Hello dear readers, today we will be concluding our short three post jaunt down feminism and gender dynamics (four if you think that marriage and child rearing falls under that category)! In addition for my personal health and safety, we will never touch any sort of inflammatory politicized philosophies again! Hurrah!
But before we begin, I did want to make one quick announcement. Because of various schedule constraints and discrepancies, I will no longer be updating on a set schedule of Tuesdays and Thursdays. However, do not fear, for I will continue to update biweekly, one early in the week, the other late, and perhaps, like the grand phoenix, a new regular schedule may rise from the ashes. Until then, just look to the skies, and you will know my sign.
Now then, as I have alluded to before, today I will be discussing the historical evolution of gender dynamics, and my hypothesis on why Patriarchal societies seemed to be the rule among most of recorded history [Sadly, we must largely omit Subsaharan Africa and the Americas. I should note that the focus on Eurasia in history is largely based on the fact that these are the only cultures of which there are detailed written records for most of history (though the Maya and Aztec cultures are the exception to this). Archaeological evidence can only go so far when you can only vaguely wave around arrowheads and pottery fragments and say that a general trend happened over the space of several hundred years]. Also, because this is history, rather than philosophy, I will be citing sources. And yes, Wikipedia is a perfectly fine source for an informal treatise such as this, it's a blog not a dissertation. Deal with it
It seems that largely, patriarchy in its prime seems to have existed for about 6,000 years, and though this is basically all of recorded history, is small potatoes in terms of humans actually existing (about 3% of total human history). It would seem that most anthropologists think that pre-agricultural societies were rather more egalitarian. However, due to the natural progression of power after agriculture (as I described in On Tribes and Politics), it was necessary that the military become an integral part of the political system, as demonstrated in various parts of the world (the citizen soldiers of classical Greece and Rome, the private military emperors of the Roman Empire, Feudal Europe and Japan, the Shi and Kshatriya castes of China and India, ect.) This is where men got their advantage, I believe. Men are naturally more suited to war.
Now, hold on just a second there. I mean that in pre-modern war, men are more naturally suited, and not for the reasons you think. As warriors and generals, I would argue that there is little difference in a baseline, even before gunpowder. In an individual fight, a woman's disadvantage in strength is largely irrelevant, because fighting with weapons is more about technique and speed than raw strength (you can break just about anything in the human body with 8lbs of pressure which is literally childsplay, and a decent set of armor will deflect all but the strongest attacks with a weapon of equal metallurgical quality anyway). Likewise, strategy, tactics, and logistical management are all academic skills, and discipline and courage address areas of the mind which are equal between the sexes. Even if all of these things were true, women could still be of use as skirmishers, pioneers, scouts and as part of the baggage train. Rather, the two main traits of a man which makes them more suited to war are campaigning ability and expendability.
Campaigning ability is the ability of the soldier to endure long periods of sustained marching, heavy loads and adverse weather, illness and fatigue. The primary advantage that men have over women has to do with the fact that men do not get pregnant, nor do they have PMS. The problems in campaigning with pregnancy is obvious, and with a mixed sex army prior to contraception, pregnancy will be a thing that happens, probably quite frequently. However, even if a general was able to enforce such rigid discipline and somehow not experience a ridiculous amount of mutinies, PMS would still cause problems. Now, while I am not wholly familiar with the precise symptoms, I do know that they range from mildly irritating to physically debilitating, and having a not insignificant portion of your army not be able to march or fight because their uterus hates them for not having babies would put you at a major disadvantage. Of course, after effective hormone inhibiting contraceptive pills became commercially available, women were phased into the military proper not long after, and even before military doctrine and mechanization made campaigning less of an issue in any case.
The second major advantage that men have in the pre-modern military is that they are expendable, biologically speaking. As I described in On Marriage and Pedagogy, a society actively looks for large, growing populations because it is safer and more economically viable. While any given man can have a truly ridiculous number of offspring (as demonstrated by our good friend, Genghis Khan), any given woman could, at the most, have around 25 (which is pretty optimistic, considering how common death by childbirth was). Thus, being the inhibiting factor in the population equation, it is socially more important to keep women alive than men. Considering the preposterous number of casualties which could be sustained in a single day in pre-modern war, any failure of a mixed-sex army could be the ruin of the state even if they won the war. Male casualties are easy to bounce back from, female casualties are very hard. It should be noted that these advantages apply on a large scale. One or a few women would not cause a disadvantage, as was seen on occasion in history.
