Sex at Dawn, and the Republic

Name anything written by Plato. I bet the first thing you thought of -- maybe the only one -- was the Republic.

Tell me something about the Republic. Once we skip past "It's long," "It's boring," and "I think we had to read it in college but I just blew it off" the next thing to trip off the tongue -- the first remark that has anything to do with the content -- is probably "It's idealistic and impractical."

Plato gets that a lot. In the central books of the Republic, Socrates describes a made-up city, and commentators ever since (starting with Aristotle) have fallen all over themselves criticizing how silly his ideas are. It got so bad for so many centuries that in the late 1940's Leo Strauss proposed (and his students have later extended) the theory that Plato was just kidding. Strauss's student Allan Bloom, responsible for one of the most widely-used translations of the Republic, amplified this suggestion by saying that the Republic is really meant to expose the true nature of political life, and the true demands of political justice, so that we can all see just how problematic politics and justice are once we realize that the true demands of political community are impossible.



Impossible? How so? Well, there are plenty of fish to shoot in this barrel, but Bloom focusses on three specific proposals, which Socrates himself acknowledges are huge, saying they will provoke "three waves" of ridicule from his listeners: that the Guardians of the City should hold all their possessions in common, that they should hold their women and children in common, and that the whole show should be ruled by philosophers. Bloom says that every listener will naturally reject these proposals, because they leave us no fragment of private life, ... because everybody will naturally want to hold on tight to his own personal property, nobody will want to share his bed-partner with another (because of jealousy), everybody will be attached to his own children at the expense of all the others, and besides philosophers are ridiculous. Who would ever accept being ruled by them? The point, Bloom goes on to explain, is that real community -- if the word means anything -- is like that. Political groups, social groups, kinship groups ... they require everything from us, they ask for our total devotion. Holding anything back is invariably perceived as disloyal, as unjust, even (potentially) treacherous or treasonous. But since (Bloom concludes) we can't help but hold things back -- since it's a simple fact of nature that we won't give up our stuff, that we won't let our neighbors fuck our spouses, and that we'll always cheer for our own kids at Little League -- perfect justice and perfect community are impossible. There is and will always be a permanent tension between the demands of justice, of community, of the group, and the immutable requirements of human nature.



And ... well, that's fine, I guess. It's actually an impressive argument when he spells out all the details. Only, ... pause with me for just a minute to remember the argument of Christopher Ryan's and Cacilda Jethá's delightful book Sex at Dawn. Ryan and Jethá argue a number of things, but foremost on the list is their claim that the way we organize sex and child-rearing -- all our presuppositions about chastity and fidelity, about infidelity and immorality, about legitimacy and bastardy and parental affection -- that all this is a product of the agricultural revolution, or at any rate of the introduction of food surplusses that can be saved. They argue further that among "immediate-return foraging societies" these concepts are unknown. And they wind up by pointing out that for most of human history, we grouped together into bands that lived by immediate-return hunting and foraging. Durable property was unknown, food storage was unknown, ... and so were most of the concepts we use today to think about sex.

In fact, the more you think about it, the more you see that the first two of those three huge proposals actually describe the very same societies Ryan and Jethá write about. Holding all property in common? If "property" means rocks used for pounding, why not hold them in common? There are plenty lying around on the ground. Sticks sharpened to spears? There are always more sticks. Cars, computers, refrigerators, houses, money, jewelry, swords, metal of any kind? Nope, hadn't been invented yet. Look at the description of the Bushman community in the first few minutes of "The Gods Must Be Crazy" -- before the Coke bottle -- and you'll see what I mean.


What about "women and children"? Socrates says (at Stephanus 457 D), "All these women are to belong to all these men in common, and no woman is to live privately with any man. And the children, in their turn, will be in common, and neither will a parent know his own offspring, nor a child his parent." And right away his interlocutor (I think it is Glaucon at that point, though it is a little hard to keep track.) objects that this arrangement sounds both impractical and undesirable. But isn't this exactly the scenario that Sex at Dawn describes? That in paleolithic communities, men and women fucked whom they wanted when they wanted, and then the whole tribe raised children together, loving them all without caring who was whose? The whole discussion of "partible paternity" and of "intersecting webs" of mothers and fathers in Chapters Six and Seven are about exactly that. Again, so far from being impossible or impractical, this measure looks like something that may well have been the norm for most of human history.

