There is no such rush; most people try to pretend that evolution either doesn’t exist or has no effect upon us. Instead, there is the near-fanatic dogma that we are all born blank states; that we humans are the exception to the principles that shape every other form of life.
In your rush to be snarky and clever you failed to read the actual post. Note that I mentioned that social enforcement of female fidelity was a universal characteristic of advanced civilizations, in other words, folks who had developed past the hunter-gatherer stage. But apparently the knee is just too fun to jerk.
(Thought experiment: If sexual anarchy is bad for developing civilization, what would be the effect of a shift towards sexual anarchy on the development our even more complex civilization?)
That’s pretty close to what I’d say. Killing a spouse in the heat of passion is intentional homicide and accordingly immoral no matter how you slice it, but it’s perhaps less some degree less evil than coldly calculated premeditated murder.
Okay, reasonable. I guess I’m not used to thinking of civilizations in terms of “advanced” and…I’m not sure, I guess you’d say “primitive.” From my perspective, agriculture has been a pretty brief and often fairly unpleasant phase of human existence that we were pretty much forced into due to population pressures. I’m pretty glad the post-agricultural era seems to be a bit freer, more equal and less disease-ridden.
I’m not convinced sexual anarchy was bad for “developing civilizations.” What evidence do you have for that? It seems to me that increased sexual control was related to a new mode of producing food, not because it was inherently problematic on it’s own. In any case, a lot of things have changed- we have fewer children, women generally are able to support themselves and their children on their own, and we no longer generally face food shortages. This alone eliminates a lot of the reasons for sexual control, and I don’t see why giving them up would lead to widespread bad.
Morality is all about the decisions people make and the reasons they make those decisions. For example we can’t view all killings as morally equal, if I run a red light and accidentally kill someone I think we can all agree that is far different from the moral decision making that say, Ted Bundy engaged in when he decided to rape and murder women to satisfy deeply seated urges that had taken over his life.
From a strict morality viewpoint, if someone comes in and sees their wife with another man and kills her because it has angered them or because they are jealous, that is definitively immoral.
If they come in and see their wife with another man, and they become “so engulfed in rage” that they genuinely lose the ability to make decisions based on right and wrong, then I don’t know how I view that morally. I mean if someone is legitimately no longer in control of their decision making I have a hard time holding them morally responsible.
Now, my very basic understanding of human psychology is that 99.99% (probably more) of people who kill cheating spouses do it out of “simple” anger and jealousy, not because they entered some “berserker” state where they genuinely lost control of their decision making.
From a “practical” standpoint, anyone who would kill because of that (be it a “deliberate” killing or a killing because the person was temporarily insane) is not someone I want to associate with. In my life I’ve known a few people with anger issues such that I think they are capable of doing something like this, I’ve always tried to limit my involvement with them. I’d definitely totally eliminate someone from my life if they were a confirmed killer.
Killing a spouse because you want to get rid of her and marry someone else (but don’t want to go through the legal pain of a divorce), or killing a spouse to enrich yourself through insurance money seems far worse to me than the scenario of this thread. Why? Because even the person who is just a genuinely bad person who decides to kill his wife because he’s mad at her for cheating is someone who has made an immoral decision in the heat of the moment. A person killing for insurance money has had to plan it out (usually) over a long period of time and has in effect repeatedly and in serial made immoral decisions culminating with the decision to actually kill.
I’m no biologist or sociologist but I’ve had enough academic exposure to both fields to know that there’s very little consensus on what aspects of human behavior are based on evolution and which are based on cultural mores. You’ll find wildly different opinions across both disciplines and on most aspects of human behavior.
So I find it very surprising when people with no real authority on the matter are so quick to basically ascribe whatever strikes their fancy to one or the other. I sort of doubt (and I’ll be happy if there is evidence to the contrary) that you did any sort of analysis of scientific data or studies when you started ascribing the human behaviors in this thread to evolution.
Seriously? Aside from those who have exceptionally wide boundaries that make sexual encounters with others acceptable I don’t know how many people would agree. For most of us, finding our spouse in bed with someone else would constitute a serious betrayal and would be a great source of emotional distress. Anger in such a situation is certainly an appropriate and reasonable emotion to have at such times. Though I certainly do not believe murdering either person would be moral.
AHunter3’s response is probably typical of someone who runs in polygamous circles or other subcultures that are widely out of touch with the rest of society.
There’s no right or wrong, but the “reality” is that for 95%+ of the Western world, both women and men expect after a certain time that they are in a monogamous relationship. Eventually this is cemented by actions like moving in together, and maybe even getting married (thus making the monogamous nature of the relationship enshrined in ancient tradition and vows.)
Is it an act of “great evil” if one of the parties cheats? No, but it is immoral. It’s not immoral because you are “owned” by your partner, it is immoral because you’ve essentially entered into a commitment to remain monogamous. If you didn’t want that, the morally correct thing to do would be to tell your partner you no longer wish to uphold that commitment, and then do as you please. Do you have any legal obligation to do so? No.
You also had no moral obligation to enter into a monogamous relationship to begin with, but once you do, it’s a “promise” and breaking it is immoral because you’re hurting someone else’s feelings for the sole reason that you did not want to inconvenience yourself by being honest and telling them you weren’t interested in remaining exclusive.
