Monogamy is unnatural and is a major factor in high divorce rates...Discuss

Iago

I believe that monogamy is a completely unnatural state for the human race. I think that any form of restriction on sexual urges regarding consentual sex between two adults is a bastardisation on our natural state of being. I also believe that forced monogamy is the main reason behind the high divorce rates in many countries. I think that given a choice the majority of people would prefer the option to engage their sexual desires as they see fit.


I don’t think that the personal moral compass of the individual is in line with the societal moral compass that it’s forced to work with and as a result people who have entered into marraige often find that it's restrictions are incompatible with their needs. As a direct result of this the number of people in unhappy marraiges and divorce rates are spiralling and that's unlikely to change in the short term.


Lights the firecracker and then stands way back....

Red Hand

Iago wrote:

I believe that monogamy is a completely unnatural state for the human race. I think that any form of restriction on sexual urges regarding consentual sex between two adults is a bastardisation on our natural state of being. I also believe that forced monogamy is the main reason behind the high divorce rates in many countries. I think that given a choice the majority of people would prefer the option to engage their sexual desires as they see fit.


I don’t think that the personal moral compass of the individual is in line with the societal moral compass that it’s forced to work with and as a result people who have entered into marraige often find that it's restrictions are incompatible with their needs. As a direct result of this the number of people in unhappy marraiges and divorce rates are spiralling and that's unlikely to change in the short term.


Lights the firecracker and then stands way back....

I really do not see this as a firecracker.

You got to be careful with using the word "natural"- it's pretty meaningless in any discussion.

karen3212

Actually I think monogamy is natural for most humans. I think it has something to do with vasopressin(i think, bad memory sometimes). Anyway everytime you have sex with a person, you secrete this hormone, which induces attachment. Apparently even if you don't like someone and if you have sex with them regularly, you can fall in love - even if you don't want to - and form an attachment because of vasopressin. Moral - only have sex with people you like;)

Although I think the amount of secretion varies in humans, maybe why some fit marraige better.

Zombrex

Iago wrote:

I believe that monogamy is a completely unnatural state for the human race.

Fair enough, but biology suggests otherwise

Humans, like a lot of Great Apes, have evolutionary instincts to form family units around the idea of raising children. These children are produced by the "sexual urges" you talk about. This is our natural state.

What is "unnatural" is the modern human ability to have sexual intercourse without producing offspring, through artificial contraception. This produces a situation when a man or woman can have sex without ever producing a child and therefore the instinct to form a family unit around these offspring never kicks in.

Therefore trying to apply our initial natural state to modern sexual intercourse is rather pointless, since modern sexual intercourse is no longer "natural"

Of course all the instincts that we have to form family units don't just disappear because we start using condoms. There are evolutionary reasons why we naturally feel emotions such as jealousy and possession over our sexual partners. These can lead to people viewing monogamy as a desirable concept.

I would also point out that when people say "monogamy" this can mean a number of different things, from simply only having sex with one person at a time, to a life long commitment such as marriage. Again in a biological sense monogamy means not attempting to produce offspring with another mate while you still have children with someone. This is what we have evolutionary instincts against doing, but since we have the ability to have sex without producing children this becomes rather redundant.

So really discussing whether or not it is "natural" for modern humans to either be monogamous or polygamous is rather pointless since modern sex is no longer taking place in a natural manner in the first place.

Iago wrote:

I think that given a choice the majority of people would prefer the option to engage their sexual desires as they see fit.

I would imagine that given the choice the majority of people would prefer the option to engage in their sexual desires as they see fit so long as it does not produce children

Throw the "natural" consequence of these sexual desires (a child every few times you have sex) and I imagine the line of people waiting to sign up for this idea of "free love" would get very short.

Arguing about it being "unnatural" to deny these sexual urges is rather pointless, since these sexual urges themselves are not natural to being with.

Humans left "natural" back in the 50s. These days modern sex is an unnatural act. Our evolutionary instincts, our natural state, are playing catch up to this fact.

metrovelvet

Christ. Didn't Freud's Civilization and it's Discontents cover this?