The third proposal, rule by philosophers, we can probably write off as a piece of special pleading. But Bloom points out that in principle we would all like the wise to rule, more or less. We may disagree that philosophers are especially wise, but that is another point. Even here, though, I think there is not a total disconnect. Ryan and Jethá write that in the societies they study there is very little social hierarchy and a broad sense of social equality. Similarly, there is a reluctance to do what somebody else tells you, unless there is a better reason than that they said so. In a society like that, the most influential people are likely to be the ones who are most persuasive. And since these tribes are small and everybody has known everybody else forever, that doesn't mean someone who can run a slick propaganda campaign. Most often it will mean someone whose ideas have proven right before. Philosophers? Maybe not. But the wise? Maybe closer.

This way of looking at the subject casts a whole new light on Bloom's claim that Socrates here shows the nature of community and justice. If this is how we lived for most of human history, if this is (as far as anything can be) the way we evolved to live, then an immediate-return foraging community may indeed be the very kind of community we are built to live in. So far as we can infer purpose from long-term evolutionary development -- and I am bracketing a huge philosophical discussion here, about which let me say right now only that whatever you think of the idea of innate human purposes, it is pretty clear that cats have long claws and strong pouncing muscles in order to catch mice -- I say, so far as we can infer purpose from this kind of evidence it seems plausible that we were meant to live in immediate-return foraging communities. But these are indeed exactly communities where all individual interest is subordinated to the communal interest, where there is no private property to speak of, where sexuality is not channelled to monogamous forms of expression, and where children are raised by the whole tribe as a huge pool of fathers and mothers and uncles and aunts. In other words, the true nature of human community, the true nature of political organization, the true nature of justice ... at heart it really is this kind of communal life. Bloom is right about that. The only place he goes wrong is to say that it is impossible, when that's how we lived for most of our life as a species.

So is the tragic Straussian prognosis wrong as well? ... the gloomy story that says there is a permanent conflict (or "tension") between what is best for the individual and what is best for society? If a just society is possible because we lived that way in the Stone Age and they live that way now in the Kalahari, does that mean we truly can achieve justice and community in our lifetimes?

Sure. Move to the Kalahari.*

But short of that, ... no, I don't think so. Ryan and Jethá are really clear about saying that times have changed. With the introduction of agriculture and property, it becomes impossible to lead a life of the kind of sexual freedom they describe. And as sex goes, so goes justice. As long as we live around agriculture and property -- hell, as long as we can hoard resources for tomorrow, which may not take much more than salt and fire -- for so long we will live in an "ownership society."** And for so long will the joy of true community in the deepest sense -- including (but not limited to) a social acceptance of promiscuity -- be unavailable to us. We can't get there from here. Sadly, Strauss and Bloom are right about that too.



* Or Mars. This kind of society also looks exactly like the Nest that Valentine Michael Smith sets up at the heart of the Church of All Worlds in Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. In fact, for some years I have toyed with the idea that Stranger is really an extended gloss on the Republic. Call me when you get there.

** Stephen Snyder's review of Sex at Dawn is really good on this point, so I am glad that Ryan and Jethá posted it on their website.

Meditation on marriage, 3. Marriage as education.

D responded to my long thoughts about one-ness and two-ness with her own rather extended meditation. I won't repost it all, because it is quite long and there are stretches I'm not sure I understand yet. But one remark of mine that she picked up was the part about marriage's educative effects. She wrote:

You are right to say that marriage is a tremendous education.... I also agree with you that marriage is not so much the outcome of love, sex, or maturity, but the most available road for most people. Marriage is the next logical step in human development after childhood and youth and to marry is to invite growth, which in turn encourages more growth and a wider field.... Marriage and family are the natural extension of the human condition and whether the marriage is happy or unhappy may not be as important as the fact that it completes your growth. And then what? Do you end your marriage or fall into a pattern of routine and boredom?

There is an alternative, but it is hard. I think one of life’s major challenges is to put off what is outgrown, even when it was true in its day and has served us well.... To fail of that is to fail, period, and that failure is bitter, because it is unnecessary. Each individual can change this, but we often refuse to do so. When we can say, “I choose to do this,” or “I find the world exciting ,” rather than ,”He mistreated me,” or “She never understood me,” we will be adults and capable of true love.

