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Comment by poisonborz | Hacker News Reader

I tend to believe self-assured people do not become jealous as they don't terminally depend on a relationship. This of course depends on age, how social someone is or the population size in the area. This is a general human problem, the traditional answer of "ownership" has problems of its own.

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All good points, but this doesnt really answer my question. If we imagine this hypothetical non-monogamous society, with no social constructs incentivizing monogamy, jealousy being in human nature would remain a driver towards monogamy. I imagine historically this is how most religions arrived at propagating monogamy. In christianity and judaism for both genders, or in islam for female monogamy, as jealousy was such a common driver of conflict that may even escalate into wars. Enforcing monogamy as the moral choice has some merit, if it avoids bloodshed, though obviously ideally people capable of being in non-monogamous relationships shouldnt be punished for being in one.

Replying to myself in case my point isnt clear - Im postulating that monogamy being some sort of “default” is inevitable, given enough time to evolve, regardless of how you setup the starting parameters.

"Historically" is a narrow term, we don't know much of our 50k years of history, or what we know of, societies handled this very creatively. Like how sleeping with outsiders was not a taboo due to needing new genetic material, or that childrens would be raised communally as parents might often die or not present to do other tasks. I don't see this inevitability of monogamy - my kitchen table theory is that the current state of >mostly monogamism< was driven by a globalising world (even 1-2k years ago) that favored imperialism, standardization, expansion, relied on the heavy physical labour while being very resource constrained. Religions placating chivalry and honor were a supporting policing tool.

All of the "classical sins" could be described as are human nature regardless of relationship type. Note that as an alternative I don't just think of flat hierarchy polyamory here, any non-heteronormative relationship or constellations that revolve around a "main relationship".

In a world of industry standards, automatization, light and flexible work hours, easy communication and high mobility I think we need to be creative again. Especially how this above evolution seems to reach its limits, and "scale to the moon" does not seem to work (dead internet) and we're in dire need of small, informal communities again. I see much more openness to this from the younger western generation.

People who do not depend on relationships simply don't enter into relationships.

For everybody else, there is the normal and perfectly human feelings of jealousy, attachment, fear or loss, and feeling associated with self-confidence.

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