Post Modern Marriage - A Return to Eden?

Here is the "Fall". Natural Man and Woman are being expelled from the Natural World and are being banished into the Agricultural world of the Middle East of about 5,000 years ago.

It's a myth that tells of a deep historic truth. It tells of the great shift in human culture that took place as we ended 4 million years of living a Hunter Gather life and took up Agriculture.

More than our source of food changed. Our entire worldview changed. We no longer saw ourseleves as being partners in nature but now as lords above nature. We no longer saw oursleves as being partners in creation with our human partners but also either as lords or servants.

In this new world of ownership, of control and of obedience, the relationships between men and men and between men and women and between parents and children replicated the relationship between big men and their herds.

Genesis declares the new contract like this:-

Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;

Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

I laugh to myself when I hear of people defending traditional marriage. They defend this. 

"Oh it's not that any more I hear you say." Really - well divorce courts seem to suggest that it is.

Something isn't working anymore with our core institution. 50% of marriages end in divorce. After a couple of drinks, most of us admit to at least being bored, many to being angry with our spouses. Look at our children. Many feel that they are "trophies" to be shown off or worse they feel like bargaining chips as their bitter parents use them as weapons in the war of the sexes. 30% of children in Canada, most from the middle class, are in deep trouble by 6. They have had such a poor social environment that they cannot behave socially and they cannot learn. This is not merely an opinion. It is a fact. Please look here and here for the evidence.

How can this be? How can marriage drive such unhappiness and such social failure? 

Imagine if wolf packs no longer nurtured wolves and allowed them to thrive? Imagine if killer whale pods became sources of whale dysfunction? Imagine if ant colonies damaged the future of ants?

What if we had indeed lost paradise 5,000 years ago? What if the price for agriculture was that we gave up the natural social arrangement that naturally made us most human?

How could we return? Would we have to don skins and take up hunting and gathering?

I think that the life of a courtesan can help us see parts of the core of the Natural Social Arrangement. I also think that many of us now live the life of the post modern Hunter Gatherer.

Please join me in this post, as I walk unsteadily to a place that eschews control and obedience  but instead embraces life and potential. To a place that looks below the surface and beyond functionality to where the human spirit lives in all of us. As I fumble my way home to Eden. The most Trusted of all Trusted Spaces.

Imagine that you could sit before a fire with your husband and the father of your two boys and laugh or cry about your love life with others. Imagine that you might hold your distraught husband and comfort him after a public failure - such as not being elected to Parliament - after he has also asked your advice a few days before about his new boyfriend.

Imagine a husband who allowed you total freedom of what to do and how to live. Imagine a husband who took as much joy in your work as you did?

Imagine the satisfaction knowing that the two of you have created together - over a lifetime -  finest garden in the world. Imagine your feelings as your boys learned to love books as you both did. Not because you forced them into it but because they witnessed your joy in the literary life. Imagine your feelings from beyond the grave as one of your sons would write a tribute to you both.

Imagine the tenderness in Harold's heart, as he picked a white rose from their garden and laid it upon Vita's pillow on her death. This was the marriage of Harold Nicholson and Vita Sackville West.

Nothing could have been further from the ideal of what many people hold up as Traditional Marriage. Many who review their son's book, are repulsed and suggest that this was merely an arrangement between two gay people.

But I think that it gives us a clue to what a partnership between two people who had decided not to own or control the other or their children might be like.

As I look below the surface, their marriage stands for something that surely most of us would prefer.

Ultimately the marriage "succeeded," according to Nicolson (Their Son Nigel), "because each found permanent and undiluted happiness only in the company of the other."

It gives me a clue that the Natural Marriage has survived in small pockets and that we can know how it works. We don't have to invent it. We can simply observe its embers and see the potential for its flames to burst out again. Natural marriage feels like this:-

Would you want a partner who loved you for yourself? Who never judged you? Who took a keen interest not only in your successes but who comforted you in all your losses. Would you want a partner who did not claim that you were the sole source of her happiness? Would who want a partner who knew that they had your heart and that they did not need to own you body or your mind. Would you love a parent who did not seek to control you as a child? Would you like to have a parent who was honest and straightforward with you and who lived their own lives openly before you. Would you like to have a partner with whom you could share a great creative project?

