You will forgive my irritation, Von, but you have been harping on me about the ideal, the definitional, and the practical since before this conversation started, and yet *nowhere* have you provided three definitions to delineate your point. You're proposing the game board, you've gotta set the table. You provided one definition that's clear enough (even if not linguistically coherent), not three.
I really don't know how I can continue this letter exchange when you're going to fisk me on issues where (intentionally or not) you don't appear to be playing straight (first your "monogamy" is "one sex partner for life", now "polygamy is a form of monogamy???"). Just as with your last post, I don't see much here that is coherent enough to argue with, and there's even less here that I can use as a jumping-off point. That which we seem to agree on has been adequately explored. That on which we disagree is profound, and goes deep, but I suspect we lack a common vocabulary for it; as I said in my previous closing statement, I don't think sex is a particularly important issue in this discussion.
To put it another way, while you're nit-picking a lot on language here, I don't see you making an argument in this post, at all. There's nothing to respond to--either in agreement or opposition or somewhere in between--except for diving deep into weeds that seem not to lead anywhere.
A lot to respond to here! Probably best if I do so in several comments. So...
1) Sorry you find the distinction between the ideal, the definition, and the practice so hard to understand. Maybe its a generational thing. I was raised with those distinctions. I also did a certificate in linguistics where these things were considered rather important.
I can post definitions, I suppose, but for this comment I think the example of the meter stick might help:
1) The definition. A meter stick, according to definition, would be exactly X long... where X is defined according to the speed of light and some such. No meter stick in the world is exactly this long. It's not even possible to create one.
2) The practical. We can all go down to Lowe's and buy 'meter sticks', tape measures, etc. The 'meter' that they measure is close enough for the work that we do.
3) The ideal. The ideal meter stick... what would it do? They are making ones now that can measure a room from the middle, there are some that make the mark for you, that will even make the cut for you, my son has a guide on his table saw that you can set to a meter, or half a meter, and help you cut a big board...
So in social science, or in biology, we routinely talk of all three of those. The kidneys might be ' a pair of blood filtering devices that sit...'. Nobodies kidneys fill all of the definition perfectly, given disease, genetic abnomralities, etc. And the idea kidneys... perhaps those that Superman has, would do their job perfectly, instantly, etc etc.
Does that help? I think you cover a lot of that in your post, you just don't seem to list them as distinct.
Eh...no, that doesn't parse well. I'll take my run at the same example, hopefully it will show why.
Definition: A stick used for measuring a meter, often with subdivisions on it demarcating centimeters and/or millimeters.
The Practical: A stick that's as close to a meter long as can be made with available tools or technologies, that is close enough to the tolerances that it can do the job demanded of it. Machining tolerances require a much higher degree of precision than framing tolerances, so a different grade of meter stick would be used.
The ideal: A measuring stick that is exactly a meter long.
---- ----
Your set of definitions confuses "ideal" for design considerations that are more-or-less analogous to metaphysical concerns. It is as if you're trying to be Platonic, but the considerations are completely muddled up with practical questions. The two don't work together. An ideal platonic sphere can be expressed mathematically in a single statement--there is no room in the ideal for "What color should it be?" because color isn't a necessary property of a sphere.
continued in next comment due to apparent word limit...
To bring it back to monogamy, you define monogamy as "The social practice of having a single sexual partner for life." But that's not the definition of monogamy. The definition of monogamy is, and always has been, "having one spouse." It's *literally* in the word roots. Your statement is an ideal statement that's obfuscated by the "social practice" clause, but social practices are practical issues, not definitional or ideal issues. "The social expectation of having a single sex partner for life" would land closer to the mark where you're concerned, but that is also not monogamy. We already have another word for that: chastity.
To express what I think you're trying to express, you'd have to break it down thusly:
Definition: The social custom of having a single spouse, and the expectation that this custom will be followed.
Practical: The demands of a single spouse and the home which the marriage comprises form the organizing principle of the family and the society built around it. Compromises to make it work, including support of extended family, legal sanctions and privileges, divorce, prostitution, or covert adultery customs are often required, even if regrettable.
