And wide spread religiously backed monogamy stabilisation didn't save us from two world wars.
[0]https://medium.economist.com/big-love-and-big-war-exploring-...
When all those things travel together, it's not clear that polygamy should be viewed as the primary cause.
It’s not clear to me how the first three would lead to social instability though. There have been plenty of religiously authoritarian cultures that were quite stable. Similarly gender inequality and reduced education for women have been common historically and it’s hard to see how they would lead to social instability and violence. After all it’s not very common for women to rise up violently against gender based oppression, that just doesn't seem to be the dynamic.
I can certainly see how low productivity and standards of living could lead to violence. Desperate people can reach for desperate means. Nevertheless there are many very poor countries round the world and only some of them are significantly polygamous. The fact that the most unstable 20 are all to some degree polygamous seems to me to be a pretty strong correlation. If polygamy can be a driver of social instability though, it’s fairly straightforward to draw a logical causal link from that instability to all sorts of other social and economic ills.
As for conquest and Imperialism, Islam has strong polygamous tendencies and has been very aggressively expansionist in it's history. It even has formal rules spelled out in the Koran for acquiring women through conquest (their non-Muslim marriages are automatically rendered invalid on capture).
Funnily enough Muslim countries rank high on instability metrics, and we can see from recent history how stable and developed Muslim countries under autocratic rule collapse into chaos once that autocracy fails.
If even just the top 10% of men only have one extra wife, or 'girl friend' in a flat and secretarial role, as is common for middle eastern businessmen and politicians, that means the bottom 10% of men cannot ever marry. People will go to great lengths to get out of that bottom 10%.
I wonder to what extent the recent shift in sexual access for young men is a factor in political radicalisation in America. There seem to be a lot of angry young white kids around these days.
Just look what long celibate does to priests. Soldiers in war have to be 'neutralized' via some mild suppressants in the rations (at least WW II was done like this from what I had read).
Also, if you survive the war and come home, being a war hero is very attractive to the ladies. You can speculate about an evolutionary background to that.
Most people in western societies at any given time are engaged in monogamous relationships. In fact, it's a crime in the U.S. to get married when you're already married to another person. Western governments don't recognize polygamous arrangements for tax purposes, etc.
If you're a 28 year old woman without a partner you only have a few more years of being physically optimal to give birth to a healthy child.
So the average-looking men suddenly become more interesting. They have a career going, they are stable, aren't womanizers, and won't gather too much attention from the competition.
I'm definitely average looking and I didn't get much attention in my late 20s. Only in my 30s I started getting attention from women who would formerly only go with the types of men they now avoided like the plague.
One of those guys is a good friend of mine. Great looking guy, just a great person if you're... not a woman. But he's the "bad boy" women fell for when he was in his 20s. Now he's in his 30s and still playing his old game.
Take a pick:
Option #1: An 9/10 looking 6,2ft tall guy who had over 100 sexual partners, constantly plays the seduction game just to get laid, is constantly flirted with by younger women, can't hold a conversation unless it's about sex, booze, or soccer, still goes to clubs several times a week.
Option #2: A 7/10 looking 6ft tall guy who had 4 sexual partners in his entire life (all longer-term relationships), can hold a conversation, has female friends, worked on his career instead of being in clubs 5 times a week.
Sure, there are still women who fall for him. His most recent relationships were women in their early to mid 20s. He's actually trying to settle down and find a long-term partner, but he has no clue how. The last 5 of them he fell in love with, all left him hanging just a few weeks into the relationship.
I am in my 30s and when I was on dating apps I'd suddenly get a ton of matches. Obviously also from women who are like my friend: promiscuous (no judgment here) women who, in their 20s, got pregnant and were left by the father.
- 6th grade - extraordinarily unattractive to the opposite sex.
- 8th grade - not outwardly reviled.
- 9th grade - outwardly reviled again.
- 12th grade - actually dating, with a bit of interest here or there.
- Freshman year of college - lower relative interest.
- Senior year of college - enough girls are interested that they're fighting with each other.
- 1st year in the workforce - outwardly reviled again!
- 5-10 years into the workforce - hard say, got married, so I must have been doing something right.
