Now, I realize that many of the preceding presentations have addressed the issue of political correctness in one way or another. Nevertheless, I think that PC needs to be discussed overtly.
In simplest terms, political correctness, or adherence or avocation thereof, is a sure sign of stupidity. Now, I must be careful in stating that political correctness is not the same as common courtesy. Racial, ethnic, gender epithets, or any form of name-calling designed to attack a group of people is not acceptable. The type of political correctness I am referring to involves people’s refusal to address issues, or their soft peddling of responses. I suppose I am in a sense differentiating between maliciously motivated actions and intentions, and mere words.
Perhaps we should start with a less controversial example, and then build up to the strongest of opinions, and therefore the things that really piss people off. Somewhere about a generation ago, firemen became firefighters, with the theory being that the language itself created prejudices that influenced the perception that women could be firemen. I will concede that words create perceptions, and therefore that words can be instrumental in changing the way that people behave and think and such. However, did we really need to have that period where all the compound words that ended in ‘men’ were replaced by ‘person?’ I mean, seriously. Couldn’t a busboy still be a busboy even if she were a female? What was the benefit in the increase in the number of chairpersons, and committee persons, and longshorepersons?
Okay, the longshoreperson label never really caught on, but why not? I contend that the sheer idiocy of the ‘man’ to ‘person’ exchange became obvious when we came to words like longshoreperson.
Perhaps a bit more volatile of a term will help to illustrate my point. I understand completely why the word ‘nigger’ is inappropriate in conversation. The original coining of the term and its earliest usage was intended to denigrate a race of people. Consequently, using the term, even when no offense is intended, is careless, tactless, and wrong. Quite simply, the baggage that the word carries precludes its effective use. What I don’t understand is the adoption of that same word by contemporary Black Americans, or African Americans or persons of color. You see, I intended no offense there at all; I honestly don’t know what is currently the acceptable term of address. The component of political correctness to which I object is this very example. If I were a person of color who was using the term in the context of addressing a friend of mine who is also a person of the same color, then the term becomes some sort of an inside term of endearment.
Bear with me for a second. What if the law enforcement officers of the world decided, capriciously, that their exclusive term of address for other law enforcement officers was ‘pig’? In the squad car or the squad room, they could inoffensively call each other ‘pig’ without fear of offense taking. After all, it would just be a buddy calling a buddy a name. Such things happen everyday. Now suppose that a whole bunch of singing policemen sold millions of songs in which policemen call other policemen pigs? When the general population hears the disparaging term on the radio or on their pirated downloads to their ipods, will they also be able to use the term to address the policeman who pulls them over for speeding? Will the policemen be offended, not reasoning that the offensive term has been revived by the very people the term is meant to denigrate?
Hopefully, you are starting to follow my reasoning. Political correctness is a cowardly business that can often prevent people from saying what they really mean. For fear of choosing the potentially offensive term or phrase, they adopt some circumlocution that muddies the informational waters.
Having saved the most recent example for last, let me go on record as saying the backlash and subsequent firing of Don Imus for saying ‘nappy headed ho’s’ among other stupid things, is illustrative of my position. Don Imus is a shock jock. That is, he was hired and has been gainfully employed for a long time expressly because he says politically incorrect things. He doesn’t lack the sense to avoid the offensive; he is being paid to find it. The game, on his end, is to walk the tightrope between rattling the cage and grabbing the bird by the neck and thrashing its brains out on the rec room floor.
So to be blunt, I don’t think Don Imus should have been fired, and I don’t think that the public outcry should have been able to twist the short hairs of the radio execs. I think those execs should have been able respond to the public umbrage by saying, “Don Imus says stupid things. That’s why hundreds of thousands of people tune in daily. We don’t like what he said, and we don’t condone his opinions or his delivery. He is being paid to entertain people, and for some reason, the current public taste embraces the abhorrent things he says. So shut up. We ain’t firing him. He’ll be back on the air in the morning, and if you think he is crossing the line, stop listening to his program, you dopes.”
Had the radio execs responded in such a way, the outcry would have grown exponentially for about three days. Then, when the same radio people repeated their position a few days later, the outcry would have dwindled to a whimper.
Now, don’t get me wrong, though I generally despise the litigious nature of our culture, I think the offended basketball players had every right to accuse Imus of slanderous or damaging remarks that could adversely affect their status in life. However, I think the judge who heard that case should have said, “Look, a public figure said a stupid thing on the radio. Each of you, so far as I have seen, carries herself with a degree of dignity and class that further exposes the stupidity of his comments. Why not continue to show the fool what a dimwit he is by being above the whole thing?”
The negative characterization, in fact, had little true damaging effects on the character or public perception of those young ladies. Why did the girls lower themselves by accepting the public viewpoint? In effect, the public lived down to the standard thrust upon it, and the ‘victims’ followed suit. Our current culture has established a set of items that are presumed to offend, and everyone waits for the signal to feign offense.
Here’s the simple point. Most political correctness is false in every way. If black people call each other by the ‘n’ word, in what they say is proper context, then the word isn’t the source of the offense. If the word isn’t the source of the offense, then the offense emanates from the speaker. That is, the offended person or group is offended because the speaker hasn’t the right to traffic in a term that has been historically and traditionally offensive. In other words, the victims feel offense because they are supposed to, not because they feel any genuine offense. Hence, the political correctness issue is almost always grounded in pretext, presumption, and falseness.
