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I think there is beauty and wisdom in making a commitment (through good and bad, till death do us part) and then actually keeping that commitment regardless of

I think there is beauty and wisdom in making a commitment (through good and bad, till death do us part) and then actually keeping that commitment regardless of how my personal desires are or are not met over the years. Once the commitment to honor my wife and word is most important, it becomes an anchor in my life to the waves of wants and desires which are ever changing. Feeling lonely in my marriage, well, I'm in this thing for life, how can I productively address this with my wife? Or, maybe my expectations of her are unrealistic, can I find friends or interests elsewhere while still honoring and remaining committed to her? If our romance becomes dry, then I work to address that with her. If I notice she's not happy or unsatisfied, then I need to care for her and help if I can. If I can't, then I'm just going to be there with her, walking through dark times, because that's my commitment, and it's loving and honorable. My desires are often fleeting and dishonorable...selfish and wanton. It's good to deny them and pursue more honorable things with my life. The best things in life, the best stories, are those that come after trial and sacrifice. So much of our modern culture is empty and destructive because we've put self, our wants...our desires, in the place of utmost importance. Not having the wisdom to see that philosophy is like dedicating oneself to getting water from a broken cistern. Furthermore, one of the best things a father can do for his children is to love their mother this way.

derefr 5y ago
In the end, what do you get from that commitment? Why did you make it in the first place, if not for a selfish reason? What is the place of “honor”, if it is not a code that it makes you happy to live by? People’s terminal preferences are the root of who they are. There is no goal that exists beyond one’s terminal preferences. You can prefer to obey some moral distinction, but you prefer it because that increases your happiness/life satisfaction (or at least, you have absorbed enough second-hand examples that you believe it will increase your happiness/life satisfaction.) If it didn’t, why would your brain ever bother to spit out a “you should do it” answer? > My desires are often fleeting and dishonorable...selfish and wanton. I think you’re confusing societal mores that you’ve chosen to adhere to (e.g. monogamy) with some sort of objective moral function that all humans will somehow be judged by regardless of whether anyone is doing the judging. If you’re sleeping around (the thing I’m assuming you’re talking about here) but you’re in a polyamorous relationship, with a partner who experiences compersion rather than jealousy when people outside of your relationship do things to make you happy — is that act still “dishonorable” or “wanton” of you? What would those words mean, for that to be true? If everyone important to you wants you to enjoy yourself, and you do enjoy yourself, then who is saying no? And, given that, if your marriage partner does say no to something that would make you happy, how is that anything other than an incompatibility between you; something that could have been avoided by ensuring compatibility before commitment? IMHO, you are rationalizing staying in a relationship with a partner whose preferences do overlap with yours enough for life with them to be generally pleasant; but where in some ways their preferences are extremely incompatible with your own. But, because you are embedded in a society mostly consisting of potential partners who also have those same extremely-incompatible preferences to your own, it doesn’t feel like you’d actually have any luck finding a partner whose preferences cohere more closely to your own. You satisficed, and now are attempting to construct a philosophy that makes satisficing seem optimal, so that you can have one fewer regret. People should really spend more time looking outside their own culture for partners. It can turn out that what is “dishonorable” or “wanton” to you, is just regular respectable behavior in another culture in another part of the world. The objectivity of social mores is an illusion created by cultural isolation. (FYI: this is just the standard University “introduction to meta-ethics” stuff, just applied to romantic social mores in particular.)
- zepto 5y ago
  > People’s terminal preferences are the root of who they are. There is no goal that exists beyond one’s terminal preferences. You can prefer to obey some moral distinction, but you prefer it because that increases your happiness/life satisfaction. If it didn’t, why would your brain ever bother to spit out a “you should do it” answer? This is circular reasoning. You have baked in the assumption that people operate by maximizing their individual self-interest. A simple answer to why one might do it, even if it didn’t maximize their own happiness/satisfaction, is that they are genuinely focused on a less individualistic aim. Self-sacrifice in service of higher value doesn’t necessarily make one happy, but it can be part of one’s nature to recognize that one’s own sacrifice benefits others in some way.
