What is wrong with polygamy?

Scientia said:
I can't even be married to one person. Who would want to be married to several? The thought of that makes me tired.
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Right?!? Talk about exhausting. Boarding the train to Fuckthatsville.
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I say, to each their own. However, I don't agree with the underage and non-consensual wives that some of the sects do. No 13 year old should be forced into marrying a man old enough to be her father/grandfather..nor forced to get married at all, really.
 
I guess jealousy could be a problem, but I personally don't understand the point of engaging in that kind of drama to begin with...that is, even if monogamy would put a damper on those jealousy issues, I'm on principle opposed to the jealousy, so it would be a pragmatic fix but not philosophically consistent for me. I don't mind the idea of engagement in monogamy for other reasons, of course.

But it's true on a purely practical level, a lot of the time that's what monogamy is all about. I'm a "in principle" kinda guy, pretty frustrated with overly pragmatism-based fixes
 
charlatan said:
I guess jealousy could be a problem, but I personally don't understand the point of engaging in that kind of drama to begin with...
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Jealousy is a state of being, not something you can reason with. Unless you specifically know all the things that will put you in that state of being, you can easily be put there. And it's easy to speak against it when you're not there.
 
ruji said:
Jealousy is a state of being, not something you can reason with. Unless you specifically know all the things that will put you in that state of being, you can easily be put there.
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Well, I think in a large number of cases it's not so much that someone doesn't know what would put them in the situation so much as they don't know how to deal with it even after knowing the cause. I don't blame all instances of it, in the sense that it can be reasonable. There are other cases where I find it just arises from a confused value system.

I tend to think you can reason with most things :)
You're right about the qualifier, but basically from my point of view, while feelings can't be reasoned with in entirety, they're usually part visceral, part rationalization. The rationalization part can be attacked quite a bit, and I usually find it's better to keep it that way. Once the rationalization has been battered in, the visceral component may persist. However, it is starved of oxygen, basically, and it tends to occur to the person to let it dwindle.
If the rationalization is hard to shake, that is when there's a problem. There's a sense of justification in one's feeling. Like you say, sometimes the problem is simply one doesn't know the rationalization in advance and only observes the visceral reaction experientially/as a "state of being"
 
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charlatan said:
Well, I think in a large number of cases it's not so much that someone doesn't know what would put them in the situation.
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The state-of-being I'm referring to is much deeper than the obvious situation

charlatan said:
I tend to think you can reason with most things
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Yes, you can, but your feelings don't give a fuck about your thoughts.

charlatan said:
You're right about the qualifier, but basically from my point of view, while feelings can't be reasoned with in entirety, they're usually part visceral, part rationalization. The rationalization part can be attacked quite a bit, and I usually find it's better to keep it that way.
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I see this all the time where people explain the best-case scenario of not being affected by something they shouldn't. We say these things from a stable state, but eventually life will find a way to kick down your bathroom door with a loaded gun while you're taking a shit.
 
ruji said:
I see this all the time where people explain the best-case scenario of not being affected by something they shouldn't. We say these things from a stable state, but eventually life will find a way to kick down your bathroom door with a loaded gun while you're taking a shit.
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Well I'm not suggesting we can always win against life, or anything optimistic like that. My idea that there's a visceral and a rationalized version of one's reactions is pretty compatible with this possibility you're describing, but I tend to think the really unfortunate possibility is the one where you can't implement what would clearly be the reasonable solution for no reason than crude, brutal pragmatic issues.
The possibility that one's visceral reactions precede one's awareness of one's rationalizations is also there, but I have more experience with the first kind of unfortunate than this kind.

It's also important to note that I'm not suggesting any kind of altruistic/self-sacrificial ideal, my views are perfectly compatible with a selfish (but rational, just, etc) worldview.
I tend to think the reason people see this night-and-day difference between the best-case-scenario and the shit-hits-the-fan description you're giving is simply that I'd not agree with them on where they draw the lines on what they should and shouldn't be affected by; I place a higher premium on getting rid of irrationality (that is, unreasonable justifications that might lead one to impossible-to-shake feeling-reactions) and a lower premium on getting them to chase a romantic ideal. If one is unrealistic about drawing that line, then of course there'll be a big difference between the best-case fairytale and the life-kicks-you one.
I think if one places a higher premium on rationality than almost anything else, it's possible to whittle down the issues to purely pragmatic ones. How feasible those are to overcome largely depends on one's circumstances, but that's why I'm emphasizing my views are about what you can control. I find many underestimate the number of ways out there are tremendously
 
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Flavus Aquila said:
What happens if one of the spouses becomes the favourite and the others become jealous?
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Having more than one wife just ups the odds that you'd get divorced. I think if you are the type to have many wives then you are getting tired of the others anyways/ that's a motivation to be polygamous in many cases. I only say this because that was my experience in a polyamorous relationship.
 
