November 14, 2004
NOW HERE IS A THEME FOR THE UN
Terrorism and polygamy (William Tucker, Jerusalem Post, November 14th, 2004)
The recent discovery of a miniature race of extinct "Hobbits" on a small island in Indonesia reminds us how closely attached we human beings remain to our biological evolution.It is not that everything is "programmed into our genes." Even the most strident sociobiologists say that no more than 40 to 50 percent of our behavior is "hard-wired." Cultural custom and personal choice play an equally important role. But evolution and biology set certain ground rules.
One rule is that if a large species becomes isolated on an island with limited resources and without predators, it will gradually grow smaller. That is what happened to the Hobbits.
Another is that if a culture adopts polygamy as its mating system, it will experience heightened levels of male violence.
The rules of polygamy and monogamy are well known to scientists. It's really a matter of simple arithmetic. Into every society is born approximately the same number of males and females. If each takes one mate - if there is "a girl for every boy and a boy for every girl" - then all will all have an approximately equal chance of mating.
If a society tolerates polygamy, however, the equation changes. When one man can take several wives, other men will have none. If there are five eligible males for every four eligible females, for instance, one in five males must remain unmarried.
This creates social tensions. It also creates strategies to deal with these tensions. One is to allow child marriage. Because there is a "wife shortage," men are permitted to reach further down into the female population, marrying girls that have barely reached puberty. In some ancient societies, grown men married infants and waited for them to grow up.
Polygamous societies also tend to practice extreme puritanism and be restrictive toward women. Because they are scarce, women are hoarded by families. To marry, men must pay a "brideprice." (The "dowry," on the other hand - a cash bonus attached to an eligible daughter - is the signature of monogamy.) The brideprice tends to concentrate the unmarried among poorer men.Faced with this exclusion from domestic society, men tend to join the "bachelor herd" - gangs of unattached males that adopt criminal, even warlike, behavior. Polygamy is widespread in tropical Africa and those countries are constantly plagued with "rebel armies" that live in the bush for years, plotting conquest and kidnapping wives from villages.
Polygamy is not the only route to these imbalances. China has arrived at the same place by pursuing its "one-child" policy. [...]
Monogamy is the social contract that underlies the essentially peaceful nature of most human societies. By promising each man an equal chance of mating - and domesticating men in general - social harmony is established.
The correlation between violence and the absence or breakdown of monogamous marriage is too obvious to question. It, and not a host of leftist socio-economic shibboleths, is directly responsible for the growth of state dependency, the breakdown of the civil order and the rise of crime and political extremism. A society that aims at peace and prosperity should do all it can to promote marriage and family, and sanction those who undermine it in word or deed. Choice be damned.
Excellent -- again. If these facts were widely promulgated, perhaps those opposed to gay marriage and it's inevitable byproduct, polygamy, would be viewed with less condescension by the elitist hate-mongers.
Posted by: JimGooding at November 14, 2004 8:33 AMNo civilized society allows young males to run around untrammeled. Either marry them off (in which case wives civilize them), put them in the military (sargeants may not be able to civilize, but they can discipline), or house them in 'colleges.'
"One rule is that if a large species becomes isolated on an island with limited resources and without predators, it will gradually grow smaller. That is what happened to the Hobbits."
I don't know about Hobbits, but I'm not sure this theory explains monitor lizards.
Posted by: Fred Jacobsen (San Fran) at November 14, 2004 9:10 AMThe Mormons had a perfectly reasonable polygamous society for about a half-century. Many ancient cultures practiced polygamy without becoming degraded.
Posted by: Bart at November 14, 2004 10:56 AMAha! More Spencerian evolution! You see, our ideas and folkways, the mos maiorum, have brought us to where we are. One-man, one-woman marriage is one of these, the marginalization of wretcheds(a much better name for them than "Gays") is another. The ways of the ancestors ane not to trifled with by the flies of a summer.
Of all the fantasies of those who lust after new things, the greatest is the cargo cult--the idea that the fruits of civilization will continue to arrive, like manna from the skies, without the disciplines of civilization.
Posted by: Lou Gots at November 14, 2004 11:28 AMBart:
The only place Mormons practiced polygamy was in isolated 19th Century Utah. It did not really work then, and it would be disastrous today.
Posted by: Vince at November 14, 2004 12:03 PMVince,
They were perfectly happy with the situation until they were strong-armed by the US government which delayed their statehood until 1896 because of it.
