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Polyamory: Freedom of the Heart |
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((I’m losing the computer, so I decided to put all of the lists and writings that I didn’t want to delete in my journal.))
Eddie Hurley
1201-01
Final Draft, Argument
12/6/10
Polyamory: Freedom of the Heart
Love is abstract. That, and the intensity with which it affects most people, is why it has been the focus of so many stories, songs, and countless other things. We humans, as a species, want to define what love truly is, just as we want to define everything else. But is that really possible? With love being possibly the most involved way to connect separate individuals, who can be so very different from one another, does it really seem at all likely that it has anything more than the most basic rules to govern it? I posit that the answer to both of these questions is “no.” No matter what special physical research comes up, I will continue to support polyamory in its pursuit of simple love and freedom, comfortable in the knowledge that it is philosophically in the right, which is the only right that matters.
First, let’s go over a few illustrative hypothetical examples of culturally acceptable scenarios that I believe are inconsistent with society’s apparent condemnation of polyamory. For those of you who don’t know, polyamory is, according to Dictionary.com, “participation in multiple and simultaneous loving or sexual relationships.” Now that that has been clarified, imagine that you got married to the love of your life. You are together for a number of years, and live as happily as can be reasonably expected in this world. One day, the love of your life dies in a horrible accident. You are heartbroken. Your soul mate is gone; they are never coming back. Does that mean that you stop loving them? Of course not, unless you are a somewhat unconventional and cold-hearted person. Now, imagine that a few years later, after you've grieved, you meet someone new. This person is their own person, not any kind of reincarnation or replacement of your past soul mate. Over time, you bond, and you come to love each other. In fact, you come to love that person just as much as you loved your deceased soul mate; you just now have a new one. Again, have you stopped loving your past lover? No. Is the love you have for your new lover just as true? Yes. Already, you are an emotional polyamorist. Further, what if it turned out that there was some sort of heaven-like afterlife that people got into for being basically good, and you and your two sequential lovers qualified to go there when you all eventually died? If the mechanic of that heaven permitted it, then you would be reunited with both of your loves, and you would still love both of them. Unless you were so devoted to monogamy that you would abandon a soul mate for the sake of it, you would then spend your afterlife with those loved ones. At this point you would be both an emotional and a spiritual polyamorist. Incidentally, this could branch out into a polyamorist web if, for example, your first love had lost their first love before meeting you. Then, in the end, you would have two soul mates in heaven, one or more of whom would have one or more of their own past soul mates waiting for them. For those who can’t put sexuality out of their minds when considering this subject, it also seems likely that, if you could have bodies in heaven, you would most likely become a physical polyamorist as well, though that isn’t ultimately important. Sex is only one aspect, and not even necessarily a primary one, of a good polyamorous relationship, after all (Wikipedia). To summarize, even our society condones finding a new love after one has died. If that kind of approval is given, but it is also understood and accepted that you do not stop loving those you have lost, then it follows that society unwittingly supports emotional polyamory.
There are many kinds of love, but who can say which ones are the most important or powerful? Aside from the many kinds of love for non-living things, there is the love of friends, the love of pets, the love of your children, the love of your parents, the love of more distant family members, the love for your fellow man, and, of course, romantic love, and who-knows-how-many other types, as well. You can have and love more than one friend, pet, child, parent, relative, and stranger (referring to the love of your fellow man), so what makes romantic love so special? It certainly doesn't automatically outrank the other types of love. That’s why being forced to choose between a lover and any other object of your affection is thought of as such a cruel and unfair decision (ex. mother or lover, world or lover, friend or lover, etc.). All of these love sub-types are love, so they should all ultimately be the same. Unless there is some unidentified quality which dictates the impossibility of plurality, unique to romantic love, it follows that it should be just as acceptable for a person to have more than one romantic love as it is for them to have more than one familial/stranger/pet/etc. love.