I don’t have a reliable test for these issues, but I wish I did. So, let’s invent a test using an example of relatively harmless political correctness. I was once chastised for referring to middle-aged women that I work with as ‘girls.’ They should be considered as ‘women’, or ‘ladies’ I was told. However, when I said to my seventy-year-old grandmother and two or her friends, “How are you girls doing today?” they giggled well, like girls, and thought it was cute. In two contexts, each with women older than thirty, I was supposed to know whether reference to them as girls was offensive or not.
So the test is this: if the speaker has to guess about the propriety of a particular term, then the problem is not with the speaker, but with the listener. If there is not definitive intention to offend inherent in the derivation of the term, then there is no offense. Using this test, the ‘n’ word is verboten, and that’s ok with me. But it’s verboten in ALL public discourse, even if the speaker and the listener are complicit in adopting acceptance of the term in their own private context. In short, if it’s wrong, it’s wrong. If one has no definitive reason to know that it’s wrong, it’s not wrong. How’s that?
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Marriage Part II
Marriage Part II
So you want to be married, eh? Well, let’s be frank about this enterprise. You, like everyone else getting married for the first time, have no idea what you’re getting into. Tenet number 1 is that marriage is a journey into the unknown, and if you don’t admit that, you stand less than half of a chance of remaining married for any extended period of time. If you do accept your ignorance, you stand a fifty-one or higher percent chance of prolonging the relationship. And don’t even think about protesting, those of you who have lived together. Spouses and roommates are not of the same species. They may walk and talk alike - to strangers, but they have only superficial appearances in common.
Mind reading, at least the expectation thereof, is a critical component of married life. If you’re the husband, you are supposed to anticipate – and here’s the yoke – and to act upon the projects, chores, and routines that your wife has thought about at lunch. That means that if your wife has a momentary impetus to rearrange the living room furniture, or to clean out the basement, then the only way for you to come out looking good is to have completed those tasks before she gets home. No matter that you go to work, and you get home half an hour later than she does. “Common sense!” your wife will say, should have told you that the job lay in wait for you.
That’s a good thing to know too, by the way: common sense is actually the cumulative opinions that your wife may have encountered in the supermarket, workplace, or at the bus stop. Common sense also entails any and all contact that your wife has had with her mother, your mother, her girlfriends, (but not your girlfriends) and can be profoundly influenced by tabloids, magazines, and Oprah. If, for example, Oprah does a segment on making your kitchen more efficient, common sense would have told your wife that, of course, you need to re-tool the kitchen.
Men, by nature, don’t get to come into contact with common sense. It is secreted in those locations to which only women have full access. A man believes that he’s showing common sense when he goes out to buy the new power drill rather than to borrow the neighbor’s for the thirteenth consecutive project. But if your wife’s family and friends – cathode, periodical, or otherwise – have not stumbled onto this idea, then your purchase is whimsical and foolish. The purchase of the ten-person van, with TV and video arcade in the backseat, is entirely common sensible. After all, there’s an outside chance that you’ll be making a twelve-hour trip with yours and the neighbor’s children sometime before the kids all go off to college.
Another problem to consider is the division of labor in your household. Don’t waste time nor breath trying to pretend that you and your spouse will devise a way to make the division 50-50. Someone is going to do more than the other, and if you’re the one most concerned about the split, then you’re the one who’s going to do the higher percentage. It is a time-proven fact that the spouse who is least concerned about the division of labor is casual about the issue for a reason: s/he has no intention of doing his/her 50 percent. S/he will rationalize, equivocate, and explain, but the last 15 percent of the chores will not get done.
In fact, marriage can be a wonderful estate, for other people that you know, but never for you. And that is actually the largest part of the problem. Married people judge and interpret other marriages so favorably that they always see their own union as falling short. The only good news about this is that other people will misjudge your marriage just as badly. If this happens, and you get the chance to respond, tell them how wonderful everything is all the time. Complaining will put you in a bad temper and make you even less accepting of your spouse’s flaws. More importantly, he or she will find out about your gripes, and then get even.
The truth is that being married to someone, and using your combined efforts to achieve a common purpose or goal, is entirely out of the question. No two people ever see things the same way, so why pretend that love, loyalty, and commitment can alter that? What you must hope to do is to agree on a goal or purpose in theory. Don’t even consider that you’ll approach the objective in the same way. Your spouse should be someone you can have fun with, who will let you tilt at your windmills while he or she tilts at hers. You need only agree that some personal windmills require serious tilting.
Your spouse should allow you your quirks, while you allow him/her his/hers. (Is that right? All that he/she, him/her stuff?) You are supposed to be in a semi-chronic state of individual evolution together. The things you try to accomplish, together and apart, are the glue that holds your relationship together.
Here’s an analogy. It’s like a bed of rocks. Some are igneous and some are metamorphic. Others are sedimentary. The rest are fool’s gold, but that’s another story. Time throws things down onto the rocks, and pressure either pushes them apart or together. Sometimes you pick up these sedimentary rocks that have somehow bonded without losing their individual identities and characteristics. Other times the pressure and the forces of nature (think HEAT!) melt those babies down so they appear to be one rock. In still other circumstances, fiery volcanoes throw up molten rock that has nothing whatsoever to do with this analogy. So you see, marriage is like that bedrock. At least, it should be like that bedrock. You and your partner rock are going to join with identities intact, be melted and compressed into a single entity, or pushed apart until you lose sight and contact with one another. In any case, once you’re in that little swale, you’re not getting out. I mean, you can’t just get up and leave. You’re a rock for Chrissakes!
On the subject of other important components of betrothal, you need only consult Glamour, Cosmopolitan, or Redbook. Of course, if you want to find out the truth, you’ll just continue reading.