Might there be more than one person who could share your life like this with you? Might this include both men and women?

My bet is that you would. So how do we find this Natural Marriage?

To find this love, each of us has to give up the central element of the "Traditional Marriage". We have to give up the idea that we own the other. We have to give up the idea of Property.

If we give up the idea that the other is property - our property - then we can give up the related ideas that the other owes us obedience. We can give up the idea that we have to reform the other. We can give up the idea that the other is the sole source of what we need. We can give up the idea that we own our children and that they are Icons of us.

What kind of experience can we have that will enable us to find this as a new reality? What can we do that will naturally erode the grip that the idea of property has over us?

At the centre of the courtesan relationship is not the idea of property. It is value. "Aha", you may say. "They are really just in it for the money!" No I said "Value".

The central Value of this type of relationship is that it offers a Trusted Space where you can be your true self. Such a space then offers you the best opportunity to grow as a person. This is the contract. Quite different from Genesis!

What Voltaire needed most for Emilie was her total support. Being on the edge of ideas, he needed a safe place where they could grow. What Talleyrand needed Germaine most for was her mind and her trust. He could be himself with her. Living on the edge of what was possible at a time when the world was being turned upside down and he was a key player meant that he too needed a safe place. This was also what Louis XV needed from Madame de Pompadour. She no longer slept with him after 5 years. But he could be a man with her while he had to be the king with everyone else. Emilie, Germaine and Madame de Pompadour received in return affirmation, protection and support. The bottom line was that they became powerful in the own right. They received their power by the paradox of giving all theirs away to the man they loved.

In this type of social arrangement, fidelity is not a property of the body but of the spirit. There are no claims on the other's body. The confidence and the happiness comes from the surety that the other is part of your soul.

All my courtesan examples have one thing in common. They are all taken from the upper crust of society. My second major clue of how to find Natural Marriage is discovered when we look more deeply at this point.

The clue is that parts of the aristocracy lived the life of hunter gatherers. If you were the younger son, you could not get a job or a steady income. You had to live by your wits. It is the same with artists of all time. Artists and aristos share this non property existence.

Today we can add a growing multitude of Free Agents. I wonder. Just as agriculture gave men and women a new experience of life and so changed our social relationships, will the growing experience of the Artists life or the Free Agents life also change our experience enough to change our social arrangements?

My experience the last 5 years gives me hope that this indeed is happening. I live now in a global community where I am finding kindred spirits where I feel an instant heart connection. I am working with friends where I feel utterly safe. I feel that I have my own little "Tribe" evolving around me.

A paradox is that the blogosphere has been a huge help. It has helped me live the Hunter Gatherer life and it has helped me find friends who are deeper than most that I have made before.

In my next post I will explore this new reality and wonder what it may mean to us as individuals, as new tribes and as a society.

Comments

[Hal]

Rob,

I think you have hit the key point with the word "property."

As an experiment ask a woman friend who is married (and where your intentions are not in the carnal realm) to go to a movie. I did this once when my friend’s husband was present and even asked his permission and she still could not bring herself to do this.

You dance around the issue of monogamy, a great undiscussable. Ask people to talk about this and a steel wall comes up that says “inquire no further” but inquire in a private trusted space and people will “dish the dirt” about what they would like to do or have done.

It really helps to look at the monogamy issue from a pan-historical and pan-cultural perspective. Helen Fisher does this in her book: “Anatomy of Love: A Natural History of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray.” The book received mixed reviews; however, it is thought provoking to see how cultures have established institutionalized arrangements that go beyond common views of monogamy.

Hal

[Andi]

Really a nice post. Great read
wish u a nice day greetings
Andi

[Umar Saeed Shah]

My name is Umar Saeed Shah I am Male from Pakistan. I am looking to meet the rigkt match for me,some one who is very similar to me,some one who understand me and love me.I don,t need time waster. I would like an Girl who is Trustworthy,Caring,Loving,Hardworking, Responsible and Faithful. I would like some one who is between the Age of 17 To 22 Email me with Pictures My Email Adress:[email protected] My Cell Number:+923086981690