One of the most exciting developments in neuroscience recently has been the discovery of mirror neurons. Admittedly, our level of understanding of what these neurons actually do it mostly speculative. But such speculation is greatly intriging for those who are interested in the Philosophy of Mind. But for me personally, I believe that these brain circuits are an essential component in explaining where spirituality comes from.
I'm particularly interested in how these concepts might explain the psychological phenomenon called 'transference' which has many definitions. My personal definition is: "the transferal from one person to another of their emotions, complexes and experiences to another person." That might sound suspiciuously like telepathy. Well in a sense it is, but it isn't supernatural, it happens every day and is one of the wonders of being a human being.
Today I'm going to highlight three experiences I've had with transference and hopefully convince some people that this is a worthwhile thought experiment to investigate.
The Good:
The other week I was feeling deeply insecure and afraid. I have a series of maxims and comforting words I tell myself when I feel like this to soothe myself like soothing a distressed child. I find that when there is just one crisis in my life I am easily able to soothe my troubled heart... but when there are multiple crises after I have soothed one another one needs my attention and then the next and so on until I'm too tired to hold back the deluge of misery.
It is in times like this that a like spirit can offer considerable psychological aid. When you walk down the street and you see someone laughing or smiling and it makes you laugh or smile this is transference. It isn't usually that intense with a stranger... but with someone whom you understand well it can be quite intense. If they are willing and courageous enough to take the risk to open themselves up to transference.
The other day a like spirit shared with me some of her peace of mind(/heart?) which helped me enormously to regain my peace of mind. It was a beautiful gift because when someone opens themselves up for transference like this there is always the risk that they will take on your anxieties, worries and complexes... which would be a borrowing someone's car and then returning it covered in mud and no petrol.
The thing with transference is that the better you know someone the better it works... although the experience isn't always such a pleasant one of peace and love shared with a like spirit. It can actually be quite disturbing.
The Bad:
Two days ago I experienced a violent assault on my psyche. I was being beaten up emotionally with the intention of overpowering me through my sympathies and guilt. In short I had the peace of mind and power to soothe that another person wanted so they sought to take these from me by using guilt, they intented to coerce me to give them care and love at my own psychological expense. They were basically throwing their emotional turmoil at me to make it my problem too with the hope that I could drag them up when I dealt with their issues for them. Of course, I have enough issues right now and the resulting conflict only dragged me down into their pit of woe, despair and anguish with them.
The whole ordeal left me feeling angry, miserable, exhausted and deeply conflicted. Even as I write this I'm still tense and uncomfortable. As I mentioned earlier, when I'm upset I have a repertoire of maxims which I use to soothe and calm myself down... but these had been usurped by the traumas and complexes of the other person who had thrown them at me. This were unfamiliar problems for me... I just don't have these insecurities and so I find that my maxims are just inadequate to deal with them. I find myself stewing over these kinds of unsettling transferences for days as I have to mull over and wrench each issue from my mind to restore my inner peace. Just as a friend was able to transmit some of her inner peace to me this person was transmitting their inner chaos to me. Giving me fears and anxieties that I don't normal worry about.
I believe that there is an etiquet regarding these kinds of things and most of us learn it unconsciously during our lives: when retelling an emotional event to a person don't be intense and theatrical! If a person tells you a story calmly versus if they were to tell it intensely it has a very different affect on the listener. Poets and story tellers have been using this technique for thousands of years to draw their audience into the story. So when someone is always being melodramatic whenever they relate a story be wary that they could be trying to overwhelm you emotionally and use to for manipulative purposes.
Simply put, a person who plays up their emotions is subconciously saying "listen to me, my emotions are important" which is ok if they are considerate with what emotions they choose to share such as joy, wonder, awe and peace of mind. But when they won't let you have the space and time to share your emotions with them they are saying, "listen to me, my emotion are more important than yours!" This is psychological abuse and it is harmful.
The Spiritual:
Since my father's death I've been dealing with the unfortunate circumstances of his departing. He only just started to open up to me but in the 45 minutes we had alone together in his final days we had only just started to redefine our rocky relationship. There were a lot matters left undiscussed, unresolved and unsaid.
