“But now it’s my turn!“
The world is showing us how it’s done: Regardless of whether Donald Trump wins this year’s presidential election in the USA with simplistic but nonetheless noisy slogans – or in Germany, the current Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz causes the governing coalition to collapse by dismissing his disfavored finance minister: “But now it’s my turn!“ Finally being able to assert your own will unchallenged, to really kick ass – how wonderful that must be…
And what happens on a large scale – and because it happens on a large scale, eventually we ourselves also want to claim our share of it in equal measure. On the one hand, because it now seems to be in vogue to seize the opportunity when it presents itself without too much consideration. On the other hand, because this is accompanied by a “now more than ever” / I don’t care at all” – feeling, since the world seems just to be going crazy anyway – and at least you don’t want to be the last one in the seemingly omnipresent closing-down sale.
After all, it would be stupid to wait any longer. Not to mention all these petty obstacles and regulations that make something that is actually quite simple unnecessarily complicated. Probably communists, eco-freaks, feminists or otherwise queer–anarchist folk devised something like this…
Whatever.
I want another date now! And then I want sex right away as well. What I don’t want is to think about annoying counter-reasons like transparency, honesty, entitlement and egalitarianism (that word alone ^^!) beforehand, to hell with it, as otherwise I won’t get a chance at all. Otherwise everything will once again be overthought, dissected and discussed out of hand. Those who want something will find ways, those who don’t will find reasons. And all of this has really stood in the way of our happiness for long enough now, no longer:
Today it’s our turn!
It’s perfectly possible to try such an approach in the world of non-monogamy. And this is also done, not uncommonly at all, which contributes both socially and in the media by providing multiple relationships such as Polyamory with a persistently dubious reputation.
Above all, however, it leaves both the initiators of such “crowbar strategies” and those who unexpectedly became part of such behavior frustrated and often heartbroken: “Multiple relationships? It’s just a mess, constant irritation and pain, I’ve tried it, it isn’t working anyway…!”
Functioning democracies and ethical multiple relationships, such as Poly- or Oligoamory, therefore seem to struggle with similar problems. Even in argumentative discourse. What’s going on there?
I would like to try my hand at an answer – above all, of course, in terms of multiple relationships. But there are always parallels with democracy, which is in the nature of things.
After all, “Polyamory”, for example, which was conceptualized in 1990 by the pagan priestess and feminist Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart, is actually not that old in order to provide romantic relationships between more than three people with “relationship rules of the road” (Fun fact: Morning Glory actually used the phrase “rules of the road” verbatim in the very first text in which the word “polyamorous” appeared for the first time in modern context¹.)
Would it not have been enough to stick with the “free love-movement” that emerged from the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s? At its time, this was an anti-establishment statement that broke with outdated moral rules and called for the self-empowerment of those involved, thereby also declaring the pursuit of immediate physical and emotional satisfaction to be an aspiration and an entitlement for all people.
From the flower children and hippies on the streets of San Francisco, an almost quintessentially American agenda: “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.² Incidentally, precisely those principles of which Donald Trump is currently saying that he wants to make them “more valid” again in the US…
Breaking with outdated rules, revolutionizing traditional views and empowering people is great and holds its very own power. Without this revolution in the 60s and 70s, people would probably not have dared to explore their sexuality and their lives in different types of relationships for many more years to come.
A little more than 20 years later, it was precisely this exploration that led to new insights:
Simply empowering people is only half of a success story. This can be observed quasi iconically in one of the oldest ” entitlements” of mankind – by which I mean the Bible from Genesis, chapter 1, verse 28, which has long been translated and propagated as “Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” Which gradually led to a “self-service mentality” towards our planet, the consequences of which we are now confronted with in the most dramatic way in the 21st century…
Because if in this way entitlement and self-empowerment have been turned into an authoritarian and defiant “But now it’s my turn…!” often enough, then it is obvious that one day there will probably be nothing left that can be distributed or shared any longer.
Almost 20 years after the “sexual revolution”, not only did our planet show the first alarming signs of wear and tear, but also many relationship experiments proved that the factor “sustainability” urgently needed a place in the equation.
And “sustainability” is known to come in two stages:
►The first stage is the realization that a merely unleashed self-service mentality will gradually deprive itself of the basis of existence. A revolution that once began for good reasons will ultimately consume itself when it has finally destroyed its last foundations due to arrogance and selfishness.
Resources therefore have to be managed and distributed so that the greatest possible added value is retained for all those who wish to participate.
The latter principle is as important in ecology as it is in healthy relationship hygiene: Ego-tripping and non-transparent action in order to gain an advantage at the expense of others accelerates the descent into the abyss (even if this may seem quite comfortable for those who act purely selfishly until shortly before the end…).
►It was probably the second stage that prompted Morning Glory to think about a concept such as “Polyamory”: To ensure continued viability and longevity, self-empowerment must be extended to include the protection of resources and protective rights for the benefit of one’s own integrity.
Oh!
It was precisely at this moment that the “easy and simple answers” of the original revolution came to an end.
