Monogamy May Contribute to the Extinction of Humanity

Monogamy May Contribute to the Extinction of Humanity

“I’ve calculated that if we keep fixing the problem, in 10,000 years no men will be producing sperm.”
- Sherman Silber , urological surgeon, researcher who heads the Infertility Center of St. Louis, at St. Luke’s Hospital

It’s not as if the (distinctly male) Y chromosome is under attack by monogamous men. The claim is that due to monogamy, more correctly one man, one woman, no cheating, may be causing the sperm of some men to get lazy. It’s “use it or lose it,” make it work or it will suffer from atrophy.
Isn’t sperm a natural component of maleness, something that gets passed down from generation to generation like a treasured gold pocket watch? Not quite. Like anything related to DNA, deficient sperm, if allowed to procreate through a non-natural process such as in vitro fertilization, will pass from father to son to grandson, and so on. Once the genes responsible for producing sperm become deficient, their progeny (if any) will also be deficient for every succeeding generation.
A strictly monogamous relationship, especially if overwork, lack of sufficient sleep, fatigue from childcare, prescriptive drugs or many other causes come into the picture, results on long periods of sex drought. In effect, what happens with newly made sperm is similar to what happens to muscles that are not used for long periods of time. They don’t work so well. While atrophied muscle can be revived, defective sperm producers remain defective until death.
When it comes to sperm, working well is critically important. The World Health Organization (WHO, an agency of the United Nations) says that fewer than 15 million sperm per milliliter of semen will likely result in a healthy egg that will not be fertilized after coitus. Out of that number, only one (in most cases) will ever be successful. If the sperm don’t fight hard, if they have developed with a funny shape or if they swim poorly, they will die alone, along with the egg.
The original purpose of monogamy was to ensure that a baby grew with both a mother and a father--the old concept of “a family.” Monogamy originally meant devotion of one man to one woman for the purpose of raising a child. Religions, given legal charge of marrying men and women, dictated the “no cheating” rule. Even the term for “cheating” in a marriage is “unfaithful,” a word commonly associated with religion.
Today we have astronomical rates of divorce, often because the man has been “unfaithful” to the marriage vow. A shocking majority of single mothers live on social assistance (welfare), barely able to fulfill their role model as mother let alone act as a father as well.
One large study a couple of years ago, in the USA, found that 85 percent of husbands admitted (confidential survey) to being unfaithful to their wives (sex with at least one other partner). However, another study found that 65 percent of wives were unfaithful to their marriage vows as well. Both of these were “at least once.” That’s a clear majority on both sides.
Our insistence on sexual monogamy in marriage (or equivalent) is, therefore, in conflict with the realities. In other words, the partner who gets caught is the guilty one.
But who suffers from breakups resulting from sexual wandering of one or more spouses? More than anyone else, the children. We say that “Kids can adapt easily to changes in family makeup.” That kind of thinking may be seen in people who know nothing about children. They suffer, in ways that parents seldom understand, often for the rest of their lives.
“Bad food, bad genes and monogamy are sucking the life our of human sperm,” according to David H. Freedman, freelance journalist and author, in a column about the degradation of human sperm, in Discover, November 2011.
Several studies have confirmed that the viability of male sperm has slid downhill over the past century, going by standards of the World Health Organization. “We’re producing pretty poor sperm compared with those of [other] primates and other animals,” claims Gary Cherr, reproductive toxicologist at University of California, Davis. “Even in the most fertile men, there are quality issues.”
The facts stated above may seem to confuse the issue of the future of humanity. But they don’t really. Over time, Darwin’s concept of natural selection will prevail.
The total population of humans on our planet may decrease in the meantime. Who would dispute the value of that?
This article is not intended to support the concept of sex with partners outside of marriage. That part is up to you. What we need to keep in mind is the best interests of children, who are inevitably harmed by the breakup of their parents. Inevitably, in their minds, if not visibly by their behaviour at the time.
Let’s remember that the primary purpose of the marriage bond is to ensure a child has caring parents to raise him or her. Sexual monogamy of both parents, or lack thereof, matters little to a child.

Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today’s Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to raise kids with a comfortable balance of skills and knowledge as adults.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

You Were Inevitable

"Life only starts to make sense when you realize that sometimes--often all the time--two completely contradictory ideas can be true.Everything that led up to you was wrong. Therefore, you should not have been born.But everything about you is right: You had to be born.You were inevitable."
- Jonathan Coe, The Rain Before it Falls, Viking (U.K.), 2007

Perhaps the most inspiring words I have ever read.

Jonathan Coe's multi-generational narrative takes the reader through decades of grievous family history, where everything including abandonment, emotional abuse and the beating of a child that blinded her points to a cold, dire, sometimes brutal existence for the recent descendants. Yet the blinded girl had to be born and grew up to be happy and fulfilled, according to the narrator of the story.