As a result, the male monopoly on military power disenfranchised women from the public sphere. However, this public disenfranchisement does not necessarily mean that women did not have power. While this article is largely speculative, it does remind us that we can't entirely rely on our modern perceptions of how things are to reconstruct the past. I won't go into detail about that, because this post is very long, and there's one more aspect of gender dynamics which is extremely important and that is the women as property thing.
Like with the disenfranchisement of women, I suspect that the objectification of women is derived from a side effect of power distribution. Before the industrial revolution, the primary source of wealth was land ownership. Land provided important raw and agricultural goods which made the owners very wealthy and very powerful. Of course, the owners don't live forever, and while inheritance is probably as old as humans ourselves, the steaks after the agricultural revolution had never been higher. Inheritance law and martial patriarchy probably developed relatively co-currently and thus it would have been natural for sons to inherit property, as they could defend it. While women played a key role in inheritance, they were largely used as an inter-household currency. However, like all currency, its value lay in its purity. The original utility of a virgin bride was to prevent the shady claims of half brothers from being a problem, as, even if they were successfully repelled, would probably be at a great expense of money and life. As time went on and the original purposes forgotten (a la the three monkey experiment), this value on virginal purity remained. While the male morality was being brave enough to die for the good of your state (e.g. the Roman Virtus, "courage," "virtue" or "manliness") the female morality was to not cause inheritance feuds by making a bunch of half-brothers (e.g. the Roman Pudicitia, "chastity," "shame," "womanly virtue"). While both of these moralities were originally for the good of the state, virtus (which is, amusingly, a feminine noun) commanded men to "do this politically empowering thing" while pudidictia commanded women to "don't do this thing unless we tell you it's okay." Because women were a more important part of a state's well being, the state appropriated more control over them.
To me, it is not at all surprising at all that feminism took off around the industrial revolution. Mechanization and industry decreased the value of real estate, corporate doctrine hugely lightened the importance of familial inheritance of the means of production, modern medicine and agricultural production caused the population to skyrocket, reducing the pressure to reproduce constantly significantly, contraception made pregnancy extremely controllable which loosened incentives for pudidictian morality, and the mechanization of the military broke down the primary causes for the male monopoly.
Over all, if present trends continue I would say that the blip of patriarchal rule within our history won't last for much longer, and we'll return to our natural state of largely egalitarian gender dynamics. Of course, cultural change is frustratingly slow, so though there is no longer any real purpose to patriarchal practices, the vestigial remains of them will last for quite a few generations to come.
(Or at least that's what the Phallo-Council wants you to think.)
Sincere Regards,
Michael Coffey
Friday, January 24, 2014
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Vol. II On Feminism and Skub
Wait- This isn't Tuesday.
For all of those curious as to why I didn't update Bluh Bluh Something Clever yesterday, it was due to some chronospacial mishap with my temporal-reconstructionalist wave function. That is all. It is not because I was lazy over the long weekend and had to do all of the work that had backed up since Friday. I mean, how irresponsible and undisciplined would that be, am I right?
Anyway we're here to talk Feminism.
So building off of what I was talking about in my post-script last Thursday, I do make a distinction between gender dynamics and feminism. Essentially, the difference between gender dynamics and feminism is the same as that between class dynamics and Marxism. While divisions of the population based on economic assets have been a long standing tradition in just about all civilized culture (by which I mean cultures with large collections of people in a single political unit, a stationary lifestyle, and capacity for graphic communication), Marxism is a specific philosophy which describes and politicizes the dynamic and constructs an ideal dynamic. Likewise gender dynamic is the division of populations based on sex, gender and sexuality (in fact, gender is a bad descriptor for this dynamic, but there really isn't a good word to describe all three so it'll have to do), while feminism is a series of western movements over the past 120 years which describes, politicizes and constructs ideals. These movements, most of which I will not describe are advocates for the civil and cultural enfranchisement of traditionally suppressed peoples within the gender dynamic (women, homosexuals, the transgendered et al.). These can range anywhere from self deprecatingly modest to militantly extremist, with about the same distribution as any other political movements. However, the three big cultural pushes are known as "waves" with the first being the civil enfranchisement of women in the West from the 1870s to the 1920s, the second being the shift towards cultural equality of women in the 1960s and 1970s, while the third, which, having begun in the early 1990s and, is still in full force, and among other things, advocates for the political and cultural enfranchisement of LGBTQ and the dispelling of gender based corruption.
