Why Monogamy Is Ridiculous

Discussion in 'Science & Society' started by KilljoyKlown, Jun 24, 2011.

  1. scheherazade Northern Horse Whisperer Valued Senior Member

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    Perhaps when you have experienced love, you will realize that your initial assumption was correct, except that you had seriously underestimated the 'special' part......

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    First love is ...........awesome!

    Really messes with your mind, your appetites, your sleep patterns, and a whole lot of other things.

    Trust me. If and when you become smitten, you will know.
     
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  3. nietzschefan Thread Killer Valued Senior Member

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    Indeed this is simply one of the many ways the Greek Drama : Apollo VS Dionysus plays out.

    Apollo is Order : Get married, raise perfect children, die.

    Dionysus is Chaos : Fuck as many ho's as possible and make the "Man" pay for dem kids.

    Somewhere in between is most people, in various doses (at various stages of life) of Apollo and Dionysus.
     
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  5. Nocturnumbra ... Registered Senior Member

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    You misunderstand. I meant that I thought that love, if it's as special as people say, should be beyond circumstance. Which means that there's no "if" or "when", but rather, that it would be a fundamental, innate part of me. That's why monogamy seems inconsistent with how I define love...a more "chaotic" view (which I'm not going to call polygamy anymore...I don't mean being able to marry multiple people, I just mean the lack of marriage as a system) would make more sense given that definition. No matter how strong feelings can get, they're still just feelings, and the fact that they're variable to change means that they're variable to circumstance...which means that they're meaningless. And that is why I will never experience what you call love. Also, I have a condition which makes me emotionally incapable, but that's a different story.
     
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  7. chimpkin C'mon, get happy! Registered Senior Member

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    Ah, no, there's love in popular culture, and then there's real love. Real love, long term, is hard work and an act of will.
    Any long-term close relationship though, will involve hard work and conflict for most people...par for the course.

    I wonder if that's why there's so much divorce...people think there's something wrong with them when the moonbeams go away and the butterflies drop dead. At that point the rubber meets the road, so to speak, and the hard work of getting to build a true, deep partnership begins.

    Or it doesn't. And the marriage founders.

    *Restrains eagerness to compare/contrast brain cooties*
     
    Last edited: Jul 14, 2011
  8. scheherazade Northern Horse Whisperer Valued Senior Member

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    The lack of marriage as a system would not preclude many people from choosing monogamy. In fact many people DO choose to be monogamous without marriage.

    Some people choose serial monogamy, and may be in one relationship during the period of raising a family and move on to another relationship after the children have outgrown their need of parental guidance.

    It all depends on whether the relationship grows to continue to meet the needs of the persons in that relationship. For those whom experience it, it can be a wonderful thing, to help each other realize their individual and shared goals, for inside the relationship, each person remains an individual with their own distinct personality and goals.

    Some people are able to attain a parallel growth while others may gradually grow apart. Neither is 'right' or 'wrong' and it is a good thing when partners can recognize if and when it is time to go their own ways and remain friends for the time that they have shared.

    Unfortunately, many persons are not capable of this degree of emotional and psychological maturity and very often acrimony accompanies a separation.

    Thank you for continuing this dialogue and for sharing that you have a condition which precludes you experiencing deep emotion. I am aware that there are several conditions that may cause this. I have one gentleman friend who suffers from fetal alcohol effect. He is absolutely brilliant in many regards, and very desirous of a relationship with a woman, yet has not been able to find a long term partner. Though he emulates the proper conduct, his lack of empathy makes communication difficult over a prolonged period.
     
  9. Me-Ki-Gal Banned Banned

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    This is so true !! When the lovey dovey day dream of wanting lustful let Me touch you wears off and you find out your partner shits pisses and spits then you get to work together and put all you got into it or split the sheets cause it is hard work , There are mile stones. If you can make it 10 years and still love each other for all the faults and perfections you are doing pretty good . After 15 you even start to understand each other .
     
  10. Aladdin Registered Senior Member

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    125
    They did not have to run away -- they were exchanged (with young people from other bands). One theory of how marriage appeared is that the nomadic bands of hunter-gatherers needed a way of forging alliances among themselves (so that they won't resort to violence each time a minor annoyance appeared between them) and marrying their young ones with those from neighbouring bands was the most durable way of doing it. It wasn't always females that were traded, males were a good enough exchange coin, too. (Though, I believe, females were the norm.) However, the customs and practices of our ancestors were not uniform across the board, so I'm sure there was some variety in regards to how different bands were dealing with their sexuality and procreation. I would guess inbreeding was not as rare a case as it is nowadays.

    Returning for a moment to the original topic (monogamy), I have recently read about a relatively small community (a few thousand people), somewhere in China, which is unique among all other human communities in the sense that they never marry -- so no husbands/wives, but also no assumed paternities. Brothers and sisters stick together under the same roof, and all the children borne by the sisters are raised together with the brothers playing the Western-style father role. Neither women or men have any restrictions on their sexuality, except for one rule: brothers and sisters never mate together. Each woman during her prime reproductive years has her own room that she uses for sexual encounters with as many partners as she wishes to accept; the rendezvous happen only during the night and the pairs never continue their relationship during the day. While there are no specific rules against monogamy I don't really see any advantage to it in such a setup.
     
  11. KilljoyKlown Whatever Valued Senior Member

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    How would a community like that ever get started and why has it survived over time?
     
  12. Aladdin Registered Senior Member

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    How it started I have no clue, but why it survived is probably because most of those being part of it are content with its lifestyle.
     
