Dear readers,
recently I came upon an article from the NYT in which faithfulness is exposed as an outwright fantasy in the animal world.
In this article by Natalie Angier, biologists and psychologists explain that social monogamy is very rarely accompanied by sexual, or genetic, monogamy in virtually all species. Moreover studies have shown that there are also species that “pay for sex”, male shrike provisioning their “mistresses” with more gifts than the ones given to their mate while male macaques that spent time picking parasites from an adult female’s hide systematically expect compensation in the form of copulation.
Yet, one thing remain: jealousy and possessiveness don’t disappear since very often females are violently attacked by males if they copulate with other males…
Here are some parts of the article by Natalie Angier The New York Times ( Tuesday, March 25, 2008)
Sexual promiscuity is rampant throughout nature, and true faithfulness a fond fantasy. Oh, there are plenty of animals in which males and females team up to raise young, as we do, that form “pair bonds” of impressive endurance and apparent mutual affection, spending hours reaffirming their partnership by snuggling together like prairie voles or singing hooty, doo-wop love songs like gibbons, or dancing goofily like blue-footed boobies.
Yet as biologists have discovered through the application of DNA paternity tests to the offspring of these bonded pairs, social monogamy is very rarely accompanied by sexual, or genetic, monogamy. Assay the kids in a given brood, whether of birds, voles, lesser apes, foxes or any other pair-bonding species, and anywhere from 10 to 70 percent will prove to have been sired by somebody other than the resident male.
As David Barash, a professor of psychology at the University of Washington in Seattle, put it with Cole Porter flair: Infants have their infancy; adults, adultery. Barash, who wrote “The Myth of Monogamy” with his psychiatrist-wife, Judith Eve Lipton, cited a scene from the movie “Heartburn” in which a Nora Ephronesque character complains to her father about her husband’s philanderings and the father quips that if she’d wanted fidelity, she should have married a swan. Fat lot of good that would have done her, Barash said: we now know that swans can cheat, too. Instead, the heroine might have considered union with Diplozoon paradoxum, a flatworm that lives in gills of freshwater fish. “Males and females meet each other as adolescents, and their bodies literally fuse together, whereupon they remain faithful until death,” Barash said. “That’s the only species I know of in which there seems to be 100 percent monogamy.” And where the only hearts burned belong to the unlucky host fish.
Even the “oldest profession” that figured so prominently in Spitzer’s demise is old news. Nonhuman beings have been shown to pay for sex, too. A male shrike provisions his mate with so-called nuptial gifts: rodents, lizards, small birds or large insects that he impales on sticks. But when the male shrike hankers after extracurricular sex, he will offer a would-be mistress an even bigger kebab than the ones he gives to his wife — for the richer the offering, the researchers found, the greater the chance that the female will agree to a fly-by-night fling.
Significantly, males adjust their grooming behavior in a distinctly economic fashion, paying a higher or lower price depending on the availability and quality of the merchandise and competition from other buyers.
Commonplace though adultery may be, and as avidly as animals engage in it when given the opportunity, nobody seems to approve of it in others, and humans are hardly the only species that will rise up in outrage against wantonness real or perceived. Most female baboons have lost half an ear here, a swatch of pelt there, to the jealous fury of their much larger and toothier mates.
Please feel free to comment in this subject. But don’t put the blame on science!
as two unique beings ,there arsies different views on relations .love is not something that controls .it must free him or her .at least two must be able to talk on it freely than being an hpocrite.
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The difference between animals and humans, according to the Old Testament, is and has always been REASON. While animals may behave this way, the only thing this article proves to me is that it is the animal within us that wishes to follow this behavior, and it is the reason within us which makes us human that allows us to resist.
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leina,i think u misunderstood me…
First of all i said it was an article from the net,(the article made be thought about, and i posted it to take opinions from others….and second i can not be so influnced by the Bible so much, cause i am not chatolic at all.
