Ideal world: Future poly?

V

vodkafan

New member
Hi all,
this is just a flight of fancy for a moment but has a serious purpose....I am writing a novel at the moment (my first!) which is a novel about time travel....anyway I am trying to put together a believable vision of the future about 2180...I figured poly would become more important and wanted to incorporate that.
But I have been away from the forum a long time. I was just wondering how many of you saw things going. Better or worse?
Do you think poly will become more mainstream in society?
Or even, leaving realism aside, what would your ideal world be a couple of hundred years from now?

Thanks
 
Far less shunned/badmouthed/prejudiced against - yes, I dearly hope so, and I think that hope has a reasonably good chance to become reality. Which would go along with poly/open arrangements becoming a lot more visible and commonplace, both IRL and in depictions all across the media.

Much more statistically common - eh, I really don't know about that. Even though I can't personally relate to it (and don't even want to, to be honest), I think that being "hardwired for mono" is probably a real thing, and thus mono 'ships are going to stay around for as long as humanity lives on... possibly even as the statistical majority of 'ships, but I won't hazard a guess at that.
 
I'd say, by the time period you specify (2180's-ish), that poly (and gay, for that matter... because it's likely that gay acceptance will open up poly acceptance) will be just as accepted as interracial is today.
 
Robert Heinlein wrote about polyamory a lot in his books (though many get weird fast and his characterization of women left something to be desired.) But he dealt with many types of marriage like ones that were more like a club with a fixed number of members.

I would hope that it would be common enough that people didn't assume a monogamous marriage by default.

I have also heard a lot of interest in 7 year marriages. Basically, you are married for 7 years with an option to extend it. So that may gain in popularity.

And then Futurama predicts the marriage battle of the future is robo-human relationships. :)
 
Quath said:
And then Futurama predicts the marriage battle of the future is robo-human relationships. :)
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That's actually a lot more probable (in the near future) than some people think. And I don't think it will take until the year 3,000 either.
 
In my ideal world, everyone would be able to define their family themselves, and the definition would be accepted officially and legally. I think there should be different options for “marriage”, i.e. each and every marriage contract could be different. A lot like the commitments poly people have with their partners: with one you share living and finances, with the other you want to be listed as the person to be contacted in medical emergencies etc.

This could be the official way to do things, as well. That everyone could formulate their marriage contract to suit their needs, whether mono or poly, straight or gay or whatever. And, in my ideal world, a child could have more than two legally recognized parents.
 
Secular states that allow people to practice their religion within the confines of what is universally agreed to be okay. Ie human rights would be what dictates the law rather than religious principles.

This would mean that people could have any sort of relationships they like as long as the people involved supplied informed consent. A child couldn't give informed consent. You would be able to become legally entangled (civil partnership) with as many people as you like regardless of gender or lack thereof. Marriage would be kept for people who are religious and each religion may have criteria for marriage that means certain members of society are unable to marry under that religion. That would be fine because those members are unlikely to subscribe to a religion that excludes them and everyone can have civil partnership which gives you the same legal rights as marriage does anyway. Marriage would be a religious ceremony. The legal bit would be referred to as something else and be the same for everyone regardless of whether they marry or have a civil partnership.
 
One of the things that I think will make poly much more accepted is ever increasing life spans. I think we are on the brink of some dramatic jumps (aging + cancer), and an extra 20 to 40 years (maybe more) are going to change the way we think about relationships.
 
Nox said:
One of the things that I think will make poly much more accepted is ever increasing life spans. I think we are on the brink of some dramatic jumps (aging + cancer), and an extra 20 to 40 years (maybe more) are going to change the way we think about relationships.
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That's a very good point. "Until death do you part" used to mean an average of mid 50's to 60's. Now it's not unusual for it to mean "until 90's"
 
Nox said:
One of the things that I think will make poly much more accepted is ever increasing life spans. I think we are on the brink of some dramatic jumps (aging + cancer), and an extra 20 to 40 years (maybe more) are going to change the way we think about relationships.
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I'm going to disagree.

I don't see that longer life leads to more freedom; I think it will lead to more disparity as only the establishment can afford to live longer and continue to repress even inadvertantly everyone else.

The complete separation of sex and reproduction, via artificial wombs, would increase polyamory even if only the rich can afford it.

Essentially rich young men and women will couple even more freely than today without any concern for reproducing. If a poly woman wants a child she will submit a blood sample, pick her favored mate from her friends list, have the child modeled via Google Self (and know with 90% certainty every possible purchase the child will ever pursue), and them submitted to Amazon for delivery via DroneSTORK 10 months later. An Amazon subscription populated by Google Self will deliver clothes and toys and food every month.

Of course Apple will offer a competing service where they make it possible for men to also submit blood samples and have children, by specially combining DNA from a proprietary super X chromosome to supplement the male Y, with a partnership with Microsoft to do the modeling of the child.
 
london said:
Secular states that allow people to practice their religion within the confines of what is universally agreed to be okay. Ie human rights would be what dictates the law rather than religious principles.

This would mean that people could have any sort of relationships they like as long as the people involved supplied informed consent. A child couldn't give informed consent. You would be able to become legally entangled (civil partnership) with as many people as you like regardless of gender or lack thereof. Marriage would be kept for people who are religious and each religion may have criteria for marriage that means certain members of society are unable to marry under that religion. That would be fine because those members are unlikely to subscribe to a religion that excludes them and everyone can have civil partnership which gives you the same legal rights as marriage does anyway. Marriage would be a religious ceremony. The legal bit would be referred to as something else and be the same for everyone regardless of whether they marry or have a civil partnership.
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Agreed 100%. Awesome to see someone else seeing it that way, because for the most part I get flack from conservatives and liberals both when I propose that my ideal approach to a) marriage and b) equality in legal benefits for all kinds of 'ships is "rigorously unmix these two concepts, and keep them firmly separate forever onward". :)
 
InsaneMystic said:
Agreed 100%. Awesome to see someone else seeing it that way, because for the most part I get flack from conservatives and liberals both when I propose that my ideal approach to a) marriage and b) equality in legal benefits for all kinds of 'ships is "rigorously unmix these two concepts, and keep them firmly separate forever onward". :)
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Interesting. My thought has been that we should get the word "marriage" to mean all kinds of 'ships, and make them all legally equal - as well as have equal terminology. But as I think of it, the word "marriage" has such a baggage... of religious type, and of other traditions. Even though world history knows a lot of different marriage types, our modern western culture relies on monogamy and male dominance, historically. Maybe it really would be a good idea to give up the term marriage and let it have all this baggage, and take a totally new term in use for legally recognized 'ships of all types.
 
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