Universality
We love to talk. We love to eat together. We love to laugh.
Why?
Well, because humans are highly social. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, it’s enshrined in our very being. From this sociability we birth culture which in turn shapes much of our human experience; anyone who’s travelled will tell you this. But with culture’s complexity, analysing human behaviour becomes tough.
As a result, something I use as a heuristic for understanding human nature – that ephemeral beast – is any ritual or belief which is practiced cross-culturally. When I see universalities across something as variable as culture, it tells me it’s an intrinsically human behaviour. For example, the ubiquitousness of faith teaches me that religious belief is essential; that all cultures have funeral rites tells me the significance of honouring the dead; that every society eats animal products spells out their importance to human health.
This is important as cultural beliefs rarely emerge without purpose. We may no longer remember what that purpose is, but there was always a reason.
However, the longer a culture has been around, the more warped it can get from its roots. Over time the influence of powerful individuals, misinterpretation of social feelings and group think have the ability to change a culture for the worse. This is never more pertinent than today, particularly when considering the personalised manipulation which is beamed directly into our pockets.
For example, look where we are with Western ideals of individualism and individual rights. Current trends of Social Justice Warriors and intersectionalists are bastardisations of this originally great idea.
In many ways this is purely an example of entropy – ideas are just as susceptible to degradation as an uncared for car. Without strong defenders of an idea’s principles, it will rust into a shadow of what it once was. We have seen this in many traditions over time, including the focus of this essay.
What is that focus?
Marriage.
Institutionalised Relationships
Marriage is an institution which is ‘proved’ (as much as any social idea can be ‘proved’ – spoiler alert, it can’t) by my idea of ‘universal principles’. Every culture practices a form of matrimony, telling me that pair-bonding is part of our core existence. Now, admittedly how marriage works in practice varies [monogamy, polygyny, polyandry] – but having institutionalised and committed relationships is universal within hunter-gatherer tribes, subsistence farming societies and advanced civilizations.
From this, we can infer some trends.
The first is that humans mate long-term. No society picks a partner for a week, before moving on to a new one in the next. We find a partner and stick with them – not always ‘until death do us part’ – but that we settle down long-term is undeniable.
The second is that relationships are always affirmed by a ritualised ceremony in order to let the community know of its legitimacy. Cohabiting without knowledge of the elders is universally decried – except in modernity.
The third is that human’s pair-bond. I believe this even with the knowledge of polygamy – usually given as an argument against pair-bonding.
However, from my understanding this marital form stemmed from the need for help with household labour in primitive societies. Not only this, but within polygamous marriages there are always ‘favourite wives’ – again hinting at pair-bonding principles. There are also wider societal issues surrounding polygamy which I’ll explore in detail later.
Now the problem with talking about humans is that there’s always an exception for every rule. We are a complex and dynamic species who – annoyingly for analytical purposes – create culture. Culture really does throw a spanner in the works of every attempt to talk about universalities of human behaviour; but this difficulty doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.
Relationship Breakdown
Given the above, it’s obvious that humans mate long-term until either death, or divorce.
So let’s take a moment to quickly talk about relationship breakdown then. Contrary to popular opinion divorce is both common and normal in many societies. It’s not necessarily encouraged, but its allowance is the acceptance that mistakes can be made. Whilst I would personally argue that it should be a last resort, within hunter-gatherer tribes (and even some Muslim cultures such as the Sundanese from West Java, Indonesia) it is normalised.
Now, whether divorce is easy or not should be correlated with how hard it is to get married, how young on average the bride and groom are and how stringent the cultural vetting process is. The easier marriage is, the younger the couple and the less stringent the vetting process, the more streamlined divorce should be.
However, I believe divorce must be actively prevented. If it becomes overly common it weakens marriage as an institution – as we can currently bear witness. This is negative, as marriage and monogamous pair-bonding is essential for a functioning society.
Sexual Stratification
Why do I think this?
Well, many of you will be familiar with the Pareto principal when it comes to sexual stratification. If you’re not it generally goes that – if all things were equal (a big if) – the top 20% of men would get 80% of women. Whilst this is overly simplistic, my subjective experience of life tells me that, as a general principle, it holds.
