Sequentially serial monogamy.  Or polygamy, or polyandry, or polyamory, or what have you.

Are those among the paths nature expected us to tread?  Paths that would separate and segment child bearing, child rearing, sexual intimacy, economic collaboration and companionship into different functions, each potentially involving differing relationships over time, but relationships tied together through decency and harmonious post relationship continuity?  Something I think Robert Heinlein seemed to espouse and which makes a great deal of sense, but with which, emotionally, most of us are not prepared to cope, that inability being primarily attributable to hypocritical Abrahamic strictures which insist that jealousy and possession ought to be our prime motivators.  Motivators that rule our personal lives as well as our lives as members of collectives, collectives from dysfunctional nuclear families to contending nations bent on mutual annihilation.

The concepts work well in Heinlein’s novels but not that well in real life, although perhaps they should. 

Perhaps, some day, somewhere, they may.

Paradise lost or perhaps just never attained, …

_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.