However, like many political movements, philosophies have taken root around them. Now, I really dislike politically based philosophy, because they tend to focus less on describing the world as it is, and more on describing the world in a way which is advantageous to their cause. All political based philosophies do is muddy the water with partisanship, which is no good. My specific problems with Third Wave Feminism stem primarily from their support of post-structuralism and their lack of any good historical theory.
Now, my qualms with post-structuralism could (and most likely will) make up an entire post on its own, but I will briefly explain one of the ways it effects feminism (and much of social justice studies). A core element of post-structuralism is the destabilization of meaning, or making meaning wholly subjective. If you have read my earlier posts (especially On Beauty and Shit) you will be very well acquainted with the fact that I find this sort of thing to be pointless and annoying. However, as this is a politically based philosophy, the ability to dance around like like a childish tit and avoid any sort of challenge by pulling out the rug of definition from under your critics is an excellent way to win an argument. This is the primary difference between politics and philosophy: politics is a tribal game of Us vs Them, where it doesn't matter how you play the game, so long as you win, while in philosophy when both parties challenged and corrected with various arguments, they are both more able to come to a sensible conclusion. While post-structuralism is a perfectly valid field of metaphysics and semantics, as soon as it gets employed in politics, it's a toothbrush shiv designed to gut your opponent with underhanded tricks.
My second qualm with Feminism is their historical theory, which (from my own experience) is something along the lines of: "so men ruled everything in a patriarchy for a long time and that was super bad but then 1869 some women got the right to vote and then men got all upset, but it's really their fault anyway. Anyhoo real history doesn't start until the suffragette movement, except for all these cool ladies who stuck it to the MAN!" What I find most infuriating is that there isn't any question to HOW the patriarchal gender dynamics arose in the first place, or why they existed the way they did, why patriarchy almost universally arose in wholly independent cultures and why it was only in the late 19th and early 20th century did women actually successfully challenge this state.
I have a hypothesis which answers all of these questions, actually, but I'll save it for next time. I'll end with this: do I support feminism? Well, it's complicated. On one hand, I do think that most of their conclusions of what are just gender dynamics are legitimate, and I will concur that gender based corruption is in many aspects a political and cultural issue which needs to be resolved. However, Feminism is a political movement at heart, and any political party I look at with a contemptful mistrust most people reserve for the Ol' Nick himself. I, therefore, will caucus with this meerkat and share a tub of popcorn as pro-skub and anti-skub vainly duel for supremacy.
Sincere Regards,
Michael Coffey
For all of those curious as to why I didn't update Bluh Bluh Something Clever yesterday, it was due to some chronospacial mishap with my temporal-reconstructionalist wave function. That is all. It is not because I was lazy over the long weekend and had to do all of the work that had backed up since Friday. I mean, how irresponsible and undisciplined would that be, am I right?
Anyway we're here to talk Feminism.
So building off of what I was talking about in my post-script last Thursday, I do make a distinction between gender dynamics and feminism. Essentially, the difference between gender dynamics and feminism is the same as that between class dynamics and Marxism. While divisions of the population based on economic assets have been a long standing tradition in just about all civilized culture (by which I mean cultures with large collections of people in a single political unit, a stationary lifestyle, and capacity for graphic communication), Marxism is a specific philosophy which describes and politicizes the dynamic and constructs an ideal dynamic. Likewise gender dynamic is the division of populations based on sex, gender and sexuality (in fact, gender is a bad descriptor for this dynamic, but there really isn't a good word to describe all three so it'll have to do), while feminism is a series of western movements over the past 120 years which describes, politicizes and constructs ideals. These movements, most of which I will not describe are advocates for the civil and cultural enfranchisement of traditionally suppressed peoples within the gender dynamic (women, homosexuals, the transgendered et al.). These can range anywhere from self deprecatingly modest to militantly extremist, with about the same distribution as any other political movements. However, the three big cultural pushes are known as "waves" with the first being the civil enfranchisement of women in the West from the 1870s to the 1920s, the second being the shift towards cultural equality of women in the 1960s and 1970s, while the third, which, having begun in the early 1990s and, is still in full force, and among other things, advocates for the political and cultural enfranchisement of LGBTQ and the dispelling of gender based corruption.
