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> Marriages are fundamentally just a societal complication of a relationship - complete with dubious legal consequences and a not a sure thing that can end. Or

> Marriages are fundamentally just a societal complication of a relationship - complete with dubious legal consequences and a not a sure thing that can end. Or, alternatively marriage is the fundamental glue of society and the germ of new life across the vastness of time and in basically every culture through disasters and war. One of these perspectives is fair to the most ancient institution.

toomuchtodo 4y ago
Evolve or die. Marriage is an unnecessary burden and construct in modern times. Love, date, cohabitat (non community property state), but the failure rate is too high (~66% of marriages fail) when the cost is similarly high. Warren Buffett says the factor which most contributes to your future wealth is who you pick to marry. Do you feel lucky? https://www.amazon.com/Science-Happily-Ever-After-Enduring/dp/037389290X/ https://www.amazon.com/Science-Happily-Ever-After-Enduring/d...
- dash2 4y ago
  This is a very interesting perspective! I urge you to create a society or subculture which doesn't waste time on marriage. When it has lasted for at least one generation, come back and tell the rest of us about it.
  - rdsubhas 4y ago
    The divorce rate is 50% in US and 40-50% in developed societies today. I would rather urge you to find a society that doesn't waste time on divorces and dysfunctional marriages today.
    - newsclues 4y ago
      And yet the developed world is in turmoil, perhaps because we have abandoned the social contract involving marriage and the nuclear family for the good of our society. I don't know the answer to this massively complex problem, but I don't think it's easy to reduce things to "marriage = dumb", especially with the world so divided and angry.
    - chris_wot 4y ago
      So the number of successful marriages outside the U.S. is around 60%? Given the complexity of humanity, that actually sounds pretty reasonable to me. By all means, forgo marriage but many of us quite like being married. I love it. Most of the time!
    - EdSharkey 4y ago
      [flagged]
      - starkd 4y ago
        Someone is in a foul mood today. Did you just have a breakup or a divorce? Cheer up, chief. Maybe divorces can be prevented by getting better at setting the terms of marriage. Like pre-marriage counselling.
        EdSharkey 4y ago
        No, just chuffing at the rapidly dying zeitgeist of yesterday. We did some marriage counselling last year and it was great for us, highly recommended.
    - santoshalper 4y ago
      The failure rate for starting a business is much, much higher. Realistically, the failure rate for doing anything sufficiently ambitious or rewarding is going to be high. If your main goal is life is to avoid failure, enjoy your mediocrity.
    - starkd 4y ago
      Does staying single make it any better? If you check the stats on that, I think you'll find married people tend to be happier, both financially and socially. The fact many marriages don't survive should not necessarily dissuade you from rolling the dice. Just be pickier about who you marry. Pre-marriage counselling can help weed out the improabable marriages.
      - tharkun__ 4y ago
        I think they mean something like Canada's "common law marriage" as an alternative. You never actually marry. No institutional stuff. No expensive dress to fuss over and never wear again. No huge expensive party for a lot of people that you actually don't like but have to invite. No expensive "honeymoon" vacation that has to be super special and that everyone around you wants to fuss about. No other expensive big party for all those people at 25 years married etc. Instead you just get the same tax benefits as a married couple for having lived together for a certain amount of time. You stay together as if you were married for however long it lasts. Which in lots of cases is the same 50+ years some people stay married. Or not. No need for a paper. If you guys work out long term you work out long term. If you don't, you don't.
        starkd 4y ago
        I can see how that approach would be attractive, since it is more convenient. But there is a cultural significance to ritual that makes life events more meaningful, and hence, more durable. If you don't treat it as a life-ling treatment, there is less of a chance you will treat it as such for 50 years.
        tharkun__ 4y ago
        I can see how the corset of tradition, social pressure and law can make marriage "more durable" of course. If you're facing eternal damnation and being ousted from the only social circle you know unless you marry before ever having sex and everyone around you does the exact same thing then of course many if not most people will endure all but the very worst marriages. I'm glad this is finally past us in at least some places in the world. Unfortunately not everywhere. Not even in Canada or the US and other such countries. I think the 50+% divorce rate in itself isn't the bad thing. It's not the root cause. It's just a statistic that shows how unhappy a lot of marriages have always been. But until recently-ish (and still in some places) people couldn't get out of it and endured it all and you can't tell me that they were better off that way. You can treat "it" as a life-long treatment without all the pressures and the paper and all the other stuff.
    - taxyz 4y ago
      There’s lies, damned lies, and statistics. This is one of those often misrepresented statistics. The divorce rate for first time marriages is much lower - off the top of my head I think it might be sub-20%? This statistic gets skewed because some people go through multiple marriages. And I think it’s one of those things where it’s common that people have only been married once or like 3+ times. I’d imagine if you leave when one marriage gets tough you’ve opened the door to that being a viable option.
  - patapong 4y ago
    I mean, monasteries have existed for hundreds of years.
    - ianai 4y ago
      Thousands. And a phd program is pretty similar to a modern monastery.
    - carlosjobim 4y ago
