The origins and rationality of chastity

[rousseau]

With a more rigorous understanding of early religious thought most people realize that a lot of the rules had real biological value, even if they were shrouded in theology. For instance, calling homosexuality abnormal was probably done to promote reproduction. Disavowing adultery was meant to increase the integrity of the nuclear family.

But chastity was one that never really made sense to me (although I never thought about it much), until recently I had a 'duh' moment and realized that for the entirety of history birth control didn't exist, and sex often meant you had a baby. The extension of that is that pre-marital sex could, and often did lead to bad situations for people, which would be why chastity was such a prominent concept throughout history.

So a few questions:

1) Does my explanation for this phenomenon seem about right?
2) Was chastity, historically, common throughout most cultures of the world?
3) What elements are similar among unchaste social groups?
4) What elements are similar among chaste social group?

 

[Kharakov]

Sailors and those they came across found out a bit about chastity as well.

 

[Bronzeage]

The first thing to consider when discussing the rationality of chastity, is the seriousness of human pregnancy and childbirth. Take away society and culture, long enough to view humans as a fairly intelligent mammal, it's plain to see that a pregnat woman, and the ensuing new mother and infant, have a poor chance of survival, without the support of a group. This maybe the father, or a group of females, but suffice it to say, pregnancy and childbirth will not exist outside of a social group.

The rules of any group are going to based on available resources. In any environment where resources are scarce, people will form groups to secure and protect resources. People within the groups will form alliances, in order to have reciprocal obligations. The most basic of these will be a man and a woman, which will come to include their children.

Hunter-gatherer cultures may have seen pregnancy and childbirth as a great mystery, but it's certain that farmers and shepherds understood it very well. Along with this advance in biological concepts, came an understanding of property rights. A wild goat was game for any hunter, but a domesticated goat was private property. Anything of value that could be secured and protected, could be claimed and owned. Grown men were needed to secure and protect property, and women were needed to produce men, much as ewes were needed to produce more sheep.

The farmer-shepherd society is more efficient and productive, which allows the population to grow faster. This puts more stress on the resources, even as they increase. Women, especially young women become more important as property, because they can be traded as wives to neighboring groups, which creates kinship alliances.

This property value is the origin of chastity. When property maybe inherited, based on paternity, that paternity must be established without question. A lot of wealth is at stake. There's really no religious basis for any of it, other than that authority always tends to consolidate power. The established religion always supports the current power structure. It's simpler to credit God, whatever that means in context, for the rules, than acknowledge the rules are all man made and subject to question and revision.

 

[rousseau]

The first thing to consider when discussing the rationality of chastity, is the seriousness of human pregnancy and childbirth. Take away society and culture, long enough to view humans as a fairly intelligent mammal, it's plain to see that a pregnat woman, and the ensuing new mother and infant, have a poor chance of survival, without the support of a group. This maybe the father, or a group of females, but suffice it to say, pregnancy and childbirth will not exist outside of a social group.

The rules of any group are going to based on available resources. In any environment where resources are scarce, people will form groups to secure and protect resources. People within the groups will form alliances, in order to have reciprocal obligations. The most basic of these will be a man and a woman, which will come to include their children.

Hunter-gatherer cultures may have seen pregnancy and childbirth as a great mystery, but it's certain that farmers and shepherds understood it very well. Along with this advance in biological concepts, came an understanding of property rights. A wild goat was game for any hunter, but a domesticated goat was private property. Anything of value that could be secured and protected, could be claimed and owned. Grown men were needed to secure and protect property, and women were needed to produce men, much as ewes were needed to produce more sheep.

The farmer-shepherd society is more efficient and productive, which allows the population to grow faster. This puts more stress on the resources, even as they increase. Women, especially young women become more important as property, because they can be traded as wives to neighboring groups, which creates kinship alliances.

This property value is the origin of chastity. When property maybe inherited, based on paternity, that paternity must be established without question. A lot of wealth is at stake. There's really no religious basis for any of it, other than that authority always tends to consolidate power. The established religion always supports the current power structure. It's simpler to credit God, whatever that means in context, for the rules, than acknowledge the rules are all man made and subject to question and revision.

