Because marriage has been in the news a lot lately due to the Supreme Court's ruling on gay marriage, I thought I'd say something about it. Regarding my personal background in this matter, as mentioned earlier, I was married somewhat coercively in 1974 because my girlfriend's parents didn't approve of her living with a man to whom she was not married. I was unceremoniously dumped eleven years later for reasons which included the stress of raising children, the feminist ideology at the time, a quest for greater social status and a touch of mental illness. The minor financial issues that came up early in the marriage do not seem significant now, because we still managed to see our children through four-year colleges and we both retired early, she at 55 and I at 57. I have remained unmarried since 1985 and will never marry again. Marriage is a complex topic with a long history, so I'll just mention a few aspects of it that interest me.
In modern society marriage is a lingering artifact of the past that no longer serves much of its earlier purpose. Once it was a formal way of recognizing the union of a man and a woman in the eyes of society and served as a statement of their commitment to each other and as an announcement of their withdrawal from availability as potential mates. In many societies intermarriage was a device consciously used to maintain harmony among conflicting groups. Outside the U.S. arranged marriages have been popular for centuries. Marriage has often been unrelated to love and has served a transactional role with respect to money and power. According to my current thinking, there is no valid reason to elevate the importance of marriage, and it would be just as well to phase it out as an institution.
Cultural and economic changes in the U.S. and most developed countries have been rendering the institution of marriage obsolete over the last fifty years. The reasons for men and women to cohabitate now probably have more to do with sex, child rearing and companionship than any of the more complex social functions that marriage once entailed. The economic independence of women eliminates their need to marry for financial reasons, and there is now little stigma associated with remaining single. With less incentive to marry, people are now marrying later, if at all, and divorce rates remain high. Lavish weddings are popular, but, according to recent statistics, the more expensive the wedding the shorter the duration of the marriage is likely to be.
Many of the laws regarding marriage seem dated to me. They are hangovers from the puritanical days of America's past in which all normal adults were expected to marry. The more recent social engineering that has encouraged marriage and home ownership through tax breaks has done little to stabilize society and should be reevaluated without relying on religious doctrines. If the legal framework that currently supports and encourages marriage were dropped, marriage as an institution might soon fade away.
Based on my experience and observation, marriage is handled by society in too haphazard a fashion with respect to education. It is difficult for most single people to know what they will need to do to sustain a marriage or whether they will even want to sustain a marriage after a few years, and no wide-scale system exists to guide them. If I had been able to see into the future of my relationship with my ex-wife I would never have married her. Similarly, married couples are often insufficiently prepared to be parents, and all could benefit from training in that area. The ceremony of marriage itself could be replaced with training and the reaching of formal or informal agreements between couples. Government involvement could be restricted to clarifying and enforcing the legal responsibilities of parents to their children and to subsidizing relevant education for couples who choose to live monogamously. In this scenario, every person would be seen as a single individual from birth to death from a government standpoint.
With these views in mind, there is little to applaud about the acceptance of gay marriage, which looks to me like a poorly-conceived attempt to provide affirmation to gay people. Now we have more people participating in a pointless ritual that makes them feel good about themselves and is a boon to the wedding industry. I suppose my skepticism about the value of democratic processes is confirmed whenever pointless-seeming events like this occur; an outcome in which marriage went out of fashion would make more sense to me in the long run. Now we are looking at wider acceptance of an institution that I think of as irrelevant.
I don't think that romantic love is central to heterosexual or homosexual relationships. The primary fact is that almost no one likes living completely alone. This becomes more apparent as you progress through life and your relationships evolve. Early in their lives most people are motivated by heterosexual attraction and have a tendency to develop monogamous relationships which may or may not remain intact. If children follow, that provides some incentive to continue a relationship but is not sufficient in itself. The underlying force, if you want to look at this deterministically, is probably chemical activity in the brain that makes us feel good and consequently affects our behavior. Generally, the chemicals that favor long-term relationships are going to play a more important role in determining whether one is happy or not than the chemicals associated with romantic infatuation. It should also be noted that we have not evolved to engage in fifty-year marriages, because our ancestors simply didn't live long enough for that.
