> 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.
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.