Ideal: In the ideal state, each person is only ever sexually bonded to a single other person, forming a spiritual union that resonates in eternity (this is more or less the Apostle Paul's definition).
--- --- ---
The reason for my irritation is that you've demanded, over and over again, that there are three prongs and things would be easier if I would just give in and stick to them--unfortunately, you've only ever elucidated the one, you've elucidated it poorly, and your definition is both incoherent and idealized, thus overturning the entire apple cart that you're trying to use to set the stage.
>>>first your "monogamy" is "one sex partner for life", now "polygamy is a form of monogamy???")
Actually it was: “The social practice of having only one sexual partner for life.”
And the same issue as the previous post... that is the definition. It is neither the practice nor the ideal.
>>In my view regular polygamy (the kind that was practiced historically) is actually, looked at from its social function, a form of monogamy. It’s values and purposes are largely the same; and in stark contrast with polyamory
And when I said it was 'a form of monogamy' I said it in the context of 'its social function', 'its values', and 'its purposes' and I put it 'in stark contrast with polyamory'.
So in regular polygamy, at least in the ideal, the women, for example, only had one sexual partner for life. The values that monogamy idealizes: hetrosexual sexual practice, producing children, raising those children in a safe environment, forming those children in the value of the parents... all of these are strongly present both in historical polygamy and monogamy, and are not in polyamory.
If you are at all familiar with Jewish law, and its evolution over history, you will see that what they have considered marriage has, up until recently, included polygamy, but roundly rejected polyamory. Only recently have they rejected regular polygamy, and I'm not sure all the sub-groups have done so.
The ideal in polygamy--or, to be specific, polygyny (there are two documented cultures that I know of that were polyandrous for a long time, and that's a whole other universe. Interesting but irrelevant to the current discussion)--was that the husband would treat wives fairly and equally and minimize conflict in his household while adequately seeing to their sexual needs (a big deal in Jewish law, as I assume you know). The practical reality was often very different, given the political considerations around inheritance, the limited resources of the husband's affections, etc.
The wife's virginity was prized in young marriages (or at least marriages where the woman was young) within the clan, sure, but given that the most common way for husbands to acquire additional wives, since pre-history, was taking them as wartime plunder, it's a hell of a stretch to say wifely virginity was ever the ideal in polygamy to the extent that it has often been in monogamous cultures and arrangements.
---- ---- ---- -----
As far as rolling polygamy around into monogamy through the back door like that, I just can't go there. I don't buy it. What we're dealing with are two sets of mating customs--one that sanctions the ongoing maintenance of multiple primary pair-bonds (polygamy) and one which does not (mongamy). Polyamory is clearly a subset of polygamy (or vice versa), which starts with multiple pair bonds, leavens it with female choice, and then splinters off in a thousand different directions from that point.
>>as I said in my previous closing statement, I don't think sex is a particularly important issue in this discussion.
This is a fascinating statement, and would seem worth another half dozen posts. As I'm sure you are aware; historically speaking sex has been seen as incredibly important. Who is or isn't have sex with who, who may or may not have sex with who, the results of sexual activity (children)... all of these have been seen as incredibly important. The linguistics... adultery, fornication, Sodomy, bastard, consummation, cheating... there is a whole vocabulary around sexual activity.
I would be fascinated (and perhaps your audience would to) in reading why, from a social science perspective, you don't see sex as important. And do you project this back into history?
In the research on 'animal monogamy' that I have done, the scientists seem to see two things as very important when speaking of whether an animal or species is 'monogamous': who they have sex with, and who they help raise children with. They use such words as 'true monogamy' to indicate species where the partners rarely 'cheat'... ie have sex with others.
So, again, I would be fascinated to hear more on this subject.
I've got a post in the brewing on this topic, it's waiting on a couple books that are in storage in another state that I don't want to re-buy if I can help it.
