Necratoid Wrote:Okay...Flamecheck Status: Toasty!
I'm going to try to respond to that without starting a flame war with a
heavy post blindness sauce that spirals off into gibbering infinity.
First I can't believe you invoked it takes a village. That is
equivalent of invoking the Godwin's law of Parenting... you
automatically lose the debate the second it's invoked as a positive. I
told you not to do that for a reason. Seriously, you invoked it takes a village.
First,
I counter your personal anecdotes with one dead four year old cousin of
mine. Which is the direct result of the only actually communal
breeding harem (CBH) I've had personal experience with. So call me
jaded. The other kid got most of his parenting from doing what most
kids I've seen do when that ugly bit of their parents getting divorced
do... seek it else where. In otherwords your invoking a 'He said, She
said' style arguement. No one's mind really changes from those.
Second,
I'm swapping out your Glooblflargs namely, 'good parenting' and 'bad
parenting' as it would take far, far to long to flesh those out.to
meaningful terms and replacing it with just 'parenting'. To expand, a
Gloobleflarg is a key, central point in a debate, arguement, or politcal
campaign that no one ever actually got around to defining. Its an
empty term that the listener or debater is left to secretly define
themselves. Basically, it can be replaced by a random sound effect,
thus being honest about being more Madlib then meaningful speech.
Third,
you do realize your arguement boils down to basically: As the number of
participants in the CBH approaches infinity then percent chance of one
of them having time to do parenting approach 100%. To which I''d
counter with: The percent chance of any offspring being unparented by
the CBH at any given time interval approachs 100% as the number of
offspring approaches infinity. Baiscally, the 'infinite number of
monkies' arguement... on a less cosmic scale. Which means the most
important word in your arguement goes to someone. Which is
more likely to be a non participant in the CBH than a participant, if we
go by numbers... unless the entire community is involved and then your
in a hippy commune and you can off replace parented by some one at
random with given LSD by someone at random.
Which is the largest
part of why, to me at least, your arguemnt utterly fails to counter what
you were responding to. It basically turns parenting into a games of
statistics. As statistics are crazy easy to make say what you want them
to say. Its the literal truth that papers coming to completely
opposite conclusions use the exact same statistics to prove their
points. Again I'm not trying to pick a fight and it would take far, far
to much effort and research into your personal life to pick your
personal anicedotes appart... possiblely a 20 year or so megastudy.
So
instead I'll explain why you lost via the parenting equivalent of
invoking Godwin's law. The 2 men and 2 women (minimum) formatt is only
possible in two formatts. Foursome or wifeswap. For wifeswap Your
looking for Marmalade Girl fanfiction or something. For Foursome of the
described type (rather than a loose association) it takes a village makes a rather a lot of sense and works with my point rather well.
The reason why it takes a village
to explain parenting practices that are a good idea fails, is where
that saying comes from. Seriously. That phrase is straight from
Africa. Specifically villages of Kleenex people. As in those who are
disposable, interchangable, and expected to die randomly like minorities
in a slasher film with an insanely racist director. Once husband/wife
is as good as any other huband/wife as life is short and pointless and
someone has to take out the trash/cook. Where dating is composed of the
men (as a group) going to another village (thus limiting inbreeding
chances) and prettiing themselves up... then the available women wander
out in a herd and pick a mate entirely by how pretty he looks. Its from
those sections of Africa were you are forbidden to name and infant
until two years of age... because its so likely to die that your not
allow to get attacted until that point as its probably going to live
long enough to get to puberty at that point. If you name the infant its
a lot harder to forget about it. It takes a village because the parents are often not going to live long enough to raise the kid.
In
a non third world context, it means your free to ignore the kids as
eventually someone will get around to doing it for you. Quick use the
Ultimate Babysitter! (a.k.a. a TV set, or LSD in Hippy communes) Buy
them a toy line so they have stuff to amuse themselves with while we
ignore them. This is why they have friends and grandparents! These are
hallmarks of negligent parents. Which has is not restricted to CBH at
all. These are signs of failing at parenting. As I aid the equivalent
of Godwin's law being invoked.
Now to take a foursome into being
you find another trait of these societies comes into play. Segregation
of children by sex, during which time your homosexual by law. Then when
you come of age your now straight by law and go to the men market.
Yes, by law. All it would take is a female couple by chance picking a
male couple and a little bit of ignoring said law.
1. It takes a village/Godwin's Law - I have never heard a formal formulation of this concept, and have encountered the phrase in the past only as a fanfic title. If my own thoughts and ramblings overlap with it, so be it; I don't think that that counts as a deliberate invocation. More, my intent is not so say, 'this is how it should work because that's the theory'; I am saying, 'this is my attempt to explain what I have observed'.
2. Personal experience - First, if I seemed to be taking your position lightly, I apologize; polyamory, in families or otherwise, isn't terribly common, so my default, irritated, assumption was that I was responding to an argument made in ignorance. That said, this admittedly tragic case is the first directly witnessed or anecdotal account I have encountered - out of an overall pool of five households inclusive - where any sort of negative repercussion devolved onto the child. Anecdotal evidence being acknowledged at an impasse, we're still left with too small a sample size for an attempt at a scientific analysis.
3. High Death Rate Societies and Human Interchangeability - Leaving aside the obvious problems with an argument that seems, to me, to boil down to, 'Those brown animals, they're all the same, they don't even treat each other like people', I doubt that the less desirable features of any given society can be so easily mapped to any given particular custom in this manner. I doubt it most sincerely.
All of the above being the case, I don't think we're going to get any closer to agreement going around it again.
Good day, sir.
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"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."
