Apologetics for the Status Quo

I have a few philosophical obsessions/interests in my life, of which 3 are:

  1. The desire for extreme longevity
  2. ethical non-monogamy
  3. atheism.

These subjects interest me greatly and have each lead me to stand apart from the mainstream in many ways (though atheism is of course becoming much more mainstream all the time).

That said, I accept wholeheartedly that other people don’t have the same interests or desires as me. If you want to die in old age. Fine. If you want to believe in God. Fine. If you are certain that Monogamy is the only option for you. Fine.

But I am starting to get incredibly frustrated by the apologists out there who argue for the maintenance of any of these status quos.

With all 3 of these status quo situations, people who argue for their maintenance are as much a consequence of the system as they are part of its perpetuation. And the blindness to this reality is so very difficult to overcome within the usual 30second snippet interactions. You actually have to tear down the whole system and start again before they realise that their arguments only make sense ‘because that’s how it has always been done!’

It feels like arguing with a slaver who insists that slaves actually like being given structure. Or misogynists who insist that women like having lower positions in companies. And then having them point out examples which validate their arguments. yeah, it might even be true…but only because the system is rigged to make it true, and because people are incredibly malleable and so adjust to the bullshit world they are raised in.

So yeah, you have convinced yourself that you ‘really want to die in old age’ – but I promise you that is only because you resigned yourself to that fate because it feels helpless and pointless to do otherwise.

And I bet that 90% of the people out there who are CERTAIN that monogamy is the only option for them, would be certain that they could never be monogamous if everyone was non-monogamous. It is just a coping mechanism because from early childhood it is made clear to us that there is only one option, and to fight the system is pointless and a lost battle. You must step in line, and you might as well ‘enjoy it’.

So then, when people ‘cheat’ in the rigged system which they had fooled themselves into believing they wanted, everyone acts shocked. The blindness of people looking in on this just leaves me dumbfounded.

sexual healing screenshot don't get caught south park

 

It reminds me of a great South Park Episode called Sexual Healing. Here are a couple of excerpts from it:

 

Chairman: I’ve gathered you together here because you are the best minds our country has to offer. As you’ve all seen on the news, our country is facing a major crisis, and we need to find out what’s causing it. [the men glance at each other] Why? Why are rich successful men suddenly going out and trying to have sex with lots of women?
Expert 1: [with mustache and black coat] Tiger Woods was only the most prevalent, but our data shows that the numbers are growing. David Letterman and before that, Bill Clinton. There’s a pattern here, people.
Expert 2: [with mustache and midnight blue coat] Why would a man who’s famous and makes tons of money use that and have sex with lots of different women? [glances at the woman to his left, then looks ahead again]
Chairman: [stands up] Aand these rich celebrities have perfectly good wives at home. Why would they even think of sex with others? Dammit![pounds the table with his right fist, but manages only a soft blow] I want answers!
Expert 3: [balding, with lab coat] We believe that it may be an outbreak of sex addiction, sir.

 

Chairman: Mr. President, in every test the results were the same. The monkeys who were given cash always acted out their sexual addiction to dangerous levels. It appears that money has a direct effect on the virus’s ability to develop.
Obama: So we must keep our nation’s youth away from money and success.
Chairman: No good, Mr. President. Because we’ve learned that sex addicts will find ways to make money and become successful in order to feed their addiction.
Obama: You mean boys will start working towards being rich and successful just so they can one day have sex with lots of women??
Chairman: Yes. That’s why we decided to look at the cash itself for clues! We tried to find something in the hundred dollar bill that could explain why this is happening now. Then we looked at the backside, and found this. [points to the picture of Independence Hall on the back of the bill]Independence Hall.
Obama: The birthplace of our country.
Chairman: We believe something is happening in Independence Hall that gives money its power over men.
Obama: Independence Hall… Independence Day… Aliens… Gentlemen, I might know what’s causing the sex addiction outbreak. This is highly classified, but… in 1947 a flying saucer was discovered in Roswell, New Mexico. Two deceased alien bodies were recovered and hidden from public knowledge. They carried… a virus with them. A virus that only barely stopped from spreading all over the country.
Chairman: And you think that these aliens… could be back with a new virus? One originating from Independence Hall causing rich successful men to have sex with lots of women?!
Obama: [seriously] It’s the only explanation that makes any sense. [glances at Michelle, who doesn’t react, then looks at the chairman again]

