The Religious are All Psychotic (in a bad way)

Editorial Note: This post was written by Wes Fenza, long before the falling out of our previous quint household and the subsequent illumination of his abusive behavior, sexual assault of several women, and removal from the Polyamory Leadership Network and banning from at least one conference. I have left Wes’ posts here because I don’t believe it’s meaningful to simply remove them. You cannot remove the truth by hiding it; Wes and I used to collaborate, and his thoughts will remain here, with this notice attached.

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Last month, Jules Evans of Wired Magazine posted an article entitled The religious are all psychotic (in a good way) which argued that:

A new paper by Heriot-Maitland, Knight and Peters in the British Journal of Clinical Psychology (BJCP) estimates that 10-15 percent of the population encounter ‘out-of-the-ordinary experiences’ (OOEs) such as hearing voices. By automatically pathologising and hospitalising such people, we are sacrificing them to our own secular belief system, not unlike the Church burning witches.

First off, equating the diagnosis and treatment of people with mental illnesses to burning witches is just stupid. I’m not going to bother pointing out why.

Second, this is just the latest example of someone slapping the label “religion” onto something to legitimize it. As Evans himself says:

A western psychiatrist would nod and tick off the classic symptoms of psychosis: hearing voices, feeling guided by spirits, feeling singled out by the universe, believing you have magical abilities to save the world. Our psychiatric wards are full of people locked up for expressing such beliefs.

Those are the classic symptoms of psychosis for a reason! The reason is that they are evidence of psychosis! Evans goes on to argue that:

Perhaps we need to find a more pragmatic attitude to revelatory experiences, an attitude closer to that of William James, the pioneering American psychologist and pragmatic philosopher. James studied many different religious experiences, asking not “Are they true?” but rather “What do they lead to? Do they help you or cause you distress? Do they inspire you to valuable work or make you curl up into a ball?”

Really? We need to take an experience that, in any other context, is clearly a delusion and shows a dangerous disconnect from reality, and (because it’s “religious”) we need to evaluate them individually on a pragmatic level? I’m all for caution before locking people up, but it’s important to recognize such experiences for what they are: delusions.

Really, this is the same tired old “religion can be a force for good” argument. Of course it can! The problem is that it can also be a force for evil, and there is no way of knowing ahead of time which it will be. The same voice that tells you to donate to charity today could tell you to murder your children tomorrow. If we take a pragmatic approach to such things, as Evans urges, we will end up encouraging people (at least, the people whose visions we deem acceptable) to place greater and greater faith into their own delusions, with wildly unpredictable consequences. Instead of helping these people understand their mental illness and find treatment, we encourage them to adopt an arational worldview and entrench themselves into a belief in things that aren’t real.

Come to think of it, it’s unsurprising that such things are called “religious.”

A Whole Year Already? Egads!

A year ago today I married a most wonderful man.

In celebration, Wes and I spent the past weekend condensing the best parts of our honeymoon into two fabulous days. On Saturday, we went to several wineries in the Cape May area and I was thoroughly drunk by 3pm. Then we got to Ocean City, NJ and checked into our hotel right next to the boardwalk. We passed out for a while and then went for a swim. Then we went to pick up Jessie who was taking the train to Atlantic City after work to spend the rest of the weekend with us. The three of us spent the rest of the evening consuming lousy Italian food, riding on a few carnival rides and getting an Old Tyme Photo (gangsters and flappers, FTW). It was a million degrees out so we decided to go back around 11 and passed out shortly after. On Sunday morning, Wes and I went out to get newspapers for crossword puzzles and got coffee and the most delicious donuts ever from Brown’s. We chipped away at the puzzles and lazed around the room until noon, when we had to check out. We were at the beach for 5 hours and enjoyed such things as swimming, a couple hours of sand castle building and gorging ourselves on boardwalk food (nachos, buffalo wings, crab fries, and lemonade). After beaching, we checked the remaining things off of our beach must-do list by playing a ridiculous game of “Haunted Golf”, getting ice cream, playing skee ball, pinball, Ms. Pacman, and air hockey at the arcade, using the rest of our ride tickets at the amusement park, and finally getting a slice of pizza. We were on the road home at 9pm, made impressive time getting back and were showered and starting to doze off in bed by 11.

