Another thread on marriage : Is marriage obsolete?

[thir]

[QUOTE=denuseri;911308]
We have all the evidence we need, people have been writting things down for a long long time.
[quote]

I was way back in time, long before that.

And yes I am saying that monogamy is "one of" the several reproduction behaviors that are indeed hardwired into our brains,

This does not make sense to me.

1) You say we can be 'hard-wired' to several different kinds of behaviour which we then choose according to circumstances - that is hardly hard-wirering, that is adaption.

2) The whole idea of 'hard-wirering' as based on Darwin makes no sense. Darwin talks of evolution, meaning arbitrary changes and mutations, some of which make changes that benefit survival in a specific set of circumstances.
Change being the operative word. If we were 'hard-wired' we would not have been able to, and we would have died out, which has happended to a number of other humanoids.

Humans are an exception in that we form a variety of social group patterns and may even change our pattern, which is just part of evolution in action

Ergo we are not 'hard-wired' into any pattern.

However, each human society usually defines one of them as being acceptable and condemns the others. Only the multimale-multifemale group pattern is not normally found in any human society as the norm. And the one that is ussually considered acceptable is monogamy or patriarchial polygamy.

So, my question (or rather, the question in the article) is whether we can now accept other forms, such as polyamory (which is based on any variation of commmitment with more than two people). Poly organisations are found all over Europe and US both, and I have read about the push for legal laws to marrage more than one in US.

Or if, perhaps, marriage can be given better conditions to survive - the divorce rate is, as we all know, very high. Why? Something does not work, what is it with this serial monogamy? Why are people not happy?

Or what the situation is now that people can provide for themselves and their kids without marriage: what is marriage based on now? Seems things have changed, but we have not changed our thinking?

The most common social group pattern among semi-terrestrial primates is the multimale-multifemale group. This is most likely the partern we originally developed from, but again, its all dependent on predominate enviromental conditions and success rates.

I think so too. And if so, it only means that we can change as we like, we are not wired to be mono or anything else - we can choose.

Multimale-multifemale groups commonly have a dominance hierarchy among both males and females (just like we humans).

See the thread on diaster viticms for a discussion on this.

I have read the whole animal section of your mail with great interest, it would be fun in a more broad discussion about Darwin and people and ways to organise and interact.

The effects of mordern urbanization have as yet to be determined, but nothing so far in our behavior points to a majior evolutionary change tacking place in levels of monogamy vs non-monogamous pairings that we havent allready recorded from past urbanization periods.

I am not so sure. I do not know about evolutionary, but certainly with greater freedom things seem to be changing. Mono relationships break in at least half the cases, and new ideas, such as poly or a lifelong single life spring up. Years back people had go at collectives, people feeling that a bigger group had more chance of a good life.

To me this is to a great extent about what people do, now that they can survive physically by themselves.