🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1990Oct26.182603.342@athena.mit.edu>, cedar@athena.mit.edu (Walid F Nasrallah) writes:
> In article <1990Oct24.175532.9407@pmafire.UUCP>, reiser@pmafire.UUCP (Steve Reiser) writes:
> 
> |> Without cultural training would human being by there biological nature
> |> be monogamous or is it culturally ingrained from childhood?
> 
> Both!

I don't believe that it is possible for a human being to survive 
to mate in any pattern, monogamous or polygamous, outside of a 
fairly complex cultural matrix which would place its pattern(s) 
firmly into the maturing mind.  While there are undoubtably 
quite a few instinctive behaviours remaining, (the infant's urge 
to suck, the fear of falling), most of them are vastly 
overpowered by cultural conditioning, as well as by other 
learning systems.  The fear of falling is a major example of a 
behaviour apparently instinctive in infants that can be 
overridden later on.  (Though personally, I still think anyone 
who jumps out of a perfectly good airplane is in serious need of 
counseling.)  My own pattern (in adulthood) has always been 
loosely monogamous, and I have spent the last 16 years either in 
a polyandrous triad or in an extended open marriage.  (Yes, 
there are rules concerning disease and birth control.)  This is 
primarily as a result of conscious decision based on reading, 
observation and experience rather than childhood conditioning, 
since I was raised rather conservatively Protestant.  But since 
the invention of the printed word, books are part of our 
cultural matrix.  Reaching puberty at the end of the sixties may 
have also played a subconscious role.

Much of this also seems to apply to the larger apes.  Gorilla or 
chimpanzee infants raised without the opportunity to observe the 
social, grooming mating and dominance behaviours of their elders 
rarely mate successfully and never achieve dominance of any sort 
if they are introduced to a tribe at a later time, and in fact 
are usually (always?) outcast by the rest in an unconfined 
setting.  I don't have any references here in my cube, but if 
there's interest, I or someone who studies primate behaviour 
less informally can dig them up.

-- 
The people that make Unisys' official opinions get paid more.  A LOT more.      Ward Griffiths, Unisys NCG aka Convergent Technologies
===========================================================================          To Hell with "Only One Earth"!  Try "At Least One Solar System"!

"Let's get out of here.  They've run out of meat.  Funerals are a pain when     there are more than twenty people.  Never get enough to eat."                                             Donald Kingsbury, "Courtship Rite": Gaet to Honey