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Love, love will keep us together... ; >Love, love will keep us together... ; >Love, love will keep us together... ; > 05/28/2004 09:27 AM "But they don't know about us, and they've never heard of love..." A Million Love Songs--a new mp3 blog hoping to list them all. Songs stay active for a week, and you can contribute too! So far, they're ranging from Tracey Ullman to Britney to Take That to Eddie Fisher to the Supremes and Abba (send your contributions to: amillionlovesongs@hotmail.com) This is a GrokNews Entry: (what is grok?)Love, love will keep us together... ; >Grok Headline matches for Love, love will keep us together... ; >Are You a Perpetual Bad Relationship
|
 The
Idea: Author
Laura Kipnis argues that monogamy is unnatural and unhealthy, and
possibly complicit in our emotional detachment from political life and
our ecosystem as well.Laura Kipnis, despite the title of of her 200-page "polemic", is not Against Love. Rather, she's against the trappings, the rules, the rituals that our culture imposes on love relationships. She goes even further -- she sees marriage, the institution, as every bit as repressive, suffocating and unnatural as our mind-numbing employment in modern hierarchical organizations, and draws strong parallels between the slavery of the workplace and the slavery of the matrimonial home. These two canons of civilization: our need and responsibility to devote our daytime hours to meaningless subordinate labour, and our need and responsibility to devote the rest of our hours to boring, stifling and unsatisfying monogamy, work together diabolically to keep us suppressed, and in our 'place' in society. Small wonder, she says, that one of our most enduring conventional wisdoms is that "a good marriage takes work". If this protestation against the rigours of monogamy, fidelity and marriage-slavery as the complement to wage-slavery sounds familiar, it's because it's very similar to the argument that Glenn Parton made in his essay posted first on these pages last year entitled "Love Politics". Glenn's argument is that we have become so emotionally numbed by our twin bondage to job and marriage that it has made our hearts cold and hard, uncaring of the plight of our planet and of others, and that this is a direct cause of the destruction of our world. "If I'm miserable, why should I care about anyone else?" Dare to love more than one person, he suggests, and the shackles of this self-imposed imprisonment are broken, and the inrush of emotion will shock us into awareness of, and eagerness to heal, the massive emotional and physical illness of our entire planet. Why should we, why do we subject ourselves to this one-love-partner-slavery as easily and as passively as we do to wage-slavery? This is the subject of much of Ms. Kipnis' book. Her prose is so adept and so powerful I won't attempt to paraphrase her arguments. Here are a few teasers: Is it the persistence of the
work
ethic that ties us to the compassionate couple and its workaday
regimes, or is it the ethos of compassionate coupledom that ties us to
sould-deadening work regimes...Resenting the boss? Feeling bored or
overworked or dissatisfied? Getting complaints about your attitude?
Whether it's "on the relationship" or "on the job" get yourself right
to the therapist's office, pronto. There are only two possible
diagnoses for all such modern ailments: it's going to be either
"intimacy issues" or "authority issues". You'll soon discover that the
disease doubles as the prescription at this clinic: You're just going
to have to "work harder on yourself"...
Take the modern consumer. Clearly, routing desire into consumption would be necessary to sustain a consumer society -- a citizenry who fucked in lieu of shopping would soon bring the entire economy grinding to a standstill. Or better still, take the modern depressive. What a boon to both the modern pharmaceutical and the social-harmony industries that such a social type would be. These are merely hypotheticals of course, since it's not as if we live in a society of consumers and depressives, or as if the best strategy for the latter weren't widely held to be strategically indulging in the former -- "retail therapy"...Love's proper denouement, matrimony, is also of course the social form regulated by the state, which refashions itself as a benevolent pharmacist, doling out the addictive substance in licensed doses...What about re-envisioning [marriage] or... insisting that social resources and privileges not be allocated on the basis of marital status? No. let's demand regulation! Not that it's easy to re-envision anything when these intersections of love and acquiescence are the very backbone of the modern self, when every iota of self-worth and identity hinge on them...Domestic coupledom is the boot camp for compliant citizenship, a training ground for gluey resignation and immobility... Ms. Kipnis suggests the same lack of innovation that permeates the workplace in the 21st century also permeates domestic institutions: Different social norms could
entail something entirely different: yearly renewable contracts for
example. And if we weren't so emotionally yoked to the social forms
we've inherited that trying to envision different ways of having a
love
life seems intellectually impossible and even absurd, who knows what
other options might present themselves?...It behooves [our] society to
convince its citizenry that wanting change means personal failure,
starting over is shameful, and wanting more satisfaction than you have
is illegitimate...As love has increasingly become the center of all
emotional expression in the modern imagination -- the quantity without
which life seems forlorn -- anxiety about obtaining it in sufficient
quantities and for sufficient duration has increased to the point that
that anxiety suffuses the population, and most of our cultural
forms...Uncoupling [then] can only be experienced as ego-crushing
crisis and inadequacy...[and] the grief of failed love is exacerbated
by inevitable feelings of personal failure...