Fortunately for me I have a psychological memory of my father. Not just memories of his existence by a 'living' memory of his fears, feelings, complexes and attitudes. In a sense part of him still lives inside of me. This is only possible via tranference because it has allowed me to keep part of my father alive passed his death. I actually have an extensive 'library' of people, friends and relatives that I've built up throughout my life.
I suppose that I am perceived as quite an intense person for this reason: When I meet new friends I'm eager to 'get inside' their minds and figure them out. I greedily devour my every moment with them taking in their thoughts, feelings, reflections and mannerisms. I like to cultivate an environment of peace and total security if I can manage it for them because it helps them to share with me these precious parts of their psyche. I find this experience very rewarding because it helps me to form new maxims and enhance my own psychological resilience to trauma... also it gives me new interests and hobbies which increase my interest and enjoyment of life. It also provides me with endless challenges and creative inspiration. Although recently I've also come to realise that it comforts me when they are gone... either because they have died or because they don't want to be my friend anymore. When I'm writing stories I like to take elements from people I know and blend them into new personalities to write into my stories.
But sometimes when I'm feeling intense sadness, joy or awe my ability to readily accept transference starts to behave in rather unusual ways. For example, it stops applying just to other people but to things. Take a drop of water for example. The molecules of water cling to each other but not to other things. The molecules themselves actually have a very complicated atomic relationship with each other and during these intensely emotional moments just observing a drop of water can feel sublime. It is as though all the rules and laws of the world I've learned to live and interact in have been forgotten and this drop of water is the one law that explains the universe and everything within it. The great mass of humanity is suddenly percieved as a great psychological pool of water and we're all interconnected to each other in complex and unconcious ways. It is usually a very moving and visual experience with little linguistic content.
In a sense, to borrow a Neitzche idea, while we peer out into the universe around us, through transference, the universe is able to peer into us. I'm not going to make any grand claims that this is where we come in contact with the fabric of reality because I just can't see how human beings could ever know reality. But there is a peace in this state of mind that dulls the fear of death and this is certainly worthy of investigation by thought experiment.
Showing posts with label thought experiment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label thought experiment. Show all posts
09 March, 2010
02 January, 2010
In the Absence of Fear
I was thinking about my next thought experiment last night. It is a simple but profound one. Imagine yourself in a situation, maybe with a friend, talking to a superior, shopping or planning your next life changing decision. Think about what you would normally do in this situation. Then think about what you would do in that situation if you had no sense of fear.
When I find the actions of myself and my friends predictable it is only because I have gotten acquainted with what scares us. Knowing what scares someone allows one to accurately predict their reaction to a situation... but I think you'll find as I did after running that thought experiment through your mind a few times to its logical conclusion that the end result is extremely unpredictable and even suicidal in behaviour.
But it is interesting, yes? Just how many of our decisions in life are made out of love (in this sense our desire to do something we personally believe in) and how many are made out of fear (in this sense our desire to manage our insecurities)?
I have developed this model of insecurity management vs creative adventurism to explain human decision making.
Insecurity management is about making decisions to placate our fears relating to death, harm, loss, rejection, ostracism and uncertainty. These fears could be real, such as avoiding walking across a floor covered in glass shards with bare feet, or they could be imaginary, such as fearing that someone is telepathically reading your mind. I personally think purely imaginary fears are quite rare and the vast number of fears people have do have a rational basis. What I'm far more concerned with is over expressed fears. That is fears we respect even though the consequences of ignoring them are next to harmless or less severe than if we did otherwise.
Self-consciousness is a good example of this. A person may fear that they have a physical defect, which honestly, we all have physical defects so that is a rational fear, so they avoid social interaction because they're afraid of people not accept them because of it. While it is quite distressing to realise that you might have a physical defect that limits your enjoyment of life compared to other people, the consequences of fearing that other people will reject you and thus avoiding social interaction altogether are far more harmful than ignoring that fear.
