Author: Christopher Ryan

ISBN: 978-0061707803

We, humans are biologically wired to live in monogamous relationships. After we find the "one" a true love emerges and we enjoy an intimate, sexual and deeply fulfilling relationship till death do us part, right? This theory often stemming from romantic definiton of love is certainly predominant in Judeo-Christian worldwiev. What if it's the other way around?

EXCERPTS

[The book's main premise is that the monogamy as a type of mating behavior (prevalent in the Judeo-Christian world) is not as much an element of human nature as it is an adaptation to social conditions—many of which were introduced with the advent of agriculture no more than ten thousand years ago. From evolutionary perspective monogamy was very risky. If a woman could only rely on biological father to take care for her and a child, she found herself in an awkward position if father for one reason or the other couldn't or wouldn't care for her and a child. From evolutionary perspective it made much more sense that women (and men) had sexual relationships with many partners. When a baby was born all the men a woman had sex with before her pregnancy were deemed to be fathers of a child. (DNA paternity testing is a relatively new invention). Consequently they would all take care for a child - they would all be deemed fathers of a child.]

Part I: On the Origin of the Specious

So, if promiscuity suggests a number of ongoing, nonexclusive sexual relationships, then yes, our ancestors were far more promiscuous than all but the randiest among us. On the other hand, if we understand promiscuity to refer to a lack of discrimination in choosing partners or having sex with random strangers, then our ancestors were likely far less promiscuous than many modern humans. For this book, promiscuity refers only to having a number of ongoing sexual relationships at the same time. Given the contours of prehistoric life in small bands, it’s unlikely that many of these partners would have been strangers.

One can choose what to do, but not what to want.

The Moral Animal, Robert Wright puts it succinctly, saying: “We are built to be effective animals, not happy ones. (Of course, we’re designed to pursue happiness; and the attainment of Darwinian goals — sex, status, and so on — often brings happiness, at least for a while.) Still, the frequent absence of happiness is what keeps us pursuing it, and thus makes us productive.”

[Today's prevailing theory; the standard model.] A woman, according to the theory, would be more upset about her partner’s emotional involvement with another woman, as that would threaten her vital interests more. According to the standard model, the worst - case scenario for a prehistoric woman in this evolutionary game would be to lose access to her man’s resources and support. If he limits himself to a meaningless sexual dalliance with another woman (in modern terms, preferably a woman of a lower social class or a prostitute — whom he would be unlikely to marry), this would be far less threatening to her standard of living and that of her children. However, if he were to fall in love with another woman and leave, the woman’s prospects (and those of her children) would plummet. From the man’s perspective, as noted above, the worst - case scenario would be to spend his time and resources raising another man’s children and propelling someone else’s genes into the future at the expense of his own). If his partner were to have an emotional connection with another man, but no sex, this genetic catastrophe couldn’t happen. But if she were to have sex with another man, even if no emotional intimacy were involved, he could find himself unknowingly losing his evolutionary “investment.”

Modern man’s seemingly instinctive impulse to control women’s sexuality is not an intrinsic feature of human nature. It is a response to specific historical socioeconomic conditions — conditions very different from those in which our species evolved. This is key to understanding sexuality in the modern world. De Waal is correct that this hierarchical, aggressive, and territorial behavior is of recent origin for our species. It is, as we’ll see, an adaptation to the social world that arose with agriculture.

Part II: Lust In Paradise (Solitary?)

What gets cultivated — in soil and minds — is not necessarily beneficial to the individuals in a given society. Something may benefit a culture overall, while being disastrous to the majority of the individual members of that society.

No creature needs to be threatened with death to act in accord with its own nature.

Institutionalized sharing of resources and sexuality spreads and minimizes risk, assures food won’t be wasted in a world without refrigeration, eliminates the effects of male infertility, promotes the genetic health of individuals, and assures a more secure social environment for children and adults alike. Far from utopian romanticism, foragers insist on egalitarianism because it works on the most practical levels.

In the literature of evolutionary psychology, in popular culture, in the tastefully appointed offices of marriage counselors, in religious teachings, in political discourse, and in our own mixed - up lives, lust is often mistaken for love. Perhaps even more insidious and damaging in societies insistent on long-term, sexually exclusive monogamy, the negative form of that statement is also true. The absence of lust is misread as indicating an absence of love.

Why is it so easy to believe that a mother’s love isn’t a zero-sum proposition, but that sexual love is a finite resource?

Part III: The Way We Weren't

When Hobbes wrote that “Man to Man is an arrant Wolfe”, he was unaware of just how cooperative and communicative wolves can be if there’s enough food for everyone.

He is richest who is content with least, for contentment is the wealth of nature.

Using this correlation, he predicted that humans start losing track of who’s doing what to whom when group size hits about 150 individuals.

Community ownership doesn’t work in large-scale societies where people operate in anonymity.

It is a common mistake to assume that evolution is a process of improvement, that evolving organisms are progressing toward some final, perfected state. But they, and we, are not. An evolving society or organism simply adapts over the generations to changing conditions. While these modifications may be immediately beneficial, they are not really improvements because external conditions never stop shifting. This error underlies the assumption that here and now is obviously better than there and then.

When you read, “At the beginning of the 20th century, life expectancy at birth was around 45 years. It has risen to about 75 thanks to the advent of antibiotics and public health measures that allow people to survive or avoid infectious diseases”, keep in mind that this dramatic increase is much more a reflection of increased infant survival than of adults living longer.

