I came across a conversation some people were having about a news article that explained how the poor have to pay more than many middle-class people for the same services (such as how not owning a car can disrupt one's life). One person made a typical American-right-wing comment about how the poor should stop smoking, look harder for jobs and take any job, cook for themselves and cancel television subscriptions (all good advice, but not really an infallible solution to a global or national problem of poverty). These hilarious paragraphs were the response.

'The poor are there because many of them make such bad choices. All those middle class poor overextending themselves on their mortgages and all those multi-millionaure poor overextending themselves on credit default swaps just show that bad decision making is an exclusive trait of the poor and that they can never have wealth until they learn to stop making bad decisions.'

'That's right. If they were responsible people, educated themselves, went to business school, and blew a $12,000,000,000,000 hole in the world economy, then the government could help them out. As it is, though, these leeches are steaing our money for what? To feed their children?'

' If you cannot afford a computer and internet, then you're 'paying' for a similar thing with commute time, as you go to the library to use their computers. Funny how the "time is money" phrase kind of gets ignored by many when applied to the poor.'

The drive to promiscuity

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8055296.stm
This is a news story about how brain anatomy correlates with sociability. The idea that sociability is an innate characteristic is not proven, since the brain could have grown this way during development due to environmental influences. Nonetheless it's as interesting a thought that someone might have a set drive for sociability during adulthood which doesn't really change.

What I find more interesting than this, though, is the implication that these various drives might correlate with each other, such that people who crave chocolate, sex or other drugs also crave social contact. I've encountered suggestions that people substitute one of these things for another: magazines are full of articles in which people mention chocolate binges that happen as a result of being dumped, for example. I'd never encountered a neurological basis for this before though.

We also have cravings for attachment and romance, as explained here:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/helen_fisher_tells_us_why_we_love_cheat.html
Apart from the fun bits, such as 'we were made to love more than one person', I wonder if all these cravings really can substitute for each other. Can the 'satisfaction' neurons reach maximal activity just from one or two of these (such as sex and chocolate) or do we need romance, sex, attachment, chocolate and social contact?
Either way, I'm not sure that marriage is a good solution. Helen Fisher thinks that we naturally want more than just the satisfaction of one drive that marriage gives us. If one drive, satisfied enough, can satisfy us entirely, why marry at all? Why not smoke weed all day, or eat chocolate, or have a busy social life? On the other hand, if it can satisfy us, why do so many marriages fail?
It seems much more likely that some amount of substitution is possible, but that we really want all the cravings to be satisfied separately.
In this case marriage seems to fight against human satisfaction by specifically denying us the chance to satisfy lust, romance and attachment all at once. Once again it seems a less than optimal solution. Any long-term arrangement that satisfies our desire for attachment does us harm if it also forbids us from satisfying our intrinsic desire for romance or our relatively short-term lusts; people who are attached to each other should accept that what is now called cheating is a perfectly normal and acceptable human trait. We might also notice that this research gives a decent explanation for extreme variabilities in sex drive. If someone wants more sex than someone else, he's not necessarily more base and sinful, just as the other person is not necessarily more prudish.

Of course, we knew this already. It does bring us on to the complicating factor of religion. Religion is a powerful tool for convincing people that things are wrong when they're actually beneficial. Religious people tend to be far less tolerant of drug use (of any sort), promiscuity, satisfaction of urges in general and especially of lust. It does seem strange that God would have made us to be naturally unhappy if we follow His teachings. Of course, much of these teachings are not necessarily God's, but are part of church doctrine instead. Either way, we have cause to doubt organised religion.