The Bastardization of Olympus: Sex and Sanctification

I read the synopsis for a book that declared that monogamy is unnatural for humans (along with controversial stances on many other things regarding what today’s society deems normal sexuality). Indeed, something to the effect of a small sex commune is closest to the State of Nature.

While I wouldn’t necessarily argue with the authors regarding how unnatural monogamy is, I would suggest that it is the noblest of choices.

The heights of human consciousness separate humanity from animals. The profundity of our self-awareness, reason and emotion distance us from our animal heritage. While we are still animals – we still have all of the basic drives that tie us to our roots – we stood up, thus separating us in a way paramount to the understanding of our existence.

Humanity needs significance in our lives in a way that no other species does. Ambition and the pursuit of meaning are a fundamental difference, one that forces us to reevaluate how close we really are to our ancestors. We have evolved too far to use the “basically animals” excuse any longer (lest you prefer to live outside of civilized society).

At this point, the MO of human life is the creation of significance.

Sacred essentially refers to something set apart, revered through distancing it from normal life, treating it in a way markedly different from the way other things are treated. In this sense, anything can be made sacred. To some extent, American culture has perfected the allotment of this sacredness, however arbitrary, which appears as the loss of anything sacred: with the pervasiveness of sanctity came the bastardization of worship.

Popular culture deified sex, alcohol, money, fame, power, etc. And through the placement of these things on our culture’s Olympus, all things holy have been adulterated.

To regress to our animalistic nature is to embrace this lack of significance.

To treat all things according to their utility runs counter to our yearning for import.

And while I appreciate practicality, I’m not so bold (or hopeless) as to say I seek no significant meaning.

I’ll find my girl, and marry her.

And I won’t convince my buds to swap wives when I get bored.

I’ll raise the act of love in a declaration of my distance from my primate predecessors.

I’ll celebrate the significance evolution has granted.

I’ll allow marriage to be sacred, and find deeper contentment in that than any number of lovers can give.

And anyway, the potential drama of polygamy is infinite--I can hardly handle one relationship at a time.

No thanks.