I have to wonder to what extent women were involved in this. After all, this works both ways: women would theoretically want a commitment before bearing a child.

I wonder where the concept arose and how. I'll have to check the index of my 'Sex in History' book to see if there is any evidence.

 

[rousseau]

The first thing to consider when discussing the rationality of chastity, is the seriousness of human pregnancy and childbirth. Take away society and culture, long enough to view humans as a fairly intelligent mammal, it's plain to see that a pregnat woman, and the ensuing new mother and infant, have a poor chance of survival, without the support of a group. This maybe the father, or a group of females, but suffice it to say, pregnancy and childbirth will not exist outside of a social group.

The rules of any group are going to based on available resources. In any environment where resources are scarce, people will form groups to secure and protect resources. People within the groups will form alliances, in order to have reciprocal obligations. The most basic of these will be a man and a woman, which will come to include their children.

Hunter-gatherer cultures may have seen pregnancy and childbirth as a great mystery, but it's certain that farmers and shepherds understood it very well. Along with this advance in biological concepts, came an understanding of property rights. A wild goat was game for any hunter, but a domesticated goat was private property. Anything of value that could be secured and protected, could be claimed and owned. Grown men were needed to secure and protect property, and women were needed to produce men, much as ewes were needed to produce more sheep.

The farmer-shepherd society is more efficient and productive, which allows the population to grow faster. This puts more stress on the resources, even as they increase. Women, especially young women become more important as property, because they can be traded as wives to neighboring groups, which creates kinship alliances.

This property value is the origin of chastity. When property maybe inherited, based on paternity, that paternity must be established without question. A lot of wealth is at stake. There's really no religious basis for any of it, other than that authority always tends to consolidate power. The established religion always supports the current power structure. It's simpler to credit God, whatever that means in context, for the rules, than acknowledge the rules are all man made and subject to question and revision.

Read through my book and it repeated essentially what you've said here.

It also added that before this dynamic arose 'genders were basically equal', so one must wonder if the social role of a woman as a person who had to find a trustworthy, committed man evolved *with* man's increasingly dominant role, and *not before*.

There were a number of other passages on chastity after it's development, all of which I didn't read, but from what I did it was obvious that historically men have been serious about propagating their own children.

After the fact, I guess women would have been on board because raising a child required a commitment that the man needed to make.

 

[Speakpigeon]

I seem to have a slightly different take on this.

There doesn't seem anything much in nature to compel the fathers to take care of their offspring. Think of rape here if you don't believe me.

So I think the overwhelming evidence today of caring fathers is probably best explained by a slow buildup in the complexity and resilience of the social fabric in humanity, probably since very early times.

The human possibility of tradition and culture meant that each new generation could somehow take note of how the previous generation had behaved and performed, and then it would build on that, prisoners as well as creators of the ideologies that told them both how they could act and how they should act.

We have to expect that our conception of parenthood will always remain dependant on our way of life. Feudal times and Christianity had a stabilising impact but them capitalism reframed the whole thing. Liberalism today is again reshuffling the pack of card by destabilising the social fabric in at least some very important respects.
EB

 

[fromderinside]

Humans come from nervous systems that include the waggle dance as an index of both mating acceptance and 'stay your distance' aggression. Female cats and dogs not in heat, even during heat, resist advances by males who try to mount everything. So I agree that slow buildup in a society that requires protection of young for survival purposes is likely.Although I do read of paternal instincts, family and clan as supportable options in evolutionary explanations.

We have multiplied to require societies of such complexity that they overwhelm genetic codification in response. there is no way a species that can remember 300 individuals can cope in a society where contact with thousands of individuals is common. Obviously constructs are required that exceed , perhaps contradict, genetically determined proclivities. Here is where rationality is probably beneficial even though root behaviors are not really containable.