When marriage has fulfilled its promise of rounding out personality, it is easy to say that we have fallen out of love, or were never in love in the first place, or that one partner has betrayed the other. These charges may be true or not. What really needs to be considered is that here we both are, stuck with a self, and needing to decide what is to be done with it from this point on. How we arrived here is much less important. Sometimes I think I have found an answer in my work, or in caring for others, but these are no substitute for genuine love. The real challenge is not to give up, and I know that possibility is very much with me.

In my reply I tried to restate this back to her, to be sure I had understood what she was telling me. She has not yet answered whether I got it right or not, so the possibility remains that I am completely confused. But what I think I hear her say here is pretty interesting.

Your letter develops a remarkable theory, one that truly I have never heard before. I don't know if I agree with it ... and in fact I really can't tell yet, because it involves a way of looking at things that is so new that I will have to try it on for a while before I can tell what I think. What I'm referring to is your theory about why marriages (sometimes) decay. You start from my observation that marriage is tremendously educational (although I think I might have said only that it "can be" educational, or at any rate that mine has been). But you proceed from there to say that this is part of the meaning of marriage -- part, if you will, of the design or intent or purpose of marriage, that it further our education in how to live a human life as a man or woman, respectively. The consequences of this shift are enormous. Hundreds of people, after all, have spilled gallons of ink on the question why marriages (often, perhaps even usually) go stale. Some people write as if the spouses themselves are doing something wrong. Others -- for example, Ryan & Jetha in Sex at Dawn -- argue rather that we are simply made for sexual variety, that we need it almost like we need food; so that monogamy cannot help but end in monotony ... and that it then cannot help but finally terminate in a celibacy like that of brother-and-sister. But you, if I understand you correctly, propose an altogether different theory. It is simply this: marriage is designed to be part of our education. Therefore, when we have mastered the lessons it has to teach us, we naturally get bored. Who wouldn't get bored, after all, if he were forced to repeat fifth-grade math every year until he graduated from college?

I see one easy objection to this theory, but it is just as easily met. The objection is: if marriage is like math class, then why don't all (or nearly all) spouses get bored at exactly the same rate? Most fifth-grade teachers teach the same stuff in math class; and most students have mastered it by the end of the year. So why don't we see all (or nearly all) marriages ending in one, five, seven, ten years ... whatever the number is, why isn't it always the same number?

The easy answer is that while marriage is a part of our education, the number of lessons it is designed to impart can be open-ended. It all depends on who the partners are. What I mean is that there are a few lessons that are common to all marriages everywhere, ... or at least all marriages that more or less match what you and I mean by "marriage." But this is a class where the Teaching Assistants have broad latitude to assign extra credit -- sometimes lots of it. If the partners are intelligent, interesting, and engaged, then in addition to learning lessons about interrelationship or parenthood, they might teach each other lessons about community service or long-term mentorship or ... gosh, any number of things. And so they might interest each other longer, by learning more from each other. (And naturally that interest might carry back into the bedroom as well.) And if not, not. But in any event, the absolutely critical part (and what is fundamentally new) is the assertion that if and when husband and wife lose interest in each other, it is not because either of them has failed, and it is not because they are fighting a fundamentally recalcitrant inner nature. It is rather because they have succeeded in doing what they were supposed to do, and so now the time has come to move on to the next class.

At any rate, that's what I think you are saying. And it is, truly, a radical rethinking of what marriage is about. It will take me a while to flesh out the implications of this vision, ... all but one. One of them is obvious: if the disinterest which a long-term couple feels for each other is a sign of success rather than failure, they should greet it with a kind equanimity or even joy, rather than sorrow. This in turn has to mean that they should support each other in whatever steps are necessary to graduate into the next grade and the next set of classes. In our society the way it is built today, that means welcoming a no-fault divorce; but honestly in many cases (not mine) a legal divorce might be a wasteful and inefficient way of proceeding onto the next class. What might serve many couples better (assuming the marriage was healthy to begin with ... unlike mine) might be some kind of recognition or permission that after X years it is simply time, quietly and tactfully and with no legal fuss or bother, to look abroad. After all, no fifth-grade teacher resents it when his or her students pass on to sixth grade ....

"Is there a message here?" (Ryan & Jetha's failed last chapter)

So I was talking to D the other day, and she mentioned that she had finished Ryan and Jetha's Sex at Dawn. Then right away she added, "It left me feeling a little bit insecure, actually. I kept wondering, 'Are you trying to send me a message here?' "

A message? Huh? Oh, right. That.

