Just a Gwai Lo - fun within prescribed limits

Glenn Parton writes a daring essay called Love Politics: A Case Against Monogamy which Dave Pollard accurately says echoes the radical and remarkable ideas of James W. Prescott's ideas on the origins of violence. Parton argues that the origin of our environmental crises as well as political crises orginate not in Western Christianity as Lynn White suggests, nor does it originate in totalitarian agricutlure as Jared Diamond suggests, but in the first man's decision to "own" a woman.

First the weaknesses of the essay, and they are debilitating ones. The last sentence of first paragraph (“That Americans do not see the obvious truth is amply demonstrated by the popularity of George W. Bush.”) effectively dates the article, making it a 2004 polemic rather than a timeless critique. This error—and it is my intention not to defend George W. Bush or Americans by supporting the man and people being criticized but rather to dismiss the device of criticizing a contemporary (and temporary) figure to make a larger point—is not the most eggregious, however. If Parton's intention was to engage the people's whose behaviour he wants to change, he could not have picked a worse way to write the following paragraph:

Education is not the primary path for social change because the biggest obstacle we moderns face is not widespread ignorance, but manufactured stupidity, the arresting and distortion of human nature by culture. Americans are arguably the stupidest people on earth, informed and entertained by the infantile and adolescent nonsense of TV and Hollywood. We have forgotten what our tribal ancestors knew, and not (yet?) broken through to high/integral reason that surpasses but also preserves old knowledge. Our knowledge is more and more manipulation of nature and each other, in terms of which we are the very best, the number one country in the world.

Instead of making an excellent point about so-called "education" that treats teaches the same information in the same way over and over, which he does in the first sentence, Parton loses everything he could have gained from pursuing a nuanced argument and calls the people he is trying to convert to his point of view idiots. And far be it from Parton to use the media of TV and Hollywood to his benefit: instead of using the "installed base" of either media to spread his message, he not merely dismisses them entirely but ridicules those who "use" the media.

A third weakness is the use of mysticism, exemplified in the following sentence: “Monogamous couples are, for the most part, sexually asleep, not alive, not sensitive, to the secret stimuli of Gaia and the dance of the cosmos.” "Secret stimuli"? "Gaia"? "Dance of the cosmos"? Please. Fourth, Parton cites at length from Frederick Engels. Since Engels is strongly associated in the American mind with communism, and add that to the multiple negative references to private property and the over-use of the word "social" (an adjective that often reverses the meaning of the noun following it), the result is an rather large obstacle for Parton—largely of his own construction&mdsah;to overcome. If all that wasn't bad enough, I fully expected Parton to cite science fiction writer Robert Heinlein so that I could nod in knowing agreement of some of the ideas Heinlein had about marriage and sexuality. Instead, mysticism, partisanship, and anti-Americanism.

The essay make strong points in other areas, as the ideas of monogamy as boring and as encouraging isolation and lonliness are compelling. Parton directs significant effort towards focussing on the appropriateness of loving multiple people. This may not be as radical an idea as either Parton or Parton's readers are led to believe: we all love our friends, but the stigma is in the declaration of that love, not in its actions—which include but are not limited to opening up about one's secrets and speaking passionatly about what you believe in. The ultimate expression of love—or so we are led to believe from the diffusion agents of Western culture—is sex, but Parton here is arguing that sex is a natural expression of both our love and attraction to the people around us. An excellent recent discussion about sexually-attractive friends has led me to reconsider how I appreciate the company of my sexually-attractive friends and the appropriateness of the one-time sexual advance as well as the appropriateness of mutual pity sex.

Parton unfortunately weakens what should be an easy sell to many people. Teenagers, for one, have already bought into the idea that one or no sexual partner is something to be avoided. The problem is not that monogamy is increasingly (but not fully) discredited among teens, but rather the anonymous nature of hook-ups and the nature of sexual education, which preaches either safety or abstinence, but not how to do it right or how to get it in the first place. Parton fails to cover this generation which, as Marty Beckerman is fond of noting, is our future. Parton, in short, makes an interesting argument worth considering seriously. He just does it badly.