feelings of arousal he experiences are probably not too different than anybody else's.

Try thinking about it this way. If everybody's biology was radically different, then how does modern medicine work? How can aspirin be succesfully marketed as an anti-inflammatory if it only works for a very small portion of the population, because only their biology is specifically tuned to allow aspirin to work? How can doctors routinely administer anesthesia, if the anesthetics they use only work for a small group of individuals?

Clearly, this is not the case. Most people's biology works about the same. There are variations (some men like tits, and some men prefer asses), ther are people who fall outside the mean (some people are allergic to aspirin; good luck with that headache), and some people who are outliers (like the guy who can only get it up if he gets stabbed with a sharp object, or whatever).

As for man becoming the "ubermensch", doesn't that involve the creation of a superior race by ELIMINATING all of the outliers, and bringing mankind into a state of consistent perfection? How does that philosophy jive with accepting the outliers as normal? Maybe you can explain that to me.
Basically, your post leads up to the explanation: modern medicine works. Does it? It has a higher percentage of "success" than ancient medicine. But it doesn't work--not to it's 100% claim. Name one pill, surgery, therapy, medicine, treatment, diagnosis for, forget 100% of the population--a hundred percent of people it's applied to.
No, the point of my post WAS NOT that modern medicine works ALL THE TIME (and you'd probably have a hard time finding any doctors who would make that claim. I DID say that some treatments don't work for some people (If you had actually bothered to read my post carefully, you would have noticed that I mentioned some people are allergic to aspirin - an excellent example of that fact).

The point of my post is that most people are about the same in terms of their biology, and that bringing up one random guy who blows his load whenever someone stabs him with a pointy stick doesn't prove that such extreme variances in sexual behavior are the rule and not the exception.

I was using the capabilities of modern medicine to demonstrate this point; if radical biological differences were the rule and not the exception, modern medicine WOULD NOT WORK AT ALL, because it would be impossible to predict what a particular chemical's effects would be on even a small portion of the population.

In reality, most people respond to common drugs in about the same way, and most people have their vital organs in about the same relative locations on their body. Human beings, biologically speaking, fit on a bell curve. Most people are in the middle. Only a small percentage of the population has radically different biology, and that also applies to sexual behavior.

And you didn't answer my question about the ubermensch. I've never read Nietzsche, so I don't know anything about his philosophy other than the very basic tenets.
I apologize for overlooking the ubermensch reference, in truth, it's a really complicated thing. But it's kind of the ideal, an "overman" a person who conquers man.

Also, again, I'm taking about proof. The point that something doesn't work for everything--so you admit--is proof that we really don't have knowledge. We have fragments what resembles knowledge, which we use to replenish our bruised ego. Since modern science is fallible, all I'm saying is that don't hold too much faith in it--there will be a time when people wiser than us will, too, cast it down and write about us in history books as we do of the Greek mythos.

We should not dismiss these things as mere "technicalities," because nothing remains proven while there is a contradiction. Because we then progress on things based on assumptions, which only take us further away from the "truth." But yes, I do agree: Suum Cuique. To each his own.
I'm not 'dismissing' anything. The fact that pin-guy exists (not to mention people with a lot of other weird sexual predilections) is certainly a significant reality.

Still, sometimes we don't need all the details about reality to have a functional understanding of it.

Think about a road map. All it has on it are roads, locations, and major landmarks. You can navigate just fine by it. It doesn't matter if it's missing the individual bushes, trees, stop signs, and the names of all the families that live in every house, it's still a good map.

Of course, we should always strive to learn more about reality, and figure out how all the deviations fit into the big picture. Still, sometimes you don't need a perfect understanding to get things done and make predictions that work most of the time. I don't need to know about all the little quantum fluctuations that occur in my laptop's CPU as it cranks out operations; I just need to know what buttons to press to make it do what I want it to do.

The same holds true for the monogamy discussion. Maybe you can't say monogamy is good or bad for everyone, but most people know enough about human relationships from watching other people interact, and from their own experiences, to think about what might work best for most people.

