Archive for the ‘“Love” Contra Social Stability’ Category

Gender IS Strategy

In principle, the social organisation of any species is reducible to the net result of the sexual strategies by which the individuals of that species endeavour to reproduce themselves. Or, more accurately, reducible to the net result of the sexual strategies themselves, considered as algorithms and transiently expressed in those individuals. If we argue that […]

Sneakers And Dashers

There are three basic male reproductive strategies: holding enough territory for one female; holding enough territory for many females; and holding no territory at all, but freeloading on the other two. This third strategy is generally called “sneak”, and comes in two variants: the “female-mimic” sneak, who infiltrates harems by pretending to be harmless, and […]

A Mildly Polygynous Species

Feminist writers have seen human history in terms of a battle to control reproduction. In consequence, perhaps, this crucial perspective has been unduly ignored by non-feminist historians. For history need not be approached with the Manichaean sensibility that treats male reproductive ambitions as automatically bad and wrong and female reproductive ambitions as automatically good and […]

Posted on May 5, 2009 at 07:40 by Hugo Grinebiter · Permalink · 3 Comments
In: AGAINST NATURE, "Love" Contra Social Stability

The Genetics Of Concubinage

That the natural interest of women is in high-minded monogamous marriage while the natural interest of men is a brutal free-for-all is an assumption that is more repeated than thought about; it is more prejudice and tactics than good reproductive economics. To be sure, it has been proven that modern Mormon polygamy is not in […]

Variance

Since evolution relies on the overproduction of animals and the selection of only some of them to breed, the only thing that could stop us continuing to be subject to it would be social arrangements that absolutely guaranteed that no human being had either more or fewer offspring than any other. Inasmuch as certain human […]

The Campaign For Equal Wives

Since young men are tamed by marriage (the women citing their own moral superiority, but it could just as well be due to the fulfilment of male biological ambition), the growing imbalance between the number of women and men who marry has been called a serious threat to our social stability. How much more severe […]

Posted on June 3, 2009 at 13:14 by Hugo Grinebiter · Permalink · 3 Comments
In: AGAINST NATURE, "Love" Contra Social Stability

Matchmaking And Stability

Societies in which every man has his own wife, and no man has more than one, are more stable than the polygamous cultures that generate whole cohorts of frustrated young males. Religions that promulgated monogamy may have been powered, or even created, by this desire for stability. That includes Islam, which originally set out vastly […]

Posted on June 9, 2009 at 12:16 by Hugo Grinebiter · Permalink · 2 Comments
In: AGAINST NATURE, "Love" Contra Social Stability

The Bollywood Scenario

However much it serves to stabilise society by extending the breeding franchise, arranged marriage can also be perceived as oppressive, particularly when the young people are not given veto rights. Men obliged to marry some woman they don’t want generally have the option of taking a mistress or going to the brothel; understandably enough, therefore, […]

The Gregorian Paradox

In the late eleventh century the Gregorian programme of church reform declared war on the concept of marriage hitherto espoused by the aristocracy, namely, the patriarchal disposal of women in the interests of the noble house. It introduced the startling novelty of bridal consent. This was often a dead letter, not least when, as was […]

Back To The Lek

Whenever control of reproduction by the kin-group or wider society, which as far as we know is unique to Homo sapiens, breaks down, then the human reproductive pattern moves back towards that found in the rest of the animal kingdom. There, females breed with the “superior” males, whether by choice following a courtship ritual or […]