 

 

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Infomatic Diagram of Non-Monogamy

A friend sent this to me through StumbleUpon today, and I thought it was worth sharing – it is an attempt at representing all of the various types of relationship models regularly engaged in by people. The comments around the diagram make it much more fun and understandable 🙂

Infomatic map of Non-Monogamy by Franklin Veaux

This is third or so version of the informatic, as its creator (Franklin Veaux) kept adding new relationship models as he thought of them, and then started adding the comments. You can see all of his blog posts over in live journal:

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The Polyamorists – Article in Sunday Life

Just wanted to post about the article published in Sunday Life (a section of the Sydney Morning Herald) back in July. I was overseas at the time so missed it when it was published, but have just got my hands on it and was really happy with the article. I cannot find an online version at SMH, but a scanned version of the article can be found here:

Three’s Company + Meet Australia’s Polyamorists

Another Post about the article has been made on the “Polyamory in the News” blog:

Publicity Breakout in Australia

One quote from the article which I think really captures one of the beautiful aspects of Polyamory, is actually the final paragraph:

As for the Fords, they say polyamory has enriched their marriage and offers them fulfilling romantic relationships and if you want to try it you can check this Asian sex site to met girls for this. “Being poly relieves you of the crushing burden of having to be everything to somebody,” says Ford. “You can be yourself and your partners can be themselves, and nobody has to try to be everything to everybody or worry about being traded in for ‘someone better’.”

I just like that. 🙂

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Polyamory vs Monogamy

Part Two of TwoRead part one first: Stranger in a Strange Land – Love vs Jealousy

On Polyamory
Polyamory is the desire, practice, or acceptance of having more than one loving, intimate relationship at a time with the full knowledge and consent of everyone involved. Most people have heard of it, and I imagine that everyone who has heard of it just as quickly dismisses the concept as one of those ideas that “can’t work” or simply “doesn’t work”. I want to explore that instant dismissal briefly.

I don’t know of any rigorous studies done on the subject, partly because I haven’t looked (this is just a topic on my mind, not something I have studied extensively), and partly because such a study would be very difficulty to do as most such relationships would be very private arrangements – polyamory still being something not accepted by society at large. So I think it would be hard to actually know how many of these relationships there are, let alone how many of those relationships ‘fail’, and more difficult still – how many of those failures are caused by the structure of the relationship, as opposed to normal reasons for relationship failure and outside factors.

So if we consider the scenario created by a polyamorous relationship we are immediately struck with two strongly negative forces: 1. The social conditioning of the participants and 2. The constant non-subtle judgements passed by people outside the relationship.

It is difficult to really say anything about the first negative force because it will vary greatly from person to person and from one childhood environment to another. However I don’t think there is a person (at least in our western society) who doesn’t know that you are ‘supposed’ to have one partner and only one partner, and that anything else is ‘evil’ in one way or another. ‘Knowing’ it isn’t really the problem though – the real problem is the underlying subconscious thought processes, the trained ways of thinking, the assumed roles and consequences which have been bred into us by a consistent world that will create mental hurdles. I guess that most people are unable to jump all of these hurdles, and inevitably trip on one or another, and find themselves ‘unable’ to be polyamorous.

The second negative force is probably just as powerful as the first. Most people simply won’t understand polyamory. Not that they can’t – but they won’t. And they will express that choice in numerous judgemental ways that will constantly drain on the energy of someone ‘trying’ to be polyamorous. With the self-doubt already well implanted in the mind of anyone raised in our society, the constant barrage of ‘concern’ by their family and extended friend group will only help to rock the delicate balance of the mental boat.

So, are Polyamorous relationships destined to fail? Probably – but not for the right reasons. Not because people can’t love more than one person – you have to be a very special case of ‘protected from life’ to think that someone can’t love more than one person at a time. Also, as I argued in the point above, I also do not think that they are destined to fail because of jealousy – we have as much opportunity to ignore and overcome jealousy as we have opportunity to ignore emotional desire, lust and affection for people who are not our spouse. Maybe it is failure will come from the complexity of maintaining relations with more than one person?

