On Marriage

• Marriage, as it impacts directly on reproduction, is one of the foundational social technologies of any society.
• As with almost all social technologies, the change from communal to individualistic focus inherent in modern society has placed the technology of marriage under increasing pressure and resulted in ongoing erosion of the institution and its power.
• Thus underlying the increasingly obvious degradation of marriage over the past few generations is the increasing social focus on the individual at the cost of the group, even as the state increasingly focuses on the group at the cost of the individual. Jim, in his unabashedly blunt manner, provides a run down on the changes and effects since the early 1800’s here.
• Suffice to say, that once the weighting we give individual concerns over societal ones exceeds a certain threshold — alternatively and just as accurately, once societal resources exceed a certain level — pressure is exerted on social institutions that favour society over the individual, including marriage.
• There appears therefore to be a base level societal more that can be expressed something like: As resources become available, the hard choices that are forced upon a society in order to ensure its survival shall be gradually set aside and the luxury of choice be granted individuals.
• Thus the arc of a society can be observed in its treatment of marriage as that moves from barbaric to haremic to patriarchal to nuclear (currently transitioning to) disordered and eventually returning to barbaric.
• An obvious question that arises is whether this arc can be interrupted. My sense is that this is only possible under conditions of resource shortage, because resource shortage drives people back towards community rather than individuality. This resource shortage can be imposed or natural.
• This highlights one of the deep negative externalities of the welfare state. Even in the areas that would normally be undergoing the cultural correction that comes with resource shortage, the steady, unconditional drip of resource from the wealthier segments of the community prevents this. Eventually, catastrophic failure of the economic system will result in immense resource restriction over the entirety of society, and rather than having some segments of society ‘pre-primed’ in terms of culture to handle the change. Thus social collapse and economic collapse will coincide to an unnatural degree, exacerbating the consequences.
• Under such conditions, those and only those who have:
  • artificially restricted their own resources;
  • limited their own (and own families) degeneracy;
  • and built community by choice rather than necessity,
• will be prepared and positioned for societal growth.
• Thus a community wishing to reverse the trend of the arc towards social decay must create within itself an artificial shortage of luxury through an intentional focus on future generations rather than individual gratification.
• In a world dominated by the western academic-media Cathedral, such a task is difficult.

End