QuantumT wrote: ↑Thu Jun 21, 2018 12:06 am
Is it wrong?
Depends on your moral matrix. Right and wrong are socially and culturally defined; breaking rules has social consequences, as well as psychological and practical ones, all of which depend on what you and the people around you believe.
From an evolutionary point of view it's normal and an advantage.
Well, there, you have some problems. Yes, a male can spread his chromosomes wider, and have spare offspring that he doesn't need to support...
if the mate of one of the off-limits females doesn't catch him at it and take him out of the gene-pool for good. Yes, a female who has young by more than one male may be hedging her genetic bets....
if the male who supports her young doesn't find out and abandon them. Then, of course, there are both male and female animals that routinely kill the progeny of their rivals.
Sometimes coulouring inside the lines is more advantageous.
Do we own one another, when we become couples?
That's a deliberately negative way of putting it, but,
yes.
That's why we introduce the mate as "my wife", "my husband" "my fiance" or "my partner".
The pair-bonding troth (whether publicly ceremonial or privately pledged) is a contract which carries privileges and duties, expectations and gratifications, responsibilities and limitations.
But most importantly, it's a voluntary transformation of two separate individuals to a couple: this means both people belong to the unit and to each other.
Is vengeance just, if we are "betrayed"?
That, too, is a culturally determined judgment.
Shouldn't we just forget romance, and be free?
That's not an ethical matter. It's an entirely personal choice.
Of course, as social animals, we are generally prone to crave companionship, validation, emotional security and physical affection. Most of us, when single, find it impossible to ignore romance: it rings a bell every time we encounter an appropriate other: we see mate-potential. And there is the even more basic biological imperative, not only to pass along DNA, but to possess and nurture offspring. And there are cultural and familial pressures to conform to societal pattern.
There persists, in civilized folklore, a version of Utopia where all humans are playful, unfettered, uninhibited hedonists. The down-side is, they're shallow and boring. They are perpetual children. For a mature human, some degrees of commitment - to principles or an ideal, to friends or a fraternity, to a life-mate and family, to a life's work or goal, to a community or nation - is necessary to self-fulfillment. They can't be happy without it.