nearly all wars are fought by men, nearly all generals were men, nearly all murders, rapes, et cetera, men. Hitler was presumed to male. It is abundantly clear that men are more violent, more reckless, more bloodthirsty, more agressive than women. They are also, on the balance, more physically strong. If you took a random sample of 100 men and 100 women from any place or cultural group, I can nearly guarantee the male sample will have more upper body strength.

Those are the facts that anyone with a pulse surely noticed before age ten.

NOW here's the juice.

Car insurance companies hire statisticians. Those statiticians have found that indeed, young men are reckless. They have also found that once those young men are married, literally, "settled down" they become less reckless as now they must be providers.

In general, wives keep their husbands in line and out of trouble.

What does polygamy do? SIMPLE! imagine a population of 50 men and 50 women. Where each man will take 2 wives IF he can. Well, you will potentially have 25 men with 2 wives apiece, and 25 single men. And those 25 single men will be society's worst nightmare: reckless, criminal, irresponsible.

In the case of the muslim world, who is going to strap the bomb on their chest, the man with 3 wives, or the man with none? Even if a muslim man with three wives is not radical, he may contribute to the radicalization of a muslim man in his community deprived of a wife.

MONOGAMY is the foundation of modern civilization. A wife to control all men, a father to control all children. Children without fathers and men without wives, will be the downfall of any civilization.

Was that supposed to be a serious argument?

Misogynistic much? By your logic and by my personal favourite, the REAL ideal would be polyamoury. One woman with several men who would be less of a risk.

Regarding children, current statistics show that 51% of children are in one parent homes with no indication that they are no less successful than their peers.

"Misogynistic"

Misogyny is prejudice against women. I have stated men are more violent than women. If anything you could call my views Misandry- prejudice against men. Unfortunately, your vocabulary is lacking, and my view is firmly rooted in ACTUAL statistics and history.

"By your logic and by my personal favourite, the REAL ideal would be polyamoury."

Wrong! If there is a question of who the father of the children is, *all* the men will slack off. Men are selfish, and want their OWN genetic material to succeed. You can't escape biology. You can channel into a beneficial instution, like, say, MONOGAMOUS MARRIAGE, but you can escape it.

"Regarding children, current statistics show that 51% of children are in one parent homes with no indication that they are no less successful than their peers."

You are lying! Studies have repeatedly shown children without fathers are more likely to be criminals(if male) or become pregnant as a teenager(if female). Google it: "Father Absence Teen Pregnancy". And stop spreading the lies that you tell yourself to make you feel good about family disintegration.

It is sad that it has gotten to the point where people look at the BLINDINGLY obvious ask question whether it is serious.

. . . when they specifically mean polygyny, the taking of multiple wives by one man. Polygamy, however, includes both polygyny and polyandry, the taking of multiple husbands by one woman. Your argument really only addresses one kind, and not very convincingly at that.

Statistically, the difficulties faced by Y-chromosome carrying sperm (being slower swimmers, more damaged by the environment, more susceptible to genetic disorders) ensure that most human populations will have a female majority; only laws that systematize the removal of female children really circumnavigate that.

Being in an essentially monogamous marriage myself, I agree that monogamy may be a desirable state for the majority (though statistics would indicate that a sizable plurality of "monogamous" marriages are monogamous in name only); I think, though, that a majority of people would live that way even if plural marriage were an option.

. . . but the word you mean to use, unless your mistake goes deeper than mere linguistics, is "misandrist," not "misogynist."

Historically it has always been WHO IS THE MOTHER because that is the one thing that could be assured. Men may want to think their genetic material is superior but that is not often the case. There is a notable percentage of men who are raising children as their own that are not of their own genetic material. That however does not validate you assertion that a monogamous relationship is the ideal. It is the contemporary norm. Biology has a number of homosexual relationships naturally. It is equally valid to reason that SSM is an equally valid relationship. Studies alao show that SSM raise successful children at the same rate or higher than hetero couples.

Regarding single parent children my statistic and others came from an number of articles published in slate and other sources. You do read Slate don't you?

Furthermore children raised in polygomous/polyamoury families have that many more adults to interact with and be nurtured as well as a pooling of resources including time towards the children. That is something two parent households have less of.

It is more often my mistake linguistics and definitons. Especially when you go between British English and USNA English and my native languages. You should see me talk with my Gran in Russian/Yiddish/English. Spanglish has nothing on that.

In the past, when humans had more space around them, had lower technologies and less treasure, when trade and productivity were less beneficial, male adventurism, piracy and war helped those societies which engaged in it.

So, a polygynous society which allowed half the men to father all the children and drove the other half out to war to kill the men, steal the goods, animals and women of neighboring tribes thrived. They did better than their peaceful monogamous neighbors. They gained the edge.

Times have changed. War no longer pays, especially compared to running an online auction house, building high tech housing or designing new wind-power technologies.

We now have such lovely, valuable stuff. War destroys it. War is more destructive than it was when all we owned were some skins and some beads.