Just to clarify I'm being very broad in my definition of physical defects in the above paragraph, I'm including beauty spots, facial assymetries along with more serious ones like heart and kidney defects. Defects that make us less than perfectly beautiful are present in everyone and the source of much anxiety for most people - even though they are hardly life threatening by themselves. They are far more dangerous when we over express our fear about their impact on our lives.
Pushing against insecurity management is creative adventurism. This is our desire to explore new experiences. New romances, deeper connections with existing relationships, new hobbies, new interests, new ways of doing the same thing. Basically our desire to be creative and inventive. From fixing a squeaky gate to changing our career. This is our desire to grow, explore and live.
This sounds really beautiful, and it is because this is where we get our enjoyment out of life. Pushing new frontiers. This is what makes life worth living.
It is also the biggest source of insecurity in our lives.
It is the source of our desire to put ourselves into harm's way, it is our desire to stop an abuser, it is our desire to risk our friendships and money for something that very likely will not be worth the cost of losing that money or those friends. It is our desire to challenge our society, parents and leaders... which might lead to greater freedom, happiness and prosperity... or to brutal and fatal retaliation from them. Making the first move into unexplored territory is always the scariest venture. Even if just for the risk of putting in weeks, months or years of effort into a project, book or relationship only to find it leads nowhere.
So... insecurity management is important... it keeps us safe, and our lives stable and predictable. But it doesn't make us happy either.
Then there's creative adventurism which offers us all the thrills and excitement of living. But it just might kill/destroy/harm us in the quest for a better life.
Clearly the two sides of this see-saw need to be in balance somehow. We need to work on our insecurities and discover if we over express them or if we have too many that they cripple our ability to enjoy life. Sometimes we need to look at our desire to challenge and attack the status quo and ask if you're investing your time in a rebellious act that is actually helping yourself, your friends and your community... or just creating new problems for them?
This is all about becoming less ignorant about why one does certain things so that we can both be more productive and enjoy our lives more.
When I find the actions of myself and my friends predictable it is only because I have gotten acquainted with what scares us. Knowing what scares someone allows one to accurately predict their reaction to a situation... but I think you'll find as I did after running that thought experiment through your mind a few times to its logical conclusion that the end result is extremely unpredictable and even suicidal in behaviour.
But it is interesting, yes? Just how many of our decisions in life are made out of love (in this sense our desire to do something we personally believe in) and how many are made out of fear (in this sense our desire to manage our insecurities)?
I have developed this model of insecurity management vs creative adventurism to explain human decision making.
Insecurity management is about making decisions to placate our fears relating to death, harm, loss, rejection, ostracism and uncertainty. These fears could be real, such as avoiding walking across a floor covered in glass shards with bare feet, or they could be imaginary, such as fearing that someone is telepathically reading your mind. I personally think purely imaginary fears are quite rare and the vast number of fears people have do have a rational basis. What I'm far more concerned with is over expressed fears. That is fears we respect even though the consequences of ignoring them are next to harmless or less severe than if we did otherwise.
Self-consciousness is a good example of this. A person may fear that they have a physical defect, which honestly, we all have physical defects so that is a rational fear, so they avoid social interaction because they're afraid of people not accept them because of it. While it is quite distressing to realise that you might have a physical defect that limits your enjoyment of life compared to other people, the consequences of fearing that other people will reject you and thus avoiding social interaction altogether are far more harmful than ignoring that fear.
Just to clarify I'm being very broad in my definition of physical defects in the above paragraph, I'm including beauty spots, facial assymetries along with more serious ones like heart and kidney defects. Defects that make us less than perfectly beautiful are present in everyone and the source of much anxiety for most people - even though they are hardly life threatening by themselves. They are far more dangerous when we over express our fear about their impact on our lives.
Pushing against insecurity management is creative adventurism. This is our desire to explore new experiences. New romances, deeper connections with existing relationships, new hobbies, new interests, new ways of doing the same thing. Basically our desire to be creative and inventive. From fixing a squeaky gate to changing our career. This is our desire to grow, explore and live.
This sounds really beautiful, and it is because this is where we get our enjoyment out of life. Pushing new frontiers. This is what makes life worth living.