At least one other component of marriage should be mentioned. The first marriage chapter dealt with staying married and this one has dealt with daily, married life to an extent. Of course, it was all very philosophical and abstract and general and such. But if you are upset with your spouse, even as you read this, you should consider a few things. You married the person, for crying out loud; are you really so surprised at how s/he is behaving? Or are you upset because you expected to have completed substantial makeovers by now? Seriously, write down the character traits that you have always known that your significant other has. Is he or she impatient, picky, opinionated?
Well, let’s bet last month’s salary that the reason you’re mad right now is directly related to one of the traits you’ve known about all along.
What I’m really saying is that trying to alter someone’s makeup or disposition is another lesson in futility. Sure, you might have some success in getting your spouse to be nicer, more courteous, or more conscious of your feelings, but even these changes take great concentration on the part of your spouse. S/he won’t be more anything without tremendous effort. Why not love the man or woman for all the reasons you originally did? Make a list of what you loved to start, and try to appreciate any efforts being made to accommodate you.
You’re probably thinking that it’s easy for me to say these things, but I assure you it’s not. My wife is emotional, moody, sensitive, and strong-willed: all of the things I am not. (OK, maybe I’m pretty strong-willed too.) But that is not to say that I am any better. I have my own set of negative traits, which I like to call quirks, because it makes me look better. We are polar opposites, and her empathy, sympathy, sensitivity, kindness, and caring are what I originally loved. Sometimes I have to remind myself when she is driving me nuts. What I loved about her is what can make me want to pull my eyes out of my sockets – or hers. And asking for those traits to disappear because I’m in one of my moods? Well, that’s unrealistic and shows a lack of common sense. I read about that in last month’s Maxim.
For better or worse, with only a smidgen of expectation that you and your commitment can change anything substantially, concentrate on having as much fun as possible. Psychologists, who I trust only occasionally, report that our personalities are determined during childhood. What makes us think that marriage will reconfigure what it took ten years to build, and another ten or more to solidify? Again, we can work toward getting some behaviors altered slightly, but genuine personality traits are here to stay.
Love your spouse. It’s more fun and much more productive than the alternative.
So you want to be married, eh? Well, let’s be frank about this enterprise. You, like everyone else getting married for the first time, have no idea what you’re getting into. Tenet number 1 is that marriage is a journey into the unknown, and if you don’t admit that, you stand less than half of a chance of remaining married for any extended period of time. If you do accept your ignorance, you stand a fifty-one or higher percent chance of prolonging the relationship. And don’t even think about protesting, those of you who have lived together. Spouses and roommates are not of the same species. They may walk and talk alike - to strangers, but they have only superficial appearances in common.
Mind reading, at least the expectation thereof, is a critical component of married life. If you’re the husband, you are supposed to anticipate – and here’s the yoke – and to act upon the projects, chores, and routines that your wife has thought about at lunch. That means that if your wife has a momentary impetus to rearrange the living room furniture, or to clean out the basement, then the only way for you to come out looking good is to have completed those tasks before she gets home. No matter that you go to work, and you get home half an hour later than she does. “Common sense!” your wife will say, should have told you that the job lay in wait for you.
That’s a good thing to know too, by the way: common sense is actually the cumulative opinions that your wife may have encountered in the supermarket, workplace, or at the bus stop. Common sense also entails any and all contact that your wife has had with her mother, your mother, her girlfriends, (but not your girlfriends) and can be profoundly influenced by tabloids, magazines, and Oprah. If, for example, Oprah does a segment on making your kitchen more efficient, common sense would have told your wife that, of course, you need to re-tool the kitchen.
Men, by nature, don’t get to come into contact with common sense. It is secreted in those locations to which only women have full access. A man believes that he’s showing common sense when he goes out to buy the new power drill rather than to borrow the neighbor’s for the thirteenth consecutive project. But if your wife’s family and friends – cathode, periodical, or otherwise – have not stumbled onto this idea, then your purchase is whimsical and foolish. The purchase of the ten-person van, with TV and video arcade in the backseat, is entirely common sensible. After all, there’s an outside chance that you’ll be making a twelve-hour trip with yours and the neighbor’s children sometime before the kids all go off to college.
Another problem to consider is the division of labor in your household. Don’t waste time nor breath trying to pretend that you and your spouse will devise a way to make the division 50-50. Someone is going to do more than the other, and if you’re the one most concerned about the split, then you’re the one who’s going to do the higher percentage. It is a time-proven fact that the spouse who is least concerned about the division of labor is casual about the issue for a reason: s/he has no intention of doing his/her 50 percent. S/he will rationalize, equivocate, and explain, but the last 15 percent of the chores will not get done.
In fact, marriage can be a wonderful estate, for other people that you know, but never for you. And that is actually the largest part of the problem. Married people judge and interpret other marriages so favorably that they always see their own union as falling short. The only good news about this is that other people will misjudge your marriage just as badly. If this happens, and you get the chance to respond, tell them how wonderful everything is all the time. Complaining will put you in a bad temper and make you even less accepting of your spouse’s flaws. More importantly, he or she will find out about your gripes, and then get even.
The truth is that being married to someone, and using your combined efforts to achieve a common purpose or goal, is entirely out of the question. No two people ever see things the same way, so why pretend that love, loyalty, and commitment can alter that? What you must hope to do is to agree on a goal or purpose in theory. Don’t even consider that you’ll approach the objective in the same way. Your spouse should be someone you can have fun with, who will let you tilt at your windmills while he or she tilts at hers. You need only agree that some personal windmills require serious tilting.
