dating – Becoming Human

Mononormativity

“It seems certain that the habit of marriage has been gradually developed, and that almost promiscuous intercourse was once extremely common throughout the world.” – Darwin, The Descent of Man

Let me add a few more words of explanation to what I wrote yesterday on the subject of mononormativity, a term coined by Pieper and Bauer (2005) to refer to the normative social matrix of monogamy in its various cultural manifestations. Sociological research into mononormativity is very much in its infancy, meaning that unfortunately there is not a lot I can base myself on in order precisely to map the concept and its influence (I think we have some idea of the economic circumstances under which the monogamous norm developed, but little real grasp on the social mechanisms which maintain and enforce it).

When I was fourteen, the world around me, uninvited, started changing. The hitherto somewhat annoying subspecies known as “girls” suddenly became objects of intense fascination – and intense fraternal rivalry. Handicapped by my childhood emotional injuries, and with no manual to follow, I was ill-placed to play this game. It didn’t take long for this to become clear to me, and so, rather than make a fool of myself, I placed my erotic ambitions on hold; instead I focused on getting into a position of financial independence from which I imagined I would be better able to shape my life. At fifteen, I developed generalized fasciculations which, though it turned out they were benign, I was convinced were the onset of a muscular wasting disease. This was the state in which I spent all of my later teens and my college years.

My pubescent sexuality was born into a social context, one in which I knew, was linked to and cared about the objects of my affection; but it was soon divorced from it. Unable to develop in an integrated way, the sexual drive was transferred to images and fantasms, objects without social context and unable to receive love, with which I engaged in a perplexed monologue. I am sure I am describing here the sexual development of a majority of teenage boys of my cohort in our culture.

Several years ago I did quite a bit of work on my childhood traumas, but this particular, pubescent trauma I never paid much attention to. I have at least the impression that it is generally supposed in psychoanalysis that the resolution of earlier experiences will also resolve later ones and that these latter need no special attention. But this, I now think, is not true; this part of my life also needed to be revisited. Until recently, I had never given it much thought.

In fact I did not give it any thought recently either, but I received a gift of healing during a shamanic soul retrieval session which specifically related to this, and since then I have actively been trying to make friends again not only with my inner child, but also my inner fourteen-year-old : a much unloved and forgotten creature. That I suddenly adopt a caring attitude to him, asking him to contribute to my adult life, is, I am sure, a great and unexpected relief to him.

Pubescent male sexuality is a bubbling soup. The objects of ones affections are not chosen according to some fixed set of preferences: it is a time of experimentation, and tactical opportunism, a game in which one seeks to optimize a complex equation involving not only the girl one is dating and sexual payoffs, but also ones reputation and position in the group. Exclusive partnering, advocated usually by the girls, who to be fair also need a mating strategy, is discovered to be part of the rules of the game, adaptation to which is a pragmatic necessity; it is, however, absolutely alien to the subjective experience and every teenage boy knows it. We are by nature polyamorous, but once we discover the sweet pleasures of the union of body and soul, we dive deeply into it, forgetting, in the intoxication, that the circumstances which enabled it had a lot to do with pure chance and assuming that the rules we played by enabled the reward we obtained.

I think it is by now an established scientific fact that, even if sexual appetite may experience a monogamous phase at the outset of a relationship, this does not last for very long. Monogamy in the early days of a relationship may be natural, but subsequently it is only a choice – or no choice at all. Nevertheless, not only the myth, but the institutions of monogamy pervade society, compelling an unnatural compliance with their dictates on pain of social disopprobium, ostracism or worse. In the same way as society is androcentric and heteronormative, it is mononormative.

Mononormativity does violence to our biological nature and severely limits our extraordinary ability and desire to love. And as I have argued elsewhere, restoration of our biological nature is a prerequisite of sustained spiritual growth, at least at the community level, because human beings are not going collectively to be happy in an environment to which they are biologically unadapted.