      Monasteries were a system for sustaining unwanted children, and those children united became a very powerful institution in the world. Before monasteries unwanted children were generally "exposed", meaning left in the wilderness as infants to be devoured by animals or freeze to death. Birth control is why you only see old monks or nuns today. Still, monasteries didn't produce any children.
- sicp-enjoyer 4y ago
  > the failure rate is too high The rate dramatically changes with demographic, for example many of those were married young and did not complete education. > who you pick to marry The quote doesn't say whether :) Married men also tend to make more money and work for longer periods of time. There is a cynical view of whether that's good or not, but 40-50 year old single men don't seem to be a particularly successful demographic.
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    Married men live longer, but the last years are mostly garbage anyway. If you’re co-dependent or really need that companionship, autonomy and agency might not be what you’re optimizing for. Cashflow and wealth doesn’t buy love or happiness, only choices and freedom. Optimize accordingly.
    - sicp-enjoyer 4y ago
      Your comment cautioned against marriage for its "cost". Now you are talking about lifestyle preferences.
      - toomuchtodo 4y ago
        My apologies, sometimes I forget connecting the dots must be more explicit. Tell me the lifestyle of someone who has their assets split in half and having to provide alimony/maintenance for (possibly) the rest of their partner’s life. I can only speak for my circle of social acquaintances, many divorced, all living terrible lifestyles because of the financial burden of divorce. Some got away with only losing half their assets and having to provide $3k-$5k/month post tax to their ex partners. Some, worse. One expects to have to work to death, and can never retire. I’m just working back to first principals. You can be happy without the legal Russian Roulette of marriage is my overarching thesis, and I apologize again it took so many words to arrive at my point.
        sicp-enjoyer 4y ago
        Now you're talking about financial burden again. I don't wish the situation you are describing on anyone, and I am sympathetic to making choices to avoid that happening. I don't think that is inconsistent with my other comments. Just to add, here are a few other things that also limit your day to day freedom and add some risk of legal nightmares: - operating a business - owning a home or other building - running for political office - raising a child - using a professional license (medical, law, civil engineer, etc)
- wonderwonder 4y ago
  Or marry a good person, raise happy kids and live a good life together. If you are not married and one partner makes significantly more than the other, what's to stop the wealthy partner just deciding 20 years into the relationship that they want a newer model and just leaving the former partner destitute? It creates a massive power discrepancy in the relationship. "Do what I want or I'll leave you in the street." Married people work towards the same goal as a unit. Do whatever you want it's your life but marriage has very much been a net positive in my and my kids lives. I'm the primary earner in my relationship.
  - ianai 4y ago
    Losing half of their wealth and honestly rolling the dice on whether a new relationship would be with someone who would be with them through thick and thin or just another “fair weather friend.”
    - wonderwonder 4y ago
      If you are in a relationship with someone where the concern is losing half your wealth after 20 years together then I would advise not marrying that person. I make about double what my wife makes. If tomorrow she said, I want a divorce, then she can take half of what we saved over the 20+ years together without any issue from me (assuming infidelity was not involved, if it was I would go scorched earth). Anything I earned was done with her support. She was there to look after the kids on the nights and weekends I worked late. When I was working until 2am she would often get up to check on me. We earned the money together. When I left software development for 5 years and took a 65% paycut, she was the one that suggested it, indeed she made more than me during that time. When I came back to software she wanted to be sure it was not going to burn me out again. I very much understand that I sound like a guy that started a business, beat the ods and was wildly successful telling you to open your own business while ignoring the reality that most businesses fail. America stands on the shoulders of those that tried and succeeded though. I understand that marriages fail and that people get screwed over. I know I have been incredibly lucky with my marriage to my wife. There is really no way to know and I always recommend dating and living together for years before thinking about getting married. We roll the dice when we cross the street. Everything is a risk with no guarantee of a happy ending. For me the gamble was worth it and has paid massive returns far outstripping any financial concerns. With that said some people get shafted and I really do feel bad for those people. Dedicating your life to someone to discover they are not who you thought must be a devastating experience.
- inglor_cz 4y ago
  "Marriage is an unnecessary burden and construct in modern times." Too early to say. It is possible (though by no means certain) that by 2200, the Earth will be inhabited by a mix of the Amish, the Haredim and various Salafist creeds which, while distinctly non-modern, never stopped reproducing themselves, while all the modernized groups did. Edit: interesting that this comment attracted two downvotes but no rebuttal. I would say that the process is at the very least visible in Israel, at its conception in 1948 a very secular state whose demographics has since then changed a lot due to high TFR of the Haredim. And the Israeli politics seems to be following its demography.
ianai 4y ago
Someone working towards a phd in the final year of work shouldn’t be personally taking upon the baser weight and long term sustainability of society. That’s too much for any one person - Jimmy Carter clearly “settled for less” and still managed a lot more than the rest of us could hope in our lifetimes. OP is perfectly fine to just focus on the degree and know the world will continue on while OP works. Your framing this as something more than it is is abhorrent.
