THE SHADOW GRID OVER MARRIAGE

Queen Victoria's Engagement Ring

Marriage in the US today is a more than million-dollar industry, a rite of passage, a racket, a romantic fantasy, a beautiful thing, a source of pride and celebration for many people over many years, and a total mess that makes the lawyers rich.   People make a great fuss about marriages across “race,” across too great a gap in age, between two people of the same gender, and among certain groups who allow marriage to be one man and a lot of women.  I haven’t heard anything about one woman and a lot of men unless we’re talking about a woman and her sons, as in certain Old West outlaw gangs.  But that’s not quite marriage.  Marriage is assumed to be a matter of sex, even if no children result.  No longer does anyone flinch at teenagers or pensioners living together without marriage.  Nor do we balk at “friends with privileges.”  Children proudly and happily attend a wedding where their parents tie the knot, even when they are the products of previous failed relationships.

Victoria and Albert

The Great Grid of Historical Great Britain hangs over our arrangements, conflating the functions of church (blessing, pledging and dedicating) with the functions of the government (licenses, disease exams, and pre-nups).  Neither has anything to do with the human ability to empathize, attach, and commit to each other.  Not really.  This is mostly because a marriage in its deepest social purpose is a way of controlling property and tracking responsibility for children.  Not that control or responsibility is always there, but that if the matter got to a court, it could be enforced.  This is particularly vital when dealing with a king or a pope, which is why kings resort to murdering barren wives and popes are presumed to be celibate even if they have children.

Society in its baldest terms is economic.   This is a survival issue: if human beings don’t have enough food and shelter, they die.  Therefore they are programmed to acquire, guard and exploit sources of wealth.  Inheritance of wealth is a way of projecting the fortunes of an individual beyond their own physical life, which is good for the group as a whole.  Unless it is not -- if quarrels among inheritors or the temptation to outsiders become too great, then the wealth is dispersed, destroyed, or moved to some other context.  Government that is based on law instead of force can legitimately require taxes for the good of the whole, but ingenious rules can as well divert wealth to uses that are not for the survival of the group, but rather for the greed of individuals who are surviving nicely by whatever means.  Religions are constantly accused of doing this and no doubt it happens.  Okay, now that’s out of the way and we can talk about the alliances among humans that are good for individuals and society and how the ghost shadow of the British Empire messes things up.

“Hunting and the American Imagination” by Daniel Herman is the source of one of my favorite ideas: that the United States was founded on two conflicting desires that come from Brit society:  the desire to own land in order to be the Lord of the Manor who can forbid everyone else from doing anything he doesn’t like (for instance, shooting his game) and the desire to freely hunt in the forest (esp. if one’s family is hungry).  So Americans came to this continent with the idea of founding an empire at the same time as being idyllically free, which they projected on the indigenous population before they confined them.  The dynamics of relationship contain the same conflict: wanting to control and wanting NOT to be controlled.  It’s easiest to see in the dynamics of the street gangs, which are often said to be “families.”  When they’re old guys with kids, they become “mafia.”

So people want to be married, but they want the partner to be more married than they are.  Street gangs are based on force and so are some marriages -- the stronger partner imposes control.  From society’s point of view this can destroy wealth, because the abused person will simply leave, unless they are locked up like kidnap victims or too emotionally attached to separate, the way a pimp controls his whores or the way beaten-up women refuse to press charges.  Religion uses moral leverage and the law uses police and court to keep relationships intact.  Trapped in this way, the pair may keep their assets but spin off their rage onto weaker persons, like children or oldsters.  But in terms of social cost, this also diminishes wealth.  Running away also disperses monetary wealth and property ownership.

In the past poverty has prevented formal marriage and probably that’s true now as well.  Marriage is shared property stable enough to raise children and increase wealth.  It is playing the “Lord” card.  But it is possible -- more so in a rich society like ours -- to be Robin Hood, moving through the landscape hunting and gathering as opportunity offers.  (Notice that story has a foot in each religious camp:  Maid Marion is an abbess of the established and emplaced church and Friar Tuck is portable religion.)  Today the forest is in the city -- “squatting” in vacant buildings is a form of camping.

Social patterns have a disconcerting way of surfacing before the law recognizes them, so now we have people who combine assets without any legal arrangement or via a lawyer-negotiated contract.  They don’t call it marriage.  They may not even have a sexual arrangement, but they don’t usually produce children.  We need better social parameters regarding children.  They just happen.  But then what?

At present we have an overburdened system that can remove abused and neglected children from bad situations, whether defined as “family” or not.  The sentimentality of family, national origin, ethnic genes, or inherited religion interfere with this.  But the biggest missing piece of the puzzle is what to do with the kid who has no place to go.  The foster care system is inadequate.  We reject orphanages. Infants and toddlers are both the hardest and the easiest, since they need so much but are often emotionally appealing.  “Adrenarche” children (8 to 12 -- I wish I could think of a good name for their category -- “pre-teen” is a non-name.) are economically valuable to certain people as dominated puppets  for sexual and labor uses, which destroys them as human beings so that they are assets to their controllers but debits to society, esp. when they quickly age out of value to their captors.  

Adolescents, moving in and out of shadows, in and out of maturity, in and out of groups, are the slipperiest category of all.  They include rock stars, top models, and soldier heroes.  They are also a constant source of violence, sexually-transmitted disease, and new babies needing care, possibly very expensive care since their gestation may have been problematic.  Society is torn between punishing them and making them gods.

How do we maximize the survival interests of individuals and society?  Some feel it is worth letting oligarchs be rich so long as it maintains order.  Others feel piling up wealth by force or law destroys too many individuals and must be opposed, even with answering force.  Whatever works will determine the future.  What personal characteristics or social parameters will promote survival?  Can we redefine wealth in a way that blunts greed?  some of us already think that knowledge, art, intimacy, and the other humanities (including science) are far more likely to preserve our species than any material assets.  So much wealth now is simply bookkeeping and gambling.  Nothing a person could eat.