In its origins, tantra was as iconoclastic in regard to mononormativity as it was in relation to other social institutions such as diet and the caste system. Tantric practitioners frequently did not even know the identity of the person with whom they entered into sacred union. All this though, of course, was devised in a world far removed from our own. Today, the central image of Shiva and Shakti in yabyum enjoys wide appeal in part because it can easily seem (although this is clearly an incorrect interpretation) to endorse the primacy of monogamy – these primal characters are indeed destined to each other and alone in the universe.

Now, while some schools of tantra orient themselves towards couples practice, this is certainly not generally the case: indeed I know few practitioners who are, by conviction, much less de facto, monogamous in the traditional sense. Nevertheless, I would maintain that societal mononormativity influences practice more subtly. People may embrace a rarefied, ritualized interaction with the opposite sex, even a very intimate one, but they do it in a spirit of dissociation from the biological foundation of their sexuality, in a way which is almost ascetic, and certainly unerotic.

My inner fourteen-year-old is mystified by this disenchantment. He wants a place at the table. He likes it messy and raw. Indeed, this for him is alignment with ecstasy; the ascetic, transcendent imagery is incomprehensible.

We can live a life in alignment with spirit only if we are aligned with our biological nature. Then life’s experiences wake us up, move us in new directions, bring healing and creativity; just as falling in love always has, the world over. We are in a state of bliss when we are constantly falling in love with all around us, the physical and biological world and also our fellow human beings. For me, if I review my life, my sexual instinct has always been the major driver of healing and renewal. But that instinct, like the spirit, blows where it will. I am not its master; and in fact I am not the master of anything about myself, I am more like a servant of myself, curious to discover who I am and what I can do and experience in the world. This attitude of humility and service towards ones own essence is, I think, key to the spiritual life and to alignment and abundance.

This is why I insist that all notions of mononormativity within a couple must be banished if its component parts are serious about their spiritual life, and indeed about living their relationship as an adventure in growth and healing. One simply cannot place any a priori constraints on where the breath of spirit may blow. Because we have absolutely no idea, not even the remotest basis for an idea. Radical honesty within a couple only makes any sense if it is based on radical honesty to oneself, a person one cannot presume to know but is always discovering. One cannot bind this unknown self. Indeed, the discovery of self, this unbinding of Prometheus, is the spiritual path.

I do not think this makes dyadic relationships impossible or even undesirable, but I think it is a very strict condition regarding which, at the level of aspiration and shared values at least, no compromise is possible. When desire taps on my shoulder, that is a moment of opportunity and rebirth. I owe it to myself, my partner, and the world, to greet her with open arms.

Playing the Game: What Pick-Up Artists Do and Don’t Know about Human Nature

In recent months I have been renewing my acquaintance with some of the work of those writers and coaches which aim to help men get on dates with women, often known as “pick-up artists” or PUAs. When I first encountered the PUA subculture, about ten years ago, most of the writings were underground, self-published and reviewed only on similarly underground internet forums. Each of the big names had their admirers and detractors, and there was quite a personality cult around each of them and rivalry between them.

The scene started to grab public attention with the publication in 2005 of Neil Strauss‘s semi-autobiographical The Game. Strauss, then a journalist, initially entered the PUA world with the objective of writing about it, but got more sucked in than he expected. He now runs a dating school, Stylelife Academy, though he has also continued his writing career. I was introduced to Strauss through Chris Ryan‘s podcast Tangentially Speaking, and got curious enough to buy the book, which is not entirely a training manual and in fact quite a good read, not without some worthwhile philosophical reflections on the experiences which turned him from being an average guy (“AFC” or Average Frustrated Chump in the lingo) into a guy who could date celebrities with ease. I later went on to study some of the material in his sequel Rules of the Game, and some of the online courses of the Stylelife Academy, before discovering another coach, Nick Savoy of LoveSystems, author of the dating guide Magic Bullets. Savoy, a Harvard MBA graduate, took over from Strauss’s mentor, known by his pseudonym Mystery, and is probably the most prominent exponent of the field today.