  - derefr 5y ago
    You misunderstand what I mean by “happiness”, I think. (Probably because I should have said “predicted utility of all agents similar to oneself”, but I didn’t, because that’s pretty dang jargon-y, and assumes you’ve walked through the relevant thought experiments about self-sacrifice to help other copies of yourself, etc.) If someone martyrs themselves, then in the moment they do that, they’re thinking that that is a good thing to do — i.e. the reward calculation in their brain comes out in favour of doing that thing instead of anything else they could be doing instead. They expect that good things will happen due to this—things that cohere with their preferences. This is still true even if they don’t live to see those good things happen, because brains are adaptation executors, not fitness maximizers: we prefer the kinds of things that made our lineage successful, not the things that make us successful. But those are still preferences! “Being of use to others” is a preference. You do it because that’s the thing your brain releases reward chemicals when you do. This is what you are terming something being “part of one’s nature”; “your nature” is equivalent to “your preference function.” And, if you can assume that to be true for a second, then I can restate my point in terms of it: many of the things people have terms for in their preference functions are based on adhering to an abstract role or identity, something like “an honorable person”, their understanding of which was inculcated by local, culturally-contextual societal mores. For most people, doing something “because it’s honorable” isn’t a post-hoc rationalization of some spiritual connection to the concept of honor that informs their life. Instead, it’s an instrumental preference — a thing you do in order to work toward some higher-level preference you have — where the higher-level preference is “cohere more closely with my own understanding of what it means to be honorable.” In these cases, people don’t like X and dislike Y because their brain is directly telling them that X is good and Y isn’t (where they then notice a class of such preferential distinctions they’re making, and then call that class of distinctions “honor” because it seems to be the same as a class of distinctions that other people call “honor.”) Instead, people like X and dislike Y because they learned a concept like “honor” from their societal context, and they learned that their society considers X to be honorable and Y to be dishonorable; and so they then prefer to do X and not do Y because they want to live in the image of what they believe honor to be, as learned from their society. For these people, if they experience other cultures’ conceptions of these abstract concepts, and through that learn more about what these abstract concepts can mean to different people, this is usually enough to shift how they understand the abstract concept itself; and due to that, they will usually end up with different instrumental preferences—because now what they have learned “is honorable”, is a different set of things. (Compare and contrast: etiquette. “What is etiquette” can feel objective if you never leave the culture you were born into. But you’ll have a very different idea of things being or not being “polite” if you experience a variety of different cultures that all have developed different customs around etiquette.)
kace91 5y ago
I'm trying to empathise to your perspective, but I can't see why you would want to remain less happy (or more miserable) that you'd otherwise potentially be while your partner does the same thing, just because it seemed like a good idea at some point in the past. You add abstract good adjectives to that idea (honorable, wise, beautiful) and bad adjectives to the opposite (wanton, selfish, etc), but you don't really justify that assignation. I understand that thinking short term by default can lead to harm or missing something in the long term. But there's a whole jump from that to thinking that something has value just for being long lasting. Following your analogy, I wouldn't want to keep reaching from water in a well that went dry long ago. >The best things in life, the best stories, are those that come after trial and sacrifice. I'd say that even if that is often true, it is often difficult to tell trials and sacrifices apart from refusal to move on. And to be clear, since this can be both a philosophical conversation and one that touches personal matters,I don't by any means imply a personal judgement of your personal choices - I'm just speaking about abstract ideas.
- rsyring 5y ago