I really think sex is a very important part of everydaylife,but we must admit our society has created about it the ima ge of pervertion. ..Dont u agree?
My answer to Paolo’s question is that generally are bound by society…
but i wander about this question :should we be judged if we arent faithful to persons we really love????
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I want to defend Marvin and congratulate him on his soul-searching past and present honesty and vulnerabilty…it would probably mean a lot less for us and you, had you compared yourself with an ape x
Wanbliska
I don’t know either.
I’m with Paul from Austria on this…
I reckon it’s an imposed discipline
but if we’re honest
and looked at an hypothetical, acceptable promiscuous society; How many of us could honestly say that we would not feel ‘put out’ ‘put down’ ‘pissed off even’ when our partner walks off casually, in preference of someone else….as with the same freedom we owe ourself?
As always, it’s one of those things that is ‘on our own terms’…..I’m bored with you now, goodbye…
Humans got to evolve a long way before then….in the mean time - discipline has it’s benefits lol
LOVE
xxxx
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I think what distinguishes us from most animals is the ability to discern. How many times we do things that are contrary to our nature? We know that following our nature can put us in danger, such as STDs and AIDS. We have intellect, rational thought, so we don’t solely depend on instinct. And where does morality comes in? Does this concept exist in the animal kingdom? To answer the question I would agreed we are bound by society; but what is society is not ourselves?
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But isn’t it better to be faithful to only one, to work it as a wisdom? Or is it leading to frustration, anyway? I don’t really know.
What I know is that we can be faithfull to only one, for entire life. Some demonstrated so, around Earth.
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I am faithful. For me it is about the development of trust.I know that for me surrendering to my desires and needs I want to feel safe. Safety comes with time. It comes with the development of a space that is built with experience, with words, with intimacy.
While researching for my book “Who’s Helping Who?” I delved into intimacy. One interview gave me a nugget I am still savoring. A fellow business coach spoke about intimacy in a new way. She said, “What most people do not realize, is that when they agree to become intimate, what they are really agreeing to is to be affected.” I have explored this notion with many people since that conversation over a year ago.
What I have continued to see, i that we are so scared to admit we are affected by others. We are so busy defending who we are, that we forget that the interactions we have continue to shape and evolve our hearts, minds and souls.
I have come to a place in my life finally that i am open and willing to be affected. I love myself and stand for what I believe in, yet am also willing to learn and evolve each day, be it by people experiences or the hand of God.
I define intimacy as a connection of souls, be it on the physical, emotional, intellectual or spiritual level. Becoming intimate on all levels is my quest. My quest to self, to God and to others.
Each day, I ask myself, What do I need to be honest about today? What do I need to be willing to look at and not judge. What do I need to stretch into and be with? My desire to be intimate is for me the path to enlightenment. I have times of deep sense of Gods presence in my life. Almost almost always it is about intimacy.
Whether I am becoming intimate with myself, with another person, with the earth, with the breeze, it is about seeing and feeling what is. Being aware in the moment and accepting and loving what is.
As I sit here writing, I can feel an intimacy with myself and with the words of each of you. Shared ideas, respect, all a part of the development of LOVE.
Blessings all, Florence
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I’m going to try to look at this from a different angle. The article, I feel, is being taken far out of context. Animal behavior, below the great apes, can be said to be largely based upon ritual and genetics, both of which have developed in accordance with selection pressures. For those who do not study biology, both the behaviors and genetics (physical, hormonal, and mental characteristics) of an any species are controlled by breeding and passed down through generations. In the animal populations (other than human) the greatest factor in mating is the survival and betterment of the species.
Obviously, infidelity has proven to be a beneficial trait in genetic recombination. For a species to survive and adapt it is most advantageous for the most pairs of mates to combine genes and allow for the most diversity in the gene pool of the next generation. Animals which appear to have life mates are not together in the same way that a human couple is together, there is no religious pressure on a pair of lizards to love one another endlessly, they do not experience attachments and emotions in a way that we could comprehend.
