Monogamy

Last month I wrote about the historic mistake of handing out driving license to everyone and how it is damaging our lives today.

August, on its hard sun and summer vibe is the right time to mention another social-historical mistake we keep dragging through the generations, monogamy.

Let’s go a few years back to when men roamed the land looking for hunt and shelter. We lived like animals and acted accordingly; each male individual strived to have as many offspring as he can to insure the survival of his blood line and for that he needed to impregnate as many females possible.  The females only wanted to bare the child of the healthiest and most powerful male who will take the best care of her and the child. No exclusivity was expected and self preservation ruled.

"she's just a woman from the office, we always joke around on Facebook"

Things changed when we moved to live in settlements, started to grow our own food and have a more complex social life (back then we could only poke each other and writing on the wall was just writing on the wall).  

All of a sudden our survival wasn’t so fragile and we started seeing the same people every day. Maybe even grow feelings to some of them.  And monogamy was born (along with love, jealousy and revenge). Then came religion and as usual messed things up when they started burning dudes just for looking at other women. Thank god that’s over with…

The bless of longevity

Actually that was o.k. for a while you see, people didn’t live that long. Up until a few decades ago the life expectancy was between 40-50 years.  So if you got married when you’re 25-26 you got just enough time to raise a few kids before punching your last ticket.

Nowadays, thanks to modern medicine (yeah, thanks!) we may
end up living 60-65 years with the same partner we chose when we were nothing but dumb kids.

Suddenly choosing a wife or a husband takes a heavy turn. A person changes a lot in 60 years and we don’t always like where it’s going. Pregnancy weight is sticking around, ears get hairy, boobs fall, baldness comes, and all that without even going into character change.

Now the whole “till death do us part” thing sounds intimidating. Death is far far away and this guy you’re looking at for the past 40 years is waiting for his dinner in front of the TV right now.

It’s a long fall from the tree my friend

Before I’ll go any further I wish to make a point, monogamy is clearly unnatural and is against all of our natural instincts. When our basic nature catches up on us, then comes trouble.

What do I call trouble? The outcome of us clinging to monogamy like it was the holy grail of culture has two main categories: evolutionary and social.

"don't go tripping, It's only my nature baby"

Planet of the nacho eaters

The first and most urgent problem caused by monogamy is the fact that top quality man and women confine their gene pool to only one partner. Meaning that if you have a very intelligent guy or a super athlete he would have babies with only one woman (unless he’s a Football player) and thus having 3-4 children of his own. I find it imaginary that guys like Brad Pitt, Bill Gates or Kelly Slater aren’t procreating only to flood our world with their awesome genes while this guy at my office, spending his days trying to clean the nachos crumbs of his keyboard will multiply himself 3-fold by 2018.

The moral high ground

As I said, going against one’s nature means trouble.  We think we are so sophisticated and evolved but it only takes 5 minutes standing in traffic or riding the subway to realize we are at best a bunch of well shaved baboons.

That is why we invented morality for if we wouldn’t have this dormant nature, we wouldn’t need it.

We are so set to think in terms of cheating or moral deprivation on anyone that is most likely just do what we think of doing but don’t. As long as we have moral on our side we are golden. Any other way of living is thought as primitive, uncultured and even criminal.

do I have to choose only one?

So I got a news flash for you, we are already there, our nature is catching up on us and the post-monogamy era is upon us. The marriage age is rising every year and being a single 34 year old has become very acceptable, the divorce rate in the western world is closing on 50% (wait it gets better) for the 1^st marriage, 67% for the 2^nd marriage and 74% for the 3^rd marriage, everybody cheats!! (So I’ve heard) only to get caught and ruin their family in the process and we spend the day wandering through the world like a drugged lion on display trying to remember who he once was.

So, any suggestions on how to fix it without all of us go on a jealousy rampage?

By the way, Miss Joe if you are reading this, monogamy is the only way for you. There is nothing better out there!

Related Posts:
The Soprano-Draper Paradox
Everybody is just  too good looking

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