  13. scheherazade Northern Horse Whisperer Valued Senior Member

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    From the link supplied by Aladdin on the Mosuo:

    That was a very interesting read, Aladdin. Thank you for posting it and it relates very well to this thread on monogamy, as it speaks to a culture of serial monogamy and long term relationships, yet allows for flexibility to address many of the challenges that possibly end in divorce in Western marriages.

    As I have stated earlier, monogamy is a choice that does not require marriage.
     
  14. KilljoyKlown Whatever Valued Senior Member

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    I was going to ask how that system would work in a modern society, but it seems with very little modification it would fit right in and may even be an improvement.
     
  15. scheherazade Northern Horse Whisperer Valued Senior Member

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    I agree that it seems to have some potential for consideration.

    People talk a great deal about wanting to be in an enduring intimate relationship, yet seem to be held back by their own insecurities, IMO.

    Fear of being hurt emotionally and attachment to their chattel are two of the most apparent challenges for people to mitigate.

    The third might be that they have unrealistic expectations of what they want in a partner and perhaps do not consider that they might fall short of the expectations of another.

    Relationships require effort both to establish and maintain and it seems that many persons do not truly understand the meaning of the term committed relationship, ever on the look out for 'something better'.

    At least, that is my interpretation of much that I observe.

    Whether social media and economic pressures are contributing to this changing relationship pattern are questions that come to mind.
     
  16. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    24,690
    Its the hard work, notwithstanding the reason it becomes necessary, that is the problem for modern Americans. Our lives are so easy, starting in childhood, that we're simply not prepared for something as difficult as building a strong marriage. Many of us literally lack the strength to accomplish it because we never did the "exercises" that would have built that strength. We have the same problem at work. It's gotten so bad that even the people who percolate to the top of the corporate ladder don't have what it takes to make difficult decisions. Just look at the bozos who thought it was okay to institutionalize subprime mortgages: Wow! Quick profits! They didn't bother to extrapolate a mere five years into the future.
    It's become quite common in Europe. The last statistics I saw a few months ago said that a greater percentage of European children grow up to adulthood in a stable home with their biological parents than American children, even though a much smaller percentage of those parents are married than American parents.
    True, but it also depends on whether the participants in the relationship also grow.

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    A growing number of Americans simply fail to mature in many important ways because our culture not only tolerates it but encourages it.

    Just look at the people who make up Congress. They're pounding their tiny fists and throwing temper tantrums, saying, "No no! I won't let you raise taxes/cut spending/increase the debt limit (pick any one or all three of those and you've described virtually the entire Capitol Building), and I don't care if it destroys the global economy and makes the Great Depression look like a bad day at the beach, because I can't think that far in advance."

    I wish I had the reference for this quote, which I got from a newspaper or magazine earlier this year:
    Still, it was less common in our species than in our closest relatives. A primatologist once said that inbreeding is so intensive in gorillas that if you showed a skull from two individuals from opposite ends of the species's range to a biologist unfamiliar with gorillas, he would insist that they must be from two different species.
    There are still a few Paleolithic and Neolithic tribes left in central-northeastern Asia. These people are living the way their ancestors did twelve thousand years ago.
     
  17. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Americans became rich, and behaved normally for rich people - not all of that has been bad behavior, either.

    It's unusual to have an entire country full of rich people: the standard isolation of their irresponsibility from the mainsprings of the larger society breaks down, and we end up with an entire culture behaving like the nephews of some 18th Century French king, but there's no call to beat up on people for behaving normally.

    The behavior of the rich in other countries and cultures is no better - and quite often worse.

    The hucksters made the profits, and have them piled up right now. They did that with their eyes open, and it worked. They are successful and responsible adults in our culture, as we speak - many of them with long term and enviably sound marriages.

    And it wasn't from "institutionalizing" subprime mortgages. Those have been routine, standard parts of the banking landscape since banking was invented in the US.
     
  18. scheherazade Northern Horse Whisperer Valued Senior Member

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    LOL......so much for monogamy.

    This thread is becoming somewhat political and financial.

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  19. kx000 Valued Senior Member

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    You should only devote your life to ONE person, IF AND ONLY IF you find love. Other than that, spread the love (the sleazy kind), be safe out there though its a dirty world, also keep in mind our planet is quickly getting over populated, a true problem for mankind to conquer.

    Mariage is complete bull shit, its just legality. If you love someone you don't need a court to prove it.
     
  20. Sparkofbliss Registered Senior Member

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    22
    Monogamy

    If a man does not find satisfaction with single woman ,he will not be satisfied with any number of women.that is why most of the religions stress monogamy
     
  21. KilljoyKlown Whatever Valued Senior Member

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    As far as love goes that's true, and you can sign any number of legal contracts that will make the ending of that love fair for everyone involved (children included). But then that's what the marriage contract is designed for (at least in most states).

    If you really love and care about someone, you do want to be fair about any break up down the road don't you?
     
  22. Orleander OH JOY!!!! Valued Senior Member

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    I agree. I think polygamy should be legal. There is a HUGE difference between bigamy and polygamy
     
  23. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    But they were not institutionalized. There were not so many of them that defaults became a domino cascade. There were not so many mortgagees upside-down that there were not enough solvent people to swoop in and buy up the properties.
    The dictionary definitions of the words are nearly identical, even though a strict etymological analysis tells us that bigamy is one man with two wives and polygamy is one man with many wives.

    In popular usage, bigamy generally implies that the two wives live in separate households and probably don't even know about each other, whereas polygamy usually refers to a communal arrangement with all the wives living together as an extended family, as in the repudiated Mormon splinter groups. People also use "polygamy" to include polyandry which, AFAIK, is only practiced among tribes who still live a paleolithic or neolithic lifestyle.
     

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