Unnatural

An HoS article on the sexual incontinence of famous men and the curerent trend towards “polyamorous relationships” (viz. Sleeping around) opens with the question “Are men naturally monogamous?”

This is a stupid question.

I am well aware that most of the males in animal kingdom do not mate with a single female for life, that they have multiple sexual partners and occasionally engage in homosexual sexual activity. Males of the species do not appear to be naturally monogamous. They also tend to kill the young of previous males, but I am not advancing that as an explanation of our child-murder statistics. The selective lifting of animal behaviours to justify our actions is a stupid argument that ignores the simple fact that we engage in unnatural behaviour all the time. Civilisation is, in fact, constructed on an artifice of completely unnatural acts. Even the very idea of a “swingers” party as outlned in the article is very unnatural. In the animal kingdom, if I wanted someone else’s mate, I would simply kill him and take her. A “mate swap” is not something that would readily occur to a lion or a baboon.

If men were to behave absolutely naturally, we would evacuate our bladder and bowels wherever we felt the urge, kill and steal from others with impunity and rape women whenever we felt randy. That we don’t is because we are civilised (well, some of us are civilised). In fact, when we want to show our disgust at someone’s behaviour, we call them an “animal”. It is, therefore, somewhat inconsistent to try and justify our bad behaviour by saying it is “natural”.

Marriage is a profoundly unnatural, civilised behaviour. The vast majority of the animal kingdom operates with short term relationships. Male fishes often don’t even meet the female, but just fertilise the eggs (I know some humans like this). But the price of this transience is that the infant mortality is massively high. Even in species where the birth rate is low (elephants and rhinoceroses for instance) the infant mortality is high. One of the primary benefits of society and civilisation is that our infant and child mortality is virtually non-existent compared to the animal kingdom. This is due to many factors but the stable nurturing of children in a long-term marriage is a principle part of it. The evolutionary value of civilisation and stable marriage is obvious. A large portion of human longevity and population growth is entirely due to increased infant survival. Our survival is dependent on our unnatural behaviour.

Religious and sexual preference reasons aside, long-term monogamous marriage or, at least, cohabitation, is essential for our long term survival as a species. Of course, this does not mean to suggest that sexual promiscuity will bring about the downfall of civilisation (though, historically, it has been a sign the civilisation is failing). But it does mean that the argument, that we should somehow take our behavioural cues from the animal kingdom, is seriously flawed.

“It’s only natural” is usually an excuse for stupid behaviour, not admirable action.

Related posts: