Untangling Darwinian Confusion around Lust, Love, and Attachment in the Scandinavian Modern Breakthrough

Mads Larsen

doi:10.26613/esic.5.1.209

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Untangling Darwinian Confusion around Lust, Love, and Attachment in the Scandinavian Modern Breakthrough

Mads Larsen

Published/Copyright: June 15, 2021

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From the journal Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture Volume 5 Issue 1

Abstract

The myth of true, lifelong love promoted low divorce rates among farmers who depended on each other for survival. In the urban ecology after industrialization, it became increasingly clear that long-term monogamy goes against human nature. In the Scandinavian Modern Breakthrough, a late-1800s literary movement, Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg, and others clashed in a battle over modern mating morality. Each interpreted Darwin to fit their own agenda, suggesting naturalistic understandings of “free love” and “true marriage,” some of which were laughable while others landed authors in prison. Evolutionary theory from our present era suggests that human mate choice is guided by three brain systems: erotic lust, romantic love, and feelings of deep attachment; our species thus evolved for serial pair-bonding with extra-pair copulation. Using these and other evolutionary insights, this article evaluates narratives from the Modern Breakthrough, which laid the foundation for today’s gender-equal and sexually liberal Nordic societies.

Keywords: mating systems; morality; modernity; social democracy; Darwinian gender studies

Published Online: 2021-06-15

Published in Print: 2021-06-01

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Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.26613/esic.5.1.209

Keywords for this article

mating systems; morality; modernity; social democracy; Darwinian gender studies