I have no particular desire for a lifestyle involving the dating of endless streams of beautiful women – well no more than the next guy anyway 😉 – but the material attracted me nonetheless. Savoy, Strauss and others have gathered together material which can have a considerable impact on ones self-confidence, self-image, and life. Although the stress remains on dating, they are also aware of this wider dimension, without which the whole enterprise really doesn’t make a lot of sense. Whilst some of the criticism has been predictable (claims that the material teaches men to manipulate women), the PUAs strongly defend their corner. This is material, they say, to make men into better men and therefore is good for women and men alike. Whilst individual cases may vary, on the whole this claim seems to me justified. A dating coach does not offer a complete program of personal self-transformation, but he certainly may help men to overcome one of their major self-esteem issues. And that is definitely a step in the right direction, as this article by a traveller on the PUA path shows.

The infant science of dating for men, it seems to me, has as much of the potential for self-transformation which Daniele Bolelli, in his poetic and provocative book The Way of the Warrior, ascribes to the martial arts. Bolelli argues that the martial arts offer a way for us to confront our fear of physical force being used against us, and, by means of this concrete channel, also a host of other, less tangible fears. The argument may be a little overstated, but it is clear that the dating arts, i.e. the art of erotic encounter, addresses another core fear which dominates the psyche of many men: that of being unattractive, rejected and abandoned by women. Facing your fears and the lies about yourself which you have absorbed is always a path to personal growth. Certainly, the PUA path, at least as currently articulated, also plays into other male fantasies of multiple, uncommitted sexual relationships and endless youth, and may, if reports are to be believed, enable those fantasies to be extended almost indefinitely; but that is no more a reason to reject this body of knowledge and the discipline that might attend it than the testosterone-soaked glorification of violence in certain martial arts circles is a reason to reject the martial arts themselves.

Unlike the martial arts, however, the dating arts are in their infancy, and they have not been founded by figures who have surpassed their ego and are merely in the service of mankind. At least, their founding fathers make no such lofty claim. The dating arts are more at the stage of trial and error of what works in the field, with only a limited degree of codification.

The lack of codification and of serious cross-cultural study are to be expected in the infancy of a science, and may indeed to a degree be inevitable. Indeed, even the martial arts have no universal fighting techniques, despite what some may claim: opponents adapt and so must your strategy. This is true many times over in the dating world, which, even if there is a biological layer, is quintessentially cultural. A student of the dating arts would do better to follow the Taoist philosophy of Jeet Kune Do founder Bruce Lee, rather than the Confucian and Shinto precepts underlying many classical martial arts. Learning is useful but only if it is internalized and put at the service of a personal goal: only, indeed, if once learnt it is forgotten. The techniques of dating artistry are doubtless best used as scaffolding, not as a temple. As Lee said, “Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot”.

But my purpose here is not to review the PUAs’ materials and approaches. Nor is it to do more than suggest that readers might find them, even if they remain rudimentary, a useful component on their path of personal growth – they are worth exploring for this reason alone. However, I want to look at this phenomenon firstly as a source of evidence as to sexual and social bonding behaviour patterns which we manifest, but are unaware of. In principle, the PUAs and their many acolytes are sitting on a ton of experimental data which, unfortunately, no one in academia seems so far to be taking seriously and investigating.

This evidence of course is weakly structured and heavily framed in terms of certain underlying assumptions which act as axioms within the systems and are therefore not falsifiable. Whilst most of society has preferred to ignore the PUA phenomenon or has ploughed into it in terms of the usual old-feminist male stereotypes, a few observant authors have noted that the account given by the PUAs of evolutionary biology, and which underlies their systems, is oversimplified and wrong in a number of particulars (see for instance here). This begs the question of how not only the techniques, but the whole philosophy of the dating systems might change if they were brought better into line with not only our dominant forms of social conditioning, an American version of which they reflect reasonably well, but also our actual biological nature.