Your constructs in your last paragraph cannot be sufficient to attain both protection and competition. So I don't think we're talking destabilization, rather I believe observation of relative stability of social fabric in the face of innate tendencies should be what we evaluate.

 

[Bomb#20]

I seem to have a slightly different take on this.

There doesn't seem anything much in nature to compel the fathers to take care of their offspring. Think of rape here if you don't believe me.

So I think the overwhelming evidence today of caring fathers is probably best explained by a slow buildup in the complexity and resilience of the social fabric in humanity, probably since very early times.

Paternal care varies wildly from species to species. It's more common than not in birds. In mammals it's pretty much confined to rodents, canines and primates. Marmosets and tamarins are noted for it. So sure, something in nature compels fathers to take care of their offspring, but only when a given species' ancestral conditions favored it.

 

[Speakpigeon]

I seem to have a slightly different take on this.

There doesn't seem anything much in nature to compel the fathers to take care of their offspring. Think of rape here if you don't believe me.

So I think the overwhelming evidence today of caring fathers is probably best explained by a slow buildup in the complexity and resilience of the social fabric in humanity, probably since very early times.

Paternal care varies wildly from species to species. It's more common than not in birds. In mammals it's pretty much confined to rodents, canines and primates. Marmosets and tamarins are noted for it. So sure, something in nature compels fathers to take care of their offspring, but only when a given species' ancestral conditions favored it.

Hmm, I don't know.

I seem to remember that in some tribes somewhere the men didn't even know or understand when they would be fathers. The women folks would pretty much make up "society". The men would live outside society and just visit occasionally, and sex would happen. Sex, without fatherhood. A stable structure.

I think you are perhaps forgetting that what you know of family life could be just as well explained essentially by the relation between men and women on the one hand, and women and their children on the other. The men could certainly be motivated to take care of the women while the women would be minded to take care of the children. And, hey, presto, you have family. And once you have family, culture and tradition can kick in over time and make us look like civilised, decent people, if it wasn't for the 'occasional' rape.
EB

 

[Bronzeage]

Paternal care varies wildly from species to species. It's more common than not in birds. In mammals it's pretty much confined to rodents, canines and primates. Marmosets and tamarins are noted for it. So sure, something in nature compels fathers to take care of their offspring, but only when a given species' ancestral conditions favored it.

Hmm, I don't know.

I seem to remember that in some tribes somewhere the men didn't even know or understand when they would be fathers. The women folks would pretty much make up "society". The men would live outside society and just visit occasionally, and sex would happen. Sex, without fatherhood. A stable structure.

I think you are perhaps forgetting that what you know of family life could be just as well explained essentially by the relation between men and women on the one hand, and women and their children on the other. The men could certainly be motivated to take care of the women while the women would be minded to take care of the children. And, hey, presto, you have family. And once you have family, culture and tradition can kick in over time and make us look like civilised, decent people, if it wasn't for the 'occasional' rape.
EB

We are not birds who know how to build a nest from twigs, never having seen the actual process. Paternal feelings may not be a instinctual in humans as maternal feelings are in most mammals, but they can be learned. Actually, they have to be learned. As with any learning process, there will always be failures.

As I said in a previous post, a human mother and her infant cannot survive alone in the wild. There has to be a support group. As every man has a mother and most men have a sister, caring and interdependent relationships will be a part of growing up to be a man. Human society and culture, in its many forms, is molded by the environment. The harsher the environment, the more critical caring and interdependence become. Any society where the men live outside and visit just for sex, would have be in a mild climate, where food was plentiful, and predators which had a taste for humans, would not be found.

 

[Bomb#20]

Paternal care varies wildly from species to species. It's more common than not in birds. In mammals it's pretty much confined to rodents, canines and primates. Marmosets and tamarins are noted for it. So sure, something in nature compels fathers to take care of their offspring, but only when a given species' ancestral conditions favored it.

Hmm, I don't know.

I seem to remember that in some tribes somewhere the men didn't even know or understand when they would be fathers. The women folks would pretty much make up "society". The men would live outside society and just visit occasionally, and sex would happen. Sex, without fatherhood. A stable structure.