I think the weakest part of the book is the last chapter, not because it says anything that appears demonstrably untrue but becomes it comes across as a half-truth and a piece of special pleading. The last chapter is all about men's need for sexual variety in order to sustain sexual interest. They give a biological explanation, and reference some remote society where wives encourage their husbands to take mistresses and see the mistresses as enhancing the stability of the family. The argument is probably as sound as any of the other arguments in the book, and I doubt most people would argue. So men want to get a little on the side? What else is new?

But I understand D's momentary insecurity. No doubt she was wondering, "Did Hosea give me this book as a subtle way of telling me he want to fuck other women too? He knows I'd get upset ... is he trying to let the book argue the point for him?"

Of course, that's not why I wanted her to read the book. I just thought she'd find it fascinating, because she is so interested in sex. But I think the responsibility for the misunderstanding rests squarely with that last chapter itself. Because the chapter totally ignores the question, "What is so special about men in this respect? Wouldn't women like a little extracurricular action too?"

And of course the whole rest of the book answers that second question with a resounding "yes I said yes I will Yes!" Of course women too thrive on sexual variety! Haven't the authors given abundant arguments and examples to explain exactly this point, in all the rest of the book? Haven't they gone well out of their way to argue that female sexuality evolved in a context where each sexual encounter might involve half a dozen men? If this doesn't imply that women -- just as much as men -- should be expected to crave variety in bed, then I must be missing something.

Somehow I think if the last chapter had been more even-handed, urging both husbands and wives to understand and respect the unmet sexual cravings of each other, then D would have felt less insecure. Or alternatively -- taking the book completely seriously -- she could have said, "You can have a second mistress if you like, so long as I can have another man in bed with me at the very same time you are there, so that the two of you can trade off." I don't expect her to say that, however ....

What makes you come alive?

Towards the end of Sex at Dawn (I have a note that says "page 291," but D has my copy right now so I can't check), Ryan and Jetha tell the story of a man they call Phil. Phil was married; Phil had an affair; Phil's marriage came caving in around his head. Untold destruction. A very bad scene. And Phil was upset. He didn't hate his wife. He didn't want to lose the marriage. But he had not been able to keep from having the affair. What he said about it (as near as I can quote without the book handy) was that the affair "made him come alive again." He had not realized how dead his life had gotten until his affair made everything bloom and blossom for him again. And he craved that coming alive so much that he couldn't stop himself.

When I read those words, I couldn't help but think of another post, a little over a year ago, where I quoted John Eldredge from his book Wild at Heart, saying, "Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive."

Really? So what the world needs is more adultery? Maybe so -- sometimes it sounds like Ryan and Jetha are making exactly that case -- but I think Eldredge would be shocked to hear it. (If you check out his website, their current mission is fighting to save marriages.)

You know, when I first heard of Eldredge -- when a friend of mine first passed me a copy of Wild at Heart -- I found him exciting to read, absolutely thrilling, one of the best things to happen to the all-too-tepidly-communicated Christian message in decades. Looking over his website just now (as I went to find the links I have embedded here) I remember why I felt that way. Only, ... is he really telling me that I'll have a better, fuller, more joyous life yoked to Wife than I could have exulting with D? I'll have to think about that.


Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

Promiscuous but choosy

One of the difficulties that Ryan and Jetha encountered in writing Sex at Dawn was the lack of a suitable word in English to describe the sexual attitude that they claim to have found in prehistoric times. What they settle on (somewhat reluctantly) is the word promiscuous. But they explain that it is not really suitable as normally used, because it implies undiscriminating sexuality. By contrast, what they wanted was a word that meant indefinitely plural but nonetheless choosy sexuality. And they couldn't find one.

If you think about it, the idea is not so strange. Ryan and Jetha talk about sex as a tool for binding together a tribe, for enhancing social relations among the members of a community. But these people already share more than just bodily fluids. A small tribe of human beings in a world of saber-toothed tigers would have to trust each other with their lives; and since food had to be hunted or gathered, everybody needed to pitch in. So the relationships among these people had to be intimate in more than the genital sense. When they fucked each other they weren't just scratching an itch, but making friends and allies on whom they would then depend in a very real way.

