Women create society, women ARE society. A few chosen men (rich, powerful, handsome) hold key positions in this society, meanwhile most men are just outside, looking for a way in. You can buy your way in by being productive and hard-working. Or by dying for the society. Note that in times of war, women were handing out white roses, not putting on their combat boots. The rich and powerful were likewise found nowhere near a battlefield.
We try to get past our wild roots, the fact that we don't have harems in most of the world is how we became civilized.
Forced monogamy is what gave most men “skin in the game” (a chance at having a family), and as such, encouraged them to go above and beyond in making society better and safer. So yes, a lack of harems is what makes society progressive, safe, and stable.
Having large masses of men who will never have an opportunity for a wife and family is massively unstable for any society, because these men will either sod off and do their own thing (why should I contribute to society/civilization if it does nothing for me?), or they will forment unrest in an attempt to acquire wives of their own by any means possible.
More precisely, societies that enforced monogamy out competed and eliminated those that didn't.
I think it is possible to have a self stable society without enforced monogamy, so long as you have a mechanism to eliminate the hoards of unnecessary males before they rise up in revolution, but it's not stable in a world where there are some societies that do enforce monogamy and therefore have more males with a stake to fight for.
Where are the sources for this? What stopped many men from marrying in the far past wasn't that women were all in harems, it's that many men were poor laborers.
>Note that in times of war, women were handing out white roses, not putting on their combat boots.
True.
>The rich and powerful were likewise found nowhere near a battlefield.
False; see the traditional sorting of European aristocrats' sons (oldest is heir, second joins military, third joins clergy). To a first approximation, every single member family in Britain's landed gentry and peerage lost someone in WW1.
Every child also needs a father. Not just his semen or his money.
To believe that you are expendable is just your mind providing a token explanation for deflecting intimacy. That’s the believe that others can only need, but never love you. Such thinking is a symptom for an avoidant attachment style. Those “explanations” tell you nothing about the world. Though they do tell you something about yourself.
We try to get past our wild roots, the fact that we don't have harems in most of the world is how we became civilized.