Saturday, May 30, 2015

Death of Monogamy

WashPost Promotes the 'Evolution' of 'Forsaking Monogamy'

"Washington Post reporter Caitlin Dewey’s beat is the Internet. But her big piece on the front page of Wednesday’s Style section is about something broader: “Forsaking monogamy: The evolution of relationships has made affairs less clandestine and less combustive. And of course there are Web sites to help match tryst-seekers.”

This being the Post, there is no space for critics of the "evolution" of online adultery Web sites or their users. Dewey promoted the “non-monogamous dating site Open Minded,” where her married female subject, Jessie, advertised, “I’m into building deep and loving relationships that add to the joy and aliveness of being human.” She talked her husband into “ethical non-monogamy.”

The Post also used the term “monogamish,” the cutesy term of radical gay sex columnist Dan Savage to describe the married-but-cheating lifestyle.

The online headline was “Are new dating apps killing monogamy? Or has it always been dead?” Dewey pushed (B). Or monogamy is an old “agricultural” tradition that’s fading away in the modern age. Adultery is the new mainstream, according to Open Minded founder Brandon Wade:
Open Minded is a new kind of dating site for a newly mainstream lifestyle: one in which couples form very real attachments, just not exclusively with each other. He expects swingers, polysexuals and experimental 20-somethings to use his site. But he guesses that most of his 70,000 users are people like Jessie: Those in committed, conventional relationships, who realize that, statistically speaking, few modern couples stay with a single person their whole lives.

“If you look at marriage, it developed as a survival strategy and a means of raising kids,” Wade said. “But relationships are no longer a necessary component of life. People have careers and other interests — they can survive without them.”

That’s not wrong, says Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist and one of the world’s leading relationship researchers. In the caveman days, humans teamed up in non-exclusive pairs to protect their children. Later, as people learned to plant crops and settle in one place, marriage became a way for men to guarantee kids, and for women — who couldn’t push heavy plows or carry loads of crops to market — to eat and keep a roof over their heads....

In fact, given the history and prevalence of non-monogamous relationships throughout cultures, it’s not scientifically correct to say the human species mates or pairs for life. Dogs mate for life. Beavers mate for life. Humans have one-night stands, paramours and a 50 percent divorce rate.

Fisher dubs it a “dual reproductive strategy”: We’re biologically programmed to form pair-bonds, yes, but some people — many people — are also programmed to seek out variety.
So, if you stay true to your spouse, you’re more like a dog or a beaver than a human. To the Post, this is about empowering the ladies, not the men..."
The destruction of monogamy began in the '70s with no-fault divorce which allowed people to marry with the knowledge that they could get out without too much trouble. Marriage went from irrevokable to revokable overnight, and has been losing ground as a viable institution ever since. The main problem is that government got involved, and removed the institution from a religious contract basis to a purely legal basis. Possibly there should be two separately understood institutions, legal marriage for governmental purposes (regulation of first cousins, taxes, visitation and inheritance), and the different but equal institution of matrimony, which is a three way contract with a deity.

7 comments:

Rikalonius said...

I love how historically vacuous dunderheads use hackneyed terms like evolution" when speaking about the rejection monogamy, as if the whole world was, until recently, monogamous but suddenly a transformative event happened and people started being not monogamous. No. Our culture's success was predicated on the ideal of high civilization. This "evolution" as Dewey calls it is nothing more than a regression to tribalism where the monkey puts its d*** wherever it can.

Where sexual discretion occurs, so civilization flourishes, where sexual indiscretion is rampant, so civilization collapses. Anyone who thinks you can't be the richest empire on the planet and then be nothing but colorless ruins in short order purposefully ignores Santayana's wise admonition. And sexual licentiousness is purulent soar on the body politic indicating the potentially fatal sickness.

yonose said...

Rikalonius,

You put those exact words out of mine.

The predicament to make this westernized society successful, is that one. MONOGAMY. There are so many "inside agents" and subliminal messaging, just to be ignored. It is simply impossible.

Yes, it does not matter whether a third world or a developed country anymore. I must confess this scares me. This civilization will purposefully collapse under its own fatty, obnoxiously lavish weight.

Sooner than later, we will start killing each other everywhere in this planet. No exaggeration.

Gotta learn the most useful starting from now on. Gotta be prepared for what is coming.

Kind Regards.

Anonymous said...

I don't think that sexual indiscretion is the biggest problem. I think that this country's biggest problem is the love of money.

And, I think that marriage is part of the problem.

A few months ago, I saw a billboard that said something about how marriage can increase your wealth or something. That smells like propaganda to me.

The government wants people domesticated and fat and happy, not focusing on the crimes and atrocities that they are committing. If people only care about their families and their money situation, how can they help society as a whole?

Stan said...

I think heterosexual monogamy works on multiple fronts. One is to replace the smaller wage of a single mother, which is even less due to child care expense, with the full wage of a male father (and even the mother). The children get both role models. They get to see the benefits of being in a stable married relationship, rather than in a temporary, even one-night, relationship. So I think the slogan is right, in the sense that the opportunities are better for the entire family.

Russell said...

@Rikalonius

Hear, hear! Well said.


As the world spins into a new progressive nightmare, the societies and cultures that support and celebrate traditional, stable marriages will have a better chance of maintaining and perpetuating civilization.

Anonymous said...

Stan,

You make some good points, but the problem with marriage can be what I touched on above. It's not a perfect institution. A lot of people just jump into it before they are ready, or they have too many kids and live well beyond their means.

Also, in biblical times, men had many wives and concubines. The problems stemmed from worshipping other gods and taking other people's property, not premarital sex.

Anonymous said...

Interesting commentary by Fred on marriage:

Fred: Don't Marry