The same thing is true, interestingly enough, about the first fully-modern American example that Ryan and Jetha give of a similar approach to sexuality: the "swinging" lifestyle of the Air Force's "top gun" fighter pilots. These were men who faced death on every mission, and who knew implicitly that a third of them would never come back from the war. The way Ryan and Jetha describe it, they used group sex as a bonding experience, tying the men to each other through their wives; what is more, the clear but unspoken implication was that this bonding meant the survivors would take care of the wives and children of those who died. After all, they -- the surviving pilots and the widows of the dead -- had already been lovers, and some of the children carrying a dead man's name might belong to the living. In any event, more generally, they all belonged to the community of fighter pilots. Note again: highly plural sex used to tie together a small, select community ... but with nothing undiscriminating about it.

There is one more example of this kind of sex -- promiscuous but choosy -- that I can't help but think of. It's a literary example this time: the Nest established by friends and followers (water-brothers) of Valentine Michael Smith in Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. (See also the Wikipedia entry here.) The dynamic in this story is slightly different, because Valentine Smith is willing to offer his way of understanding the world to anybody willing to put in the work to master it. But the effect is the same; as Jubal Harshaw reminds him, those who don't listen to him select themselves out by choosing to ignore him. So once again, the luxuriously plural sexuality reenforces bonds that hold together a select group in contradistinction to those outside.

I said in my last post that I never resented the sexual encounters Wife had with other lovers when I was included too. Well, it's fair to ask what about that? Did I never think to establish some kind of bond with her other lovers, so that it was somehow us against the outside world? If Ryan/Jetha and Heinlein are on to something, then why not?

The answer is that I thought about it from time to time, but it never worked out. Or almost never. The only two lovers with whom it would have been a possibility were Boyfriend 1 and Boyfriend 4, because those were the only ones who ever ended up in bed with Wife at the same time I was there. And Boyfriend 4 had been a friend of mine from high school, so he was really a special case. But I could never establish that kind of bond with Boyfriend 1 because we never trusted each other. He never trusted me because Wife kept telling him so many terrible things about me (as she did to everybody that would sit still to listen). I never trusted him because, ... well, partly because he wanted to take Wife away from me (based on all the horrible things she had said about me). And partly I just didn't think much of him. I guess he was a nice enough guy, from a distance, but he had absolutely no features that made him (in my eyes) an interesting person to talk to or be around. His tastes were boring and conventional, his conversation was shallow, and he never had a new idea. Other than the sex (and Wife complained to me about that), I couldn't tell what she ever saw in him.

I think I have mentioned that I had this trouble with most of her other lovers: they seemed like losers, at least to me, and I couldn't find anything much to recommend any of them. The exceptions were Boyfriend 4 (who was an alcoholic and recurrently unemployed, but also my friend from high school and a real mensch when sober) and Girlfriend 1 (who certainly seemed destined for better things, but who had absolutely no use for me at all). Whether this was my problem, or whether (as I suggested before) it reflected something significant about Wife's taste, I may not be objective enough to tell. But the upshot was certainly that none of these other models ever worked out for us. Of course, back then (say, when she first started fucking Boyfriend 1) I didn't know anything about the "swinging" fighter pilots; and naturally I had never heard of Ryan or Jetha. But I had read heinlein; and I remember feeling vaguely disappointed somehow that -- if she was going to fuck other men -- we couldn't turn it into some kind of Nest. I have to conclude that for Wife the whole thing was more like scratching an itch; or else that, as a narcissist, she really had no idea what to look for in other people that would constitute community-building qualities, ... nor really had any idea why they might be useful. It's sad.

There is one other conclusion from this line of thought, besides my personal moping. If the only way to make a sexual community work the way that Smith's Nest worked, or the way that prehistoric tribes may have worked, is to be choosy enough about the members that you can build a community where everyone can truly rely on everyone else -- can truly trust everyone else with his life -- then how on earth could it ever be possible to build such communities in the kind of complex and highly mobile society we have today? (I mean, outside of ultra-specialized enclaves like the Air Force in wartime.) Is this another sign that "it's strictly big boxes of bananas, all the way up Columbus Avenue"? Maybe so. But if anyone has any interesting ideas about how this could be possible, I would truly love to hear them.

Thinking through polyamory, 2: Prehistoric promiscuity

This post harks back to one of my early posts from 2008, "Thinking through polyamory." Back then I was trying to understand my marriage in light of my Wife's serial infidelities. Today, times have changed: I no longer care whom Wife fucks (although I do believe her when she says she hasn't had anybody for a long time), I myself am carrying on an affair with D, and quite recently I have been reading Christopher Ryan's and Cacilda Jethá's book Sex at Dawn. So if I am honest with myself, there is a lot that I need to re-evaluate.