However, like many political movements, philosophies have taken root around them. Now, I really dislike politically based philosophy, because they tend to focus less on describing the world as it is, and more on describing the world in a way which is advantageous to their cause. All political based philosophies do is muddy the water with partisanship, which is no good. My specific problems with Third Wave Feminism stem primarily from their support of post-structuralism and their lack of any good historical theory.
Now, my qualms with post-structuralism could (and most likely will) make up an entire post on its own, but I will briefly explain one of the ways it effects feminism (and much of social justice studies). A core element of post-structuralism is the destabilization of meaning, or making meaning wholly subjective. If you have read my earlier posts (especially On Beauty and Shit) you will be very well acquainted with the fact that I find this sort of thing to be pointless and annoying. However, as this is a politically based philosophy, the ability to dance around like like a childish tit and avoid any sort of challenge by pulling out the rug of definition from under your critics is an excellent way to win an argument. This is the primary difference between politics and philosophy: politics is a tribal game of Us vs Them, where it doesn't matter how you play the game, so long as you win, while in philosophy when both parties challenged and corrected with various arguments, they are both more able to come to a sensible conclusion. While post-structuralism is a perfectly valid field of metaphysics and semantics, as soon as it gets employed in politics, it's a toothbrush shiv designed to gut your opponent with underhanded tricks.
My second qualm with Feminism is their historical theory, which (from my own experience) is something along the lines of: "so men ruled everything in a patriarchy for a long time and that was super bad but then 1869 some women got the right to vote and then men got all upset, but it's really their fault anyway. Anyhoo real history doesn't start until the suffragette movement, except for all these cool ladies who stuck it to the MAN!" What I find most infuriating is that there isn't any question to HOW the patriarchal gender dynamics arose in the first place, or why they existed the way they did, why patriarchy almost universally arose in wholly independent cultures and why it was only in the late 19th and early 20th century did women actually successfully challenge this state.
I have a hypothesis which answers all of these questions, actually, but I'll save it for next time. I'll end with this: do I support feminism? Well, it's complicated. On one hand, I do think that most of their conclusions of what are just gender dynamics are legitimate, and I will concur that gender based corruption is in many aspects a political and cultural issue which needs to be resolved. However, Feminism is a political movement at heart, and any political party I look at with a contemptful mistrust most people reserve for the Ol' Nick himself. I, therefore, will caucus with this meerkat and share a tub of popcorn as pro-skub and anti-skub vainly duel for supremacy.
Sincere Regards,
Michael Coffey
Thursday, January 16, 2014
Vol II. On Smashing the Patriarchy
You know what phrase I really detest?
*Prepares riot gear*
"Smash the Patriarchy."
To me, "smash the Patriarchy" is the most condensed way to express exactly in what way people misunderstand the use of philosophy. I will discuss my hypothesis on the genesis of historical and modern gender dynamics next Tuesday, but right now I want to deconstruct the phrase, its verbal connotations and the image that arises in most people's minds when it is spoken or heard. Now, I really only have the problems with the words "smash" and "Patriarchy" and how they are used in tandem. I have absolutely no quarrel with the word "the," and in fact it is the perfect demonstration of the use of a definite article with a proper noun, which is quite nice. However let us first look at the word "smash." The definition of this word is essentially to violently physically demolish something, to crush it completely and irreparably. "Patriarchy" is a bit trickier. From what I gather, it is the socio-cultural trend of male bias in the public sphere, which is honestly a bit of a mouthful.
