It’s been probably a year since I read The WEIRDest People in the World by Joseph Henrich, but the ideas in there have really stuck in my head.
The WEIRD acronym stands for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. The thesis is that the Christian Church inadvertently created modern society by prohibiting polygamy and cousin marriage.
The topic of polygamy is what’s really stuck in my head. Polygamy is a more natural state for civilized human societies than we think it is. It may be to women’s advantage to choose an “elite” spouse she has to share because it could mean a better quality of life for her and her children than the alternatives. Chris Hemsworth could have two dozen wives if it were legal and social acceptable (and he wanted to), and his wives might be happy with that. But the downside (or one of them) is that it creates huge imbalances in society—men find it really hard to find a mate. They then do risky stuff to make it into the elite to try to attract a mate—steal to accumulate wealth or kill potential romantic rivals.
This isn’t in the book, but it made me think—are we back in that same position now? Polygamy isn’t *technically* legal or common, but you still have plenty of people who have many romantic partners—just not at the same time. We know the what the activity of dating apps looks like—a very small subset of “elite” men get an outsized proportion of likes and matches from women. It’s slim pickings for the rest of the men. Are men, unable to find a mate, going to resort to risky behavior to try to make it into that subset that are able to attract women?
> Polygamy isn’t technically legal or common, but you still have plenty of people who have many romantic partners—just not at the same time.
I don't think those two are the same. Polygamy is a way to structure society and determine access to resources, whereas fooling around on Tinder is just a way to have fun with no questions asked. It might surprise you but the plebes of old were also promiscuous.
Maybe, maybe not. In relationships where a larger number of people competes for one partner you still have the same emotions of jealousy, insecurity etc. Everybody wants to be the favorite one.
It was interesting to observe the dynamics of such a relationship of my friend who dated two women (one white, one black) some years ago. When you asked them then, everybody would answer they were perfectly happy. Years later it turned out both women felt increasingly uncomfortable in the situation.
Polygamy was the norm for most of ancient/imperial China, Ottoman Empire, Mongols, Ancient Jews etc.
I wouldn't go so far as to say it was the norm for most people at most points in history, but considering the populations of the above civilisations it wasn't uncommon either.
FWIW, in ancient China people strictly only have one wife in most cases. The others are called concubines (I think). They have very different social/legal status.
Islam prohibits more than 4 wives and obliges the husband to treat every wife equally, so much so that most men who are even rich enough to marry more than one wife don’t due to of fears of not being able to treat them equally. (rich enough: women need not work in Islam. Their husband, relatives, and the state is obliged to provide for them in this order) That’s the best solution.
What do you mean "to deal with"? There's a lot of misconceptions about marriage, having to "manage" your spouse is one of them. You don't, they're their own person, they can take care of themselves, and if they're dependent on you it's not a healthy marriage.
A healthy marriage of two people treating each other as equals takes a lot of communication, and that almost certainly can't be scaled 10x, nor do the same principles apply when someone is only getting 10%.
In traditional polygamy, the man with 10 wives would be the head of household for 10 wives with competing interests, so it does start to sound very managerial.
I recall reading an interview of a higher-up in the Saudi government. He was asked why he doesn't have multiple wives. He replied that he doesn't have enough free time for that lifestyle. His grandfather was a tribesman: they raided other tribes about once a month to get what they needed. His father was a farmer/grazier: he worked about once a week. He, himself, is a government official and works most days.
Dating apps have created a kind of dynamic polygamy in the West, where a minority of 'single' men have many sexual partners per year, women have fewer, and the majority of single men have very few sexual partners.
I too find it funny when people use the naturalistic fallacy.
In my youth, I used to engage and try to retort about how brutal violence is also a more natural state. But now I just commiserate on HN.
What’s funny is that I do think that “natural law” is useful for reasoning problems in that equilibrium and natural forced impact on lives (eg, leverage gravity don’t fight it unnecessarily) and they frequently the invocation of nature isn’t accurate or isn’t particularly important. In that just because something occurs in nature doesn’t really mean much. And I don’t think there’s really any evidence that polygamy is a “natural state” only that some cultures practiced it and some didn’t. Even in the animal kingdom there’s polygamy and pair mating so it’s not even true that it is some expression of a natural law.
