[lelanthran]

> But it's fascinating to think about the second level "why": what made people encode monogamy and heterosexuality into their cultural canons (including their mainstream religion)?

I dunno about heterosexuality being encoded[1] into cultural canons, but for monogamy it's actually quite simple: violence.

Do you really want half your testosterone-fueled 18-28 year old males unable to attract a mate? There'll be continuous fighting to kill of the excess males.

===========

[1] As far as heterosexuality goes, it's not "encoded by wilful intention" so much as "this is the default". IOW, most people are happy going with the default, so if you make something opt-out, the majority won't opt-out. Same for opt-in. This is why countries that have opt-out organ donors have more organs donated, while countries that have opt-in organ donations have a fraction of he opt-out countries.

Defaults matter.

[psidium]

Literally one of the main points of the book: the church’s mandate and enforcement of monogamy in Europe lowered violence so much that a different kind of society emerged.

[rollcat]

> Do you really want half your testosterone-fueled 18-28 year old males unable to attract a mate? There'll be continuous fighting to kill of the excess males.

This is nonsense. Non-monogamy is relinquishing exclusivity. If a man can have multiple women, but a woman can't have multiple men, it's just a different form of oppression.

Monogamy is possessiveness, and possessiveness is what drives violence.

[fluoridation]

>If a man can have multiple women, but a woman can't have multiple men, it's just a different form of oppression.

There are reasons to allow only one of the sexes to have multiple sexual partners/spouses.

* In a community with such liberal sexual practices, STDs spread more easily, especially in earlier centuries.

* It makes marriage intrinsically more complicated simply because of the more complex interactions. For example, if Alice is married to Bob, who is married to both Alice and Carol, who is married to both Bob and David, what are Alice and David to each other? Anything? Nothing? Is the entire married community a distinct entity?

* Relatedly, how is inheritance handled if such complex spousal organizations are going to be legally allowed?

[rollcat]

> In a community with such liberal sexual practices, STDs spread more easily, especially in earlier centuries.

You can use a condom. TIL, rubber condoms are a mid-19th century invention; a significant upgrade over sheep gut.

The alternative is called polyfidelity.

> [...] what are Alice and David to each other?

They're called Metamours.

> Anything? Nothing? Is the entire married community a distinct entity?

It's called a polycule.

> Relatedly, how is inheritance handled if such complex spousal organizations are going to be legally allowed?

You write a will.

By the way, inheritance laws are messy already as they are. Try figuring out how to reject inheritance (e.g. of debt) in your jurisdiction.

> There are reasons to allow only one of the sexes to have multiple sexual partners/spouses.

Yes, the reason is to reinforce division and oppression. One "side" is underprivileged, the other has to fight each other for supremacy. The stronger few win, everyone else loses. History is littered with examples.

Don't get me wrong, these are all very good questions. But we've figured all of these things out quite a while ago. People do live like that, and form lasting, loving communities. I'd wager that an entire society built on top of that would have no lesser chance at thriving than the one we've been born into.

[fluoridation]

>You can use a condom.

Sure. Now. But monogamy and polygyny are a little older than condoms.

>Metamours [...] polycule

You're answering rhetorical questions which, incidentally, are not about terminology, but about legal and social mechanics. Knowing what a "metamour" is, says nothing about what the formal and informal responsibilities of the parties involved are or should be with respect to each other. My whole point is that not having to define such relationships and their expectations is a reason to forbid them culturally.

>You write a will.

How did that work before most people knew how to write?

>By the way, inheritance laws are messy already as they are.

That's not an argument in favor of legally legitimizing polycules.

>the reason is to reinforce division and oppression

I mean, I gave several reasons why historically either monogamy or asymmetric polygamy would have been preferred over symmetric polygamy, that have nothing to do with oppression.

>I'd wager that an entire society built on top of that would have no lesser chance at thriving than the one we've been born into.

Sure, maybe. Personally, I'm more of the opinion that cultural features are memetic, and that memes are not uniformly successfully propagated. If monogamous and polygynous societies are more common than polyandrous and polycular societies, it's probably for a reason.

[rollcat]

> You're answering rhetorical questions which, incidentally, are not about terminology, but about legal and social mechanics.

Yes, that's what I've tried to imply. You name things, so you can discuss them in more abstract terms, so you can form a social & legal framework around those concepts.

> My whole point is that not having to define such relationships and their expectations is a reason to forbid them culturally.

>> [...] not having to define [...] is a reason to forbid [...].

Suppress the concept. "We don't talk about that."

> How did that work before most people knew how to write?

How did people enter agreements?

> Personally, I'm more of the opinion that cultural features are memetic, and that memes are not uniformly successfully propagated.

Agree. It's also how dictatorships rise. Another form of oppression that concentrates power and fires back at the group who have initially supported it. Another lose-lose.

Societies often overoptimize for a local maximum.

[fluoridation]

>Suppress the concept. "We don't talk about that."

You're not disagreeing that it's a valid reason, you're just saying you don't like it.

>How did people enter agreements?

A will is not an agreement, it's a declaration of posthumous intent. It necessarily cannot work in oral form.

>Agree.

Good. I'm glad you agree. I'm just going to ignore the appeal to emotion.

[lelanthran]

> This is nonsense. Non-monogamy is relinquishing exclusivity. If a man can have multiple women, but a woman can't have multiple men, it's just a different form of oppression.

Only if your argument is that this behaviour is nurture, not nature. IOW, if your argument is "this behaviour is completely disconnected from instinct and has nothing to do with evolutionary pressure", then sure, your argument makes sense.

Many of the great apes, and indeed, other animals, don't think in terms of political soundbites, though, so we can readily observe that the behaviour "violence over mating rights" is a thing that developed in those creatures that eventually evolved into other creatures which evolved into pre-hominids which evolved into hominids which evolved into us.

Some things are instinct. It's a very large stretch to claim that violence over mating isn't instinct, but political.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and all that...

[dsign]

You may be taking things from the wrong end.

Violence about having an exclusive mate could be a purely cultural construct, reinforced from childhood. I can say that I always, personally, considered the idea of controlling a person abhorrent, as much as I found uninteresting the idea of orbiting my intimate life around a single person with special and very high privileges over whatever I do and think, including outside of bed. However, all my relatives were very insistent that I should date girls and marry. 100% culture, 0% nature. Of course, this is just a single data point.

The heterosexuality part being the "default" is a bit naive, because it ignores the lengths to which some people go to force their kids to be heterosexual. Again, anecdotally, my father sired two gay sons, who had to go to great lengths to have a less traumatic life. Sometimes I suspect my father wasn't that hetero himself, and was only ensuring the next generation inherited his cultural legacy/trauma.

I could consider an argument that a majority (heterosexual) imposes a cultural canon on a non heterosexual minority. But the problem with that is that we don't really know if that majority/minority split would exist without the very strong cultural conditioning. And, as I said before, I don't really believe that homophobia is something the Canaanites invented out of spite. Most likely, it was a cultural trait that conferred advantages to groups, particularly after the agricultural revolution locked human population in a cycle of growth and war for land--but that's just a pet theory of mine.

There are even theories (read the controversial book "Sex at Dawn" if you want the details) that our current cultural canons about sexuality run against what was our nature for hundreds of thousands of years.

[lelanthran]

> Violence about having an exclusive mate could be a purely cultural construct, reinforced from childhood.

"Could be" is not "probably is".

All the observable evidence points to "fighting for mates being purely instinctual".

The opposite, is in fact, true: not engaging in violence for mates is, in fact, purely a cultural construct.

Culture enforces that, via laws, norms, etc.