Polygamy

[BOOM headshot65]

I try to keep an open mind. For starters, I am most likely in the minority of Lutherens that are ok with homosexuals. But Polygamy...That is something that I have never and WILL never accept. I live my life by the old Chivalry/Bushido Codes and it has just never seemed possible to me for someone to truely love more that one person.

I have never thought it was only because of tax purposes, old religious laws, or a skewed view caused by "bad examples," It is because, it is wrong. Marriage is supposed to be between ONE man and ONE woman, more than that is being unfaithful. I know my girlfriend would be very upset if she saw me kiss someone else, or meaningfully hug them, and I could never think of making her feel bad like that, so I have promiced myself and her that it wont happen.

However, I am 100% certain that your opionion on it is based on one thing. Location, Location, Location. For instance, I live in the midwest, where we still consider ourselves the fortress of the old American way, and the color guard of everything good and rightous in the world. If you lived in Utah, a mostly Morman state where I understand this is common, than your view would still be different about it.

 

[Project_Omega]

For me it has to be a single woman.

I need ONE

UNO
EINS
JEDNA
UN

I can't possibly put my full attnetion and emotion towards two loved ones at the same time, its not possible. Seriously...

 

[Beliyal]

It does not prove humans are polygamous by nature, but it strongly supports it. If competing with multiple sex partners was such an issue that the by-product was a population whose very physiology is prepared to fight off competing partners even to its own detriment it would certainly imply infidelity. In the event that ancient humans were primarily monogamous our ancestors would have higher chances of reproducing if sperm were more benevolent towards one and other, and at the very least shape and behaviour would provide no advantages, at least none that anyone has seen.

Wouldn't this indicate that nature was strongly against polyandry only? I don't seem to understand how does this support polygamy; in my opinion, it only shows that women having multiple men was not desirable so penis evolved to eliminate the possibility of women being fertilized by the previous mate, which means that the penis (men) didn't want competition (which, in turn means, that women should only have one mate). Besides, as women can only be fertilized by one person at the time and then have to invest much more resources, time and energy into pregnancy and birth, polyandry as a biological mean of reproduction is quite silly (if we're talking about instincts and pure biology, not taking into account how many women today don't care about reproduction and want multiple partners to have sex with for pleasure).

Okay, BUT this is far from the only evidence we have, in fact its not the only evidence i gave. Simply put i was told that there was no biological evidence that humans could be polygamous and i presented evidence to the contrary not intending for this to cover everything, and i have no desire to try and cover everything now.

First, thanks for the reply. And yeah, I assume there's more evidence, probably for both sides, I was just interested in how would this specific evidence work.

Monogamy creates a better environment for children, because the parents know it's their only offspring and they invest more in it.
Going around, fathering and mothering dozen children like it's some type of a commune where children don't know who their parents are, doesn't sound like a healthy environment for a human being in this day and age, because no parent would feel obligated to invest in some of their offspring, or they would invest in a "favourite" one, while neglecting others. Of course, there will be polygamous couples that don't want to reproduce; what I mentioned is only the extreme example which shouldn't be taken as absolute truth because it isn't. There is no way of knowing how would it develop. Still, I don't think our biological preference for polygamy or monogamy, whatever the preference is, should influence our final decision and laws. Times when we lived by applying the laws on nature on our society are long gone. I see no reason to act on something simply because it is "biologically correct". If you are genuinely polygamous and you find polygamous partners, it should be enough of a reason. Some people are like that, just as some people are gay, despite the fact that in the past, I highly doubt that polygamy was introduced because "some people were like that" and not because of political reasons, patriarchal traditions or the stabilization of the population.

I largely agree with you here and have said as much in previous posts, however you chose one specifically trying to refute the statement that there is no scientific evidence as to why humans would be polygamous. I personally think that things like love are a modern luxury more than human nature, largely because if people were as selective as they are today, we likely would have died out ages ago.

I agree about the modern luxury part, though for the most part of the human history, I don't think it was so much a matter of our species dying out, as it was a matter of societal norms, political marriages and similar things (which, sure, may have originated from the need to secure the continuation of the species, later transformed into just the continuation of a certain family, village or a ruling dynasty).

I personally never want to be in a relationship like that, but I hate that we want to legislate what consenting adults do in private.

And I agree with this, of course. Hopefully, legislating what consenting adults do in private will soon come to an end (or at least a change).

 

[Draconalis]

Marriage is supposed to be between ONE man and ONE woman, more than that is being unfaithful.

Not originally. In Greece, it was pretty much just a contract of ownership and an insurance of purity, and the Greek men went out for orgies while their wives stayed home.

