stargeek
I love women...no, wait, apparently I love menI love women...no, wait, apparently I
|
 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 |
(1) the
things we do for loveyouyesyou.com/welove/index.html
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I 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.
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...)
If you find the list a bit strange, it's probably for three
reasons:
1) It has seven songs.
2) Love is a relative concept.
3) Some of these are not really my favourite songs at all. But all of
them have some connection to my life, either directly, or through
friends trying to cope. I also had to leave out a bunch of really
good ones, for unexplicable reasons.
There's a story here. It's not my story, but you are free to interpret it in any way you want. Some persons might find more truth here than others; some might even know the reason why a particular song was picked. But they are all connected to love - love expected, love experienced, love lost.
Kent: Kärleken väntar
Brinn pengar brinn Jag vet att du är värd någonting Du är hoppet i ett IQ-fritt land Du är drömmarna jag drömmer ibland Visst känns det som att kärleken väntar Visst känns det som att kärleken väntar
Bonnie Tyler: Total Eclipse of the Heart
And I need you now tonight And I need you more than ever And if you'll only hold me tight We'll be holding on forever And we'll only be making it right Cause we'll never be wrong together We can take it to the end of the line
U2: With or without you
My hands are tied My body bruised, she’s got me with Nothing to win and Nothing left to lose And you give yourself away And you give yourself away And you give And you give And you give yourself away With or without you With or without you I can’t live With or without you
Olavi Virta: Hopeinen Kuu
Kaipaus vastaa sydämen ääneen Onneni tiedän mä nyt taas niin yksin jääneen Toinen nyt kuuta kanssais katsoo Toinen vienyt sinut lie nyt Hopeinen kuu luo merelle siltaa
Roxette: Listen to your Heart
Listen to your heart when he's calling for you. Listen to your heart there's nothing else you can do. I don't know where you're going and I don't know why, but listen to your heart before you tell him goodbye.
Lene Marlin: One year ago
She’s walking there alone, No one by her side She manages to fight the tears, but The pain inside She can’t hide And all the tears she’s cried The moment she closes her eyes, she starts Thinking of you The dreams that she had one time Have gone away Will they ever come true? All she needs is - all she needs is you
Junnu Vainio: Vanhoja poikia viiksekkäitä
Saimaan saaressa pikkuinen torppa, istuu portailla Nestori Miikkulainen. Lepokivellään iäkäs norppa, katsoo ystävää ymmärtäen. Suuri Saimaa, mut' naista sen rannoilta vaan ei näin tuuliseen saareen saa asettumaan. Kuten norpan, on määrä myös Miikkulaisen, olla sukunsa viimeinen.
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