But, That's me, I thought. And it could be you.

Maybe the terrible family history and problems you had to face in your life prepared you for the total person you are today.

You are not the tragedies of the past in your life, nor the calamities that befell your family before you came along. You were the product of them, yes, but you came through them.

To the average person, the rock that will one day become a beautiful sculpture is nothing but a rough, crass chunk of space debris. To a sculptor, the rock is the protection that has surrounded the beauty he will soon reveal from within, for eons. Somehow or another, the rock clothing that surrounded you has been chipped and drilled away to reveal something beautiful. Something beautiful that is you.

If you identify yourself as being the product of a troubled past, you will act the role of the troubled person of the present waiting for something else to go wrong to destroy your life. If you see yourself as the beautiful creation you have become, you will be a different person.

You are not your past, nor the inheritor of the troubled history of your family. You are who you are. Not only are most of your ancestors not alive today, not even you can live in your own past. You are who you are today, no matter what happened in the past.

Your past is no more real today than the genocides of Hitler, the agonies of The Great War to End All Wars or Joan of Arc tied to the stake. Today is today. It can only be today. The past brought you to where you are today, but it does not force you to be its victim.

You were inevitable.

If you want to make yourself useful to the world, make it better for someone. The more people whose today you improve, the more likely they are to pay the favour forward.

The world improves not by those who destroy, but by those who create and improve in preparation for the future. Generally speaking, your life is better than the lives of any ancestor in your past. If it doesn't seem that way, then maybe you aren't looking at what is right and good.

When you see what is right and good in your life, pass it on. You don't know how much better the future can be for your descendants. But you can try to do what is right and good for them.

Teach right. Teach good. Teach peace. (What I call the Philosophy of T3)

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want their children to grow into a better world that they will help to create. You can help to prepare them.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

Christmas Carols: A Brief History

Though we often think of carols in association with church services, notably in the Christmas season, they began as anything but.

The word carol itself derives from the French carole, which referred in medieval times to a ring-dance. The first Christmas carols were banned from the church because they were festive dances, though there was singing and often accompaniment by musical instruments.

These were frowned upon by the church in the 13th century as holdovers from paganism. Carolers who arrived at a church on Christmas Eve would have to stand outside. As their singing would disturb the somber attitude of the service within the church, the doors were closed against them. Thus began the tradition of carolers strolling to churches, then homes, as people moved around with their singing and dancing, perhaps to keep warm.

The first time that carols were sung in church, it was the priest who sang them, and only the priest. Those in the congregation kept silent, as was the custom where only the priest would sing within the church. In those days, much of the service was sung by the priest, in Latin.

Most carols, then, began apart from church celebrations. Nearly 200 years ago, one of the few times a carol began within a church setting happened in Austria. The church organ broke down on the eve of Christmas, so the service would have no music if the organist and choir leader couldn't think of something.

Within a short time they had prepared a song which was first sung by two choirmen, accompanied on a guitar by the organist. At least that's the story, believed now by some to be a folk tale. Silent Night has become the best known and loved carol in Christendom. Today it's sung in almost every language on the planet. (Follow the link to see some translations from the original German that differ from the words most of us know.)

Christmas carols are distinguished from Christmas songs mostly by the reference in carols to Jesus or to something relating directly to Christmas. In other words, the church appropriated the songs it once found offensive, adopted them, then controlled their proliferation.

One of the best known Christmas songs is Jingle Bells. While this song is appropriate for the Christmas season, it originated in the USA for the purpose of being a carol for Thanksgiving. Jingle Bells, it was originally hoped, would become the Thanksgiving carol. While it refers to sleighs and bells and snow, which few Americans see on their Thanksgiving in late November these days, it was more common for winter weather to have begun by that time of year in the past when Europe was still coming out of the Little Ice Age and America itself was colder than it is today.

Go Tell It On The Mountain, written by John W. Work, Jr., began as an African-American spiritual that gave hope to people who had little of it a century ago. Its words have been adapted numerous times by various groups for different settings and purposes, but the music continues to inspire. The song has a theme and the music a style that Europeans took to, so it was adopted by Christians around the world when Britain was home to the world's largest empire.

Carols, many people feel, do something for us that other Christmas songs don't. They bring back memories of happy times from Christmases past. They always have a positive message and people who know them find it hard to stand by and not join in when others begin to sing them.

Perhaps more than any other feature of the Christmas season, the singing of carols inspires people to what we often call "the true meaning of Christmas," helping us believe that there is more to Christmas than overloading the credit cards.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about how, what and when to teach children the life skills and knowledge they need to be competent and confident adults, including being inspired by music.
Learn more at http://billallin.com