I expect it would be harder to maintain extremely intimate relationships with more than one person at a time, and that would cause difficulty, but that is a problem to be tackled on individual merits case by case as we currently do when dealing with our single spouses, friends and family. As a matter of fact, having said that, I can’t think of anything else to say about the difficulties of possible polyamorous relationship structures, because the number of possible ways it could be worked are extensively numerous. For every difficulty, there is a way to do it which avoids, compensates for, or embraces that difficulty. When the real idea here is simply dispensing with jealousy, and embracing those you are close with into a closer circle of affection, the way it is done is immaterial to the ends.

Regardless of whether polyamorous relationships are destined to fail or not, it is worth noting that a large proportion of monogamous relationships also fail – repeatedly. Most people practice monogamous relationships from their mid teens, always looking for ‘the one’, and still about 40% of Australian marriages and up to 50% of marriages in the USA end in divorce. Take into consideration that these are the monogamous relationships which both individuals decided would last ‘forever’, and that was after (in most cases) a series of monogamous relationships which were discarded leading up to this marriage because of not meeting the requirements. Also consider that these are just ‘divorce’ rates – this does not factor in other de facto relationships, and versions of ‘life long’ monogamous relationships which break up.

When you factor all of that together, you end up knowing that the clear majority of monogamous relationships ‘fail’. Take the time to consider the fact that most of these relationships started because of an emotional closeness between the individuals involved – an affection, a desire, sometimes a sense of love. Two individuals who love each other, and nonetheless statistics say that that relationship will fail. Why?

Maybe monogamous relationships aren’t are great as we have convinced ourselves that they are. Divorce rates for second and thirds marriages enter the 70 percentile range too… so it only gets worse.

Maybe if both partners of a monogamous relationship allowed each other the freedom to love openly – repressing the ‘bad’ jealous emotion rather than the ‘good’ affection/lust/desire emotion, more marriages would last. Why would you leave the man/woman you love for someone else, when you can have both?

Jealousy makes no sense at all.

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Stranger in a Strange Land – Love vs Jealousy, and On Polyamory

Stranger in a Strange Land deals very much with social taboos, and with the concept of polyamory (amongst other topics). It was an interesting book for me to read at this time because I have been actively engaged mentally on this topic recently. I have thought quite extensively about polyamory and other forms of non-monogamous relationships in the past, but I think the past few years have helped me refine my understanding of relationships and people in general.

There are two primary things I am interested in talking about in this post. Firstly I want to talk about the ‘goodness’ and the ‘badness’ of certain things/actions/feelings. This comes almost directly from Stranger in a Strange Land and is something which has really struck me. Secondly I am interested in the idea that “everyone knows that open relationships/Polyamorous relationships never work”.

Love and Jealousy
To start with, I want to quote ‘Mike’ (The Man from Mars) directly. This quote directly follows on from a friend talking about how he felt while ‘making love’ to one of the women in Mikes inner circle, and how if he was younger he would have eagerly married the woman:

“That’s what it should be. But that’s what a I slowly grokked* it rarely was. Instead it was indifference, and acts mechanically performed, and rape, and seduction as a game no better than roulette but with poorer odds and, prostitution, and celibacy by choice and by no choice, and fear, and guilt, and hatred, and violence, and children brought up to think that sex was ‘bad’ and ‘shameful’ and ‘animal,’ and something to be hidden and always distrusted. This lovely perfect thing, male-femaleness, turned upside down and inside out and made horrible.

“And every one of those wrong things is a corollary of ‘jealousy.’ Jubal, I couldn’t believe it. I still don’t grok ‘jealousy’ in fullness, it seems an insanity to me, a terrible wrongness. When I first learned what this ecstasy was, my first thought was to share it, share it at once with all my water brothers – directly with those female, indirectly by inviting more sharing with those male. The notion of trying to keep this never-failing fountain to myself would have horrified me, had I thought of it.”