Posted by: Bart at November 14, 2004 12:04 PMThey made no move to change it until the US government made changing it a condition of statehood. Then, miraculously their elder had a 'revelation' and the practice was ended.
Had they been allowed to continue the loopy practice while being a state, they would have. They were an economic success story. Population went from 11,000 in 1850 to 210,000 by 1890.
Posted by: Bart at November 14, 2004 12:22 PMBart:
Oh, I bet their population skyrockted--no doubt about that.
Posted by: Vince at November 14, 2004 12:28 PMBart, It continues on in isolated pockets of Arizona, Utah, Montana, Canada and Mexico and there is documentation of incest, child rape, children being forced to marry tribal elders, etc. It even ties in with the cargo cult mentality as many polygamist have their several wives collect government aid as single mothers for their individual families. Since there is a woman shortage, younger men are displaced and go searching for women to indoctrinate into the cult. It is not a "leave us alone and we'll be fine" libertarian situation.
Posted by: Pat H at November 14, 2004 12:54 PMBart:
I lived in Idaho for a couple years. Bookstores there had many books, both fiction and non-fiction dealing with polygamy. Some were first hand accounts.
All were from female authors.
The kindest thing any of them had to say about the institution would have to get much less furious to qualify as merely scathing.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at November 14, 2004 1:35 PMBart, have you read about the Mountain Meadows massacre? All Mormons weren't so peaceful back then:
http://www.brainyencyclopedia.com/encyclopedia/m/mo/mountain_meadows_massacre.html
Posted by: PapayaSF at November 14, 2004 2:27 PMIn addition to polygamy, the logic of SSM would also mandate polyamory (multiple marriage); how, in all "fairness", could we possibly force a bi-sexual to choose between marrying a man or a woman? And having allowed them to marry two people simultaneously, how could that "right" then be denied to others?
Of course, public nudists have the best argument; they were undeniably, indisputably "born that way".
Posted by: Noel at November 14, 2004 3:28 PMThis is the second time since the 'Hobbits' story came out that a supposedly informed writer has claimed that darwinism (or something) means that large animals isolated on islands diminish in size.
Fred is exactly right, about the Komodo dragons, and he might also have offered dodos, the largest of the pigeon tribe. And many others.
The fact that such nonsense passes current proves my point that few, very very few, people have any idea what darwinism is about.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at November 15, 2004 2:22 AMpublic nudists have the best argument; they were undeniably, indisputably "born that way".An amusing quip, but seriously--I have absolutely no problem seeing nude people as they were born--i.e. newborn and infants. People my own age are a different story! I hope you'll believe my when I claim I wasn't born with this belly the way it is now, nor with any nose or ear hair, nor with loose skin that would make Annie Dillard's parents proud, or....
You get the point.
Pat H, Jeff Guinn:
Polygamy, as it is now practiced by Mormon splinter groups, is necessarily dysfunctional, since it's illegal.
The experiences of modern American polygamists don't much illuminate what a healthy polygamist culture would look like.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at November 15, 2004 5:31 AMMichael,
Causation, causation, causation. Is it disfunctional because it's illegal, or is it illegal because it's disfunctional?
Can you point to an example of a healthy polygamist culture? Just one?
Posted by: Roy Jacobsen at November 15, 2004 11:30 AMSure, same as Bart's.
Mormons, before Utah statehood.
Also, all of America, in twenty years or so. Canada in twelve.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at November 15, 2004 1:41 PMMichael,
As others have pointed out, the example of Utah before statehood isn't without blemishes. (Some future utopian state is a non-starter. That's like saying "Communism works, really it does. Or it will once we've finished developing the perfect proletariat.")
On the subject of plural marriage, Harry Leon Wilson's first novel, "Lions of the Lord," is instructive.
Though it was written as fiction, he had interviewed hundreds of people throughout the Old West.
Probably no one outside the Mormon Church knew more about how polygamy had worked in practice than Wilson.
No marriage arrangement is without blemishes. The question isn't "Is is perfect", it's "Is it working well".
Future Canada and the future US won't be utopian, but they will have legal polygamy.
However, I doubt that such marriages will become the norm, except in certain sub-cultures.
Easy divorce and feminine empowerment remove most of the negative aspects of polygamy.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at November 16, 2004 1:33 AMUtah, be damned. try the middle east. They have had 1400 years to try to make polygamy work and look where its gotten them.
BTW. Under Lawrence. You have a constitutional right to polygamy, multigamy, nulligamy, you name it.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at November 17, 2004 3:03 AM