Your spouse should allow you your quirks, while you allow him/her his/hers. (Is that right? All that he/she, him/her stuff?) You are supposed to be in a semi-chronic state of individual evolution together. The things you try to accomplish, together and apart, are the glue that holds your relationship together.
Here’s an analogy. It’s like a bed of rocks. Some are igneous and some are metamorphic. Others are sedimentary. The rest are fool’s gold, but that’s another story. Time throws things down onto the rocks, and pressure either pushes them apart or together. Sometimes you pick up these sedimentary rocks that have somehow bonded without losing their individual identities and characteristics. Other times the pressure and the forces of nature (think HEAT!) melt those babies down so they appear to be one rock. In still other circumstances, fiery volcanoes throw up molten rock that has nothing whatsoever to do with this analogy. So you see, marriage is like that bedrock. At least, it should be like that bedrock. You and your partner rock are going to join with identities intact, be melted and compressed into a single entity, or pushed apart until you lose sight and contact with one another. In any case, once you’re in that little swale, you’re not getting out. I mean, you can’t just get up and leave. You’re a rock for Chrissakes!
On the subject of other important components of betrothal, you need only consult Glamour, Cosmopolitan, or Redbook. Of course, if you want to find out the truth, you’ll just continue reading.
At least one other component of marriage should be mentioned. The first marriage chapter dealt with staying married and this one has dealt with daily, married life to an extent. Of course, it was all very philosophical and abstract and general and such. But if you are upset with your spouse, even as you read this, you should consider a few things. You married the person, for crying out loud; are you really so surprised at how s/he is behaving? Or are you upset because you expected to have completed substantial makeovers by now? Seriously, write down the character traits that you have always known that your significant other has. Is he or she impatient, picky, opinionated?
Well, let’s bet last month’s salary that the reason you’re mad right now is directly related to one of the traits you’ve known about all along.
What I’m really saying is that trying to alter someone’s makeup or disposition is another lesson in futility. Sure, you might have some success in getting your spouse to be nicer, more courteous, or more conscious of your feelings, but even these changes take great concentration on the part of your spouse. S/he won’t be more anything without tremendous effort. Why not love the man or woman for all the reasons you originally did? Make a list of what you loved to start, and try to appreciate any efforts being made to accommodate you.
You’re probably thinking that it’s easy for me to say these things, but I assure you it’s not. My wife is emotional, moody, sensitive, and strong-willed: all of the things I am not. (OK, maybe I’m pretty strong-willed too.) But that is not to say that I am any better. I have my own set of negative traits, which I like to call quirks, because it makes me look better. We are polar opposites, and her empathy, sympathy, sensitivity, kindness, and caring are what I originally loved. Sometimes I have to remind myself when she is driving me nuts. What I loved about her is what can make me want to pull my eyes out of my sockets – or hers. And asking for those traits to disappear because I’m in one of my moods? Well, that’s unrealistic and shows a lack of common sense. I read about that in last month’s Maxim.
For better or worse, with only a smidgen of expectation that you and your commitment can change anything substantially, concentrate on having as much fun as possible. Psychologists, who I trust only occasionally, report that our personalities are determined during childhood. What makes us think that marriage will reconfigure what it took ten years to build, and another ten or more to solidify? Again, we can work toward getting some behaviors altered slightly, but genuine personality traits are here to stay.
Love your spouse. It’s more fun and much more productive than the alternative.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Marriage Part I
Anyone who doubts that we have culturally encouraged our current divorce rate is stupid. People divorce for only a handful of reasons, each of which can be addressed in some fairly simple ways. However, discussing the ins and outs of marriage, no pun intended, is impossible unless we consider how easily and how often marriages end.
First of all, we have to agree that divorce is undesirable, if only for the reason that people would improve their chances to be happy, if they could avoid the ugliness that usually cavorts with divorces. If we can agree that the world would be a better place if marriages didn’t fall apart, then the remedies to the high divorce rate can be discussed.
Prior to marriage, prospective spouses should be given the following warning: you will not be able to end this marriage unless you are fully prepared to end your spouse’s life. The day you file for divorce, a team of referees will come to your door. They will lock you in a rubber room with only a blunt penknife for a weapon. Your opponent/spouse may or may not be armed, but if s/he is armed, it will be with more firepower than you have. The great thing about the plan is that you won’t know if your prospective ex is armed before you file. If you come out of the room under your own power, your divorce has been granted. If not, then your spouse’s troubles with you are over, one way or another.
Sure, this sounds harsh, but what if we all conspired and told all potentially-betrothed that this was the case? It seems pretty obvious that one cause of divorce is that people marry without seriously contemplating the potential for marital trouble. Lord knows they should think of these things, but people in love are not entirely human. They live on a spiritual plane – temporarily – that will be defined in a later chapter. If couples honestly believed that the only alternative to staying married was to commit murder, how many would expect to manage the trouble that inevitably occurs in marriage?
Forethought is part of the problem. When people are in love, they are more than a little retarded. Despite the rational part of their brains telling them that their marriage will be like others they’ve seen; that is, fraught with difficulties, they seriously believe that their little romantic heaven is impervious to time and trial. A rule that makes divorce close to impossible could go a long way toward reducing the number of marriages that should never happen, and which are doomed to failure.
Be honest, how many of your friends have been married and divorced? Didn’t you suspect that the marriage was doomed from the start? Did you say anything to them?