  Happy to try to explain. But, we are really getting into deeper waters of worldview and foundational values. Where we land on such things is rarely solely objective or analytical, so I'll just try to explain where I'm at, recognizing that it won't be satisfying or sufficient for others. I appreciate the sensitive/personal nature of these things, as you note, and your comments. My worldview has been shaped by the Bible and, specifically, a reformed evangelical theology. Inherent to that worldview is the belief that my life is not my own, I was designed for a purpose, and my life will have the most meaning (not necessarily the most happiness) when I operate to fulfill that purpose. > I can't see why you would want to remain less happy (or more miserable) that you'd otherwise potentially be I don't believe one's personal happiness is a sufficient measurement to optimize one's life around. My worldview is shaped by different questions than, "Does this make me happy?" Even though this belief is, for me, rooted in religion, I actually think there is plenty of evidence for the truly objective to recognize the danger inherent in maximizing that metric. I have biblical "justifications" for those ideas and for the adjectives I use (honorable, wise, beautiful), but a full defense is beyond what can reasonably be discussed here. "The Meaning of Marriage" by Tim Keller or "Sacred Marriage" by Gary Thomas would further elaborate on these ideas specifically in the context of marriage. TBH, I wasn't really trying to justify my beliefs in the parent comment b/c It's too hard in this context. I just figured I'd share what I thought and let the upvotes and downvotes work it out. :) I'm not advocating commitment to marriage simply for the sake that it ends up being long lasting. I think there are benefits to the spouses, the children, and to society to not only stick it out, but to work on improving it. One of the things that I guess didn't come out clearly in my original comment was that, if you are in the marriage for life, and you are going to honor that commitment, it's a great reason to invest in that marriage and make it as good as it can be. > I'd say that even if that is often true, it is often difficult to tell trials and sacrifices apart from refusal to move on. When moving on is simply not an option, there's no debate, no wrestling. It's not refusal, really. It's more like war. I'm not surprised by the war, by the trial...by the hardship and sacrifice necessary. But I am committed to not leaving my partner behind..we'll go through it together, till death do us part. I think there's glory in that...I think most people feel it and want to be a part of a story like that. I think our attraction to such things is built in, wired into how God has made us. But when we celebrate self and personal happiness, that attraction gets re-wired, and as a society and as individuals we start loving attitudes and actions that really aren't lovable. Things that, in war, we would usually call cowardice. Not every deserter in wartime is a coward and not every person who gets divorced is selfish. My wife was married and divorced before we met and were married. Complexity exists, wisdom needs to be used, my intention is not to judge. My goal is simply to share the perspective that commitment and steadfast love are better than selfishness. That optimizing for personal happiness is a bad metric. I hope that some will be able to hear and embrace that message...will be able to sense the honor and glory inherent in that perspective, even if I can't well articulate an objective analytical justification for it. Thanks for the dialogue.
uptownfunk 5y ago
Agree 100% with parent here. I find some of the responses interesting and I think symptomatic of the trend I've seen among the under 35 crowd.. (stay single for as long as you can, marry late, have dogs/cats in place of children..) Ultimately, you're either honorable as a person or you're not. Honor for honor's sake is reason enough. These sorts of rationalizations against honorable behavior such as commitment are what is driving the degradation of society as we know it. These institutions have formed over hundreds (if not thousands) of years, and are ultimately present to sustain and propagate life itself.
iJohnDoe 5y ago
With respect, this sounds miserable. The only redeeming fact is the commitment to your children, which is honorable and admirable.
- rsyring 5y ago
  Anecdotally, I'm pretty happy in my marriage. There are hard times, as there are with anything, but overall I'm glad I married my wife and she's glad she married me. We enjoy each other's company and have a relationship that is built on trust, compassion, and commitment. We are far from miserable. I think it's interesting that commitment to children is honorable but commitment to spouse is not. My oldest son, due to selfish life choices, has caused me far more misery than my wife ever has. I still love him, and want good things for him, but my life is now very separate from his. And, perhaps, that's how it should be for children. It's expected that they grow up and leave the nest. But my wife is the one I made a life long commitment to. That seems like the higher priority to me. FWIW, I'm not advocating staying in a miserable marriage. I'm advocating for, having already committed to staying in the marriage (when you took your vows) do everything possible to have a robust and joy-filled marriage.
  - iJohnDoe 5y ago
    Don’t get the wrong impression. I’m not judging. My opinion, you should be a thousand percent more committed to your children. Your wife is an adult. You brought your children into this life. You owe them everything. Most husbands and wives would sacrifice themselves and each for their children. Although, I understand the subtle distinction that once your children have grown and moved on, that you still have a vow to your wife/husband. I think that’s important. Interesting topic of the stages of marriage and parenthood.