“Natural fallacy” people say that whatever way people were living for thousands of years is the happier way, because your body and mind is literally designed to live that way. The idea is there will be friction and thus disturbation if you stray off the default path. It’s more reasonable than the idea modern way of living is better. I see no justification for modern lifestyle. Still I don’t completely buy “natural” life because I believe men has a tendency to do evil which when mitigated by religion, leads to an even happier lifestyle than the indigenous tribe life (and yes, the primitive tribe people are happier than the average modern Joe.)
> In my youth, I used to engage and try to retort about how brutal violence is also a more natural state.
Would you consider it fair to describe violence as a 'default' state? To avoid a positive prejudice whilst also describing the higher frequency of violence in history and in toddlers.
> And I don’t think there’s really any evidence that polygamy is a “natural state” only that some cultures practiced it and some didn’t.
Through the lens of 'default state' - was there any civilisation pre 2500 BC that didn't practice polygamy? My understanding is that the prohibition of polygamy spread through the Greco-Roman tradition, but I'd be interested in finding out whether the prohibition occurred elsewhere or earlier too.
Maybe violence is the default state but I don’t think in a useful way, just that there’s lots of conflict and violence is an easy expression. So toddlers biting people are probably linked to the same urge that led to cavemen raping whatever women they could.
By not useful I mean, I wouldn’t plan my society around it and certainly not my partner decisions. Although maybe it feeds into the whole mindfulness technique of not acting on intrusive thoughts and minimizing their control over us.
> Through the lens of 'default state' - was there any civilisation pre 2500 BC that didn't practice polygamy?
This is an interesting question. I like history as much as the next person but haven’t studied this. I assumed there were because the Judeo-Christian origin story has Adam and Eve, not Adam and Eves (although the Bible is full of polygamy).
I’d look for societies that were individualistic rather than authoritarian as polygamy seems to me to be a function of patriarchy and power consolidation (ie, if the king/warlord/etc has 100 wives, that’s 99 fewer spouses available for craftsmen/merchants/artists/etc).
Wikipedia [0] says “ According to the Ethnographic Atlas by George P. Murdock, of 1,231 societies from around the world noted, 186 were monogamous; 453 had occasional polygyny; 588 had more frequent polygyny; and 4 had polyandry.” so it seems that polygamy is more common.
But again, my initial thought isn’t that this means polygamy is natural in as much as that physical strength and safety being prioritized and difficult means power consolidation. I’d like to learn about power distribution and it’s effect on family structure.
> I’d look for societies that were individualistic rather than authoritarian as polygamy seems to me to be a function of patriarchy and power consolidation
I wonder whether patriarchy is a consequence of polygamy rather than a cause.
It's very hard to compete with a person who has dozens or hundreds of children. And women cannot have more ten or so children, even in a non-monogamous setting.
This advantage is most visible in a hereditary aristocracy where a man could have a stable base of heirs, a large group of natural allies and the political opportunities of arranged marriages for children.
But even working class farmers would have the benefit of more free labour, and the middle class merchants could enjoy networks of trust in which to conduct commerce.
Although monogamous and eventually growing out of the middle class, the first / second Rothschilds are an example of the latter business benefit of having many competent adult children.
The WEIRD acronym stands for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. The thesis is that the Christian Church inadvertently created modern society by prohibiting polygamy and cousin marriage.
The topic of polygamy is what’s really stuck in my head. Polygamy is a more natural state for civilized human societies than we think it is. It may be to women’s advantage to choose an “elite” spouse she has to share because it could mean a better quality of life for her and her children than the alternatives. Chris Hemsworth could have two dozen wives if it were legal and social acceptable (and he wanted to), and his wives might be happy with that. But the downside (or one of them) is that it creates huge imbalances in society—men find it really hard to find a mate. They then do risky stuff to make it into the elite to try to attract a mate—steal to accumulate wealth or kill potential romantic rivals.
This isn’t in the book, but it made me think—are we back in that same position now? Polygamy isn’t *technically* legal or common, but you still have plenty of people who have many romantic partners—just not at the same time. We know the what the activity of dating apps looks like—a very small subset of “elite” men get an outsized proportion of likes and matches from women. It’s slim pickings for the rest of the men. Are men, unable to find a mate, going to resort to risky behavior to try to make it into that subset that are able to attract women?