I think you are perhaps forgetting that what you know of family life could be just as well explained essentially by the relation between men and women on the one hand, and women and their children on the other. The men could certainly be motivated to take care of the women while the women would be minded to take care of the children. And, hey, presto, you have family. And once you have family, culture and tradition can kick in over time and make us look like civilised, decent people, if it wasn't for the 'occasional' rape.
EB

Maybe. But a marmoset doesn't even know or understand he's going to be a father and that doesn't stop him from instinctively knowing to take care of his mate's babies. I'm skeptical of narratives that say humans culturally reinvented the same behaviors animals evolved instinctively. It smacks of blank-slate wishful thinking -- a lot of us still have an aversion carried over from the creationist era to admitting to ourselves on a gut level that we really are animals, and we think like animals. Paternal care is a strategy that obviously has an expected payoff to any selfish genes that get their host bodies to do it. Depending on how the numbers shake out for a given species, that payoff may be more than the expected cost and then those genes will tend to be selected for.

(And it may just be coincidence, but typical human sexual behavior is unlike other apes'. A better model for human sex than any other ape is seagulls, who have regular mates but are also jealous, and sneak off to cheat, and keep an eye on their mates to prevent it. Seagulls are good dads.)

 

[Speakpigeon]

Maybe. But a marmoset doesn't even know or understand he's going to be a father and that doesn't stop him from instinctively knowing to take care of his mate's babies. I'm skeptical of narratives that say humans culturally reinvented the same behaviors animals evolved instinctively. It smacks of blank-slate wishful thinking -- a lot of us still have an aversion carried over from the creationist era to admitting to ourselves on a gut level that we really are animals, and we think like animals. Paternal care is a strategy that obviously has an expected payoff to any selfish genes that get their host bodies to do it. Depending on how the numbers shake out for a given species, that payoff may be more than the expected cost and then those genes will tend to be selected for.

There are broadly two main strategies available for males to insure their descendance. They can watch over their offspring to increase survival rates or else leave it entirely to the females while trying to inseminate as many as possible. And then, some mix of those two, including in terms of how long they choose to stick around.

As far as I understand, the animal kingdom, even if we ignore humans, includes representatives of the two main strategies and all those in between.

(And it may just be coincidence, but typical human sexual behavior is unlike other apes'. A better model for human sex than any other ape is seagulls, who have regular mates but are also jealous, and sneak off to cheat, and keep an eye on their mates to prevent it. Seagulls are good dads.)

Then there are two main ways to get a strategy in place. Either the necessary behaviour is as good as encoded into the genes, or a learning ability to invent new behaviours is encoded into the genes. And then a mix of those two.

What you say here seems compatible with, for example, humans having a sexual behaviour different from other apes precisely because it's learned and similar to those of seagulls because on the one hand there are similarities across species within the same group as to a variety of simple mechanisms such as jealousy, the ability to dissemble, etc., and on the other hand, the range of complex behaviours that work is limited and a species able to learn will just stumble on a behaviour which other species get directly through their genes.

Further, the one striking thing about humans, even compared to apes, has to be our stupendous ability to learn and the incomparable complexity of our societies, both having no match anywhere in the rest of the animal kingdom.
EB

 

[fromderinside]

There are broadly two main strategies available for males to insure their descendance. They can watch over their offspring to increase survival rates or else leave it entirely to the females while trying to inseminate as many as possible. And then, some mix of those two, including in terms of how long they choose to stick around.

As far as I understand, the animal kingdom, even if we ignore humans, includes representatives of the two main strategies and all those in between.

(And it may just be coincidence, but typical human sexual behavior is unlike other apes'. A better model for human sex than any other ape is seagulls, who have regular mates but are also jealous, and sneak off to cheat, and keep an eye on their mates to prevent it. Seagulls are good dads.)

Then there are two main ways to get a strategy in place. Either the necessary behaviour is as good as encoded into the genes, or a learning ability to invent new behaviours is encoded into the genes. And then a mix of those two.