However, I am 100% certain that your opionion on it is based on one thing. Location, Location, Location. For instance, I live in the midwest, where we still consider ourselves the fortress of the old American way, and the color guard of everything good and rightous in the world. If you lived in Utah, a mostly Morman state where I understand this is common, than your view would still be different about it.

Sorry to crack you assumed certainty with fact... but I live in Houston, Texas.

 

[Housebroken Lunatic]

My logic is fine. You're the one that is misreading and putting words in my mouth. Humans have instincts, we just ignore them mostly. The abnormality is ignoring those instincts. No other creature in the animal kingdom ignores their instincts to the level of humans. Flying for birds and dinosaurs, none of that matters.

No your logic is not "fine" because you're separating one set of behaviors traditionally regarded as "instincts" from the rest of the displayed behaviours in the species in question and argue that they, supposedly, are "more natural" than the rest, when you can't truly know the difference from the behaviours which you refer to as "instincts" from those other behaviours that you imply are "unnatural".

And the reason you can't know that is because you don't know how the human brain works (no one does at the moment), and thus it's impossible to truly tell where your supposed "instincts" end and your supposed "abnormalities" begin.

And no, arguing what instinctual behaviour looks like in OTHER species of animals does NOT prove any sort of point in regards to humans, since other species have different fundamental conditions than humans do, due to the vast differences in higher brain functions and brain size.

You've somehow formed the view that there's an internal "conflict" between the behaviours you refer to as "instincts" and other more "refined" behaviours. And reached a premature concluscion that the first humans didn't have such internal conflicts and that their "instincts" were always followed and the "refined" behaviours didn't play any part in their decisionmaking, views, feelings or perception of their surroundings.

But how do you know for sure that this must be the case? How do you know for sure that this "conflict" hasn't been going on since the very first homo sapiens sapiens was born?

And if that "conflict" has been with us since the species started, how is it NOT fundamental part of our true nature?

My guess is that you're line of thinking is a bit too much influenced by Freudian theories. You know he was the one who made the idea popular in the first place that humans are all basically driven by sex and anger (the "id"), and that only an abstract part of our minds called "the superego" is the thing preventing us from basically becoming mindless slaves to "the id" who do nothing but fuck and fight with eachother. And that you then reach the concluscion that somehow the "superego" is an abnormality, while "the id" is our "true nature".

The thing is, Freud was never able to prove that we even have anything you could feasibly call a "superego" or an "id". It was all just theoretical (and in regards to Freud he was hardly a reliable source or a very good scientist, and many of his theories have been discredited and proven wrong in modern times). So there's no real support for the notion that there's an "internal conflict" taking place, biologically speaking. For all we truly know at the moment, these behaviours you refer to as "instincts" might be just as old and natural as the other behaviours humans display.

So it is quite arrogant of you to think that you can somehow determine that some behaviours are an evolutionary abnormality, while others are "natural instincts". Especially if we consider the fact that there are real people TODAY who don't make that distinction between love and lust that you do. And it doesn't matter what chemicals causes it or which parts of the brain are stimulated, because to each and every individual the experience and perceptions of those chemical changes and brain stimulation is SUBJECTIVE.

Maybe if you didn't argue like a pompous jack ass or ignore my points, or bend and misinterpret them so badly, or spout off non-sense to make your own points seem more valid, I'd take you more seriously.

Private channels mean I don't have a need to be understood by all, only one person. I don't give a damn what people think about me, and I'm not here to "win" anything. Shit, I don't even have a reputation on these forums to be tarnished in the first place.

Really it's my own fault for giving you another chance and responding to you though. for that, I apologize. I'll rectify the mistake immediately.

Wow, aren't you immature.

You blame me for "ignoring your points" when it is YOU who can't see the points I make because you're way to preoccupied with getting all frustrated over your perception of me as a pompous jack-ass.

It's like you can't hear me because you're too distressed of the impression im making. Your ability to focus on the subject matter being said is affected too much by something so trivial as manners.

Is that what you're saying?

 

[BOOM headshot65]

Marriage is supposed to be between ONE man and ONE woman, more than that is being unfaithful.

Not originally. In Greece, it was pretty much just a contract of ownership and an insurance of purity, and the Greek men went out for orgies while their wives stayed home.

So. That is STILL being unfaithful. I do not condon actions like that. They should have stayed at home, with the one they married, not gone out to give into lust with another.

I still say it should only be one man, one woman, because it is impossible to truely love anymore than that.

 

[Draconalis]

snip

You make a valid point for once. Who's to say? No one was alive back then to record those facts... but at the same time... who's to say, not? If left with nothing but observing modern creatures to make educated guesses on primitive man, whom were nothing more than creatures with a fate to dominate the world... I'd go with that over "Well shit... I guess we'll never know."