An analogy for me would be:
You agree to pick a friend up from the airport on Tuesday morning. When Tuesday morning rolls around, you decide you’d rather go see a movie instead. So you blow off your friend, don’t bother to tell them, and go see a movie.
Is going to see a movie immoral? No. Do you have a moral obligation to pick up friends from the airport? Not by default, no.
However, your actions in that analogy are immoral because you’ve made a commitment to pick your friend up from the airport. Essentially you are lying (immoral) when you say you’re going to do one thing and then you do another.
Monogamy is the same way, you aren’t intrinsically bound by it. But once you enter a monogamous relationship it is definitely immoral to cheat, if you decide you want to have sex with other people, you should communicate it to your present partner. If they’re cool with that, great, everyone is happy. But if not, you need to be willing to end the relationship to pursue your other desires.
It’s a grossly disproportionate response. Breaking a marriage vow does not equal a loss of life. A proportionate response would be either getting a divorce (you broke the marriage vow therefore our marriage no longer exists) or having an affair of your own (I will retaliate by breaking my marriage vow in the same manner you did).
Right you are; but I’d suggest a third option; ask if you may be allowed to join them.
I can definitely wrap my mind around it, betrayal of intimate trust can feel as physically painful as actual injuries. Whether I could be friends with them out of fear for myself, depends on whether the act was evidence of a preexisting instability, or whether it truly was solely within that context.
But definitely, it’s immoral. Even regular, eye-for-an-eye vengeance is questionable as to it’s morality. Vengeance for which the consequence (2 murders) is many orders of magnitude worse than the crime (1 infidelity) is without a doubt severely immoral.
That’s not actually the point. Your actions benefit the group. By killing the errant spouse, you send a message to others that this is what happens when someone errs and they’ll be less likely to err from their spouses.
That’s the theory, anyway. 
In the modern case, I’m surprised that no one so far has made the case for self-defence. “Yes, my lord, they were angry at my discovering them. It was self-defence. I had to kill them before they killed me.” This works better in America where you could reasonably expect one or the other to have ready access to a firearm: “Yes, your honour, they started to reach for the gun we keep by the side of the bed so I had to pull mine and shoot them.”
I agree that I could never personally be comfortable with someone who has murdered out of jealous anger, but morally I consider premeditated, calculating, deliberate murder for gain to be far worse.
I guess that I can find a hot-blooded murderer, if not excusable, at least more understandable than a cold-blooded murderer. The former at least one could imagine the possibility of feeling sincere remorse, repentance (however useless) and even possibly some sort or redemption; the latter, not so much.
You have got to be kidding. Cheating is wrong in a purely personal morality sense, but it’s something that every individual has a perfectly valid right to choose without having to face violent retaliation.
Murder is murder.
I would not associate with the murderer in any way. If someone with whom I associate was going to come in contact with the murder, I would warn that person. Same goes if the murderer was not a murderer, but was violent or abusive.
The choice to cheat is invalid. Fullstop. Violent retaliation is also an invalid choice, but that doesn’t mean the cheater isnt’ scum.
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If Gerber baby food is good for developing bodies, what would be the effect of shifting to a different diet?
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No need to consider it a “thought” experiment – we have real experiments (e.g. the US and Europe on one hand, and Saudi Arabia and Iran on the other), and can observe which civilization develops and which civilization gets by on importing and copying the other one’s works.
Wrong. If it was that invalid, there would be criminal punishment for it. Cheating is as natural and routine as any other human behavior.
Cheating is validated constantly, not only when people do it, but when people use cheating as a springboard to a successful relationship.
No, the two behaviors are on completely different levels. Murder is a crime. It is per se immoral and it is unforgivable.
Cheating is just standard human behavior. It’s shitty, but so is stiffing your waitress or cutting off another driver. It’s nowhere in the league of murder. It’s likely that more than half the people you know have cheated at some point in their lives.
Hmm I don’t know how I’d feel about ‘hanging around with them’, but I think I’d certainly be sympathetic towards them.
I remember a case near me recently on a small canal boat. Person A and person B were man and wife and lived on the canal boat with their young son, person C was person A’s best friend. Persons A, B and C had been drinking and went back to the canal boat and drank some more. Person A went to bed in the cabin with their young son. Person A woke up in the middle of the night and caught persons B and C in the middle of having sex. According to the evidence of person A he flew in to a rage and cannot remember what happened next, but the next thing he remembers is finding persons B and C stabbed and holding a bloody knife in his hand, he immediately phoned the police and ambulance and tried to administer first aid, but persons B and C died shortly afterwards.
Though Person A maintained he could not remember the deaths he never denies that he is not responsible for them and he is charged with murder. When the case came to court he pleaded gulity to manslaughter on grounds of diminshed responsibilty (US equivalent 2nd degree murder?). I think the case did go to trial and he was found not guilty of murder, but guilty of manslaughter and though he got a reasonably lengthy sentence, it was nothing to what he would’ve got if he had been convicted of murder.
I found myself feeling quite sympathetic towards him. In English law great store is set on what the ‘reasonable man’ would do when confronted with a situation and it’s difficult to legislate against extreme reactions to extreme situations.