A plain: “Of course you can have as many partners as you want and have sex with whom you want and as often as you want…” at this moment became “…but the other participants are also to be perceived and heard as whole individuals, they have their own rights like you do – and concerning a whole from which you want to benefit and in which you want to participate, you are asked to contribute in return so that everyone involved experiences added value and things remain as balanced as possible.”
At the latest with this expansion, the word “ethical” was added to the word “multiple relationship”, which now brought together all the well-known values, in particular transparency, honesty, entitlement and equality – but also predictability, reciprocity, consensus and an effort to achieve long-term viability.
“Just so complicated again…” I hear people sighing in the US and Germany. Couldn’t we at least once allow ourselves to believe in the promise that we can achieve what we are striving for, plain and simple, without too much regulation?
My personal answer is: No, I don’t think so.
A “Yes!” would of course be so nice and straightforward here – but in my opinion, it wouldn’t be honest at this point to suggest it.
“In the past, when the opportunity presented itself, you just grabbed it, you didn’t ask much, you just did it…” Ok, that’s where we were already at the beginning: Exactly, it’s this “promise” of simplicity that is so tempting when it comes to quickly satisfying needs (of whatever kind).
As a result, what I call with a little tongue-in-cheek “regulations” or “values” above is perceived as incredibly obstructive, cumbersome and therefore negative, because it seems to be standing in the way of the direct path to the supposedly already obvious goal.
Folks, this is precisely the illusion that is being so heavily exploited by populists these days:
a) It is only this unnecessarily “complicated stuff” that separates us from the realization of our direct happiness. If it were gone, we would have immediately achieved it in the most excellent way.
What’s more:
b) Gradually, everything has been made more and more complicated to prevent us from ever being able to attain happiness (plus blame: insert a causative grouping of your choice here).
And that is a terrible distortion of the facts.
Because those “rules & regulations”, those values, are by their very nature a fundamentally good thing – and it is fantastic that they exist and have been compiled by many courageous people on the basis of their own experiences.
Global society – and also the society of those who wish to live in multiple relationships – is more and more often behaving like a person who doesn’t care about solidarity-based health insurance because they have a robust physical condition and will always enjoy their maximum fitness.
But what happens when that is no longer the case? What about the moment when we are the ones in need of protection and consideration? If we are dependent on this to get back on our feet at all? If we are also dependent on the people in our immediate surroundings to give us the necessary leeway to do so – at a time when we ourselves would not have the strength to provide it on our own?
What I am trying to say is that the values of ethical multiple relationships are indeed complicated. They also have complicated names – and their contents are complex, sometimes demanding. This will lead to them being discussed on a regular basis, sometimes controversially.
This, in turn, can mean for your own perception that some allegedly quick routes to the desired destination can be given a “Stop!” simply because of these conditions.
“In the past, you were allowed to open up a snack bar on every corner… And with a lot of honest work, you had made it after a few years.Today, you need hot and cold running water in your shack, there has to be a protective screen in front of the chip fat – and if you hire someone, you have to pay social security contributions for them on top of that…”
Yeah, bloody complicated, everything used to be better in the old days – today it’s all just worse…
No. Exactly not. Okay, today you can still exploit yourself – but with your employees, fortunately, it’s no longer that easy. The screen is designed to protect you and your employees from accidents, the hot water to protect your customers from stomach upsets and thus save you from claims for compensation.
But it is precisely with the above arguments that positive achievements can be declared to be obstacles, “superfluous things” that are unnecessary for the promised success.
If we apply this to our relationships (and our democracies), I would like to say that we may sometimes personally feel regret or frustration if the path to our goal is not as straightforward as we would like it to be due to other concerns.
However, these “concerns” almost always affect other people or our immediate surroundings, of which we are also a part.
And in reverse, this also means that next time it will be us who will benefit if someone else can’t simply cut through our personal integrity as a shortcut just because it seems to be a hindrance to their personal goal. And this doesn’t always only happen when we are healthy and resilient – analogous to the health insurance example above – but rather sometimes when we need protection, respect, solidarity, connectedness or just a little kindness, simply because we are a fellow human being.
Ethical multiple relationships and democracies are therefore very similar in these characteristics – and it is up to all of us to protect both.
After all, even the pushbacks that rise up now and again – and sometimes rage fiercely – are something the two are regularly confronted with.
Votes (personal and national) turn out differently than we would like, coalitions and relationships break down, partners do not come together. Sometimes it is difficult, at times devastating, occasionally we feel rejected by the world – but also by our closest fellow human beings – despite or because of our commitment to the ethical but therefore more complicated answer and because of this we may even believe as a result that we have failed.
In the US crime/mystery series “Castle“ (Season 4, Episode 3 “Head Case” ), the protagonist Richard Castle (played by Nathan Fillion) encourages his daughter Alexis with the following words: „Rejection isn’t failure.“ To which she replies: „It sure feels like failure.“
And he answers:
„No, failure is giving up. Everybody gets rejected. It’s how you handle it that determines where you land up.“
¹ The original document from the magazine “Green Egg“ from 1990 can be found e.g. HERE as a source.
² The quote is of course from the United States Declaration of Independence of 1776.
Thanks to Alana Jordan on Pixabay for the photo!