FYI – I can’t get your book here in NYC on Park Avenue at Borders… hmmmm… ordering online now. I think I WILLED you to write the book as I had been meaning to do so for some time. I summoned you and I’m glad you came. xo

I love this discussion, and of course it is a topic that has been dealt with for ages. However, I agree with Ryan that it needed an update and young cute guys to talk about it again. giggle. I LOVE what you wrote David. I love that you found older record of this “pact” men made with themselves and women (oddly enough) to carry out patriarchal ideas.

I must take issue with the idea of jealousy being a “natural” human emotion. We have to recall the to share, lovingly, and to feel “compersion” are also a natural human emotions. (Think of a baby on the playground). Human emotions are cultivated based on what the culture promotes. Here in the “West” jealousy is cultivated by the media specifically, I feel, to hold the monogamous regime in tact along with patriarchal order which has women feeling as if she is a slut if she wants several nice pieces of different _____ in too close a span of time.

I am a love coach and I beleive sex is sacred. I have an open marriage with a luscious man of 15 years and I can have all the love I want from any man with whom I desire it. I have appeared on several news shows, Fox News here — http://jujumamablog.com/introduction/ and am an advocate for the open relationship. I have started a movement and the hub is at my blog. I hope you sweet darlings will click the link and check me out. Or follow me on Twitter – I’m JujuMama… (Kenya K Stevens)

Love and Light Boys! Thanks again for this talk. xoxo

No, it doesn’t.

The Constitution protects the PEOPLE (the majority) from the tyranny of GOVERNMENT(the minority). The Constitution defines limits and authorities of government actions against the people – all of us. The “us against them” is not the people against the people; it’s the people against the government. And the less government interference and assumed authority, the better off the people are. Always. Period.

If all branches of government worked the way they were supposed to, Congress would write the law (by taking on real issues of substance and importance to Americans, not worrying about steroid pimples on the butts of baseball players); the Executive branch would execute the written laws (not write or re-write it through executive orders and appointment of czars outside of Constitutional review and approval), and the Judicial branch would only review the validity of contested law against the powers enumerated in the Constitution (not write or re-write law based on judges’ personal views).

Asserting the 10th Amendment tells the federal government it has overstepped its limited scope of power granted by the Constitution, usurping the power that rightly belongs to the states and the people of those states. Over the years, states have permitted the federal government – which is supposed to be the weakest level of government – to become the strongest, neutering state sovereignty by falling prey to bribes of federal funding for programs that should otherwise have no “legs.”

I applaud Massachusetts’ tactic of asserting its right to sovereignty under the 10th Amendment. More states MUST do so. The federal government has become too big, too intrusive, and completely unaffordable – not to mention unconstitutional.

“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.” – Thomas Paine

The inmates have run the asylum for too long…
Time for the people to take back the authority that is rightly ours. All of the people.

Thank you, that is very kind of you say and no, I am not an anthropologist (although my wife teaches anthropology at university and my daughter is an anthropology major who is currently in New Zealand). I suppose with such a personable offer it would be impossible for me to say “no” so we shall see.

I are of course quite right, I certainly did not mean to imply otherwise. There is nothing in science that was outlined 150 years ago that there is not orders of magnitude more information and understanding about today.

What is sad however, and I suppose my point, although I did not really have the thought formed when I responded Ms. Knefel’s blog, is that the profound and important theory that family relations, property relations, and the formation of government are all inter-connected and develop in a parallel fashion is, surprisingly, rarely taught or discussed in the 20th or 21st centuries. It thus seems new to many readers today.

CPR

CPR (co-author of Sex at Dawn)

You wrote:”I also believe that there is a basic feeling among the majority of people that we don’t want to share our companionship with anyone besides that one partner.”

This is not necessarily so. Polygamy and polyandry in various forms are well documented in many societies, both ancient and even some modern. The Mosuo society in China, is both matriarchal and matrilineal and marriage in the traditional sense do not exist. People live together in large, multigenerational, extended families centered around women (i.e. mothers). Men and women form romantic / sexual couples but the man lives with in mothers family and only goes to visit his “wife” at night at her mothers house. This called a “walking marriage”. The relationship lasts as long as both choose to make it last, sometimes they are short-lived and others are life-long. Children produced remain with the mothers family. They are generally sexually monogamous during the course of the relationship. This is serial polygamy or polyandry. In Sub-Saharan African, the Maasai people practice simultaneous polyandry, as did many Polynesian cultures prior to western contact.

This is not to say that jealously does not occur in these societies, but it does not form the basis for sexually exclusive marriages.