Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, January 2, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 5
Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, January 2, 2006 at about 11pm CST
Segment 5
Next up is a song about marriage as it is, not as we imagine it to be.
That was Easy by Stan Swiniarski.
The reason I like this album is that it deals with love as an adult deals with love. Too many songs nowadays deal with the chase. None of the songs deal with being married and what that really means. Our songs do not emphasize marriage as an institution as being a good idea. Again, the thinking has become that marriage is just a lifestyles' choice equal to living together without marriage and living alone. That is of course crazy. Marriage is better for both males and females. To say otherwise is to deny reality. People in marriage are more stable, healthier and they live longer. Anyone who denies that has not looked at the data.
When radical feminism became the central paradigm in our society, the big phrase was "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle." Then most women found to their horror, they that they did not like to live alone or to just live with a guy. Marriage makes it possible for an adult to count on at least one other human in the world, because a couple is intricately joined to each other. If you are living with each other, there is always the thought that the woman or the man will be gone tomorrow. Why is that a good thing to happen to you? I mean, why is it good to know that you can never count on anyone? How can you be your best, if you cannot commit to anyone completely?
The problem is that too many people decide that they are going to stay a child forever. They abdicate responsibility for just about everything to such an extent that they feel that they are owed a good life without any hard work. This is a very childlike way of looking at things. When you are a child, you expect that your parents will devote themselves to you. The concept that your parents would not committed make them the center of their lives would be a big shock to kids. So by remaining a child ALL your life, you expect that people around you will provide whatever you want without much work on your part. Marriage then become impossible, because you do not work hard to stay married.
In the song, the couple have discovered that they have to be committed to each other. They have to think of each other as of equal importance to themselves. If in a relationship you think you are more important than the person you are with, then why be together? The thing is that too many people perceive that marriage should be a happily ever after event. Impossible. The thing to remember is that for every low there is a high in a marriage. I know, that is not a popular way of looking at things. Again, it centers on postponing self-gratification. To be the best at marriage you have to be willing to put off gratifying yourself.
I've been looking into the divorce statistics and it all brings home to me that there is a systemic problem here, not something that can be fixed by simply doing one thing. We've done something stupid in the dating rituals in our society. By decoupling sex and marriage AND love, we have made the goal in dating to have sex. Why does that make sense? If you date someone with only the idea of having sex, how does that chase sequence prepare you for marriage? Think about it a minute. As I have said before, our military has the truism that you should train as you do. If dating is supposed to train you for marriage, then how does it do it? Our dating rituals do not emphasize putting off self-gratification. If putting off self-gratification is the secret to a good marriage, then how does the dating rituals allow you to know that your partner WILL put off self-gratification? Again, it all has to do with the 80% rule. If a given institution works at the 80% level, then you should call it a good idea and try to make it better without abandoning the institution. If you say that a failure rate of 20% makes the institution a failure, then you have a problem.
Do I believe that marriage is a perfect institution? No. I just think that marriage of one man and one woman is the best we have come up with so far in the history of the world to raise children. All the other alternatives seem to have failed.
Segment 5
Next up is a song about marriage as it is, not as we imagine it to be.
That was Easy by Stan Swiniarski.
The reason I like this album is that it deals with love as an adult deals with love. Too many songs nowadays deal with the chase. None of the songs deal with being married and what that really means. Our songs do not emphasize marriage as an institution as being a good idea. Again, the thinking has become that marriage is just a lifestyles' choice equal to living together without marriage and living alone. That is of course crazy. Marriage is better for both males and females. To say otherwise is to deny reality. People in marriage are more stable, healthier and they live longer. Anyone who denies that has not looked at the data.
When radical feminism became the central paradigm in our society, the big phrase was "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle." Then most women found to their horror, they that they did not like to live alone or to just live with a guy. Marriage makes it possible for an adult to count on at least one other human in the world, because a couple is intricately joined to each other. If you are living with each other, there is always the thought that the woman or the man will be gone tomorrow. Why is that a good thing to happen to you? I mean, why is it good to know that you can never count on anyone? How can you be your best, if you cannot commit to anyone completely?
The problem is that too many people decide that they are going to stay a child forever. They abdicate responsibility for just about everything to such an extent that they feel that they are owed a good life without any hard work. This is a very childlike way of looking at things. When you are a child, you expect that your parents will devote themselves to you. The concept that your parents would not committed make them the center of their lives would be a big shock to kids. So by remaining a child ALL your life, you expect that people around you will provide whatever you want without much work on your part. Marriage then become impossible, because you do not work hard to stay married.
In the song, the couple have discovered that they have to be committed to each other. They have to think of each other as of equal importance to themselves. If in a relationship you think you are more important than the person you are with, then why be together? The thing is that too many people perceive that marriage should be a happily ever after event. Impossible. The thing to remember is that for every low there is a high in a marriage. I know, that is not a popular way of looking at things. Again, it centers on postponing self-gratification. To be the best at marriage you have to be willing to put off gratifying yourself.
I've been looking into the divorce statistics and it all brings home to me that there is a systemic problem here, not something that can be fixed by simply doing one thing. We've done something stupid in the dating rituals in our society. By decoupling sex and marriage AND love, we have made the goal in dating to have sex. Why does that make sense? If you date someone with only the idea of having sex, how does that chase sequence prepare you for marriage? Think about it a minute. As I have said before, our military has the truism that you should train as you do. If dating is supposed to train you for marriage, then how does it do it? Our dating rituals do not emphasize putting off self-gratification. If putting off self-gratification is the secret to a good marriage, then how does the dating rituals allow you to know that your partner WILL put off self-gratification? Again, it all has to do with the 80% rule. If a given institution works at the 80% level, then you should call it a good idea and try to make it better without abandoning the institution. If you say that a failure rate of 20% makes the institution a failure, then you have a problem.
Do I believe that marriage is a perfect institution? No. I just think that marriage of one man and one woman is the best we have come up with so far in the history of the world to raise children. All the other alternatives seem to have failed.
posted by aRandomTexan at
1:05 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home