It's abundantly clear from a pure biological standpoint that humans are not designed to be purely monogamous. A reading of any of the basic evolutionary psych primers will get you to that understanding. A cheat sheet version of Sperm Competition and Concealed Ovulation is a reasonable starting point at Wikipedia.
From a biological perspective both men and women appear to to be built for a primary hormonally pair bonded relationship plus opportunistic sex outside that relationship.
Monogamy is a social adaption that is somewhat in conflict with our Body Agenda. Our body is happy to hook up into a primary relationship, but it also keeps on the outlook for something tasty and proximal of the opposite sex. And yes, even if what's at home is tasty too.
So while we are not exactly designed for monogamy, it is a remarkably effective long term strategy as a building block for a society to use to advance. It is somewhat counter intuitive to our individual sexual desires, but I've previously argued that men in particular benefit from monogamy.
And likewise, we are not particularly perfectly designed for other modern social adaptations either. Things that spring to mind are; democracy, capitalism, the rule of law, science, medicine, education, standing in line, the Internet, driving, city apartment dwelling and most obviously... dealing with an ample food supply.
I mean if someone was designing humans from scratch to do all that, we'd all be speaking Vulcan.
5 comments:
Thank you for commenting, much appreciated.