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By Root 706 0

ethic handed down from the heavens. That is, at some point, the authorities made the choice to believe the institution of monogamy was best for everyone. As the western powers flexed their muscles over the past two millennia, they’ve also imposed their own moral choices on anyone they subjugate. Therefore, any tribe conquered by, say, Cortez, would most likely be subject to the moral choices of the Western authority, forced to follow western tradition, which included the authority’s notions of relationships. Nowadays, we cannot legally marry more than one person, but there is no law against living with a dozen partners, if that’s what you choose. In a sense, through the course of history, we’ve chosen a freer society than we had five hundred years ago.

The upshot of Sartre’s existentialism is that we’ve always been free to choose whatever type of morality we like. Throughout human history, humans have made individual choices in regard to their own morality. It has always been the Jews’ choice to believe or not to believe that circumcision is a covenant with God.41 Anyone can choose to believe this. Similarly, one can choose to believe (as some Mormons do) that supernatural undergarments are part of divine covenant.

There may or may not be a God. Magic underwear and penile foreskin may or may not matter to that God. For humans, we must choose to believe or not believe in a ritual. Even beyond religious rituals, humans must choose what they believe about anything in their world. It was my choice to care enough about the Rolling Stones and philosophy to write this chapter about the test case of monogamy. In a way, my writing is affirmation of my belief that the subject is important.

Human action and morality has been a process of thought, choice, and change for humans. One needn’t look any further than Deuteronomy to see that the moral rules and choices are certainly made in a historical, cultural context. After all, we don’t stone women to death for having pre-marital sex as Deuteronomy 22:20 prescribes, because we choose not to ascribe any relevancy to this rule anymore.

If Sartre is right, and all morality is simply a matter of human choices, moral traditions are simply sets of rules or moral frameworks we have chosen to believe or have faith in, and we continue to choose and change our minds about morality as time passes. Unless some all-powerful divinity directly controls the hands and minds of men (which we can never know), how can we help but give Sartre some credence on this issue? Keith, Mick, and Simone (and obviously Sartre) all took up existentialism on some level and chose to discard their inherited traditions of monogamy in favor of something else. Charlie Watts chose to stick more closely to the more staid, Western tradition.

Practiced at the Art of Deception

Mick (or at least Mick’s persona, if there is a difference) seems to have embraced the world of seduction in all of its mysterious luster. Tales of bolted doors, secret coded love notes, and various rendezvous are all a part of Mick’s mythology. Since secrecy is a part of seduction for the monogamist, the historical data to prove Mick’s perfidy is most often obscured. We’re left to either believe or ignore his alleged lovers’ testimonies. I’m inclined to believe many of them. The lips, the tongue, the whip coming down. No smoke without fire, right? Mick’s image is surely derived from some place of truth. But Mick isn’t the world’s first Lothario.

What makes Mick’s case interesting is the fact that he wants to walk the line of both traditionalism and radical sexual freedom. To be all things—to be the knight and the sorcerer. But you can’t be the establishment and the counter-culture at the same time, which is partly why Mick’s persona and music is wrought with tension. So, he sires seven (known) children by four different women over his life and sings, “You can’t always get what you want.” Well, if what you want is a lasting love and to be a seducer, you have a problem. If you want to be accepted by the tradition of the aristocracy, while simultaneously