
Ian Boyne, Contributor
AT THE same time that a number of important social scientific studies are highlighting the importance of marriage, empirical evidence suggests that its future is dubious, at least in the ways it has been traditionally conceptualised.
In short, marriage is in trouble. Ideas have consequences but in an era which elevates passions over intellectual thought, it is not surprising that what might be objectively in the interest of people is subjectively resisted. Marriage is one of those institutions which suffer from the time warp effect. It is an institution which is based on premises and assumptions which have long been eroded at the base, but which people still cling to unthinkingly and almost reflexively.
Marriage has religious roots and is bounded by notions of obligation and commitment which have been radically overturned by modernism, and now by postmodernism. Large numbers of people who get married today and exchange vows about "for better for worse, for richer for poorer" and "till death do us part" don't begin to accept the implications of those words as originally intended. An article in the special 35th anniversary September/October edition of Foreign Policy listed monogamy as one of 16 ideas and institutions likely to be "here today and gone tomorrow".
MONOGAMY WILL DIE
In that article Jacques Attali, president of PlaNet Finance, says, "Monogamy, which is really no more than a useful social convention, will not survive. It has been rarely honoured in practice; soon it will vanish even as an ideal." He minces no words and can't be accused of political correctness. And his position makes absolute sense in the light of the seismic philosophical shifts which have taken place in the modern world.
Says Attali: "We constantly speculate about the future balance of power, looming conflicts and emerging technologies. Yet somehow we imagine that morals and aesthetics are immutable." Usually the changes in practice take place long before the intellectual analysis is done. "The continued rise of individual freedom will permanently change sexual mores, as it has in most realms."
This issue has been thoroughly and incisively explored by professor F.L. Jackson in the philosophical journal Animus. Writing in an article titled 'Freedom and the Tie that Binds: Marriage as an Ethical Institution', Jackson notes that "The freedom of the individual is modernity's absolute. The question seriously raised is how the marriage tie can survive the optionalism that dominates modern attitudes, or whether after all it is an outmoded institution whose time has run out."
Jackson goes on to say that "The legitimisation of liaisons once thought beyond the pale - 'open marriage', single parenthood, homosexual coupling - now test the boundaries of established legal and moral definition based in most cultures of the gold standard of once in a lifetime monogamy."
As Attali says in his article, "Two hundred years ago, few people foresaw legalised divorce or open homosexuality let alone gay marriage." But ideas matter and they have profound consequences. Who says that one should limit one's sexual activities to only one person in marriage? Who made this an absolute? How does one ground this view epistemologically? Who says we can't love and sexually enjoy more than one person at the same time? Where did these 'moral' limits come from?
LOOSENING MORALITY
As people begin to question institutions of authority such as the Church, the state and the judiciary begin to see them as merely human, man-made and culturally and sociologically bound institutions, the hold of traditional morality loosens. For secular people who don't follow the Church on its teachings about premarital sex, divorce and the importance of church going, why should they follow the view that monogamy is a moral absolute? Can monogamy be defended on pragmatic grounds? What if one 'cheats' but does so discreetly and shows respect for his or her marital partner? It is said that what you don't know can't hurt you, at least subjectively. So what is the harm if one has sexual liaisons outside of his or her marriage? (For Christian conservatives reading this, I am simply asking logical questions, not expressing a personal opinion!)
Many secular people - many people generally - don't think through their practices. Over the weekend many secularised people and those who live like practical atheists - and some actual philosophical atheists - will be getting married. Why should they be monogamous? For what pragmatic reasons and can those reasons really hold? Every non-religious reasons for strict absolute monogamy, I submit, is flawed. One could still remain married, have a proper institution to rear kids in and hence provide them with the proper psychological and economic foundation, without being strictly monogamous. Many persons live this way, anyway. Outside of a religious or quasi-religious context, strict monogamy is tenuous.
Most marriages are probably a farce, anyway. They are anything but monogamous. People are just pretending to be fooling one another. Says Attali in his Foreign Policy piece: "The reality of multiple lives and partners will become more apparent and society's hypocrisy will be revealed."
He goes on to say that "Just as most societies now accept successive love relationships, soon we will acknowledge the legality and acceptability of simultaneous love."
Says Professor Jackson in the Animus essay: "Vows declaring two individuals permanently one in the sight of God, a bond no one may put asunder, are taken as a mostly quaint rhetoric or archaic poetry. To take such vows 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 and certainly esteem for long-abandoned divinities."
I give Attali the last disturbing words: "The demise of monogamy will not come without a struggle. All the churches will seek to forbid it, especially for women. For a while they will hold the line. But individual freedom will, once again, triumph.
Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist. You can send your comments to ianboyne1@yahoo.com