The Monogamy Puzzle

written January 17, 2009 by hambydammit
Source: http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/2009/01/17/the-monogamy-puzzle/

There are a lot of opinions roaming about the blogosphere regarding whether or not people are “supposed to be” monogamous. I’m going to try to take an in depth look at this topic from several points of view. Hopefully, by the time you’re done with this article, you’ll have some idea about what science says, and that will allow you to evaluate your own moral feelings and emotions against something a little more concrete. Before reading on, I do feel like I need to emphasize that descriptions are not instructions. I’m not in any way trying to tell you what you as an individual should do. Instead, I’m trying to give you something scientific on which to base your own decisions — something more than gut feelings. Humans are widely varied in their desires, so I certainly do not presume to tell you what yours ought to be.

To begin, I’m going to tackle human sexuality from both sides, male and female. This may seem the obvious choice, but just to be sure, let’s remember that sex is competition. Males and females have their own interests, evolutionarily speaking, and we have hopefully dispelled the myth that human intelligence puts us above other animals. Like chimps and dolphins and killer whales, we are very intelligent social animals, and examining our behavior is the same as examining that of any other creature. If we see a pattern of behavior, there is a reason for it. Anything that exists is a product of evolution, including our intelligence and our incredibly complex society. If we look well into our past, we will understand the mechanisms behind our behaviors. If we are lucky, we will be able to take the lesson of sugar consumption to heart, and we will be able to make some educated statements about what we should do if we want to achieve a particular result.

So, on to the question of monogamy. Before answering decisively, I must make a distinction about the word itself. There are two very different ways of asking the question – that of a social scientist and that of a sociobiologist. An anthropologist who speaks of monogamy is talking about marriage, or whatever cultural equivalent there might be. A species is monogamous if males and females have one official partner. This does not take adultery into account, nor does it account for serial monogamy, which is the practice of having one partner for a relatively short period, and then moving on to another partner. On the other hand, a sociobiologist who speaks of monogamy is speaking of the actual practice of mating. A species is only monogamous if it really has only one sexual partner. Any mating is considered part of the equation, and social institutions are not considered.

For the time being, I will be using the sociobiological application of the word. When I speak of polygamy, I am speaking of the practice of having multiple sexual partners, regardless of institutionalized or cultural norms. Similarly, monogamy will only apply when a species really does mate with only one partner. Just as in our mental exercise with sugar cravings, we must first understand how we behave, and then we must understand why. Only then can we begin to look at ourselves as individuals and begin to think about goals and how we should act if we wish to achieve them.

Finally, then, the answer to the question. Are humans monogamous? The short answer is no. We are mildly polygamous. The long answer requires addressing the question from various points of view. Culturally, we have always focused on a single marriage between a man and a woman, but there are two unavoidable facts that we must not overlook, even if they are incriminating or cause us personal discomfort. First, though marriage has virtually always been between one man and one woman, mating has not. Since the agricultural revolution, powerful men have virtually always kept harems. In fact, this practice has only fallen out of favor since industrialization. Contrary to the notion of the faithful middle class man, polygamy was not restricted to the very powerful. It was only institutionalized for them. Men have been cheating as long as they have been marrying, and not just a little bit. Cheating is almost as common as marriage, historically.

If we compare anatomy and biology, we find this conclusion to be valid. There is a clear and virtually indisputable link between the size of the testicles and the fidelity of the species. Ours are not large enough for a thoroughly promiscuous lifestyle, like the chimpanzee’s, nor are they as small as the most monogamous apes. Human males are not large enough, compared to females, to command harems in the same way as a gorilla. We are not antisocial enough to be as monogamous as gibbons. In all biological areas, we fall above the threshold of monogamy, and below that of outright polygamy. ---->>

Continue reading by clicking here.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEdHz0eIpm4

The Most Dangerous Movement in History: Progressive

The progressive movement was the beginning of the end of personal and individual responsibility. One of the primary ideas of the progressive movement was the “conviction that government must play a role to solve social problems and establish fairness in economic matters” (u-s-history.com, n.d.). Any individual has the freedom to choose how they require to be treated. Any person that has been enslaved, economically depressed, or socially maltreated throughout history has had the choice, and ability to some degree, to stand in the face of those responsible and make necessary changes. Passing on responsibilities to government, whether it be Nazi Germany, Saddam’s Iraq, or the United States, opens the possibility of wide spread and powerful corruption. Government, by nature, will always be more than happy to take as much responsibility and money from its people as it possibly can. The true problem lies when the people wake up one day and they realize they’ve given too much. As generations pass, citizens will not be able to tell the difference between the way it should be and the way it is. Therefore, making it exponentially difficult to stop the government in place and reverse some of the responsibilities that have been passed on.

