What’s the point of marriage if it’s going to go to shit anyway?

[LurkTrawl]

Marriage I think is one of those things that people who are married themselves have a sunk-cost fallacy mindset so try and admonish those who aren't interested in it to justify their decision to do it themselves, those who romanticize it act like it's a shame that nobody else wants to because they're eager for it themselves, people who've seen lives fall apart due to bad marriages are prickly due to fear, and those who aren't interested get shit on because not wanting to shackle yourself at the hip to someone who could fuck you over in a very big way is seen as cowardice.

Though I'll say openly the point of marriage is much like life, it's whatever you make of it. If you don't want to get married for whatever reason, or you do, just make sure that you know exactly what you expect out of it and let your partner (if you're thinking of proposing) know precisely what you expect out of it before proposing (or before telling them why you're not). Me, I don't see the point because in my opinion, it's just the government getting involved in a societal institution they have no business interfering in - or put another way I see it as the law and government sticking their nose in people's lives in a way that they really shouldn't. Separation of church and state is an idea I'm very on-board with, and last I checked you typically get married in some form or another of religious ceremony.

 

[Meth Until Death]

I suffer from a condition where my mouth and ringhole trade places.

Yeah nah, mate you've fuckin lost me.
>Roman Empire is liberal
>Abbasids is liberal
Have another hit of that billy, you've earnt it

 

[Linkin Park]

Marriage I think is one of those things that people who are married themselves have a sunk-cost fallacy mindset so try and admonish those who aren't interested in it to justify their decision to do it themselves, those who romanticize it act like it's a shame that nobody else wants to because they're eager for it themselves, people who've seen lives fall apart due to bad marriages are prickly due to fear, and those who aren't interested get shit on because not wanting to shackle yourself at the hip to someone who could fuck you over in a very big way is seen as cowardice.

Though I'll say openly the point of marriage is much like life, it's whatever you make of it. If you don't want to get married for whatever reason, or you do, just make sure that you know exactly what you expect out of it and let your partner (if you're thinking of proposing) know precisely what you expect out of it before proposing (or before telling them why you're not). Me, I don't see the point because in my opinion, it's just the government getting involved in a societal institution they have no business interfering in - or put another way I see it as the law and government sticking their nose in people's lives in a way that they really shouldn't. Separation of church and state is an idea I'm very on-board with, and last I checked you typically get married in some form or another of religious ceremony.

Some of the people posting on the first few pages are definitely like your first few sentences. Got a laugh out of the "marriage-divorce rates being 50% is misleading" stat somebody used, because it did nothing to argue against the point. It just reinforced it more, especially if you're dealing with a divorcee.

Marriage in modern times is useless, unless you're extremely religious and traditional, along with your spouse, or it aligns deeply with your (& their) personal values. The rest of it is bullshit and people trying to shame you into doing it are hilarious, because those same people will tell you not to marry just anyone. The ones romanticizing marriage speak about it like working a graveyard shift at your local Wal-Mart, and any marriage that hasn't ended in divorce is a "happy" one, which is why they used shaming tactics as part of conversing. It makes them feel superior, while looking massively insecure. You're only 19 now, but you could still hold these values at 30/40/50/etc. You could age out of it, and decide marriage works for you. Nothing wrong with either, but take your time.

 

[Zero Day Defense]

It's pretty clear that you want constraints to be placed upon individuals within a marriage for the purported benefit they would bring to society as a whole, and I have said that I reject this reasoning because I don't believe it is the state's responsibility (or their right) to try to manage people's lives for them.

How much longer will you be able to talk around the fact that the state is already involved in the marriage it officiates? If you don't want the state "managing people's lives for them" (which really isn't what this is), then give up every marriage benefit including the family court used for court proceedings and custody agreements.

The reason you don't see a dichotomy between constraint and empowerment is because you believe that a relationship built on constraint can still be empowering; whereas I reject that notion because I believe that all adult relationships should be voluntary from their foundation.

Would you argue that a parent-child relationship can't empower the child, if only in the long term, because the parent imposes various restrictions on the child in service of said empowerment? For the record, I'm aware you're talking about adult relationships, but the concepts are still universal.