Showing posts with label Relationships. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Relationships. Show all posts
Monday, September 14, 2015
Sunday, September 7, 2014
Notes on Feminism
Throughout most of my adult life, it has been politically incorrect to say anything negative about feminism. Feminism is a broad topic that covers a long time period and a large geographical area, but I think of it mainly in terms of its second wave in the U.S. during the 1970's. When I was in college in the Midwest during the late 1960's and early 1970's, attitudes were still patriarchal, and even though political activism and sexual liberation were in vogue, men still behaved in what would now be considered a sexist manner, and most women went along with it. For that reason, it was difficult to argue convincingly against the basic concepts of feminism, which had been around at least since Mary Wollstonecraft published A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792.
In my current thinking, equality is one of the few organizing principles that continue to be valid for humans. I think it has a basis in evolutionary biology, and belief in equality can be considered a basic human trait that stems from our predisposition to belong to cooperative groups. If E.O. Wilson is correct, natural selection for humans is based on groups, not individuals or selfish genes. The theory of group selection has its detractors, but I agree with Peter Richerson and Robert Boyd, who support Wilson when they say that "in the human species, a pro-social psychology arose by cultural group selection and gene-culture coevolution." This can be construed to make a strong case for equality, while other popular ideas such as democracy or capitalism seem comparatively arbitrary, transient and weak. Democracy is primarily a political system that attempts to enforce equality among conflicting groups. Capitalism is an economic system that is perceived as natural to many people only because it tends to break down society into different groups, allowing one group to feel justified in exploiting another. Earlier, slaveholders exploited slaves, and now corporations exploit workers. In a realized state of equality among all people, neither democracy nor capitalism would be necessary. It could be argued that the remaining world conflicts are related to the difficulty of convincing all people that they belong to the same group.
Although I support feminism to the extent that it advocates equality, it is difficult for me to overlook some of the destructive effects that it has had on my life. I think it helped generate interpersonal chaos in my generation. Previous generations were pressured to marry and remain married, and they usually did. Greater equality for women has allowed more women to enter the workforce and attain economic and social independence without male support and approval. In my experience, many women in the transitional group of the 1970's unconsciously absorbed both the old and new ways while they were growing up. On one hand, they saw their fathers as solid breadwinners who took care of their mothers in an unequal system that bestowed greater authority to males. On the other hand, they thought that they could live independently and make free choices without male interference. The upper-middle-class women with whom I became familiar sometimes developed unrealistic expectations as a result of exposure to both systems. They thought that they could have the security and social prestige accorded to their mothers with the support of their uxorious fathers, while simultaneously disdaining dependence on men.
In the case of my ex-wife, she deeply resented parental pressure to follow their guidelines. She was forced to study nursing under the unstated presumption that she would meet and marry a successful professional and not work. That was the model of her parents' generation. She rebelled and married an unconventional philosophy major, but when it became apparent that this would not lead to socioeconomic status comparable to what her mother had, she got a divorce. Later, when her idealized picture of life as a single mother with two children didn't materialize and her relationship with her daughter deteriorated, she defaulted to a strategy that centered on self-preservation. In her later life she is still single, with no partner and strained relations with her siblings and her daughter.
While feminism corresponded with necessary social changes, on a personal level it was disruptive to my life. I find that many educated American women in my age group retain elements of both pre- and post-feminism ideology, though the two are not compatible. In my opinion, this impedes their ability to have good relationships with men, a problem that was less common among their mothers, who in hindsight often seem happier and far more realistic.
In my current thinking, equality is one of the few organizing principles that continue to be valid for humans. I think it has a basis in evolutionary biology, and belief in equality can be considered a basic human trait that stems from our predisposition to belong to cooperative groups. If E.O. Wilson is correct, natural selection for humans is based on groups, not individuals or selfish genes. The theory of group selection has its detractors, but I agree with Peter Richerson and Robert Boyd, who support Wilson when they say that "in the human species, a pro-social psychology arose by cultural group selection and gene-culture coevolution." This can be construed to make a strong case for equality, while other popular ideas such as democracy or capitalism seem comparatively arbitrary, transient and weak. Democracy is primarily a political system that attempts to enforce equality among conflicting groups. Capitalism is an economic system that is perceived as natural to many people only because it tends to break down society into different groups, allowing one group to feel justified in exploiting another. Earlier, slaveholders exploited slaves, and now corporations exploit workers. In a realized state of equality among all people, neither democracy nor capitalism would be necessary. It could be argued that the remaining world conflicts are related to the difficulty of convincing all people that they belong to the same group.