As I said as we started our trip home, that was quite the beach weekend. I can always count on having a whole lot of fun when I go anywhere with Wes and, as it turns out, Jessie just adds to that. She encourages us to do silly things and, in my opinion, a life without a large amount of silliness is not a life worth writing home about.

It has been, to say the least, quite a year. In the last year, Wes and I invited Jessie to move in with us, bought a car, bought a house, and put on a burlesque show. Wes lost one job and picked up a much better one. I learned that I love more than one person very deeply. There have been wonderful ups and terrible downs, and I would say that the year averaged out to be pretty good. I found out that there are always new things to learn about the people you love. I learned that there are always new things to learn about you too.

As I have mentioned before, a common question Wes and I get as a married, polyamorous couple is “Well, if you’re going to have other relationships, why get married?” It’s usually not said that nicely, nor with as little venom as that, but you get the idea. Anyway, the answer, to me, is pretty simple. If I were feeling snarky, I would say that we just got married to reap the tax and health insurance benefits. This is true, of course, but it is not the only reason. We got married because we are completely committed to each other. Becoming legally bound was a final expression of this fact. Being polyamorous isn’t a symptom of impending failure of our relationship but rather a symptom of its strength. Wes and I love each other. We enjoy seeing each other happy. The additional relationships we have add to that strength. They make us better. We talk through things because communication and working things out is a priority. We dole out and accept challenges. We forgive.

And none of it feels like sacrifice. The only things that I have had to sacrifice to be happier in this life have been things like the coveting of jealousy, possessiveness, indulging of my ego, and the idea that because my insecurities are a part of who I am, I am powerless to stop their influence. I have not had to give up anything I wanted to have this life.

It will not always be easy, but, for me, the hardest part is dealing with people’s negative judgments and since there’s no way to avoid that no matter how “normal” or “good” you are, fuck it. All I can tell you is that 9 years down the road in the relationship and one year into marriage and Wes and I are very happy. Each day I feel luckier and luckier that I ended up with him because each day I am happier and healthier than I was the day before. And while Wes and I were happy when we were monogamous, we are most certainly happier now that we are not because we have filled our lives with amazing people. The love we have for others only adds to the love we have for each other and it would be a tragedy not to have something so wonderful. If this makes you think that what we have is a sham or a joke, well, so be it. I’ll be laughing all the way to the “bank”.

As we were driving home, Wes said, “Well, here we go. Leaving the beach and heading back to our regular hum drum existence!” I said, “That’s fine. Our regular existence is not particularly hum drum.” And Jessie said, “Our regular existence is awesome!”

I couldn’t agree more. Happy anniversary, Wesley 😀

Tightly vs. Lightly

One of the never ending discussions polyamorous people have is around jealousy. For that matter, people who are monogamous and just talking to someone poly always want to talk about jealousy. Jealousy is apparently a fascinating topic–what it really is, how to deal with it, is it learned or ingrained, etc. I’d like to offer a different way to look at this question: Tightly versus Lightly

Some people hold on to relationships very tightly. They try to control them and shape them so they feel safe. They’re the ones who set up rules and vetoes, who have problems with jealousy, who constantly wonder when things will go wrong. And things always do.

Other people hold relationships lightly. They don’t make any relationship the focus of their happiness, they naturally avoid jealousy and they are happy when their partner goes off without them, whether it be to another lover (poly) or a hobby (mono).

People who hold relationships lightly don’t constantly wonder when things will go wrong. Because they know things will.

Ha! Gotcha there didn’t I? You thought I was going to make the claim that holding relationships lightly was a cure-all for relationship problems! Well, that would be stupid, because there IS no cure. Annalisa’s #1 relationship rule is:

All relationships end badly
(Note: This is written simplistically so it can be catchy. The true statement is: All relationships end. And unfortunately we live in a society that equates “ending” with “failure” so many people consciously or unconsciously fear a relationship’s end and automatically label it as failure).

It’s true. You either break up (which is usually framed as “the relationship was a failure”), or one of you dies (which maybe isn’t the same kind of “badly” as being dumped, but it certainly isn’t a good thing). I suppose we could consider the case of two people who die at the same instant (maybe a la Thelma and Louise), but that’s pretty rare and anyway, you’re dead, so the relationship is over.

