I was watching an old episode of Joe Rogan chatting with Bill Maher* when the topic of monogamy bobbed up and Maher (who will probably die in a hooker’s disgusted arms) offered the classical anti-monogamy argument that chimps, our nearest primate cousins, don’t do monogamy (Hey, Bill, they don’t play piano, either) and that all that “territorial ownership bullshit” (I’m paraphrasing) is a mess. Which is the familiar line that we of the post-Bebop (Aquarian) Generation, were fed. The dawn of the so-called Aquarian Age** coincided with the dawn of the Techno-Media Age, luckily, which meant that we late Boomers were generously fed more Social Engineering Psycho-Babble than TV dinners by the time we were ready to buy our own Right Guard and Binaca with our lunch money. The Social Engineering Psycho-Babble was always disguised as Good Sense while, quite often, it was the opposite***.
I’m not presenting a “monogamy is best, by default” line because I think it’s fairly obvious that monogamous teens and twenty-somethings are doomed to face disappointment (and suicide-inducing marriages, possibly) if they declare the search over, before it’s properly begun, and they bind themselves, in a state of hormone-induced monomania, to the first not-bad stranger who comes pheromoning**** along. On the other hand, too many men seem unaware of the fact that it isn’t only women who have to worry about a biological clock, or two, and that if you haven’t started looking, in a fairly methodical way, for someone to “settle down with,” by the age of, say, 45, at the latest, you may end up travelling on an unknown body of water at an accelerating pace, only to discover, when it’s far too late, that the only paddle you ever had was a trial-version and the markers along the water, which were never really legible, read “SHIT’S CREEK” with increasing clarity…
As it turns out, LOVE, as a functioning, dynamic, enrichingly-two-way experience, is a matter of co-ownership.
If I didn’t own my Wife’s exquisite Pussy (as the practical synecdoche of her Animal Vitality) and if She didn’t own my sturdy Cock (as the practical synecdoche of my Animal Vitality), neither one of us would be able to relax, enough, into a shields-down kind of Trust in order to give/take at a level conducive to mutually satisfying Life-Partnership. You simply will not (cannot) commit if, at the back of your Reptilian Stalk, you entertain the reasonable niggle that Beloved might well run off with Mick Jagger (or Lupita Nyong’o) when the opportunity arises. The endorphins which soak me to my toe-tips when I am to-the-hilt in My Beloved Wife are only possible because I know, without a doubt, that her velvet scabbard is mine, through and through. Likewise, I bring her (sometimes it takes three minutes, sometimes it takes six) to shuddering, sheets-clutching climax because she knows my tongue is actually more Hers than mine and certainly nobody else’s. She seems to suck my cock with a level of detailed attention concomitant with the notion that the cock is Her device. This ownership-pleasure-circuit is a hot fuse of ancient mammal design and not to be underestimated.
(Interesting Corollary, which I will thumbnail directly below, in one sketchy paragraph called Heterosexuality IS Capitalism [classical Queerness veering closer to Kollektivist theories of distribution], not as a Manifesto but as food for thought:
Heterosexuality IS Capitalism. Human Females were the first Currency and the first Start-Ups yet didn’t have the physical power to enforce being the first Moguls of the Currency they monopolized by embodying. When, at the dawn of human existence, half the Population (A) has something (X) that the other half (B) wants in a way that this want can verge on being a maddening obsession, and (A) needs a service (Y) that (B) can provide in exchange, you have a primordial Market (M) [where X=Sex and Y= Security]. The market (M) is made more complex by the fact that certain among (A)…. call them (A-1)… are more desirable to (B) than the average, while certain among (B)… call them (B-1)… are better at providing (Y) than the average (where (B-1) are generally more clever and/or physically more powerful males and (A-1) are physically more attractive females). The not-so-numerous mutual-benefits partnerships of (A-1)/(B-1) were the first forms of Royalty. The far more numerous (subordinate) mutual-benefits partnerships of (A)/(B) formed the first Market-Kingdoms. The fact that the superior desirability of (A-1) over (A) is neither rational, nor proportional to the utilitarian superiority of advantages conferred by (B-1) over (B) illustrates the ongoing conundrum of Capitalism’s tendency toward Artificial Demand (amplified in the Media Age by Advertizing) as a function of the hypo-Logical agency of Longing, the key indefinable term in Capitalism’s fuzzy syllogisms. If, at the beginning of human existence, there was no distinction-by-consensus between (A-1) and (A), the eventual development of such a distinction… (Z)… reflected the cultural rise of Longing, the parent of Religion, Aesthetics and Modernity.
The bond between Parent and Child, as well: “That’s MY Dad!” and “That’s our DAUGHTER!” and “Here comes MY Mom!” and so forth. The natural, unpremeditated and Ego-reassuring comfort in the publicly-pronounced identification.
I know “modern” parent types who have their poor kids calling them by their first names! This is tragic; it’s also probably unethical and it cheats the children out of the first really powerful ownership-connection between one’s Self and the crucial epiphenomena of the big Humans who birthed, housed and fed one. Parents who have their kids calling them “Joe” and “Wendy” are really just trying to get away with palming the kids off on the nurturing capabilities of a Hypothetical Aboriginal Daycare Village of Legendary Antiquity they will never manage to will into contemporary existence, no matter how emotionally cut-off they are from their children.
Yeah: Ego… Possessions… what of it?
The point is not the eradication of what is clearly a naturally (constructively) Human relationship with The World merely because the extreme form of these impulses wreak havoc; the point is the maintenance of Reasonable Balances.
—My Wife and I own one another but we are not each other’s objects.
—My Wife and I own rather less of Daughter (and She, us) than we own each other… the Parent/ Child relationship is proportionally lighter in the “ownership” clause in order to leave space for Daughter to find her own Adult Relationships (when the time comes) and for Wife and I to have space enough to maintain the intensity of our Adult relationship even as we raise Daughter.
Possession is not in and of itself “bad” and even the need for the private property of one’s own tatty little material objects (even dogs love, territorially, their bones and squeeze toys, after all) is fine; is good (contra the insinuations of De Ebil WEF). The issue being the huge gap between loving one’s shoes or bike or camera and owning a fucking island or half a city or an actual percentage point of the Global Economy. Who could be such an Adolescent that he/she doesn’t get the distinction between the benign (rational) need to Own/Possess something of The World, as a stable connection to it, as a healthy anti-Nihilist anchor in Life, and the pathological inability to know when enough is enough?
Well, Bill Maher (poor fuck), for one.
*Watching Rogan’s podcast, once a month, is a good way to keep track of trends in Incel Culture, which is a good way to be ready when any number of obviously-in-the-works Color Revolutions kick off in one’s vicinity.
**Astronomically speaking: not really near to commencing for another 2,000 years.
***Like, for example, the very bad rap that “FEAR” was given. In Dune we get the famous line “Fear is the mind-killer!” Uh, no it’s not, you pseudo-mystical fuckhead: the ability to “FEAR” is hardwired into the organism in order, potentially, to protect it. Neurotic Fear (of, say, the color brown, or of cat’s tongues) is one thing; the FEAR of wild animals, guns, fire and great heights may save your Life one day. I always suspected that the Cult of “Fearlessness” (and Extreme Sports) was pushed on us (esp. on Young Men) by military interests…
****My SpellCheck™ resents me.
***** A move you don’t want to make before having a pretty good idea about what spins your secret pinwheel or sets your teeth on edge.
THE IMPERIALIST 