Modern Marrage: Part 4

I've put off the conclusion of this series and finally have a little free time to say what I want to say.

I've touched on how marriage today is different than any other century and that the differences are actually what make modern marriage better.

I've touched on what the modern marriage is composed of--traits, benefits of, and what the purpose of it is.

Then I talked about how marriage is an agreement that you will approach changes together.

Success (or, how to have a successful marriage)

The Self-help and improvement genre of literature is full of books and authors who will tell you there is only one way to have a successful marriage. Religion, too, will tell you that only one form of marriage is acceptable. But how can this ever be an accurate statement? There are 7 billion people on Earth--each different--which means there are 21 billion combinations of potential relationships--all different.

My point is that no two relationships are the same, and no two marriages should be the same either. People try to cover all the bases by saying get married and make a vow that you'll take care of the other person physically, emotionally, spiritually, etc. And you'll be monogamous, and what's mine is yours, and you'll both worship the same religion so that one of you doesn't end up in hell without the other person, etc etc. But the truth is, there ARE highly functional relationships in which both spouses agree to not be monogamous, don't share their possessions, don't worship the same way, and these couples are very happy and successful in life.
The question then, is how? How can two very different people fit together and make it work?
To answer this question you have to take a few steps back. You need to look at how they define success. You have to look at what their goals are--not the surface goals, but the root goals that these people have as individuals.

Happiness
Happiness in life isn't defined by what you possess. Having a specific kind of marriage isn't what makes a person happy, just like having a specific kind of car won't make you happy either.--there is something at the root of it. Owning a nice car might grant you access to a specific level of prestige, it might inflate your ego, it might release a few endorphins in your brain that make you think you're happy, but it isn't the car that made you happy--it was the chemicals in your brain, or the prestige, or whatever else. The car is just a vehicle you use to obtain your root motivation. Marriage of a specific kind is just a vehicle as well. People use marriage the same way that they do cars!
Unfortunately, happiness that is founded on possessions isn't very long lasting. Possessions degrade and fade away, nice cars break down and are expensive to fix, marriages collapse and it takes a good chunk of money, time, and emotional energy to fix or even get out of them. Nice cars and fancy marriages aren't for everyone and won't make everyone happy.

Successful, Modern Marriages are...
...Unique. They mold to the people, not the people to the marriage. Marriages are a tool that people use to reach their root objectives and ought to prioritize functionality over fancy.

Now what?
For those of you who are already married, I'm not saying stir the pot and make changes right away--if at all. I'm suggesting that if you aren't happy with your marriage, something needs to be done. Something needs to change, you and your spouse need to adapt to the modern times, need to adapt to each other, need to find a solution that works that is customized to your relationship not to the world. Marriage isn't a statement to the world and even though society thinks it has to have its hand in it--enforce it, sanction it, legally protect it--marriage really doesn't need an advocate. Marriage needs YOU and YOUR SPOUSE and that's it. Let the world do what it wants with marriage.
A confident person will approach life without regard for the influences around them because they trust themselves enough that they aren't going to be swayed negatively and trust that they have the opportunity to pick and choose what positive traits they want to incorporate. A confident marriage works the same way: it isn't swayed by the outside world, but is swayed and shaped by the individuals and their root objectives.

For those of you who aren't married. Change. If you aren't married but want to be (and I'm guessing you are if you are reading this) then you need to come to this one conclusion: that the way you've been thinking about marriage is utterly wrong. --it's not your fault, you've been programmed to think that way by [insert anything here: Disney, religion, family, society, etc]. --Now that you know that you've been thinking incorrectly, change. Embrace reality. Embrace knowledge. Gain a little confidence in your abilities to form relationships and to traverse life and obtain what you want from life. Take the risk with the next person you meet, or the next good relationship you have (or currently have), that you'll find a way to make it work for what you really want. And leave the possibility open that you'll never be married but will find what you want without using the tool called marriage.
Most single individuals cringe and shy away when hard times happen while forming relationships. They think "It would never work out for us" or "I can't deal with this for my whole life" and then they miss the opportunity to uncover what their root desires are. They spend their lives focused on the surface: "he/she doesn't fit my lifestyle therefore it would never work. He/she doesn't look like I want, doesn't do what I want, doesn't act how I want, doesn't--me me me me me me me." --they turn relationships and marriage into a "me" thing, which it has and always will be a "we" thing.
Like I said in part 3: The only reason a marriage fails is because one or both people see their way as the only way, and they give up trying. If one person gives up, the other is forced to let go as well and then it's just a matter of how far they fall. When you give up in this manner, you're sending the message, "I want this relationship to work MY way and if I don't get what I want then I won't cooperate and I'll leave."

