Introduction

Humanity approaches a demographic collapse. Increasing singledom contributes to plummeting fertility rates, which will age many populations so rapidly that some experts warn that civilization is under threat. This book investigates the perhaps most foundational factor behind this uncoupling: our present era’s ideology of love. Throughout human history, communities have shared fictional stories infused with various mating moralities that compel people to pair-bond and reproduce. After taking readers on a 6-million-year journey through hominin mating regimes—with various extents of promiscuity, polygyny, and monogamy—this introductory chapter outlines the radical evolution of the past millennium’s Western mating moralities, from antiquity’s heroic love, to medieval courtly and companionate love, to modern libertine, romantic, and confluent love. A summary is offered of the book’s ten chapters, each of which investigates Nordic literary works to illuminate the pivotal transitions between the West’s First, Second, and Third Sexual Revolutions, which occurred around the years 1200, 1750, and 1968. The conclusion chapter speculates regarding the upcoming Fourth Sexual Revolution, one of artificial intelligence and other technologies that seem likely to transform human mating practices more radically than any of the previous revolutions.