Thus in chapter 3 of Magic Bullets, Savoy treats us to a very Dawkinian account of natural selection, effectively ignoring the fact – although he acknowledges it elsewhere – that individuals do not survive well in groups which have perished. Rage as many evolutionary psychologists might, there is overwhelming evidence that human behaviour is cooperative. The biological basis of mate selection is unlikely to be antagonistic to this trait.

For the purposes of this article, let’s ask the following question: how would Savoy’s theories of attraction fare if our underlying biology is not akin to Dawkin’s caricature, but more accurately portrayed in Sex at Dawn, including perhaps my own thoughts regarding ancestral mate selection? Indeed, society does not operate even remotely on the cutthroat basis that Savoy proposes, certainly not now and probably not in the remote past either. Men and women may be bad at meeting each other, but eventually they end up doing that and nearly everyone gets a slice of the evolutionary pie. They may not get the slice they would have wished for, but their genes do not die out. That genes, at any point in human history, have died out in significant numbers because of failure to mate (other than as a result of death) lacks, as far as I am aware, any evidence in its support. So there is a process of preference at work, which eventually results in sexual selection of genes, but it is not of the cutthroat nature Savoy portrays.

The same can be said of the idea that the father plays a significant role in raising and protecting offspring and that the extent to which he successfully acquits himself of this role predicts the procreative success of his progeny. In agricultural societies, it may be that this factor contributes to the ultimate social status of progeny, and the ultimate destiny of their genetic traits, but not their immediate reproductive success. In hunter-gatherer societies, and hence in our underlying biology, this factor is probably not relevant at all. In other words, mate selection is, to a large extent, learned behavior.

Some might say, so what: whether cultural or biological, isn’t the effect the same? Well, learned behavior exhibits much more variety and changes much more quickly, so it is dangerous to assume that it is universal in the way that the PUAs do. But more fundamentally, it seems to me that this formulation is inconsistent with what it is that PUAs actually do in the field and with the whole logical structure of their methodologies. In fact, dating artistry consists of two phases, logically sequential but temporally superimposed. In the first phase, the PUAs try to play off learnt behavior: for example the signals of status which certain behaviors, attributes and accessories convey. These create interest and attraction. However, attraction is not mate selection in the way that the PUAs conceptualize it: it is much more ephemeral. Much of it is about making excuses to ourselves for behaving in the way we are biologically programmed to: that is, promiscuously. This becomes evident in the later stages of seduction, until the social context rears again its head and relationships need labels. So in fact, what the PUAs do is exploit weak spots in female social armoring in order to activate underlying impulses which do correspond to more universal biology, but this biology has little in common with their account of it.

Correcting the assumptions might not necessarily change very much for those who merely want to overcome their shyness with girls and become, in this sense, more in control of their own destiny. For such people, an accurate account of social conditioning and a vague idea of the biological nature which underlies it (such as the actual desire of women for sex) are enough.

But this is just entry level. For those who question whether the goal of having one or more desirable women on ones arm is intrinsically as opposed to merely socially valuable and are more curious about human relationships and their potential, however, a better understanding of the processes may change a lot: it may fundamentally change where you end up and what you get out of it.

Indeed most of us have ambition to graduate beyond a game. Games are fun, up to a certain point; but mating is a key part of our biological makeup and we need to respect its deeper mysteries, because it has a lot to teach us. Indeed, master PUAs may have immense success in the initial stages, but, many, like the tragic example of Mystery in The Game, find it afterwards even more difficult than others to be content with the relationship institutions which society has preordained for them. This is not only, as many would caricaturise it, a reflection of the male desire for multiple partners and sexual variety which, being potentiated, becomes even more difficult to resist. It is also a reflection of the – equally important but frequently ignored – male desire for commitment and depth, within the confines of arrangements which respect this biology. Attracting partners using a discourse which is incompatible with this goal, but rather relies on the dominant social mores, seems in this case to be a recipe for short-term success, but long-term failure.

