I agree, marriage has lost much of its meaning/luster. The present institution is a shell of what it was.
Marriage in the past was:
- A way to ally disparate families together
- A means of keeping family resources focused (e.g., two cousins wed, so property remains within the family)
- Necessary for the survival, rearing, and good standing of wives and children
Today it is more a vestigial institution based around vague notions of 'love' and 'fulfillment' that it is poorly equipped to satisfy. Marriages end in divorce when people marry 'for love' then hit a rough spot where they 'stop feeling the love'. It's rather insipid.
However, the marriage institution is still fairly necessary for proper child-rearing (unless anyone wants to argue a single mother does just as good a job rearing children as a man and woman jointly). And reproduction, and the rearing of the fruits of reproduction, is a principle concern of Man's. If at any point it stops being a principle concern, we can presume whatever peoples it stops being a concern for are on the road to decline, replacement, and quite possibly extinction, to be supplanted by more fecund peoples.
Modern marriage combines a ceremony involving family where two people publicly commit themselves, followed by a state-enforced contract where two partners agree to pool assets for a reason that is not specified in the contract but is usually understood to be for the joint rearing of children.
There are also marriages for companionship (childless marriages, homosexual marriages), which are somewhat odd in nature -- why do you need a marriage contract & ceremony to have a companion? Yet there is still strong demand for this from people who want the "official" stamp of approval on their companionships, which they perceive marriage as conferring.
We can also say that modern marriage in general is something done for the sake of the woman. There can be benefits to the man, but the woman needs it more (financial security while she quits work or works less to focus on child-rearing; the removal of herself from the dating pool, leaving behind her orbiters, etc., as she focuses on husband and children). So a lot of the times, the situation today is "Woman wants marriage, man is ambivalent."
Now... you may look at that and say things like
- "I don't need a marriage for companionship"
- "I don't need a marriage to rear children in"
Most of the women you will meet however will want marriage and/or children. They are going to pressure you for it after enough time goes by, and if you cannot deliver it they will leave.
So, it puts you in a bit of a pickle, unless you're certain a.) you never want kids, and b.) you're happy being the eternal bachelor.
If you want to hang onto one girl, it's tougher. You now have to look specifically for a girl who is fine not marrying,
and remains fine years down the road (remember, people change. Women in particular).
If you want to produce children, it's tougher still. The level of risk/uncertainty for the woman goes even higher, which means the level of commitment she wants from you goes higher too. You can just go around knocking chicks up and fleeing (dead beat dad'ing it), but not all those chicks will keep the pregnancy, and the children you have that way won't necessarily work out the best. Or you could find a really chill chick (or better still, one who is already independently wealthy) who's very trusting of you and fine to cohabit with you long-term to raise kids without marriage... but then, isn't that exactly like marriage, only minus the ceremony / official contract? Most states will even
de facto marry you after N years spent cohabiting that way.
That's what I mean when I say "humans haven't figured out a better way than marriage yet."
You can try all the clever ways you can think of to get away from it, but you just end up either right back at it, at something that is basically an adulterated version of it, or as one of the few rare characters pursuing the lifelong bachelor strategy -- but if you do that, you are, indeed, "one of the few", and most of humanity is still doing the same thing it always has.
You know the Book of Ecclesiastes... one of my favorite passages from the Bible:
1 The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem:
2 “Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.”
3 What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun?
4 Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever.
5 The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises.
6 The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course.
7 All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again.
8 All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing.
9 What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
10 Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.
11 No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them.
Chase