The great thing about really accepting the fact that all relationships end is that you stop thinking you can do something to avoid that fate. And then you stop worrying about the end (ZOMG I don’t want to be alone!) and start focusing on the middle (aka the present). You can stop thinking “If my partner is poly he might find another woman and she might be younger and prettier and that might mean he likes her better and then he might leave me so to protect myself I’d better create 3,846 rules!” and start thinking “Right now, what would I like?”

Whether you’re more comfortable in a monogamous or a polyamorous setup is in my view not the most important question. Every monogamous relationship admits other people into it (family, children, friends). Every poly relationship has limits (number of partners, certain people who are deal breakers). In modern society, where men and women work and play together as equals (mostly) and mingle in all settings, there’s really no sharp distinction. There are tons of “monogamous” couples who have the occasional threesome and tons of “poly” couples who have “we two only” activities. It’s not a bright line at all.

But I honestly do believe that if we could all accept that at some point, our relationships will end (possibly sadly) and that we can’t change that we might be able to let go of some of the fear, jealousy and name calling. We’re all in the same boat after all. No one gets out alive, so we should concentrate on enjoying the ride as honestly and fully as we can.

Don’t be a Dick Stump!

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Yesterday, my friend Angie Tupelo posted a link that caused me to revisit a term that my partner Jessie and I came up with some time ago.

Dick Stump: verb. The act or behavior of responding to sexual rejection with aggression or hostility, especially by a man directed at a woman.

It can also be used as a noun (see title). The idea is that a woman has metaphorically castrated a man via sexual rejection, and the man responds by attempting to piss on her with the stump. I like the term because it (a) rightly makes the man in the circumstance an object of ridicule, (b) sort of sympathizes with him, in that it acknowledges that a bad rejection can feel like castration, but (c) illustrates how stupid and counterproductive the reaction is. It also brings up the image of pee getting shot everywhere in an uncontrolled splatter, hitting everyone in a 10ft radius, which is often how those sorts of reactions can be.

It looks an awful lot like this:

To all the women of the world,

If you’ve rejected me, I hate you. If we’re just friends, our friendship is over. If we don’t know each other, I will never offer you mere friendship. The friendship I’ve offered to your sex has been abused too much and for too long. I now spit at the concept. So I offer you two options and two options only: take this dick, or fuck off and die. Spread your legs, or go fall on a knife. Wet my prick, or eat a fucking bullet. In other words, if you don’t want to fuck me, then stay out of my life forever. If you don’t want to fuck me, I honestly couldn’t care less if you died. Those are the only options you get. Those are the only options you deserve.

Guys, don’t do that. Dick stumping is the main reason why honesty is hard for women in potentially sexual interactions. For every clear rejection a woman gives, she risks provoking a round of dick stumping, which is at best unpleasant, and at worst dangerous. I encourage everyone subject to a clear sexual rejection to take a deep breath and say “thank you for being honest.”

And remember: friends don’t let friends dick stump. Make it know that dick stumping will not be tolerated in your social circle, and things will get better for everyone.

The God Particle was Framed

Last week, mostly in the comments section of my post on the difficulties of defining words clearly and universally, to everyone’s satisfaction, Wes and I discussed (among other topics) the importance of rhetorical framing. CERN’s recent announcement of the near-certain discovery of the Higgs-Boson (a.k.a. the “god particle”) has elicited surprising reactions from theists, and I think framing explains their response.

Some of you may have seen this Twitter feed making the rounds. When I first saw it, I was puzzled. How can theists claim that a discovery that demystifies a major, previously unanswered, question about the physical world is bad for atheism? I considered the possibility that the Twitter feed was a joke (and it may still be, though I think it’s serious), but then I came across other christian apologists making the same case. Many theists do, indeed, see this discovery as proof of their god’s existence. But why?

The answer, at least in part, is that apologists have reframed the term “god particle.” Fifty years ago, when physicist Peter Higgs hypothesized his eponymous boson, it was simply called the Higgs boson. The metaphor of a “god” particle comes from nobel laureate Leon Lederman’s 1993 book, The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What is the Question? In most press accounts, the phrase is bracketed by quotation marks, a rhetorical move meant either to indicate words/phrases that are being used in ways that might differ from their denotative meanings or to show potential biases of the word/phrase’s originator. When Rush Limbaugh called Sarah Fluke a “slut,” people reported that Rush had used that word to describe her, not that they were using it themselves.