From the evolutionary stand point certain species have developed the trait to have a single mate, or as we are now realizing, a single partner with which to raise children. The species which do play a major part in the raising of young, mainly those which contribute the most energy in gestation, sometimes find it necessary to raise children in pairs. The division of certain animal populations into male female pairs does not suggest that they will not breed else where, these species do not share our odd views on morality or societal pressures, they act in the way that is best for evolution. This, in many cases, seems to mean that many species of animals find genetic recombination with many mates and raise young with a single partner. The larger animal population’s behaviors are not dictated by religion or custom.
As for the jealousy of the apes, it may be that the psyche of the great apes has leaned towards the desire for monogamy, which does have some genetic benefits as well. Monogamy allows for each individual to know absolutely which of the next generation hold their genes, allowing for conscious altruism. Also the behaviors of the great ape’s of which we are a part, are often divergent from those of other animals. It may be that the culture of different species of great apes (for they do at times seem to have a culture or tradition passed from generation to generation) is favorable to monogamy, and allows for jealousy and rage when encountered with an instance of ‘infidelity.’
This does not, however, mean that humans should have multiple mates, or single mates. The human psyche has developed to be much more complex than that of the larger animal kingdom. We are widely controlled by learned behaviors. Though we do have our fair share of genetically controlled aspects we are widely blank pallets. Our minds are shaped by so many variables, both the subtle and uncontrollable experiences within the womb and the teaching of society. It can not be readily said what any one person is programmed toward, certainly our genetics could point us toward infidelity, but our genetics ceased to completely control us millennia ago.
Genetics are no excuse, if one’s society dictates monogamy, that is the standard by which you are right and wrong. Tragically that is what it has come down to, it is not what is natural, genetic or learned, it is what is written.
And Marvin,
I commend you on your massive efforts to make this into some sort of revolt against hard core porn and masturbation, but I can in no way see how the workings of nature have anything to do with your belief in “male led relationships” or in your apparent jadedness of the female body. I’m going to assume you are young, perhaps erroneously, and I am going to plead with you to part with your bible and society’s spoon fed teachings on the issues of sex and relationships. It is far too early in life, for both of us I assume, to say that such things are over rated, sex is a very important part of a relationship. I hate to break it to you but in the society which we have developed into, which does not demand procreation as our species has far too many individuals as is, and which recognizes the natural physical activities which produce positive feelings, sex can be good simply for the act in itself.
I am not trying to break down your beliefs whatever they may be, I myself do not believe that any book translated so many times as the bible has been should be taken literally. Just as I am sure you feel no shame wearing mixed fabrics, you should not allow others to guide your ideas of human relationships, they are far too complex to be dictated.
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There is something to be said for the lack of sensuality in today’s society. We have stripped sex bare. And yet, there is much to be said for interactions, faithful or no, in which we share our sensuality. Passion is sorely lacking in most relationships that surround me. Why? Because it is not allowed to grow, it is not nurtured, before the giving of bodies.
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Hi! Do you have this text in portuguese? I’m just learning English, so, I wish to read this text in portuguese, just for make an comparison.
Thanks a lot.
Tomás
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Oh by the way….I am faithful… (monogamous) but I’m not sure if it is right ;-)
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we cannot possibly be all things to all men/women, but isn’t variety the spice of life/love…..we build so many barriers (ie monogamy)because we are afraid of the enlightenment, love & light, Paul
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When I read this article a quote popped into my head. “A kiss may not be the truth, but it is what we wish were true.” I know that monogamy doesn’t really exist but I still hold out the hope that it will for me. Maybe it’s because I’m a woman, I don’t know, but I think being faithful to one person is the ultimate romantic vision. Isn’t it what we all wish for…to find that one person to be our everything. (Maybe I’m the only one who wishes this.) I think that if more couples where honest with each other and just talked about what they needed in bed… their relationships would last longer. There will always be someone out there who is younger, faster, stronger then your mate but will they understand you, love & care about you, standby you & be loyal? Make love to someone who can do all of those things, and if you’re honest with them about what you want, you can transcend everything and have the kind of sex that most people never even have in their life time. The most powerful sex is a combination of body (instinct) & mind (thoughts & feelings). You can’t get that from a one night stand….that takes years & many life experiences to cultivate. I do think that sex is primal & I understand wandering desire but as humans we’ve been granted the opportunity to either have sex (primal, quick, fleeting) or mind blowing sex (which takes loyalty & love to create.) I don’t know about you but I’d rather have mind blowing sex…maybe that’s just me though?! I’m for monogamy.