Whether or not two opposing concepts can exist together is irrelevant to the question of whether or not they have to, and the fact remains that empowerment and constraint are undeniably opposing ideas.

If they can exist together, then they're not undeniably opposing ideas.

If the state is by the people and for the people, and isn't some distant, authoritarian entity, then how is it not an extension of society? Is it really any less authoritarian if the restrictions imposed upon private behavior by community pressure alone are just as stifling to individual freedom in practice as the restrictions imposed by the state?

By definition, yes. Authoritarianism demands a strong central power, whereas you describe pressure enacted by the collective will of a community not concentrated in a distinct political authority.

The paternalism of your stance is evidenced by the way that you framed the issue from the perspective of the state's interests, which no one who believed in the primacy of individual rights would do.

The reason I talk about state interests is because the institution of which we speak is in the domain of the state. If you truly believed in the primacy of individual rights, you would acknowledge circumstances where they cannot be tantamount by design.

The fact that a concept can be somewhat relative doesn't make it unsound.

My point is that your application of that concept for the sake of your argument is patently unsound.

Strength is relative, but that doesn't mean that we can't say an Olympic weightlifter is stronger than a couch potato. [...] By the same token, knowledge is relative; for example: Stephen Hawking was a lot more knowledgeable about physics than Isaac Newton ever was, but that doesn't in any way diminish Newton's immense contributions to human knowledge, nor how incredibly knowledgeable he was within the context of the time he lived.

This wasn't the argument you were making. This is the first time you've actually used the concept of "more civilized" to contrast two distinct civilizations. Prior to, you employed the term without describing a second data point-- rhetoric that smacks of entrenched presentism.

What you're arguing now is closer to the point I was making before:

I find many cultures that are not my own lacking in many regards, and I would even call them "bad" if I felt there was enough wrong with them, but I wouldn't altogether assert that they are not civilizations-- such approach isn't cultural relativism.

The narrative to which I ascribe is informed by empirical evidence, and if your view of history lacks such a narrative, it might be because you haven't noticed certain historical patterns. I have no problem admitting that social evolution isn't entirely linear, but to focus on this fact rather than the observable trends which exist in spite of it is, in my view, to miss the forest for the trees.

This is an extremely vague statement. My point is that you can't make a blanket statement about a positively progressing society because society improves and worsens on several axes. "Certain historical patterns"? "Observable trends"? What does that have to do with anything?

The Roman Empire was a liberal and open society by the standards of it's time, as was the Abbasid Caliphate during the it's Golden Age, as have the various European powers been since the Enlightenment. The history of human civilization shows us that societies become parochial and conservative when they're in economic, political, and cultural decline.

Clearly it matters more what their actual values and practices are and how conducive they are to maintaining a society, then whether their ideals are more conservative or more liberal than some other arbitrary selection of ideas.

The fact that certain practices remain in place in countries which are otherwise civilized doesn't automatically make the practices themselves civilized.

Up until this point, we've been talking about societies being civilized, not certain practices.

My point didn't start being true eighty years ago. The Roman Empire was a liberal and open society by the standards of it's time, as was the Abbasid Caliphate during the it's Golden Age, as have the various European powers been since the Enlightenment. The history of human civilization shows us that societies become parochial and conservative when they're in economic, political, and cultural decline.

Emphasis mine. Clearly, the exact nature of the values these civilizations uphold matters more than whether you could classify them as "liberal" or "conservative" relative to something else, because it's in that exact nature that the efficacy of those values can be understood.

 

[Hellbound Hellhound]

How much longer will you be able to talk around the fact that the state is already involved in the marriage it officiates? If you don't want the state "managing people's lives for them" (which really isn't what this is), then give up every marriage benefit including the family court used for court proceedings and custody agreements.

This is a dumb argument. The state's involvement in something doesn't automatically grant it special rights over anyone else involved in the proceedings. If someone is charged with a crime, for instance, the state is required to provide them with a fair trial, and that right is provided for any citizen in a free society; it is not a right which belongs to the state.

Would you argue that a parent-child relationship can't empower the child, if only in the long term, because the parent imposes various restrictions on the child in service of said empowerment? For the record, I'm aware you're talking about adult relationships, but the concepts are still universal.

