Posted on 03/22/2006 8:49:06 PM PST by neverdem
A year ago I proposed a book to several publishers about terrorism and polygamy. They thought I was crazy. Polygamy? What did that have to do with anything?
A year later, a sitcom about polygamy—“Big Love”—is all the rage. Sometimes it’s hard to keep up these days.
With its penchant for picking the locks off civilization, the entertainment industry is presenting us with polygamists as “just plain folks.” It’s not clear where all of this is going to lead. Will polygamy become the new homosexuality? Will Massachusetts legalize it? Will college students start practicing it? Is polygamy the new chic?
New York Times columnist John Tierney has already taken a libertarian stance—if people want to do it, why not let them? I agree with Tierney on most things, but here I part company. If America is going to add polygamy to its list of “Why-Nots?” we’re not going to have a civilization around here much longer.
In the current issue of The American Spectator, I have an article entitled “The Alpha Couple and the Primal Horde.” It’s a just-so story about how human beings became monogamous. And we are a monogamous species, at least in our beginnings. Hunter-gathering tribes, the original human economy, were monogamous. Polygamy came later, with more affluent economies.
Briefly, my conjecture is that we adopted monogamy in response to adversity. Five million years ago, a very small, polygamous ape, barely three feet tall, moved out onto the East African savannah in groups of 15-25 in search of animal carcasses—or maybe just for adventure. The whole story is too long to tell here (it’s in the issue with Mitt Romney on the cover), but basically we became monogamous for greater security. Predators were everywhere. The only safety lay in group solidarity. Monogamy became preferable because it knit the group more tightly together. In a word, it was more democratic.
Shortly after I submitted the story, I attended a lecture at Columbia by Larry Young, a neuroscientist at Emory University, who is investigating monogamy in voles. It turns out there are two species in America: the meadow vole, which inhabits woodlands east of the Mississippi, and the prairie vole, which lives out on the open grasslands west of the Mississippi. The meadow vole is polygamous. The prairie vole is monogamous. Young has even found the genes that marked the transformation. He believes the change occurred because, in open country, the prairie vole was more vulnerable to predators. As a cautious scientist he’s not jumping to any conclusions, but the analogies with human evolution sure are interesting.
Monogamy creates a society that has an inherent equality. Every male has the promise of getting a female and every female has the promise of getting a male. It gives everyone a stake in society.
But it’s not biology. Biology says that males can impregnate any number of females and that females desire the most fit and attractive males. Monogamy limits certain groups. High-status males have to be satisfied with only one mate, while low-status females have to be satisfied with lower-status males. Polygamy liberates both. The losers are: 1) high-status females, who must share their mate with lower-status females, and 2) low-status males, who don’t get to mate at all.
It’s that last one that brings the disruption. Species and societies that practice polygamy end up with a “bachelor herd,” a gaggle of unmated males who are very unhappy with their lot. Competition among males becomes much more violent because the stakes are so high—it’s all or nothing. The peaceful monogamous contract is gone.
When 18th- and 19th-century Europeans realized polygamy was common in the “backward” portions of the world, they had an easy explanation. Polygamy was a more primitive form of marriage. Advanced societies had evolved out of it. Then they discovered the hunter-gatherers and a different explanation offered itself. Polygamous societies had remained backward precisely because they were polygamous. Polygamy creates a huge inequality where all the wealth—however little there may be of it—and all the women are concentrated among the more successful men. (Think Saudi Arabia.) Societies bog down. Social advancement becomes very difficult.
Monogamy is not natural. It’s a human construct. But I also happen to think it is the greatest social achievement in the history of mankind. Peaceful advanced societies never would have emerged without it.
So now the entertainment industry is going to start asking, “What would America look like without it?” Lots of luck.
HA....America would look like the backward Islamic jihadists "society" I suppose....
interesting
It's that first assumption - that monogamy is actually against the "natural order" of things - that drives the pro-polygamy argument. I think those that don't challenge/disagree with that assumption lose the whole fight in the first round.
From the early reviews, the series looks to be as dreary as any other standard comedy.
All the same, with all the crusading for gay marraige in the last few years, polygamy can't be far behind. Social benefits be damned; what matters now is what feels good sexually. Besides, monogamy is something out of old Christian traditions and we can't have that anymore, not in these days of Heather having two mommies.
What will prove thoughtful is how the women will take this.
If monogamy is a human construct, how come prairie voles are monogamous?
I do not agree with the premise.
All of us have a singular match.
"The prairie vole is monogamous. Young has even found the genes that marked the transformation."
Anthropology and genetics are still works in progress.