The short version is that all the customs around sex are about two things:
1) Magic
2) Group Cohesion
Social customs are evolved practices that deal with the realities on the ground (in the case of sex, these realities are desire and its mismatches, pregnancy and its ramifications including inheritance, and social dominance and labor roles). Everything we've got in terms of mating customs in our cultural history (i.e. the West as it descends from Sumeria through Greece and Rome, with the admixture of Celtic and Nordic cultures, through to the present) is premised upon coping with this set of factors.
The modern era, beginning more-or-less in the late 19th century, has done away with and/or changed the pregnancy and social dominance issues. The subcontracting of social customs enforcement to the State has done away with inheritance and child support issues. At the moment, we're largely coasting on the vestiges of attitudes about the magical properties of sex, which vary quite a bit from subculture to subculture.
When the underlying game board changes, the customs shift, slowly and painfully, and explore a whole raft of new ways of doing things in order to adapt. As our civilization collapses (possibly terminally), some of the above factors are going to come back into play, but the most important one--pregnancy--won't. The understanding of female fertility has advanced to the point where the rhythm method is about as effective a the pill for birth control, and that's not a genie you're gonna put back in the bottle.
That's why I say sex-per-se (my original phrasing in my post was "who gets to bump uglies with whom") isn't particularly important to the conversation. Yeah, that's the way it's gonna get articulated once the new equation is solved, but it's not actually what all of this is about. In my view, looking at the underlying factors is much more enlightening and profitable than focusing on sex and romance which, powerful though they are in the life of the individual, have always taken a back seat to social stability and magic where customs are concerned (and you have no idea how annoying I--a radical individualist--find that statement).
>>I don't see you making an argument in this post, at all
I was focusing a good deal on definitions and measurement; because I think that is the foundation for any good argument. I did make a brief discourse in to dating which, according to my definitions, is destructive of monogamy. I posted an article on your post which makes the same point. Does that resonate with you?
You will forgive my irritation, Von, but you have been harping on me about the ideal, the definitional, and the practical since before this conversation started, and yet *nowhere* have you provided three definitions to delineate your point. You're proposing the game board, you've gotta set the table. You provided one definition that's clear enough (even if not linguistically coherent), not three.
I really don't know how I can continue this letter exchange when you're going to fisk me on issues where (intentionally or not) you don't appear to be playing straight (first your "monogamy" is "one sex partner for life", now "polygamy is a form of monogamy???"). Just as with your last post, I don't see much here that is coherent enough to argue with, and there's even less here that I can use as a jumping-off point. That which we seem to agree on has been adequately explored. That on which we disagree is profound, and goes deep, but I suspect we lack a common vocabulary for it; as I said in my previous closing statement, I don't think sex is a particularly important issue in this discussion.
To put it another way, while you're nit-picking a lot on language here, I don't see you making an argument in this post, at all. There's nothing to respond to--either in agreement or opposition or somewhere in between--except for diving deep into weeds that seem not to lead anywhere.
A lot to respond to here! Probably best if I do so in several comments. So...
1) Sorry you find the distinction between the ideal, the definition, and the practice so hard to understand. Maybe its a generational thing. I was raised with those distinctions. I also did a certificate in linguistics where these things were considered rather important.
I can post definitions, I suppose, but for this comment I think the example of the meter stick might help:
1) The definition. A meter stick, according to definition, would be exactly X long... where X is defined according to the speed of light and some such. No meter stick in the world is exactly this long. It's not even possible to create one.
2) The practical. We can all go down to Lowe's and buy 'meter sticks', tape measures, etc. The 'meter' that they measure is close enough for the work that we do.
3) The ideal. The ideal meter stick... what would it do? They are making ones now that can measure a room from the middle, there are some that make the mark for you, that will even make the cut for you, my son has a guide on his table saw that you can set to a meter, or half a meter, and help you cut a big board...
So in social science, or in biology, we routinely talk of all three of those. The kidneys might be ' a pair of blood filtering devices that sit...'. Nobodies kidneys fill all of the definition perfectly, given disease, genetic abnomralities, etc. And the idea kidneys... perhaps those that Superman has, would do their job perfectly, instantly, etc etc.