- logicalmonster 4y ago
  > Someone working towards a phd in the final year of work shouldn’t be personally taking upon the baser weight and long term sustainability of society. What if that's the correct selfish viewpoint on an individual level, but the wrong decision for overall society? These are certainly some complex and nuanced issues, but just as a counterpoint, what if having a family is arguably the most important thing that somebody capable of completing a PHD likely does? Unless a PHD invents some important new technology that transforms humanity (and most PHDs probably don't get anywhere close to that level of contribution), the most likely valuable contribution they could make to the world comes with having large families, being a pillar for the community, and helping guide their children well. Successful families are the foundation for a stable and prosperous long-term future. Idiocracy presented a very satirical look at the future that emerged from the smart people being too focused on education and careers over actually maintaining the society they were given. We all see the news stories coming out where there's the claim that average IQ rates are dropping, right? OP might not be able to solve that problem on his own, but if every PHD candidate made the same decision to put off family, maybe society eventually gets into some trouble.
- idopmstuff 4y ago
  > Your framing this as something more than it is is abhorrent. Framing marriage as something more than "a societal complication of a relationship" is abhorrent? Do you think maybe that's a little harsh?
  - ianai 4y ago
    That’s an outright abusive misreading of what I’ve said.
dagmx 4y ago
Depends what society you talk about too. Marriage isn’t integral to all societies, so much as monogamous partnership is (excluding some rare poly societies). You also don’t need marriage to procreate , and several societies are built around the concept of children raised by the community. That said, marriage is certainly the most persistent form of long term bond in history, but it’s not always borne out of mutual desire. It’s often been as much a means of politics as it has been of love.
- throwayyy479087 4y ago
  It absolutely is and you should reconsider your filter bubble
  - dagmx 4y ago
    Great rebuttal. Should we continue by saying “no it isn’t/yes it is, you’re wrong” repeatedly at each other then?
- joenot443 4y ago
  What successful societies exist today without some concept marriage? I’m not aware of any, but it sounds like you have one in mind.
  - dagmx 4y ago
    Ah you’ve introduced two other elements into the mix, and possibly have introduced the issue of conflation of causation and correlation. 1. What is a successful society? You may have a different definition but imho it’s one that hasn’t torn itself apart or causing active harm to itself. 2. I never said they didn’t have a concept of marriage, just that it’s not integral. Both those points however are dramatically affected by colonization. Particularly Christian colonization, but not restricted to it. Colonization both destroyed many otherwise successful societies and forced their own concepts onto the ones that remained. As such I don’t think there’s any society that does have absolutely no concept of marriage, but there are some where marriage is not integral. Various indigenous groups did not have a formal marriage, but did sometimes have a vow. Even within the US, you’d have the ancient traditions of hand fasting among settlers, which wasn’t a marriage but an informal vow. The Mosuo/Na people of China famously do not marry. Hence why I disambiguate between marriage and monogamous binding. heck, monogamous bindings for life are present in a lot of non human social norms too. But marriage is different in that it’s a formalized procedure to do the binding, and in many cultures was tied to the religious or governmental authority figure as a form of bookkeeping and control, or to show political bindings. And back to the point of causation/correlation, is marriage integral to success? I’d argue not since hand fasting continued into very relatively (to human history) recent times.
silverwasthere 4y ago
Marriage is not all its cracked up to be. My divorce 1 year aniversary is this month, after being loyal and faithful for 12 years, I left due to abuse. I am now raising our child alone and I am so much happier now than I ever was while married. Marriage is societal cancer.
- carlosjobim 4y ago
  There exists no society at all without marriage. The reason marriage is absolute central in all cultures and civilization is not because it's been forced onto people by bad men or because people think it's better, the reason is that cultures or people who don't practice marriage die out quickly.
  - rsaesha 4y ago
    Which culture died quickly due to not practicing marriage?
    - carlosjobim 4y ago
      All of them. They couldn't establish themselves enough to leave any important traces in history and are effectively erased. Sexual liberation is not a new idea, the reason why it's not traditional is because it is unsustainable and can never grow to a tradition
      - krapp 4y ago
        You do realize people can have sex, procreate and raise families without marriage, right? "Sexual liberation" doesn't negate sex, it only negates the proscription of involuntary sex and gender roles through patriarchy. Also: >All of them. All of whom? Surely you can give us specific examples. Your certainty must based on solid archaeological and anthropological evidence, right?
      - flangola7 4y ago
        We complain about ChatGPT making brazenly false statements with complete confidence, yet we have humans out here saying things like this.
afpx 4y ago
As universal as divorce Meaning, the "validity" of marriage is built into the power hierarchy. The same power hierarchy that determines whether a couple should stay together. People are going to get together. Wouldn't it be better if they could just be together without the need for an authority?
BillyTheMage 4y ago
People have children and live their lives together all the time without involving the government or their personal deity. Marriage is a hierarchical construct rooted in male supremacy and heteronormativity.