Of course, the problem is that it also has the meaning of a social organization structured around the rule of an authoritarian male figure and I feel that often times in the phrase "smash the Patriarchy" the definitions are often conflated. Now putting aside the shadowy cabal of hertonormative misogynists which do in fact govern the world from the top of a very phallic building (about which I am not currently at liberty to speak), I feel that combining the words "smash" and "patriarchy" is not the best idea, as depending on the sentiment of the speaker, they can have very different meanings. On one hand, in the more philosophical definition of "patriarchy," "smashing" is a bit of a misleading metaphor, because in order to "smash the patriarchy" a frank and civil societal discussion on gender dynamics in which both the grievances of both the progressives and the status quo are addressed fairly and in the spirit of cooperation, while in the (more easily understood), literal definition is essentially a call for belligerence and conflict which is among the worst ways to convince anyone of anything.
I do have reason that I credit the literal definition of "smashing the patriarchy" as being more easily understood. It has very little to do at all with feminism, in fact, and far more to do with epistemology. As it was only very recently that humans as a species developed the ability for abstract thought, it would make sense that we have a smaller and less organized neurology to comprehend them than more concrete things. Because of this, it requires a greater application of conscious effort to conceive of an abstract idea to a concrete one and, especially when not paying attention, a mind will tend to gravitate to the simplistic and concrete. This is especially true of things which are commonly observed, as our minds concentrate on novelty. In addition, impassioned emotion tends to override critical and abstract thought. Hence the power of buzzwords, which, by means of brevity, repetition and emotional weight, drown out attentiveness to their actual meaning, in favor of their simplest connotation.
With this in mind as we return to "smash the Patriarchy." A phrase which, though simple, is loaded with meaning. In addition, the violent connotations are from the ire of those rightly frustrated by the lethargic pace of cultural change, as they wish to express their growing impatience. While I would not credit anyone with actually believing that there is a literal regime of oppressive men (especially one that hosts a lovely potluck dinner every third Thursday of the month), I do sense that on both sides of the issue there is a growing hostility because of the aggressiveness of the phrase (not that they really needed much help anyway). To feminists, it is the rallying cry to be close minded and belligerent to those who disagree with their opinions, while to the status quo, it is the confirmation that feminists do not in fact care for anyone but their own supporters and are willing to be entirely unreasonable with their demands. I know that being unreasonably bipartisan is in vogue in our political culture, but honestly it's really a shit way to get things done.
Sincere regards,
Michael Coffey
(PS: Please be mindful that I am not expressing any opinion on gender dynamics. This post is designed to demonstrate how poorly crafted rhetoric can polarize political opinion, which is to the detriment of any political culture. Also let it be known to all that I will identify the socio-cultural trends of gender and sexuality as "Gender Dynamics" and "Feminism" as the political progressive movement focusing primarily on it.)
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
Vol II. On Marriage and Pedagogy
A Preface from the Author:
Greetings once again, dear readers! It is good to be back again! I should probably mention now that while I alluded to absences, I ought to explain the conditions of my hiatuses with greater precision. While I intend to deliver content as regularly as possible, under circumstances of extreme commitment such as finals weeks or show weeks I will most likely be absent, as such commitments are of a greater priority. In addition, it shall be known that any scheduled academic breaks a week or greater in length (spring break, summer break, Thanksgiving break and Christmas break) are officially out of season, and the end of each semester will mark the end of one volume of collected essays (for those who are looking to edit my works post humorously). Thus we begin Bluh Bluh Something Clever Vol. II, (the Electric Boogaloo).
Today I am going to expand from my more esoteric topics of political and theoretical philosophy and talk about a hot button issue which I believe that many people care about for the wrong reasons. The topic, of course, is marriage and while I will begin with the more popular romantic and spiritual aspects of it, I will mostly elaborate on its functions as a social mechanism. I would ask now for both sides of the gay marriage debate to put down their torches and pitchforks now, because honestly I find that these issues are the least interesting and least socially relevant (meaning pertaining to the interests of society as it functions).
Now to begin with, we must think of what marriage is good for. "Nothing!" some of you japesters may jest, to which I say sit the fuck down and pay attention, this'll be on the test. Marriage is good for three things: psycho-spiritual satisfaction, procreative conjunction and pedagogical alliance. The first is where the debates regarding gay marriage chiefly fall under, as the second and third have proven to be of little consequence in this regard.
