Poll of the Day > Did cave people have monogamous relationships?

(+) Yeah! (+)

OhhhJa posted...

Oh, for sure. Several times people here people have said they believe I have no friends but I'm actually pretty social. Real life is pretty different from message board environment. On the same token, I've seen people that were previously friendly in real life be total dicks to those same people on Facebook. People like to vent online in ways they wouldn't in face to face encounters

Unfortunately, the anonymity of the internet seems to bring out the worst in people, myself included. I'll be honest, there are posters here that I draw conclusions about based entirely on their posting style, but there's just no way you can get an accurate view of what a person here would be like in real life. Even with you, I can't really say that I agree with many of your political views and my impression of you so far has been that you seem to invite conflict on PotD, but that's not really surprising seeing as most of PotD leans left. That said, I'm pretty sure we'd get along fine outside of this message board. I tend to believe that most people would genuinely get along if given the opportunity to find common ground.

...not sure how I ended up talking about this topic. It's late. lol

GunslingerGunsl posted...

Unfortunately, the anonymity of the internet seems to bring out the worst in people, myself included. I'll be honest, there are posters here that I draw conclusions about based entirely on their posting style, but there's just no way you can get an accurate view of what a person here would be like in real life. Even with you, I can't really say that I agree with many of your political views and my impression of you so far has been that you seem to invite conflict on PotD, but that's not really surprising seeing as most of PotD leans left. That said, I'm pretty sure we'd get along fine outside of this message board. I tend to believe that most people would genuinely get along if given the opportunity to find common ground.

...not sure how I ended up talking about this topic. It's late. lol

I admittedly can be a little troll-y sometimes nowadays but i honestly kind of gave up on being polite to people that would call me an idiot or whatever just for having a different perspective on an issue

GunslingerGunsl posted...

Unfortunately, the anonymity of the internet seems to bring out the worst in people, myself included. I'll be honest, there are posters here that I draw conclusions about based entirely on their posting style, but there's just no way you can get an accurate view of what a person here would be like in real life. Even with you, I can't really say that I agree with many of your political views and my impression of you so far has been that you seem to invite conflict on PotD, but that's not really surprising seeing as most of PotD leans left. That said, I'm pretty sure we'd get along fine outside of this message board. I tend to believe that most people would genuinely get along if given the opportunity to find common ground.

...not sure how I ended up talking about this topic. It's late. lol

I also suspect that a huge chunk of the problem is that there's not one but two mental 'filters' that get disabled when you read something in text as opposed to seeing it IRL. Cause IRL not only do you have a personal mental filter going on that checks what you say, do, and think but if you do, somehow, slip up and say something crazy you have people around you who can filter it on the receiving end. Like, if I accidentally said something homophobic IRL my RL friends would know that, at worst, I probably didn't understand what I actually said or if I DID I didn't mean it in a homophobic way. But online if I accidentally said something homophobic not only has my own, personal, filter failed but it's now dependent on both the other people reading it realizing that I didn't mean it in that way and said realization happening every time someone new reads that post. So what would have been a minor slip-up with an easy recovery IRL can be turned into a massive online meltdown because one person read what you said and then assumed the worst of you and your character.

Or, put another way, every farmer concerned about not having a gun to protect his chickens is suddenly some raging wingnut who wants infants to have handguns and every social worker who hates seeing discrimination against hispanics is suddenly a lunatic who wants all borders gone and for spanish to replace english as the U.S.'s main language. There is no middle ground online. It's all insanity.

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*edit* I didn't read this topic at all.

OhhhJa posted...

That's like 50% of the conversations here probably. I think I've seen almost everyone here bitch at almost everyone else about something at some point

Lies. No one has ever bitched at Jack for anything. Other than having too big a penis maybe.

Unbridled9 posted...

While I'm not going to disagree with the trickle-down ideology I don't think it works because we'd be seeing things like the lower classes engaging in frequent arranged marriages, systems in which a man would have a wife and mistress or two, and several other things depending on where and when we looked and we don't really see that.

You've got two main limiting factors, there.

One, the economic limit you touched on, where poorer men can't afford to support multiple wives, and thus would be more likely to have to compromise - but that would also turn having multiple wives into a status symbol, thus making lower classes MORE likely to want to do it, but simultaneously making the people with wealth and power more likely to push ideology that prevents them from doing so, because the people at the top often zealously guard their prerogatives (like Patricians in Rome passing laws about who can wear what type of toga, or countries making it illegal for anyone who isn't royalty to wear purple).

And second, full-scale polygamy without polyandry only really works in a scenario where women vastly outnumber men. In any society where the divide is more or less equal (like in the modern US) or where men vastly outnumber women, every man who takes multiple wives is essentially stealing a wife from someone else. So people in power have a vested interest in preventing widespread adoption of polygamy across the entire class spectrum to better ensure their own ability to acquire wives.



Unbridled9 posted...

but also because the family unit is very good for the farming lifestyle since it means a potentially large amount of hands willing to help at any point.

If anything this point would argue the opposite. If a husband and wife (and their children) can farm a field more effectively than just a single individual, then a husband and his multiple wives and children would be able to farm even more effectively.

Monogamy likely wouldn't become the pair bond of choice (and become ritualized as it has been) solely by its own benefits, as much as because the other options are limited in some way or have their own discouraging drawbacks.

And once the idea of monogamy is ritualized, it essentially becomes a self-reinforcing system (like how the US savagely suppressed the Mormons over the idea of having multiple wives, and forced them to conform in order to be accepted - which is why the Mormons found ways to circumvent that).
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IronBornCorps posted...

LOL


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ColdOne666 posted...

Geez what a train wreck.

it really is, but she doesnt deserve the extra struggle right now, since she has to run a restaurant in a pandemic, ok?

we talk about the baby often, but her husband has himself believing its his, ok?

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