If the principle of self-ownership is understood to apply primarily to adults, then it can't be a universal concept. There are plenty of very understandable reasons why children do not have complete custody of themselves until they reach the age of majority, but the point of reaching adulthood is that it is now up to you decide your own destiny.

The idea that we must forever remain children, and that the state should serve as a sort of father figure is a foolish notion, because political leaders are no more adults than the rest of us. In light of this fact, it is evident therefore that they must not have any right to tell us how we must live our lives.

If they can exist together, then they're not undeniably opposing ideas.

Two opposing things can exist side by side. A manipulative partner can be loving one moment and then abusive the next. The real question is whether or not a relationship built on such a contradiction could ever be optimal, and my argument is that it is not.

By definition, yes. Authoritarianism demands a strong central power, whereas you describe pressure enacted by the collective will of a community not concentrated in a distinct political authority.

The definition of authoritarianism is the enforcement or advocacy of strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom. Whether this authority comes in the form of the state, or whether it presents itself through familial or communal relationships is largely unimportant, since the outcome is pretty much the same. Afghanistan didn't have a functional government for years, yet it was still very much an authoritarian society.

This wasn't the argument you were making. This is the first time you've actually used the concept of "more civilized" to contrast two distinct civilizations. Prior to, you employed the term without describing a second data point-- rhetoric that smacks of entrenched presentism.

In what way has my argument changed? If my point was that the definition of a civilized society is one which has reached an advanced stage of social and cultural development, then it necessarily follows that societies which generally fall short of this must be less civilized.

This is an extremely vague statement. My point is that you can't make a blanket statement about a positively progressing society because society improves and worsens on several axes. "Certain historical patterns"? "Observable trends"? What does that have to do with anything?

A generalization is not a blanket statement. I have already said to you immediately prior to this that social evolution is not entirely linear, but that clearly doesn't negate the obvious reality that it does develop in the same general direction as knowledge and education increase.

I'd like to return for a moment to a brief paragraph which you decided not to quote:

There are many cultural practices which were once commonplace (like slavery, mutilation as a punishment for crime, femicide, human sacrifice, etc) which are now almost universally condemned as barbaric, and most thinking people have no problem intuitively understanding that our attitude towards these practices changed as we became more civilized.

I would be interested to know if you disagreed with this. Do you think it is a mere coincidence that the practices listed above died out as human knowledge increased, and would you have any problem condemning any of these practices as uncivilized?

Emphasis mine. Clearly, the exact nature of the values these civilizations uphold matters more than whether you could classify them as "liberal" or "conservative" relative to something else, because it's in that exact nature that the efficacy of those values can be understood.

Of course values matter; a society's values are ultimately what defines it. The question this begs is: what kind of values does a civilized society generally adhere to?

 

[Zero Day Defense]

This is a dumb argument. The state's involvement in something doesn't automatically grant it special rights over anyone else involved in the proceedings. If someone is charged with a crime, for instance, the state is required to provide them with a fair trial, and that right is provided for any citizen in a free society; it is not a right which belongs to the state.

The argument is not that the state "automatically" has "special rights" over anyone else in a contract, it's that the other parties of said contract agreed to the state's terms and said agreement enumerates the rights of all parties, as has grounds of implication for others-- again, for both parties.

The idea that we must forever remain children, and that the state should serve as a sort of father figure is a foolish notion

And also what nobody here was arguing, even by implication.

The parent-child analogy served to make the case that empowerment and constraint can coexist at all, but it appears that I was thinking of a more generic notion of "empowerment" and you were talking about something I'd better recognize as "liberty"-- recognizing that one is never free, liberty calls for the individual to be a master of themselves so that they don't have to be subjugated by forces unknown to them.

This still takes me back to my proposal to argue the abolition the institution of state marriage. By its nature, it was created to constrain, and still serves that purpose. That much is evidenced by the requirement of "fault" for divorce until recently, and is also evidenced by "faults" still being able to play a role in judgments for asset splitting, alimony and custody.

Two opposing things can exist side by side. A manipulative partner can be loving one moment and then abusive the next.

