I don't want to plagiarize, but I can't think of a better descriptor of the cultural zeitgeist than "ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth." (St Paul)

> Social iconoclasts dismiss organized religion, marriage, sexual norms, social duty, gender roles, and cultural traditions.

It's important to recognise that western organised religion stomped on a great many multi-millenia gender roles and cultural traditions about the globe via colonisation.

Promoting what might made right as "the norm" severely downplays the alternative collective learning of uncountable generations.

> It's important to recognise that western organised religion stomped on a great many multi-millenia gender roles and cultural traditions about the globe via colonisation.

Sure, but let's be honest that the majority of humanity stabilized around a man and woman having children in a monogamous relationship, with a minority practicing polygamy. The rest were tiny outliers numbers wise.

That's not quite the blank slate that some people imply humans are, imho.

What grinds my gears about this is that it’s always some white American invoking the moral sanction of unspecified black and brown people. No, we don’t approve of your relationship choices either, sorry.

Sorry, white people don’t get to take credit for inventing monogamy. The basic sexual and gender roles are pretty consistent across Europe, the Middle East, India, China, most of Africa, etc. It’s actually one of the main things we all have in common.

You have to get into pretty small and obscure populations before you come across meaningfully “alternative” constructions.

Check your history, really.

Polygamy has been widespread throughout history, eg:

    In accordance with the marriage-customs of the Egyptians the priests have but one wife, but any other man takes as many as he may determine; and the Egyptians are required to raise all their children in order to increase the population, on the ground that large numbers are the greatest factor in increasing the prosperity of both country and cities.

Diodorus Siculus

It's been widespread throughout the western christian church also - Popes weren't the only ones with multiple families.

> What grinds my gears about this is that it’s always some white American invoking the moral sanction of unspecified black and brown people.

What grinds my gears is the sheer number of idiots that assume the internet is made up of white American males.

Some of us were tagging along on logistics runs and meeting the Minangkabau, the Bugis, the Fore, and many many other people in the 1960s.

To the best of my recollection Paul Gauguin wasn't hanging out in Tahiti for the grinding monogamy.

Still, it's hard to bame people in a post missionary world for having culturally blinkered views formed by the pinhole of white saviour pamphlets.

Yeah, but polygamy specifically is one of the things that western society has tried to wipe out for pretty good reasons. It’s usually horrible for women and children.

> Some of us were tagging along on logistics runs and meeting the Minangkabau, the Bugis, the Fore, and many many other people in the 1960s

See my point about small populations. Indonesia has 278 million people, of which the Minangkabau comprise 8 million. What’s the gender norms of the dominant Javanese culture? Are they accepting of polyamory?

And white travelers like Gauguin really have little insight into foreign cultures. Sex tourism is much more a legacy of colonialism than monogamy.

And we’ll see what ‘new’ polyamory looks like on that front in a generation or two as well eh?

Still too early to tell otherwise.