However, you could argue that we evolved to optimize our reproduction in one of several strategies. For some, it means their best bet is to settle with one family, for others it means profligate mating with dozens of partners. If so, by your logic, neither lifestyle would have any more inherent meaning than the other.
And, well, the 400,000 years of itinerant existence with much stronger evolutionary selection pressures vs. 10,000 years of agrarian society with less intense selection pressures doesn't seem commensurate.
You're arguing very hard for your chosen lifestyle, which includes some sunk cost bias.
Personally, I've done the settled-down thing and the hobo life and neither is more inherently meaningful than the other.
Perhaps you could argue that a pair-bond and a single location and community makes climbing Maslow's hierarchy of needs easier in our current society - that I might buy.
I would point out the other component to this, which is that the ideal structure should be what rewards the group, not the individual. So some people might be most suited as an individual to mate with many partners, but that would need to fall someplace within the larger hierarchy of their social suitability, in which case an absent or unavailable father is not ideal (children do objectively - although not universally - worse on average without their fathers). In that instance, whatever they are personally inclined to do is actually harmful to the broader group, meaning they should be given a compensatory incentive by the group to adopt a less promiscuous lifestyle. In either situation, whether it is natural for them to be monogamous or not, they should end up monogamous for the sake their young. So we have to look at the broader group structure as well.
However, you could argue that we evolved to optimize our reproduction in one of several strategies. For some, it means their best bet is to settle with one family, for others it means profligate mating with dozens of partners. If so, by your logic, neither lifestyle would have any more inherent meaning than the other.
And, well, the 400,000 years of itinerant existence with much stronger evolutionary selection pressures vs. 10,000 years of agrarian society with less intense selection pressures doesn't seem commensurate.
You're arguing very hard for your chosen lifestyle, which includes some sunk cost bias.
Personally, I've done the settled-down thing and the hobo life and neither is more inherently meaningful than the other.
Perhaps you could argue that a pair-bond and a single location and community makes climbing Maslow's hierarchy of needs easier in our current society - that I might buy.