toomuchtodo 4y ago

Evolve or die. Marriage is an unnecessary burden and construct in modern times. Love, date, cohabitat (non community property state), but the failure rate is too high (~66% of marriages fail) when the cost is similarly high. Warren Buffett says the factor which most contributes to your future wealth is who you pick to marry. Do you feel lucky? https://www.amazon.com/Science-Happily-Ever-After-Enduring/dp/037389290X/ https://www.amazon.com/Science-Happily-Ever-After-Enduring/d...

dash2 4y ago
This is a very interesting perspective! I urge you to create a society or subculture which doesn't waste time on marriage. When it has lasted for at least one generation, come back and tell the rest of us about it.
- rdsubhas 4y ago
  The divorce rate is 50% in US and 40-50% in developed societies today. I would rather urge you to find a society that doesn't waste time on divorces and dysfunctional marriages today.
  - newsclues 4y ago
    And yet the developed world is in turmoil, perhaps because we have abandoned the social contract involving marriage and the nuclear family for the good of our society. I don't know the answer to this massively complex problem, but I don't think it's easy to reduce things to "marriage = dumb", especially with the world so divided and angry.
  - chris_wot 4y ago
    So the number of successful marriages outside the U.S. is around 60%? Given the complexity of humanity, that actually sounds pretty reasonable to me. By all means, forgo marriage but many of us quite like being married. I love it. Most of the time!
  - EdSharkey 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - starkd 4y ago
      Someone is in a foul mood today. Did you just have a breakup or a divorce? Cheer up, chief. Maybe divorces can be prevented by getting better at setting the terms of marriage. Like pre-marriage counselling.
      - EdSharkey 4y ago
        No, just chuffing at the rapidly dying zeitgeist of yesterday. We did some marriage counselling last year and it was great for us, highly recommended.
  - santoshalper 4y ago
    The failure rate for starting a business is much, much higher. Realistically, the failure rate for doing anything sufficiently ambitious or rewarding is going to be high. If your main goal is life is to avoid failure, enjoy your mediocrity.
  - starkd 4y ago
    Does staying single make it any better? If you check the stats on that, I think you'll find married people tend to be happier, both financially and socially. The fact many marriages don't survive should not necessarily dissuade you from rolling the dice. Just be pickier about who you marry. Pre-marriage counselling can help weed out the improabable marriages.
    - tharkun__ 4y ago
      I think they mean something like Canada's "common law marriage" as an alternative. You never actually marry. No institutional stuff. No expensive dress to fuss over and never wear again. No huge expensive party for a lot of people that you actually don't like but have to invite. No expensive "honeymoon" vacation that has to be super special and that everyone around you wants to fuss about. No other expensive big party for all those people at 25 years married etc. Instead you just get the same tax benefits as a married couple for having lived together for a certain amount of time. You stay together as if you were married for however long it lasts. Which in lots of cases is the same 50+ years some people stay married. Or not. No need for a paper. If you guys work out long term you work out long term. If you don't, you don't.
      - starkd 4y ago
        I can see how that approach would be attractive, since it is more convenient. But there is a cultural significance to ritual that makes life events more meaningful, and hence, more durable. If you don't treat it as a life-ling treatment, there is less of a chance you will treat it as such for 50 years.
        tharkun__ 4y ago
        I can see how the corset of tradition, social pressure and law can make marriage "more durable" of course. If you're facing eternal damnation and being ousted from the only social circle you know unless you marry before ever having sex and everyone around you does the exact same thing then of course many if not most people will endure all but the very worst marriages. I'm glad this is finally past us in at least some places in the world. Unfortunately not everywhere. Not even in Canada or the US and other such countries. I think the 50+% divorce rate in itself isn't the bad thing. It's not the root cause. It's just a statistic that shows how unhappy a lot of marriages have always been. But until recently-ish (and still in some places) people couldn't get out of it and endured it all and you can't tell me that they were better off that way. You can treat "it" as a life-long treatment without all the pressures and the paper and all the other stuff.
  - taxyz 4y ago
    There’s lies, damned lies, and statistics. This is one of those often misrepresented statistics. The divorce rate for first time marriages is much lower - off the top of my head I think it might be sub-20%? This statistic gets skewed because some people go through multiple marriages. And I think it’s one of those things where it’s common that people have only been married once or like 3+ times. I’d imagine if you leave when one marriage gets tough you’ve opened the door to that being a viable option.
- patapong 4y ago
  I mean, monasteries have existed for hundreds of years.
  - ianai 4y ago
    Thousands. And a phd program is pretty similar to a modern monastery.
  - carlosjobim 4y ago
    Monasteries were a system for sustaining unwanted children, and those children united became a very powerful institution in the world. Before monasteries unwanted children were generally "exposed", meaning left in the wilderness as infants to be devoured by animals or freeze to death. Birth control is why you only see old monks or nuns today. Still, monasteries didn't produce any children.
