You are viewing a single comment's thread from:
RE: Monogamy is an Evolutionary Strategy
Interesting points. Here's another resource that makes a few more points as well: The Puzzle of Monogamous Marriage http://www.des.ucdavis.edu/faculty/Richerson/Monogamy.pdf
It seems logical that if we have most males focused on working to support their wives and families, instead out and about foraging and collecting women, then society will be more productive and less contentious aggression. The testosterone level will be lower. I alluded to this facet in my reply to @igorterleg. For him to compare low productivity societies, and declare that thus it can't be an evolutionary strategy seemed quite myopic. James A. Donald argues that a society which restricts female hypergamy and encourages marriages for "lower status males", is more productive and civil. It can be possibly a collective (group) evolutionary strategy.
Overall it appears to be a better deal for beta-males, except when it becomes too asymmetrical as it is now where financial divorce shifts too much power to the females. Now the younger generation is rejecting marriage because of this, and substituting it with birth-control and promiscuity. So the cycle appears to be overdoing a good thing, destroying it, collapse, and rebirth.
I am not arguing that monogamy is the right strategy for a high status male. There are means by which to escape society's imposition of monogamy, if one is truly high status. But my intuition and experience is that rarely if ever does promiscuity correlate with maximum productivity. Which is probably one (subconscious?) factor in why you settled down and became a serially successful author.
Edit: it is easier for those who are propped by debt and socialism entitlements, to argue for arrangements which destroy productivity. Western society.