Tuesday 15 June 2004

Pic of the day: What is wrong with this picture? (Screenshot from the anime Happy Lesson, the Final.)

Marriage and war

"What is this?" you may ask. "Marriage and war? What have they got to do with each other?" (Unless you have a really quarrelsome spouse.) Well, dude, I'm gonna enlighten you. Oh yes. When you have finished reading, you should go like "Almighty Creator, I praise Thee for thou hast sent Thy humble servant Itland and shattered the dark coils of ignorance with the spear of Truth! Yeah, verily" and stuff like that.

(OK, probably not, but I bet you hadn't thought of this at all.)

The Americans and their allies are currently occupying Afghanistan and Iraq with heavily armed troops. It's not like this is the first time. It worked fine with Germany and Japan. Win the war, stay around for a while and make sure they set up political bodies similar to those of old England, and then withdraw with their eternal gratitude for saving them from themselves. How could it possibly go wrong? It is like giving candy to a small kid. After all, everyone wants peace, freedom and democracy. We don't want to kill you, and you don't want to be dead.

***

Now for something seemingly different. Let us look at marriage in America and Europe. While no longer lifelong at all costs, marriage is still quite exclusive. You can only be married to one person at a time. And we're literally talking "person" here. The way you go about it is, a man and a woman like each other so much (or like doing a certain thing together so much) that they decide to stay together until death or boredom part them, or they find someone much better. It is a highly personal thing. And even if the marriage ends, the individuals are just kinda washed back into the gene pool for another try.

One effect of this is a kind of gender equality. A woman may kick out the man after some careful preparation, but it is trouble if he just disappears without due warning. A widow may hope for some support from her mother, but by and large there is this feeling of the bridge crumbling under you while you are crossing the bottomless chasm. (Insert balrogs as needed.) And of course the man feels the same way, but that goes without saying. A man without a wife is like a hand without a ... uh, another hand. Yeah, that's it. It is just not the same. But you already knew that. It's on the clock radio when you wake up in the morning. "I just can't live without you, la la la." (And people wonder why I tend to sleep in. But onward with the revelations now.)

Well, friend, the Middle East just isn't like that. I could say Islam isn't like that, but I remain unconvinced that is the real reason. The Bible approves of polygamy (or at least oligyny – the practice of having a few wives) but most Christian countries abhor it like a cat abhors a vacuum. Then again, most "Christians" don't bother much with the Bible unless they need an excuse to persecute witches, gays, mutants or people who go to the wrong house to pray. It is more of a culture thing ... you are born somewhere and by the age of three or so you have a pretty good idea of how family is organized around there. From then on it is kinda locked down and follows you till you die or undergo some really major brain surgery.

Well, in the Middle East a man can have up to four wives without any adverse reactions from society. Furthermore, marriage is largely a family thing. Not in the sense of starting a new family, like it's here, but it's binding together two families. Or, quite frequently, two branches of the same family. After all, you don't just share your wealth with strangers, or your genes for that matter. You know what you have, you ought to know what you get as well. So, marriage is a family thing, and it stays in the family. Upon the untimely demise of the bridegroom, a brother or other close relative will take over the wife and children and associated property. (As also God commanded to Moses. But who cares about Moses anyway? Unless you need an excuse to prove that you are holier than the neighbor by keeping some random minor commandment, while ignoring the major ones such as not coveting your neighbor's ass or his wife or slave girl.)

OK, that pretty much sums it up. Now we add this small piece of metallic sodium to this vial of H2O and watch what happens when the two combine. (Don't try this at home, kids.)

***

The net result of polygyny is that men become a lot less worth really fast. In particular, men are much less worth than women, but then again women have known this for a while. Now the guys know it too. Let's say you kill some guy for the good of the country, because he was like rebelling and causing all sorts of trouble. So, with a sad heart you blow his brains out. Now, this is bound to be a real downer for the guy in question. He will no doubt be disappointed and really frustrated, unless you do it really fast, in which case he will barely have time to be surprised. Anyway, yeah, bummer for him. His wife and kids are probably not too happy either, but it's not like their world collapses and they don't know where to go next. They know exactly where to go and what to do, and so does everyone around them.

The guy's brother (or second cousin once removed, but let's keep it simple), who inherits the wife and the dowry and the family business, will probably also make sure to grieve visibly for a while. And it's not like brothers are in unlimited supply after all – you usually have only half a dozen or so, and some of them may already have fallen by the wayside due to disease, a duel and the two previous wars. But the point remains. Your brother lives on in your memory, and his wife lives on in your house, or his house if that is larger. So, things could be worse. Consoling the widow is hard work, but somebody's got to do it.

(Sociobiology predicts that getting an extra wife or two will do a lot to alleviate the grief of losing a relative. Sociobiology predicts that men really really like women, especially when young.)

So, killing a few men now and then doesn't make nearly as much of an impression as it would in a monogamous society. And men killing themselves in the process of killing others is also a lot more likely when they know that they're not bloody likely to get any as long as they have three older brothers, and offing the brothers is not just plain wrong (don't even think about it!) but also highly conspicuous.

The Americans ... er, Coalition, don't seem to have got this point yet. And until they see the terrain clearly, they are at a disadvantage. Perhaps they should ask the local experts. The Israelis know their Moses, that's for sure. So when some disheartened studmuffin blows himself to bits and pieces in a heavily crowded cafe, they DNA-test the remains and then go look up his family. It's a bit late to punish the guy, after all, but guys are not all that important. They are more like placeholders, or representatives of the family. So, the authorities go seek out the family, and then they run a bulldozer repeatedly over their house and any international protesters that may be camping the site. That makes an impression for sure.

You can't just come traipsing down there in the Middle East and expect everything to be like back home. You have to understand that in a polygynous society, a man is his brother's keeper ... or at least he keeps his brother's wife. So you can't just shoot one guy – you have to shoot his whole family and first cousins and second cousins and especially the grandparents who organize the whole show. And that's rather distasteful and something you really don't want to do unless you plan to destroy them completely as a people and take their land like you did with the Red Indians and the Inuits and the Aborigines and the Sami. (Yeah, we Norwegians are part of the Coalition too, although mostly in Afghanistan.)

That said, monogamy rules in peacetime, because you get a heavy demand for guys so there are fewer single men, or "loose cannons" as they are called in the West, who go around causing grief. The wives may prefer polygamy, but economists prefer monogamy, and money is the god of this world.