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How Polygamy Shaped Who We Are

Also found interesting, but I'm not getting his third point at all. Because males die at a higher rate than females "from a broad array of causes" and "across the entire lifespan", that's connected to ancient polygny?... :rolleyes:
 
andrew said:
Because males die at a higher rate than females "from a broad array of causes" and "across the entire lifespan", that's connected to ancient polygny?
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Maybe because they were running out of available males?

Ok, after actually reading it, they seem to be claiming that males die early and often due to the pressures to get to the top of the heap for mating and having multiple partners. Well.....that’s my interpretation of what was said.
I think that other studies, and personal observation, indicates that males simply engage in riskier behavior.
 
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That's what I was thinking....
 
FollowingHim said:
But males may engage in riskier behaviour in an attempt to attract women, tying it all back together again.
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In some instances, yes. But when I think back to some of the stupidest and most dangerous choices that I made, there was nobody to show off to. I was just filled with that feeling of invulnerability that young males have. I did challenging things that I never bragged about later because I realized after the fact how stupid they were.
The ministering angels that were assigned to me might have been being punished for something. :eek:
 
steve said:
In some instances, yes. But when I think back to some of the stupidest and most dangerous choices that I made, there was nobody to show off to. I was just filled with that feeling of invulnerability that young males have. I did challenging things that I never bragged about later because I realized after the fact how stupid they were.
The ministering angels that were assigned to me might have been being punished for something. :eek:
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RUSH

Workin' Them Angels Lyrics

Driving away to the east, and into the past
History recedes in my rear-view mirror
Carried away on a wave of music down a desert road

Memory humming at the heart of a factory town

All my life
I've been workin' them angels overtime
Riding and driving and living
So close to the edge
Workin' them angels
Workin' them angels
Workin' them angels - overtime
 
Cap said:
RUSH

Workin' Them Angels Lyrics

Driving away to the east, and into the past
History recedes in my rear-view mirror
Carried away on a wave of music down a desert road

Memory humming at the heart of a factory town

All my life
I've been workin' them angels overtime
Riding and driving and living
So close to the edge
Workin' them angels
Workin' them angels
Workin' them angels - overtime
Click to expand...
Guilty :confused:
 
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Reactions: Cap
FollowingHim said:
But males may engage in riskier behaviour in an attempt to attract women, tying it all back together again.
Click to expand...
It would to that extent, but he specifically brings in behavior across all ages (not just peak mating ages) and death from "a broad variety of causes", which doesn't sound like it's limited to showing off for females.
 
OK, guys do riskier stuff. This guy (and the evo-psych crowd generally) are looking at that behavior asking, "Why is that? What purpose in our genetic history would it have served?"

Prepping for and then getting and defending of one's mate(s) is a lifelong endeavor. After civilizations came along, the clobbering of other males became mostly less direct, but the impulse to jump at things remains — even when directed into activities not at all related to mating. And such driven activity still wears on a guy, whether the result is acute trauma (injuries, violent death, etc) or chronic disease (much of which is, in fact, caused by stress).

On top of that, that the rate of trouble — higher for men of any age — increases during peak mating years may support (rather than detract from) the idea that the trouble is connected to how our distant ancestors mated.

The author is writing to a crowd that looks at how contemporary behavior is wired into us based on events and conditions during the far-distant evolutionary timeframe. I think y'all overlook who it is he's speaking to (and for) when you ding him for making a point that doesn't revolve around here-and-now cause and effect.

His message seems to be that females were never rationed out on a one-to-a-customer basis and that males had to scramble against each other to get theirs, and that this accounts for the evidence trail in which males are bigger, like to have different partners, and lead driven lives that kill them or at least wear them out, especially when they're of prime mating age.

If the connection to injury and death still seems murky, I'd say look at the opposite: Is it easy to imagine, if men were naturally monogamous and a completely docile guy could mate as well as the next, that men would be no more risk-driven than females, that they'd sit around living long, mellow lives, and that the danger of hostile invaders arriving might drop to nil? That's a fantasy, because men aren't naturally monogamous, but I think you can imagine these other ways males might be different if it were so, and that's my point.
 