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I am mulling over that!
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Hm? After all, we humans are not the smartiest:)
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Unfaithfulness on all channels? So bad?
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Dear Paolo,
As I see it, humans re unique creatures as we both have an animal part of our nature and a spiritual, divine part of our nature. Our challenge in life is to wake up and realize our divine potential. We have a biological anatomy as well as an energetic. Sex becomes love making when our heart is open and we exchange love with whom we´re exchanging energy.
For me, to see humans as only biological creatures and only focus on the functions that we have in common with animals is only looking at part of who we truely are. I think it´s natural for most people who experience love and love exchanging in sex to have a longing to unfold that exchange and experience. How we treat eachother in those experiences comes from our heart´s ethics and is independant from societie´s or other moral rules.
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Basic instinct !
i am reminded of a few words from KG’s Prophet, much in man is as yet not man. Human form is a cross road, it has both the animal tendencies and the higher tendendencies ! it’s all about transcending the animal tendencies, which can be best done, starting with close auqintance with those tendencies, both, the once we want to leave and those we want to live with.
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Thanks.
For monogamy is a sociologist law. Anyone should follow one’s desire, insofar as spreading Love.
Right, some people are faithful all their life, and yet they have some unfaithfulness ideas sometimes. Is this a frustration to restrain that desire? Or is it something that give strength to a couple?
All I think if someone is sad, because he can’t satisfy his desire, he should live it.
Useless to struggle. And,
maybe people would be happier in life, if they considered sex as a Gift.
Lastly, there’s a problem of possessiveness indeed. And as nearly the whole society thinks “monogamy”, people know they have to be faithful, or lose all they built.
;) happy sunday to all.
Gratefully.
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I wonder if this reflects the strength of our desire to be true to ourselves and for our own reunion with spirit. For myself, when I approach this question from this persepective, monogamy feels very natural and not something I feel any need to agonise over.
On the other hand when I am more divided in myself and am finding it harder to regain that sense of integrity and centredness I am more open to the idea of different partners and affairs.
Is it not the case that the world outside us, and how we express ourselves within it, is only a mirror to our inner world? We retain our primitive brains and the instincts that go with them. I don’t know about the animals, but humans came here to be more than that. Perhaps, for some, that journey includes polygamy and, perhaps for others, it does not. I am not sure that it is possible to try and contain this in one box that fits all, which is something that science very much likes to do.
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Marvin and Agnieszka
I see where you coming from
much love
xxxx
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In our present life everything is overstimulated, with movies, articles, ads. It’s hard for someone to survive these temptations even if, or maybe especially if, you’re in a good, long term relationship, where you have love and stability, and even if your life is exciting, with parties, great vacations, interesting people, even you have so many things in common, etc..
There are always will be other people whose greatest sport is to tempt or use others, especially those volnurable ones.
I think it’s human nature to be tempted, and it’s also up to us to control it.
There is this one saying, that as long as you don’t try not even once, it will not happen again, but if you try, you’ll may become addicted to it.