Although I support feminism to the extent that it advocates equality, it is difficult for me to overlook some of the destructive effects that it has had on my life. I think it helped generate interpersonal chaos in my generation. Previous generations were pressured to marry and remain married, and they usually did. Greater equality for women has allowed more women to enter the workforce and attain economic and social independence without male support and approval. In my experience, many women in the transitional group of the 1970's unconsciously absorbed both the old and new ways while they were growing up. On one hand, they saw their fathers as solid breadwinners who took care of their mothers in an unequal system that bestowed greater authority to males. On the other hand, they thought that they could live independently and make free choices without male interference. The upper-middle-class women with whom I became familiar sometimes developed unrealistic expectations as a result of exposure to both systems. They thought that they could have the security and social prestige accorded to their mothers with the support of their uxorious fathers, while simultaneously disdaining dependence on men.
In the case of my ex-wife, she deeply resented parental pressure to follow their guidelines. She was forced to study nursing under the unstated presumption that she would meet and marry a successful professional and not work. That was the model of her parents' generation. She rebelled and married an unconventional philosophy major, but when it became apparent that this would not lead to socioeconomic status comparable to what her mother had, she got a divorce. Later, when her idealized picture of life as a single mother with two children didn't materialize and her relationship with her daughter deteriorated, she defaulted to a strategy that centered on self-preservation. In her later life she is still single, with no partner and strained relations with her siblings and her daughter.
While feminism corresponded with necessary social changes, on a personal level it was disruptive to my life. I find that many educated American women in my age group retain elements of both pre- and post-feminism ideology, though the two are not compatible. In my opinion, this impedes their ability to have good relationships with men, a problem that was less common among their mothers, who in hindsight often seem happier and far more realistic.
Thursday, September 4, 2014
Panic Attacks
In 1997 I had lived in Dixon, Illinois for ten years. Since I had little in common with anyone there, for my mental health I used to participate in the UC Berkeley summer programs in Europe. That year I spent three weeks in Oxford studying cathedrals and abbeys. It was my second trip to Oxford, having studied Anglo-Saxon archaeology in 1993. In 1997 I met Kimberly there; she was studying historical English journals.
We were both looking for changes in our lives. I was sick of Dixon, and it wasn't a good location for my daughter, who had just finished tenth grade at Dixon High School. Staying there, she might have turned out the way some of her friends later did, becoming a topless dancer or an unwed mother. Kimberly had worked for ten years in the Religious Studies Department at UC Santa Barbara and had recently broken off an engagement.
In the early fall, Kimberly visited us in Dixon. During that trip, she suddenly had a small panic attack. I don't recall what precipitated it, but it was the first of many to follow. Nevertheless, we began to develop a tentative plan to pursue the relationship. I started to look for jobs in the Chicago area, and I planned a trip to see Kimberly in Santa Barbara over the Christmas holidays. As it happened, I got a job offer in Wheeling, Illinois, near Chicago, and accepted it over the phone while I was in Santa Barbara. In January, 1998 my daughter and I moved to Lake Forest, Illinois. Kimberly soon quit her job, moved to Wilmette, Illinois and shortly thereafter found a new job nearby at Northwestern University in Evanston.
The next panic attack that I distinctly remember occurred when Kimberly came over to our apartment in Lake Forest to watch a movie. We watched River's Edge, starring Keanu Reeves, with a humorous cameo by Dennis Hopper. I had seen the film previously and liked it. It is a dark film, but very well done, and an observant study of teenage culture in a small Western town. However, it was too upsetting for Kimberly to watch, and it triggered a panic attack. She couldn't stand watching it, became extremely agitated, and finally asked me if I had ever killed anyone.