No, of course not. It wasn’t any of your business, you thought. And when others intervened and tried to talk you out of the intervention with your friend’s doomed union, you should have said, “Don’t tell me it’s none of my business.” Anything that causes you heartache – your friend’s heartache, for instance – has to be considered your business.
The second way to reduce divorce rates is to re-think the division of property issue. How about this idea? If two people get divorced, they each get ---- NOTHING! All their property is sold and the proceeds given to an agency which takes care of kids. Or diseases. Or especially kids with diseases. How many people can afford to get divorced, because half of a lot is still enough?
Children of divorced parents aren’t biologically, physically, or intellectually worse off than children of married parents, yet children of divorce are more likely to have all kinds of emotional problems. Furthermore, kids whose parents divorce are much more likely to get divorced themselves. So let’s take all the money and property from divorcing people and give it to kids.
The prospect of starting over, with absolutely nothing, will encourage troubled married people to try harder. Of course, trying harder won’t solve all the marital difficulties, but those who survive divorce proceedings won’t be completely out of luck. They could re-marry, this time with a little forethought, and no prospect of improving their station in life by divorcing again. Moreover, if we take away the property fights, divorced people won’t be reinforced that they have made the right decision. Every time an ex-spouse makes the property issue ugly, the other spouse feels vindicated. “See,” he or she says, “I was right to end it. Look what a vindictive person s/he really is.”
All of the preceding comments have been precipitated by some serious philosophical views. The first one is simply that our society is more stable with two parent households in the majority. But I don’t think that most societies have developed an expectation of monogamous relationships, married or not, by accident. Belief in monogamy is inextricably linked with a fact: throughout history, those groups that prized two parent households or living arrangements fared better than those that didn’t. I think it’s reasonable to suspect that early societies which didn’t keep parents together were unable to sustain themselves, or they were over-run by hostile neighbors who were better organized. We haven’t publicized a great deal of information on how humans have come to try to practice monogamy, yet monogamy has had the upper hand. Why?
Sociologists and psychologists of different bents have contended that humans, men anyway, are not monogamous by nature. I don’t know the validity of this contention, but it does make some sense, given my own interactions with men. However, if men by nature want to frolic with as many women as possible, then why haven’t they done so more prolifically, and with society’s approval? A simple hypothesis is that those societies who have endorsed freedom to frolic, without repercussion, have been largely unsuccessful.
In fact, some of the men who have tested the waters of infidelity will tell you the same thing. Staying with the mother of one’s children is the most stable, most productive, least painful option in the long run. Maybe this isn’t true for any one person, but for the society as a whole it is most certainly true. Yet the knowledge that this is so hasn’t really reduced the number of husbands who stray. So it may be true that men are not monogamous by nature. They have to learn to be monogamous. Or they must be cowed into exclusivity.
But before this part about marriage has ended, we must acknowledge that some marriages, even those approached with significant forethought, will end in failure. So long as nobody wins, I suppose divorces have to be a rare option. Both parties get a fresh start, but no other stuff. Property is forfeited, and children are made as financially comfortable as possible. This is not a great situation, but it must be better than having former spouses fight over property, children, and responsibility.
The attitudes expressed so far are meant to be taken somewhat seriously; the illustrations somewhat less so. People should be encouraged to proceed with caution, to fight through the tough times, and to stay together. We can’t possibly hope to encourage these behaviors unless we make divorce an even more unpleasant condition. “Till death do us part” is an order, not a suggestion.
First of all, we have to agree that divorce is undesirable, if only for the reason that people would improve their chances to be happy, if they could avoid the ugliness that usually cavorts with divorces. If we can agree that the world would be a better place if marriages didn’t fall apart, then the remedies to the high divorce rate can be discussed.
Prior to marriage, prospective spouses should be given the following warning: you will not be able to end this marriage unless you are fully prepared to end your spouse’s life. The day you file for divorce, a team of referees will come to your door. They will lock you in a rubber room with only a blunt penknife for a weapon. Your opponent/spouse may or may not be armed, but if s/he is armed, it will be with more firepower than you have. The great thing about the plan is that you won’t know if your prospective ex is armed before you file. If you come out of the room under your own power, your divorce has been granted. If not, then your spouse’s troubles with you are over, one way or another.
Sure, this sounds harsh, but what if we all conspired and told all potentially-betrothed that this was the case? It seems pretty obvious that one cause of divorce is that people marry without seriously contemplating the potential for marital trouble. Lord knows they should think of these things, but people in love are not entirely human. They live on a spiritual plane – temporarily – that will be defined in a later chapter. If couples honestly believed that the only alternative to staying married was to commit murder, how many would expect to manage the trouble that inevitably occurs in marriage?
Forethought is part of the problem. When people are in love, they are more than a little retarded. Despite the rational part of their brains telling them that their marriage will be like others they’ve seen; that is, fraught with difficulties, they seriously believe that their little romantic heaven is impervious to time and trial. A rule that makes divorce close to impossible could go a long way toward reducing the number of marriages that should never happen, and which are doomed to failure.
Be honest, how many of your friends have been married and divorced? Didn’t you suspect that the marriage was doomed from the start? Did you say anything to them?
No, of course not. It wasn’t any of your business, you thought. And when others intervened and tried to talk you out of the intervention with your friend’s doomed union, you should have said, “Don’t tell me it’s none of my business.” Anything that causes you heartache – your friend’s heartache, for instance – has to be considered your business.
The second way to reduce divorce rates is to re-think the division of property issue. How about this idea? If two people get divorced, they each get ---- NOTHING! All their property is sold and the proceeds given to an agency which takes care of kids. Or diseases. Or especially kids with diseases. How many people can afford to get divorced, because half of a lot is still enough?