Maybe we should remember that.
love
Agnieszka
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our hearts r weird, uh? well i think that as long as one follows his-her heart, and i mean truly follows it, it will lead us further in life, and we cant actually know if its gonna be with one person for sure or another.. maybe we need to meet more people before being ready for our “special one” and we cant know when in life that person will come.. maybe we think we already met that person, but when he-she truly comes we realize the string that connected all our life to take us to that very special moment… anyway if we could be less deaf towards our heart we could understand better wheter the need of being with some other person rather than our current companion is truly what we seek or need or if its just a matter of not wanting to commit ourselves and work our butt off to obtain something that we think should be easier to have… except some blessings that eventually come (but deep inside we deserve them) nothing in this life that’s worth having comes easy
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what do u thik about this article i found on a website????
Our pagan (a.k.a. “modern”) culture programs us to worship sex in the form of the fertile young female.
Sex is considered the most pleasurable and profound experience life has to offer and possession of the nubile female the greatest gift.
I subscribed to Playboy and devoured nudes with Kirk Douglas-like adoration. Henceforth I judged females primarily on the basis of sex appeal; all others were invisible. I also equated sexual desire with love, and love with religion. In essence, I became dysfunctional, unable to relate to real women.
This subversive verse from Paul Simon’s “Kathy’s Song” (1965) became the anthem of my generation:
“So you see I have come to doubt/ All that I once held as true/ I stand alone without beliefs/ The only truth I know is you.”
We were taught to be “alienated” from society and to seek fulfillment in romance. Uprooted from our true historical and spiritual context, we were told life is meaningless: find it in sex.
“An erotomania is abroad through our civilization,” Francis Parker Yockey wrote in 1948. It is “the identification of ‘happiness’ with sexual love, holding it up as the great value, before which all honour, duty, patriotism, consecration of Life to a higher aim, must give way.” ( Imperium, 297)
This message has not changed and it is pervasive. The pagan goddess is used to sell everything from cell phones to insurance. In one commercial, she says, “even I get constipation” as if she were supernatural.
As if this weren’t enough, lately she has become an Amazon warrior anxious to avenge centuries of imagined oppression. As result, she is either frostily unapproachable or a demanding pleasure-seeking slut.
These factors have poisoned male-female relations. We are fearful and cannot form a permanent bond. Many men have turned to pornography, which has become a multi billion-dollar industry and national pastime.
PROCREATION OR RECREATION?
In Plato’s Republic Socrates says that when he finally lost his sex drive in old age, he felt as if he had been ” released from the jaws of a wild beast.”
Despite what we are told, I don’t think sex is intended to be a lifelong obsession. It is part of the courtship and procreation phase. We are meant to marry young, have children and outgrow sex to some extent. We were intended to focus our energy on more compelling things.
For men, the goal is to control our sex drive rather than to be controlled by it (or by women.)How do men do this if they cannot find a compatible mate ?
Obviously most masturbate and many use pornography as an aid. Most men would be thinking of nothing else if they didn’t relieve the pressure in this way.
But, as a sensible teenager said to me recently: “If I need to look at pictures, well then I don’t really need to do it.” His focus is on managing his sex drive not on dissipation. By masturbating every few days, he can be “cool” with girls.
HARD CORE PORN: THE UNDEFINED HATE CRIME
If a pipe were spewing untreated sewage into our streets, we would stop it. But hard-core pornography does this on a psychic level on a much larger scale, and somehow we are helpless.
A swastika graphitti or the epithet “nigger” are considered “hate crimes” yet every day millions of men receive offensive email offers to extend their penises or watch 14-year-old Sue get sodomized. That is considered “free speech.”
Hard-core porn is anti human. It is hate. But anything that is prohibited assumes an undue importance. I’d rather curious males investigated and were disgusted and bored.
There is a difference between hard-core porn, which is tedious and sick, and tasteful female nudity, which can be a temporary substitute.
The key is to grow beyond it. The temporary substitute should not become a permanent one. It should not interfere with finding a mate.
Pornography makes us see women in purely sexual terms and obviously this affects how we treat them and how they respond to us.
ANOTHER OPTION
When men dehumanize women, we dehumanize ourselves.
Men and women are demeaned when they seek sex merely as physical release. Let’s face it. Most of us have been demeaned.