By placing it in quotation marks, the mainstream media, then, frames “god particle” as a term that could at least be open to debate. I think they do this with varying degrees of success, and using the term at all gives it credibility that scientists wish it would not have. I think there’s plenty of blame to go around here. Scientists generally do a poor job of framing issues in the public discourse. Perhaps this is because they see language in general, and the language of the media especially, as needlessly slippery, and they do not want to engage in discussions involving terms/concepts that are not clearly, objectively provable. In a way, that’s what I’d expect of scientists: it’s what makes them good at science. However, it also reflects a type of black-and-white thinking that doesn’t always help factions make their rhetorical points.

But the media is also to blame for assuming its audience needs figurative language to understand complex ideas (though figurative language is certainly useful for this purpose, one must choose one’s metaphors carefully), for so readily and uncritically using normative (in this case theistic) figurative language, and for not doing the minimal amount of research needed to know that Leon Lederman himself thinks the term “god particle” is problematic. On this last point, I’m not sure it’s entirely fair to let Dr. Lederman off the hook. He has joked that his idea to call it the “goddamn” particle was shot down by editors, but he has also said that he used the term “god particle” because the Higgs boson was “so central to the state of physics today, so crucial to our final understanding of the structure of matter, yet so elusive.” It seems Dr. Lederman could think of no better way to communicate uncertainty than appeal to a deity, so he may have been foist by his own petard (along with the entire physics community, which is no stranger to using theistic metaphors to make its points).

Christian apologists, however, have used framing to remove the quotation marks completely. For them, “god particle” is not a metaphor but a descriptor. They refer to biblical passages like Colossians 1:15-18:

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him.

For apologists, then, the discovery of the Higgs boson particle is the discovery of the “invisible God.” This line of apologetics lauds scientific discoveries like the one at CERN as proof of the validity of the teleological argument. The problem, of course, is that they’re begging the question. The mere fact that we’re able to see a logical order to the material world does not prove that an unseen “logical” creator of that world exists. Whether or not that creator exists, our observations will be the same.

The thing about framing, though, is that it’s not always the same as misunderstanding–or, more insidiously, misusing–language. In the case of “god particle,” the problem is that the phrase’s two constituent words are abstract enough to allow myriad interpretations. The word “god” has almost a dozen definitions and “particle” has five. The definition of “particle” is particularly flexible, so it’s not altogether surprising that apologists would see “all things…that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers” as being made up of “one of the extremely small constituents of matter.” Somewhat ironically, the definition of “particle” with respect to English grammar is “a small word of functional or relational use.” In other words, a particle itself doesn’t belong to a clear category: it is not easily quantifiable. To the extent that it fits into a linguistic structure, its role in the logic of that structure is unknown/invisible, or at least not categorizable.

I’m not saying that I think apologists are right to see the discovery of the so-called “god particle” (see, was the “so-called” so hard to use?) as proof of a deity’s actual existence, of the universe’s “intelligent design,” etc. But I think that Leon Lederman’s choice of words was problematic, that the media’s dissemination of his phrase (utterly divorced from its original context, mind you–Lederman was worried his phrase might offend theists) was irresponsible, and the scientific community’s inability (or lack of desire) to frame the debate in a way most advantageous to its own case contributed to apologists’ declaration of victory.

Atheists (or materialists, secularists, etc.) see the world in a way that we believe is fundamentally right, but we don’t have the power of cultural normativity–and its concomitant ease of rhetorical framing–on our side. As a result, we must be especially vehement in pointing out the ways in which dominant groups use framing to buttress their hegemony. We must understand, however, that framing is a technique we also use. Demystifying framing is necessary in order to understand how it functions, but demystification alone does not necessarily change the rules of the rhetorical game.

Reasons and Excuses

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Wes here.

I don’t believe in either contra-causal free will or objective morality. I don’t know many skeptics who believe in either of those, but I do run into a lot of skeptics who seem to feel that bad behavior can be excused by explaining that the behavior was the result of forces outside of the control of the actor, such as mental illness or a history of oppression. I find these things to be in conflict.