Does that help? I think you cover a lot of that in your post, you just don't seem to list them as distinct.
Eh...no, that doesn't parse well. I'll take my run at the same example, hopefully it will show why.
Definition: A stick used for measuring a meter, often with subdivisions on it demarcating centimeters and/or millimeters.
The Practical: A stick that's as close to a meter long as can be made with available tools or technologies, that is close enough to the tolerances that it can do the job demanded of it. Machining tolerances require a much higher degree of precision than framing tolerances, so a different grade of meter stick would be used.
The ideal: A measuring stick that is exactly a meter long.
---- ----
Your set of definitions confuses "ideal" for design considerations that are more-or-less analogous to metaphysical concerns. It is as if you're trying to be Platonic, but the considerations are completely muddled up with practical questions. The two don't work together. An ideal platonic sphere can be expressed mathematically in a single statement--there is no room in the ideal for "What color should it be?" because color isn't a necessary property of a sphere.
continued in next comment due to apparent word limit...
To bring it back to monogamy, you define monogamy as "The social practice of having a single sexual partner for life." But that's not the definition of monogamy. The definition of monogamy is, and always has been, "having one spouse." It's *literally* in the word roots. Your statement is an ideal statement that's obfuscated by the "social practice" clause, but social practices are practical issues, not definitional or ideal issues. "The social expectation of having a single sex partner for life" would land closer to the mark where you're concerned, but that is also not monogamy. We already have another word for that: chastity.
To express what I think you're trying to express, you'd have to break it down thusly:
Definition: The social custom of having a single spouse, and the expectation that this custom will be followed.
Practical: The demands of a single spouse and the home which the marriage comprises form the organizing principle of the family and the society built around it. Compromises to make it work, including support of extended family, legal sanctions and privileges, divorce, prostitution, or covert adultery customs are often required, even if regrettable.
Ideal: In the ideal state, each person is only ever sexually bonded to a single other person, forming a spiritual union that resonates in eternity (this is more or less the Apostle Paul's definition).
--- --- ---
The reason for my irritation is that you've demanded, over and over again, that there are three prongs and things would be easier if I would just give in and stick to them--unfortunately, you've only ever elucidated the one, you've elucidated it poorly, and your definition is both incoherent and idealized, thus overturning the entire apple cart that you're trying to use to set the stage.
>>>first your "monogamy" is "one sex partner for life", now "polygamy is a form of monogamy???")
Actually it was: “The social practice of having only one sexual partner for life.”
And the same issue as the previous post... that is the definition. It is neither the practice nor the ideal.
>>In my view regular polygamy (the kind that was practiced historically) is actually, looked at from its social function, a form of monogamy. It’s values and purposes are largely the same; and in stark contrast with polyamory
And when I said it was 'a form of monogamy' I said it in the context of 'its social function', 'its values', and 'its purposes' and I put it 'in stark contrast with polyamory'.
So in regular polygamy, at least in the ideal, the women, for example, only had one sexual partner for life. The values that monogamy idealizes: hetrosexual sexual practice, producing children, raising those children in a safe environment, forming those children in the value of the parents... all of these are strongly present both in historical polygamy and monogamy, and are not in polyamory.
If you are at all familiar with Jewish law, and its evolution over history, you will see that what they have considered marriage has, up until recently, included polygamy, but roundly rejected polyamory. Only recently have they rejected regular polygamy, and I'm not sure all the sub-groups have done so.
Again, the ideal you're citing is incoherent.
The ideal in polygamy--or, to be specific, polygyny (there are two documented cultures that I know of that were polyandrous for a long time, and that's a whole other universe. Interesting but irrelevant to the current discussion)--was that the husband would treat wives fairly and equally and minimize conflict in his household while adequately seeing to their sexual needs (a big deal in Jewish law, as I assume you know). The practical reality was often very different, given the political considerations around inheritance, the limited resources of the husband's affections, etc.