So, did I change much between 8th and 9th grade? Or between 12th grade and freshman year of college? No, obviously not, but my status relative to the bellcurve of available men did change quite a bit. This was most evident from my senior year to college to my first year in the workforce. I went from amazing, to worthless all due to graduation!
Please bear in mind, I'm not complaining about the nature of female preferences here. However, I do wish someone had explained that this would occur, and also why it would occur. I remember being quite surprised at the time.
It's quite cynical, I know.
It USED to be be the same thing when you were in highschool before tinder and social media: as a male, the more senior the higher status you had -- i.e. 9th grader males will just drool at their female coleagues going out with more senior males, until in 12th grade you finally hit payday.
Not so anymore because tinder and social media allow females to reach a much broader male audience.
It's the same thing with women in their thirties -- they notice they get a lot less male attention -- first the bad boys stop noticing them and a couple of years later even the nicest of guys won't give them that sweet validating attention women crave, so the smart ones settle down with a nice guy in her early thirties, the not so smart ones end up basically cat ladies.
Which is another problem men in their 20s face. They're competing with men in their 30s for the same women. There's simply a larger number of men trying to date a smaller number of women. The numbers mean someone gets left out.
Even in western cultures where monogamy was pretty strictly enforced by the church and society, I doubt that more than 80% of men procreated (wish I could cite sources, but there doesn't seem to be good data about this)
We also need to do away with the stigma that you can't have a fulfilling, productive and contributive life without children.
[1] https://psmag.com/environment/17-to-1-reproductive-success
If you read my post carefully, you'll see I only estimated the percentage for societies where monogamy is enforced (either through peer pressure, religion, or both)
I also did not cite the source you did, because I consider it of enough poor quality to be unreliable in debate.
It’s a very destabilizing trend. Not only are these same men being economically disadvantaged, but they’re being socially isolated. Perfect way to increase violent tendencies, drug addition, and so on.
* dating apps aren't the only way to meet people; you can still meet potential partners at parks/bars/work (Americans love office romances apparantly)
* dating apps do favor the conventionally good looking folks but its also about presentation, which can be gamed and its not a secret how to.
I agree that its a little unfair that the men who are good looking get all the benefits without having to put in any effort. But hasn't that been the case with inherited wealth too?
The focus on the visual to the exclusion of body language and personality chemistry just makes it a bad all around deal. From my experience, naturally meeting girls in the world is a much more pleasant experience.
If you look for anything else, like long term happiness, its a very hard find a partner on such platform. Maybe I am naive but I still think this is what most people want in their lives. But it ain't as easy as swiping around - one needs to go out there, make some effort to look attractive, expose oneself to as many potential partners as possible. And have patience, tons of patience.
It is how women are genetically programmed to be; it is why the Sabines accepted their raping-roman husbands, why Helen left with Paris, it is why Cleopatra accepted to be the mistress of Caesar and Anthony.
It is why women lubricate when they percieve a threatening male, it is why the Stockholm syndrom exists -- because it increases the chances of survival of a woman and her children if she can become the 10th wife of a man who just recently slain all her male relatives.
As they say: a picture is more than a 1000 words.
It's much more prone to manipulation than direct, spontaneous contact.
Think about doing a job search. You could find a potential employer at a park/bar/whatever, but it's a lot more efficient to go to a job site where people are actively looking to employ you. It's similar for dating. It's definitely possible to meet someone to date in the real world. It's just a lot less efficient than doing so in a space where the only people there are those actively looking for the same thing you are.
Plus, people typically go to the same bars/parks and have the same circle of friends. The absolute number of single people will be relatively small and you can go through them relatively quickly. There's also the awkwardness of dealing with failed relationships.
I wouldn't put to much blame on dating apps in general, as the whole category of "dating apps" has become rather large and differentiated. And the more differentiated it becomes, the more I see it reflecting existing social behaviour.
On Tinder a small number of attracive men gets to hook up. But hasn't that always been the case when the objective has been to "hook up"? When you pick someone up for the night at you local bar and have rather free choice, hasn't the choice always rather fallen on the hot guy?
