Philosophy Now Forum

I was at an event last month where a lecturer gave a presentation about checking and challenging the current model for monogamy. I was doing some searching and found a few posts on the issue and I'm not going to copy/paste it for fear of turning it into mountain of wall text. Here are the links, for those that want to do the reading:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the ... l-monogamy
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tammy-nel ... 41965.html

The Psychology Today post, especially the last paragraph, brings up some interesting points. I agree with a lot of it and I would go with non-monogamy, specifically polyamory. I just find the current model of monogamy to be outdated, as the world has changed and we are no longer in a archaic society. Furthermore, we are becoming more connected with each other through outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. There are so many options to choose from (perhaps this is my downfall)!

For example:
Let's say we're at a ice cream shop and we can only pick one flavor. Let's say we pick vanilla and that's all we get for the rest of our lives. We can't change the flavor with additives, such as chocolate syrup or sprinkles, for that would constitute as "cheating" as we are changing the original recipe. Won't we tire of it, eventually? Imagine eating just vanilla for 10...20...30 years!

So for those who plan on having relationships in your life, what model would you adopt?

Aero wrote:I was at an event last month where a lecturer gave a presentation about checking and challenging the current model for monogamy. I was doing some searching and found a few posts on the issue and I'm not going to copy/paste it for fear of turning it into mountain of wall text. Here are the links, for those that want to do the reading:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the ... l-monogamy
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tammy-nel ... 41965.html

The Psychology Today post, especially the last paragraph, brings up some interesting points. I agree with a lot of it and I would go with non-monogamy, specifically polyamory. I just find the current model of monogamy to be outdated, as the world has changed and we are no longer in a archaic society. Furthermore, we are becoming more connected with each other through outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. There are so many options to choose from (perhaps this is my downfall)!

For example:
Let's say we're at a ice cream shop and we can only pick one flavor. Let's say we pick vanilla and that's all we get for the rest of our lives. We can't change the flavor with additives, such as chocolate syrup or sprinkles, for that would constitute as "cheating" as we are changing the original recipe. Won't we tire of it, eventually? Imagine eating just vanilla for 10...20...30 years!

So for those who plan on having relationships in your life, what model would you adopt?

This was all extensively reviewed and challenged in the 1960s and 1970. People, who are not ice-creams, have tended to return to the monogamous ways, generally, even-though they no longer feel the social pressure to stick to one partner for life.
Generally I think that serial monogamy is more like the norm these days, and the notion of fidelity is much preserved as sought in partnerships as a positive and pragmatic quality without which worthwhile relationships are not possible.

Even when people are serial philanderers you will find that they still hanker for that 'special one', or they may have someone they consider to be 'the one' but still philander in what they consider to be meaningless trysts. I don't know if monogamy necessarily means only having sex with one person. Humans are more complex than that.