First, without objective morality, calling an act or a person “better” or “worse” than a different act or person becomes merely a subjective judgment, based on the speaker’s preference. When I say, for instance, that being honest with your friends is better than lying to your friends, what I really mean is that I prefer to live in a world where people are honest with their friends, not that there is anything objectively superior about such behavior. When I say that “Sam is a better person than Pat,” what I mean is that Sam helps move the state of the world and/or my subjective experience of the world toward my preferred ideal more or better than Pat does.

Second, without contra-causal free will, all actions are caused by external forces, and nobody is truly responsible for hir own actions. The main implication of this view is that all evaluations* of someone’s behavior must be forward-looking. Traditionally, the morality of an action is judged in a backward-looking way. An act’s morality, and its associated blame or praise, has traditionally been based on an evaluation of what exactly the actor did what what hir motivation was at the time of the behavior. The focus is on the past. When you take contra-causal free will out of the equation, this approach makes no sense. Because all actions are caused by external factors, the only relevant inquiry into the myriad causes of a person’s behavior is the extent to which an understanding of such causes allows one to predict and/or influence that person’s future behavior.

Consider two parents who beats their children. Alex was abused as a child, and beat hir children because that is hir only understanding of the parent-child relationship.** Assuming that the statistic that 70% of abused children turn into abusive adults is true. Terry has lived a life of luxury and privilege, and beats hir children because ze has anger management issues. Which one is morally worse?

The intuitive answer is that Terry is worse, because Alex is a victim of circumstance, and Terry seems more in control of hir own behavior. However, without a belief in contra-causal free will, one must view everyone as a victim of circumstance. Terry has no more meaningful “choice” in hir behavior than Alex does.

The reasonable inquiry in such a circumstance is: what is each person likely to do in the future? How will each respond to efforts at rehabilitation? What sort of conditioning*** must each be given in order to prevent future instances of child abuse? It may very well turn out to be the case that Alex’s behavior is more ingrained, and thus Alex must be subject to stronger conditioning & stricter monitoring in order to prevent future abuse. While this is intuitively unjust, it is the only rational conclusion.

This is not entirely counter-intuitive. One of the reason that crimes of passion are punished less than crimes involving forethought is that crimes of passion are less likely to be repeated. It is also the reason that repeat offenders are punished more harshly than one-time offenders.

The idea that all evaluations of a person’s behavior must be forward-looking is equally applicable to all acts and personality traits. This comes into conflict with our natural sympathy for the oppressed. Skeptical communities tend to be liberal communities, which are sensitive to things like oppression, privilege, poverty, society’s influence, brain chemistry, and similar concepts. This is generally a strength of the community. Often, however, some members of the community (and a number of people that I know personally) make use of such concepts in order to excuse bad behavior.

Consider mental illness. Many people have diagnosed mental illnesses that cause them to behave in ways that I (and many others) see as unacceptable from healthy people. I do not think this is a controversial statement. Often, the behavior caused by such illness is exactly why it is classified as an illness in the first place. Mental illnesses can cause people to be excessively prone to anger and violence, to have poor social skills, to behave irrationally, to suffer delusions, and many other behaviors that I consider “bad.” This is not a moral judgment, as I do not believe in morality. I have tremendous sympathy for those who suffer from such things, often because they recognize the illness in themselves, and they find it much more objectionable than I do.

The same goes for victims of oppression. Oppression (especially of women and minority groups) is rampant in our society, and oppression can make it completely understandable why someone would be more suspicious, hostile, or quick to anger than someone more privileged. An understanding of oppression and privilege is critical for anyone who actually cares about other people and/or society. The skeptical community’s awareness of such is growing, and the community is much better for it.

However, mental illness and oppression are not excuses for bad behavior. They are merely reasons. The fact that such are out of the actor’s control does not differentiate them from any other explanation for a bad act. The biggest jerk in the world is a jerk for reasons outside of hir control. Any evaluation of the person’s behavior, to be at all useful, must be forward-looking. Some mental illnesses make a person completely intolerable, and I don’t think there’s any shame in saying so. Sometimes a person’s history of oppression can give hir a giant chip on hir shoulder such that ze is unpleasant to be around. It doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be sympathetic, but neither does it mean that we should view such behavior as any more (or less) forgivable or tolerable than someone who does the same thing for a different reason.