Children of divorced parents aren’t biologically, physically, or intellectually worse off than children of married parents, yet children of divorce are more likely to have all kinds of emotional problems. Furthermore, kids whose parents divorce are much more likely to get divorced themselves. So let’s take all the money and property from divorcing people and give it to kids.
The prospect of starting over, with absolutely nothing, will encourage troubled married people to try harder. Of course, trying harder won’t solve all the marital difficulties, but those who survive divorce proceedings won’t be completely out of luck. They could re-marry, this time with a little forethought, and no prospect of improving their station in life by divorcing again. Moreover, if we take away the property fights, divorced people won’t be reinforced that they have made the right decision. Every time an ex-spouse makes the property issue ugly, the other spouse feels vindicated. “See,” he or she says, “I was right to end it. Look what a vindictive person s/he really is.”
All of the preceding comments have been precipitated by some serious philosophical views. The first one is simply that our society is more stable with two parent households in the majority. But I don’t think that most societies have developed an expectation of monogamous relationships, married or not, by accident. Belief in monogamy is inextricably linked with a fact: throughout history, those groups that prized two parent households or living arrangements fared better than those that didn’t. I think it’s reasonable to suspect that early societies which didn’t keep parents together were unable to sustain themselves, or they were over-run by hostile neighbors who were better organized. We haven’t publicized a great deal of information on how humans have come to try to practice monogamy, yet monogamy has had the upper hand. Why?
Sociologists and psychologists of different bents have contended that humans, men anyway, are not monogamous by nature. I don’t know the validity of this contention, but it does make some sense, given my own interactions with men. However, if men by nature want to frolic with as many women as possible, then why haven’t they done so more prolifically, and with society’s approval? A simple hypothesis is that those societies who have endorsed freedom to frolic, without repercussion, have been largely unsuccessful.
In fact, some of the men who have tested the waters of infidelity will tell you the same thing. Staying with the mother of one’s children is the most stable, most productive, least painful option in the long run. Maybe this isn’t true for any one person, but for the society as a whole it is most certainly true. Yet the knowledge that this is so hasn’t really reduced the number of husbands who stray. So it may be true that men are not monogamous by nature. They have to learn to be monogamous. Or they must be cowed into exclusivity.
But before this part about marriage has ended, we must acknowledge that some marriages, even those approached with significant forethought, will end in failure. So long as nobody wins, I suppose divorces have to be a rare option. Both parties get a fresh start, but no other stuff. Property is forfeited, and children are made as financially comfortable as possible. This is not a great situation, but it must be better than having former spouses fight over property, children, and responsibility.
The attitudes expressed so far are meant to be taken somewhat seriously; the illustrations somewhat less so. People should be encouraged to proceed with caution, to fight through the tough times, and to stay together. We can’t possibly hope to encourage these behaviors unless we make divorce an even more unpleasant condition. “Till death do us part” is an order, not a suggestion.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Promptitude - why it's not really a problem being a bit late
Promptitude
Tardiness, or lateness, is a pet peeve for my wife and a slew of other people I know. But I confess that I think concern for being prompt, or promptitude, is further evidence of a lack of intelligence.
Now, let’s set some ground rules for discussion. Being on time isn’t a bad thing. Showing courtesy and awareness of other people’s time is a virtue of sorts. Nor do I condone being fashionably late or obnoxious about meeting appointment deadlines.
So what is the subject? Perhaps an illustration, maybe even an anecdote might prove insightful. It’s 6:00 p.m. on a typical weekday evening. I have been inside the door for all of twenty minutes. In that time I have managed dinner for two of my three children and me, though we are in the process of eating it, and I have to be in Temple, a town forty minutes away, by 7:00 p.m. to retrieve the third child. (This occurs at least once a week, in some manner, because my wife is at work, or because she is doing something else and it’s my turn to be the loony.) The important thing is that I’m not complaining; my wife carries a disproportionate amount of the chartering children duty.
If I eat like a human, I will have to get in the car with my vegetable side dish in a coffee cup, eating with a spoon while I wheel in and out of traffic at sixty miles an hour. Furthermore, the dinner dishes are unwashed and the leftover food is slowly coagulating on the table, counter, stove, or floor. It’s worth it though, isn't it --- because I will now arrive in Temple on time!
On the other hand, I could eat like my nine-year-old, rifling food into the general vicinity of my mouth, fully aware that I will be compromising some 20% of the meal by mass and volume. In this case, I will have time to clean up most of the dishes and the food, and I won’t have to drive one-handed on the freeway.
In both scenarios, I will arrive on time! But my psychological state will be awful.
How about opting for possible choice number three? I can eat like a human, clean up the dishes and the kitchen in general, drive two-handed, and arrive at 7:10. Ten minutes late can provide me with peace of mind, and no coagulating food on the stove.
I’m willing to risk being labeled ‘tardy.’ My wife, and a majority of people I know, will not take the same risk. Those ten minutes of impromptitude may render them unworthy of other people’s respect or something.
I give myself a five-minute or so late window. If I’ve arrived at my destination within five minutes of the due time, I consider myself punctual. And to be truthful, I rarely slide outside the window. Yet those five minutes can turn my wife and her compatriots into nervous wrecks.
I am not exaggerating when I tell you that my wife sometimes begins worrying about being on time a full twenty-four hours before the scheduled event.
