Korean Job Discussion Forums

[mindmetoo]

Evolution favors monogamy in certain cases, notably humans. Humans have big brains but because of the birth canal, most of that brain development can't happen in utero. The brain growth and development takes place outside. That big brain is a huge survival advantage. It's like a swiss army knife. Need sharper claws? You don't have to evolve them anymore. The brain will take care of it. Need thicker fur? You don't need to evolve it. The brain will take care of it.

But that also comes at a cost in terms of very long childhoods. So clearly if you want your genetic material to survive, you need to keep a male around. You can't make up for it by birthing large number of babies thinking "well at least one will survive". Pretty much no baby will survive on its own.

The male, of course, can pursue a dual strategy. He can keep one woman close, get her prego, and protect that baby. He can also hedge his bets and knock up other women, knowing another man will probably help raise and protect that line of genetic code.

[Masta_Don]

True that it does support both, as different strategies but there's one important factor in determining which a species does. Proximity to others of the same species. Some species, such as the seahorse, have to search far and wide for a mate. Thus when they find one they hold onto them, becoming monogamous. Some species of birds do this as well.

Those that live in close proximity don't practice monogamony. But they still typcially have one mate that serves as a life partner and then they sleep around too. As the poster above said, a male will just hope he impregnates others and won't worry about siring them. Even if one survives without his help (or another male is tricked into believing it's his) then he benefits. If a female can pair with a capable male, someone within her range, but sleep with better genes, then the weaker male will end up raising a stronger offspring that isn't his, and she benefits.

Humans obviously live in close proximity of each other and one would think they would fall into the not monogamous category. But human children take a long time to develop into adults, capable of caring for themselves. Fortunately that argument doesn't hold much water as we have lived in tribes for as long as we've been around and some still primative parts of the world, there they raise the children together.

Marriage and monogamy are more institutions to keep society in order. To keep emotions/jealousy and the violence that can result from it in check, marriage is needed. That way no one gets mad at another for having more than themself. Least that's the way it's supposed to go.

And yes, evolution doesn't effect us more than we effect ourselves anymore. This is obvious when you see bad genes being passed around like even needing to wear glasses or being schitzophrenic. We allow these people to breed and they pollute the gene pool. They make society more suseptible to diseases and its breakdown.

BTW, you can only consider all this if you believe in behavioral ecology models being used on humans. Strangely enough, I have met those that don't believe in it. Since we can't actually but humans in situations where we'd measure them, it's impossible to know if these outcomes that we see with animals are true for humans as well. Silly, I know, but figured a disclaimer was needed.

[ED209]

[out of context]

Just off the top of my head, I would say no to the question in the thread title. There certainly are animals that have evolved to be purely monogamous, but I don't think humans are among them. If evolution drove us to be monogamous, we wouldn't need social codes to enforce monogamy and there would be no market for things like prostitution and pornography. Of course the argument could be made that attaching social stigma to non-monogamous behavior is itself the result of an evolutionary process, but the perception of that stigma exists to such varying degrees within any given population (most conspicuously between sexes) and across cultures that I feel it would be a major stretch to extrapolate it to the entire species.

This is always an interesting issue to watch people discuss, anyway. It seems that even a lot of otherwise hardened skeptics tend to take the tack of starting with the premise that non-monogamy is bad, and then working to find ways to justify that premise using the facts. This is one issue where if you even question the premise, people think you're just looking for an excuse to *beep* around.

[twg]

[Keepongoing]

[Jizzo T. Clown]

[storysinger81]

[Keepongoing]

Deflating the Myth of Monogamy

excellent article about naughty birds


http://www.trinity.edu/rnadeau/FYS/Barash%20on%20monogamy.htm

[Big_Bird]

[Masta_Don]

[paquebot]

[Keepongoing]

[mindmetoo]