This is not to say that reasons for bad behavior are irrelevant. On the contrary, understanding of a person’s reasons for their behavior is critical to an understanding of how likely ze is to repeat such behavior. Often, a diagnosed mental illness is much easier to deal with than a standard personality flaw, because treatment is available. An understand of an oppressed person’s history makes it easier to predict what will trigger the objectionable behavior. These are all very relevant lines of reasoning.

However, understanding a person’s reasons for behaving the way that they do is only part of the inquiry. I think that the relevant inquiry when evaluating someone’s actions is an inquiry into that person’s future behavior. This is the inquiry which allows me to decide if I consider that person a force for good or bad (in the subjective sense, as I’ve defined them above).

Everyone has reasons for their behavior which are outside of hir control. A reason is not an excuse, and we shouldn’t treat it as such.

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Side note – this post has concentrated on explaining away a person’s bad behavior for what I consider bad reasons. I see these concepts as equally applicable to the excessive glorifying of a person’s good behavior. Just as all bad acts are the result of forces outside of a person’s control, so are all good acts.

* When I talk about evaluations of a person’s behavior, I mean the process by which we, as individuals, decide things like what role we want a person to have in or lives, how close we can/should be to someone, how often we want such person around, how attracted we are, how dangerous someone is to us, etc. Such decisions are reliant upon the ability to make accurate predictions of a person’s future behavior, which is why that’s where my focus is. Society also makes collective evaluations, through the legal system, to which I think these principles are equally valid. However, for purposes of this discussion, I’m concentrating on individual evaluations.

** Disclaimer: I know nothing about the psychology of child abuse. This may be a completely unrealistic hypothetical. Please consider it only for purposes of the point being illustrated.

*** I use “conditioning” in place of “punishment,” because I don’t think punishment is very effective at rehabiliting antisocial inclinations, notwithstanding that it is the only system that our society uses.
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Is polyamory better for humanity? Let’s find out!

I am well aware that there are people within the polyamory world for whom the idea that polyamory is better than monogamy is quite annoying. To say that polyamory is somehow objectively better, from their point of view, is to miss the varieties of human experience. How can anyone be so arrogant, parochial, or unobservant to not notice that many people are quite happy being monogamous? How can such people not see that not everyone wants to or can be polyamorous?

I have a feeling that some people who read this blog, or who know me, think my opinion is that polyamorous people are better than non-poly people. But before I address that question directly, allow me to make an important distinction that may help avoid conflating two different sets of views which are related to the question, and which may be creating confusion as to what is being claimed by some “arrogant” polyamorous people.

(Not that anyone has ever called me arrogant…)

There are probably people out there who will make the claim that poly people are better than monogamous people. One can trip them up by pointing to quite mature, happy, awesome monogamous people and compare them to people who are polyamorous but aren’t as respectable. There are many out there who are doing polyamory—well, they are really just doing relationships and personal growth—in unhealthy ways. Such people who will want to maintain some form of this claim of superiority will step back and make some bell-curve restatement; something like people who are polyamorous are generally better than monogamous people, but there are exceptions (of course).

This line of argument is pretty fruitless, as there is no research I know of that could support this (or the opposite) claim. We don’t have agreed-upon criteria for better or worse, necessarily (although we could come up with some), and even if we did have such criteria, we don’t have the data to apply to such. The conversation about whether poly people are better, equivalent, or worse than monos leads us [nowhere practically useful], in my opinion. We are left with individual judgments about other people based upon our experience, which is subject to personal biases and criteria, which is not particularly helpful in general claims about superiority. Thus, to make general claims about whether poly or mono people are better is quite difficult, even if one where to identify some rubric for talking about such a general claim. So while there may be aspects of polyamory which are superior, whether the people themselves are is a separate question.

These (I hope uncontroversial) observations lead many people to the conclusion that we cannot create an objective criteria for judging the relative superiority of polyamory and monoamory (rather than monogamy because we are not necessarily talking about marriage, since -gamy means marriage). But, further, it leads many people to the conclusion that the whole enterprise of judging the general merits of polyamory in relation to relationship exclusivity is not only fruitless or complicated, but simply wrong-headed; poly people are not better than mono people, they just have chosen what works for them, just like many monogamous/monoamorous people. And, the argument goes, since we all have to make our own choices about how to live, and since we have different desires and experiences, we cannot judge whether one relationship philosophy is better than the other.

