Biology of behavior
I believe that some very basic facts of life, in our times, are not receiving adequate attention. I would summarize these facts as the biology of behavior.
There are many aspects to the biology of behavior, and the topic bears similarity to the biology of thought as outlined in Darwin’s The Descent of Man. However, this article shall concern itself only with that specific biological trait of the males of the species Homo sapiens, which I shall call harem building.
It is a common trait among primates and, for that matter, among a large number of mammalian species.
We may have been to the moon, and we may be able to count the electrons of an atom, while a mere 500 years ago, we didn’t even know that the Earth is a planet of the sun, and hundreds of thousands of years ago, we were still unclothed.
Most of the technological amenities we surround ourselves with have been invented only within the last 100 years. We ourselves do not evolve that fast. We may learn to behave in a civilized manner, but the roots of our behavior are genetic, and the mechanisms by which they change are determined by mutation and natural selection, not by conscious action (unless this conscious action is genetic engineering).
The mechanism of natural selection, however, is negated by the system of state social security.
I am obviously not advocating such nonsense as state-supervised breeding of humans with traits desired by political leaders.
But I believe that the human society of the future should be more in accordance with the biological traits with which we, as primates, are born. I believe it is futile to try to engineer societies based on ideologies of universal equality. The communist experiment was an outright failure primarily because it was in opposition to some fundamental axioms of our social, or anti-social, behavior. We are not all brothers; we are competitors. We do not want to work with each other; we want to defeat each other.
I believe that societies of the future should provide a framework for humans to live in accordance with their biological sexual traits, rather than civilizing them away.
In the past, social engineering often entered the stage in the form of religions. Imperatives that were in opposition to biological traits, such as sexual abstinence, were enforced because they were alleged to have been ordered by a deity. Few people nowadays are willing to heed advice that draws its legitimacy primarily by appealing to a deity; too many people simply do not believe in its existence.
I imagine a society of the future to be much more polygamous than current society. Or rather, I imagine a society that has a much higher degree of acceptance of polygamous relationships.
The current Western moral standard still prescribes that we be in one monogamous relationship at any given time. This is absurd. Such moral standards are tolerable only when their implementation cannot be strictly controlled, thus leaving ample loopholes. Because formal state control requires economic resources, poor societies may lack the infrastructure for strict state enforcement, even though informal social and religious controls on sexual behavior can remain severe.
If the level of formal control is low in a certain society, a large number of men will definitely take the opportunity to have parallel sexual relationships. And the reason why other men do not take the opportunity is simply that they lack the opportunity. I assume that in Western societies, 80 percent of all sexual relationships are accounted for by just 20 percent of all males.
Strictly enforced monogamy is the prescription of less successful men who speculate that their own chances of at least one sexual relationship are better if monogamy is the only option. Enforcing monogamy thus presents itself as the sexual strategy of those who would otherwise go home empty-handed. Restricting successful competitors also satisfies their envy.
But even for less successful men who try to secure their quota, monogamy is not the biologically encoded behavior. Their dream world is still to possess their own harem. Consequently, the promise of a heavenly reward of multiple companions is a known motivational tool used by various extremist ideologies to recruit vulnerable men.
While some hope for their dream to come true in a fictitious afterlife, others pursue it on earth. It is remarkably accurate to say that as men climb the ladder of success, they become more likely to seek out additional sexual conquests.
An agenda for a more sensible society would have to include the following points:
The recognition that sexual fulfillment is, genetically encoded, the only real purpose we have in life. Awareness that it is natural for males of our species to aim for multiple parallel sexual relationships. No moral or social stigmatization of multiple parallel sexual relationships. Acceptance that multiple parallel sexual relationships are the primary reward for being successful in life.