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I wonder whether societally enforced monogamy might be important too in creating a WIERD culture.
by rjsw 6y ago
I wonder whether societally enforced monogamy might be important too in creating a WIERD culture.
- est31 6y agoI think so, yes. Polygamy creates structures where high status men have multiple wives, and low status men don't get any wives at all. Those low status men then get frustrated and destabilize societies by causing war etc. See: https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2018/03/19/why-polygamy-breeds-civil-war https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2018/03/19/...
- dragonelite 6y agoNothing more dangerous then males aged 16~30 in their physical prime sexually frustrated and access to weapons.
- theFco 6y agoI that includes a very narrow form of polygamy. In particular, that men are the only ones allowed to take multiple partners. In a form of polygamy where everyone gets to take multiple partners it is exactly the opposite. Everyone is always available to form bonds with whom they want. This notion of being "taken" in marriage is what breaks polygamy.
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- ta8645 6y agoThat ignores the reality of reproduction with a woman giving birth to a child of only one male. There is very little reason for one man to raise the child of another man in such a situation where multiple new partners are available without any obligations. The traditional form of polygamy comes from the natural forces of nature, not oppression.
- spfhnoop2020 6y ago> There is very little reason for one man to raise the child of another man in such a situation where multiple new partners are available without any obligations ...or even own child, especially if there is a pension system and centralised care system.
- theFco 6y agoI did not use the word oppression. Personally I think it is more lack of imagination. Given the current state of technology, it is fairly easy to know who is the father of a kid. Personally, I do not feel the drive to polygamy, in particular because I think it is very emotionally demanding of all the participants and ultimately exhausting and unstable. I don't know what the "natural forces of nature" are, but of course many, many animal species do not establish monogamous relationships and they still manage to surivive.
- dandanua 6y agoIt's an upside down logic to think that low status men cause war. Yes, they do have more incentives to go to war, there is a correlation, but this doesn't mean it's the cause. I'd bet that in every such situation the root cause of war is the hunger of power of the top leadership. They could deliberately impose even worse imbalance and use the "hate force" of low status men as a destructive energy in a war. This is what Russia does nowadays, I believe.
- rjsw 6y agoI wasn't really thinking about single men destabilizing a society. Just an idea that mixing genes up more in children may be good for that society, and that anything that reduces this mixing may be unhelpful to a society. I see both monogamy and preventing cosanguinity as examples of actions that could increase this mixing.
- autosharp 6y agoHow does monogamy increase the mixing of genes? Surely polyamory (everyone having multiple partners, not just men) mixes genes more? And doesn't monogamy also reduce the pressure of natural selection?
- rjsw 6y agoI'm suggesting that monogamy increases mixing compared to the alternative types of society that have been tried, in particular to ones where only high status males have children. Maybe we do need to move to adopt polyamory, the evidence from online dating suggests we are reverting instead to default primate behaviour.
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- motogpjimbo 6y agoYour theory requires us to believe that low status men are more capable of starting wars than the high status men who actually run society. Incel anger is a real thing, but incels are not building warships or running munitions factories.
- s_dev 6y agoI would imagine groups like ISIS are numbered by such men.
- bilbo0s 6y agoI believe HN User "motogpjimbo"'s point was that it's very likely that groups like ISIS are started by high status men. And now that he got me to contemplate the matter, I think he may be correct. I think it is the high status men and women who generally start the wars, and the low status people who are forced to fight the wars. I think this is how things generally work.
- motogpjimbo 6y agoSure, but probably not led, funded or conceptualised by them. Anyone who is able to accumulate enough power to start a war wouldn't normally be considered a low status male.
- FooBarBizBazz 6y agoInterviews with ISIS fighters struck me strongly with that impression. One man in particular -- in Europe he had been a nobody, but in the Islamic State he had status... and his experience was that this status was absolutely worth killing for.
- est31 6y agoHigh status individuals might have more power than low status individuals, but the collection of low status individuals is large. Men without anything to lose and no potential to improve their lives legally are very dangerous, whether you give them weapons or whether you don't. The high status men only channel this force and use it for their own gains. But you are right, I should have mentioned that high status men contribute to wars as well. Re incels, it depends on the definition of the term whether they can be regarded as such. I think that the term is most commonly used to refer to a specific group of men in western society which by and large is still monogamic, so it's not very comparable to a mostly polygamic society and the effects it has. I think most men or women who identify as incel can find someone if they really want to, they might just not live up to their standards. I mean, here in the west there is no effect which removes far more women from the dating pool than men :).
- magicsmoke 6y agoThe causation could easily go the other way. In most societies, males are typically sent out to war because males can easily have more children than females since they don't have go go through a period of pregnancy, so a society that sacrifices its males on high risk high reward activities can rebuild faster than if it sacrificed females instead. This is why typically you see male soldiers, raiders, and explorers. But as a result, more warlike societies tend to have less males in the population than females because the males keep getting sent out to die. Remaining females now have less potential mates to choose from, so polygamy becomes socially acceptable to ensure more people get a share of the economic rewards those surviving males bring back. So you could easily flip this around and say that it's not polygamy that causes war. Rather, war causes polygamy, and polygamy is a reward for the few male "winners" that survive to bring home the loot because now they have less genetic competition. This model of warfare reducing the proportion of males could also explain why most societies have tended to be patrachical. Scarce males means each males has more bargaining power. In return for the economic loot they bring back, they could demand more say in the household than their counterpart or counterparts. Stretch this population imbalance over a few centuries and you get a patrachical society.
- spfhnoop2020 6y ago1. I would not discount physical strength, males would win every pre-modern conflict. 2. Also consider the alpha/provider split. Welfare state and sexual liberation result in a polygamic marriage, where collective taxpayer is the "husband" and single mothers are "wives".
- readarticle 6y agoChristianity’s insistence on monogamy broke extended households into nuclear families. The Church uprooted horizontal, relational identity, replacing it with a vertical identity oriented toward the institution itself. The Church was stern about its marital policies. Violations were punished by withholding Communion, excommunicating, and denying inheritances to offspring who could now be deemed “illegitimate.”
- throw0101a 6y agoThis is one of the central thesis of the book: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Henrich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Henrich * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51710349-the-weirdest-people-in-the-world https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51710349-the-weirdest-pe...