Sam Harris

One of the principles of religion is the idea of marriage or fidelity to a supreme being.  I find that fidelity to ideals and not beings is the way to go in life.  Why can’t the supreme being be your companion for as long as it’s deemed worthwhile, why marriage?!? (*cough* Christians).  And what about forced marriages, what if you don’t like your supreme being? I don’t think anything has ever come useful in this species from a single wedding that has ever occurred on earth, nor do I think anything useful will ever come from a single wedding on this earth.  It is a huge waste of resources for promises that in most cases SHOULDN’T be kept.  If you want your partner to meet your friends and family, have a picnic for a couple days, not a wedding. 

One thing that really bothers me about life is monogamy.  The ethical distribution of sex is probably the biggest factor in a lack of global suffering and a person never knows when a situation will present itself where it is more ethical to share their partner with someone else than to not do this.  I’m still trying to figure out whether monogamy is a sexual orientation or a lower cognitive age.  People are very revealing when they describe monogamy “I want to be enough for this person.”.  Why?  If I had a sexual partner that I cohabitated with and I saw some guy who was nice, single and down on his luck, I would not only want my partner to be someone who’d want to have sex with this nice person, I’d want them to see the moral imperative of doing so.  Suppose they’re an alcoholic or smoke cigarettes, perhaps my partner can approach them and say, “Hey, if you stop this I’ll have sex with you a few times a week every week you don’t do this.”  Actually work to make the world a better place.  I find people brutishly selfish.

Though not entirely true, sometimes I pull up a word processor and type my life story,
I met these horrible people in this horrible place.  The End.
Then I delete my life story.

Do you think anything useful has ever come from a single marriage?

0username0 - 15 February 2012 02:46 PM

Do you think anything useful has ever come from a single marriage?

Sure. My parents’.

Funny because I’ve been listening to some tom leykis clips recently.  And as callous and rude and an ass that he is, he makes a lot of sense when talking about men and women and marriage.

Especially the observation that women are looking to trade up to a richer man, and men are looking to trade up to a hotter, younger woman.  (And the following observation that men have the better deal on this end, since as they age they can become richer, while the opposite is true for women who, as they age, cannot become more young and more hot.)

Marriage as an institution is useful when you’re in your 30s, 40s, and are ready to raise kids.  An incredible amount of american marriage ends up in divorce, repeatedly, over and over.  This is a hint.  Many people simply use marriage to essentially steal their ex spouses property and money.

If you like another person, maintain that relationship.  But there’s no reason to get married unless you are ready to retire, have kids, and drastically transform your life from an adult to a parent.  Marriage should never be used as a relationship maintenance or enhancer for the sake of the relationship itself, because in the end it becomes the opposite.  It gives a contract which, when broken, allows one of the parties to greatly benefit, and therefore tempts them into ruining the relationship.

And yes, useful things come from marriage.  But they are far outweighed by useless, and even worse, detrimental things that come out of marriage, to the point of an entire life being ruined by some (and I use this term in a gender neutral way) bitch.

So marriage is a contract used to siphon money from one party to another from your POV and in this it is useful.  It’s a contract that people draw up with each other to determine finances and custody.  Or rather, without a specific contract, there is the legal system at large which recognizes this certificate and has structured laws around it.

In a perfect world (at least the way I see it) marriage would be simply yet another way for you to express love for someone else.

But in our corrupt world, not only is marriage so much more than that (in so many differently bad ways as I described) but true love itself is exceedingly difficult to find and fleeting when found.

So the best utility for marriage is funcitonal - to create a family unit for the express purpose to raise children and forfeit all rights to a sexually active life (since, naturally, we like to fuck around.)  (And, of course, in the absence of a prenuptial agreement, marriage is also a tempting tool to get rich)

QuakePhil - 16 February 2012 12:48 PM

In a perfect world (at least the way I see it) marriage would be simply yet another way for you to express love for someone else.

But in our corrupt world, not only is marriage so much more than that (in so many differently bad ways as I described) but true love itself is exceedingly difficult to find and fleeting when found.

So the best utility for marriage is funcitonal - to create a family unit for the express purpose to raise children and forfeit all rights to a sexually active life (since, naturally, we like to fuck around.)  (And, of course, in the absence of a prenuptial agreement, marriage is also a tempting tool to get rich)

I deleted what you replied to when I edited.  So, the advantage is that you make a contract with a person based upon their personality (your expression of love for who that person is) and if either of you violate it, that love wasn’t really there and who violates the contract determines how resources and custody are determined?  Although, I would add that on the topic of love, when a person is more aggressive they are not expressing love even though they may love who they are, and it is not love to feel love for their aggression.

On the contrary, the love really was there.  Was.  People change, and - sometimes - the feeling of love can simply evaporate.

Because that’s exactly what it is.  It is a legal contract, bound by all kinds of laws such as alimony, pre-nuptual agreements, and a host of other crap that, for the most part, gets in the way of the relationship and sometimes makes it worse by the strain of something externally imposed - be it fidelity, the ability to get rich quick, or whatever.

Which is what you’re actually talking about: a relationship, not a marriage.