Of course, it's entirely possible that, even with such experiences, a person might not have enough information to make a decision that would actually work in reality, just like a city map from 1950 probably wouldn't do you much good when navigating in the present day. But even then, just because a person doesn't know enough right now to come up with a good idea, doesn't mean they can't get to that point eventually.

The concept of there being an absolute truth isn't really a practical concept, because we'll never know all the facts about anything. We usually just have to make due with what understanding we have. When our understanding is adequate, we get good results. When it isn't, we get bad results, and start learning more until our understanding improves.

And yes, a lot of the time, bad results come out of bad assumptions, and we have to revise those assumptions before we can start going towards better understanding. It's a constant process.

But once again, just because you don't have a perfect understanding about how something works doesn't mean your understanding is invalid. Sometimes saying something is "generally true" when it's true for 90% of cases isn't invalid, so long as you recognize the other 10% and take it into consideration when making decisions.
What's most curious about your argument is that you insist upon your point while admitting you don't have "enough knowledge." But that is the epistemological question: what do we know? Nothing I--nor any amount of "proof"--will dissuade you from your skewed perception of reality. And i say skewed because it seems so this way.

I will let you have the last word.
Then the last word will be this:

Right back at ya', chucklecuz. Epistemology is a two-way street.

You're saying that my perception of reality is skewed, but what if you feel this way because YOUR perception of reality is skewed? If people don't really understand anything, how is it that YOU have come to understand that people don't understand anything, if people's inability to understand anything would preclude you from understanding that people don't understand anything?

You're working on the assumption that one must have complete knowledge in order to be right, but what if that assumption is wrong? Isn't it possible to say something true without understanding why it is true? Isn't a stopped clock right twice a day?

Well, not if it's a 24-hour clock. Then it's only right once a day.

To assume that you 'know' something, can be a dubious prospect to be sure, but reality insists that we do this in order to survive. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. The only consistent truth is that human beings must consistently challenge and revise their beliefs, not to attain absolute truth, but merely to survive in a world we can understand very little about. However, just because 'knowledge' is sketchy at best, doesn't mean it doesn't work AT ALL. The very fact that we're having this discussion is proof that knowledge works at least some of the time.

Well, we've gone from debating the merits of monogamy to dissecting the value of knowledge and the nature of reality. At this point, I think we'd better just agree to disagree and move on to something else.
 

MassiveGeek

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People can do what they want in my opinion.
But that doesn't mean I won't state my personal opinion back at them.

I absolutely love my boyfriend, he provides everything I need in a relationship and I wouldn't dream of being with anyone else as long as I'm with him, which I hope will be a long, wonderful time.

Just him is well more than enough for me.

But if some other people want to have a ton of girl and boyfriends, and everyone feels great about it - sure, go ahead. As long as everything is cool for everyone involved.
 

Naheal

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Sep 6, 2009
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Other: I don't care what others do. Any man who wants to tie himself to multiple women will get what he's asking for, though.
 

Beliyal

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Jun 7, 2010
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@Pravus, your post is very well structured and informative, thanks :D

But I tend to think that our "natural animal instincts" cannot be applied to us anymore. If we apply them, we ignore thousands of years of culture and civilization and, above all, evolution. We are biologically still animals and there's nothing wrong with that, but in all other aspects, we are not and we are not driven by pure natural animal instincts (I'm not counting the need for food, water and reproduction here, since no living creature can survive without those). Humans had a lot of "animal instincts" that became unnecessary (such as having 10 or more children; yes, some people still do have that much, but it is unnecessary) because we developed and evolved. And I believe it is wrong to take our "animal instincts" as an excuse to do certain things. We outgrew and learned how to control them; that's what makes us human. So yeah, while that might have been the norm in the past and while it can still be the norm in primitive societies where everyone is used to it and approves of it, it is definitively not the norm in a fully developed world that has all the commodities that we have. Above all, it is unnecessary, unless it is used for pleasure. But then you don't really have to marry and form an official polygamous relationship with 10 people; just be single and have another partner every week. I guess that is our version of polygamy. But for settling down and having a family? Not really something I would consider necessary, or even smart when it comes to resources (five women in the house? Do you have any idea how much money would just the make-up cost? :))