Much of the latter part of the book is focused on the psychological
gymnastics of all three (or more) parties in the polygon of adultery,
from the rationalization that hiding the affair is to protect the
feelings of the cuckold, to the feelings of self-hatred and
self-flagellation of the 'sinner(s)'. She also discusses the awkward
mechanics of the ultimate break-up of either the marriage or the
affair
(or both), and the degree to which children of the relationship become
hostages, or excuses for deception, or excuses for the boredom that
gave rise to the deception. Of course the book also talks about famous
infidelities in high political circles, and the twisted hypocrisy of
conservatives' opposition to same-sex marriage, as well as the
equal-opportunity-for-misery desire of lesbians and gays to gain
access
to the sad and repressive regulation of 'official' marriage rather
than
'settling for' merely the legal and resource rights that come with
equivalent-to-married status. And there's also a discussion of the
pragmatic phenomenon of "serial monogamy" -- the fall-back that
there's
nothing wrong with marriage per
se, it's just that we were all married to the wrong person. All of this is complicated (even more) by the emergence of the Two-Income Trap, which imposes a financial prison on top of the emotional one in marriage. We have to stay together because we can't afford to live apart. I am convinced that this one factor is overwhelmingly responsible for keeping the rate of divorce from reaching astronomical levels. It is also probably helpful in keeping birth rates in the West below replacement levels -- Not only can we not afford children, we certainly don't want any (or any more) with the spouse we're economically shackled to. And having one with the secret love is just too messy. In my recent article predicting a baby boom, perhaps I underestimated the sheer perverseness of a socioeconomic system that not only makes parenthood financially reckless, it also suppresses fertility rates by its expressed moral repugnance for having a child by someone other than your boring spouse. A lot of people, some of their own free will, and many more who have been pushed, have recently broken free of wage slavery and are now working, mostly for much less income, for themselves. That's probably a good thing in many ways -- it reduces the supply of the remaining wage slaves, which might actually, in time, allow them to bargain from a position of at least a bit of power. It increases self-sufficiency. It reduces excessive consumption. What if there were a similar revolution against marriage slavery? What if a whole generation just refused to define themselves (in more ways than one) as married, or to live with the constraints of monogamy, and instead opted for a polyamory life-style? Paternity 'rights' and responsibilities would both probably suffer, as the new family unit would be a woman (or possibly, and more logically, a group of women, in self-selected community) and their children. They would have the power, and could strike whatever contract they chose with males who wanted the responsibilities and privileges of fatherhood. The nuclear family and the 'single-family dwelling' would disappear. Conjugal relations would not attach to parental responsibility, and could be negotiated between any two people as individuals on a one-shot basis, with no responsibility other than the responsibility to prevent unwanted pregnancy and disease. This would probably be bad for the oldest profession, as the supply/demand ratio for quick couplings would soar. Jealousy and the consequent domestic violence that is the scourge of our nuclear spouse-as-property society would, slowly (old habits die hard), disappear. I think the vast majority of men, driven by million-year-old biological imperatives, once they reached a certain age, would choose to attach themselves to one of the matriarchal communities (if so invited), and would do their share to provide for its well-being, in return for the company and sense of purpose that would bring. We are told it takes a village, a community, to raise a child. Perhaps the community is necessary, and sufficient, for far more: To break us all free from both the emotionally numbing subjugation of wage-slavery and the misery and boredom of marriage-slavery. The community would then become truly self-sufficient in every respect, and we would be happier and freer than we can, or dare, imagine. Cartoon: By Peter Steiner from The New Yorker, in the Cartoon Bank |
youyesyou.com/welove/index.html
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(1) the
things we do for loveI almost called Anil last night to find an all-night Internet access place. Sure sure - Bryant Park, Union Sq. Battery Park all have free Wifi - but they don't have power.
So I'm currently ensconced at a Starbucks at 66th & 3rd - enjoying the summer hotties, the international place that NYC is - and prepping for tonight's micro-content dinner.
It's at the Grand Sichuan on 9th Ave. between 50-51 at 6:30.
My friend Kenny asked: "What the hell is Micro-content?" and I started to tell him the history of what Jakob Nielson called it, how I define it and some examples of how it's used (I pointed Kenny to Jason Kottke's site.)
We were contacted by the Wikipedia folks yesterday to work on the OpenMedia project. JD's been kicking ass - getting that going.
The FOAF confab programme was finally announced (notice the EU spelling.....) Plaxo is sending somebody and there are a couple of other entities saying they're using FOAF en masse. Can't wait to find out what's up wit dat.