No, they cannot. A manipulative person that abuses their partner can never be said to "love" them. It's not even a matter of them being abusive "overall"-- the "love" does not exist in the first place. What you identify as "love" is only a cheap imitation thereof, another facet of their manipulation and abuse.

That aside, this isn't even a proper analogy to what I described about constraint and empowerment, because my contention is that the two can work complementarily towards some sort of ends-- this isn't merely a side-by-side existence.

The definition of authoritarianism is the enforcement or advocacy of strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom. Whether this authority comes in the form of the state, or whether it presents itself through familial or communal relationships is largely unimportant,

No, that's pretty important. Through etymology, and by the reality of the concept being chiefly political, authoritarianism requires a distinct figure-- it can be an individual or a party, but it has to be an explicit subsection of the population. You can't say "the community is the authority", because then you're suggesting that the authority is diffused into the community-- which, strangely, seems to better describe democracy. Let's look at the example you gave:

Afghanistan didn't have a functional government for years, yet it was still very much an authoritarian society.

Granted, my knowledge of Afghani politics and history is poor. Nevertheless, an authoritarian society is characterized by its submission to an authoritarian state by definition. So either the government wasn't entirely non-functional, there were regional authorities in command of various communities and all of this put together meant that Afghani society was generally authoritarian, or you need to reassess your understanding of authoritarianism.

If my point was that the definition of a civilized society is one which has reached an advanced stage of social and cultural development, then it necessarily follows that societies which generally fall short of this must be less civilized.

Except that that's not what you said-- at least, in effect:

According to anyone who has studied history. The definition of civilized is an advanced state of social and cultural development (read: more enlightened)

Furthermore, you insisted on a particular definition that relied on relativity:

I like the way that you conveniently cropped that screen capture to omit the first definition that comes up:

Shall we zoom in on that?

Up until the point I pointed out, you've insisted on arguing with relativities without actually establishing a comparative object or seeking something that could be much more objective. I took issue with this, which is why I've been arguing to use specific criteria that aren't nearly as reliant on comparison for their meaning to be understood (i.e. "an uncivilized society will lack these features"). Only recently have you done this or come close to it.

A generalization is not a blanket statement. I have already said to you immediately prior to this that social evolution is not entirely linear, but that clearly doesn't negate the obvious reality that it does develop in the same general direction as knowledge and education increase.

I'd like to return for a moment to a brief paragraph which you decided not to quote:
I would be interested to know if you disagreed with this. Do you think it is a mere coincidence that the practices listed above died out as human knowledge increased, and would you have any problem condemning any of these practices as uncivilized?

Honestly, I forgot to address this, but that was partly because I was at a loss for how to do so.

Slavery hasn't disappeared. Even discounting what could be viewed as "effective" slavery (anything from being paid peanuts in exchange for not getting ratted out to ICE to "wagie, wagie, get back in your cagie"), or whatever slave labor happens in prisons as permitted by law, we're very reliant on products produced by slave labor... overseas, where we can't see it happening. All we know is that, say, a carpet we use, or the fabric from which it was made, may be made in Pakistan, but we aren't readily thinking about the fact that they likely had a literal child work their fingers bloody to make the fabric, or that the local mafia associated with that industry quite literally assassinated a 12 year old for speaking out against the industry's practices. Slavery is bad, glad we can agree... but we're still its beneficiaries in many inescapable ways. It might actually be worse now, because we benefit from it in a way where we also can't readily confront it.

Femicide? Murder was always frowned upon.

Human sacrifice? I can't speak definitively to its commonality (it seems to have been a coincidental widespread phenomenon, but I can't say for certain which societies concurrently practiced it or whether it was generally accepted or merely a thing that happened to the revulsion of the greater population). That said, you're arguing that this changed "as we became more civilized" without talking about the specific mechanisms (e.g. supercession by other religions which condemn the practice) by which they fell into obscurity and even contempt.

In short, you're providing a really simplistic narrative that isn't even mostly correct in its premises. As for your latter question:

Up until this point, we've been talking about societies being civilized, not certain practices.

Of course values matter; a society's values are ultimately what defines it. The question this begs is: what kind of values does a civilized society generally adhere to?