Time is valuable. We should spend as much of our time as tranquilly as possible. Fretting about mere minutes is stupid in most cases. Of course, we should leave early if the appointment involves a train or plane departure. Of course there are deadlines we should make responsible provisions to meet. But most of our fussing over keeping appointment times is not concerned with crucial arrivals and departures. No, most of our appointment times are arbitrary.
“Let’s meet at seven,” our friend or colleague suggests. “How about 7:12?” you should say. If you plan to get there at seven, allow for the five-minute window, and arrive at 7:07, your friend will applaud you for being early. Unless your friend is an insensitive jerk who believes the five-minute window begins at 7:12, and so doesn’t arrive until 7:17. If that happened, I would never speak to that former friend again.
I was joking. Of course, I was joking. My one brother is an inveterate ‘tard,’ as I call us. Jay is especially tardy if the appointment time is a.m. A few years back, when we were golfing on a fairly regular basis, we tried to get out as early as possible so the rest of the day wasn’t affected. Jay was usually the last one to arrive. And he often didn’t show up at all. In fact, I don’t think the lateness would have bothered me if I had known he’d eventually arrive. You see, I would usually go early, getting in some time on the putting green in the dark, just because I am a morning person, and I like to practice before teeing it up for real. Tardiness is one thing. Failure to show for a confirmed appointment is unforgivable. [I also should mention that I have figured out Jay’s idiosyncrasies to some extent. If Jay says he will definitely be somewhere, he will be there, and often on time. However, if he expresses even the lightest bit of doubt about his appearance, breath holding is a bad idea. He won’t show, or if he does, he’ll be inordinately late. I imagine in these cases – when he eventually shows – that he’s been agonizing over the situation for ten or fifteen minutes, and the mulling time has caused the delay.]
Comics have often joked about our American tendency to time our trips, and to look for shortcuts to travel or travel time. But I generally drive pretty slowly. I don’t see what I might gain if I cut the trip by five minutes, or even ten.
Consider these scenarios.
“Yup, had I taken the route you proposed, I would have arrived at the pig roast at 11:18.” The listener waits expectantly. “But I cut down Breakneck Boulevard and across the Frenetic Freeway. I avoided Serenity Station Drive altogether, and made it here by 11:13.”
“Read the odometer and the chronometer and weep, Rand McNally. I risked life and limb for me and my family, and I got five free minutes coming. Somebody better start paying up.”
Now, I admit that I plan travel routes and times too. The difference is that I am shooting for the trouble-free trip. I want it as short or as quick as possible, same as everybody. Yet if I can stay on a lonely two-lane highway and sacrifice ten minutes, I’ll do it. Those ten minutes translate into two or three more Springsteen songs, and I get better scenery to boot.
But it’s not just travel time. Suppose you’re going to dinner with friends. Three couples are scheduled to meet at 8:00 p.m. It’s now 7:15 and I haven’t showered yet. The trip will take about twenty minutes. My wife, brandishing her hair dryer like an instrument of destruction, orders me to the personal hygiene booth, the shower. She has already begun panicking.
I shower, shave, and --- take care of other things --- and sit downstairs with my car keys in my hand at 7:45. My wife, bile up to her right tonsil, issues final instructions to the children/babysitter, and then storms to the car. (If you’ve been following the consumption of time, you realize that we don’t have a chance of being on time!) Out of courtesy, I drive a bit faster than normal. We arrive at 8:05 p.m. and my wife apologizes profusely to the other people. I blame everyone but myself for the delay, but I really don’t care at all. What happened in those five minutes that really matters? Will those five minutes prove crucial in any way? Calm down. Listen to the music. But try to be on time.
Punctuality isn’t to be avoided; rather, it simply isn’t so critical that one should rush like a maniac to compensate for a poor start. I can’t think of one important event of my life where I recall if I was on time or not. I was there when it counted. And I can’t think of any major regret prompted by my own tardiness. Life is too short to rush through. When I rush, I notice nothing. I yell at people I don't even know and who have offended me in no particularly significant way. My blood pressure goes up, and sometimes I even get sick to my stomach. By contrast, when I take my time, and everyone else's too, I arrive safe and stress-free. I yell at no one, unless it's the kids or my wife who remind me every thirty seconds how late I am. When I rush through things, the day is shorter. When I stay calm and slow, the day is longer. I'm already on a time-life limit. Why would I want to hurry up and minimize my experience of it?
Tardiness, or lateness, is a pet peeve for my wife and a slew of other people I know. But I confess that I think concern for being prompt, or promptitude, is further evidence of a lack of intelligence.
Now, let’s set some ground rules for discussion. Being on time isn’t a bad thing. Showing courtesy and awareness of other people’s time is a virtue of sorts. Nor do I condone being fashionably late or obnoxious about meeting appointment deadlines.
So what is the subject? Perhaps an illustration, maybe even an anecdote might prove insightful. It’s 6:00 p.m. on a typical weekday evening. I have been inside the door for all of twenty minutes. In that time I have managed dinner for two of my three children and me, though we are in the process of eating it, and I have to be in Temple, a town forty minutes away, by 7:00 p.m. to retrieve the third child. (This occurs at least once a week, in some manner, because my wife is at work, or because she is doing something else and it’s my turn to be the loony.) The important thing is that I’m not complaining; my wife carries a disproportionate amount of the chartering children duty.
If I eat like a human, I will have to get in the car with my vegetable side dish in a coffee cup, eating with a spoon while I wheel in and out of traffic at sixty miles an hour. Furthermore, the dinner dishes are unwashed and the leftover food is slowly coagulating on the table, counter, stove, or floor. It’s worth it though, isn't it --- because I will now arrive in Temple on time!
