Swipe Right? More Like Swipe Wild!

Sex is at the center of every culture.

If you want to control a population over time, control how it reproduces.

In his long series, anthropologist Patrick Clarkin sets up the mystery of human mating norms.

The short version?

We did it in all sorts of ways.

At different times, for different purposes.

Looking at all this dazzling variety, you may, like me, wonder why people are so confident about their norms.

The quick answer?

Politics.

We use coalitions to fight for power.

Well, at least, our winning mega-groups did.

And one thing large coalitions do well is to co-opt every event into the narrative of why their group should rule.

So people use their preferred mating norms as rallying flags to keep the group together.

Consider how stories today are used as slaps in ideological tugs of war.

You might watch a movie that has little to do with the preferred politics of a critic.

And that critic will go on about how the real message of the movie was their message.

“If you were smart…you would know this secret message.”

Any contradictions that prevent this from adding up are painted as clever complexities.

But we can return to anthropology for more than just an acknowledgement of the stunning variety of our mating norms.

For as long as we’ve been writing, people have gathered stories.

And they’ve asked: what do these have in common?

Manvir Singh did that again.

He looked at folk tales and epic oral traditions.

These were stories that made listeners sympathetic.

They could identify with the heroes of these stories.

This says something about who they found heroic.

Someone like them, but better.

More beautiful.

More active.

Someone who gets rewarded at the end.

Which tells us…

We are moved easily by stories with beautiful protagonists who do something to overcome adversity and get rewarded.

No matter what your original message is…

If you show these things to someone…

And they sit down for the whole book, movie, or story…

They will come out of it identifying with the main characters of that story.

So…you can’t really satirize people if you make them the protagonist of your story.

Especially if they get rewarded at the end.

Now, if it ends like the middle of the book of Job…

that is, an utter tragedy…

his wife leaves him, his children mock him, he gets a disease, the wind takes his mansion, and he loses all his wealth…

Well then, that might work.

But if you give your Hero Protagonist acclamation, status, wealth, or a satisfied slice of life at the end…

then, you’re planting a story in the listener’s mind.

A story that they will carry with them.

One that will let them identify with that protagonist.

And feel sympathetic toward them.

Even if they simultaneously resent them.

Just as we needed many ways of reproduction to get here.

We will need many kinds of norms.

With millions of different kinds of heroes…

Let a billion norms bloom.