Most everyone experiences minor and/or major “crushes” in their younger years. These “crushes” are generally thought of as immature (in that they are less informed, powerful, physical (in the younger years), and regulated/controlled/organized) forms of romantic love. They aren't thought of as a completely different kind of love from the romantic variant. Therefore, they should be subject to the same cultural rules and attitudes, right? Apparently not. Whether the love is immature or not, it is not at all uncommon for younger people to have crushes on several people at once. A prime example would be bands (such as the Jonas Brothers). Children, teens, and even some adults are known to be so appreciative of the members of such groups that it is not at all inappropriate to say that they have crushes on them, or at the very least, their concepts of them. This seems to be a culturally acceptable case of having romantic feelings toward several people at once. Of course, that is merely the most obvious instance of younger people having romantic feelings for more than one person. The same thing can happen with normal people, too, such as classmates, teachers, and childhood friends, though those cases are less well-known in the cultural sense.
Is there anything to be gained from denying people as much love as they can find? And for that matter, what do we lose by doing so? This world is a hard place, and love is possibly the single greatest refuge from its harsh realities that a person can find. Yet our society insists that an arbitrary numerical value must limit us in the pursuit of happiness, an ideal that is seen as almost holy in the United States of America. Polyamory doesn’t deny that there are some people who can only love one at a time, so just think about the terrible position society puts some people in because of its mindless perpetuation of the tradition of monogamy. If person A was the kind of person that could only love a single other person, and they were unlucky enough to fall in love with person B who was already involved with person C, then our society would condemn B if they came to love A in addition to C. That unthinking condemnation would thus doom A to a life bereft of the happiness of romantic love, just because our society stubbornly holds that monogamy is the only “right” form that romantic love can take.
As for all the unfortunate atrocities that have happened in polyamorous circumstances, such as rape, early pregnancy, abuse, incest, etc. in polygamist compounds (FOX News), those things happen within the “normal” (meaning monogamous) sector, too. With the different ways in which actively polyamorous people are treated, any conclusions about their average rates of committing certain crimes would be premature. It is only once they have been accepted as just another part of society, and thus are treated with a certain degree of normality, that such statistics would come close to being useful. Even if it did turn out that polyamory was accompanied by an increase in some offenses, banning it because of that would be like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If it turned out that, for some reason, one particular race committed noticeably more crimes than any other, it would be ridiculous to ban that entire race. It’s essentially the same thing as what is being done to the potentially polyamorous people in the country, and it is a terrible form of injustice.
Ultimately, I see no reason that polyamory shouldn’t be allowed. Though I may be biased because of my personal belief that it is not intrinsically bad, it seems to me that it might even bring great benefits to society. If it were accepted, once its negative patriarchal connotations started to wear off, it could function as a tool for the equalizing of the sexes by making it equally culturally acceptable for either sex to be involved with more than one person at a time. This could combat the stereotypically different ways in which the sexes are viewed as different in relation to sex, love, and romance. Further, gathering people together who have in common the love for one or more people, forcing them to learn to live with the others’ existences, could help many people in society overcome the green-eyed monster that is jealousy. And I doubt that many people could say with a straight face that eliminating jealousy wouldn’t be a tremendous step forward for any one person or society. None of that is as important, though, as helping so many people of the world to gain some measure of happiness. Just as with monogamous romantic love, there are bound to be problems and rough patches, but the world would be a terrible place if such love were to disappear. And if that is true, then imagine how much more wonderful the world might become if all that love were to grow.
Works Cited
“Abuse Investigated at Polygamist Compound After 400 Removed.” FoxNews.com. 8 Apr. 2008. FOX News Network. 6 Dec. 2010 <http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,346959,00.html>.
"polyamory." Dictionary.com's 21st Century Lexicon. Dictionary.com, LLC. 21 Nov. 2010. <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/polyamory>.
“Polyamory – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.” Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 20 Nov. 2010. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 20 Nov. 2010 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyamory>.
 magic_doglover · Mon Jan 02, 2012 @ 04:00am · 0 Comments |
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