Uhh, what is the connection here? And how are you so sure that status wars did not happen as much, if only in different forms, during the days of "enforced monogamy"?
My mistake, I should have been more clear. The current "political correctness" paradigm along with all of its associated hate mobs is a ferocious status competition as a result of the unmet sexual and pair-bonding needs of singles.
Single males and females are different, in that females hold out for the absolute highest status man for as long as possible, whereas males try to poach any female who meets their minimum fertility requirements. Both end up frustrated as dimorphic sexes have different sexual optimization strategies which are impossible to satisfy simultaneously.
What's important to note is the psychological state of singleness, and its resulting anxiety, is far more damaging than the actual lack of intercourse. In the past, religious and social institutions attempted to prevent this by encouraging early marriage and enforcing it with strict penalties. In the past few decades, all of this has changed rapidly along with the development of effective contraception.
This confluence of factors has thus lead to fiercer competition for each sex as they double down on their strategies, both of which involve status as the main currency. Males attempt to hoard status, and females attempt to attract it. As such, we see far more ruthless status posturing and attacking, of which this article lists many examples.
I did not believe my comments to be controversial, as any cursory glance of the relevant scientific literature will reveal the mundane facts I've stated. However, it appears my statements trigger an immune response in a group of HN readers, for reasons that I can only guess involve discomfort with the somewhat disturbing reality of man's evolutionary origins and predispositions.
I commend you for asking a question rather than reflexively recoiling in disgust. I do believe we will have to confront our natures eventually. Running from the mirror rarely works long term.
I did find your original comment interesting, but wasn't sure about its relevance to this article. This comment is more clarifying, thanks.
I agree with your evopsych explanation. Political correctness is to do with status, as noted by Kristian at http://www.iea.org.uk/blog/the-economics-of-political-correc... but even he doesn't go so far as to connect it to sexual competition. Sexual competition, especially without enforced 1-on-1 pairings (e.g.: marriage of the past), does lead to conflict. Cases like that of Elliot Rodgers come to my mind.
However I'm not convinced that enforced monogamy has seen less conflict than modern times. Can you back this argument with statistics? For example, did crime rate increase? My feeling is that even in the good old days where 1-on-1 marriage was the norm, high-status males still surreptitiously poached females paired with lower-status males. Per certain writers even the Victorian Era was not immune to it.
There is a widely observed empirical correlation between out of wedlock births and poor outcomes for children, who grow to be dysfunctional adults. This is was the first article from google when I searched the terms [1]. An excerpt:
"However, results of the study conclude that compared with "traditional families," parents of fragile families are more likely to have become parents in their teens, more likely to have had children with other partners, more likely to be poor, suffer from depression, struggle with substance abuse, and to have been incarcerated."
Aggregate crime may have decreased, but it is because we are still in the unraveling phase of widespread monogamy. Once its vestiges have fully eroded, then we will see the results.