Take a survey of the numerous and diverse civilizations throughout the ages and find out.

 

[JektheDumbass]

Because the nuclear family is essential for society to function.

So there was no society prior to 1950 US?

 

[Finder]

Marriage is a pretty shitty deal for men in most countries, but have any of you ever seen an old man who either refused to or couldn't get married? You don't want to be that guy.

 

[emptyblu]

I would like to have kids in the future, however I don’t want marriage to be apart of that equation.
after doing my own research, listening to the opinions of others, and most importantly observing my own parents marriage, I’ve come to the conclusion that marriage carries way to many risks that outnumber the positives at least from my perspective.
I don’t like the idea of being tied to the hip of someone who might potentially fuck me over or put emotional stress on me and the children, no matter how much I love my partner I’m not going to allow them to drag me down. And I don’t think shaming tactics will work either.

Of course having kids is also a risk but that’s a risk I’m willing to take, I know that will piss a lot of people off knowing I don’t want a second parent involved and that’s fair enough but that’s a burden I’m willing to carry I guess. But then again I’m still 19 and I’m being angsty now so who knows what will transpire in the future.

 

[Bunny Tracks]

Fuck, there is no point if it means putting up with whiny autists like you guys for the rest of my life.

 

[Zero Day Defense]

Fuck, there is no point if it means putting up with whiny autists like you guys for the rest of my life.

It's gotta suck that your entire dating/marriage pool consists of KF regulars, but that sounds like something you did to yourself.

On the bright side, you're a stone's throw away from completing your love quest.

 

[Hellbound Hellhound]

The argument is not that the state "automatically" has "special rights" over anyone else in a contract, it's that the other parties of said contract agreed to the state's terms and said agreement enumerates the rights of all parties, as has grounds of implication for others-- again, for both parties.

If we were arguing specifically about prenuptial agreements, this argument might make more sense, but marriage by itself is clearly not analogous to a normal kind of contract with concrete terms and conditions. since the institution is constantly being legally redefined. In reality, it's more of a legal designation than a contract, and the precedent has already been set that it's terms can be revised when it is believed that there is a benefit in doing so.

This still takes me back to my proposal to argue the abolition the institution of state marriage. By its nature, it was created to constrain, and still serves that purpose. That much is evidenced by the requirement of "fault" for divorce until recently, and is also evidenced by "faults" still being able to play a role in judgments for asset splitting, alimony and custody.

I don't see why it is impossible to have the good without the bad. People can enjoy the legal protection marriage affords them without the more restrictive aspects still being in place, and many countries are moving in this direction.

No, that's pretty important. Through etymology, and by the reality of the concept being chiefly political, authoritarianism requires a distinct figure-- it can be an individual or a party, but it has to be an explicit subsection of the population. You can't say "the community is the authority", because then you're suggesting that the authority is diffused into the community-- which, strangely, seems to better describe democracy. Let's look at the example you gave:

Granted, my knowledge of Afghani politics and history is poor. Nevertheless, an authoritarian society is characterized by its submission to an authoritarian state by definition. So either the government wasn't entirely non-functional, there were regional authorities in command of various communities and all of this put together meant that Afghani society was generally authoritarian, or you need to reassess your understanding of authoritarianism.

The definition you linked to agrees with my definition of authoritarianism, wherein it admits that authority can constitute a "person, party, or class". A community is not generally a disorganized group of people; it comes with social norms and a hierarchy which enforces them, and in tribal societies like Afghanistan, this might mean a warlord, a village elder, or even simply an individual's biological father.

The point is that wherever this authority comes from, it can be just as burdensome to a person as the central authority of the state. In Afghanistan's case, arguably more so, since the central government has generally, on America's advice, pushed for a more open society.

Up until the point I pointed out, you've insisted on arguing with relativities without actually establishing a comparative object or seeking something that could be much more objective. I took issue with this, which is why I've been arguing to use specific criteria that aren't nearly as reliant on comparison for their meaning to be understood (i.e. "an uncivilized society will lack these features"). Only recently have you done this or come close to it.