sicp-enjoyer 4y ago
> the failure rate is too high The rate dramatically changes with demographic, for example many of those were married young and did not complete education. > who you pick to marry The quote doesn't say whether :) Married men also tend to make more money and work for longer periods of time. There is a cynical view of whether that's good or not, but 40-50 year old single men don't seem to be a particularly successful demographic.
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  Married men live longer, but the last years are mostly garbage anyway. If you’re co-dependent or really need that companionship, autonomy and agency might not be what you’re optimizing for. Cashflow and wealth doesn’t buy love or happiness, only choices and freedom. Optimize accordingly.
  - sicp-enjoyer 4y ago
    Your comment cautioned against marriage for its "cost". Now you are talking about lifestyle preferences.
    - toomuchtodo 4y ago
      My apologies, sometimes I forget connecting the dots must be more explicit. Tell me the lifestyle of someone who has their assets split in half and having to provide alimony/maintenance for (possibly) the rest of their partner’s life. I can only speak for my circle of social acquaintances, many divorced, all living terrible lifestyles because of the financial burden of divorce. Some got away with only losing half their assets and having to provide $3k-$5k/month post tax to their ex partners. Some, worse. One expects to have to work to death, and can never retire. I’m just working back to first principals. You can be happy without the legal Russian Roulette of marriage is my overarching thesis, and I apologize again it took so many words to arrive at my point.
      - sicp-enjoyer 4y ago
        Now you're talking about financial burden again. I don't wish the situation you are describing on anyone, and I am sympathetic to making choices to avoid that happening. I don't think that is inconsistent with my other comments. Just to add, here are a few other things that also limit your day to day freedom and add some risk of legal nightmares: - operating a business - owning a home or other building - running for political office - raising a child - using a professional license (medical, law, civil engineer, etc)
wonderwonder 4y ago
Or marry a good person, raise happy kids and live a good life together. If you are not married and one partner makes significantly more than the other, what's to stop the wealthy partner just deciding 20 years into the relationship that they want a newer model and just leaving the former partner destitute? It creates a massive power discrepancy in the relationship. "Do what I want or I'll leave you in the street." Married people work towards the same goal as a unit. Do whatever you want it's your life but marriage has very much been a net positive in my and my kids lives. I'm the primary earner in my relationship.
- ianai 4y ago
  Losing half of their wealth and honestly rolling the dice on whether a new relationship would be with someone who would be with them through thick and thin or just another “fair weather friend.”
  - wonderwonder 4y ago
    If you are in a relationship with someone where the concern is losing half your wealth after 20 years together then I would advise not marrying that person. I make about double what my wife makes. If tomorrow she said, I want a divorce, then she can take half of what we saved over the 20+ years together without any issue from me (assuming infidelity was not involved, if it was I would go scorched earth). Anything I earned was done with her support. She was there to look after the kids on the nights and weekends I worked late. When I was working until 2am she would often get up to check on me. We earned the money together. When I left software development for 5 years and took a 65% paycut, she was the one that suggested it, indeed she made more than me during that time. When I came back to software she wanted to be sure it was not going to burn me out again. I very much understand that I sound like a guy that started a business, beat the ods and was wildly successful telling you to open your own business while ignoring the reality that most businesses fail. America stands on the shoulders of those that tried and succeeded though. I understand that marriages fail and that people get screwed over. I know I have been incredibly lucky with my marriage to my wife. There is really no way to know and I always recommend dating and living together for years before thinking about getting married. We roll the dice when we cross the street. Everything is a risk with no guarantee of a happy ending. For me the gamble was worth it and has paid massive returns far outstripping any financial concerns. With that said some people get shafted and I really do feel bad for those people. Dedicating your life to someone to discover they are not who you thought must be a devastating experience.
inglor_cz 4y ago
"Marriage is an unnecessary burden and construct in modern times." Too early to say. It is possible (though by no means certain) that by 2200, the Earth will be inhabited by a mix of the Amish, the Haredim and various Salafist creeds which, while distinctly non-modern, never stopped reproducing themselves, while all the modernized groups did. Edit: interesting that this comment attracted two downvotes but no rebuttal. I would say that the process is at the very least visible in Israel, at its conception in 1948 a very secular state whose demographics has since then changed a lot due to high TFR of the Haredim. And the Israeli politics seems to be following its demography.

