I disagree with the sense that evolution has answers to begin with, or that everything in human psychology can be assumed to be touched by evolution. Sometimes weird shit happens and it doesn't prevent you from fucking so it sticks and there's no greater purpose to it.
I feel this understanding of evolution ascribes too much anthropomorphism to the phenomenon.
That's how you end up with random maladaptive mutations. But they aren't distributed across a species.
You don't end up with near universal traits in a species without them being molded by evolutionary pressures.
1) people jump between partners too often when free, it's easier but maybe less deep
2) family stability is important, and noble (it's a hard compromise but others complicated things are important and noble)
3) in the past social, family and intimate stability were probably a lot more important than today, so we inherited that perspective, even though today we may care less
ps: saying this I understand perfectly how human relationship, marriage are complex, volatile and how no one wants to rot in a bad relationship. :)
There's a difference between "no one wants to rot in a bad relationship" and "no one wants to put the effort and time to make a relationship work", though.
And while a number of divorces are because of the first, another number is because of the latter.
Now, a question would be "So? Why shouldn't people just jump ship, even if they're just frivolous/bored/have short relationship attention spans/etc?"
And an answer would be, "Well, look at our modern relationship landscape. Does these trends work out well for us? Is yes, then fine..."
And shockingly, depression and anxiety is on the rise, we have a "loneliness epidemic", etc because people can't seem to fill that void.
I'm nobody but it seems that survival made most mammals social, but we don't owe our survival to the group now, but to a blurry and large system. So why bother with people when I can swipe for all my needs /s
But the thing is, as an ex introvert I can understand, dealing with people is not easy. Just like dealing with love, intimacy, marriage, existence is not easy. But we used to try to find solutions of better quality. Not just "i'm out".
This is a very timely question. There are a few topics about how easy our lives should be, how much effort is considered normal. And beyond efforts, the skills to know when, what and how to apply them to avoid just struggling 24/7.
I am not sure, if I understand you right, but you seem to romantize the old version of marriage relationships.
Well, as far as I know, they had only very rarely something to do with love, but rather with violence and domination and "making the relationship work" meant beating the wife to submission. And one of the written duties of a wife were sex, whether they wanted, or not, so basically rape.
And the thought of leaving an abusive partner was considered sin, with real punishment (sometimes torture to death) for making those thoughts real.
It has not been even so long ago, that these laws were abolished in the west. And to my knowledge, they still exist de facto (or even de jure) in many parts of the world.
The only reason I can think of, of "making a relationship work", is when there are already kids, who need stability. Then both adults should get their act together and work it out like responsible, mature people. But in the cases I have witnessed, the children usually were acting more mature, than their parents.
All relationships require upkeep. If you never make any time for a friend, the friendship deteriorates. You need to make time for each other and show each other that you care.
The fact that you see this as abusive is perhaps revealing why marriage and lasting relationships are at an all time low.
Many past societies did not have atomic families like we do today.
In fact, even couple-marriage is not _that_ old (several thousands of years)? I remember reading about this stuff in "Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State", which, while somewhat dated (125 years ago or so?) is quite interesting. Matrilineal societies, group marriage (i.e. being 'married' to all people in a certain category so that if you travel to another village you have people in your 'family' or 'marriage group' there even if you've never met them) and other arrangements.
Also some people say that a lot of animals have similar emotional/biological needs. It's not just a matter of homo-* history it seems.
I would assume you were brought up in a modern cultural environment. That means your view of the world, your values, your expectations, your fantasies - are shaped by that upbringing.
So, your feelings are not good evidence that this is "programmed deep down inside of us".
That seems a … bizarre opinion. Until industrialization, human relationships were directly tied to survival.
And, in fact you're making the point even more strongly, in that you seem to identify lifelong, formal, monogamous pairing with the potential for human companionship.
Cities and written language and written laws and such are not that old either...
What was the case in some earlier societies shouldn't be a yardstick...
By Fredrick Engles, known most popularly when associated with his co-author Karl Marx. Who among their many philisophical ideas advocated things such as
- "All history is class warfare"
- Dialectical materialism that proved to be so wrong no one even knows about it anymore.
- Or my personal favorite that the communist revolution would come first to the most capitalist countries, when in fact the only countries that fell to communism were backward feudal societies or those that had communism forced on them by the Soviet Union.
My point if your source of information is Engles then I'd suggest checking out some resources from people haven't been quite so thoroughly eviscerated by actual reality when their ideas were put to any sort of test.
What is the question and what are the possible answers? What difference would it make in our morals?
That sounds like the reverse of the good old "Well, if God does not exist, why don't you just kill random people, then?"
Anger and violence and rape and murder, are all bilogical and evolutionary based. So what?
> "If a culture artificially forces relationships to last by, say, heavily stigmatizing divorce, then of course that's going to override the "natural" course of events.
See the above argument, it changes nothing. And by the way, divorce is more normalized than ever and divorce rates are falling in the developed world.
On the countrary, if lustful love is just a chemical process that eventually wears off, you're better off not divorcing. If love was this astral magestic thing, then sure, divorce and pursue it.
People have this idea "yeah, but back then, there was no marriage and both men and women could just fuck arround".
Sure, some people did just like today, but back then, we lived in small groups, a coule hundred individuals, the opportunities to fuck around were not as great as today and there was no anonymity as today.
I've been 20 pumped with testosterone. Was it not for my religious education and moral sense, I would probably have slept with a lot more women. Between age 20-35 I think I only cried 3 times, when my grandparents died.
As my testosterone levels are declining, my emotions are coming back.
I'm still the same biological organism, evolution did not intend one course or the other. I just find a lot of satisfaction now from family life.
There is no contradiction or dilema for me. I do not feel oppressed by society or morals or biology.
Who said anything about morals here? The questions are, why do we feel the way we do, and why do our feelings make us act the way we do? Evo-psych gives some ways of possibly answering that. How we got here is largely independent of where we want to go from here.
> There is no contradiction or dilema for me. I do not feel oppressed by society or morals or biology.
I honestly don't know what the rest of your comment has anything to do with any of what the article is talking about. When did the article bring up any contradictions?
I think people are dealing with the issue on the other end, by just not getting married in the first place.
> It's a common thing with these evo-psych explanations. If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
If everything in reality is made from nails, then it makes sense to look for the hammer that hammered it in. Everything in human psychology was in fact molded through evolution, so of course it makes sense to look to evolution for potential answers.
> For example the fact that oxytocin is apparently indicative of how long a relationsihp lasts.
If a culture artificially forces relationships to last by, say, heavily stigmatizing divorce, then of course that's going to override the "natural" course of events. That hardly means there isn't useful information to be gleaned from our biological nature in situations where such artificial forces are not in force. (Or you could argue, where different artificial forces are in force.)