Ian Boyne, Contributor
THAT DIVORCE is increasing at alarming rates in the Western world, including Jamaica, is not surprising considering the seismic philosophical and cultural shifts which have taken place. It is just that many people have not been putting the pieces together.
While, interestingly, the gays have been asserting their right to marriage in the United States and have made this a major human rights issue, marriage as an ethical institution presupposes certain values and commitments which have deep religious underpinnings. Without those underpinnings it becomes fragile. The old-style Marxists saw marriage as a largely economic institution. The famous 'twin' to Karl Marx was Friedrich Engels who expounded his views on the evolution of the marriage institution famously in his book The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.
In the west the romantic concept of marriage and living "happily ever after" has long fed our fantasies and has been the subject of the most engrossing novels. But the commitment required to make couples stay together despite inevitable differences in personality, history, ways of seeing things is difficult to sustain given the prevailing assumptions of modern society.
In a brilliant essay in the philosophical journal Animus (Volume 6, 2001) Professor FL Jackson says, "The freedom of the individual is modernity's absolute." The authority of the institution of marriage would seem especially compromised by an ethics wherein individual freedom pre-empts every other basis of human compact. Vows declaring two individuals permanently one in the sight of God, a bond no one may put asunder, are taken as mostly quaint rhetoric or archaic poetry.
INFINITELY IMPORTANT
"To take such words seriously would contravene what alone is infinitely important: The certainty individuals have of their absolute freedom, requiring as it does that self-esteem take precedence over other-esteem."
In his highly thoughtful essay titled, Freedom and the Tie that Binds: Marriage as An Ethical Institution, Jackson says that in western culture "marriage is taken for the most part as an optional extension of what is vaguely called a 'relationship', that is, a sexual compact entered into and sustained by the force of subjective commitment alone, a commitment which can be just as freely withdrawn as made."
Continues Jackson: "Ethically, radical individual freedom yields the principle that one has an absolute right to choose, indifferent to whether what actually chosen be judged good or evil. This principle is devastating when applied to social and ethical institutions since it suggest that these are tolerable only where they are answerable to individuals and exist solely to advance their rights, interests and advantages. Accordingly, institutions that should claim an authority independent of these subjective interests must be summarily declared illegitimate: freedom demands their overthrow."
It is easy to lampoon and ridicule religious people, especially fundamentalists here in Jamaica. An agnostic like Mark Wignall has been acerbic in his criticisms and putting down of people like Herro Blair and Al Miller. But after we have cast aside these popular preachers and seriously impugn some of their questionable pronouncements, we still have to deal with the fact that many secularists and atheists are still philosophically and culturally living off the heritage of religion.
Atheistic and agnostic psychologists, psychiatrists sociologists and social workers speak eloquently about the value of marriage and family life on psychological, sociological and political health of a nation. They can wax eloquent about the stable foundation provided and the critical values and virtues learned in a nurturing and loving environment provided in the home.
But how is that loving and healthy environment preserved, and what will sustain the family as a unit and cause it not to fragment, if not a set of values and commitments outside of personal and ego-centred interests?
If every individual in the family is merely seeking to maximise his own utility; if he is trying to gain best advantage and merely accentuate his own interests, how do we derive unity and stability from that? If a marriage is seen merely as the means of the satisfaction of my needs and wants and as purely a means of my personal fulfilment, then how will the harmony and synergy emerge?
The atheists and agnostics are still living off the heritage of religious folk and behaving like ungrateful brats in the process. (I am not saying one can't have ethics without religion). At best it is highly risky to build a harmonious, stable and nurturing marriage on a purely pragmatic, ego-centred view of marriage. If I am only committed to the satisfaction of my desires, then whether my desires mean cheating on my wife, committing adultery with her 17-year-old daughter of a previous marriage or making out with her sister, then I just have to give in to the sovereignty of my desire.