So how does an ethical non-monogamist, or whatever your favourite label is for someone who has figured out what kind of creature we all are, play this game if it is based on assumptions which he does not share?

Damned if I know. Perhaps one day enough people will have enough field experience with trying to answer this question that someone will be able to write the book about it, and move mankind beyond its erotic infancy. In the meanwhile, it’s an exciting voyage of discovery.

A spiritual manifesto

When I married my partner, almost to the day five years ago, we, like many couples who are dissatisfied with traditional concepts of marriage, were faced with the challenge of how to formulate our marriage vows and our marriage contract to reflect what it was we at that time really believed was the meaning and content of the commitments we were entering into. We didn’t find a lot of resources out there to help us do that, because every alternative we found – be it polyamorous, Wiccan, or other new age notions – seemed to be envisaged, by its adherents, as a new orthodoxy. That is, it was characterized by a bunch of behavioral prescriptions and once-for-all negotiated space but it did not go to the heart of the sacredness of human relation and of the human person, nor did it reflect truly, for us, the deep spiritual urges underlying the wish to enter into a relationship and to bring up children. So we did our best to find words.

Five years later, and I see the problem in a different light and from a number of new angles. I want therefore to try to propose a solution to it, and I hope I can count on the support of some of the very wise people I have met over the intervening years who have a similar clarity of vision as to what it is that is actually going on in the space of human relationships and its meaning within the context of humankind’s spiritual evolution.

I believe it should be possible to distill, out of the various experiences and movements that have brought us an immense new global consciousness of our human potential, some principles which are perfectly universal and to which any person who has seen beyond her or his conditioning and glimpsed their true nature will find it natural to adhere. Indeed there is no effort of adherence required, merely an effort of formulation. This article is trying only to introduce the concept and some basic ideas; on the basis hereof I hope together with others to arrive at a text which can really find a natural consensus, because it seems to me that on all essential points of it all authentic persons and teachers would agree.

What are the key elements of such a declaration?

Firstly, it seems to me that it must be in the first person. The ancient Hebrews (basing themselves on the even more ancient Sumerians) formulated their code of laws in the second person and credited it with divine sanction. We have been living with it and all its inadequacies for over three thousand years. Its manipulative and paternalistic character as well as its primitive nature are plain to see.

Our new set of principles will not be imposed on us from outside, it will simply emanate from our soul; and it will not serve a purpose of organizing society around a set of ethical precepts, which is a worthy but separate purpose. It will rather serve to communicate and reach out, and its effects will be only in the private sphere.

The new set of principles must be based on a complete renunciation of any claim on the life of another person. We have recognized the evil of slavery and of many social injustices; with the same passion we must recognize the evil of traditional prescriptive family institutions, chief among them marriage. It is a Faustian bargain which 21st century man can no longer tolerate. It predates on mankind’s desperate desire to achieve some measure of spiritual advancement and consolation, and should in its traditional form be simply outlawed: the law should recognize, at it does in so many other areas, that a contract written under such oppressive conditions cannot be binding. This is the principle which has underpinned humanity’s progressive emancipation ever since liberal thinkers began challenging the moral precepts of the church and the inherited social order.

Marriage is not a divine institution, but a contract between two individuals subject to a high degree of social incentive and coercion; marriage as a contract is, however, in almost all cases based on a collective misrepresentation, a social psychosis; even if such misrepresentation is innocent, it seems to me that (whilst I recognize that children enter into the institution without contracting or being able to contract to do so, which is the only remaining justification for a legal marriage regime I can see) all marriage contracts should be voidable by the automatic application of contract law. There is doubtless a need to reformulate the institution of marriage in order to protect the interests of children, rather than abolish it entirely; with this I do not take issue. However, such an altruistic concern is hardly the foundation of marriage law today.

