Love Autopsy

Polys of the world, unite! Are you sick and tired of being discriminated against by the monoamorous?

There's only three words coming to my mind: How dare they? Would a person that due to some psychological defect, due to some unfortunate premises he holds, is only able to have one platonic friend at a time dare to look down on a person who has many friends?

Monoamory, after all, is a defect. Much more, it is the nadir of injustice. To love someone means to appreciate his or her qualities: spiritual virtues and physical beauty. What excuse can there be for a person who loves only one person, refusing to love all others who too are deserving of his or her love?

Ironically, holding only one other human being as the image of one's highest values (objectivist-speak excuse for monoamory — and for some of them an excuse for a witch hunt on polys, too) is rank Platonism. There's no such thing as perfection. And there's a snowball's chance in hell that you'll meet exactly one person who's so much better than everyone else that he or she can claim your love exclusively, to the exclusion of everyone else.

"Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another."

— H. L. Mencken

"A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity."

— Robert A. Heinlein

Is it a coincidence that the word "jealousy" is more than half made up of "lousy"?

You ask, what caused this rant? Well, the other day there was a pretty awful article in The Atlasphere. It was probably meant to be funny, but in fact it was only an array of ugly prejudices. You know, I'm not in the habit of dissecting Atlasphere articles, but this one's wrong on so many levels… I've already dealt with the monoamory presumption in it, so let's look at the rest of the prejudices and be done with it.

"But of course, every guy with a lick of sense knows he'd destroy his own and his family's happiness that way [i.e., by an open marriage]."

Great argument — in the same vein, a Tory in 1775 would have argued, "But of course, every guy with a lick of sense knows a civilized society without a king is impossible." Or a red in the red decade, "But of course, every guy with a lick of sense knows history's march toward socialism is irreversible."

The lesson: Don't make any assumptions. Just because something seems obvious to you it doesn't have to be true.

"And when you come down to earth, a harem is probably closer to living hell than heaven, especially after kids start to arrive."

Human beings aren't breeders. Not everybody wants kids. Kids don't "arrive." Family planning is a good idea.

"And doesn't he want to grow old with someone?"

Like monoamory, aging is a defect. Aging is not a part of human nature, it's in fact incompatible with being human. Aging is a holdover from evolution, from ancestor species that had to adapt to nature by evolution instead of adapting nature to their needs, like man does. To the human species, death is useless. It accomplishes nothing but to render life meaningless.

Fortunately, you don't have to accept death as your fate. No, I'm not a mystic. What I mean is that optimists say that aging will be curable in twenty years.

Well, I don't know how long it will take to find a cure for aging or if it will be found in time to save the lives of us who are presently alive. But in any event, "to grow old with someone" is not a very fortunate choice of words. It's a horrible mindset. It's living on a death premise.

It can be reasonable to say, "Let's stay together forever!" Or if you don't believe in transhumanism, "Let's stay together as long as we live!" But to say, "Let's grow old together!" is like saying, "Let's have cancer together!" or, "Let's catch cholera together!"

"For those of us who remember the actor Charles Boyer: When his wife of many years died, he took a few weeks to put his affairs in order and then took a fatal dose of sleeping pills."

I mean, please. Loving one's wife is wonderful, but loving her more than one's own life?

"All of Hef's women are tall, leggy, hyperpneumatic platinum blondes.

"What the heck is the point? Doesn't the guy want any variety in his life?"

It's actually ironic that a mono would criticize a poly for not having variety in his lovers. I mean, who has more variety in his love life, someone who restricts himself to exactly one woman, or someone who restricts himself to two percent of womankind?

And in case you've been wondering, no, sufferers from blondphilia (Ah! What a beautiful condition to suffer from!) don't date only blondes. I'd say, it's more like striving to keep up a ten-to-one ratio.

In short, don't hassle the Hef, man.

P.S. There even is a song about the idea of a perfect (wo)man being Platonism: "Trying to Find Atlantis" by Jamie O'Neal.

A girl trying to find herself the perfect man is like trying to find Atlantis