The developments in my marriage, and the affair with D, have gotten a lot of discussion here over the last couple of years. But the book is new, and it has been a while since I have done any re-thinking about what it would be natural to expect in the abstract (rather than just moping about what I feel here and now). So that is where I want to focus today.

Two years ago, when I wrote about polyamory, I concluded as follows:

The problem is this: it is very easy to fall in love with multiple people;
but for most of us, it is very, very hard to have our partners fall in love with
multiple people! The whole point of monogamy turns out not to be about us at
all. The whole point of monogamy is that we forego some desires that call to us
profoundly and insistently – and we swallow the pain that this causes us – in
order to avoid hurting other people.

But now, after reading Ryan and Jethá, I have to wonder if it was always so. Did prehistoric man get jealous the way modern man often does -- the way I used to, back when I gave a shit -- or is sexual jealousy something new, a recent development?

Of course there is no way to travel back in time to answer the question for sure, so I began to think about the only data I could lay my hands on: how did I feel about Wife's infidelities? The exercise has made me think that Ryan's and Jethá's theory could be at least plausible.

In the first place, a minor consideration: I argued in this essay ...

that the meaning of sex is couplehood: fucking creates a couple
where there was none before; and ... this means a couple in which each
partner puts the other one first, in which each partner is a home or refuge for
the other from the storms of the world....

Only ... how do you feel when you come back to your home at long last,
after a day that has beaten and bruised you, and you find a total stranger at
ease in your living room, relaxing with his feet up, drinking your
beer, eating your chips, and watching your television?

Disoriented? Shocked? Violated? Betrayed?

Exactly.

This may be fine as far as it goes, but it doesn't really speak to Ryan's and Jethá's picture. In the social organization they describe, both partners will likely have other partners as well. So while neither partner may be able to rely on coming back to a single "home" for refuge from troubles, the odds are very high that at least one partner will be available. What is lost in exclusivity is made up in redundancy.

There is a second point, which is more interesting. We have all read stories where one guy (usually it's the guy) tells how hard it is to hear his girl in the other room, moaning in the arms of another lover. And it makes him crazy. What about this part? Wasn't this an issue back in the Stone Age, too? It's all very well to say that you have someone else too. But at a fundamental level shouldn't it have made guys crazy back then, too, when their girls were carrying on with somebody else? Heaven knows that attitude isn't even limited to guys, as the lyrical Marianne once wrote here.

Not only do Ryan and Jethá answer this question No, but they make it more pointed. They argue that the reason women have the capacity for multiple orgasm is to keep them in the mood, because back then they could very well have routinely had sex with several men one right after the other. They argue that the reason women moan in orgasm was to announce to other men in the area that sex was going on, so that they could come join the fun. Ryan and Jethá argue, in other words, that orgies involving one woman and many men could well have been the norm back in the Old Stone Age. (I won't give the genetic argument here, but it has to do with Darwinian selection through sperm competition.) The consequence is that not only would the typical caveman know that his woman was fucking the guy in the cave next door, but he would hear her and see her -- and even be there when it happened. And if anything, you would think this would be worse than merely knowing it in the abstract.

You would think so, but you'd be wrong. Or well, ... your mileage may vary. But here, too, I went back to some of what I had written before and found that this very case isn't quite so clear as it seems. Linking the tail-end of this essay with the beginning of its sequel, I wrote: ...

I don’t care if Wife takes a friend for an afternoon of shopping for shoes
(so long as the bill isn’t too high); in fact, if she invited me, I would
actively look for an excuse not to go. Why do I care if she takes a friend for
an afternoon of rapturous sex? It’s not the same, but why not?

At the most immediate emotional level, the answer is that I don’t want to
be left out. If there is rapturous sex going on some afternoon – at any rate, if
it involves Wife – I want to be part of it.

And this was true. But notice that this is exactly what Ryan and Jethá say: that paleolithic promiscuity, so far from being hidden, was out in the open where many suitors could join. If Wife and I had lived back then, I doubtless would have been right there participating any time she was fucking one of her other boyfriends.