The wife's virginity was prized in young marriages (or at least marriages where the woman was young) within the clan, sure, but given that the most common way for husbands to acquire additional wives, since pre-history, was taking them as wartime plunder, it's a hell of a stretch to say wifely virginity was ever the ideal in polygamy to the extent that it has often been in monogamous cultures and arrangements.
---- ---- ---- -----
As far as rolling polygamy around into monogamy through the back door like that, I just can't go there. I don't buy it. What we're dealing with are two sets of mating customs--one that sanctions the ongoing maintenance of multiple primary pair-bonds (polygamy) and one which does not (mongamy). Polyamory is clearly a subset of polygamy (or vice versa), which starts with multiple pair bonds, leavens it with female choice, and then splinters off in a thousand different directions from that point.
>>as I said in my previous closing statement, I don't think sex is a particularly important issue in this discussion.
This is a fascinating statement, and would seem worth another half dozen posts. As I'm sure you are aware; historically speaking sex has been seen as incredibly important. Who is or isn't have sex with who, who may or may not have sex with who, the results of sexual activity (children)... all of these have been seen as incredibly important. The linguistics... adultery, fornication, Sodomy, bastard, consummation, cheating... there is a whole vocabulary around sexual activity.
I would be fascinated (and perhaps your audience would to) in reading why, from a social science perspective, you don't see sex as important. And do you project this back into history?
In the research on 'animal monogamy' that I have done, the scientists seem to see two things as very important when speaking of whether an animal or species is 'monogamous': who they have sex with, and who they help raise children with. They use such words as 'true monogamy' to indicate species where the partners rarely 'cheat'... ie have sex with others.
So, again, I would be fascinated to hear more on this subject.
I've got a post in the brewing on this topic, it's waiting on a couple books that are in storage in another state that I don't want to re-buy if I can help it.
The short version is that all the customs around sex are about two things:
1) Magic
2) Group Cohesion
Social customs are evolved practices that deal with the realities on the ground (in the case of sex, these realities are desire and its mismatches, pregnancy and its ramifications including inheritance, and social dominance and labor roles). Everything we've got in terms of mating customs in our cultural history (i.e. the West as it descends from Sumeria through Greece and Rome, with the admixture of Celtic and Nordic cultures, through to the present) is premised upon coping with this set of factors.
The modern era, beginning more-or-less in the late 19th century, has done away with and/or changed the pregnancy and social dominance issues. The subcontracting of social customs enforcement to the State has done away with inheritance and child support issues. At the moment, we're largely coasting on the vestiges of attitudes about the magical properties of sex, which vary quite a bit from subculture to subculture.
When the underlying game board changes, the customs shift, slowly and painfully, and explore a whole raft of new ways of doing things in order to adapt. As our civilization collapses (possibly terminally), some of the above factors are going to come back into play, but the most important one--pregnancy--won't. The understanding of female fertility has advanced to the point where the rhythm method is about as effective a the pill for birth control, and that's not a genie you're gonna put back in the bottle.
That's why I say sex-per-se (my original phrasing in my post was "who gets to bump uglies with whom") isn't particularly important to the conversation. Yeah, that's the way it's gonna get articulated once the new equation is solved, but it's not actually what all of this is about. In my view, looking at the underlying factors is much more enlightening and profitable than focusing on sex and romance which, powerful though they are in the life of the individual, have always taken a back seat to social stability and magic where customs are concerned (and you have no idea how annoying I--a radical individualist--find that statement).
Well, between everything you have talked about just in these comments I, at least, have material for a half a dozen more posts.
Well, at least there is that! :-)
>>I don't see you making an argument in this post, at all
I was focusing a good deal on definitions and measurement; because I think that is the foundation for any good argument. I did make a brief discourse in to dating which, according to my definitions, is destructive of monogamy. I posted an article on your post which makes the same point. Does that resonate with you?
For future reference:
https://open.substack.com/pub/movingtorussia/p/sexual-restraint-helps-cultures-flourish?r=6csnm&utm_medium=ios
For future reference:
https://open.substack.com/pub/fiamengofile/p/are-women-the-biggest-losers-of-the?r=6csnm&utm_medium=ios