And I'm working on an OpenListings proposal that is gonna rock the house.
Hopefully some peeps can make it tonight. The food is supposedly really spicey hot. Good.
We need that to match the ideas being proselytized.
popwherry.blogspot.com/2004_06_20_popwherry_archive.html#108795
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Made it back from Mexico City this afternoon. The only
unhappy event during the trip was finishing reading the massive Pe
loponnesian War and failing to find a good English
bookstore. I ended up settling for an Agatha Christie novel:
"Often I have observed that it is a great misfortune for a man to have a wife who loves him. She creates the scenes of jealousy, she makes him look ridiculous, she insists on having all his time and attention. Ah! non! it is not the bed of roses."
And combining the earlier themes of MIT students and ghetto humor, this just in from a 6.171 student...
"Yo Mama so stupid, she took a rigid body mechanics class because she wanted to meet hot guys."
(We will leave this contributor anonymous so that the MIT administration does not begin disciplinary proceedings...)
I've never been a spectacular history student, but I did enjoy a civics course during my senior year of high school. After learning the basics of our gov't, I counted the days until I turned 18 and could register to vote. I happily voted in local races that first November and have voted every chance I've gotten since then. Back when Clinton was running for his first presidency, I recall getting into arguments with folks, insisting that every young person was like me, and I predicted 50% of the youth would vote (I can't remember the exact numbers, but I'm pretty sure I was way off).
Of course, back then, you had to look up the local registrar, call them, then cut classes or work to show up and fill out the registration paperwork. These days you can register from the comfort of your keyboard, at any time of the day or night.
If you're not currently registered to vote, I don't know what perfect phrase I can add here to get you involved. Personally, I feel it's the backbone of our nation and without anyone voting, democracy breaks down. Every year I read my little voter info packets that come in the mail, I do some research online, and I vote after weighing the options. It doesn't matter if I'm pleased with my representitives or not, I vote every chance I get.
The last few elections have had abysmal turnouts and when the voting for a single week's American Idol approached the number of folks that voted in the last presidential election, I knew something had to be done to coax more folks into it. This year, please take advantage of your right to vote. It's one of your only chances to participate in this democracy.
The guys behind HotOrNot are upping the ante and giving away $100,000 to someone that registers to vote at their site (and if you win off that link, I get $100k too). I'm amazed Jim and James are ponying up the dough, but I hope it has an effect and gets more people involved and voting.
So if you're not registered, please, for the love of God, Country, and (in this case) Money, register to vote already!
My job tonight is an easy one: to present to you one of this nation's authentic heroes, one of this party's best-known and greatest leaders — and a good friend. ...
Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome Senator John Kerry.
loveinwar.com/game.cfm
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| The Idea:
As regular readers know, I have occasionally published articles on
this
site from people who do not have their own weblogs. This will mark the
third time I've published the work of Glenn Parton, best
known for his wonderful eco-philosophy/ eco-psychology essays The Machine in our
Heads and Humans
in the Wilderness. His essay Love Politics was published here last year, and Part 1 of
this three-part essay, entitled Exterminis
m,
was published here in January. As I mentioned in Part 1, the ideas in
the essay are Glenn's, not mine, and you can tell him what you think
through the comment facility below, or e-mail him
directly. I'll add my two cents at the end of Part 3. In this part,
Glenn moves from criticism of Western culture to mysticism in support
of a polyamory life: Free Love, by Glenn Parton Look up at the clear night sky! The free play of two cosmic forces, Eros and Thanatos, Love and Hate, Attraction and Repulsion, Intimacy and Distance, sustains harmony among the heavenly bodies and evolves the beauty, wisdom, and goodness of the universe. What is the message or lesson for human association or society that is written in the cosmos? We know that human society is a microcosm of this great celestial order, and that we have fallen out of balance with the rest of Nature. What must we do in order to become part of the Universal Harmony again? Everyone recognizes that friendship cannot be mandated or legislated, that it arises naturally, spontaneously, one person at a time, and that it is possible and desirable to have many friends, on different levels of communication, conversation, and commitment. The hope of peace on earth, and peace with the earth, has a lot to do with spreading friendship around the world, but I do not believe this ideal will ever be realized (enough to save the world) until we acknowledge that Yin and Yang, the feminine spirit and the masculine spirit, are also cosmological principles and/or forces, which change the balancing point between men and women by adding sexuality to the mix. We should not pursue a vision of worldwide peace and friendship that ignores, minimizes, or misunderstands the sexual-polarity of human association. My heavenly vision, and long-range political solution, is Free Love between man and woman. By free love I mean sexual love that does not restrict itself to one person at a time. It means holding oneself open to the possibility of sexually loving more than one, and taking that voyage when the opportunity arrives; it means taking each man/woman relationship on its own terms, as far as it will go, as far as it wants to go, including sexuality, until it finds its own point of equilibrium between Love and Hate, Intimacy and Distance. That is the Way to reach the proper balance