Thursday 14 February 2008

Pic of the day: Young people will often think like this, that they need "someone special". But is this a genuine need, or simply a cultural stereotype?

Duonormativity Day

Having a rather busy day (what with work and all) I kind of forgot the whole Valentine thing until shortly before midnight. In all fairness, it is not as entrenched or as ubiquitous as in the States. Even so, I would probably have noticed if I had spent the day looking in shop windows, for the merchants have embraced the day with fervor. And who can hold it against them? They are just riding the horse the way it is already running, after all. Duonormativity – the expectation that one must be two – is so deeply embedded in our culture as to be invisible. Of course you must have SomeOne Special in your life!

Well, it certainly seems to work for my sims. All of them from somewhere in their teens and up are happily in love with (and eventually living with) someone of their favorite gender. Well, except for Jenna, but she is incredibly picky. I still think I'll find someone for her eventually.

In the real world, however, things are a bit more vague. For instance, it was not quite like that in the past. It was present as a kind of ideal, or at least to Jesus it was, because he argued against divorce on the grounds that God had created humans as a pair. This is somewhat disorienting to meditate on if you believe – as do nearly all Christians – that Jesus was unimaginably single all his life. Actually the good book does not say that outright, but there are a couple passages that strongly implies it, where the rest of his family is listed but with the notable absence of any wife. Not that I'm comparing myself to Jesus really, but the thing is that he and the early church was actually pretty modern in this regard. At the time, polygamy was perfectly normal, as was no gamy at all.

Until very recently, the nuclear family only existed as a barely recognizable part of a greater lattice: The extended family, with uncles and cousins and second cousins once removed and so on, which again was a part of a larger clan. Marriage was not exactly the foundation of society, rather it was the glue or mortar that kept the foundation together. Marriage was way too important to leave to young people (and you better start young because death was an early and frequent visitor). Marriage was a contract between two families. Actually, marriage was often within the family, something the Catholic Church put an end to, but it is still common in the Middle East. But if you had to marry someone outside the village, you better make sure that the family heads were in on it, because it was not about your love, it was about avoiding a house divided against itself. It was about preserving the foundation of society, which was the clan or tribe.

Modern romance seems to me a fusion of sexuality and religion – the soul's desire to merge with Perfection (the male principle) or Completion (the female principle). While sexuality is inherently "twosome" only for the brief duration of the intercourse, religion is for eternity. "Thou shalt have no other gods before me" (and not after me either). The ecstatic unity of body and the ecstatic unity of spirit have somehow become conflated into this mostly unrealistic dream of The One who can be everything for me.

She means everything
to me...
She means everything
to me...
I know that I need her.
There comes a time when we must be
with those we love and she means everything to me.

Chris de Burgh - She means everything to me.

As if. There may be The One who can be everything for you if you are a very simple person, I guess, and I don't even mean that in a good way. (Although you can be simple in a good way, that is not what I mean here.) I've known some amazing people, among them the young woman who shows up frequently in my older entries. Talented beyond the imagination of most people, bouncing with energy and overflowing with vitality, amazingly sane for her age, she must surely have been one of a very few. I am sure she could make someone deliriously happy (and hopefully her husband is that right now) but she was no goddess. There are no goddesses. People imagine, being misled by popular culture, that somewhere out there is the person who can make you complete and bring you true happiness. They are sorely mistaken. That person is not out there, but in there, in your heart.

Just as I would rather not worship a woman, I would rather not have sex with God. Even the innocuous phrase "Bride of Christ" (popular among Christian mystics and pietists) makes me shudder inside. I know it is meant as a metaphor – and it is probably a good one, not that I would know for sure having never been a bride – but there are bound to be people who take it all too literally, as they also do with all other kinds of religion.

Anyway, let us talk about my sims. Because I have already realized that my sims are far more like ordinary people than me. Of course, the big question is whether ordinary people really exist. They sure seem to, and they even seem to believe so themselves. But perhaps they, like my sims, are actually being played and don't know it. Not least on a day such as this.