Once our ancestors began cultivating land for food, they were running on a wheel, but never fast enough. More land provides more food. And more food means more children born and fed. More children provide more help on the farm and more soldiers. But this population growth creates demand for more land, which can be won and held only through conquest and war. Put another way, the shift to agriculture was accelerated by the seemingly irrefutable belief that it’s better to take strangers’ land (killing them if necessary) than to allow one’s own children to die of starvation.

If you want to live long, sleep more and eat less. To date, the only demonstrably effective method for prolonging mammalian life is severe caloric reduction.

To put it another way, if you hunt or gather just enough low-fat food to forestall serious hunger pangs, and spend the rest of your time in low-stress activities such as telling stories by the fire, taking extended hammock-embraced naps, and playing with children, you’d be engaged in the optimal lifestyle for human longevity.

Part V: Men Are from Africa, Women Are from Africa

Most researchers and therapists agree that these unusual sexual hungers are almost exclusively seen in males, appear to be related to early imprinting, and are difficult, if not impossible, to alter once boyhood impressions have hardened into adult yearnings.

(One can choose what to do, but not what to want.) Desire, particularly male desire, is notoriously unresponsive to religious dictate, legal retribution, family pressure, self - preservation, or common sense. It does respond to one thing, however: testosterone.

Adults who abuse children were almost always victims of childhood abuse themselves, and every junkyard owner knows that if you want a mean dog, beat the puppy.

Cultures that don’t interfere in the physical bonding between mother and child or prohibit the expression of adolescent sexuality show far lower levels of violence — both between individuals and between societies.

For most men and many women, sexual monogamy leads inexorably to monotomy. It’s important to understand this process has nothing to do with the attractiveness of the long - term partner or the depth and sincerity of the love felt for him or her.

Jessie Bernard argued in the early 1970s that increasing men’s opportunities for sexually novel partners was one of the most important social changes required in Western societies to promote marital happiness.

[On cheating men, who leave for the other woman.] This common situation is heavy with tragedy, but one of the most painful aspects may be that many of these men will realize that the woman they left behind was a far better match than the one they left her for. Once the transitory thrill passes, these men are left once again with the realities of what makes a relationship work over the long run: respect, admiration, convergent interests, good conversation, sense of humor, and so on. A marriage built upon sexual passion alone has as much chance of enduring as a house built on winter ice. Only by arriving at a more nuanced understanding of the nature of human sexuality will we learn to make smarter decisions about our long-term commitments. But this understanding requires us to face some uncomfortable facts.

The options most men see before them seem to be:

1. Lie and try not to get caught. While this option may be the most commonly chosen, it may also be the worst. How many men think they have an “unspoken agreement” with their wife that, as long as she doesn’t find out about it, it’s okay for him to have a casual relationship on the side? This is like saying you have an unspoken agreement with the police that it’s okay to drive drunk — as long as they don’t catch you. Even if there is some understanding along these line , any lawyer will tell you that unspoken agreements are the worst possible foundation for any long - term partnership. A. Gentlemen, you are going to get caught sooner or later (probably sooner). You have as much chance of getting away with this as a dog has of following a cat up a tree. Ain’t gonna happen. One reason: most women’s sense of smell is significantly better than most men’s, so there’s probably going to be evidence you can’t even sense, but that she’ll pick up on. Need we even mention the much - vaunted powers of female intuition? B. This requires you to lie to your partner in life. To deceive the mother of your children, the person you were hoping to grow old wit . Is this really who you are? Is this the man she chose to share her life with?

2. Give up on having sex with anyone other than your wife for the rest of your life. Maybe resort to porn and Prozac. A. Antidepressants are the most prescribed drug in the United States, with 118 million prescriptions written in 2005 alone. One of the most prominent side effects of these drugs is the dampening of libido, so maybe the whole issue will just fade away — chemical castration. If not, there’s always Viagra, with well over a billion tablets doled out in the decade since it was introduced in 1998. But Viagra creates blood flow, not desire. Now men can fake sexual interest too. Progress? B. It’s not the same, is it? And isn’t there something humiliating (not to say emasculating) about sneaking off at night to look at porn on your computer? This course often leads to serious anger and resentment that can destroy a relationship.

3. Serial monogamy: divorce and start over. This option seems to be the “honest” approach recommended by most experts — including many relationship counselors. A. Serial monogamy is a symptomatic response to the issues posed by the conflict between what society dictates and what biology demands. It solves nothing in terms of snowballing male (and thus, female) sexual frustration in long - term sexually monogamous relationships. B. Though often presented as the honorable response to the conundrum, the serial monogamy cop - out has led directly to the current epidemic of broken homes and single - parent families. How is it “adult” to inflict emotional trauma on our children because we’re unable to face the truth about sex? Susan Squire, author of I Don’t: A Contrarian History of Marriage, asks: “Why does society consider it more moral for you to break up a marriage, go through a divorce, disrupt your children’s lives maybe forever, just to be able to fuck someone with whom the fucking is going to get just as boring as it was with the first person before long?” A man who pursues long - term happiness by leaving behind a string of hurt, embittered women and emotionally wounded children is little more than a dog chasing tail — his own.

There are zones where it’s always going to be difficult for men and women to understand one another, and sexual desire is one of them. Many women will find it difficult to accept that men can so easily dissociate sexual pleasure from emotional intimacy, just as many men will struggle to understand why these two obviously separate (to them) issues are often so intertwined for many women.