War and polygyny are outmoded technologies.

The oppression of women leads to large families. These large families feed unemployed boys into armies. Polygyny fuels that further. These warlike cultural traits lead to . . . wealth and power?

I don't think so. Humans have become so clever, so productive, so artful, so highly capable of generating profits, benefits and good things through creating complex factories, transport facilities, communications networks and so on that the spoils of war can no longer compare.

War destroys all that we can build. We are so clever and the things we build are so valuable that fighting over them, and thereby destroying them, even when the winner gets the spoils, wrecks more than one can gain from it.

We have become too smart for all this aggression and war.

We have become monogamous.

Terrorist are just pissed-off losers.

Polygyny is outmoded. It is maladaptive. We need the productivity of everyone and everything; we don't gain by driving half of men into war and killing them off while wrecking water systems, burning electrical plants, disrupting commerce. War is too costly. Our stuff is just too cool to blow up. Even the winners in war are losers compared to those who avoid war and spend that time and energy building, growing, designing and creating things.

These old-line holdovers will eventually die out. They are a nuisance in the meantime, but they have no wellspring of power, like modern people do.

Jan VanDenBerg

What does polygamy do? SIMPLE! imagine a population of 50 men and 50 women. Where each man will take 2 wives IF he can. Well, you will potentially have 25 men with 2 wives apiece, and 25 single men. And those 25 single men will be society's worst nightmare: reckless, criminal, irresponsible.

In the case of the muslim world, who is going to strap the bomb on their chest, the man with 3 wives, or the man with none?

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Not sure that holds in case of Muslim terrorists -- weren't quite a few of the 9-11 bombers married? And the doctor fella -- Asha or whathisname -- who planned the UK thing not only had a wife but also an adorable baby of 1 yr or so (there was a pic of him in Newsweek holding the baby).

Plus, there's a general issue of 'direction of causality' with these 'marriage-makes-men-settle' studies. There's an ASSOCIATION between men being married and them being less prone to law-breaking, violence etc --- but that may simply be because most women would rather not marry (or divorce very quickly) the men given to violence, unable to keep a job, etc etc.

On an aside, I do not disagree with your assertion that a population of men with no chances of getting a mate because the powerful men have all taken 10 wives each is an unstable society. I suspect polygyny was a necessity in societies where war was an everyday matter, so there was actually a shortage of men to 'raise families' since so many of them were going off to be cannon fodder. In such a society, there would be too many single young women and war widows without any means of fending for themselves (these were patriarchal societies) unless there was polygyny.

I am a bit confused, are you asserting the only purpose of marriage or relationships in the first palce is for having children to feed war machinesand now should be to gain "material things"?

I am a bit confused, are you asserting the only purpose of marriage or relationships in the first palce is for having children to feed war machines

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No comments on what it is like today -- but I always thought that purpose of 'marriage' back in olden days was mostly to protect 'property' and man making sure kids with his own DNA inherited his goodies.

Which is also why, to my knowledge in many societies, 'marriage' was confined to those who HAD property to speak of ....the 'peasants' and 'serfs' were meant to breed like rabbits with whoever outside any 'institution of marriage', thus providing cannon fodder and cheap labor for their masters.

...And higher love was among men with women only there as chattle. Yea, that thread was on Jurisprudence for a few weeks. This is only going to rehash that.

Okay now that you are back Konark, just curious if you were a poster on another site that tuned me into Patrick Roget Chocolates?

...why not imagine a population where women outnumber men (which reflects actuality), or where some men take multiple wives, or where some women take multiple husbands, some individuals marry partners of their own gender, some individuals don't elect to mary at all, some marriages consist of more than one man and more than one woman all married to each other.....etc.

You've offered one extreme and limited hypothetical case which you suggest represents a universal argument against polygamy? Get real.

"In the past, when humans had more space around them, had lower technologies and less treasure, when trade and productivity were less beneficial, male adventurism, piracy and war helped those societies which engaged in it."

"Polygyny is outmoded. It is maladaptive. We need the productivity of everyone and everything; we don't gain by driving half of men into war and killing them off while wrecking water systems, burning electrical plants, disrupting commerce."

Agreed, with both.

"These old-line holdovers will eventually die out."

Here, I disagree. As maladaptive as polygyny is, humans LOVE doing stupid stuff. They'll do something stupid just because an elder had the audacity to tell them no.

Additionally, marriage is somewhat self-destructing. Married life is good if you marry for the right reasons, but some people marry because they think marriage will magically make their lives better. Treating marriage as a panacea for all of societies ills won't fix society, but instead weaken the institution of marriage. Now we have "debate" between the left and right about marriage, and they're both wrong.

Humans will always do things to excess, and even what is good in moderation is never good in excess. Success breeds success, but eventually success breeds excess.

Our monkey brains are doomed to keep coming up with the same dumb ideas over and over. You can't fix stupid, and polygyny will never die out completely.