11 ms·

The Divorce Colony (2015)

59 points by daddy_drank 3y ago

topaz0 3y ago
Note this came out in 2015, and was posted here at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10722467 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10722467
- dang 3y ago
  Thanks! Macroexpanded: The Divorce Colony - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10722467 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10722467 - Dec 2015 (22 comments) (year added above too)
solardev 3y ago
[flagged]
- bartread 3y ago
  It's quite subtle in many ways but just wrong enough to fall into an uncanny valley that's incredibly, as you say, distracting.
  - solardev 3y ago
    It's like that bad dream where I'm naked in school, being chased by a bunch of leaky typewriters. You ever get that?
- dang 3y ago
  "Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - solardev 3y ago
    In this case it was actively distracting and impacting my ability to read the text.
    - Jtsummers 3y ago
      You can change the font in your browser, or use reader mode. Reader mode has been an option since last decade for every major browser, built-in or with an extension.
      - solardev 3y ago
        It's still a second-class citizen on Chrome, sadly :( And not always available on mobile Chrome.
    - pvg 3y ago
      The point of the guideline is not that these things aren't distracting or annoying but that they're not interesting to talk about, especially not every time someone feels inconvenienced by them.
pierat 3y ago
[flagged]
- dang 3y ago
  Please don't take HN threads into religious flamewar, or any flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and destroys the curiosity that it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: we've had to ask you about this before - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36817284 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36817284. We eventually have to ban accounts that keep doing this and I don't want to ban you! so please don't do it.
- elboru 3y ago
  Abortion is different, you wouldn’t say murder is something only religions prohibit.
motohagiography 3y ago
It would be interesting to read a charitable case for why divorce was prohibited . We see it written up as women being forbidden from owning land, or perhaps without a marriage, not being recognized as full people with the freedom to own it. It probably had some rational basis beyond cruelty and was likely about incentives, like reducing the reward for spouses to kill each other for inheritances. Maybe it was the epiphenomenal result of just not producing weak societies that get overrun by neighbouring ones that leveraged specialization and progress over short generations. If it were true that children are growth and wealth, we stop growing when we stop producing them, and simply die off. Arguably, the incentives for marriage today are misaligned and probably socially bad, as rationally, the best prospective partner to marry is the one who will provide for the most advantageous divorce. The article is a quaint slice of life, but it overlooks the demographic reality underlying it.
- purpleflame1257 3y ago
  For a long time, the prevention of divorce was intended to protect women. It meant partners can't just be thrown aside if a better deal comes along. Eventually, of course, it became a trap for women (and men). Nowadays, unless you're religious, marriage is essentially just a socioeconomic winner trophy.
  - gumby 3y ago
    > Nowadays, unless you're religious, marriage is essentially just a socioeconomic winner trophy. That is unnecessarily cynical. Civil marriage provides several conveniences for the participants: it establishes a default common property structure (so there are no tax consequences for pooling earnings or for who pays the bills each month, or common ownership of assets, especially useful in the case where one dies); if one is injured or sick the other has the authority to sign hospital paperwork etc; handling the legal mechanics of kids (from picking them up from school to paying fees etc) and so on. It also provides some hysteresis in a long term relationship (which will always have disagreements), again especially useful in the case of kids. Sure, this is a bloodless justification, but is t that the domain of civil law? Yes, you could laboriously set those things up individually if you want, but the bundle is more convenient and takes care of things ahead of time. And it’s voluntary. If you don’t want a marriage, don’t have one.
jauntywundrkind 3y ago
What an amazing read, about something I had no idea about. It's such a different tale than what we deal with today, but the same thread. A group of people angry and upset at how other people run their lives, and more than willing to use the state to suppress and deny the others. Today it's lgbtqia and pro-choice and non-white-people that the state is being coerced into hounding & frustrating, but it's the same wringing of hands scared forces, that can't recognize healthy bounds of what the state should do. I'm glad to have run across this not-that-far-back bit of historical precedent. In my view, these struggles sap us so, and we would be so much greater if we could socialize better the improperness of using government to intrude on people's lives. Having a good historical basis, I hope, might help.
- Geisterde 3y ago
  Having a completely different take on who the state is involved with hounding, I still agree completely. Whatever my disagreements with your views are, I regard the prospect of using political means to get my way to be abhorrent.
rpmisms 3y ago
Divorce is an excuse for hedonism.
- solraph 3y ago
  > Divorce is an excuse for hedonism. Sometimes? Absolutely. All the time? No. Depressingly often, it is to escape a person and relationship they desperately need to be free of. I know and am related to several people who are divorced. It was not hedonism that drove the proceedings, but exasperation and pain. EDIT after further consideration: And even if it is - so what? What business of that is yours?
  - rpmisms 3y ago
    Your defensiveness is to my point. Marriage is difficult. The idea of leaving for a series of inconveniences is a hedonistic ideal. There are cases where divorce is inevitable, but it's gotten absolutely ridiculous.
  - rayiner 3y ago
    > EDIT after further consideration: And even if it is - so what? What business of that is yours? Family policy creates externalities in society. As Lee Kuan Yew said in Singapore: Political_positions_of_Lee_Kuan_Yew (“I am often accused of interfering in the private lives of citizens. Yes, if I did not, had I not done that, we wouldn’t be here today. And I say without the slightest remorse, that we wouldn’t be here, we would not have made economic progress, if we had not intervened on very personal matters–who your neighbour is, how you live, the noise you make, how you spit, or what language you use.”). That’s coded as an “Asian” view, but until quite recently it was also the “American” view. The prosperous society in which we live, which was already in place by the mid-20th century, is the product of a mindset where it was taken for granted that state governments have plenary authority to regulate the “health, safety, welfare, and morals” of the people.
- kwere 3y ago
  Can be, but for mature and established people it takes real will to restart from zero