derefr 5y ago

In the end, what do you get from that commitment? Why did you make it in the first place, if not for a selfish reason? What is the place of “honor”, if it is not a code that it makes you happy to live by? People’s terminal preferences are the root of who they are. There is no goal that exists beyond one’s terminal preferences. You can prefer to obey some moral distinction, but you prefer it because that increases your happiness/life satisfaction (or at least, you have absorbed enough second-hand examples that you believe it will increase your happiness/life satisfaction.) If it didn’t, why would your brain ever bother to spit out a “you should do it” answer? > My desires are often fleeting and dishonorable...selfish and wanton. I think you’re confusing societal mores that you’ve chosen to adhere to (e.g. monogamy) with some sort of objective moral function that all humans will somehow be judged by regardless of whether anyone is doing the judging. If you’re sleeping around (the thing I’m assuming you’re talking about here) but you’re in a polyamorous relationship, with a partner who experiences compersion rather than jealousy when people outside of your relationship do things to make you happy — is that act still “dishonorable” or “wanton” of you? What would those words mean, for that to be true? If everyone important to you wants you to enjoy yourself, and you do enjoy yourself, then who is saying no? And, given that, if your marriage partner does say no to something that would make you happy, how is that anything other than an incompatibility between you; something that could have been avoided by ensuring compatibility before commitment? IMHO, you are rationalizing staying in a relationship with a partner whose preferences do overlap with yours enough for life with them to be generally pleasant; but where in some ways their preferences are extremely incompatible with your own. But, because you are embedded in a society mostly consisting of potential partners who also have those same extremely-incompatible preferences to your own, it doesn’t feel like you’d actually have any luck finding a partner whose preferences cohere more closely to your own. You satisficed, and now are attempting to construct a philosophy that makes satisficing seem optimal, so that you can have one fewer regret. People should really spend more time looking outside their own culture for partners. It can turn out that what is “dishonorable” or “wanton” to you, is just regular respectable behavior in another culture in another part of the world. The objectivity of social mores is an illusion created by cultural isolation. (FYI: this is just the standard University “introduction to meta-ethics” stuff, just applied to romantic social mores in particular.)