Psycho-spiritual satisfaction is a very wide reaching and subjective item, which varies greatly among both populations and individuals. Deriving mostly from social conditioning, though no doubt some natural urge as well, the psycho-spiritual satisfaction fulfills the desire for a ritual consummation of a relationship, so that the community and (for the spiritually inclined) God may recognize the relationship as legitimate. Among the more socially minded, this declaration of legitimacy can ease the tension of competition as it grants a social barrier to any would-be competitor, as well as liberating the couple from the more esoteric notions of modesty from the more traditionally minded members of the community. For reasons entirely independent of romance that I will discuss later, these marriages are largely intended to be for life. I myself consider a lifelong marriage of romance to be a rather absurd idea, and though this may be accused as cynical, I would protest that 1): the divorce statistics back me up on this and 2): it is not because I am unduly pessimistic about love. Passion waxes and wanes and often times, as lovers grow as individuals, the aspects of each other's personalities which inspired the love mutate inspiring the oft heard "It's like I don't even know you anymore." While I certainly don't doubt that lifelong love is possible, I don't think it terribly likely under most circumstances, and I find that the rigidity of marriage (especially legal marriage) stifles the necessary separation of two former lovers and often times breeds a lifelong resentment, rather ironically, so that an ex-spouse is generally held in greater contempt than an ex-lover.*
However, it would be preposterous to suggest that there is no utility to marriage at all. After all, a function that had little benefit and caused a great deal of suffering would hardly last long in the real world. The actual purposes of marriage are the two social benefits, procreative conjunction and pedagogical alliance which are the key factors in any society's greatest asset: children. Now I will admit procreative conjunction and pedagogical alliance are very similar, especially in our society, but the primary difference is that procreative conjunction is chiefly economic and deals with the ability to raise a physically healthy adult (an economic affair) while pedagogical alliance is the ability to raise a psychologically and intellectually healthy adult (an economic, educational and psychological affair).
The current model of legal marriage has leveled its sights almost entirely at the procreative conjunction. Because raising a child to even the minimum physical standards of healthy adulthood has always been a strain on the resources of all but the most affluent, legal marriage was designed to join the economies of two individuals so that the strain of child rearing may be more easily shared. Because a steady supply of young individuals is so important to the well being of a society, often the state will provide incentives to couples to get married and therefore in theory be economically secure enough to raise children. I suspect that the reason that only monogamy is supported by the invisible hand of the state is that any larger union has diminishing returns of children and therefore a bad investment. It is only in this regard that legal marriage is of any utility. As I discussed above, it is often stifling to the loveless couple (and divorce and necessary the re-division of assets is a delicate and expensive process, especially when the parties are contentious).
However, the biggest failure of both legal and romantic marriages is in pedagogical alliance. While the proverb "it takes a village to raise a child" may be a bit excessive, I would argue that their ought to be at least half a dozen consistent adult influences throughout a child's life, who come from at least three distinct backgrounds. While this may seem puzzling to some people, the reasons are quite sound. I have found that as a child, the lack of agency can be one of the most psychologically damaging things to them, because the helplessness can lead to desperation, resignation or misinformation which are essentially the primary psychological causes of many developed mental illnesses, such as codependency, depression, anxiety, and physical, sexual, substance and emotional abuse. However, if a child finds him or herself facing any abuse at the hands of one of the adults, he can seek to find comfort and reinforcement from the others. Granted, it's not foolproof, but the inclusion of a greater number of adults decreases the possibility that all of his available resources of adult agency are abusive, while not overwhelming the child with an adult presence.
Of course, some people may argue that the two individuals provided from a romantic or legal marriage provides sufficient adult agency for a child, this claim is laughably naive. Because both romantic and legal marriage require a certain degree of unity between the spouses, a child seeking the protection of one of them from the other would find himself either being spurned, the parent preferring the spouse to the child, and without any support at all or the unity of the relationship disrupted, causing only more chaos through which the child is helpless (do not doubt the volatility of an abuser called out on their misconduct: hell hath no greater fury).
