A Vision of the Future
Part Three
Love And Marriage?
”Free love? As if love is anything, but free! Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but all has been utterly helpless before love. High on a throne, with all the splendor and pomp his gold can command, man is yet poor and desolate if love passes him by. And if it stays, the poorest hovel is radiant with warmth and life and color.”
-Emma Goldman, Marriage and Love
It is a beautiful dream to think that tow human beings that have met for a few brief encounters in their youth should come together and make an eternal and unbreakable vow to each other; that their love will be for each other and each other only, until their very last days in this life. But then the dream takes a turn for the worse and the nightmare of reality begins to take control of the course and we’re off.
The inadvisable union that was just started by this lovely couple has come together not through a deep understanding of one another and themselves, but through a series of illusions and delusions. From the very start of their existence the children are reared in a way that leads them down the inevitable path towards marriage. Being brought up in this society where marriage is the final outcome of our love lives. The nuclear family is the basis of the economic system, the prime unit as it was. Inheritance is passed down within the structure, loans and mortgages are available only through the individual or the married couple, never the communal household.
Children are taught only that married life is one of the “sacraments of the church” and a “civil duty of a citizen of the state.” Indoctrinated from birth by false ideals and images of gross distortions of natural truth. Little girls are pushed down the road of homemaker and child-rarer, while little boys learn their duties of going to the office or factory, loading their briefcase of machine gun. We are never allowed to be natural and grow along our own lines. Superstition and customs start to separate us, where we view the other sex as very different from ourselves, and we even believe that it is impossible for us to relate to or understand each other. As we grow, this misconception is reinforced by the world we live in, other sexist stereotypes and gender roles begin to develop and again we are pushed into our niche. And the idea of sex, which is shown, so much to us, through media images, is never taught, is never show, is never allowed to be natural. We are allowed to know nothing of our bodies. So, when the moment comes we have no idea how to deal with it. We have no clue how to deal with the emotions, the changes, and the consequences. All of this is new to us, and we are left to our own devices since it is taboo to talk openly about these things. The only idea we have on sexual relations is that of shame, given and fed to us by the church, so that we are made to feel horrible and dirty for our natural tendencies and desires, so we suppress them, until we fall into the old familiar institution of marriage.
So we join the chorus of voices call for our monogamy and marriage. Jumping whole-heartedly into the person that you have chosen to complete your life with, to develop a monopoly of the heart and spirit. To engross myself in one person and they in I, without the chance for anyone else to find my, or their attention and affection. We’ve watched our families for so long that we accept their way of doing things; their lives. Like them we close off our eyes and block out any emotion, any passion, any desire for another person. But once we’ve realized just how horrible and torturous our mistake was, what are we to do? To leave? To break it off ? WE ARE TAUGHT TO CHERISH THE MISTAKE!
Marriage is the most horrible of prisons, marriage is a cage, marriage is a straight jacket, “Marriage is the ultimate and most lethal gas chamber in our society.” Marriage and love are not one and the same. Love can grow and develop freely of marriage, and marriage is quite free of love. It is based around the idea of family pride and alienation from the rest of the community as a whole and blocking off this group of people as a separate economic and political unit. Marriage creates an eternal dependent relationship that will slowly destroy the individuality of those involved and those of the children who are innocent of any complacency within this institution. In any marriage the two individuals are expected to submit their personal development and will for that of the great good of the family, but no two people can grow at the same pace and same direction as each other forever. The marriage is doomed to end in unhappiness eternally or divorce. Divorce is marriage dissolved under authority of the state and/or church, but what right does a human institution have to tell people that they are no longer in love, that it is not working. With the community as a whole being pulled into the intimate affairs of a couple, the separation results in bitter disputes. Each is vying for the sympathy of the whole, the right to say, “I was the good one and you were the bad one!” Utterly destroying an and all bonds that remained, splitting and hurting children who are given this as their model for loving relationships.
“So long as love begets life no child is deserted, or hungry, or famished for want of affection.” So many children in this society are unwanted and unloved, they are for many a safety value to save a floundering relationship, a last ditch effort to preserve a marriage through the sanctity of parentage. But many don’t want the children and they are neglected, left utterly alone, and the third parent takes over; the television. Bending and binding the child further to the society of exploitation. But if people are allowed free reign of their lives and loves, their relationships will be happier and less of a manuscript, less of a pre-packaged happy meal life. If they are shown true love and not false images of happy families. If they can do as they wish and have lives that they desire. If parenthood is not as sacrament, but something of pleasure, won’t children be happier? The parents will be able to grow with the child into part of the community and into a free individual in their own right.
We don’t reject the marriage outright, we reject the idea of their “sacrament” or “civil duty”, their “contract”, their “holy communion”, their alienated economic unit all out controlling monopoly on life. We say if you want to wed, do so, but you are free. Do so on your own accord, from your own desire. Love who you want, love how you feel. Regardless of sex, race or any other characteristic. Never attack each other, never bind yourself. Lose no love in the affairs that might follow, but if dissolution comes, then let it flow and grow from it, part ways and remember the mistakes that came and went. If you choose not to, then let your life bloom and do as you wish as well. Find the attraction that suit you best, cultivate the relationship you want and be free to find new ones. Never gluttonize your desires. You are reasonable, you are sensible, you know what is best for you. Just remember you are in affairs of the heart and don’t take advantage of others. Be true to yourself and others. Love is for all.
Like a tree growing in the depths of the inner city, form a small plot of the earth, polluted and clouded with debris and rubble, with nourishment and care even love can grow in this world of hate, fear and alienation.”