The punchline is that this would have been OK with me. It happened a few times, long ago with Boyfriend 1 and then more recently with Boyfriend 4, that all three of us would end up in bed together. I never had the slightest interest in her boyfriends themselves -- sorry, but no! -- but I was perfectly willing to collaborate with them in bringing Wife to as many orgasms as she could manage. And yes, sometimes two guys can just do more for one girl than one guy can. It can work out.

And I never resented those encounters. I got plenty angry at Wife for her infidelities: jealous, despairing, crazy. But never for the nights (only a few of them) when we were all together. Those I always saw as an exception. And that is part of why later I decided that what had made me so upset was not the sex itself but her skulking behind my back, her lying, and her shutting me out in the cold. In other words, her cheating.

In other words, the same things she did in the non-sexual parts of our marriage that made me so crazy.

I can't say that Ryan and Jethá have proven their thesis. But when I look at it long enough, I can see how it avoids some of the big objections I used to have years ago to promiscuous sex as a lifestyle. So it is at any rate not obviously wrong. And it is certainly interesting.

On first looking into "Sex at Dawn"

Last Friday, I finished a first reading of Christopher Ryan's and Cacilda Jethá's latest book, Sex at Dawn. Then no sooner did I finish it than I left it with D while seeing her. I want her to read it because I think it will give us a lot to talk about. Anyway, I haven't thought deeply about it yet, but it is a really interesting book.

The basic thesis of the book is that humans evolved as a sexually promiscuous species. Even though we now (most of us) live in monogamous societies, our instincts haven't had time to catch up with the change yet so by and large we still want to sleep around. That's the gist of it, right there. All the rest is argument.

The arguments are interesting, and come from several directions. Ryan and Jethá spend a lot of time comparing human sexual behavior with that of our genetically-closest non-human relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos (neither of which species is even remotely monogamous).* They examine sexual and social behavior (so far as it is available to us) in foraging** societies that exist today or that we know from reliable documentation. They even explain (at some length) that the erect human penis has a number of highly unusual features when you compare it to the penises of the other great apes, and they draw relevant conclusions by thinking through what the purpose of these features could possibly be. On the other side of the bed, they offer a very long discussion of multiple orgasm and "female copulatory vocalizations."

It will be no surprise to anybody to hear that we all -- men and women alike -- find it totally natural to want to fuck multiple other people. The interesting part, to me at least, is the suggestion that early communities relied on this very impulse as a way to forge a social bond that held tribes together. In the past, I have argued that yes, it is natural to fall in love (or lust) with multiple others; but that it is also natural for your partner(s) to get jealous. (See, esp. part 3 of this series.) Ryan and Jethá say no, jealousy is not "natural" in the sense of being biologically inevitable. They agree that fear of abandonment may well be genetically-programmed. But who ever said that you were about to be abandoned, just because your partner went and fucked somebody else? That part -- the connection between fucking others and being abandoned -- is a cultural assumption and not a biological imperative. And they argue that early foraging societies held exactly the opposite assumption. It is a fascinating*** treatise.

The most important part, though, is what they do not say. I have seen reviewers write as if this book gives us all permission to run out and fuck the milkman and the dairymaid and our neighbors down the street, all because that's what they did in the Stone Age. In a way that could sound exuberant and delightful, but the authors don't say so. In fact, while they talk a good bit about the modern day, they are hesitant to make concrete recommendations of any kind. Right at the beginning they say explicitly that they do not know what to do with their findings. They do not know what direction we all ought to go, now that we know the things they tell us. The critical fact, to which they return again and again, is that Man is incredibly adaptable. Early promiscuity worked for foraging societies in the Stone Age. But everything about our lives has changed between then and now, including the special features of their communities that made promiscuity work so well. There is -- to put it gently -- very little evidence that it can work the same way today, except in a few isolated cases**** so specialized that they really don't disprove the rule. Of all the reviews they post on the book's website, I have found only one (by Stephen Snyder, M.D., a sex therapist) that truly seems to get this point. It is sobering to realize that knowing even so much can tell us so little.

But it is a fun book. By all means read it.


* I use the phrase "genetically-closest" very deliberately. I have two good friends who are both anti-Darwinians. Personally I don't understand why, but there it is. On the other hand, the genetic code is known and mapped; so regardless what you think about Darwin (or even evolution) it is indisputable that chimpanzees and bonobos have a genetic code that is closer to ours than any other animal.