Marriage is a great thing, but just remember that it isn't the marriage that counts, it's the relationship underneath.

Everybody got their problems

99 Problems

This song doesn't fit 100% but here goes...

Why is it that people blame others for their problems? I'm not talking about when clearly something is their problem but they blame it on other people, like when someone gets in a wreck and blames it on the idiot they crashed into, I'm talking about when people get offended. I'm talking about when people are annoyed. I'm talking about when people fight over things and jihad and crusade. I'm talking about when people get something stuck in their head that they believe so strongly that they can't see the other side.

And I'm guilty of it too.

It is human nature to be one sided--it's how the mind works, it's how we sleep at night. It's because our minds try so hard to make sense of this life and if we don't understand something we compartmentalize it under some other umbrella so that we don't have to think about it. We only see what we see, and that doesn't mean it's the truth. It's just perspective.

But people base their whole lives on their perspective--and how else can they? We are the product of our experiences, and our experiences are biased by our perspective.

So, I suppose I'm not really talking about blaming others for one's problems, I'm talking about hypocrisy. People look at their perspective and they see things they can't understand and they compartmentalize them in some category that makes sense to them. They look at differences in opinion as right and wrong; differences in actions as acceptable or unacceptable behavior; and they let other people's methods of thought or action affect them positively or negatively.

People are always under the assumption that society is following the same rules as they are, the truth is that there are very few rules that have been universalized among society. People think society governs sexual conduct, ethical conduct, and they assume that we live in society and follow mores and norms because they provide us with safety and resources. But a society is really just a collection of people, each with a different perspective.

The assumption is that by living in a society there will be greater good for oneself than living outside of that society; what people fail to recognize is that there is greater bad by living in society as well. Instead of choosing to be even-keel, a member of society chooses to have higher highs and lower lows.

I'm not talking about society in general, though this applies to them as well, what I'm referring to is smaller sub-groups of society. Churches, cities, corporations, families, race communities, gangs, etc.--anywhere that people come together. Parents take on a burden for their kids, church leaders go out of their way to help their members, corporations pay the managers more than they employees and shareholders reap the profits even though they barely work at all.
You hear stories about parents complaining about their kids because they put effort into them and are disappointed by them. You hear church leaders frustration with their flocks at not following the principles they teach, you hear shareholders complaining about the poor work of their company employees; and yet none of this is related. It's all in perspective. The kids don't see life as an adult--they haven't lived long enough. The church members pick and choose their ethics because they don't know any better or because their perspective is such that they don't care. The employees and managers of companies make decisions in the moment that effect the future.

Is society doomed? No. Because society has operated this way since the dawn of man and it will continue to operate this way forever. There are good parts, even great perks to being in society, but nothing is free. And if you know how to take advantage of the system, you can see great things from being in society and diminish  your own loses--thereby limiting risk--but it always comes at a price.

People see others as the problem when they themselves are the problem. Not because they blame their problems on other people, but because they lack knowledge, they lack skill, they lack ability, and most importantly, they are trapped in their perspective.

By my perspective, everyone would confront problems in their relationships and discuss them in an environment where both parties agree to not take offence by what is said and both parties agree to act cool headed and not purposely say or do things to hurt the other party. But not everyone sees this as the best way to go. Some people see problems in relationships, conflict, as a negative thing, and they desire everyone to avoid it, not talk about it, keep cool headed, ignore it, and find a work around at whatever expense. Is one more correct than the other? No. They are just different.

The wise person walks through this world understanding two things: 1) that others don't see things the way that they do, and 2) understanding that we aren't meant to know the truth and therefore can't be more right than the next guy/girl.

I think one of the keys to this life is to simply understand, nothing more, nothing less.

Life is... Unsociable

I remembered that I forgot to follow up with this article and I have some time to write up a little bit. [DISCLAIMER: This article is deep and abstract.]

