So I was reading this article that says, how most species do not recognise the concept of fidelity, and how it is not a natural thing for any specie including the human being. And I ve heard such arguments countless times before (mostly when people want to justify their own infidel behaviours).
Well, sure, it's not natural. Even human being don't just have a natural instinct to stay faithful -but then the social structure is such that they condition themselves into it, make constant efforts to get there. And it would be wrong to condemn everything that goes as a "social" norm - which often people take up as a practice.
The coin had two side, so does the societal conditioning. Depending upon what society you are born in , and what values you are brought up with you develop a belief system, and I think it is not justified for anybody to condemn it with the comment that this is against nature.
Let me take the example of the lions - the kings of the jungle, the wild. When a new male appears on the horizon, he challenges the existing male of the lion family for the possession of the female lioness (I wanted to say affection initially – but then come on, who are we kidding). So they fight a bloody battle . . . till one of them is killed. Let's say our old head of the family is killed and a new lion is reinstated as the king. Among the first things he does, besides fertilizing the lioness is the fact that he hunts down every cub of the previous king, and kills it. And the lioness, can do nothing, but watch or maybe turn a blind eye.
Maternal instincts are natural aren't they? So how does she let this happen? Or how helpless she might be to let something like this happen?
And this behaviour may not be entirely unheard of - the history is replete with incidents bordering the barbarism of untamed lions, and power tussles just as gory as the one above.
And that's why I feel, society is not such a bad thing. It has in it a collective consciousness of generations, which we are quick to overlook when the ways of the world do not suite our bidding. Yet we all live in it, and survive within its dominion, so maybe deep in our hearts we all know how imperative it is to our survival.
Ours is supposed to be a generation that is unable to grasp or rather truly appreciate the concept of marriage. We are more whimsical and accustomed to getting most our whims satisfied. We are in a time where everything comes easy, so we believe - why work hard for anything at all. Alright, so u do not do the hard work, you do not fight the "natural instincts"– but then don't crib that your emotional life is a hell, and your escapades with the opposite sex meaningless.
And please don't say that the society should change its way of thinking and that polygamy or whatever should be an accepted norm. It will bring in a lot of other natural instincts into direct conflict, and you don't want to get there.
To sum it all up, we are often quick to jump to conclusions that society is bad, the conditioning is bad, and the mind blocks are unfair. But take a moment and think - what if we weren't the civilised race, what if we too just lived by nature and instincts all the time, what if all we had to worry about was food and survival every moment . . .
And, I can't help recalling this episode from FRIENDS (yeah yeah I am all fixated with it) where Monica tells Chandler that she does not believe in soul mates, but she does believe in the fact that they are two individuals who love each other and work hard at their marriage – some days work really hard.
:)
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