It is also the biggest source of insecurity in our lives.
It is the source of our desire to put ourselves into harm's way, it is our desire to stop an abuser, it is our desire to risk our friendships and money for something that very likely will not be worth the cost of losing that money or those friends. It is our desire to challenge our society, parents and leaders... which might lead to greater freedom, happiness and prosperity... or to brutal and fatal retaliation from them. Making the first move into unexplored territory is always the scariest venture. Even if just for the risk of putting in weeks, months or years of effort into a project, book or relationship only to find it leads nowhere.
So... insecurity management is important... it keeps us safe, and our lives stable and predictable. But it doesn't make us happy either.
Then there's creative adventurism which offers us all the thrills and excitement of living. But it just might kill/destroy/harm us in the quest for a better life.
Clearly the two sides of this see-saw need to be in balance somehow. We need to work on our insecurities and discover if we over express them or if we have too many that they cripple our ability to enjoy life. Sometimes we need to look at our desire to challenge and attack the status quo and ask if you're investing your time in a rebellious act that is actually helping yourself, your friends and your community... or just creating new problems for them?
This is all about becoming less ignorant about why one does certain things so that we can both be more productive and enjoy our lives more.
20 December, 2009
Sex... Why are we so hung up on it?
Recently I saw this video clip on the Daily Beast:
Apparently, the Governor has a relationship with an escort and it's her fault.
Once again, as an atheist I feel it is my duty to strip away all of the dogma on how human beings are supposed to engage in sexual intercourse with each other and expose the prejudice here. When women label other women as 'sluts', 'whores', 'prostitutes' or whatever, they are living out what happened in the Stanford Prison Experiment. They feel once a women is publicly labelled as a slut that they can vent their repressed anger, jealously and frustration onto her. Why? Because they know they can get away with it.
This is immoral. Religious people often attack and demonise homosexuals and Jews for the same reasons. This is one of the things that upsets me most about religious people - they use the prejudices written in their dogma to justify the dehumanisation and venting of their frustration onto them.
I feel as an atheist I have to acknowledge that I have many feelings that are anti-social. Sometimes I get angry with beautiful people because they're shallow... sometimes I get angry with them because I'm very jealous. I believe that's part of being human I don't feel diminished in dignity and purity by admitting that I have destructive thoughts and feelings sometimes.
The majority of the women on this talk show appear to me to be angry with Mz. Dupree not because she had sex with lots of men but because she is beautiful, earned a lot of money doing something she enjoyed and managed to mingle with the creme-de-la-creme of society seemingly without any effort on her part. These are not good reasons to hate someone and the women on The View should feel ashamed not Mz. Dupree.
That said, I do find Mz. Dupree's sweeping generalisations about men irritating as she is only talking about her clientele and dating preferences not all men.
Conclusion, we often define mental illness as simply attributes some people have that we don't like. We invent reasons why their behaviour is bad after we've decided it is bad*. We then tell them it is their fault and their responsibility to change themselves when they can't really help being who they are. It is a twisted savage way of thinking.
* If you think that this is preposterous try this thought experiment: find a quality in a person that society considers 'good' then pretend that it's bad and think of reasons why it could be bad. You'll probably surprise yourself thinking about all the reasons why you could hate the 'good' things about some people.
Apparently, the Governor has a relationship with an escort and it's her fault.
Once again, as an atheist I feel it is my duty to strip away all of the dogma on how human beings are supposed to engage in sexual intercourse with each other and expose the prejudice here. When women label other women as 'sluts', 'whores', 'prostitutes' or whatever, they are living out what happened in the Stanford Prison Experiment. They feel once a women is publicly labelled as a slut that they can vent their repressed anger, jealously and frustration onto her. Why? Because they know they can get away with it.
This is immoral. Religious people often attack and demonise homosexuals and Jews for the same reasons. This is one of the things that upsets me most about religious people - they use the prejudices written in their dogma to justify the dehumanisation and venting of their frustration onto them.