If there is no set of objective ethical norms, if there is no conception of a transcendent ethics, no commitment to duties and responsibilities as opposed to drives and desires, then I am putting the axe to the foundation of marriage. In the book, All You Need is Love and Other Lies About Marriage, John W. Jacobs says that among the factors undermining marriage is the "belief in the right to personal freedom and happiness and the social acceptability of divorce," which have changed "the very meaning of marriage and the stability of marital relationships."
Says Jacobs: "People who rely on the absolute power of romance to maintain their relationships are usually unprepared for the serious interpersonal problems that eventually emerge in most modern marriages."
In an article titled 'Great Expectations' in the March/April 2004 issue of Psychology Today, Polly Shulman says the "increased emphasis on emotional fulfilment within marriage leaves couples ill-prepared for the realities they will probably face." The article quotes one psychologist as saying that "it is a recent historical event that people expect so much from individual partners."
NOURISHING AND ENRICHING
Marriage should be mutually nourishing and enriching. The notion of some Christians that marriage should be simply an endurance game; a means of developing character and serving the other selflessly while carrying the cross is counter to both common sense and biblical teaching. But it is one thing to move from an ascetic view of marriage to one of libertarianism in which marriage is seen simply as a means of extracting personal gain and enrichment.
The Psychology Today article quotes psychologist Joshua Coleman as saying that "the constant cultural pressure to have it all a great sex life, a wonderful family has made people ashamed of their less-than-perfect relationships and question whether such unions are worth hanging to." Continues the Psychology Today article: "We once prized the institution (of marriage) for the practical pairing of a cash-producing father and home-building mother. Now we want it all a partner who reflects our taste and status, who sees us for who we are, who owes us for all the 'right' reasons who helps us become the person we want to be. We've done away with the rigid social order, adopting instead an even more onerous obligation: the mandate to find a perfect mate."
Hollywood and American consumerist society has fed this trend. But the deeper philosophical roots is the libertarianism and the anti-religious biases of the Enlightenment. God knows, religious folk have some sordid and sexist ideas about marriage. But we pay a high price for throwing that off only to adopt the consumerist view of marriage.
Outside of a religious context or a devotion to the notion of norms beyond egotistic interests, why would you not pursue the affair with that alluring, drop-dead gorgeous girl? If you had the opportunity to steal some love on the side, why wouldn't you? And if you can get better and freakier sex with someone else, why stick with your wife who might satisfy you but might be just slightly less exciting than this new-found love?
If you can have an affair with that handsome, well-heeled man who can give you money to buy nice things, why wouldn't you if you don't have any religious commitments and if you don't believe that certain norms are cast in concrete?
SUPREMACY OF DESIRE
We live in the age of the Supremacy of Desire. The gays make this overarching claim: "I feel, therefore, I am. These desires are natural to me so they must be right. You can't say they are wrong because I know what I feel, I know what is natural to me. I know I did not make myself this way and, therefore, my natural feelings and desires have a moral legitimacy."
This is the underlying philosophical claim of the homosexual community. Many homosexuals don't argue beyond their subjective feelings and desires. They assume it is absolutely irrational for anyone to argue that an innate desire should be suppressed.
But a rational atheistic philosopher like Kenneth Taylor of Stanford University, in the book Philosophers Without God: Atheism in a World of Believers dismisses the sovereignty-of-desire view: "Desires are more mercurial, less weighty sources of reasons than commitments. Commitment may endure even as desire wanes. Entirely non-reflective creatures are subject to desires." And they are moved by their desires to try to achieve the satisfaction of those desires: Reflective agents, like us human beings can't act like the animals, or "the lower animals", if you are atheistic.
The abandonment of religious commitment for secularism has profoundly negative consequences on society and it is time the Jamaican intellectuals in the church start engaging the agnostics and atheists into a higher-level debate.
Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist. You can send your comments to ianboyns1@yahoo.com or infocus@gleanerjm.com.