59 points by daddy_drank 3y ago

Note this came out in 2015, and was posted here at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10722467 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10722467

dang 3y ago
Thanks! Macroexpanded: The Divorce Colony - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10722467 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10722467 - Dec 2015 (22 comments) (year added above too)

solardev 3y ago

[flagged]

bartread 3y ago
It's quite subtle in many ways but just wrong enough to fall into an uncanny valley that's incredibly, as you say, distracting.
- solardev 3y ago
  It's like that bad dream where I'm naked in school, being chased by a bunch of leaky typewriters. You ever get that?
dang 3y ago
"Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- solardev 3y ago
  In this case it was actively distracting and impacting my ability to read the text.
  - Jtsummers 3y ago
    You can change the font in your browser, or use reader mode. Reader mode has been an option since last decade for every major browser, built-in or with an extension.
    - solardev 3y ago
      It's still a second-class citizen on Chrome, sadly :( And not always available on mobile Chrome.
  - pvg 3y ago
    The point of the guideline is not that these things aren't distracting or annoying but that they're not interesting to talk about, especially not every time someone feels inconvenienced by them.

pierat 3y ago

[flagged]

dang 3y ago
Please don't take HN threads into religious flamewar, or any flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and destroys the curiosity that it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: we've had to ask you about this before - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36817284 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36817284. We eventually have to ban accounts that keep doing this and I don't want to ban you! so please don't do it.
elboru 3y ago
Abortion is different, you wouldn’t say murder is something only religions prohibit.

motohagiography 3y ago

It would be interesting to read a charitable case for why divorce was prohibited . We see it written up as women being forbidden from owning land, or perhaps without a marriage, not being recognized as full people with the freedom to own it. It probably had some rational basis beyond cruelty and was likely about incentives, like reducing the reward for spouses to kill each other for inheritances. Maybe it was the epiphenomenal result of just not producing weak societies that get overrun by neighbouring ones that leveraged specialization and progress over short generations. If it were true that children are growth and wealth, we stop growing when we stop producing them, and simply die off. Arguably, the incentives for marriage today are misaligned and probably socially bad, as rationally, the best prospective partner to marry is the one who will provide for the most advantageous divorce. The article is a quaint slice of life, but it overlooks the demographic reality underlying it.

purpleflame1257 3y ago
For a long time, the prevention of divorce was intended to protect women. It meant partners can't just be thrown aside if a better deal comes along. Eventually, of course, it became a trap for women (and men). Nowadays, unless you're religious, marriage is essentially just a socioeconomic winner trophy.
- gumby 3y ago
  > Nowadays, unless you're religious, marriage is essentially just a socioeconomic winner trophy. That is unnecessarily cynical. Civil marriage provides several conveniences for the participants: it establishes a default common property structure (so there are no tax consequences for pooling earnings or for who pays the bills each month, or common ownership of assets, especially useful in the case where one dies); if one is injured or sick the other has the authority to sign hospital paperwork etc; handling the legal mechanics of kids (from picking them up from school to paying fees etc) and so on. It also provides some hysteresis in a long term relationship (which will always have disagreements), again especially useful in the case of kids. Sure, this is a bloodless justification, but is t that the domain of civil law? Yes, you could laboriously set those things up individually if you want, but the bundle is more convenient and takes care of things ahead of time. And it’s voluntary. If you don’t want a marriage, don’t have one.

jauntywundrkind 3y ago

What an amazing read, about something I had no idea about. It's such a different tale than what we deal with today, but the same thread. A group of people angry and upset at how other people run their lives, and more than willing to use the state to suppress and deny the others. Today it's lgbtqia and pro-choice and non-white-people that the state is being coerced into hounding & frustrating, but it's the same wringing of hands scared forces, that can't recognize healthy bounds of what the state should do. I'm glad to have run across this not-that-far-back bit of historical precedent. In my view, these struggles sap us so, and we would be so much greater if we could socialize better the improperness of using government to intrude on people's lives. Having a good historical basis, I hope, might help.

Geisterde 3y ago
Having a completely different take on who the state is involved with hounding, I still agree completely. Whatever my disagreements with your views are, I regard the prospect of using political means to get my way to be abhorrent.

rpmisms 3y ago

Divorce is an excuse for hedonism.

solraph 3y ago
> Divorce is an excuse for hedonism. Sometimes? Absolutely. All the time? No. Depressingly often, it is to escape a person and relationship they desperately need to be free of. I know and am related to several people who are divorced. It was not hedonism that drove the proceedings, but exasperation and pain. EDIT after further consideration: And even if it is - so what? What business of that is yours?
- rpmisms 3y ago
  Your defensiveness is to my point. Marriage is difficult. The idea of leaving for a series of inconveniences is a hedonistic ideal. There are cases where divorce is inevitable, but it's gotten absolutely ridiculous.
- rayiner 3y ago
  > EDIT after further consideration: And even if it is - so what? What business of that is yours? Family policy creates externalities in society. As Lee Kuan Yew said in Singapore: Political_positions_of_Lee_Kuan_Yew (“I am often accused of interfering in the private lives of citizens. Yes, if I did not, had I not done that, we wouldn’t be here today. And I say without the slightest remorse, that we wouldn’t be here, we would not have made economic progress, if we had not intervened on very personal matters–who your neighbour is, how you live, the noise you make, how you spit, or what language you use.”). That’s coded as an “Asian” view, but until quite recently it was also the “American” view. The prosperous society in which we live, which was already in place by the mid-20th century, is the product of a mindset where it was taken for granted that state governments have plenary authority to regulate the “health, safety, welfare, and morals” of the people.
kwere 3y ago
Can be, but for mature and established people it takes real will to restart from zero