The failing of the modern pedagogical alliance is quite stark. While in earlier times children had access to the community of tribes, villages or for the wealthy, a retinue of nursemaids and tutors, in addition to extended family members, the organization of families today is quite atrocious. The rigid separation of the private life to nuclear families (or as is unfortunately common today, bi-nuclear families, semi-nuclear families and belligerent bi-nuclear families) and the public life of professional educators, spiritual counselors and psychologists is to the detriment of the child; most children receive no adult support other than their parents and teachers, the former attempting to balance their own unities, or warring with one another for dominance and custody rights, the latter strained in their own right, and in the unfortunate cases when they are abusive, very difficult to get rid of (owing to a mixture of the administrative fear of negative publicity, the rights of teachers to tenure, and school's intrinsic mistrust of students). Pastors and psychologists are often of little help to most as well: the former is often useless or even counterproductive due to the more esoteric and conservative aspects of theology and dogma, while the latter are expensive and have a public mistrust owing to the difficulty of the trade. In the words of the resplendent Andrew Hussie: "Being a kid and growing up. It's hard and nobody understands."
Sincere Regards,
Michael Coffey
(*For those who insist that I take a stance on the Gay Marriage debate, I say this: for legal recognition, it is obvious that gays ought to be able to wed. To insist otherwise is discrimination of a prenatal disposition, pure and simple. For those who insist that God abhors it, let Him. Last I checked however, God has little interest in the temporal affairs of American law.)
Greetings once again, dear readers! It is good to be back again! I should probably mention now that while I alluded to absences, I ought to explain the conditions of my hiatuses with greater precision. While I intend to deliver content as regularly as possible, under circumstances of extreme commitment such as finals weeks or show weeks I will most likely be absent, as such commitments are of a greater priority. In addition, it shall be known that any scheduled academic breaks a week or greater in length (spring break, summer break, Thanksgiving break and Christmas break) are officially out of season, and the end of each semester will mark the end of one volume of collected essays (for those who are looking to edit my works post humorously). Thus we begin Bluh Bluh Something Clever Vol. II, (the Electric Boogaloo).
Today I am going to expand from my more esoteric topics of political and theoretical philosophy and talk about a hot button issue which I believe that many people care about for the wrong reasons. The topic, of course, is marriage and while I will begin with the more popular romantic and spiritual aspects of it, I will mostly elaborate on its functions as a social mechanism. I would ask now for both sides of the gay marriage debate to put down their torches and pitchforks now, because honestly I find that these issues are the least interesting and least socially relevant (meaning pertaining to the interests of society as it functions).
Now to begin with, we must think of what marriage is good for. "Nothing!" some of you japesters may jest, to which I say sit the fuck down and pay attention, this'll be on the test. Marriage is good for three things: psycho-spiritual satisfaction, procreative conjunction and pedagogical alliance. The first is where the debates regarding gay marriage chiefly fall under, as the second and third have proven to be of little consequence in this regard.
Psycho-spiritual satisfaction is a very wide reaching and subjective item, which varies greatly among both populations and individuals. Deriving mostly from social conditioning, though no doubt some natural urge as well, the psycho-spiritual satisfaction fulfills the desire for a ritual consummation of a relationship, so that the community and (for the spiritually inclined) God may recognize the relationship as legitimate. Among the more socially minded, this declaration of legitimacy can ease the tension of competition as it grants a social barrier to any would-be competitor, as well as liberating the couple from the more esoteric notions of modesty from the more traditionally minded members of the community. For reasons entirely independent of romance that I will discuss later, these marriages are largely intended to be for life. I myself consider a lifelong marriage of romance to be a rather absurd idea, and though this may be accused as cynical, I would protest that 1): the divorce statistics back me up on this and 2): it is not because I am unduly pessimistic about love. Passion waxes and wanes and often times, as lovers grow as individuals, the aspects of each other's personalities which inspired the love mutate inspiring the oft heard "It's like I don't even know you anymore." While I certainly don't doubt that lifelong love is possible, I don't think it terribly likely under most circumstances, and I find that the rigidity of marriage (especially legal marriage) stifles the necessary separation of two former lovers and often times breeds a lifelong resentment, rather ironically, so that an ex-spouse is generally held in greater contempt than an ex-lover.*
However, it would be preposterous to suggest that there is no utility to marriage at all. After all, a function that had little benefit and caused a great deal of suffering would hardly last long in the real world. The actual purposes of marriage are the two social benefits, procreative conjunction and pedagogical alliance which are the key factors in any society's greatest asset: children. Now I will admit procreative conjunction and pedagogical alliance are very similar, especially in our society, but the primary difference is that procreative conjunction is chiefly economic and deals with the ability to raise a physically healthy adult (an economic affair) while pedagogical alliance is the ability to raise a psychologically and intellectually healthy adult (an economic, educational and psychological affair).