INFJ16 said:
Have anyone seen the show Sister Wives?



I think it would be almost impossible for something like this not to happen.
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Yeah that guy is a real prick job.
 
The other important thing is my original post in this thread is specifically intended for a situation where we recognize a clear and systematic case of allowing for the rationalization of jealousy in society, where I'm just saying let's can that systematic rationalization as it never was very good anyway. There are adequate reasons for monogamy, and that's fine, but this just isn't one of them (I view marriage as optional, not an obligation, of course, so I don't see the point of willfully allowing bad rationalizations as justification when one could avoid the whole thing).
None of this suggests that one can never become overwhelmed by one's feelings and have it be something one probably couldn't have anticipated and corrected for in advance. Rather, it's saying we're rationally obligated to correct for the correctable situations in advance when feasible.
And when you look at it, a lot of the overwhelmed situations people undergo are really simple, commonly recurring life issues; definitely not things one cannot systematically address in advance.

Obviously if someone is in a toxic environment where insulted 24/7 I'm not going to expect the someone not to develop a self-esteem issue. But in more normal circumstances, I expect the level of control to be a lot greater if one is completely committed to addressing one's psychological issues.
It's worth repeating that there are many cases where someone feels emotionally injured where I will completely agree with the someone, and not think they "should" feel otherwise. E.g. if born into a family where the mother obviously prefers the siblings out of some bias, and illtreats them, feeling jealous isn't an unwarranted emotion.
Part of the difference in my point of view is there are so many situations where I think someone would be reasonable to feel cheated that I don't think it's unreasonable to crack down in the situations I don't think it would be reasonable.

And to drive the point home, it not being reasonable/justifiable is not the same thing as saying the person was at blame to have the feelings the person had. There are many situations where the more appropriate evaluation is that yes, there was a better solution, but do better next time/unfortunately we're human lol
 
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Satya said:
I always hear the argument, "If we allow the gays to marry then we have to allow polygamists to marry" so does anyone want to explain to me why polygamy is inherently bad? :?
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Look, as a normal guy I say one woman is fine ok whatever, but you add a few mor and you're married. buddy that's sounds horrible besides anything sexual.
 
alcyone said:
Anyone familiar with the phrase 'If Momma ain't happy, ain't no body happy'? Imagine having not only one Momma unhappy, but two or three or more Momma's unhappy. Considnering men have a difficult enough time keeping the one woman in their life content, a man faced with several unhappy women isn't going to sit everyone down and try to iron out the problems, Nooooo....He's going to grab a soda (cause aren't Mormons alcoholess?) and head out the door. So that leaves the kids alone with a bunch of sniping bitchy women. Kids who will at some point or another receive the brunt of an episode of misdirected angst. Or worse yet, the victim of some petty other Mom-bitch who decided to take her anger out on an innocent child for no other reason than he/she was the progeny of the communal husband and other wife.
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This doesn't work as an argument because it is far too western-centric. "Anthropologists say 83 percent of societies they have studied traditionally permitted polygyny — marriage with multiple wives... Just 17 percent insisted on monogamous marriage."[1] Whats more, Dowry is found far more often in monogamous societies "Dowry – a transfer of wealth from the bride’s to the grooms family- is found almost exclusively in stratified monogamous societies." (Wright, 1995).

In polygamous societies, women look for men with greater wealth and resources, thus "in polygamous societies, women tend to drift up the socioeconomic heirachy" (Wright, 1995). This suggests that monogamy is a rather unnatural state. It suggests that monogamy has to be a social taboo before people choose to stick to just one partner. Now I am not saying that monogamy can not lead to greater happiness. And that women like polygamy. But you need to explain the link between polygamy and female 'cattiness'.

1. https://psmag.com/monogamy-polygyny-and-the-well-tended-garden-6388caeaa11d#.m6sifa6rj
2. Wright, R.W. (1995). The Moral Animal. (Reprint Edition ed.). : Vintage.
 
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"You know, in one way or another, I believe the only way to
survive when your spouse is polygamous is by building some
kind of make belief around the whole situation. You make
yourself believe you are the favourite. Or you make yourself
believe that your spouse is just off to work when she/he is
actually with another spouse. Or you make yourself believe this is what god wants. You make yourself believe you’ll be
rewarded somehow if you can only make it through the day."

https://polygamy911.wordpress.com/2...atedposts_origin=1602&relatedposts_position=2
 
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