"Make no mistake your relationships are the heaviest components in your life. All those negotiations and arguments and secrets, the compromises. The slower we move the faster we die. Make no mistake, moving is living. Some animals were meant to carry each other to live symbiotically over a lifetime. Star crossed lovers, monogamous swans. We are not swans. We are sharks."
This quote comes from the movie that critics are calling the best of 2009, "Up in the Air." And although I've yet to see it, this quote has already gotten me thinking. George Clooney's character chooses to lead a life in which he is unencumbered by relationships and the mess that inevitably comes with it. He believes that humans are sharks, unable to remain monogamous or true to one other person for the rest of their life. And maybe, just maybe, he has a point.
What do you think? Are we sharks or swans?
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Comments (16)
Swans, because you know. We are ugly one moment and then we become beautiful.
Both bite and will eat your face. Can I be a panda instead? Or a fox! Maybe a manatee. All cuter options.
But, more on point, I don't agree. Maybe there are a few exceptions, but as a species I think humans were built to be more on the monogamous side.
Eh, I dunno. Dolphins are the only other animal on the planet that's known, besides humans, for having sex all year around. In other words, they don't really wait for "mating season". Are they like penguins and mate for life? Or are they "sharks"? The whole forever thing, has yet to be proven or disproven to me. I guess it's probably part luck, part will, and part.. Something else. I dunno. It takes two to make a relationship to work. No matter how bad you want to stay with someone that doesn't mean it'll work out.
Sorry, but I'm still holding out for a swan. Those long necks can be awfully useful.
http://plentymorefishoutofwater.blogspot.com/
I'm a phoenix
If we use the nature / nurture debate, I don't think that humans were (are) inherently meant to be monogamous. Before civilization humans were promiscuous and mated as they pleased. No marriage existed. For some theorists, monogamy (in the crudest sense) is the result of man's progressual and eventual control over women's sexuality - and hence the number of partners they had sex with. Before DNA testing, only women really knew who their child was, so men had to control women's sexual activities and limit the number of sexual partners they had to ensure that their property was left to their rightful heirs. Monogamy was seen as the best option for this to happen (in the West). The State reinforced this through the enactment of marriage laws. Religion (esp Christianity) also serves to reproduce the view that one should be faithful to one partner. Hence having multiple partners / cheating on your partner while you are married is projected as being morally wrong. Both the State and Relgion punish those who break norms surrounding marriage.
This view is subject to debate and criticism however it does explain how something as 'unnatural' as monogamy has not only been 'forced' upon us (through various social and cultural mechanisms of control) but has (directly or indirectly) also shaped the way we view sex and serious partnerships in the West.
Um, whether I'm supposed to have the sexuality and romantic life of a kiwi bird, an octopus, a partridge, or a guppy, I am attempting to live out my life with my husband symbiotically, like a swan. With a little tigerish passion thrown in.
I know I was never meant to be a shark. Maybe a plankton-eating whale shark, but probably not even that. It's really a personality thing he's talking about. He might be a shark, but not everyone is.
@hundredsongsinhundreddays@xanga - Im with you as far as the natural part of humans. We are not meant to be monogamous, but that doesnt mean that we cant be.
I would have no problem having multiple lovers or my spouse having multiples as long as it was discussed and OKed in the beginning of the relationship. But if its stated as being a one-on-one thing, than I can be with just her and Id expect the same.
Personally, Id rather be a shark, if for no other reason that they are possibly the most badass creature on the planet. I mean, they dont get cancer, they cant. Tell me that flipping off cancer to its face isnt badass.
I'm currently set on a path of no romantic relationships but I'm not with his character. Whether or not we are meant to be monogamous- it's a choice. Either you want to be or you don't.
We have the potential to be both.
Sharks. Definitely sharks. And that quote is coming with me. Couldn't
have said it better myself. I agree - keep moving. And if someone can't
keep up, wave goodbye and cut 'em lose. In the end, you are responsible
for you.
is that what players say when they cheated on their s.o...you can't blame me for not being faithful because it is in my nature that I'm a shark. in that case...I'm a venomous spider
Extra-Pair Copulations....look it up.
the sex drive is a powerful thing... in any animal.
Monogomy is a choice... Why we are human... we have the power to choose.
See the movie. It's fantastic. And it almost answers this question.
@hundredsongsinhundreddays@xanga - actually, from a biological/physiological standpoint, humans ARE meant to be monogamous. The female gestation period is very long, so after she spends all of her resources in being pregnant and rearing her child, she needs the male to look after them both. There are hormones that a man (or woman, I don't remember) releases right after orgasm that bonds the man to the woman.
@jzrocker@xanga - i was speaking from a sociological point of view. Some feminists who argue that patriarchy is the result of biology rather than culture would also aruge that since biologically only women can get pregnant, this makes them dependent on men and since women have to nuture/care for their newborns both mother and child become co-dependent and both also become dependent on men to maintain them. This only goes to show how women's biology makes them dependent on a man for their livelihoood - at least until they return to work. However it doesn't mean that a man (eg. a woman's husband) will actually fulfill his obligation to take care of the mother of his children or his children for the matter. There are enough single unwed mothers to proove that. Nor does it imply that men will be have a monogamous relationship with the mother of their children.