zepto 5y ago
> People’s terminal preferences are the root of who they are. There is no goal that exists beyond one’s terminal preferences. You can prefer to obey some moral distinction, but you prefer it because that increases your happiness/life satisfaction. If it didn’t, why would your brain ever bother to spit out a “you should do it” answer? This is circular reasoning. You have baked in the assumption that people operate by maximizing their individual self-interest. A simple answer to why one might do it, even if it didn’t maximize their own happiness/satisfaction, is that they are genuinely focused on a less individualistic aim. Self-sacrifice in service of higher value doesn’t necessarily make one happy, but it can be part of one’s nature to recognize that one’s own sacrifice benefits others in some way.
- derefr 5y ago
  You misunderstand what I mean by “happiness”, I think. (Probably because I should have said “predicted utility of all agents similar to oneself”, but I didn’t, because that’s pretty dang jargon-y, and assumes you’ve walked through the relevant thought experiments about self-sacrifice to help other copies of yourself, etc.) If someone martyrs themselves, then in the moment they do that, they’re thinking that that is a good thing to do — i.e. the reward calculation in their brain comes out in favour of doing that thing instead of anything else they could be doing instead. They expect that good things will happen due to this—things that cohere with their preferences. This is still true even if they don’t live to see those good things happen, because brains are adaptation executors, not fitness maximizers: we prefer the kinds of things that made our lineage successful, not the things that make us successful. But those are still preferences! “Being of use to others” is a preference. You do it because that’s the thing your brain releases reward chemicals when you do. This is what you are terming something being “part of one’s nature”; “your nature” is equivalent to “your preference function.” And, if you can assume that to be true for a second, then I can restate my point in terms of it: many of the things people have terms for in their preference functions are based on adhering to an abstract role or identity, something like “an honorable person”, their understanding of which was inculcated by local, culturally-contextual societal mores. For most people, doing something “because it’s honorable” isn’t a post-hoc rationalization of some spiritual connection to the concept of honor that informs their life. Instead, it’s an instrumental preference — a thing you do in order to work toward some higher-level preference you have — where the higher-level preference is “cohere more closely with my own understanding of what it means to be honorable.” In these cases, people don’t like X and dislike Y because their brain is directly telling them that X is good and Y isn’t (where they then notice a class of such preferential distinctions they’re making, and then call that class of distinctions “honor” because it seems to be the same as a class of distinctions that other people call “honor.”) Instead, people like X and dislike Y because they learned a concept like “honor” from their societal context, and they learned that their society considers X to be honorable and Y to be dishonorable; and so they then prefer to do X and not do Y because they want to live in the image of what they believe honor to be, as learned from their society. For these people, if they experience other cultures’ conceptions of these abstract concepts, and through that learn more about what these abstract concepts can mean to different people, this is usually enough to shift how they understand the abstract concept itself; and due to that, they will usually end up with different instrumental preferences—because now what they have learned “is honorable”, is a different set of things. (Compare and contrast: etiquette. “What is etiquette” can feel objective if you never leave the culture you were born into. But you’ll have a very different idea of things being or not being “polite” if you experience a variety of different cultures that all have developed different customs around etiquette.)

kace91 5y ago

I'm trying to empathise to your perspective, but I can't see why you would want to remain less happy (or more miserable) that you'd otherwise potentially be while your partner does the same thing, just because it seemed like a good idea at some point in the past. You add abstract good adjectives to that idea (honorable, wise, beautiful) and bad adjectives to the opposite (wanton, selfish, etc), but you don't really justify that assignation. I understand that thinking short term by default can lead to harm or missing something in the long term. But there's a whole jump from that to thinking that something has value just for being long lasting. Following your analogy, I wouldn't want to keep reaching from water in a well that went dry long ago. >The best things in life, the best stories, are those that come after trial and sacrifice. I'd say that even if that is often true, it is often difficult to tell trials and sacrifices apart from refusal to move on. And to be clear, since this can be both a philosophical conversation and one that touches personal matters,I don't by any means imply a personal judgement of your personal choices - I'm just speaking about abstract ideas.

