Uh... What?

What Makes Married Men Want to Have Affairs? -- New York Magazine: "'There is no more unnatural principle of social organization than sexual exclusivity.' But like other of my male sources, he didn't want me to use his name. 'Don't get me divorced!' was the refrain. All of these guys nursed a fantasy, as quaintly surreal as an old tinted postcard, of a perfectible world in which we might have sex outside our primary relationships and say that it doesn't mean anything."

Uh... what? I know I just finished reading The Myth of Monogamy and everything, but I seem to recall the book spending the bulk of its last chapter saying "We've just proven that monogamy only occurs in species where there is no other alternative, and yet some humans can actually be monogamous and we don't know why. Ain't that a coinky-dink?" I, of course, have much more to say on the subject, but the short and not-so-sweet version is that we as rational thinking beings have an obligation to act morally and not just fuck everything we feel like fucking. Is that so hard?

The answer is yes, it is quite fucking hard. All of my reading, all of my research, all of the time I have focused on understanding the raw elements of adulterous douchebaggery, I still draw a blank. The experts can give justifications and theories, and point out the relative successes and failures of competing reproductive strategies. They can even tell us what men and women find attractive in the opposite sex and why. But I have yet to find any real explanation for why the same species that can derive calculus, split the atom, culture penicillin, and sculpt the statue of David is the same species that can look a loved one in the eye and say such sick banalities like "Oh, the trip was fun. I had a good time," or "he's just a friend."

If you ask me, we have an obligation to fight our own genes. Richard Dawkins would argue that we can't, but I hold high the belief that success or failure from a probabilistic standpoint should not preclude us from ever trying. We are better beings than birds and monkeys, rutting in the trees and conniving our next mating just to try putting one more of our eggs in someone else's nest. Perhaps "we" is too strong of a word, since I know that "we" are in fact not better than the chimps and chickadees. I know that I am a better being than that. I believe that other such better beings exist, and that there is a better future for us all than just being bred out of existence by the douchebags of the world.

If I believed otherwise for even a single second, I'd probably put a gun in my mouth.