I feel as an atheist I have to acknowledge that I have many feelings that are anti-social. Sometimes I get angry with beautiful people because they're shallow... sometimes I get angry with them because I'm very jealous. I believe that's part of being human I don't feel diminished in dignity and purity by admitting that I have destructive thoughts and feelings sometimes.
The majority of the women on this talk show appear to me to be angry with Mz. Dupree not because she had sex with lots of men but because she is beautiful, earned a lot of money doing something she enjoyed and managed to mingle with the creme-de-la-creme of society seemingly without any effort on her part. These are not good reasons to hate someone and the women on The View should feel ashamed not Mz. Dupree.
That said, I do find Mz. Dupree's sweeping generalisations about men irritating as she is only talking about her clientele and dating preferences not all men.
Conclusion, we often define mental illness as simply attributes some people have that we don't like. We invent reasons why their behaviour is bad after we've decided it is bad*. We then tell them it is their fault and their responsibility to change themselves when they can't really help being who they are. It is a twisted savage way of thinking.
* If you think that this is preposterous try this thought experiment: find a quality in a person that society considers 'good' then pretend that it's bad and think of reasons why it could be bad. You'll probably surprise yourself thinking about all the reasons why you could hate the 'good' things about some people.
15 December, 2009
Atheism and Marriage
This is a big topic and not really one I can do justice to here. But I thought I might throw out a few daring and challenging ideas today. Also, if anyone wants me to write about a particular topic feel free to email me and I'll see about writing an atheist perspective on it.
So let's start. Firstly, every atheist I know has a different opinion on this topic so don't think I'm representing all atheist. Rather in the spirit of the Rabbi's (See first post) postulation that atheists strip away all dogma and idolatry I'm going attempt to strip away all dogma away from the institute of marriage.
Firstly, what is marriage? Many people have different ideas but the best I've heard is apparently from Emmanual Kant (although I've extended it a little): Marriage is a legal agreement between a man and a woman whereby each consigns the access rights to their genitals to the other person for the purpose of reproduction, child-rearing and determining inheritance.
Well the first question that comes to my mind as a liberal is, "Why would anyone be so willing to give up a right? For that matter one that includes access to their body and who gets all of their valuables when they die?"
Now traditionally, and still in many parts of the world, marriage is arranged for the couple and they have no say in the matter. So in this case marriage is simply enslavement forced onto the individuals and the stronger of the two is the master.
So what reasons would a person choose to get married for if it was a free choice?
I'm sure there are more, but in the 5 minutes I was jotting this down during lunch I could only think of these 5.
1. Raising children in a safe, secure and supported environment.
2. Financial security in case of sickness, old age and imfirmity.
3. Emotional security against loneliness, abandonment and depression.
4. Love, because you care for someone at least almost as much as yourself.
5. Guaranteeing the paternity of the offspring and the inheritance of property through the family name.
Now, none of these arguments are very strong. Yes, sure, people might get married for a number of reasons, probably a combination... but if none of these reasons are good ones it begs two questions: why get married at all? OR Why not reform marriage into an institution that you'd like to be a part of?
The problems I see with these arguments are summarised below:
1. About half of families are not safe, secure and supported environments due to neglectful parenting, stupid parenting and poor parents. Even if one parent is attentive the other can just as easily be completely neglecting them. Also, same sex and defacto couples are just as capable providing (and neglecting) children with a safe, secure and supported environment. Because it works maybe 50% of the time I am tempted to say it has moderate strength as an argument then again would you join any other social institution if there was only a 50-50 chance of getting benefits after investing so much time and money?
2. This is actually not a bad argument. Give up a little freedom in return for knowing that if you lose your job, get sick or succumb to depression there will always be someone else there to share in your misery and help you out. Kind of like a third parent. However, the only problem is that no-fault divorce is legal now and so these agreements wouldn't be worth the paper it is written on. But in other countries were divorce is difficult this is a good deal, at least for the men that is.
3. This is similar to the first one except, unlike unfortunate events in ones life that one doesn't have control over, in this situation one can just have friends and an active social life and they don't really need to give up access to their genitals to get it.