The relationship lasted for about three years, and was punctuated by panic attacks, which diminished in intensity over time as she became accustomed to me. One of the things I liked about Kimberly was that she knew herself well and provided specific instructions about what I should do on occasions such as birthdays, Valentine's Day, Christmas, etc. She knew exactly what might upset her and had learned to speak up about it in advance whenever possible. I came to see that she suffered from an anxiety disorder and tended to resolve her issues by being a control freak, but I appreciated having much of the guesswork taken out of the relationship, because women are often far more capricious in their expectations.
Although I attempted to accommodate Kimberly as best I could, it wasn't really possible to save the relationship. My daughter at that time was in the process of stabilizing after a rebellious adolescence during which her mother had in effect kicked her out twice. Kimberly was ill-equipped to deal with children. She was unable to develop rapports with them and was easily disturbed by unruliness. At that time, my son was having difficulties living with my ex-wife, and Kimberly was troubled by him too. Shortly after the Columbine High School massacre, he was visiting in Lake Forest, and the three of us went to a Cubs game. My son's behavior seemed to precipitate a small panic attack roughly based on the idea that he might become a murderer because he played violent video games. By then I was getting a little fed up with Kimberly, who obviously had led a sheltered life and hadn't been challenged much. She had never lived with anyone, never been married and never had children, though in 1999 she was 43. After a bad experience as a schoolteacher, she had avoided demanding jobs and lived like a college student. Although she was very frugal, she was subsidized by her father, who was a retired engineer.
There were other things that Kimberly didn't like about the relationship, but she tended to discuss them with female confidantes, clergymen and psychologists rather than with me. Religion was of considerable interest to her, and she had played at being a Roman Catholic and an Episcopalian. I, on the other hand, have been an atheist continuously since about age 14. Ordinarily this did not produce a conflict, because she only had half-baked religious ideas and was pretty smart; I suspected that at the back of her mind she knew that it was all bunk. As part of her control freak strategy, it suited her to think that God was providing order to the apparent chaos of everyday life.
In August, 2000, during the final build-up to the end of the relationship, we went on a two-week vacation to Switzerland, with side trips to Annecy, France and Tremezzo, Italy. There were things I did that upset her on the trip, but she said nothing at the time. Apparently it bothered her a lot that I had walked ahead of her in the hills around Gruyere when she had a leg cramp. Later, in November, it came to a crescendo. She had thought over the relationship and discussed it with others, and then went through a major anxiety episode, during which she became an insomniac requiring medical attention. Shortly after that, she unilaterally broke off the relationship without discussion.
While I was hurt and saddened by the breakup, I was assuaged by my awareness of her apparent mental illness, and there was in fact little surprise, because there had been clear intermittent warnings of the potential demise of the relationship ever since its inception. However, I misjudged the severity of Kimberly's self-protective regimen that ensued. I mistakenly thought that we would still see each other occasionally and discuss aspects of the relationship in a way that might increase our understanding so that we might each benefit from that knowledge in the future. That was not to be, and I haven't spoken to her since November, 2000. We exchanged a few e-mails, but she no longer replies to mine.
What has stuck with me over the years is Kimberly's unwillingness to communicate. In this context I find it completely unacceptable. How does one honestly erase three years of one's life without any accountability? It is deep hypocrisy to espouse Christian or similar values while blotting out a person who is at odds with your personal mythology. If you've ever read Martin Buber, Kimberly has made me an It.
As far as I know, Kimberly now lives alone in a condominium on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
We were both looking for changes in our lives. I was sick of Dixon, and it wasn't a good location for my daughter, who had just finished tenth grade at Dixon High School. Staying there, she might have turned out the way some of her friends later did, becoming a topless dancer or an unwed mother. Kimberly had worked for ten years in the Religious Studies Department at UC Santa Barbara and had recently broken off an engagement.
In the early fall, Kimberly visited us in Dixon. During that trip, she suddenly had a small panic attack. I don't recall what precipitated it, but it was the first of many to follow. Nevertheless, we began to develop a tentative plan to pursue the relationship. I started to look for jobs in the Chicago area, and I planned a trip to see Kimberly in Santa Barbara over the Christmas holidays. As it happened, I got a job offer in Wheeling, Illinois, near Chicago, and accepted it over the phone while I was in Santa Barbara. In January, 1998 my daughter and I moved to Lake Forest, Illinois. Kimberly soon quit her job, moved to Wilmette, Illinois and shortly thereafter found a new job nearby at Northwestern University in Evanston.