ianai 4y ago

Someone working towards a phd in the final year of work shouldn’t be personally taking upon the baser weight and long term sustainability of society. That’s too much for any one person - Jimmy Carter clearly “settled for less” and still managed a lot more than the rest of us could hope in our lifetimes. OP is perfectly fine to just focus on the degree and know the world will continue on while OP works. Your framing this as something more than it is is abhorrent.

logicalmonster 4y ago
> Someone working towards a phd in the final year of work shouldn’t be personally taking upon the baser weight and long term sustainability of society. What if that's the correct selfish viewpoint on an individual level, but the wrong decision for overall society? These are certainly some complex and nuanced issues, but just as a counterpoint, what if having a family is arguably the most important thing that somebody capable of completing a PHD likely does? Unless a PHD invents some important new technology that transforms humanity (and most PHDs probably don't get anywhere close to that level of contribution), the most likely valuable contribution they could make to the world comes with having large families, being a pillar for the community, and helping guide their children well. Successful families are the foundation for a stable and prosperous long-term future. Idiocracy presented a very satirical look at the future that emerged from the smart people being too focused on education and careers over actually maintaining the society they were given. We all see the news stories coming out where there's the claim that average IQ rates are dropping, right? OP might not be able to solve that problem on his own, but if every PHD candidate made the same decision to put off family, maybe society eventually gets into some trouble.
idopmstuff 4y ago
> Your framing this as something more than it is is abhorrent. Framing marriage as something more than "a societal complication of a relationship" is abhorrent? Do you think maybe that's a little harsh?
- ianai 4y ago
  That’s an outright abusive misreading of what I’ve said.