I'm still not sure what you're asking for. I could write paragraph after paragraph about how societies generally evolve as they become more wealthy and educated, and I could provide you with numerous metrics which show you how this positively impacts the lives of the people who live in these societies, but you don't seem to want that.

You might say that I am arguing in relatives, but the point I would make is that I am not resigning myself to them. There is no easy way to neatly delineate a civilized society from an uncivilized one, but that doesn't stop the distinction from being intuitive to most people. By the same token, there is no clear point where red becomes orange or orange becomes yellow, but that doesn't stop us from describing New York taxis as yellow and London phone boxes as red.

As far as most thinking people are concerned, a statement along the lines of: "civilized societies don't practice human sacrifice" is a truism which hardly needs debating.

Slavery hasn't disappeared. Even discounting what could be viewed as "effective" slavery (anything from being paid peanuts in exchange for not getting ratted out to ICE to "wagie, wagie, get back in your cagie"), or whatever slave labor happens in prisons as permitted by law, we're very reliant on products produced by slave labor... overseas, where we can't see it happening. All we know is that, say, a carpet we use, or the fabric from which it was made, may be made in Pakistan, but we aren't readily thinking about the fact that they likely had a literal child work their fingers bloody to make the fabric, or that the local mafia associated with that industry quite literally assassinated a 12 year old for speaking out against the industry's practices. Slavery is bad, glad we can agree... but we're still its beneficiaries in many inescapable ways. It might actually be worse now, because we benefit from it in a way where we also can't readily confront it.

Femicide? Murder was always frowned upon.

Human sacrifice? I can't speak definitively to its commonality (it seems to have been a coincidental widespread phenomenon, but I can't say for certain which societies concurrently practiced it or whether it was generally accepted or merely a thing that happened to the revulsion of the greater population). That said, you're arguing that this changed "as we became more civilized" without talking about the specific mechanisms (e.g. supercession by other religions which condemn the practice) by which they fell into obscurity and even contempt.

In short, you're providing a really simplistic narrative that isn't even mostly correct in its premises.

Slavery hasn't disappeared worldwide, but the point is that it has largely disappeared in the more civilized parts of the world, and there is still very much an argument for abolishing it further. If we can agree that slavery is bad, and must be eradicated, then surely we are envisioning what a more civilized society might look like?

 

[Fareal]

The actual difference between marriage failure rates Long Ago and now is the cult of individual gratification.

Here‘s the truth: you are not going to spend forty, fifty, sixty years in an intimate relationship with someone and both of you be happy all the time. Life has its ebbs and flows. Bringing up kids is tiring and stressful at points and not very sexy. It is also expensive. There will be times when one or both of you feel burnt out from family or work and act kinda like an asshole for a while. There will be times where collectively you are uncertain about work prospects, or money. Money issues are stressful as fuck. When you move home, you will do it together. You now share any issues and drama in your families of origin.

The idea that you would weather the entire spectrum of stressful life events intimately tied to another human and at no point be pissed off with one another is foolish. What makes a successful marriage is the commitment to weather the storms together. Yes, your spouse is being a dick right now. In six months, you might be the one being the dick and you don’t want to be bailed on when it’s you having the hard times.

It is commitment and not some nebulous idea of happiness that makes marriages last. You cannot expect another human to be your personal dopamine dispenser and your life to be like the end of a Disney movie. Yes, you will be unhappy at times. You knuckle down and see it through. You do not walk off ten, fifteen years in wailing that you don‘t feel fulfilled or authentic or whatever the fashionable word is for abandoning your responsibilities.

Doing that teaches your children that you only keep your promises as long as it suits you. This irrepairably damages the security of their attachment to you: they learn you are a person who cuts and runs in hard times.

 

[25 Omni-gel]

To get out of the barracks.

 

[Large]

Nothing exists; even if something exists, nothing can be known about it; and even if something can be known about it, knowledge about it can't be communicated to others.

 

[Bad Gateway]

I can't remember if I already shat in this toilet or not.

 

[The Great Chandler]

The first problem is believing the marriage is going to shit anyways. That's a self-prophecy right there!

The second problem is actually doing something about it like showing commitment. Love isn't about saying "I love you", it's about doing WHY "I love you"