I can't keep up with one woman, what the hell would I do with two of the damn things?
It's strange; he SAYS its against the natural order of things, a socail construct if you will, but then he proposes an explanation that puts monogamy very much back into the natural order of things if it is a survival trait.
The author has a good point, but he doesn't know how to make it - and winds up arguing out both sides of his mouth.
Really, you're cracking a joke, but you've hit on something. Another driving force behind monogamy is that it maximizes the protection a child will receive in its upbringing. Compare humans to other species where the male leaves and impregnates many females. These species generally produce many young and have many young die during their adolescence. This is opposed to humans, who generally bear one child at a time and raise that child to maturity.
In a monogamous relationship, you always have a nurturer (the female) and a protector/hunter (the male) at all times. Even when a small family unit is formed, you always have a male and a female who both have an equal interest in the success of a child.
Compare that to polygamy, where a male is to oversee all of his children (a job he can't possibly do well) and where females are competing so that their child receives the best treatment. There is a constant upheaval in such a society, and the male can be expected to add new, younger more fertile females to his harem with time.
There is a stability in monogamy that is lacking in polygamy. (Just as another for instance, look how many children are abandoned should something happen to the male in a polygamous society.) I'd actually argue that for human reproduction, monogamy is more natural.
Let's not forget the desire for companionship that humans have, as well. Our minds also drive us to monogamy.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
Another liberal step backwards into barbarism, masked as "cool" and anyone who opposes it is vilified.
That might be the preeminent concern of a minority, expressed by pundits like Andrew Sullivan, or Jonathan Rauch, but the people driving this debate are preoccupied with devaluing-if not eliminating altogether-social norms and cultural standards.
There's a staff writer on the Village Voice who basically encapsulated the pro-gay marriage argument in a nut shell, in an essay that called for the decriminalization of polygamy.
The goal isn't to invest a small minority with the benefit of a marriage certificate, but to erase any and all distinctions between what is normative behavior and what isn't.
This reminds me a lot of the debate over whether women who've enlisted in the military should be allowed into combat.
Of course, the most vociferous, vocal proponents of this proposal were individuals like Patricia Schroeder, Barbara Mikulski, and others who could charitably be described as being "anti-military."
No, if allowing women into combat would have made the Armed Forces more effective, or efficient, don't you think that this concept's most demonstrative supporters would have been right wing, hawkish, uber-patriots, like Bob Dornan, or Joe Dioguardi, or Randy "Duke" Cunningham?
The notion that ratifying gay marriage will enhance the institution of matrimony-in spite of the fact that its chief advocates are the most implacable foes of this bedrock aspect of our civilization-is absurd on its face.
Most westerners live in serial monogamy in the meantime. That means that they have quite a few monogamic sexual contacts in a row over a certain time until they find their spouse. In many cases (nearly half of them) they get divorced and marry again to extend the number of their mates. Beside of this - If we focus on the fact that the non-paternity rates in paternity tests are around 10% it can be said, that the exaggerated celebration of monogamy is often only a empty gesture. Of course there are many faithful couples, but the chance of adultery or divorce in our culture group is quite big.
Not that long ago I read a really interesting interview with a female HAMAS-administration official out of Palestina, who argued exactly that way to defend polygamy in Islam. She said she still can control the sexual desires of her man in a closely defined frame while she is sharing him legally with another woman (or up to three). To me this statement was quite funny. I better not suggest it to my own wife. :-)
This theory is about to be tested in Red China, where selective abortion of female fetuses has resulted in a glut of male offspring and a dearth of female offspring. China's economic power is advancing substantially, and they are directing a large portion of their economy on their military. To avoid internal disruption caused by their gaggle of unmated males, Red China will militarize their bachelor herd and vent their inherent frustrations in foreign military adventures with a promise of conquered women as war booty.
Say, this may work to our advantage. At the first act of aggression by the chicoms we let 'em have it. Both barrels. We'll send them Tereza Heinz, Hillary, ALL of the Dixie Chix, Babs Stiesand, and Randi Rhodes. If they esculate from there we'll have no choice but to unleash the doomsday option and let them have the entire NOW membership, Helen Hunt, Roseann, and Cindy Sheehan. That ought to teach them a lesson they'll not soon forget...
Then there are THESE fine, religious folks.........
http://www.uupa.org/
You've massively confused me on this. Are you saying that homosexuals who want be contractually monogamous are going to lead heterosexuals to be polygamous?
This is completely illogical.
The problem is that the same arguments used to justify legalizing gay marriage apply just as well to polygamy.
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