between men and women. The message of evolution is that each being finds its balancing point with all other beings, according to the laws of nature, including Yin-Yang, creating a self-balancing dynamic whole in which each being is what it is in terms of the totality of its relationships. Human beings must freely associate, form, and bond, including Yin-Yang sexual energies, or we disturb the natural order of human society, our alignment or agreement with the logic and love of the cosmos. Human society, with its sexual-polarity, must freely arrange itself, or we will not achieve a harmonious community, and without a harmonious community we will not reach consensus on the political level because sexual frustrations, conflicts and hostilities spill over into the major areas of life, work and government. In other words, the ideal of friendship will remain an empty ideal if we do not understand that free love is part of the original architecture of human togetherness, and that we must allow sexuality between men and women to work itself out, according to inherent interests and desires, or we will never build good government, real democracy, or a true Republic because if we do not first put our sexual lives in proper order, then politics will collapse on a faulty foundation. Out of the fundamental harmony of a sexually balanced civil society will come political intelligence and wisdom. Respond, as much as you can, to all heavenly bodies orbiting around you. That’s how the suns and moons and planets behave toward one another, pushing and pulling everything into a vibrating, pulsating, interconnected totality. Of course it is not possible to love everyone with the same intensity and completeness (with some people a simple nod or smile, or even silent toleration, is enough), but each man/woman relationship has its natural sexual closeness and distance, and we must have the courage to seek it, and go there, without interference from custom, convention, or imposed morality. Friendship is always, at bottom, a relationship between two people, but everyone knows that it is not socially desirable, not community-building, for each person to have only one friend. Rather, each person is permitted and encouraged to have a diversity of friends, each one created on its own unique terms, as deeply as possible, with no outside direction or definition. If sexual love was free to follow this path, like friendship, then we would have discovered the secret ingredient in a self-balancing social constellation (of friends and lovers), and secured the social foundation for rational discourse and action. If there was only Love, then the Big Bang would not have occurred, and the world would collapse (into undifferentiated Oneness), and evolution would have to begin again; if there was only Hate, then the world would fragment, scatter, and fly apart. The Great Harmony is a balance between the forces of Attraction and Repulsion, Contraction and Expansion, Integration and Disintegration. Free Love is the mystery of the universe, and if human beings would learn to sexually love who we want, when we want, in the way that we want, as much as we want, instead of imposing artificial constraints, or false morality, on love, then the gravity of love would create a tight and intricate web of human connections in which we would not have to struggle for political consensus because we would already basically have it. The first and foremost criticism that is raised against free love is that it harms children, but actually it is best for children because the nuclear family is too small a world for the development of the vast potential of children. The nuclear family limits childhood reality to the overbearing influence of two adult perspectives, making it nearly impossible for the child to escape from prejudice, ignorance, narrowness, and parental unconsciousness. The wounds of the parents are visited on the children, and the cycle of the neurotic family is perpetuated from one generation to the next, which slows down the evolution of the human species tremendously. Free love makes intimate communities (like tribes), rather than isolated families, the center of childhood upbringing, exposing the child to many viewpoints, expanding his/her consciousness, increasing the opportunities for sanity and self-realization. A second objection that is raised against free love is that it will not work because human beings are competitive, jealous and possessive creatures, but actually it is monogamy that causes these problems because it makes us fearful that if s/he loves someone other than me, then s/he cannot also love me. If your concept of love is limited, then that creates jealousy and possessiveness because you are afraid of loss, abandonment and loneliness, but if you “see” that it is possible to love more than one, then you will not fear abandonment and loneliness when love overflows to include others. Free love makes intimate networks (like tribes), rather than fragmented couples, the center of personal life and love, exposing the adult to a diversity of potential lovers, broadening the horizon of intimate contact, communication, and knowledge, increasing the opportunities for security and happiness. Another criticism leveled against free love is that there is not enough time to love more than one, but of course love concerns quality, not quantity. Eliminating the boredom of monogamy alone would provide more than enough time for at least a few additional lovers, and then there are those habits, routines, hobbies, and fantasies that could be replaced, for almost no money, with deep and thrilling real sexual love adventures. There will never be enough time for co-dependent individuals because every gesture or sign of independence is seen as a minimization or devaluation of their relationship, and there will never be enough time for someone who is waiting for the one and only perfect lover. Such people cannot get enough love no matter how much they get because they misunderstand free love. To these people I say: contemplate the heavens and let your personal life become a feeling and thoughtful expression of the Will, intention, and intelligence of the Universe! |
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