The next panic attack that I distinctly remember occurred when Kimberly came over to our apartment in Lake Forest to watch a movie. We watched River's Edge, starring Keanu Reeves, with a humorous cameo by Dennis Hopper. I had seen the film previously and liked it. It is a dark film, but very well done, and an observant study of teenage culture in a small Western town. However, it was too upsetting for Kimberly to watch, and it triggered a panic attack. She couldn't stand watching it, became extremely agitated, and finally asked me if I had ever killed anyone.
The relationship lasted for about three years, and was punctuated by panic attacks, which diminished in intensity over time as she became accustomed to me. One of the things I liked about Kimberly was that she knew herself well and provided specific instructions about what I should do on occasions such as birthdays, Valentine's Day, Christmas, etc. She knew exactly what might upset her and had learned to speak up about it in advance whenever possible. I came to see that she suffered from an anxiety disorder and tended to resolve her issues by being a control freak, but I appreciated having much of the guesswork taken out of the relationship, because women are often far more capricious in their expectations.
Although I attempted to accommodate Kimberly as best I could, it wasn't really possible to save the relationship. My daughter at that time was in the process of stabilizing after a rebellious adolescence during which her mother had in effect kicked her out twice. Kimberly was ill-equipped to deal with children. She was unable to develop rapports with them and was easily disturbed by unruliness. At that time, my son was having difficulties living with my ex-wife, and Kimberly was troubled by him too. Shortly after the Columbine High School massacre, he was visiting in Lake Forest, and the three of us went to a Cubs game. My son's behavior seemed to precipitate a small panic attack roughly based on the idea that he might become a murderer because he played violent video games. By then I was getting a little fed up with Kimberly, who obviously had led a sheltered life and hadn't been challenged much. She had never lived with anyone, never been married and never had children, though in 1999 she was 43. After a bad experience as a schoolteacher, she had avoided demanding jobs and lived like a college student. Although she was very frugal, she was subsidized by her father, who was a retired engineer.
There were other things that Kimberly didn't like about the relationship, but she tended to discuss them with female confidantes, clergymen and psychologists rather than with me. Religion was of considerable interest to her, and she had played at being a Roman Catholic and an Episcopalian. I, on the other hand, have been an atheist continuously since about age 14. Ordinarily this did not produce a conflict, because she only had half-baked religious ideas and was pretty smart; I suspected that at the back of her mind she knew that it was all bunk. As part of her control freak strategy, it suited her to think that God was providing order to the apparent chaos of everyday life.
In August, 2000, during the final build-up to the end of the relationship, we went on a two-week vacation to Switzerland, with side trips to Annecy, France and Tremezzo, Italy. There were things I did that upset her on the trip, but she said nothing at the time. Apparently it bothered her a lot that I had walked ahead of her in the hills around Gruyere when she had a leg cramp. Later, in November, it came to a crescendo. She had thought over the relationship and discussed it with others, and then went through a major anxiety episode, during which she became an insomniac requiring medical attention. Shortly after that, she unilaterally broke off the relationship without discussion.
While I was hurt and saddened by the breakup, I was assuaged by my awareness of her apparent mental illness, and there was in fact little surprise, because there had been clear intermittent warnings of the potential demise of the relationship ever since its inception. However, I misjudged the severity of Kimberly's self-protective regimen that ensued. I mistakenly thought that we would still see each other occasionally and discuss aspects of the relationship in a way that might increase our understanding so that we might each benefit from that knowledge in the future. That was not to be, and I haven't spoken to her since November, 2000. We exchanged a few e-mails, but she no longer replies to mine.
What has stuck with me over the years is Kimberly's unwillingness to communicate. In this context I find it completely unacceptable. How does one honestly erase three years of one's life without any accountability? It is deep hypocrisy to espouse Christian or similar values while blotting out a person who is at odds with your personal mythology. If you've ever read Martin Buber, Kimberly has made me an It.
As far as I know, Kimberly now lives alone in a condominium on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
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