Thoughts on Marriage

It is most likely that the ancient Athenian men, who made no qualms about enjoying sexual intimacy with their male companions, would have thought that the prospect of marriage between two men was not rude or immoral, but useless, impractical, and thus absurd.  Even in their comedies, the idea of exclusively male marriage was not even present as a joke:  It seems that the thought never entered one’s mind, let alone the public forum. 

Marriage, as far as its human origin is concerned, seemed chiefly to concern the establishment and transmission of property, i.e. the protection of one’s exclusive right to a woman (for the sake of children) and the protection of the children’s rights to their father’s property after his death.

Even as women gained value and distinction in the public sphere, their rights eventually equaling those of men (at least in the western world), marriage persisted as the assurance of the security of the family, being a social and legal safeguard for both the exclusive relationship between the spouses and the custody and property rights parents held with their children.

Marriage has a natural definition because it is naturally practical.  This is clear considering the physical dispositions of men and women and the process of child-bearing. 

Marriage has a social definition because it is socially practical.  Women’s rights are proportionate to men’s responsibilities.  If a man has no responsibility to care for his children or the mother of his children, the woman assumes the double (and near impossible) task of bearing and rearing her children as well as supporting herself.  Without loyalty to a spouse, however, the man’s responsibilities are moot:  A woman’s promiscuity diminishes a man’s obligation insofar as they are uncertain of his fatherhood.  Also, even if both parents are present and responsible to their children, their property is prone to loss or theft (by neighbor or by ruler) when there is no clear heir by virtue of some socially recognized bond.

Many movements throughout recent history gradually diminished the definition of the family, which in turn diminished the apparent need for marriage.  Industry grew bigger and more complex, decreasing the natural practicalities of marriage. Man’s role changed from household steward to travelling money-maker.  The most damaging effect on the social understanding of marriage was the gradual cultural displacement of family provider with family money-maker.  Woman’s role has changed as well, from nurturer, housekeeper, and teacher, to secondary money-maker.  Public institutions provide education in lieu of prudential child-rearing.  Commerce thrives on replacing the creativity of wife-and-mothers with affordable household necessities.  Women have been made “free” from their household duties so that they can join men in leaving their homes and earning money to pay for the replacements of their household duties.  If a woman has children without a husband to provide, publicly funded institutions will take his place until the children themselves are absorbed by institutions and the woman becomes provider.

Marriage is today, in its natural form, unnecessary and often even impractical.  This is the reason why marriage has been socially and legally redefined to include unions between two men or two women.  There is no longer a clear definition (or even a need for a definition) of a family.  What remains are social and legal utilities (like property rights and taxes) which, for the present, adhere to two people only in official record; a record which can be dashed and rewritten at whim.  Eventually, even the need to define heirs and co-owners will fade as social structures evolve.  Yet, long before this happens, it will inevitably occur to the public at large that there is no reason why private property can only be shared with one other individual or that, if any two people can be arbitrarily granted custody over a child, there is no reason why any three or four people cannot be granted custody over a child.

Perhaps it be Marxist of me to see such a linear evolution of societal customs (and to evolve does not mean to get better), but the trend is apparent.  The old form of marriage is quickly becoming a thing that is not so much dependent on political bias or economic class as it is on a desired way of life; one which is so far removed from conventional culture that it has an almost isolating effect on those who live it.  It is not inconceivable to think that a day will come when the more conspicuous members of our society will regard marriage as something unthinkable; something useless, impractical, and absurd.

Tragedy

Tragedy is not mere suffering, sadness, melancholia, depression, misfortune, grief, pain, or loss.  Suffering is an evil; it is not beautiful.  No evil is beautiful.  Pain, sickness, death, loss, misfortune, strife, betrayal, and grief are all evil. They are, in themselves, ugly.

Tragedy involves all of these things, but tragedy is beautiful.

Tragedy is beautiful because love is beautiful.

Tragedy and love are mutually inclusive.

There is no tragedy without love.  There is no love without tragedy.

Tragedy is the beauty which subsists in the presence of ugliness. It is the good which is present amidst great evil.  It is the truth which cannot be crowded out by lies.  No state of events can properly be called a “tragedy” unless its present and defining love is true enough to outlive its opposing evil.

Evil is synonymous with a lack of beauty, a lack of goodness, and a lack of truth.  The evil we experience in tragedy only reveals – exaggerates – the kernel of truth, beauty, and goodness intrinsic to love.  The evil characteristic of tragedy is a darkness which serves to amplify our experience of a light too subtle to notice under mundane circumstances.

Every relationship we have with what is beautiful and good is haunted by the mortality of the object’s beauty.  Whatever is beautiful and good in our experience can be crushed.  It can be turned into something ugly.  The source of the tragedy in this case is the relationship of the lover to what is loved.  We mourn, to some degree, the loss of that beautiful thing.  The thing, once passed, is no longer there, but our love for it, our desire to have it remain for beauty’s sake, persists. We experience the absence of it.  Our love outlives the object of our love.

How much greater the tragedy when the relationship is not between lover and beloved thing but between human lovers. 

There is not only loss but the looming inevitably of loss and being lost.  Death is certain.  Love however is not enslaved to death.

As soon as our empathy arises for something overwhelmed by evil, it is because we have already begun to love it.  “What a shame” we say in our hearts.  We, to some degree, desire that thing all but too late.

True tragedy, however, is not sympathy.  We ourselves experience the evil first-hand when we experience tragedy.  There is a difference between feeling sympathy for another’s loss and feeling grief at having lost; between feeling pity for a suffering victim and feeling remorse at having made a victim.  When we experience tragedy, we are not mere bystanders.  In tragedy, one involves himself in evil by being a lover.

Any love knows that tragedy is imminent, but love hopes. It does not merely “move on.”  When we lose someone, we do not forget for our own sake. We place our trust in the immortality of love because we ourselves experience a small taste of that immortality.

Tragedy is the most exquisite form of beauty.  It takes a refined taste to appreciate and is the deepest and most glorious beauty we can experience in this life.  But it is not possible to experience tragedy unless one wills to suffer.