4. I really do like the idea of love... but I haven't yet seen anyone actually love someone as much as themselves. For example, if you are a man and you care for the maximum benefit of your wife you will know that a varied and exciting sex life is often important for her happiness. Also, the genetic diversity of her children is a concern for her on a biological level so how many men actively encourage their wives to have multiple sexual partners and a different paternity for each of her children? While still supporting and raising them as though they were his own? Also, how many men are encouraged by their wives to go out and impregnate as many women as they can to fulfil their biological desire to spread their seed? Clearly in a marriage such satisfaction of the other person's desires cannot be met so both parties decide to mutually limit what desires they can actually have fulfilled. So both parties put themselves in uncomfortable anxiety producing situations... such sexual repression is bound to be unhealthy and to appear in other forms such as infidelity, homosexuality, porn addiction, pedophilia, anger, anxiety driven sleep loss, desire not to be home or with their spouse, etc...
If both parties are asexual then I suppose it would work very nicely for them. But what about the children?
Otherwise, if you really loved someone that much... why would you make them suffer through marriage only to eventually divorce them?
5. This one probably makes the most sense. A man might feel uncomfortable about whether or not his woman's children are his own so he'll take her into his house where he can keep her better under surveilance and the institute of marriage can act as social pressure to keep her from abandoning him or sleeping with other men and thus helping to reassure him that his progeny actually inherit his property. What the woman actually gets out of this situation isn't so clear though. As this arrangement is clearly assymetrically in favour of the man so let's just consign this idea to the patriarchal past.
So... what am I saying? End the institution of marriage? No, I am not saying that at all. If traditional marriage works for you then you don't need to change anything. But if traditional marriage isn't enough or is too much then I believe there is no reason why we can't use our natural human inventiveness to come up with a creative solution.
Firstly, it is not wrong to expect more out of marriage, it is a feeling and it ought to be respected. Also, often demanding more isn't a bad thing. Often it leads to improvements and innovations that people more content would never have invested the time and energy into developing.
My personal take on how we should redesign marriage is to come up with a solution that meets all 5 of the previous arguments for a marriage and see how well it goes in addressing those.
One alternative I've considered is a 'quaple' or a marriage of four people.
A quaple is a group of 4 adults (any combination of sexes) who decide to pool their emotional, financial and biological resources into raising children in a safe, supportive and secure environment and taking care of each other's needs.
1. With four people raising children there is a lot more space for discussing parenting ideas, learning from each other, having the right parent nurture the right child in the right way. Help them with their homework and explore their interests. They can also provide more income and greater resistance to financial hardship thus a more stable environment for the children.
2. 4 incomes versus 2, or more realistically 3 incomes versus 1, provides far more financial security.
3. It is harder to get tired of the lifelong company of 3 friends than only 1.
4. There is no law of nature that says a person can only fall in love once in their life or that they could only love one person adequately. While such a devotion can be touching it actually reeks of insecurity and personal weakness. If your life centres around one particular person... what happens if they die or decide they don't love you anymore? Simple: total breakdown. Conversely if you depend on just one person, and they can't always be there to give to you, then you're setting yourself up for disappointment. A strong person loves many people because they are loved by many people. They might give less individually but overall they give and receive the same amount but with the security of consistent support and not occasional support. If you are a jealous person and must control(/have) someone (all to yourself)... then that is your fear for yourself speaking, not your love for them. Confusing them is a common mistake for atheists and non-atheists alike.
5. OK... I don't think men will ever have it this good ever again. Though really, it wasn't a good system for the men anyway on a spiritual level. Insecurity about whether or not ones seed will be passed on in ones children is another form of insecurity. I think it is like insecurity about death. You can stay up all night worrying about it but it won't change the fact you're going to die. You can control and chain up your wife at home with a 24 video surveilance system on her... or you can accept that whether or not your sperm makes it into the mix for the next generation doesn't really matter on three grounds:
1. There are close to 7 billion people who already share 99.9% of your genetics.
2. You won't live to see the future so you can't know if your children live, die, succeed, fail or commit murder etc...
3. In the future genetic engineering will remove all diseases from people and designer babies will be normal. The days of 'your' genetics being special in any way are numbered.
