WELL: [puts on philosopher hat]:
"If more people are resisting marriage, or fleeing the ones they're in, or inventing new permutations like cohabitation and serial monogamy, here's one reason: for a significant percentage of the population, marriage just doesn't turn out to be as gratifying as it promises."
Premises do not entail conclusion. I don't think (unlike what I took to be Sara Butler's main argument) that this is necessarily a problem with people's expectations of what the institution of marriage entails (though that's certainly a factor) so much as it's a matter of people getting married at the wrong time, or for the wrong reasons, or to the wrong person. Go read the comments section here, and you'll find some people for whom the old-fashioned approach is working just fine (even if parts of their approach are too old-fashioned for my tastes).
The more I think about it, the more I believe Aristotle was right: it's all about being habituated into the right actions and thought patterns that determine future romantic success. I think.
"Thou shalt not extinguish thine anger, but shall master it,
that thy conscience may not be blunted by adjustment
to wrong causes."
-The Dutch Ten Commandments to Foil the Nazis
No comments:
Post a Comment