It seems like people are playing, from my admittedly not altogether well-informed p.o.v., somewhat fast and loose with ideas loosely derived from evolutionary psychology, yeah? Which personally I believe to be a problematic approach to all things human, but I'm not claiming any kind of expertise on this. A quick websearch found me this fairly recent, more complex picture of the evolutionary psych take on love, polygyny, serial monogamy, infidelity, developed in Robert Wright's, The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life (Pantheon 1994); Time Magazine did a cover story on it. BUT WAIT! Don't touch that link--just yet...
Despite my generous provision of a link to that brand of thinking, I encountered one persuasive feminist critique of this kind of analysis (a lecture, last year) that demonstrated that by focusing on chimps & apes (very hierarchical societies, violent, even instances of gang rape, etc), rather than, say bonobos, evolutionary psych reaffirms/ reifies conservative stereotypes of male and female sexual behavior, and heterosexist views of sexual behavior, pair bonding practices. Give me a little time and I'll find a source on this ... but, arggh, since my internet connection's suddenly gone very slow and may give out on me, here's what I recall:
The research suggested, I believe, that we are apparently equally related to Bonobos as to chimps. Bonobos' behavior however is more like a kind of communal hippie primate orgy--they have sex, a lot, for lots of reasons, with lots of partners. The theory is that in their social units sex--rather than being strictly a reproductive practice--is more of a social glue, or social lubricant? (depending on the sex, I guess, and whether the species has developed KY jelly...<=lame attempt at joke). In other words: our desire for sex and mating may not be strictly or even primarily designed for reproduction. The researcher I heard discuss this argued that it was the ghost of our culture's patriarchal and religious traditions that keeps that reproduction/sex connection so firmly in place, even for scientists, and even when---obviously!--- most of us, even most Roman Catholics living in the US, today, do not PRIMARILY have sex SIMPLY to have babies. (Rinse, repeat that last sentence.) Surely, that's also true of most 'lithers????
This researcher argued that it's at least equally plausible, and clearly more useful, and definitely more progressive, to view sex primarily as a way that human beings, who evolved to be group animals: to survive, we must create bonds with other members of our tribe. And it's important, also, for us to, communally, "recreate" ourselves. (I think the talk also challenged the idea that men really feasibly can have so many more babies than women, smtg to do with sperm counts going down with excessive orgasm ... which was quite fascinating, but I can't remember the specifics of that part of the argument.)
Even so, however, both the fairly conservative evol. psych. link I provided above and the feminist research I heard agree that it's clear we have evolved to be unfaithful as much as we've evolved to be pairbonders.
But lets get back onto other, more cultural grounds, shall we? yes, Love is a many splendored thing and a multifaceted way to get hurt. I'm not going to dispute either idea. But--maybe I'm old and cynical--I'm not sure I buy the utter "uniqueness" of each love experience argument completely. I also believe that falling in love often plays out/plays on a lot of old stories, patterns, that have shaped my life.
Not to slavishly reinscribe Freud's family romance (promise!), but most of the time I have fallen in love, and when I've had time to look back on the love relationship, it's typically true that some area of my own evolving self's personal love genealogy has fused with another person in a way that connects, deeply to old relationships, old losses, old fears, old desires....
Tell me any of you who haven't been afraid to look too closely at the way your lovers resemble, say, mum & dad?
Yipes!
alas |