So really, this is an insecurity like any other: it is learned and it can be unlearned. Once unlearned it will free one to experience much more fulfilling emotions.
Honestly, the fact is that quaples are better than couples in all counts of practicality. The only real problem is that we often lack the social skills to have one good friendship in our lives... much less three. It is a frightening idea thinking about all of the arguments and conflicts you could have with three people: all of them ganging up on you for example. However, if one has good social skills and a good sense of empathy then it is possible to do it. And hey, good social skills and empathy are good precisely because they allow one to work in such complicated social structures as a team or a quaple. Why? Because team work always beats individual ability. The champion team is better than the team of champions.
So let's start. Firstly, every atheist I know has a different opinion on this topic so don't think I'm representing all atheist. Rather in the spirit of the Rabbi's (See first post) postulation that atheists strip away all dogma and idolatry I'm going attempt to strip away all dogma away from the institute of marriage.
Firstly, what is marriage? Many people have different ideas but the best I've heard is apparently from Emmanual Kant (although I've extended it a little): Marriage is a legal agreement between a man and a woman whereby each consigns the access rights to their genitals to the other person for the purpose of reproduction, child-rearing and determining inheritance.
Well the first question that comes to my mind as a liberal is, "Why would anyone be so willing to give up a right? For that matter one that includes access to their body and who gets all of their valuables when they die?"
Now traditionally, and still in many parts of the world, marriage is arranged for the couple and they have no say in the matter. So in this case marriage is simply enslavement forced onto the individuals and the stronger of the two is the master.
So what reasons would a person choose to get married for if it was a free choice?
I'm sure there are more, but in the 5 minutes I was jotting this down during lunch I could only think of these 5.
1. Raising children in a safe, secure and supported environment.
2. Financial security in case of sickness, old age and imfirmity.
3. Emotional security against loneliness, abandonment and depression.
4. Love, because you care for someone at least almost as much as yourself.
5. Guaranteeing the paternity of the offspring and the inheritance of property through the family name.
Now, none of these arguments are very strong. Yes, sure, people might get married for a number of reasons, probably a combination... but if none of these reasons are good ones it begs two questions: why get married at all? OR Why not reform marriage into an institution that you'd like to be a part of?
The problems I see with these arguments are summarised below:
1. About half of families are not safe, secure and supported environments due to neglectful parenting, stupid parenting and poor parents. Even if one parent is attentive the other can just as easily be completely neglecting them. Also, same sex and defacto couples are just as capable providing (and neglecting) children with a safe, secure and supported environment. Because it works maybe 50% of the time I am tempted to say it has moderate strength as an argument then again would you join any other social institution if there was only a 50-50 chance of getting benefits after investing so much time and money?
2. This is actually not a bad argument. Give up a little freedom in return for knowing that if you lose your job, get sick or succumb to depression there will always be someone else there to share in your misery and help you out. Kind of like a third parent. However, the only problem is that no-fault divorce is legal now and so these agreements wouldn't be worth the paper it is written on. But in other countries were divorce is difficult this is a good deal, at least for the men that is.
3. This is similar to the first one except, unlike unfortunate events in ones life that one doesn't have control over, in this situation one can just have friends and an active social life and they don't really need to give up access to their genitals to get it.
4. I really do like the idea of love... but I haven't yet seen anyone actually love someone as much as themselves. For example, if you are a man and you care for the maximum benefit of your wife you will know that a varied and exciting sex life is often important for her happiness. Also, the genetic diversity of her children is a concern for her on a biological level so how many men actively encourage their wives to have multiple sexual partners and a different paternity for each of her children? While still supporting and raising them as though they were his own? Also, how many men are encouraged by their wives to go out and impregnate as many women as they can to fulfil their biological desire to spread their seed? Clearly in a marriage such satisfaction of the other person's desires cannot be met so both parties decide to mutually limit what desires they can actually have fulfilled. So both parties put themselves in uncomfortable anxiety producing situations... such sexual repression is bound to be unhealthy and to appear in other forms such as infidelity, homosexuality, porn addiction, pedophilia, anger, anxiety driven sleep loss, desire not to be home or with their spouse, etc...