The progressive movement was birthed in good intentions, but may have been one of the more dangerous movements in American history. I say this because I live in a time where more than 100 years has passed and I can see the negative effects. Today, American people are almost incapable of self-reliance. In almost every possible way, we wait for the government to save us. Banking regulations, economic bailouts, preemptive warfare, socialized health care, FMLA, seat belt violations, speed limits, alcohol curfews, etc. We have become children with limits and curfews on almost anything you can think of. The choice to do as you wish has been engulfed and taken because we’ve passed on the responsibility of “taking care of ourselves” to the government. It’s a scary idea to many to stand up as a citizen, but a society must be ready to stand together. In any of the problems the progressive movement sought out to address, the problem could have been solved with revolutionary tactics.

At the time, to be labeled “progressive” was attractive. Of course political leaders wanted to associate themselves with a movement focused on “eliminating corruption from the political scene” and “improving moral and ethical conditions for citizens.” Unfortunately, it’s kind of like calling John McCain a “maverick”: it’s all just for show. I would like to think I would’ve been skeptical of the real intentions. However, I do think there were many leaders who spoke up and were the leaders we needed. Susan B. Anthony, for example, spoke out and fought for women’s equality her whole life. She wrestled the government for decades trying to get them to approve fairness and spent most of her life educating people about her crusade. “In 1920, 14 years after Anthony's death, American women finally won the vote with the passage of the 19th Amendment” (Lutz, 1976). What if people were accustomed to helping out? What if she was able to simply convince fellow women or even rational men to make a stand. The fact that she had to argue for so long is sheer evidence that government is inefficient and sometimes harshly unjust.

I’m not disagreeing with any movement to make necessary changes. I will argue civil rights with anybody who doesn’t believe in equality, but I won’t give that responsibility (or authority for that matter) to government. After all, a society doesn’t need government regulation and laws. It needs strength. It needs powerful moral and ethical influence from motivational leaders. It needs people that take action and stand together to demand fairness. Our constitutional republic needs a government only to maintain the constitution and a national defense. This country was founded on great principles and ideals of limited government, however we the people became lazy and now all we get are lazy, rich men that tell us how great they’ll regulate us, spending our future generation’s money to do it. The nanny state has been turned on and we may have waited too long to think about turning it off.

References

Lutz, Alma. (1976). Susan B. Anthony: Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian. Zenger Publishing.

U-S-History.com. (n.d.) The Progressive Movement. Retrieved November 29, 2009 from http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1061.html.

The 25th Hour

[standing in the men's bathroom, talking to himself in a mirror with a "FUCK YOU" written on it] Well, fuck you, too. Fuck me, fuck you, fuck this whole city and everyone in it.

Fuck the panhandlers, grubbing for money, and smiling at me behind my back. Fuck the squeegee men dirtying up the clean windshield of my car. Get a fucking job!

Fuck the Sikhs and the Pakistanis bombing down the avenues in decrepit cabs, curry steaming out their pores, stinking up my day. Terrorists in fucking training. SLOW THE FUCK DOWN!

Fuck the Chelsea boys with their waxed chests and pumped up biceps. Going down on each other in my parks and on my piers, jingling their dicks on my Channel 35.

Fuck the Korean grocers with their pyramids of overpriced fruit and their tulips and roses wrapped in plastic. Ten years in the country, still no speaky English?

Fuck the Russians in Brighton Beach. Mobster thugs sitting in cafés, sipping tea in little glasses, sugar cubes between their teeth. Wheelin' and dealin' and schemin'. Go back where you fucking came from!

Fuck the black-hatted Chassidim, strolling up and down 47th street in their dirty gabardine with their dandruff. Selling South African apartheid diamonds!