This is the goal of the New World Order, which centres on the question: Is human life sacred or are we merely animals? The New World Order wants to prove we are cattle so we can be herded, enslaved or slaughtered.
Resistance begins at home. Attack the programming head on. Let’s stop looking at women as sex objects. Let’s humanize sex by insisting that it belongs in a loving long-term male-led relationship.
The sex act is the sacred ritual of creation. The man plants his seed, which contains his essence, his genetic code. The woman receives and nourishes this seed into a creature capable of knowing God.
Let’s look for compatible mates rather than sex partners. This would save us a lot of hardship, rejection and wasted time. Women would instantly become more approachable and available.
SUBLIMATION
Being human is a spiritual discipline. It means holding our behaviour accountable to our ideals and evolving morally. Let’s catch ourselves when we look at women lasciviously. There is a difference between that and admiring their sex appeal, beauty and grace.
Holding ourselves accountable requires will power. We are the product of our thoughts. The thought is father of the deed. We must control our thoughts and the stimuli we allow.
One acquaintance doesn’t masturbate very often. “Why stoke the fires?” he says. He keeps his mind off sex and focuses on more exciting pursuits.
This is called sublimation. The prodigious American writer Upton Sinclair (1878-1968) wrote in his Autobiography (1962):
My chastity was preserved at the cost of much emotional effort…What did I get in return for this? I got intensity and power of concentration; these elements in my make-up were the product of my effort to resist the tempter.
I learned to work fourteen hours a day at study and creative effort because it was only by being thus occupied that the craving for woman could be kept out of my soul. I recited the Wisdom of Solomon: “he that ruleth his spirit is greater than he that taketh a city.” (p. 46)
According to Sinclair, and many religions, the energy goes right to the spiritual bottom line:
“Imagine anyone wanting a lot of money or houses and servants or fine raiment if he knew how to be happy as I did! Imagine anyone becoming drunk on whiskey if he might become drunk on poetry and music, sunsets and valleys full of clover!” (56)
CONCLUSION
Sexual pleasure is nature’s way of making sure we propagate; it is not an end in itself. That’s another modern hoax.
As anyone with some experience knows, sex is highly overrated. The same applies to the female body, which has become stale from overexposure.
The masculine sex drive is a powerful creative force but It needs to be controlled and steered. We can do this by applying and then releasing the brake (sublimation). Every man is different and must find his own formula.
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This is indeed an interesting article!
And it reflects back to when us humans lived in caves or similar dwellings, when the males would go off hunting, for perhaps days at a time. It has been suggested by historians and scientists that the men would have “sown their oats” if the opportunity arose, in order to ensure the continuation of their genes; yet it also suggested that the women would have accepted other sexual partners whilst their men were away, in order to ensure a good healthy gene pool was established.
It is only with the invention of social conventions and the vain hope of fidelity that we humans have thought monogamy is ‘the norm’!
There is no doubt that we search for our Soul Mate throughout our Lives, and perhaps we are meant to find them, perhaps it forms part of our journey toward Enlightenment - yet is this an innate desire, or one that we have learnt from society? ;)
Brightest Blessings of Love
)o(
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Unfaithfulness on all channels ???
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I just saw a movie “Love in time of cholera” based on the book of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and…
it striked me that whether it is a man or a woman, they can only…love when they…desire.
So, does the pure love exists? or is it only in our fantasy?
love
Agnieszka
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Faithfulness..mmmm..the truth is i dont come up with many people that say they can be faithful to one person for a llong time..they want new adventures, new experiences, possibly with other people and i m so tired of hearing this..
I think this happens because we lose and forget the meaning of things that bind us to a person…But generally, what we lose is the meaning of devotion…Devotion to a person, to our dreams..to life…I think there lies the problem..that we cant commit to what we want, maybe because we are afraid to try..afraid of what this commitment might bring…but we dont realise that there may come greater experiences with this commitment..
Love to all of you
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