It is also backed up biologically. One man can, in theory, get an unlimited number of women pregnant. This does not translate from women to men. As such, a dominantly sexually active man can access a disproportionate amount of women with no biological barriers; only the limits of his wit, strength and charisma can stop him.
Now you can argue with the morality or ethics of this, but it holds true.
But why is this bad for society?
For the sake of clarity, let’s stick with the numbers of the Pareto Principal. A society with no cultural protections to mitigate this would leave ~60% of men unable to have sex.
As sex is intimately entwined with status, men that don’t have access to it are more prone to violence, extremist tendencies and other anti-social behaviours; incels being a prime modern example of this.
So, a nation with these demographics will be more violent and unstable.
And this is where marriage comes in.
Monogamous marriage keeps the number of these statusless men down. With pair bonding we can theoretically have 100% of the population able to access a mate in a softly enforced, institutionalised manner.
It was our ancestor’s answer to the problem of violent statusless men.
In fact traditions are often solutions to problems humanity has already encountered; this is why they stick around long enough to become traditional. In a time before powerful nation states, it was up to individuals acting on a cultural level to enforce societally beneficial practices. Without these cultural enforcements, society as a whole suffers. This is one of the dangers of tearing up tradition without having a fractal understanding of second order effects.
Polygamy
These arguments are further strengthened by the practice of polygamy. The 20 most unstable countries in the world are all polygamous. Whilst it is far too simplistic to attribute societal problems to a single variable, such a stark number warrants exploration – especially in light of what we discussed with regards to the Pareto Principal.
So let’s investigate why this might be.
Within polygamous societies, if the top 10% of men have 4 wives each, that means 30% – usually the poorest/lowest status – of men will be unable to access marriage, which in a culturally conservative country translates to not having sex. This is hugely destabilising. That’s a third of the arms bearing, prime fighting age men lacking the status that comes with sex.
As a result, these men do one of two things: they attempt to gain status, usually via violent methods, or achieve sexual gratification in other, less legitimate, ways.
Neither are good options – both for women or society as a whole.
This provides a real-world case study of the dangers of sexual stratification.
Western Parallels
What we can see in the West today runs parallel to this. With the rise of feminism, the destruction of the family and – crucially – the chipping away of marriage and committed relationships, we are seeing a similar effect play out in a different way. It is not institutionalised as polygamy is, but with excessive sexual liberalisation we are returning to a point where a small proportion men are able to access a disproportionate amount of women.
THIS IS DANGEROUS.
As previously mentioned, this problem of sexual stratification – something likely endemic to humans as a species – was previously solved through the institution of monogomous marriage.
It was effective in its prevention because marriage was both legally and culturally enforced. This resulted in it being very hard to get around. Yet in modernity both the legal and social constraints have been removed, and subsequently their effect is substantially weakened.
I believe that many of the current social tensions arise because of the second-order effects of this breakdown. Having levelled the playing field, access to sex is being dominated by an elite of men. With no cultural standards providing for lower status men in our society, they are being left behind.
I’ve already mentioned the impact of incels, but the cult-like behaviours of male members of groups such as vegans, Antifa and far-right organisations are exactly the actions exhibited by sex-starved men attempting to find a way to gain status.
Some of this is spilling out onto the streets, but with modernity’s change of battlefield, it is most noticeable in the online sphere. We are under a constant siege of competing discourses looking to incite violence between competing ideas, and the vitriolic online civil war uses these men as the foot soldiers of a deeper agenda.
This is why monogomous marriage is essential to society’s stability.
After 60 years of the institution’s weakening, we are starting to feel the full force of its collapse.
Individual Response
Moving away from this concept, the arguments against marriage tend to come at the individual level. Its detractors have usually witnessed either their parents’ or another close relative’s bad experience.
The other argument often given is individuals not seeing what personal benefits they would gain from legally enshrining their relationship.