Whilst marriage law is the easiest target because of the institutionalized nature of marriage, an adherent to the declaration will undertake, of course, to recognize patterns of manipulation in all of her or his human relations and both to admit them and to seek to go beyond them, vis a vis children, colleagues, friends and lovers.

The declaration must also be objectively multilateral and subjectively unilateral. There are no parties to the agreement, not even those others who happen to subscribe to the same text. The benefits I accord to you are the same benefits I accord to every human being, not only to those other human beings who are as “enlightened” as myself and still less to one single human being. (Philosophically speaking they may, indeed, not stop at the species boundary either; but for our purposes I think there is no need to develop this).

The text will need to take a form in order to underpin community but it cannot be rigidly formulated or breed hermeneutical bureaucracies. No one need ever tell another what it means or does not mean. No one will certify whether or not my behavior conforms to it in practice.

It should be and can be, I believe, perfectly ecumenical and even scientific. The basis for it is our understanding of how the self is formed, developed in psychoanalysis, and how it acts, developed in psychology more generally. To complete the picture, a simple extrapolation of liberal and humanistic principles on which there is wide agreement is enough.

And what are the advantages?

My hope is that the manifesto will constitute common ground on which spiritual people can build their relationships and communities. Communication can take place around it. Some may consciously decide to derogate from it, and they may have their own reasons for doing so. However, relations between spiritual people may hereby come to take place on a basis which is explicit, not in the shadows of hoped-for shared values and unelucidated conflicts of interest. Simply put, if you adhere joyfully and willingly to the principles set out, a lot is possible between us; if you do not, I am forewarned of the difficulties ahead.

The manifesto will be only a basis, a kind of framework law or constitution. Much will come on top, much that is specific to individuals, couples and groups. However, as a basis for communication and a source of shared understanding from the outset of human interactions, it is an invaluable shortcut which will slash the opportunity costs of building community. I envisage its use across the web as an invitation to authenticity and real dialogue: in social media whether, like Facebook, general in scope or devoted specifically to meeting new people.

I would also like to add that I am not “against” manipulation and even its past institutionalization, I perfectly well understand the circumstances under which it has arisen and the role that it has played and continues to play in human society. It can be argued that the institutions in question, although I qualify them as evil, are in fact a bulwark against greater evil and as such a least-bad social choice. This is not a debate I am entering into. I speak here to persons wishing to leave behind the childhood of the human race and become autonomous, empowered, enlightened individuals. For such people, these legacy institutions are inimical to spiritual growth, and this is the real point. Compromises with civil authorities doubtless need to be found. However, at the heart of what our human relationships are really about, we can all choose. I invite to this choice.

And so finally, what could this manifesto look like? It would be nice to have something memorable, a sort of Aquarian decalogue. It needs to start with my attitude to myself. As I imagine it may be difficult to sum up what needs to be said in ten short headlines, there may need to be a paragraph accompanying each to clarify the meaning, not perhaps for those of us to whom these spiritual principles are intuitive but certainly for those for whom they are not.

I don’t want to write it here as I first want to gather ideas. But let me try, to make it concrete, to give something of the possible flavor:

I understand the origin of my emotionality in my childhood experience
I take responsibility for my own experience of the world
I acknowledge my conditioning and do not seek to defend it
I distinguish between my inner feelings and what is going on in the outer world
I communicate my feelings without blame or criticism
I communicate my needs and wishes without making demands
In managing our common interests and those of those who depend on us, I will treat you with fairness and respect and honor the differences between us
I honor your need for touch and your sexuality
I honor your vulnerability
I speak my truth and listen to yours
I do not instrumentalize or objectivize you
It is my honor to delight you and to serve you

…..

Your thoughts and views are very welcome!