If both parties are asexual then I suppose it would work very nicely for them. But what about the children?
Otherwise, if you really loved someone that much... why would you make them suffer through marriage only to eventually divorce them?
5. This one probably makes the most sense. A man might feel uncomfortable about whether or not his woman's children are his own so he'll take her into his house where he can keep her better under surveilance and the institute of marriage can act as social pressure to keep her from abandoning him or sleeping with other men and thus helping to reassure him that his progeny actually inherit his property. What the woman actually gets out of this situation isn't so clear though. As this arrangement is clearly assymetrically in favour of the man so let's just consign this idea to the patriarchal past.
So... what am I saying? End the institution of marriage? No, I am not saying that at all. If traditional marriage works for you then you don't need to change anything. But if traditional marriage isn't enough or is too much then I believe there is no reason why we can't use our natural human inventiveness to come up with a creative solution.
Firstly, it is not wrong to expect more out of marriage, it is a feeling and it ought to be respected. Also, often demanding more isn't a bad thing. Often it leads to improvements and innovations that people more content would never have invested the time and energy into developing.
My personal take on how we should redesign marriage is to come up with a solution that meets all 5 of the previous arguments for a marriage and see how well it goes in addressing those.
One alternative I've considered is a 'quaple' or a marriage of four people.
A quaple is a group of 4 adults (any combination of sexes) who decide to pool their emotional, financial and biological resources into raising children in a safe, supportive and secure environment and taking care of each other's needs.
1. With four people raising children there is a lot more space for discussing parenting ideas, learning from each other, having the right parent nurture the right child in the right way. Help them with their homework and explore their interests. They can also provide more income and greater resistance to financial hardship thus a more stable environment for the children.
2. 4 incomes versus 2, or more realistically 3 incomes versus 1, provides far more financial security.
3. It is harder to get tired of the lifelong company of 3 friends than only 1.
4. There is no law of nature that says a person can only fall in love once in their life or that they could only love one person adequately. While such a devotion can be touching it actually reeks of insecurity and personal weakness. If your life centres around one particular person... what happens if they die or decide they don't love you anymore? Simple: total breakdown. Conversely if you depend on just one person, and they can't always be there to give to you, then you're setting yourself up for disappointment. A strong person loves many people because they are loved by many people. They might give less individually but overall they give and receive the same amount but with the security of consistent support and not occasional support. If you are a jealous person and must control(/have) someone (all to yourself)... then that is your fear for yourself speaking, not your love for them. Confusing them is a common mistake for atheists and non-atheists alike.
5. OK... I don't think men will ever have it this good ever again. Though really, it wasn't a good system for the men anyway on a spiritual level. Insecurity about whether or not ones seed will be passed on in ones children is another form of insecurity. I think it is like insecurity about death. You can stay up all night worrying about it but it won't change the fact you're going to die. You can control and chain up your wife at home with a 24 video surveilance system on her... or you can accept that whether or not your sperm makes it into the mix for the next generation doesn't really matter on three grounds:
1. There are close to 7 billion people who already share 99.9% of your genetics.
2. You won't live to see the future so you can't know if your children live, die, succeed, fail or commit murder etc...
3. In the future genetic engineering will remove all diseases from people and designer babies will be normal. The days of 'your' genetics being special in any way are numbered.
So really, this is an insecurity like any other: it is learned and it can be unlearned. Once unlearned it will free one to experience much more fulfilling emotions.
Honestly, the fact is that quaples are better than couples in all counts of practicality. The only real problem is that we often lack the social skills to have one good friendship in our lives... much less three. It is a frightening idea thinking about all of the arguments and conflicts you could have with three people: all of them ganging up on you for example. However, if one has good social skills and a good sense of empathy then it is possible to do it. And hey, good social skills and empathy are good precisely because they allow one to work in such complicated social structures as a team or a quaple. Why? Because team work always beats individual ability. The champion team is better than the team of champions.
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