The first of these, for me, is not an argument against the institution – but rather an individual response to poor relationships. That a relationship breaks down has nothing to do with marriage, and everything to do with the relationship.
The rebuttal I would give to the second argument, about personal advantages, is a little more obtuse. Whilst I agree that in the West there is little for an individual to rationally gain by getting married over cohabiting (objectively not true in other parts of the world) this doesn’t take into account the macro effects discussed above.
Whilst micro responses are important, when society fails on a macro level it affects us all as individuals.
This is particularly important with regards to marriage because the family is the basis of society. It’s where primary socialisation takes place, and provides our earliest experiences of the world; experiences which frame much of our life. When people have a negative home life, they tend to continue suffering long after flying the nest.
For example, in the US 75% of children in chemical dependency hospitals come from single-parent families, these kids are also 3x more likely to end up incarcerated by age 30 than children from dual-parent households and have the highest rates of incarceration in the US. And these are just the hard, statistical data points we have access to. It doesn’t include the soft, more difficult to quantify measures of attachment issues, insecurity and anxiety.
Now, I understand that in certain cases children will be better off growing up without toxic fathers. The problem is, too high a proportion of marriages now end in divorce. Not every one of these fathers was an abusive despot.
I will also caveat that not all children raised in single-parent households are going to be fucked up. Of course not. I have many friends who are rounded, well developed individuals who grew up without fathers.
But it is undoubtedly a disadvantage.
Vetting and Standards
Moving back to divorce and personal negative experiences of marriage, I mentioned at the beginning of this article that the standards for entering into marriage should be directly correlated with ease of divorce. But, the better way is to make standards for entering marriage high. When I cited Sundanese culture, who had the highest rates of divorce in the world in the 1960s, this is not a good thing. From my anecdotal experience, they have incredibly low requirements for entering marriage.
As traditions around mating have broken down over the past 60 years – since the invention of reliable contraception – there has been less need for a stringent vetting process for marriage in the West. This has led to a weaker focus on both men and women developing into people worthy of marriage. Consequently, both men and women are less attractive than they’ve ever been before: physically, emotionally and mentally.
This latest thought is spawned as I’ve just finished reading ‘Emma’ by Jane Austen. I’m a big believer in reading outside of your comfort zone, and I’ll be honest this is in orbit for mine. I decided to pick it up when there was book fair near me (I can’t spend enough time detailing the struggle I go through getting English books here. It’s one of THE major drawbacks of living where I do) as I’m always a fan of reading classics. Surprisingly enough, I’ve quite enjoyed it.
It helps that I’m British and it summons up quaint notions of my cultural heritage, but I’ve been somewhat enraptured by the depiction of men and women whose (seemingly) sole goal is marriage and its attainment. Now, bear in mind that this is an elite portrayal of society, but it still illuminates the primacy of marriage within their understanding of the world. The protagonist, Emma, is a catch due to her well-formed character, intellect and beauty.
The aspects of character displayed by Emma – and shown to be lacking in Mrs Elton and Miss Bates (an elderly spinster) – are ones I would argue are universally good; by which I mean, beyond helping someone to get married, they are generally attractive traits. They include social grace, soft-speaking, benevolence, intellectualism, being well-read, playing music for the enjoyment of friends and having good conversational skills, amongst others.
This is something lost on most men and women today. With The (uncoloured) Pill weakening the need for cultural protections developed to prevent children born out of wedlock (something which would likely doom the woman and child to poverty) men no longer need to be seen as ‘marriageable’ material in order for a woman to deem them mate worthy. This has had the consequence of men not needing to be judged on their character, as they were in the past.
For example, if the men in ‘Emma’ want to marry they must be strong, wise, benevolent, well-spoken, well-monied and socially intelligent. Again, these are all traits that lead to a healthy society, as well as healthy individuals. It is also noticeable that if you are over represented in one area (such as intellect) you can make up for shortfalls in another (such as social status).
This is no longer necessary, and is partly responsible for the poor standard of men in western society.
In the past there was greater difficulty in a partner being accepted; there was greater social pressure to find a good match; and as marriage was the prime action of life, it was more important and harder to enter into. Correspondingly, both men and women had to be well-developed and well-adjusted individuals. Thus, their marriage was more secure in the long-term.
