Korean Job Discussion Forums

huck · Joined: 19 Jan 2003

I was watching some show today, and I started wondering.....

Aren't laws "supposedly" made to protect people? Why is there a law against bigamy? Who is that protecting? I guess the same thing could be said about gay marriages....Is this just a trickle-down effect from our Puritan ancestry in North America?

JongnoGuru · Joined: 25 May 2004 Location: peeing on your doorstep

peppermint · Posted: Sat Jul 16, 2005 6:40 pm Post subject:

That depends. Can I have one to cook, one to fix stuff, and maybe one to clean as well? Razz

guangho · Posted: Sat Jul 16, 2005 7:18 pm Post subject:

I know an Indian and an Algerian in Iatewon. Both are Muslims and claim that they are allowed up to four wives.

Leslie Cheswyck · Joined: 31 May 2003 Location: University of Western Chile

Polyandry. I think there's a village somewhere in China that practices it.

pegpig · Joined: 10 May 2005

GOOD GAWD!!! Shocked

Are you guys nuts, or single?!

One wife is plenty.

huck · Joined: 19 Jan 2003

I'm just curious as to where we get our values from....There's nothing dangerous or inherently wrong with it. If our instinct is to reproduce, then it would be instinctive, since you would have more probability of passing on your genes if your weren't monogamous.

Don't you ever wonder why you believe the things you do, and who it was that decided that you and the people around you were going to believe these things?

krats1976 · Joined: 14 May 2003

Leslie Cheswyck · Joined: 31 May 2003 Location: University of Western Chile

That's right. I saw this special a few years back. The women ruled the roost. The men/fathers had to live in this lodge on the other side of the village. Bum deal for the men.

mithridates · Posted: Sat Jul 16, 2005 10:33 pm Post subject:

Bhutan?

Leslie Cheswyck · Joined: 31 May 2003 Location: University of Western Chile

No. I'm pretty sure it was China.

the_beaver · Joined: 15 Jan 2003

Wangja · Joined: 17 May 2004 Location: Seoul, Yongsan

In England, a judge recently handed down the ultimate penalty for bigamy.

Two mothers-in-law.

Beej · Joined: 05 Mar 2005 Location: Eungam Loop

Its the Musuo people of China. They have a matriarchal society where the children live in households headed by women. Lovers never get married. Men will come to the house and stay the night, then leave. They later will visit thier children. These men also have multiple lovers.

Gopher · Joined: 04 Jun 2005

Evolutionary Psychology has an opinion on this. (Warning: feminists hate evolutionary psychologists and people who insist we have free will are uncomfortable with its conclusions.)

Evolutionary psychologists (see Wright's Moral Animal) reduce human males to sex: reproduce, reproduce, reproduce. Males have low parental investment and can theoretically impregnate several women per day from puberty until...?

Human females, on the other hand, have a higher parental investment: they can only get pregnant approximately once per year between puberty and about 40ish. They are therefore coy, because they must make each pregnancy count. And whereas males look for childbirth/childbearing factors such as breasts [wow! they beeped "breastesses."] and hips, females look for security indicators, that is, money.

Women of course, look at this pattern and tend to judge it from a position of moral superiority ("men are pigs!").

Wright outlines the development of monogamy in Moral Animal, at least in Western Civilization. A while back the rich guys had all the women, being that women have always tended to prefer owning 5% of a rich guy's time than 100% of a poor guy's time (think of what the rich guy can do for her children!). But as we domesticated plants and animals and our socieites grew, this arrangement proved unstable. So many single poor guys caused increased security issues for the rich guys, who wanted things to stabilize. Hence monogamy laws. (Don't attack me for summarizing Wright: read his book, review his evidence, and write him a freakin' letter or something.)

Evolutionary psychologists emphasize the unconscious, genetic nature of all this. They cite their own comparative studies of an East African snake whose name I can't recall. It has an extremely small brain, capable of only the most rudimentary of mental processes. Yet the males are trying to mate with all of the females and the females play coy with the males...