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Yeah, I'm not overlooking who he's speaking to, I simply disagree with him. The male death thing is much deeper than 'competing for mates in a previous polygynous culture'.

Men don't die in wars and coal mines and hunting accidents or by being maimed and killed by heavy machinery because they're showing their tail feathers. These things happen because men--by design or selection--aren't women. We don't make babies, we don't nurse babies, we provide for and protect the tribe, and we do that across polygynous and monogamous cultures. We are expendable, and we sacrifice and work and, if necessary, die for the people we care about because we care about them, not just so we can get laid.

To trivialize that as being in the same category as or the result of hormonal teenagers showing off for girls is, I think, misguided, if not duplicitous. In any event, it is consistent with the trend in this culture to diminish and denigrate the unique role and purpose of men in society. ("Women need men like a . . . ", how does that go again?)
 
andrew said:
We don't make babies, we don't nurse babies, we provide for and protect the tribe, and we do that across polygynous and monogamous cultures. We are expendable, and we sacrifice and work and, if necessary, die for the people we care about because we care about them, not just so we can get laid.
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We're only expendable if you've got polygamy. We can only die for the women we care about, without seriously adversely affecting the tribe, if someone else is available to mate with them after we're gone. We can only die for the children we care about if there's someone else to take our job as father also.

In a truly monogamous society (with nobody breaking the rules and all widows destined to single motherhood for statistical reasons), every man would be equally essential to the women in order to breed.

Which means that monogamy may ultimately result in women being encouraged to join the military, to even up the numbers a bit and maximise breeding potential within that arrangement...

So you can bring this all back to polygamy - if you analyse it far enough.

Where he errs is that he thinks polygamy caused all this. In reality, God created men how we are, and polygamy is a natural feature of how we are built that complements our natures and allows us to be the expendable protectors that we are. Correlation does not prove causation. He's right about the correlation, wrong about the causation.
 
Agreed. I did not mean to imply that there is no relationship between polygamy and masculine behavior. I agree with you that the issue is causation, and that’s the issue of his that I’m taking issue with!

More when I’m not driving. ...
 
That fundamentally comes back to evolution vs creation. Our mindset affects everything we look at.

An evolutionary view can contribute valid points when they stick within sensible limits, of the effects of real-world natural selection on organisms. But when they take it beyond this, into the fantasy of animals-to-people evolution, then they end up reading too much into things and getting cause and effect mixed up.
 
andrew said:
Yeah, I'm not overlooking who he's speaking to, I simply disagree with him. The male death thing is much deeper than 'competing for mates in a previous polygynous culture'.

Men don't die in wars and coal mines and hunting accidents or by being maimed and killed by heavy machinery because they're showing their tail feathers. These things happen because men--by design or selection--aren't women. We don't make babies, we don't nurse babies, we provide for and protect the tribe, and we do that across polygynous and monogamous cultures. We are expendable, and we sacrifice and work and, if necessary, die for the people we care about because we care about them, not just so we can get laid.

To trivialize that as being in the same category as or the result of hormonal teenagers showing off for girls is, I think, misguided, if not duplicitous. In any event, it is consistent with the trend in this culture to diminish and denigrate the unique role and purpose of men in society. ("Women need men like a . . . ", how does that go again?)
Click to expand...

It's another chapter of the book! Maybe the first few paragraphs of the author's notes. Solid gold sir!
 
steve said:
In some instances, yes. But when I think back to some of the stupidest and most dangerous choices that I made, there was nobody to show off to. I was just filled with that feeling of invulnerability that young males have. I did challenging things that I never bragged about later because I realized after the fact how stupid they were.
The ministering angels that were assigned to me might have been being punished for something. :eek:
Click to expand...
Haha, I can relate! The things God had protected me against, I don't have slightest clue, but I know he has and im greatful for his angles!
 
andrew said:
The male death thing is much deeper than 'competing for mates in a previous polygynous culture'.
Click to expand...

Agreed. This is what I was alluding to in my initial post.

I think the article viewpoint suffers from the "if all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail" problem.

The idea that perhaps men were simply designed differently is beyond their grasp.
 
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