Why are we so obsessed with monogamous fidelity?
Interpretation
The quote questions society's fixation on the idea of monogamous fidelity, suggesting a need to explore its underlying reasons.
Richard Dawkins questions the societal obsession with monogamous relationships, prompting a reflection on why fidelity is held in such high regard. This quote invites discussion about the evolutionary, psychological, and cultural factors that shape our views on monogamy and fidelity, suggesting that it may not be a universal or necessary ideal in all contexts.
In practice
During a lecture on human relationships, this quote can initiate a discussion on the nature of commitment.
No educated person believes the Adam and Eve myth nowadays, but it's surprising how many parents think that it's somehow fun to pass on this falsehood to their children...I would want to argue that the truth of evolution is more interesting and more poetic
If the history-deniers who doubt the fact of evolution are ignorant of biology, those who think the world began less than ten thousand years ago are worst than ignorant, they are the deluded to the point of perversity.
The population of the U.S. is nearly 300 million, including many of the best educated, most talented, most resourceful, humane people on earth. By almost any measure of civilised attainment, from Nobel prize-counts on down, the U.S. leads the world by miles.
When you make machines that are capable of obeying instructions slavishly, and among those instructions are 'duplicate me' instructions, then of course the system is wide open to exploitation by parasites.
Even if not a single fossil has ever been found, the evidence from surviving animals would still overwhelmingly force the conclusion that Darwin was right.
The bitter hatreds that now poison Middle Eastern politics are rooted in the real or perceived wrong of the setting up of a Jewish State in an Islamic region. In view of all that the Jews had been through, it must have seemed a fair and humane solution. Probably deep familiarity with the Old Testament had given the European and American decision-makers some sort of idea that this really was the historic homeland of the Jews.
One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don't come home at night.
Being 'ethnically ambiguous', as I was pegged in the industry, meant I could audition for virtually any role. Morphing from Latina when I was dressed in red, to African American when in mustard yellow, my closet filled with fashionable frocks to make me look as racially varied as an Eighties Benetton poster.
Humans have a fraught relationship with beasts. They are our companions and our chattel, our family members and our laborers, our household pets and our household pests. We love them and cage them, admire them and abuse them. And, of course, we cook and eat them.
No soul is desolate as long as there is a human being for whom it can feel trust and reverence.
I am clearly vulnerable to these more passionate and volatile unstable relationships. I am trying to not be so vulnerable.
There are occasions on which all apology is rudeness.
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