** Ryan and Jethá use the term "foraging" society as a short-hand for "immediate-return hunting-and-gathering" society: i.e., a society that has no way to store food. Such societies are generally nomadic, because they have to wander to find enough to eat. They don't have much property, because too much crap is a bitch to carry around everywhere. And they probably represent what most human societies were like during most of human history.

*** The authors explain that the word "fascinating" comes from the Latin fascinum, which means an artificial phallus, often worn, e.g., as an amulet for good luck.



**** One of the most interesting to me was the "swinging" sub-culture of top-gun fighter pilots during and after World War Two.

Pig-headedness triumphant

I've been reading Ryan and Jetha's Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality, and I came across a quote that set me thinking. In a chapter on various theoretical understandings (and misunderstandings) of marriage, they quote the 13th-century Dominican friar Vincent of Beauvais, in his Speculum Doctrinale (Mirror of Doctrine), as saying, "The upright man should love his wife with his judgment, not his affections."

What interests me about this quote is that it echoes something I used to tell Wife back in the day, albeit with a twist. Whenever she would work herself up into a fit of depressive anxiety saying, "You don't love me! You don't even like me!" I would answer by saying that of course I did love her. But I would follow by making a crucial distinction. I would insist that love is not an emotion.

Of course that's an odd thing to say, and I didn't mean it that flatly. Naturally I know that love is (among other things) an emotion. But my point was always that love is not only an emotion. In particular, I told her, love is (also) a decision, a matter of will. And as a result, I went on, it can be a lot more stable than a "mere" emotion. After all, emotions come and go; my feelings -- insofar as they are just feelings -- can turn on a dime. But my decision to stick with her through thick and thin was something fixed. (I know, I was wrong. This is what I said then.) I always used the metaphor of the ocean, saying that love-as-emotion is as variable as the storm-toss'd surface, with waves rising and falling all the time, buffeted by winds and pelted by rain. But love-as-will, I insisted, was like the rock floor: deeper than the surface squalls, and steadier. Solid. Permanent. (I have alluded to this recurring speech in a couple of earlier posts, notably here and here.)

So when I read the quote above, I asked myself, "Did I really mean the same thing as Vincent of Beauvais? Did I really mean judgment instead of will?"

No I didn't. The way I can be sure is that for so many years I cheated my judgment, or overrode it, when it came to evaluating my marriage. My judgment told me that Wife was a liar; my will said "Stay with her." My judgment told me that Wife was irresponsible; my will said "Stay with her." My judgment told me that she would betray me at every turn, rip the flesh from my bones, and then blame me for getting blood on the carpet.

My will said "Stay with her." And I did.

So no, it wasn't my judgment, nor my affections. It was just willfulness, pure and simple. Pig-headedness elevated to the status of principle. Or damned-fool stupidity, take your pick.

And what has happened now? Well, there are multiple answers. My affections have been engaged by D -- that's for sure! I am allowing my judgment to speak the truth about Wife's faults. (At the same time, I have to admit the possibility that I may be blinding myself to any virtues she still possesses.) These are both answers that I have written about quite a lot.

But on another level, the answer may be simpler: I have made another decision. While there were doubtless reasons behind that decision, they may be immaterial, or of psychological interest only. The fundamental fact may simply be that I have decided it's over; and therefore, by virtue of all the same stubborn pig-headedness I exhibited earlier, I may have guaranteed that there is no going back. I have said more than once that I can't imagine reconciling with Wife, even if D were not part of the picture. Maybe this is just because of my mulish intransigence, that won't let me change my mind once I have really settled on something. Depressing thought ... I wish I didn't believe it.

P.S.: When I first thought of writing this post, I planned to title it "Triumph of the Will," partly because that blind willfulness is exactly what I am writing about, and partly because in the end it hasn't worked out all that well, really and truly. But at the last minute I decided that title would be in over-the-top bad taste, ... even for me. So I chickened out.

Sex at Dawn

Since when have brand-new books been published with websites already set up to advertise them? Have I missed something here?

I just bought a new book that I learned about via its website. It is called Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality, by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá, and you can find its website here.

The thesis looks interesting -- that we evolved under conditions of casual promiscuity, and that therefore it is this (and not monogamy) which is natural to us. There is more, and I don't think they say that it would necessarily be all that easy to get back again. But I want to read the book before I critique it.

I think I have mentioned that I have a business trip coming up soon, and I am saving it for the airplane. I'll let you know what I think of it when I am done.