The current model of legal marriage has leveled its sights almost entirely at the procreative conjunction. Because raising a child to even the minimum physical standards of healthy adulthood has always been a strain on the resources of all but the most affluent, legal marriage was designed to join the economies of two individuals so that the strain of child rearing may be more easily shared. Because a steady supply of young individuals is so important to the well being of a society, often the state will provide incentives to couples to get married and therefore in theory be economically secure enough to raise children. I suspect that the reason that only monogamy is supported by the invisible hand of the state is that any larger union has diminishing returns of children and therefore a bad investment. It is only in this regard that legal marriage is of any utility. As I discussed above, it is often stifling to the loveless couple (and divorce and necessary the re-division of assets is a delicate and expensive process, especially when the parties are contentious).
However, the biggest failure of both legal and romantic marriages is in pedagogical alliance. While the proverb "it takes a village to raise a child" may be a bit excessive, I would argue that their ought to be at least half a dozen consistent adult influences throughout a child's life, who come from at least three distinct backgrounds. While this may seem puzzling to some people, the reasons are quite sound. I have found that as a child, the lack of agency can be one of the most psychologically damaging things to them, because the helplessness can lead to desperation, resignation or misinformation which are essentially the primary psychological causes of many developed mental illnesses, such as codependency, depression, anxiety, and physical, sexual, substance and emotional abuse. However, if a child finds him or herself facing any abuse at the hands of one of the adults, he can seek to find comfort and reinforcement from the others. Granted, it's not foolproof, but the inclusion of a greater number of adults decreases the possibility that all of his available resources of adult agency are abusive, while not overwhelming the child with an adult presence.
Of course, some people may argue that the two individuals provided from a romantic or legal marriage provides sufficient adult agency for a child, this claim is laughably naive. Because both romantic and legal marriage require a certain degree of unity between the spouses, a child seeking the protection of one of them from the other would find himself either being spurned, the parent preferring the spouse to the child, and without any support at all or the unity of the relationship disrupted, causing only more chaos through which the child is helpless (do not doubt the volatility of an abuser called out on their misconduct: hell hath no greater fury).
The failing of the modern pedagogical alliance is quite stark. While in earlier times children had access to the community of tribes, villages or for the wealthy, a retinue of nursemaids and tutors, in addition to extended family members, the organization of families today is quite atrocious. The rigid separation of the private life to nuclear families (or as is unfortunately common today, bi-nuclear families, semi-nuclear families and belligerent bi-nuclear families) and the public life of professional educators, spiritual counselors and psychologists is to the detriment of the child; most children receive no adult support other than their parents and teachers, the former attempting to balance their own unities, or warring with one another for dominance and custody rights, the latter strained in their own right, and in the unfortunate cases when they are abusive, very difficult to get rid of (owing to a mixture of the administrative fear of negative publicity, the rights of teachers to tenure, and school's intrinsic mistrust of students). Pastors and psychologists are often of little help to most as well: the former is often useless or even counterproductive due to the more esoteric and conservative aspects of theology and dogma, while the latter are expensive and have a public mistrust owing to the difficulty of the trade. In the words of the resplendent Andrew Hussie: "Being a kid and growing up. It's hard and nobody understands."
Sincere Regards,
Michael Coffey
(*For those who insist that I take a stance on the Gay Marriage debate, I say this: for legal recognition, it is obvious that gays ought to be able to wed. To insist otherwise is discrimination of a prenatal disposition, pure and simple. For those who insist that God abhors it, let Him. Last I checked however, God has little interest in the temporal affairs of American law.)
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