On the other hand, I could eat like my nine-year-old, rifling food into the general vicinity of my mouth, fully aware that I will be compromising some 20% of the meal by mass and volume. In this case, I will have time to clean up most of the dishes and the food, and I won’t have to drive one-handed on the freeway.
In both scenarios, I will arrive on time! But my psychological state will be awful.
How about opting for possible choice number three? I can eat like a human, clean up the dishes and the kitchen in general, drive two-handed, and arrive at 7:10. Ten minutes late can provide me with peace of mind, and no coagulating food on the stove.
I’m willing to risk being labeled ‘tardy.’ My wife, and a majority of people I know, will not take the same risk. Those ten minutes of impromptitude may render them unworthy of other people’s respect or something.
I give myself a five-minute or so late window. If I’ve arrived at my destination within five minutes of the due time, I consider myself punctual. And to be truthful, I rarely slide outside the window. Yet those five minutes can turn my wife and her compatriots into nervous wrecks.
I am not exaggerating when I tell you that my wife sometimes begins worrying about being on time a full twenty-four hours before the scheduled event.
Time is valuable. We should spend as much of our time as tranquilly as possible. Fretting about mere minutes is stupid in most cases. Of course, we should leave early if the appointment involves a train or plane departure. Of course there are deadlines we should make responsible provisions to meet. But most of our fussing over keeping appointment times is not concerned with crucial arrivals and departures. No, most of our appointment times are arbitrary.
“Let’s meet at seven,” our friend or colleague suggests. “How about 7:12?” you should say. If you plan to get there at seven, allow for the five-minute window, and arrive at 7:07, your friend will applaud you for being early. Unless your friend is an insensitive jerk who believes the five-minute window begins at 7:12, and so doesn’t arrive until 7:17. If that happened, I would never speak to that former friend again.
I was joking. Of course, I was joking. My one brother is an inveterate ‘tard,’ as I call us. Jay is especially tardy if the appointment time is a.m. A few years back, when we were golfing on a fairly regular basis, we tried to get out as early as possible so the rest of the day wasn’t affected. Jay was usually the last one to arrive. And he often didn’t show up at all. In fact, I don’t think the lateness would have bothered me if I had known he’d eventually arrive. You see, I would usually go early, getting in some time on the putting green in the dark, just because I am a morning person, and I like to practice before teeing it up for real. Tardiness is one thing. Failure to show for a confirmed appointment is unforgivable. [I also should mention that I have figured out Jay’s idiosyncrasies to some extent. If Jay says he will definitely be somewhere, he will be there, and often on time. However, if he expresses even the lightest bit of doubt about his appearance, breath holding is a bad idea. He won’t show, or if he does, he’ll be inordinately late. I imagine in these cases – when he eventually shows – that he’s been agonizing over the situation for ten or fifteen minutes, and the mulling time has caused the delay.]
Comics have often joked about our American tendency to time our trips, and to look for shortcuts to travel or travel time. But I generally drive pretty slowly. I don’t see what I might gain if I cut the trip by five minutes, or even ten.
Consider these scenarios.
“Yup, had I taken the route you proposed, I would have arrived at the pig roast at 11:18.” The listener waits expectantly. “But I cut down Breakneck Boulevard and across the Frenetic Freeway. I avoided Serenity Station Drive altogether, and made it here by 11:13.”
“Read the odometer and the chronometer and weep, Rand McNally. I risked life and limb for me and my family, and I got five free minutes coming. Somebody better start paying up.”
Now, I admit that I plan travel routes and times too. The difference is that I am shooting for the trouble-free trip. I want it as short or as quick as possible, same as everybody. Yet if I can stay on a lonely two-lane highway and sacrifice ten minutes, I’ll do it. Those ten minutes translate into two or three more Springsteen songs, and I get better scenery to boot.
But it’s not just travel time. Suppose you’re going to dinner with friends. Three couples are scheduled to meet at 8:00 p.m. It’s now 7:15 and I haven’t showered yet. The trip will take about twenty minutes. My wife, brandishing her hair dryer like an instrument of destruction, orders me to the personal hygiene booth, the shower. She has already begun panicking.
I shower, shave, and --- take care of other things --- and sit downstairs with my car keys in my hand at 7:45. My wife, bile up to her right tonsil, issues final instructions to the children/babysitter, and then storms to the car. (If you’ve been following the consumption of time, you realize that we don’t have a chance of being on time!) Out of courtesy, I drive a bit faster than normal. We arrive at 8:05 p.m. and my wife apologizes profusely to the other people. I blame everyone but myself for the delay, but I really don’t care at all. What happened in those five minutes that really matters? Will those five minutes prove crucial in any way? Calm down. Listen to the music. But try to be on time.
Punctuality isn’t to be avoided; rather, it simply isn’t so critical that one should rush like a maniac to compensate for a poor start. I can’t think of one important event of my life where I recall if I was on time or not. I was there when it counted. And I can’t think of any major regret prompted by my own tardiness. Life is too short to rush through. When I rush, I notice nothing. I yell at people I don't even know and who have offended me in no particularly significant way. My blood pressure goes up, and sometimes I even get sick to my stomach. By contrast, when I take my time, and everyone else's too, I arrive safe and stress-free. I yell at no one, unless it's the kids or my wife who remind me every thirty seconds how late I am. When I rush through things, the day is shorter. When I stay calm and slow, the day is longer. I'm already on a time-life limit. Why would I want to hurry up and minimize my experience of it?
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