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The Case Against Marriage A Book in Progress by Glenn Campbell “Read it or weep!” Chapter 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 Next Chapter>> Production Notes | College Lecture | Glenn's Home Page   NOTE: This work has been ABANDONED as too long-winded and repetitive, but you are welcome to get whatever you can from it. The essential ideas are best summarized in a single page. Most of my new philosophical musings on relationships, etc. are now found in Kilroy Cafe. —GC, 5/09

Freedom

The Case Against Marriage - Chapter 6 - 7/22/2007

People claim to love freedom. They may even say they are willing to die for it. Once they actually have it in their hands, however, most people are likely to waste it and try their best to make it go away.

What is freedom? It is the ability to adapt to unexpected circumstances. If you are driving down the highway and see an interesting side road, freedom is the ability to explore that road and even make it your main route if it turns out to be beneficial.

An absence of freedom is when you are locked into the highway you originally chose and have no option to deviate from it. Regardless of any opportunities or roadblocks you encounter, you are condemned to continue straight ahead.

People sent to prison have relatively little freedom. They have to do what their jailers tell them to do, on the jailers' schedule not theirs. People not in prison but who are deeply in debt may have more freedom, but they are still condemned to go to work every morning, perhaps at a job they don't like. Relatively speaking, the people who have the most freedom are those who aren't in jail and who have enough money in the bank that they don't have to go to work. They can do whatever suits them and don't have to take orders from anyone.

Freedom is a limited commodity. Each of us born with only a finite reserve of it. Our freedom is limited to the waking hours we have left on Earth. During some of those future hours, we will not be free; we will be forced to support someone else's goals and follow roads that may not be the best for us. Only after our contractual obligations our fulfilled can we explore those interesting side roads.

From time to time we have to sell some of our freedom to get other things we want. If you have no money, no food and no place to stay, you might eventually be driven to get a "job." A job is where you exchange some of your freedom for money. For a period of time, you pursue someone else's goals according to their instructions. In exchange, you are paid money, which you can then use to buy what you want.

Freedom is traded for other things in various kinds of contracts. For example, when you get a job, you are entering into an agreement to show up at a specified time and perform a certain task. By its nature, every contract takes away some of your freedom during the time it is in force. In return, you get some sort of compensation, which may or may not be worth the amount of freedom you paid.

When selling your freedom, you have to be smart, like any other consumer or business person. While spending some of your freedom may be necessary, you don't want to pay too much for the product you are getting. Just like saving money, you want to preserve as much of your future freedom as possible. You shouldn't commit to, say, a five-year contract when you can achieve the same goals with a six-month contract.

Why should you preserve your freedom? Because you never know exactly what the future will bring. If you get a job delivering telephone books and a better opportunity comes along, you want to be able to take it. Even if you don't know what the opportunities will be, you obviously don't want to commit yourself to one project too far into the future.

Likewise, there are always unpredictable dangers and disasters ahead. A business that seems lucrative now may not be so in a couple of years due to changing markets. You want to be able to shift focus and change strategies based on what really happens and not be locked into what you predicted a few years ago.

What would you think of somebody who signed a lifetime contract? Wouldn't that be foolish? If a minimum-term contract is usually the best business practice, why do people sometimes choose the maximum term? The answer has something to do with freedom itself.

Freedom is scary.

Probably the only thing as frightening as having no choice at all is having too much. If there is only one highway, then you have to take it and there is not much point in worrying, but if you come to a crossroads where there are a dozen possible routes to take, the decision can be quite stressful. The situation is especially disturbing if the whole course of your future seems to hinge on this choice.

Young people start off in the world with essentially unlimited choice. They can become anybody and do anything; all they have to do is choose. They don't see this as an advantage, however; it can actually be quite painful. "Who am I?" they ask. "What am I going to be?" To have these questions hanging over you can seem like a prison in itself.

It isn't just you asking yourself these questions. Your family and friends also want to know. "So what are you going to do after you graduate?" From both inside and outside, you feel an enormous pressure to define yourself. Without a clearly defined role in life, you are drifting and empty. It is a very unpleasant kind of chaos, like floating alone in space. You are desperate for a quick identity, so you start shopping for one.

People who are just starting off in the adult world have a whole lifetime of freedom ready to be spent. They can make decisions now that may enhance or severely compromise their future options until the day they die. For example, if they choose to kill someone, that would greatly diminish their future freedom. If they continued their education, it might increase their options. Having a baby would certainly neutralize a sizeable hunk of their lifelong freedom. Whatever decision they make now, it is going to profoundly affect the rest of their lives.

Freedom is burning a hole in their pocket just as surely as if they had won the lottery. It is like giving someone a million dollars and saying, "This is all the money you are ever going to get." Having all that freedom staring you in the face at once can be very uncomfortable, and a sort of panic can set in. The same thing often happens when people win a big jackpot or receive an inheritance. They don't usually use the money wisely. There is a hidden emotional pressure to spend it quickly, just so the choice of how to spend it isn't hanging over them all the time. Very soon, the inheritance is gone and freedom vanishes again.

When people bypass a short-term contract and instead sign a long-term one, they usually say they are "locking in" a good deal. Merchants are cagy about this when the sell consumers things like magazine subscriptions. Subscribing to American Widget is $22 a year, but if you ACT NOW, you can get two years for only $34 and three years for only $39.95. That's a 40% savings off the one-year subscription price! Who wouldn't want to lock in the savings?

The magazine is willing to offer this deal because it knows full well that most consumers lose interest in widgets within a year and don't resubscribe. To the consumer, however, it seems like a great bargain. Right now, he is fascinated by widgets and he can't imagine any circumstance where he wouldn't be.

"Locking in" the savings has the added benefit of "locking out" freedom. The consumer is interested in widgets because they somehow give him identity. Without widgets, he would again be adrift and would have to come up with some new source of meaning. He is eager to purchase a long-term subscription in part to convince himself that his own interest is real and not ephemeral. Finding identity is hard enough; once you think you have it, you want to lock it in as quickly as possible before you change your mind.

True freedom carries with it great anxiety. With every choice, there is the burden of evaluating all the options and the knowledge that if you screw up it's your own fault. It seems so much easier, sometimes, to turn your discretion over to some outside force that will make your decisions for you. If you join the military, for example, they'll give you a spiffy uniform and a clear social identity, and they will make all your major decisions for you until the end of your enlistment.

Marriage is like that. It isn't enough that you have found someone you are compatible with right now. You want to "lock in the savings" by signing a long-term contract. You want to deliberately place yourself on a desert island with them so you never again have to face loneliness or the burden of choosing.

Well, that's a pretty long subscription, but at least you get some nice sign-up bonuses. There's all those gifts you get at the wedding and of course that nifty ring on your finger that clearly tells the world, "This is who I am."

ACT NOW to take advantage of this special limited-time offer. Operators are standing by.

Continued in Chapter 7