rsyring 5y ago
Happy to try to explain. But, we are really getting into deeper waters of worldview and foundational values. Where we land on such things is rarely solely objective or analytical, so I'll just try to explain where I'm at, recognizing that it won't be satisfying or sufficient for others. I appreciate the sensitive/personal nature of these things, as you note, and your comments. My worldview has been shaped by the Bible and, specifically, a reformed evangelical theology. Inherent to that worldview is the belief that my life is not my own, I was designed for a purpose, and my life will have the most meaning (not necessarily the most happiness) when I operate to fulfill that purpose. > I can't see why you would want to remain less happy (or more miserable) that you'd otherwise potentially be I don't believe one's personal happiness is a sufficient measurement to optimize one's life around. My worldview is shaped by different questions than, "Does this make me happy?" Even though this belief is, for me, rooted in religion, I actually think there is plenty of evidence for the truly objective to recognize the danger inherent in maximizing that metric. I have biblical "justifications" for those ideas and for the adjectives I use (honorable, wise, beautiful), but a full defense is beyond what can reasonably be discussed here. "The Meaning of Marriage" by Tim Keller or "Sacred Marriage" by Gary Thomas would further elaborate on these ideas specifically in the context of marriage. TBH, I wasn't really trying to justify my beliefs in the parent comment b/c It's too hard in this context. I just figured I'd share what I thought and let the upvotes and downvotes work it out. :) I'm not advocating commitment to marriage simply for the sake that it ends up being long lasting. I think there are benefits to the spouses, the children, and to society to not only stick it out, but to work on improving it. One of the things that I guess didn't come out clearly in my original comment was that, if you are in the marriage for life, and you are going to honor that commitment, it's a great reason to invest in that marriage and make it as good as it can be. > I'd say that even if that is often true, it is often difficult to tell trials and sacrifices apart from refusal to move on. When moving on is simply not an option, there's no debate, no wrestling. It's not refusal, really. It's more like war. I'm not surprised by the war, by the trial...by the hardship and sacrifice necessary. But I am committed to not leaving my partner behind..we'll go through it together, till death do us part. I think there's glory in that...I think most people feel it and want to be a part of a story like that. I think our attraction to such things is built in, wired into how God has made us. But when we celebrate self and personal happiness, that attraction gets re-wired, and as a society and as individuals we start loving attitudes and actions that really aren't lovable. Things that, in war, we would usually call cowardice. Not every deserter in wartime is a coward and not every person who gets divorced is selfish. My wife was married and divorced before we met and were married. Complexity exists, wisdom needs to be used, my intention is not to judge. My goal is simply to share the perspective that commitment and steadfast love are better than selfishness. That optimizing for personal happiness is a bad metric. I hope that some will be able to hear and embrace that message...will be able to sense the honor and glory inherent in that perspective, even if I can't well articulate an objective analytical justification for it. Thanks for the dialogue.

uptownfunk 5y ago

Agree 100% with parent here. I find some of the responses interesting and I think symptomatic of the trend I've seen among the under 35 crowd.. (stay single for as long as you can, marry late, have dogs/cats in place of children..) Ultimately, you're either honorable as a person or you're not. Honor for honor's sake is reason enough. These sorts of rationalizations against honorable behavior such as commitment are what is driving the degradation of society as we know it. These institutions have formed over hundreds (if not thousands) of years, and are ultimately present to sustain and propagate life itself.

iJohnDoe 5y ago

With respect, this sounds miserable. The only redeeming fact is the commitment to your children, which is honorable and admirable.

rsyring 5y ago
Anecdotally, I'm pretty happy in my marriage. There are hard times, as there are with anything, but overall I'm glad I married my wife and she's glad she married me. We enjoy each other's company and have a relationship that is built on trust, compassion, and commitment. We are far from miserable. I think it's interesting that commitment to children is honorable but commitment to spouse is not. My oldest son, due to selfish life choices, has caused me far more misery than my wife ever has. I still love him, and want good things for him, but my life is now very separate from his. And, perhaps, that's how it should be for children. It's expected that they grow up and leave the nest. But my wife is the one I made a life long commitment to. That seems like the higher priority to me. FWIW, I'm not advocating staying in a miserable marriage. I'm advocating for, having already committed to staying in the marriage (when you took your vows) do everything possible to have a robust and joy-filled marriage.
- iJohnDoe 5y ago
  Don’t get the wrong impression. I’m not judging. My opinion, you should be a thousand percent more committed to your children. Your wife is an adult. You brought your children into this life. You owe them everything. Most husbands and wives would sacrifice themselves and each for their children. Although, I understand the subtle distinction that once your children have grown and moved on, that you still have a vow to your wife/husband. I think that’s important. Interesting topic of the stages of marriage and parenthood.