What you say here seems compatible with, for example, humans having a sexual behaviour different from other apes precisely because it's learned and similar to those of seagulls because on the one hand there are similarities across species within the same group as to a variety of simple mechanisms such as jealousy, the ability to dissemble, etc., and on the other hand, the range of complex behaviours that work is limited and a species able to learn will just stumble on a behaviour which other species get directly through their genes.

Further, the one striking thing about humans, even compared to apes, has to be our stupendous ability to learn and the incomparable complexity of our societies, both having no match anywhere in the rest of the animal kingdom.
EB

... and we're back to square one

Humans come from nervous systems that include the waggle dance as an index of both mating acceptance and 'stay your distance' aggression. Female cats and dogs not in heat, even during heat, resist advances by males who try to mount everything. So I agree that slow buildup in a society that requires protection of young for survival purposes is likely.Although I do read of paternal instincts, family and clan as supportable options in evolutionary explanations.

We have multiplied to require societies of such complexity that they overwhelm genetic codification in response. there is no way a species that can remember 300 individuals can cope in a society where contact with thousands of individuals is common. Obviously constructs are required that exceed , perhaps contradict, genetically determined proclivities. Here is where rationality is probably beneficial even though root behaviors are not really containable.

Your constructs in your last paragraph cannot be sufficient to attain both protection and competition. So I don't think we're talking destabilization, rather I believe observation of relative stability of social fabric in the face of innate tendencies should be what we evaluate.

 

[Artemus]

I have to believe that STDs heavily influenced the development of societal norms as well.

 

[Kharakov]

Teenagers.

 

[Malintent]

There doesn't seem anything much in nature to compel the fathers to take care of their offspring. Think of rape here if you don't believe me.

Why should anyone "believe you" when you speak of anthropology? What are your credentials for forming your own, personal explanations, based on your own personal observations?

What experts in the field that know what they are talking about because they have professionally studied the science are saying is that there are several mechanisms to help ensure the father takes responsibility for the child.

1) pheromones are produced by both mother and child that 'attract' the genetically similar male to be protective.
2) the vast majority of babies, when they are born, greatly resemble the father, and less so the mother... this changes as the baby develops, but the evolutionary advantage to that is that, while the mother can be pretty damn sure that she is the mother (lol), the appearance of the child is all the father has to go on in measuring their accountability.

I'm not telling you what you should do, but if I have a thought that starts, "maybe its that...", then I retain the fact that I am just making it up and guessing.

 

[PyramidHead]

I would argue it goes back to Plato and the Greek influence on the church in medieval times (Boethius as well). The idea was that none of this physical fleshy stuff is where the real essence of things lies, so a person of virtue does not succumb to such crude appetites. That may have been a post hoc rationalization for another purpose, conscious or unconscious, however.

 

[rousseau]

I would argue it goes back to Plato and the Greek influence on the church in medieval times (Boethius as well). The idea was that none of this physical fleshy stuff is where the real essence of things lies, so a person of virtue does not succumb to such crude appetites. That may have been a post hoc rationalization for another purpose, conscious or unconscious, however.

I was reading a medieval sexuality case study last night, and the extent that some people would go to deny their own natural functions was really something.

The learning for me recently is that humans existed *before* they understood themselves. For most of history we were bouncing around in this crazy place, mostly confused about why the hell we were here.

The corollary of that is that understanding ourselves is not essential to what life is, or the propagation of life.

 

[fromderinside]

Didn't Cain kill Abel because the latter butt fu*ked the former.

 

[J842P]

This property value is the origin of chastity. When property maybe inherited, based on paternity, that paternity must be established without question. A lot of wealth is at stake. There's really no religious basis for any of it, other than that authority always tends to consolidate power. The established religion always supports the current power structure. It's simpler to credit God, whatever that means in context, for the rules, than acknowledge the rules are all man made and subject to question and revision.

Yes, I find it very probably that a lot of these rules are a result of the dramatic social changes brought about by the Neolithic revolution.