You make all these points about humans being vastly superior to other animals intellectually... sure... NOW, but who's to say the creatures of today wont be the masters of tomorrow once we've killed ourselves off?

Who's to say?

It's a study of relatives and comparisons. We can't observe creatures of the past, so we observe creatures of the present whom share many characteristics with those of the past, and can better understand modern man based on those observations.

It's like you can't hear me because you're too distressed of the impression im making. Your ability to focus on the subject matter being said is affected too much by something so trivial as manners.

In a debate? Yes. You want to be treated and respected as a peer. Act like one.

 

[Draconalis]

I still say it should only be one man, one woman, because it is impossible to truely love anymore than that.

For you, maybe. Not so much for all the people that get divorced and find another mate.

Then again, I'm of the opinion that a far smaller percentage of married people ever found true love to begin with... so... whateves.

 

[Draconalis]

You know, I don't often see eye to eye with Housebroken Lunatic but I think that if you're incapable of actually debating a point then being passive aggressive like this isn't helping you.

I've fully been able to debate the point. I'm just not going to debate the point with someone who isn't going to think on my words, and simply bends over backwards to create wholes that weren't there.

And if I let my mask slip and become aggressive. I might as well log off and not log back on for as fast as I'd be banned.

 

[Creator002]

In Australian law, I'm pretty sure it's illegal. Considering most people here get married at a Christian (Catholic of you want to be pedantic) church, the priests there probably wouldn't allow it.
Not sure why it's illegal, but I think most people would be offended/jealous if their partner was sharing their love with someone else.

 

[Draconalis]

In Australian law, I'm pretty sure it's illegal. Considering most people here get married at a Christian (Catholic of you want to be pedantic) church, the priests there probably wouldn't allow it.
Not sure why it's illegal, but I think most people would be offended/jealous if their partner was sharing their love with someone else.

Australia actually recognizes the polygamy of other countries. You can't get married to multiple people IN Australia, but if you already have many wives and move to Australia, you're good to go. (This thread has taught me much)

Which begs the question... what happens when someone like that moves to a location where it's not recognized... do they have to pick one as their wife and the others no longer have legal ties?

 

[Housebroken Lunatic]

You make a valid point for once. Who's to say? No one was alive back then to record those facts... but at the same time... who's to say, not? If left with nothing but observing modern creatures to make educated guesses on primitive man, whom were nothing more than creatures with a fate to dominate the world... I'd go with that over "Well shit... I guess we'll never know."

You make all these points about humans being vastly superior to other animals intellectually... sure... NOW, but who's to say the creatures of today wont be the masters of tomorrow once we've killed ourselves off?

Who's to say?

It's a study of relatives and comparisons. We can't observe creatures of the past, so we observe creatures of the present whom share many characteristics with those of the past, and can better understand modern man based on those observations.

In the end though, those observations and that methodology of yours will tell us exactly nothing of what's really going on.

In order to determine how our brains, emotions, perception of those emotions etc. REALLY works, we're gonna have to map the entire biological brain. That means experimenting and finding out EXACTLY what each and every single neuron governs and controls and how the entire chain of chemical reactions from that neuron influence our external behaviour and our internal perceptions of our surroundings.

And at the moment, modern science is LIGHTYEARS away from accomplishing that. And UNTIL THEN, it's just as premature to conclude that "we're all basically polygamous by nature" as it is to conclude that "we're all basically monogamous by nature".

So if you claim to take the scientific view of the matter at hand (or at least using scientific findings to support your views), then the only sensible thing to do (scientifically speaking) is just to admit that we can't know at the moment. The only thing we can observe right now that is relevant is that different individuals respond to and percieve emotions differently and subjectively.

You say that you make a distinction between love and lust. Nothing strange about that because that's how you work. BUT i've met people who emotionally speaking really can't tell the difference. They feel like they're in love with everyone they have sex with, and some of them are so strangely monogamous in behaviour that they pretty much view all other people outside of their current romantic relationships as sexually uninteresting objects.

And while that might seem strange to you (because you don't work that way), that doesn't necessarily make them "freaks of nature" and you into some kind of "natural creature". Because we just can't tell if monogamy OR polygamy are some kind of "superego delusions" or "id-based facts" at the moment. We just don't know enough about the brain and how it functions.

But we're getting there. Neurobiology is still a field of study attracting many scientific minds and it doesn't show signs of getting depleted of interested people.

In a debate? Yes. You want to be treated and respected as a peer. Act like one.

Well I can tell you this much: im not going to change.

But I'll also tell you this, if I didn't respect you to some extent then I wouldn't even be adressing you. People I don't respect at all, I ignore completely.

So don't you worry about contemplating if im disrespecting you or not, because you'll know for certain when I do when I stop responding to any of your posts.