dagmx 4y ago

Depends what society you talk about too. Marriage isn’t integral to all societies, so much as monogamous partnership is (excluding some rare poly societies). You also don’t need marriage to procreate , and several societies are built around the concept of children raised by the community. That said, marriage is certainly the most persistent form of long term bond in history, but it’s not always borne out of mutual desire. It’s often been as much a means of politics as it has been of love.

throwayyy479087 4y ago
It absolutely is and you should reconsider your filter bubble
- dagmx 4y ago
  Great rebuttal. Should we continue by saying “no it isn’t/yes it is, you’re wrong” repeatedly at each other then?
joenot443 4y ago
What successful societies exist today without some concept marriage? I’m not aware of any, but it sounds like you have one in mind.
- dagmx 4y ago
  Ah you’ve introduced two other elements into the mix, and possibly have introduced the issue of conflation of causation and correlation. 1. What is a successful society? You may have a different definition but imho it’s one that hasn’t torn itself apart or causing active harm to itself. 2. I never said they didn’t have a concept of marriage, just that it’s not integral. Both those points however are dramatically affected by colonization. Particularly Christian colonization, but not restricted to it. Colonization both destroyed many otherwise successful societies and forced their own concepts onto the ones that remained. As such I don’t think there’s any society that does have absolutely no concept of marriage, but there are some where marriage is not integral. Various indigenous groups did not have a formal marriage, but did sometimes have a vow. Even within the US, you’d have the ancient traditions of hand fasting among settlers, which wasn’t a marriage but an informal vow. The Mosuo/Na people of China famously do not marry. Hence why I disambiguate between marriage and monogamous binding. heck, monogamous bindings for life are present in a lot of non human social norms too. But marriage is different in that it’s a formalized procedure to do the binding, and in many cultures was tied to the religious or governmental authority figure as a form of bookkeeping and control, or to show political bindings. And back to the point of causation/correlation, is marriage integral to success? I’d argue not since hand fasting continued into very relatively (to human history) recent times.

silverwasthere 4y ago

Marriage is not all its cracked up to be. My divorce 1 year aniversary is this month, after being loyal and faithful for 12 years, I left due to abuse. I am now raising our child alone and I am so much happier now than I ever was while married. Marriage is societal cancer.

carlosjobim 4y ago
There exists no society at all without marriage. The reason marriage is absolute central in all cultures and civilization is not because it's been forced onto people by bad men or because people think it's better, the reason is that cultures or people who don't practice marriage die out quickly.
- rsaesha 4y ago
  Which culture died quickly due to not practicing marriage?
  - carlosjobim 4y ago
    All of them. They couldn't establish themselves enough to leave any important traces in history and are effectively erased. Sexual liberation is not a new idea, the reason why it's not traditional is because it is unsustainable and can never grow to a tradition
    - krapp 4y ago
      You do realize people can have sex, procreate and raise families without marriage, right? "Sexual liberation" doesn't negate sex, it only negates the proscription of involuntary sex and gender roles through patriarchy. Also: >All of them. All of whom? Surely you can give us specific examples. Your certainty must based on solid archaeological and anthropological evidence, right?
    - flangola7 4y ago
      We complain about ChatGPT making brazenly false statements with complete confidence, yet we have humans out here saying things like this.

afpx 4y ago

As universal as divorce Meaning, the "validity" of marriage is built into the power hierarchy. The same power hierarchy that determines whether a couple should stay together. People are going to get together. Wouldn't it be better if they could just be together without the need for an authority?

BillyTheMage 4y ago

People have children and live their lives together all the time without involving the government or their personal deity. Marriage is a hierarchical construct rooted in male supremacy and heteronormativity.