In contemporary society, the traditional form of marriage has been beaten down so thoroughly that it is only a shadow of its former self. Haggard, toothless, begging for any takers, the once formidable and revered institution of marriage as practiced in the West has stooped to subsisting primarily on the bridal fantasies of schoolgirls and gay men. Shunned and feared by an increasing number of men, marriage has come to resemble a leper, ambushing hapless men like a crowd of decaying harpies, preying on their guilt and sense of duty. Many men are catching on, and as soon as they see the specter of ring-slavery they turn and run like stags from a conflagration. They know, as though by instinct, that the smoke they smell is not mingled with the delicious aromas of the hearth and kitchen, but rather soot and brimstone from the depths of hell.
There are those who don the armor of righteousness and sally forth to save marriage as though they were knights who storm a castle to save a fair princess, but all they find is a cackling old crone in their arms. Attempts are made to give the institution a facelift, but no amount of perfume can cover the foul vapors that hang around the old witch, nor can any effort succeed in banishing the vicious minions that inhabit her menagerie.
We have to face the truth about marriage: it has metastasized into a beast that frequently consumes men’s lives and rewards women for grievous sins, doing great, usually irreparable, damage to families and society. Furthermore, in today’s wold it has become largely meaningless: illegitimacy no longer carries any stigma, gay marriage has extinguished its biological basis, and instead of the implicit assurance of steadfastness and fidelity, it now carries the explicit threat of divorce. Because of divorce, marriage constitutes an existential threat to many men, and for women it is loaded with so much temptation to do wrong that their risk of permanently destroying their reputation and family is unacceptably high.
It is time to cast these notions of saving marriage aside. The damage has already been done, and the systemic corruption of its corpus is too catastrophic to repair. The contemporary incarnation of marriage should be viewed and handled like high-level radioactive waste; highly toxic material to be sealed and entombed in vaults deep underground.
On first thought, this may seem like a radical solution. Why not simply try to fix the laws, tinker with the norms a bit and add some cultural prodding to get people to behave better? Unfortunately, that cannot work, and not only because of what a liability marriage has become. Western marriage was built on the Christian principles that created Western civilization, which is clearly done for. Western civilization is as dead as the old Confucian order that fell with a thud during the collapse of the Qing dynasty. This is not to say that nothing will remain of it, but just as classical Roman civilization was supplanted by Western Christianity, something different will come along to build upon the slowly crumbling ruins of Western civilization.
Western Christianity clearly borrowed a great deal from the civilization it replaced, and monogamous marriage is a good example of cultural continuity. However, the Christian marriage contract differed significantly from the pagan Roman. The most crucial difference was the irrevocable nature of marriage in Christian theology. The New Testament set the bar very high for separation from one’s spouse, whereas divorce was a relatively easy matter in Roman law. Today, we have an impossible amalgamation of the two systems, where culturally and ideally we still carry a vestigial Christian concept of matrimony, but legally and practically we are closer to the Roman norm. Therefore we still view the marital union as “one flesh,” and so apply Solomon’s solution to its dissolution, i.e. cut that baby in two.
It is tempting at this point to explore solutions, but the primary goal of this post is to open people’s minds to the idea that marriage, as it exists today, can be done away with. Of course, it will have to be replaced with something better, and I will explore that concept in my next post, but one of the preconditions for reform is the abolition of marriage as we know it. It is of the utmost importance that people begin to realize that marriage in its current form is damaged beyond hope of salvation, and that getting rid of it is not only possible, but desirable as well.
7 responses so far ↓
1 niko // Sep 28, 2008 at 5:48 pm
Financial incentives and disincentives concerning the formation and dissolution of cohabitation dictate marriage behavior.
Get totalitarian government policy out of peoples homes and decrease affirmative action (discrimination) and the rate of marriages will increase quick smart.
2 Lukobe // Sep 30, 2008 at 10:37 am
This brings up the question of whether the state should be involved in marriage at all.