On the other hand, I wouldn't practice polygamy and I wouldn't want my partner to practice it either. Maybe it's my possessive side, but I wouldn't like to share my partner with other women. And if he ever thought of doing that, I'd inevitably think that I am not enough, in any aspect, and that he definitively doesn't love me enough. Why else would he want to have 4 more women besides me? Same can be applied to myself; if I felt the need for other men, I would feel it only because the one I have was not good/enough, which means that I have no purpose in being with him if I don't love him.

I don't disapprove of polygamy though, but only if it's a mutual agreement and the wish of both (all?) partners, and I also don't see the need for it to extend to marriage. If you want to have multiple partners at the same time, and all of them agrees, well, it's your/their choice. In any other way, it would be "submissive sex-slave harem" as someone already said, and somehow, that doesn't strike me as something we should end up like, after thousands of years of civilization.
 

Cheesebob

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Theorectically its not normal.

For instance, Polyandry (a women with multiple husbands) works because it makes sure that the birth rate is somewhere to 1/2 to 1/6th it would originally be if all those husbands had wives. This is brilliant for poorer countries.

Also, I assume most of you are from 1st world countries and have been brought up in a christian country (or one with christian ideals) so you have been conditioned to believe that monogamy feels right. Its not right, nor is it wrong. its just the society we live in.

Even then in times of war, polygamy can be legalised to boost moral and the population.

So I believe it doesn't feel right, its just what I have been conditioned to believe all my life. Would I change it? Well no, because I know no better or worse or different.
 

Ava Elzbieta

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Where's the "It's right because a relationship is built on trust and cheating violates trust" option? Or, simply, "It's right because I don't want to hurt my partner."
 

Pravus

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Beliyal said:
@Pravus, your post is very well structured and informative, thanks :D
Thank you! I appreciate your thoughtful response as well. =)

I do and I don't mean to imply that we should revert back to a more polyamorous setting. The idealist in me certainly does, and I feel like every major step I've taken into adulthood has been in reconciling who I really am vs. what society wants me to be (and that this should be everyone's growing process), and that is absolutely a path towards inner peace and happiness--says my inner-idealist. Realistically, we have STI's and accidental pregnancies to concern ourselves with, and the woes of limited resources that child-bearing creates in a world of scarcity.

To that end, I think that responsible promiscuity with due protection and utter openness to all partners involved is our best compromise at not being at odds (at the very least) with our sexuality, but it's still a very difficult system to perform effectively. As you've noted, jealousy is not easily overcome, nor is the ideal that we ought to have one consistent partner from death do us part. I've run into my own obstacles with these problems, and I can't deny their relevance in arguing against a sexually egalitarian ideal.

Ah, I must disagree with the notion that humans reproduced in excess (10 or more babies), as this would have been utterly impractical for a foraging tribe who was constantly on the go, and really isn't the reality of prehistoric man. Before agriculture, our population as a species pretty much flat-lined (and in fact dipped to just a handful of people several times through near-apocalyptic events throughout history), but it was never advantageous for our species to reproduce in excess. Again, the "too many people" problem creates inevitable anonymity and we lose the capacity to care if we exceed a certain number of people in our tribe (or "family," if you will).

And I think you're both right and wrong about what makes us "human." Certainly, our society's present definition is characterized by repression and aggressive idealogical reshapings, but I'd like to think that what really makes us human is recognizing how much we've been bullshiited into changing our behavior, and ultimately recognizing how similar all of our needs are when unfettered by cultural demands and politics, so that we can at least emulate some kind of otherwise impossible mass-empathy. Says the idealist in me.
 

NoNameMcgee

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It's not wrong or right... It's about what you personally want. As long as polygamy is all consensual I mean, it's just a lifestyle choice.
 

TheLaofKazi

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To each their own, as long as everybody involved is cool with it. I think it's possible for both types of relationships to be mentally and physically healthy and enjoyable, it all depends on the people involved.