[Withano]

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

and means that social and emotional advantage will always trump evolutionary advantage for humans in every meaningful way.

Oh yeh, this was half my point, I just posted pretty much the same to Niamh above. But if mankind was to reset itself, our species would not be monogamous. We only are right now because of how it socially benefits us.

[user104658]

Originally Posted by Withano

Oh yeh, this was half my point, I just posted pretty much the same to Niamh above. But if mankind was to reset itself, our species would not be monogamous. We only are right now because of how it socially benefits us.

But all you're saying there is that if we reset to a state of "early man" that would happen - but that's losing the millennia of capacity for abstract thought that we have developed... you're comparing the modern human mind with the ancestral human mind which is apples and oranges? The second part being the idea that we wouldn't necessarily go down the "mostly monogamous path" on a second run at it... but that's sort of irrelevant too, as these "parallel universe humans" would not be "our humans".


Also worth considering, I think; the vast majority of human cultures are monogamous, and were already monogamous upon discovering each other without being influenced by any obvious source in common. It's unlikely that so many disparate human cultures spread across the globe would have developed in largely the same way in this respect by coincidence... so you have to consider then that the "root" of it is likely to be something basic to human psychology that goes beyond social / cultural norms. In other words... there is a reason that it IS the social / cultural norm, and it's not because a single guiding force "artificially" took it in that direction.

[Withano]

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

But all you're saying there is that if we reset to a state of "early man" that would happen - but that's losing the millennia of capacity for abstract thought that we have developed... you're comparing the modern human mind with the ancestral human mind which is apples and oranges? The second part being the idea that we wouldn't necessarily go down the "mostly monogamous path" on a second run at it... but that's sort of irrelevant too, as these "parallel universe humans" would not be "our humans".


Also worth considering, I think; the vast majority of human cultures are monogamous, and were already monogamous upon discovering each other without being influenced by any obvious source in common. It's unlikely that so many disparate human cultures spread across the globe would have developed in largely the same way in this respect by coincidence... so you have to consider then that the "root" of it is likely to be something basic to human psychology that goes beyond social / cultural norms. In other words... there is a reason that it IS the social / cultural norm, and it's not because a single guiding force "artificially" took it in that direction.

Well yeah, I'd have to talk about a parallel universe really, because I can't explain it with who we currently are after that millenia of abstract thinking, and wedding ceremonies, and disney.

As a species, we are not monogamous.
As a society, we sure as **** are.

[user104658]

Originally Posted by Withano

As a species, we are not monogamous.
As a society, we sure as **** are.

Nature (species) and nurture (here, society) are inseparable to the extent that this statement is almost meaningless... take a baby and lock it in a room deprived of all human contact (don't ACTUALLY do this, to be clear ) and in 10 years you will have a creature that doesn't resemble a human (or any other natural living creature) in any way, shape or form and will almost certainly have actual structural braindamage. Our behaviour as a species is informed by socialization from birth to the extent that you simply can't separate out society and species. They're interlocked. There is no such thing as a human being (or any other mammal) that operates purely on instinct.

[Niamh.]

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

Nature (species) and nurture (here, society) are inseparable to the extent that this statement is almost meaningless... take a baby and lock it in a room deprived of all human contact (don't ACTUALLY do this, to be clear ) and in 10 years you will have a creature that doesn't resemble a human (or any other natural living creature) in any way, shape or form and will almost certainly have actual structural braindamage. Our behaviour as a species is informed by socialization from birth to the extent that you simply can't separate out society and species. They're interlocked. There is no such thing as a human being (or any other mammal) that operates purely on instinct.

[Withano]

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

Nature (species) and nurture (here, society) are inseparable to the extent that this statement is almost meaningless... take a baby and lock it in a room deprived of all human contact (don't ACTUALLY do this, to be clear ) and in 10 years you will have a creature that doesn't resemble a human (or any other natural living creature) in any way, shape or form and will almost certainly have actual structural braindamage. Our behaviour as a species is informed by socialization from birth to the extent that you simply can't separate out society and species. They're interlocked. There is no such thing as a human being (or any other mammal) that operates purely on instinct.

This suggests that any animal could hypothetically be mono or poly though? I disagree. A swan will always mate for life, a lion will always be a ****boy. I'd imagine only humans have switched, and I'd imagine that this is only because of the social rules that we forged ourselves a few thousand years ago.

[Niamh.]

Originally Posted by Withano

This suggests that any animal could hypothetically be mono or poly though? I disagree. A swan will always mate for life, a lion will always be a ****boy. I'd imagine only humans have switched, and I'd imagine that this is only because of the social rules that we forged ourselves a few thousand years ago.

A swan won't always mate for life but they usually do

ETA I think TS already covered that though, you can't compare a Lion to a human

[Livia]

Originally Posted by Withano

This suggests that any animal could hypothetically be mono or poly though? I disagree. A swan will always mate for life, a lion will always be a ****boy. I'd imagine only humans have switched, and I'd imagine that this is only because of the social rules that we forged ourselves a few thousand years ago.

Promise me, Withano, that you're going to come back to this thread when you fall so hard for someone that you can't think straight. I'll happen... and it'll blow your neat, clinical theories out of the water x

[Withano]

Originally Posted by Livia

Promise me, Withano, that you're going to come back to this thread when you fall so hard for someone that you can't think straight. I'll happen... and it'll blow your neat, clinical theories out of the water x

Sure. Next time it happens, I will do. Like just a heads up, I'd probably still feel like humans are monogamous by society norms, and not by evolutionary needs.

I don't think love has caused monogamy at all, but it is difficult to argue against, I'll give it that much.

[user104658]

Originally Posted by Withano

This suggests that any animal could hypothetically be mono or poly though? I disagree. A swan will always mate for life, a lion will always be a ****boy. I'd imagine only humans have switched, and I'd imagine that this is only because of the social rules that we forged ourselves a few thousand years ago.

Again though you're assuming that nurture doesn't play a part in the lion being a playah. If you remove a lion cub from all lion contact and lion socialization until it's an adult... you can't make any definitive statements about how it's likely to behave at all. All mammals have higher brain function and are shaped by social interaction.

I'm not saying that you're WRONG that thousands of years of society have influenced how we conduct ourselves in terms of relationships now... I'm saying it doesn't really matter; social evolution is as relevant as biological evolution to our desires and behaviors. Again I think you're trying too hard to separate nurture from nature, and also putting too heavy an emphasis on the importance of nature / instinct in a species that has the level of higher brain function that humans do. OK maybe not everyone chooses to USE all of that function; but nonetheless, we do have it .