 

[Housebroken Lunatic]

So no kids for you then, right? Because as a parent let me tell you having a kid draws a lot of your attention and emotion.

Why would you want kids?

Shackled to a snotty brat for 18 years minimum is generally not a very appealing concept to most inhabitants of industrial countries (if we take the statistics showing a decline in childbirth rates that is). There's just too many better things to do than having an attention-needy kid around all the time.

 

[BRex21]

It would just be wrong to exclude humans from that, or to assume that somehow our brain simply trumps all biological understanding.

No it wouldn't be wrong. Mainly because our brain is so incredibly complex and give rise to such a wide variety of behaviours (some even counterproductive to genetic survival) that you can't just use the same biological principles for humans that you've used when observing animals.

Animals just do not possess the same ability of self-reflection and abstract thinking as humans do. They also do not possess the ability of communicating complex and abstract ideas that humans do.

And due to the overt simplicity to animal brains as opposed to human brains, this make animal behaviour a lot more predictable and easy to draw concluscions from than human behaviour.

I would argue that humans are very predictable and frequently fall into patterns, particularly how many stereotypical men simply want to bang everything that moves. However your argument that our abstract, self aware mind somehow trumps biology seems odd for someone who so fears arguments against evolution.
You don't seem to dispute the studies that show just how well our bodies developed to compete in a polygamous environment, or that among other primates we certainly fall in line with the ones who naturally take multiple partners, IE the human male easily produces enough sperm for multiple inseminations, yet the shape of the penis makes it counterproductive to mate twice with the same woman in a short period of time. This is not compatible with evolution as we know it.
In modern times our society may teach us its wrong and to control our lust and remain monogamous, this is beneficial for society, however we still see very much infidelity. Even by the most conservative estimates Paternity fraud affects around .8% (or in a population of 7 billion fifty six million) of the population with most studies showing from 4 to 10 percent of children calling the wrong man daddy. that's a pretty good argument that even with societal pressures to be monogamous we like to sleep around.

ALso consider the fact that we haven't even mapped out all animal behaviour yet.

Y'know what, no i wont. Its irrelevant to say that because we don't know one thing that we can't know another.

Then there's the "sneaky fuckers"-phenomenon. Previously, pretty much the entire academic world believed that darwinism was about survival of the "strongest", since male and female parties of different species of animals tended to prefer the strongest and most robust mate, and then they discover that members of some species are actually not as strong or robust but they manage to procreate anyway because they decieve the opposite sex in different ways into procreating with them.

This is not how the survival of the fittest works, Individuals may pass on their genes despite being less than competitive, however over time the stronger traits will be the ones to win out. Its not an individual who is fit but rather that their children need to remain competitive as do their children's children and their children's children's children and so on. "Fitness" does not refer to whether an individual is "physically fit" ? bigger, faster or stronger ? or "better" in any subjective sense. It refers to a difference in reproductive rate from one generation to the next. Keep in mind that a child in any species has 2 parents and can easily remain viable if one chooses a mate based on superficial traits like colour as opposed to based on actual beneficial traits.

So the most reasonable standpoint in this discussion is that there is a whole lot of uncharted territory here. And even IF we were to mapp all animal behaviour, human behaviour would stiltl be a lo more complicated to map the same way. Since animal behaviour is driven a lot more by hereditary impulses being tickled by external stimuli (like the instincts in certain land predators to start chasing something they see running away from them). They don't reflect or think about it, they just "do".

Let me ask you something, i want you to look at your significant other and i want you to tell me WHY she is attractive(I'm assuming your a heterosexual male, if I'm wrong i apologies and ask that you will change the gender pronouns). Did you consciously decide she is an attractive woman, or deep down did you just feel it. Sex is so much a internal drive, something ingrained in our genetics and we just DON'T think about the why's of it.

Human behaviour doesn't work the same way. Humans reflect and ponder. Sometimes over ideas that are completely abstract and internal. That makes analogies in the animal kingdom useless, and it's also pretty useless to look at a few simple biological features and simply reach a concluscion that all humans are promiscuous by nature, and at the same time disregard the infinitely wide spectrum and variation of human behaviour occuring, both now and since ancient times.

This shows a serious flaw in your understanding of human evolution. We are very much animals, who frequently let our basic nature controll us. We do have an impressive mind for abstract thout, yet the sheer concept that the brain TRUMPS biology simply can't exist in line with human evolution.
Our body is the way it is for a reason, because our distant ancestors survived and reproduced most successfully using these parts, these parts that are obviously geared to give us, the individual, the best ability to compete in an environment where men and women are polygamous. Human nature and the self aware mind may play a part in how we behave, but by being self aware, I can't simply change the fact that biologically our bodies are perfect for polygamy yet counterproductive for monogamy.