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Notes -
Yeah, but if your premise on "why did monogamy survive and indeed become dominant?" is to be examined, then we have to look at real world polygamous societies, not fantasy versions. I don't believe in the Golden Age Peaceful Matriarchal And Mother Goddess Society crap, as to how patriarchy became dominant, so I don't accept that as a starting point when examining the question. if the matriarchy was so ideal, why did the patriarchy get to replace it? Same with "we all started off with everyone fucking everyone else and nobody made a big deal out of it" for "then the wicked awful monogamists ruined it for everyone". If we look around, we see there isn't "everyone fucking everyone else, nobody cares" but that "men get to fuck who they want, people do care if women fuck without consequences". That seems more likely to segue into monogamy than "no shame, no guilt, polyamorous fucking for all" society.
If we start off with "there is free love equal rights men and women both are able to sleep around nobody cares society" versus "monogamous relationship society", we have to check that against "and does this hold up in the real world?", else we might as well put it down to "aliens made them do it".
In fact, we've now got "free love equal rights men and women both are able to sleep around nobody cares society", do we have better mean happiness than Monogamy Land? The complaints aired on here backed up with "surveys say", would seem to indicate "no".
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