But there is a whole world of other dating services outside of Tinder, that are not focused on hook ups, but rather on finding a partner, and the difference shows!
My a piece of anecdotal evidence:
On Tinder I got ~0 matches - I'd say I'm "average" looking, not "hot" enough for Tinder - but on Bumble I get regular good matches. In contrast one of my "hot" friends has no problems getting matches on Tinder, but when he tried out Bumble his number of matches were just slightly more than mine.
I still prefer dating without apps, and the overreliance on them in my youngish (~25) age group is worrying me a bit, but the world for non-hot men is not as bleak as it's often made out to be.
Of course, "attractiveness" is exactly this, the amount of partners you can get. We are certainly wired to consider the latter as an indicator of the former. Like a share's value is only marginally determined by its fundamentals, and more by how much is bought by others.
Might be helpful for some guy to bolster their confidence. This is extremely superficial of course, so comparable with tinder.
But: Any advice on safer sex should include "do not marry" in this case :)
But from the position of a guy that has few or none experience in dating, this might not be a bad choice.
Especially, as you mentioned, because it is very true that relationships are about expectations and managing those. And starting a relationship with someone who has basically always been in a relationship is very difficult for someone that was not.
Especially if the plan changed that you suddenly want to have a "serious" relationship. That is not very realistic and for the guy it doesn't really make a difference emotionally at this point.
The woman looking for greener pastures actually do have quite high expectations for economic safety, but that would make it more manageable for some guys at least.
And there is still opportunity for love here, and guys having problems with dating should know their options. Everything is allowed in love, right?
Disclaimer: I only ever at least partially defend the use of mail order brides on mondays. damn...
The risk is also in sort of men attracted to this proposition. They are literally dangerous ones to date, whether physically or for mental abuse.
Having to run out of abusive marriage sux big time and have long term consequences for women.
You insist on the idea that the wife has been "bought", and that it implies some sort of dominant/ controlling attitude on the male's part. In fact I would argue that the opposite could be true: men who resort to "mail brides" are simply trying to find their way around a system that puts them at the bottom of the ladder, often exactly because they are not dominant enough. Dominant psychopaths don't need mail order brides, they are often successful and can find plenty of partners anyway.
Also, if we're authorized to draw psychological inferences from these choices: what do you think of women who choose to date (relatively) wealthy foreigners online, refusing to find a partner in their own country? It's not that there is a shortage of males in Ukraine or Brazil or the Philippines. These women are choosing to ignore local partners for the prospect of a life of comforts (because this is the idea you get from foreign media).
So if we inform our psychological insights to our moral biases, who's the psychopath here? The naive loser who thinks he can trick the system and get a partner above his level, or the ambitious girl who shuns her local suitors for the prospect of a wealthy life abroad with a stranger?
Abusive marriages have nothing to do with if they wedded out of mail order or love. Either can turn abusive.
> Because he bought her,
Buying humans is illegal.
> She will never be respected partner with equal agency.
There is never a grain of truth in it except for vastly simplistic generalization.
> They are literally dangerous ones to date
Again! premature judgmental attitude.
That is simple risk factor evaluation one does when selecting partners. Normaly you guess on small hints, in this case it is pretty easy to see where you stand.
For sex, there is prostitution. This mail oder thing is about other wishes. And plan to be cool with whatever she decides to do is not one of them.
Men are not some robots that us pessimists programmed to turn into all the list of attributes that you just now prescribed when met with so and so situation.
Just because I bought a cat or dog doesn't mean I am going to abuse by feeling entitled and owning it.
With mail order women, women get just the same rights as any other women in marriage. Police would be after me otherwise. It is the responsibility of such women who voluntarily participate as mail order brides to educate themselves of their rights to assert them whenever apposite. Mail order transaction is perfectly legal and has no more abuse risk statistically than other kinds of mainstream marriages.
>It is not like they would be ordering her for any other reason.
Actually plenty said it is like they would be ordering her for other reasons - love, companionship and marriage.
You are again and again drawing premature conclusions like "People who own a kitchen knife are damn sure to be murderers!".
Udik explains it better -https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19622835
Anyone remember that story?