3 Hope // Sep 30, 2008 at 1:55 pm
Nicely written.
In some cultures marriage is not wrapped up with holy or religious connotations, and that may be a problem with marriage in the West. The decline of Christianity and the secularization of the West in part means that the Christian style of marriage is faltering. Fidelity is another demand made by Christianity (thou shalt not commit adultery). This is culturally, but not religiously, reinforced in other places.
You did neglect to mention that women are the ones who are overwhelmingly initiating divorce, oft-quoted as being over 70% of the cases (I’m not fact-checking this one, just parroting what I have read). It seems that women are the ones wanting both to enter marriage and escape from marriage.
The intermingling of passionate romantic love with marriage is another cause for its failure, particularly on the part of women initiating divorce. This was the cause of easy divorce during Roman times as well. When people married out of economic necessity, familial duty or political expediency (in cases of nobles in the past), the marriages were perhaps less intimate but more stable.
The younger generation is increasingly skeptical of marriage, men and women both, but by a certain point most average people do enter into it. The popular culture endorses the idea that love should lead to marriage, and those who fall in love start thinking of marriage almost immediately. However, there are signs that the young no longer rush into marriage, as stigma against cohabitation is removed and the young simply begin cohabiting through their youth. In essence, they are having more trial marriages, with some of the economic consequences upon splitting, but without the legal and social ramifications of divorce.
4 Lukobe // Sep 30, 2008 at 10:45 pm
“Thou shalt not commit adultery” isn’t just Christian, of course. Exodus 20:14 and Deuteronomy 5:18 are both part of the Torah…
5 Bill // Sep 30, 2008 at 11:05 pm
Hope from Roissy?
You make some good points, but I’d be interested in knowing which cultures do not have “holy or religious connotations” regarding marriage. If you mean Communist countries, I’d argue that Marxism (or Maoism, Juche, etc.) has all the requisite characteristics of religious belief. I cannot think of any other non-Western examples of cultures that do not include religion in the concept of marriage. But you are correct in that fidelity is (or was) almost universally enforced by cultural norms. I’m writing about the reasons for that, but have not finished yet.
Love marriage was never really even the norm in the West, either. Even today it isn’t exactly common. How many people these days get married while in the blissful first few months of a relationship? Most wait until things have cooled off, and then make what they believe is a rational decision (I would argue that despite their calculated approach, they are still making a mistake). Certainly, there is affection, but that is far from what is known as “love” by the standards of Hollywood movies, romance novels and the like.
Lukobe: There are indeed serious indications that state involvement is harmful to the concept of marriage. But doesn’t that suggest something profoundly disturbing about the state itself?
6 Hope // Oct 1, 2008 at 9:16 am
How many people these days get married while in the blissful first few months of a relationship?
I would argue that biochemically speaking, until a couple has moved in together and are physically together under the same household for a few months, the “blissful” feelings still hold for a while. This was much more the case when cohabitation was socially unacceptable, so marriages began with more of a honeymoon phase. Today, you are correct that many couples make a more rational, clear-headed decision with regard to marriage.
If you mean Communist countries, I’d argue that Marxism (or Maoism, Juche, etc.) has all the requisite characteristics of religious belief.
Not necessarily communist countries, but generally cultures in which parents and relatives have a large say in their children’s marriages, to the point of arranging marriages or introducing potential mates to their children, and at the very least the process of “approving” the marriage prospects. In other words, there are no holy connotations, but the sense of tradition and structure with regard to marriage is strong. That had happened in the West, but has mostly gone away with cultural shifts in the direction of individualism, personal happiness and less emphasis on sacrifice and the family unit.
7 Lukobe // Oct 1, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Welmer sez “There are indeed serious indications that state involvement is harmful to the concept of marriage. But doesn’t that suggest something profoundly disturbing about the state itself?”
Only that in many areas it has far overreached its bounds.
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