Ups and downs 2

Polyamory appears to be flavour of the week. Both the New Scientist and the Observer have articles on the subject

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/woman/story/0,,1813313,00.html

While it’s interesting to read what they have to say, the articles are both rather disappointing in the same ways.

Firstly it appears that one must travel half way across the world to meet these peculiar people in multiple relationships. The result is a feeling of “strange Californian cult” which makes it difficult for the reader to identify with the subject matter. Apparently everyone in the UK labels themselves monogamous, whether successfully or not!

Second each article discusses polyamory, and in particular the lack (or reduction) of jealousy involved in terms of evolutionary biology and psychology. Which is in itself reasonably interesting, if highly speculative. But the conclusions reached by various experts; that polyamory is not evolutionarily beneficial, therefore unnatural, therefore impossible to sustain as a lifestyle, could have been written thirty years ago with “homosexuality” inserted.

It would be nice to think that one thing that we have learned in that time is that people don’t fit a single mould and that they can design their own models for relationships with as much (or as little) success as with using the conventional model. To be fair, the Observer article focussed on the boundaries and the fact that for polyamory to work the participants have to think more, rather than less, about the nature and quality of their relationships. But in general both articles managed to make the subject seem unusual and difficult. Which is a shame.

It’s a nice word though. Polyamory. Rolls off the tongue.

I stayed up till 2 am Fri night playing Cleopatra and the Society of Architects. Sat am I got up early to go to a OU tutorial. By Sat afternoon I was gleefully dragging Son round the local hospital fete, buying orange things ( I now have a push along orange snail with a rotating yellow and red ball in the centre) and winning soap on the tombola. Sat evening I dashed back into town because I discovered a desperate need for tealights, and filled the room with little lit flames and roses to watch Dr Who by.

Today I'm better again (although running a slight temperature). Late nights are definitely a bad idea. Written an essay on the reception of Newton and Leibniz's calculi and watched the tennis final.