*understood in a holistic way

Several times throughout the story this very pertinent point is made. Sex is not a bad thing in and of itself. The sexual act is physically pleasurable, and emotionally enjoyable. Sex is made bad by social pressures. When all social stigma is removed, Sex is distinctly a ‘goodness’. It is positive in every way – It causes pleasure, and helps people grow closer with one another.

On the other side of the coin there is Jealousy. Jealousy appears to be pure ‘badness’. Jealousy will drive ‘good people’ to do terrible things – insults, accusations, violence, abuse, and murder to name some of the obvious ones. There is nothing good about the emotion ‘jealousy’ itself, and nothing ‘good’ comes of it.

I find it odd that our society is as tolerant of jealousy as it is. Worse than that, we often find ourselves or others like ourselves even promoting it! Everything which comes from this emotion is negative, yet we still see family and friends protecting each other’s jealous feelings; sure, it has been written numerous times that jealousy is an ugly emotion, but when it comes to how we actually live, jealousy is by far more acceptable than embracing the infidelity of a partner. How many times have we heard the story of the boyfriend cheating on his girlfriend with her best friend? The automatic assumption is always that she has been betrayed and he deserves whatever retribution she wants to dish out to him. Never is the case made that she should be happy for him and her best friend. She loves both of them doesn’t she? So why is she systematically destroying everything that was ever good between herself and the both of them? What has she gained by falling prey to the emotion of jealousy in this instance? And why does everyone always support her in this course of action? Jealousy is a ‘badness’ and there is no justification for succumbing to it.

At this point it would be fair to question the point of talking as if an emotion is felt by choice. “Surely jealousy will be felt regardless of whether I want to feel it or not?” Well, yeah, to an extent. But a married man will lust after women he can’t have whether he wants to or not – yet we have the Bible telling us we must never do it – most social codes seem to generally agree with that sentiment. We are outright expected to suppress a powerful emotion (a fundamental driving biological emotion to be specific) and act as if that emotion simply doesn’t exist. There usually isn’t much support for the ‘cheating’ spouse when everyone finds out what they have been doing…

So can we stop ourselves feeling jealousy? No more or less than we can stop ourselves lusting after other women or men while married… So why do we choose to block the emotion which drives us towards a ‘goodness’, and allow ourselves to be exposed to the emotion which drives us towards ‘badness’?

  1. Think about what it is like to ‘fall in love’, what it is like to find yourself attracted to someone, what it is like to feel ‘connected’…and think of the consequences of allowing yourself to explore those feelings without regret and guilt. What consequences do we see? We see growth, we see happiness, pleasure, enjoyment, we see increase in well being all round.
  2. Now think about the consequences of jealousy. A wife catches a ‘cheating husband’ and the jealous reaction is an overwhelmingly negative one. If it isn’t immediately violent, then it is probably immediate depression, despair, and collapse. Allowing jealousy to rule will result in despair, heartache, loss and overwhelming depression – with or without a divorce. Jealousy often drives people to particularly vindictive actions too – malicious divorce where the slighted partner’s sole purpose is to get us much money out of their ‘cheating’ partner as possible, and where kids are involved the jealous individual will even go so far as to attempt to stop all access between their ex-spouse and their children. Further extending the ‘badness’ effect of jealousy, and having the unfortunate effect of impressing upon those children that it was the ‘cheaters’ fault that this has happened – “if only he had stayed true and been monogamous, then none of this would have happened” – a strong lesson to impressionable children. Never is it taught that jealousy is the real cause of the pain and suffering.

I can’t see how this topic can be any more lucidly clear than that. There is a confliction, but one is clearly good, and the other is clearly bad – why does society insist we keep choosing the bad option?

Love is a positive emotion. Affection, friendship, closeness – all of these feelings of kindred-ship we experience with one another are the most beautiful and positive things available in the human experience. We have an endless supply of these positive closeness emotions in all of their varying intensities. It is an ‘endless fountain’ within us, but we constantly let that fountain be blocked by the jealousy of another – and ironically we only let that other person do it because we love that person, and we have been convinced that they have the right to feel ‘jealous’.

What would the world be like if our moral guidelines dictated that no one should allow themselves to feel jealous of another persons good fortunes, and just as importantly recommended that we all openly embrace our love for one another without guilt?

Part Two Follows – On Polyamory

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