What can we draw from this? Well, by having committed and socially accepted relationships which enabled legitimate avenues for sex, society encouraged good character and personal development.
This strengthened individual marriages as well as making for a healthier society.
Overt Sexualisation
A sexual free-for-all, on the other hand, does the opposite. In this situation pairing up relies solely on overt sexualisation and invoking lust. Doing so removes the need for male wisdom and female grace whilst simultaneously reducing the necessity of personal development.
I think this is evident by just looking around. Finding eligible, high-quality men and women has never been harder. Too many men and women rely solely on sexualisation and value the same in the opposite gender.
This is problematic as it only takes a significant percentage of the population to lean a certain way to destabilise culture. Much in the same way polygamy destabilises a country by stripping status from 30% of men, if 30% of men and women behave promiscuously it has a destabilising effect on relationships.
Through the erosion of trust, this change has tilted many people’s fundamental understanding of relationships with the opposite sex.
This has a HUGE effect on our day-to-day experience of life, which in turn affects culture and society, further hurting us on an individual level.
All this because of the decreasing importance of marriage.
Biology and Promiscuity
I mentioned the impact of the invention of The Pill earlier, but in reality it plays more than a brief cameo. It was hugely influential in changing society. What it achieved in freeing women from the cultural and biological constraints of childbirth should not be overlooked.
Generally, it’s often underestimated how often technology leads quiet revolutions. The Pill is an excellent example of this. Along with the automation of household tasks, it was one of the driving factors behind second-wave feminism.
Without these technologies feminism likely would never have taken off.
More pertinently to this article, two technologies which also weakened marriage as an institution were the condom and antibiotics.
Why do I say that?
Well, they curbed the impact and spread of STI’s. This further enabled promiscuity, which in turn damaged committed relationships.
In the past, those who were sexually active with multiple partners would eventually have succumbed to an infection; something which was previously untreatable. Whilst they may have successfully spread their genetics, most STI’s eventually lead to infertility. Some of these are more extreme – and will even kill people outright. This speaks to me of nature balancing out the impact of unrestricted sexual behaviours; the promiscuous can have children, but the amount will be limited by infertility or early death.
Because promiscuous people will birth a new generation, it patently serves a purpose on a biological level. In times of unrest or instability it would ensure that humans continue to breed. But nature, in its infinite wisdom, limits the impact of this gene when life is peaceful by reducing the duration it operates over.
The institutionalisation of relationships and sex through marriage was likely partly in response to STI’s. The degenerately sexual would have been seen to wither and suffer, making it appear as if the Godly institution of marriage was blessed.
But with condoms preventing, and antibiotics treating, diseases such as Chlamydia and Gonorrhoea, humans have superseded this natural balance.
As a result, the promiscuous no longer suffer in such obvious ways; their damage is mental, rather than physical. As we cannot easily witness the harm caused by promiscuity, it has become further accepted.
This isn’t to bemoan the invention of condoms or antibiotics – obviously they have been a huge net gain. However, we must examine the second order effects of their dissemination into society.
Conclusion
We have entered into a dangerous time for male-female dynamics. We have lost sight of many of the known truths of male and female behaviour, seeing them as culturally constructed, as opposed to naturally exhibited.
As a response we have torn down the cultural protocol of marriage; the very protocol which was spawned as a solution to societal ills. This has bastardised our gender roles, damaged romantic relationships and caused dangerous second and third order effects that we are still struggling to deal with.
What society must do is stop focusing on the symptoms of these changes, and instead set-up protections for prevention. It must relearn the understandings of biology and gender and look less critically at culture, and more analytically.
In doing so we would see that institutionalised relationships were a protective measure. They are not oppressive and didn’t emerge to reinforce patriarchal values.
But perhaps it’s too late. Perhaps we’ve already gone too far, for too long. Maybe gender dynamics will never recover from this.
Tension is building. With no solution, it will be released.
Let’s hope it’s not seismic.
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