However, polyamory is not sufficiently culturally disseminated, as an idea, to say that the vast majority of people have actually chosen monoamory. There is simply no way to rationally claim that there is a real choice between mono and poly styles of relationships for most people. There are too many acculturated ideologies, fears, and assumptions about how sexuality and relationships work to say that there is a level field of competition in the mind of people exposed to polyamory to make the claim that mono people have really chosen their relationship styles with appropriate consideration.

The question is what would happen is the vast majority of people really understood what this choice entailed. If most people understood what polyamory was about—including the importance of honesty, communication, the desire to deal with jealousies in mature ways, etc—would most people still choose and be happy with monogamy? We simply have no good way of knowing the answer to this question. I may have my (biased, even if educated) guess, but I have little to no evidence to support those views. I think it is an interesting thing to think about. I think the discussion will draw out our assumptions about human nature, human sexuality, and how we think about relationships. But we can only get so far with that conversation, and it will be based upon a fair amount of supposition.

So, keeping that in mind, I want to sketch out a project. I begin with the assumption that there is meaning to the idea that there are better ways to be as human beings; there are attributes, behavior-patterns, and worldviews which are better at creating happiness, well-being, and quality of life. There is meaning to the idea that there is an objective, rationally-based, metric for how to think about how to be human better, and we may not be far from defining what those things may be.

I think such a metric must be evidenced-based (that is, skeptical). I believe that while personal taste is a factor, we cannot retreat to pure relativism where we merely get to decide, on a whim, what is best for us. I think that sometimes we are wrong about what is best for us, and that we often need to appeal to something larger than us (a community, an idea, etc) to figure out if what we have chosen, while not terrible or overtly bad, may not actually what will make us happiest and most fulfilled. I think that there is always room for improvement in our lives, and we need to perpetually question our assumptions and worldview.

I agree with the idea that morality, even absent a god or cosmic purpose, is in some way objective and definable and that morality has a lot to say about how we could live in order to be happier, fulfilled, and live more authentically. I believe that honesty, attention, and authenticity are high values that we all should try and incorporate in our lives. And I think that we need to be prepared to both challenge and be challenged, and if we do so we can transcend the cultural idea that criticism and judgment are bad things.

So, what if we were to try and come up with a metric for what is more rational and better behavior for people in terms of leading to more happiness and fulfillment? Would it turn out that polyamory is the option which would be better for most people?

The rub for me is that I think there are objective facts which can help us make such judgments, but that how we rule on such questions will depend on too many unknown factors. I am willing to admit that it may end up being the case that monoamory is objectively better for most people. The point is that I think that this is a real issue that can really be tested, not something merely subject to personal taste or mere choice—especially given that most people don’t know enough about polyamory to effectively choose it.

I think there may be ways to objectively judge if polyamory is or is not better for people, even if I cannot fully define such a project right now.

So, rather than ask if polyamorous people are better than monoamorous people, the question should be whether polyamory is better than monoamory for people given that currently-monoamorous people are indeed fine people in most cases and that they are currently generally content with their choice. The implication is not that monogamous people are doing anything wrong, are unhappy, or any such thing. The question is whether polyamory fits better with human desires, behavior patterns, etc. and will serve as a more objectively practical relationship style in terms of providing humanity with a better way to think about love, sex, and well-being.

I make such a distinction because I perceive that when I make a claim like “polyamory is better than monogamy” I think people interpret this to mean that I think I’m better than monogamous people because I’m polyamorous (or even that I’m polyamorous because I’m better, in case anyone has forgotten about that fracas). No, I think I’m better than some people because I’m better than some people. I’m worse than others because I’m worse than others. My being polyamorous is, in part, a result of some of the attributes that I like about myself—I’m honest with my desires, I seek to live authentically, and I seek to challenge myself to perpetually grow as a person. I just happen to be convinced that polyamory is a wonderful way to be human and that it fits very well with what I observe as human inclinations and follows along nicely with efforts to be a better person in general. And if some (or many) people end up being accidentally happy as monoamorous, then so long as they are not suppressing anyone’s desires to do so, I have no quarrel.

In the future, I will want to sketch out the criteria about how we might pursue such a question as whether polyamory is actually objectively better than monoamory, but for now I want to make it clear that this is not a competition about what people are better than other people (although that can be a fun game too, I suppose), but rather what relationships behaviors are better for groups of humans.