Tag: paradigm

Telling The Truth

 

Neil Strauss, who wrote The Game, an account of the pick-up artist (PUA) subculture which I discussed in an earlier post has just published his new book, The Truth. The book describes, as I understand it, with a great deal of candour and personal courage, his process of transitioning from what we might call an obsessively promiscuous lifestyle to a committed open (or at least, not fully closed) relationship with his wife Ingrid. It’s Strauss’s journey, but also – certainly by the provocative title – seems to purport to be more than that.

I should say that these remarks are not based on a reading of the new book, but mostly just on what he said in his recent podcast with Daniel Vitalis. It may be, therefore, that I misrepresent Strauss to a certain extent (which I’ll gladly correct if I can be convinced of it); but in any case, what I will go on to describe and then criticize in this article is a position, I think, that many men are adopting, from whatever angle they come at it, in response to certain obvious facts of our social biology, namely our non-monogamous nature and our desire nevertheless to form deep and intimate bonds with members of the opposite sex, combined with the cultural reality they encounter. This is therefore not a book review, but a critique of that position. It isn’t necessary to listen to the podcast to understand my comments, though I do encourage you to.

Many of Strauss’s erstwhile PUA fans will no doubt be ready to poo-poo the book as a cave-in, and Strauss himself states in the podcast that some have seen it as a defense of monogamy, even a repudiation of his earlier persona, which he insists it is not. That’s fair, though he does bear responsibility for this inevitable media spin (which he doesn’t seem to have been too concerned to avoid). Strauss’s point seems to be that obsessive promiscuity is unsatisfying and successful polyamory hard to pull off, polyamory itself being, in a certain number of cases, a lifestyle choice or label which covers up an inability or unwillingness to go deep in relationships. This being so, Strauss might best be seen as a “pragmatic monogamist” who construes the term not as prohibiting extra-dyadic sex but as requiring, as I understand it, such sex to take place, if it does, on terms which are mutually agreed within the couple and transparent. He puts this forward in the discussion simply as the position to which he has come, not as a universal model, though given this his marketing seems disingenuous. I interpret him as not being opposed to polyamory, but simply skeptical of it in practice.

It might seem that Strauss and I share a lot in common; I too have written about some important misgivings related to the way polyamory is conceptualized and lived in practice (or, let us say, some of the practices which the word is used to cover) and I agree with him on the importance of commitment, communication, transparency etc, at least in that ideal world in which we decidedly do not live.

There is, however, something rather unexamined, it seems to me, in Strauss’s discourse. Vitalis illustrates this in the podcast when he speaks of his sense of shame at hiding extra-dyadic dalliances from his partner, a position he is very uncomfortable being in because he feels it lacks integrity. I would certainly agree with this, but even if we have to live our life as best we can within the constraints we have inherited, it still behoves us to examine this sense of shame critically, something neither Strauss nor Vitalis in the podcast hints at doing. Vitalis, however, offers himself a clue as to the origin of his sentiments in describing his attitude as a child towards his mother: ever fearful she would fly into a rage at the slightest provocation, he was very careful to avoid doing anything which might provoke such an overreaction. As children, of course, we seek to please our mothers because we need their love. Our mothers, on the other hand, often simply take from us what they want, being far more skilled and better placed to obtain it due to being adults and in a monopolistic position of authority. We need to be very careful to avoid the widespread error of reproducing this asymmetry in our adult relationships, and especially of doing so unconsciously, failing to recognize this as a cultural construct rather than an innate difference of social biology.

It will inevitably happen from time to time, in a dyadic relationship, that some courses of action in which the man is inclined to engage may cause discomfort to the woman. This should (ideally) be discussed, of course, and it also needs to be recognized that the woman may have insights into this situation which the man lacks; these should be listened to. However, it cannot be that the man simply does not engage in actions which make his partner uncomfortable; that she has some kind of veto on his behavior (or he on hers). The position of discomfort has a lot to teach us, and ensuring the comfort of the other at all times is a very unrealistic demand to place on oneself. This applies no less in matters sexual than in any other sphere of life. If one backs off from confrontation simply because one fears it, then one loses an essential part of ones freedom and ability to live an authentic life. We cannot rescue monogamy with the artifice of imposing upon it unhealed parent-child patterns of behavior.

In my life, I have seen that it is important to listen and communicate, but it is also important to be brave: not only important for oneself, but also for the relationship and the other. An implicit and festering situation of subordination strikes me as a major risk factor for relationship longevity. I share their desire to be open, though I do not think this is an ethical commandment; indeed, sometimes (as Dan Savage never tires from pointing out) exactly the opposite may be true. However, I am also going to do things which make my partner uncomfortable if those are things which I am convinced I need to do. I will take into account her vulnerabilities and the long run, but they are only factors among others.

There is no inherent reason to be ashamed of ones interest in pursuing any kind of relationship with another person, nor of actually doing so where this does not constitute a material and real (rather than unilaterally imagined) threat to the investment each partner has made in the primary or reference relationship. In this regard, it is irrelevant whether this behavior causes discomfort and even whether it brings about the end of the primary relationship entirely. One may certainly refrain from a course of action in order to avoid those outcomes: but consciously, not based on shame. One must, at the same time, also understand that change and challenge brings growth and new opportunities. If one shies away from this out of fear, the relationship will stagnate and may anyway eventually perish. One would want to be quite confident that in the long run the asymmetry in the relationship is not going to give rise to resentment, the rising tide of which may – and I think often does – pass unperceived under the radar of ones social identity until it is too late.

Strauss argues that we have neuroplasticity and our biology is not the last word. Of course this is correct. But any ability we may have to pursue any sort of relationship which may loosely be called monogamous still begs the question of why we should do so. There may be pragmatic grounds – including that it is a better personal choice than a life of obsessive-compulsive unsatisfying sexual liaisons and that it is a socially stable reference point, an available (if adaptable) paradigm: the path, in other words, that it sounds like Strauss has trodden. But such grounds are no more than that; they are not “The Truth”.

Monogamish

I don’t agree with Dan Savage on everything: occasionally listening to his podcast drives me nuts. But most of the time it is a real breath of fresh air. In this video, he very eloquently gets across the message on why responsible non-monogamy is a deeply humanistic, respectful and appropriate ethic which salvages, rather than threatens, the mess we have made of the social institution of marriage when, around the 1950’s and with the rise of feminism, popular culture fundamentally redefined it by, as he puts it, “instead of extending to women the same license and latitude that men had always enjoyed, … impos[ing] on men the same limitations and restrictions that women had always endured“.

The new paradigm was not of course drawn from nowhere: the church had been preaching it for centuries. The point, however, is that we had always allowed ourselves double standards and endured the feelings of guilt and shame that went with them. Those double standards kept some lid on the extent of extramarital sex and the social consequences to which it could lead, but they did not, and could not, eliminate it.

The asymmetry in society’s standards which had slumbered beneath the surface for hundreds of years (ever since the counter-reformationist Council of Trent outlawed divorce in 1563), was clearly articulated in the first version of Napoleon’s seminal civil code, considered (for other reasons rightly) by him as his lifetime’s greatest achievement. The provisions on divorce are worth citing: article 229 states that “the husband may demand a divorce on the ground of his wife’s adultery,” article 230 by contrast that “the wife may demand divorce on the ground of adultery in her husband, when he shall have brought his concubine into their common residence.”

Such discriminatory provisions, of course, could not stand the test of time. Though divorce was again outlawed in restorationist France in 1816, when it was reinstated by the law of 1884, the clause on common residence (itself inspired by canon law, which seems to have been more ambivalent about extramarital relations as such) was struck out, thereby consecrating, for the first time in a legal text, the religious condemnation of adultery (whatever is the correct understanding of that term), paradoxically enough together with a facilitation of divorce on such grounds, which the Council of Trent explicitly excluded.

Dan is right when he says that the myth according to which extramarital desire is proof of lack of love and commitment is not only evident nonsense, but also pernicious to the very institution it seeks to associate itself with. If we go round pounding such notions, which are so obviously at odds with our biological nature, into everyone’s heads then it is no wonder relationships and families are a mess and it is no wonder that affective trauma gets passed from one generation to another. It is not easy to reconcile social monogamy with sexual non-exclusivity, but only because it requires a great deal of deconditioning and the demasking of a great deal of inherited suffering. Attempts to do so, under the likely conditions of asymmetric incentive between the partners, may often end in failure and acrimony or worse. Nevertheless, the idea that there is anything natural in the association between these two ideas has been comprehensively disproved by the accumulated experience of vast numbers of couples for whom it is, by now, a complete non-issue, indeed for whom open sexual boundaries have meant much greater, not less, intimacy.

Dan’s is no self-interested male agenda, of which, being gay, he anyway cannot be suspected; it is a plea for relationships based on real respect, commitment and love between adult and equal human beings. The kind of relationship in which children prosper emotionally, and each partner feels more empowered in going about their life due to the love and stability they enjoy. It is surely high time for society to cast off the vestiges of shame around sexuality which objectively stand in the way of making the institutions work which they purport to defend.

“Sex at Dawn” – a review

I have just finished reading Chris Ryan and Cacilda Jetha’s Sex at Dawn. The book is such a revelation that it is hard to know where to start. This is not only one of those books that will change your life. It’s going to change a whole lot else too.

The experience one has reading it is much akin to the one I had five years ago when I attended my first tantra workshop. A whole load of stuff that previously existed as isolated islands, unconnected, suppressed or misunderstood, suddenly falls into place – in this case not only things I have felt inside, but numerous aspects of the contemporary world as well. Reading the book launches me into filling in many of the gaps it leaves open, as well – something I will no doubt be doing over the next series of posts.

For those who don’t know, the books central thesis is that humankind evolved as a group-living, cooperative species in which sexuality was shared and played an important social role in building and maintaining group ties.

I am totally convinced. Not just by their breadth of argument, though it is impressive. Above all, it just. makes. sense.

There are enough summaries of the book elsewhere, from every conceivable viewpoint, so I won’t attempt another (though I would advise you to read it yourself). In this post, I want to try to qualify the book and give a preliminary assessment of its importance.

Although basing itself widely on earlier work and despite its conversational tone – which heaps ridicule on conventional thought – this is a book which is likely to be as fundamental to humankind’s self-understanding as was Darwin’s On The Origin of Species. In a way, it is a completion of Darwin’s thought. The voyage of self-discovery on which Darwin launched our species has now come into port; and whilst there is surely much still to be discovered and said and plenty of meat to put on the bones, the essential features of that destination are now known.

Coming to terms with them under the conditions of modern life is going to be more of a challenge. In the first place, Ryan’s and Jetha’s conclusions are going to be subject to a bitter rearguard action. Far too many vested interests, many of them household names, are going to find it difficult to climb down from the positions they have taken; and especially when assailed with so little pity. Such vested interests are not only in academia of course, but across the spectrum of society. It looks to me like we are in for the last, and I fear not universally peaceful act in the culture wars which started with Copernicus and Galileo.

It’s time to take sides in those culture wars, or as the authors challenge us in their closing chapter, very aptly, to “come out”. If you recognize yourself as a member of the species they describe, now is the time to say it. Subgroups defined on the basis of sexual orientation or preferences have fought numerous partial wars in the past (and go on, of course, doing so today). Now, though, we have an overarching label for all these struggles: human being. We should, and will likely need to, combine our forces.

What else is new? Closest to the epicenter, is the need to reevaluate love and its associated emotions. I want to say more on this in a future article because it is where I find the book most liberating and hopeful. Then, of course, there is the need to reevaluate and reimagine social institutions suited to the “sexual exiles” we now know we are (to use a term coined by Stephen Snyder, featured in an earlier post). This is already an agenda of unimaginable breadth – but it does not stop there. As an economist (yes, I am in reality an economist), I find an enormous set of related challenges in the need to reassess the fundamental and highly useful simplifying assumptions of mainstream economics regarding so-called “rational” behavior. Of course, this is not an entirely new agenda; but it is lent a great deal new weight by these insights into a model of human nature quite at odds, at least within a defined sphere, with neoclassical assumptions. The use of the term “households” to define the basic unit of consumption was already a (reluctant and awkward) concession to the commonsense understanding that there existed individuals within the boundaries of the welfare-maximizing economic unit other than its (presumably) titular head, whose welfare was part of the objective function that this “head” would endeavor to maximize (we are not told with what discount factor). Now, I think, we know that we are capable of being cynical – but not wired for it. Whatever the exact form is that such “wiring” takes. (This is a matter I have frankly no understanding of – if anyone can enlighten me).

In fact it is difficult to conceive of any area of the social sciences which will not now have to question its basic assumptions – from anthropology to (even) psychoanalysis: how do Oedipus and Elektra complexes look once we redefine the family unit?.  (A problem with the standard discourse of psychoanalysis which has always, of course, been quite a challenge to adequately theorize).

What Ryan and Jetha have achieved is what is correctly known as a paradigm shift. The course which human history is about to take has been set out by the seminal philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn. It will not be easy and it may not be nice: but there is no turning back until, eventually, the fact of our polyamorous ancestry is as much a part of our mental universe as the theory of evolution itself.

It’s my hope, of course, that in the inevitable onslaughts which will follow, the fundamentally beautiful human insights which follow from the book’s findings will not be lost from view. This is no crude defence of marginal sexual lifestyles. We are all a part of it, and all estranged from our core natures by no fault of our own. This calls for courage and conviction, but also empathy and compassion. Something, it turns out, we as a species are actually quite capable of.