The point I made in my "Life is: Suppressed" article was that our society has made advances in technology and culture that don't contribute to our being social. Social networks, for example, don't help you to socialize, they help you to stay in touch without socializing. In other words, instead of calling up your friends or dropping by their houses, you instead check out what they wrote on twitter or on facebook.
I think this is a grave error on the side of definition. My definition of socialization includes growing closer bonds, discovering personality, and sharing experiences in the present.

I say specifically in the present because of my understanding of what I call vantage points: No two people experience the same experience in the same way. This is attributed to physical vantage point (I.E. what they see) but also their level of understanding at that point in time, and their past experiences--for sake of argument, those two are the same thing [you only know what you know because of your past experiences].--To illustrate: when you are little, everything in the world seems different than when you are older; things that you can't explain and are mesmerized by when you are young are demystified when you are older, and parents don't experience things in the same way that their children do.
We learn from one another when we share our experiences with one another. Even something as simple as mathematics is learned by sharing what we know about it based on our past experiences (1+1 has always been 2 to us). One step further: when two people look at a picture, they are both perceiving the same thing. Creativity, the stuff that allows us to make up our thoughts, is shared between the Artist and person A, and between Artist and person B. One more step: When person A and B talk about the painting, they are sharing their experiences with one another, what they like, don't like, what they think it means, etc.

Even one more step:  Let's say you aren't looking at a painting, but the real life event, say a man throwing a frisbee to his dog. There is no Artist, it's just A and B. A and B, without verbally communicating, are perceiving the same thing. This is a precious moment because although they are experiencing different emotions, A is impressed by the dog, B is impressed by the photogenic qualities of the light reflecting off of the dog, they are experiencing this moment together and it is a moment that cannot be repeated due to the 4th dimension (time). It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The experiences they are experiencing right in that moment, for the first time, they can never be replaced--they can't go back in time and change what they felt.

After the moment has passed and they are away from the scene, A and B can have a discussion. A mentions he was impressed by the dog, B mentions she was impressed by how beautiful the scene played out. B recalls that, yes, the dog was impressive and she understands how A feels about it because she can recall all of her perceptions of that moment and can re-experience it all in her head. Although B experienced the scene primarily as how "beautiful" it was, the true magic that occurred was that she was simultaneously experiencing ALL things--as far as her ability to perceive is concerned--but that she chose a dominant experience because of her personality and past experiences.

"As far as her ability to perceive is concerned"--what I mean is, people with better or worse vision see things more clear or less clear than others. Being in a different location can prevent you from seeing a cheap shot in a boxing match. &c. Nonetheless, she absorbed all of that information, but her brain processed it in a different way.

A bond was also created between A and B because they both shared the same moment in time. Sharing the same taste, sound, smell, touch, or sight is fantastic, and artists are coming up with new ways all of the time to portray these things, but no matter how hard you try, you cannot replicate time. Time is not an empirical sense and yet it is something we want to share with other people. Part of our human condition of isolation bugs us and urges us to share all of our sense with other people, yet time is impossible to share.

I know what you're thinking: photographs and films can bridge the gap between time and space; but you're wrong. When someone creates a photograph, they are CREATING a photograph. They are making a new replica of a moment of time. Philosophically speaking, the moment that a replica is made, it ceases to be the original and is left to be governed by it's own forces. A painting of a pipe is not a pipe.

(translation: This is not a pipe)

What you are looking at is a replica of a pipe, but not really, you're looking at a replica made into digital form, stolen from the internet and pasted into this article then transmitted over your monitor. --you're looking at hundreds of rays of light.

The point is. If it isn't real and original, it's just not the same.

Socializing on the internet is different from socializing in real life. We only perceive as much as can be converted into digital form and typically artists and digital scanners like to only take a portion of the whole so that they can emphasize certain parts of it.

Don't be fooled. The "social" experiences you are having over the internet are not real, they are knock-offs of reality. True, you may still experience things from them, but my purpose in writing this article is to leave the question over your head: Which is better: to socialize in real life and build better, stronger bonds and connect with other people, or socialize on the internet, where it is easier, but only share mild to weak bonds and possibly not connect with other people?

It's a lot to think about. Feel free to talk to me in person and I'll persuade you some more.