Polygamy vs Monogamy
Why is it that even though we live in society where the rules and power are mainly in the hands of men, still polygamy, generally considered as favorable towards men is not an acceptable trend? Is it really because the moral code we follow? If so what stops us from breaking it? There are few occurrences but they are generally not accepted by society as a whole and rarely any country in the world have laws which does not discourage it.
The question that arises is that are we really that good hearted as humans that we have been to control the primal instinct i.e. the desire to propagate the genes as far as possible in order to ensure their genes have a better chance of survival or are we gaining a better incentive being a monogamous society?
One of the incentive for men to support this is shown in the example given by Robert Wright. Suppose there is a monogamous society of 100 males and females. In ideal case each male is paired with a female of similar social status. The status for male would be things like resources, hunting skills, social connection any many other traits. Similarly for females the social standing of family and other traits like cultural beauty norms are considered.
Now let us imagine that suddenly the top five males decided to have 3 wives each. The top 15 female now pair with top five men and rest 85 pair with rest. Now overall none of the females except top few lose their advantage. The resources that they share gets split up and if the difference between the resources in top five males are large even less females lose out in this.
Now let’s consider the 95 males. They all are at loss because they now have to pair up with someone having less social standing. Everyone except the top male loses out in it. He gets top three whereas rest males have to pair up with someone below in the social chain and it is worse for the last 10 males who do not have anyone to pair up with. When they are stripped of their chance they in turn take more risks in order to ensure the survivability of their genes. It in turn leads to chaos and ultimately unrest among people which leads to revolution and power-wealth redistribution. So in order to safeguard resources for their future generation the people in power choose to have rules which promote a monogamous society so that they can ensure a better survivability of their gene pool.
The second reason for it still continuing could be that we have followed the code of monogamy for so long that we actually have come to accept it for greater good. But the question is has this been beneficial to us as a whole?
The female polygamous society is not considered here because of the way we have evolved i.e. females have limitation on number of offspring they can have in their life and they have higher level of involvement and commitment in the process of having an offspring and ensuring their subsequent survival. This is probably one of the reason females are very specific in the choice of their partners as opposed to men who can have as many offspring they want as long as there is availability of partners (There is no attempt to objectify or demean females. I believe both sexes have evolved differently and are necessary for the continuation of species. There is no point in arguing about equality because you can’t argue why water has two Hydrogen atoms and only one Oxygen atom. The water exists because it has that composition.).
Now let us consider a polygamous society where males are allowed to have multiple wives. Let the number of people in that society be n composed of n/2 males and n/2 females. If it was a monogamous society the total number of options would be 1 for each person and of similar social standing. It would create n/2 couples. Opposing to that in a polygamous society it would be hypothetically possible for top male to marry all n/2 females creating n/2 couples. Leaving aside the social impact let’s consider survivability factor (s) in each case.
In the monogamous society the genes are evenly matched and have a bigger gene pool considering both sets of contributing DNA are varied in each case generating a greater variety. The possibility of variety can be just imagined that it is possible to attain a possibility of n/2C1 X n/2C1 different couple pairing and a possible permutation over 23 chromosomes from each sex.
But in case of the polygamous society though it creates the same number of couple the total permutation over the chromosome will be much less as the male chromosome is constant. This would lead to a very low variety. It can be argued that if the top male chromosome is involved it must be fittest but I would say nature and environment is unpredictable. If the fit gene is no longer fit in the new condition the chances of limited variety with the fittest gene will diminish considerably. It would lead to a near extinction of the human race.
Thus the survivability factor in case of monogamous society is higher than a polygamous society. Thus as a whole group we possibly have been wired to favor monogamy as the preferred choice.
Another factor that can be considered is that we have evolved from being a hunter — gatherer beings to social animal. We have evolved to have emotions and it plays an important role in shaping our wellbeing. And the environment around us requires us to be of at least average mental health to survive. So being in a monogamous relationship provides us with certainty and emotional support. Moreover the offspring have better chance of survival and grow up to be a fit individual when take care by both parents. The conclusion that can be drawn is monogamy is advantageous for the species as a whole. It leads to less conflict, larger variety of next generation genes, and also better survivability rate of the offspring. This is the reason that monogamy is majorly favored across all cultures.
Disclaimer: These are just one chain of thought.