Fuck the Wall Street brokers. Self-styled masters of the universe. Michael Douglas, Gordon Gekko wannabe mother fuckers, figuring out new ways to rob hard working people blind. Send those Enron assholes to jail for FUCKING LIFE! You think Bush and Cheney didn't know about that shit? Give me a fucking break! Tyco! Worldcom!

Fuck the Puerto Ricans. 20 to a car, swelling up the welfare rolls, worst fuckin' parade in the city. And don't even get me started on the Dom-in-i-cans, 'cause they make the Puerto Ricans look good.

Fuck the Bensonhurst Italians with their pomaded hair, their nylon warm-up suits, their St. Anthony medallions, swinging their Jason Giambi, Louisville slugger, baseball bats, trying to audition for the Sopranos.

Fuck the Upper East Side wives with their Hermes scarves and their fifty-dollar Balducci artichokes. Overfed faces getting pulled and lifted and stretched, all taut and shiny. You're not fooling anybody, sweetheart!

Fuck the uptown brothers. They never pass the ball, they don't want to play defense, they take five steps on every lay-up to the hoop. And then they want to turn around and blame everything on the white man. Slavery ended 137 years ago. Move the fuck on!

Fuck the corrupt cops with their anus violating plungers and their 41 shots, standing behind a blue wall of silence. You betray our trust!

Fuck the priests who put their hands down some innocent child's pants. Fuck the church that protects them, delivering us into evil. And while you're at it, fuck JC! He got off easy! A day on the cross, a weekend in hell, and all the hallelujahs of the legioned angels for eternity! Try seven years in fuckin' Otisville, J!

Fuck Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and backward-ass, cave-dwelling, fundamentalist assholes everywhere. On the names of innocent thousands murdered, I pray you spend the rest of eternity with your 72 whores roasting in a jet-fuel fire in hell. You towel headed camel jockeys can kiss my royal Irish ass!

Fuck Jacob Elinsky, whining malcontent. Fuck Francis Xavier Slaughtery my best friend, judging me while he stares at my girlfriend's ass. Fuck Naturelle Riviera, I gave her my trust and she stabbed me in the back, sold me up the river, fucking bitch. Fuck my father with his endless grief, standing behind that bar sipping on club sodas, selling whisky to firemen, cheering the Bronx bombers.

Fuck this whole city and everyone in it. From the row-houses of Astoria to the penthouses on Park Avenue, from the projects in the Bronx to the lofts in Soho. From the tenements in Alphabet City to the brownstones in Park slope to the split-levels in Staten Island. Let an earthquake crumble it, let the fires rage, let it burn to fucking ash and then let the waters rise and submerge this whole rat-infested place.

[pause] No. No, fuck you, Montgomery Brogan. You had it all, and you threw it away, you dumb fuck!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Za2k5wA3sk

Religiosity

This is great:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMpWRZ7_A34

JFK: The Death of a Rational Nation

Taken from this speech:

"Today no war has been declared--and however fierce the struggle may be, it may never be declared in the traditional fashion. Our way of life is under attack. Those who make themselves our enemy are advancing around the globe. The survival of our friends is in danger. And yet no war has been declared, no borders have been crossed by marching troops, no missiles have been fired.

If the press is awaiting a declaration of war before it imposes the self-discipline of combat conditions, then I can only say that no war ever posed a greater threat to our security. If you are awaiting a finding of "clear and present danger," then I can only say that the danger has never been more clear and its presence has never been more imminent.

It requires a change in outlook, a change in tactics, a change in missions--by the government, by the people, by every businessman or labor leader, and by every newspaper. For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence--on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations."


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhZk8ronces

"Another Career in the Balance"

Tonight, I was watching an episode of the HBO series "The Wire" and I thought this was a great scene. The character McNulty says the following:

"If only half you motherfuckers in the State’s Attorney’s office didn’t want to be judges, didn’t want to be partners in some downtown law firm, if half of you had the fucking balls to follow through you know what would happen? A guy like that would be indicted, tried and convicted. And the rest of them would back up enough so we could push a clean case or two through your courthouse. But no everybody stays friends, everybody gets paid, and everybody’s got a fucking future!"

Here's the YouTube: