In William Gibson’s play The Miracle Worker, Anne Sullivan is hired to be the governess and teacher of the young, undisciplined Helen Keller. The play follows the real life story of Keller’s journey from a world where she is locked inside her own body and mind, sensible of only taste, touch and smell, to her triumph and mastery of communication through a series of hand signals made in the palm of her hand. Most people go through life blind. I do not mean that they are blind to the world as it is physically as was Helen Keller. Even an illiterate high school dropout can use his eyes to see objects and people and interact with them. The kind of blindness I refer to is a metaphysical blindness, a blindness to life as it is conceptually. Given the opportunity to learn, Helen seized on it. So also should the metaphysically blind seize on reason and drink deep, for as Alexander Pope reminds us: “a little learning is a dangerous thing.”
This metaphysical blindness occurs at many levels but today's post wishes to name this blindness as it manifests itself in terms of human relationships. Ayn Rand writes in her essay Selfishness Without a Self, that the metaphysically blind prefer those relationships which are obligatory rather than those relationships which are chosen. The preference for obligatory relationships is a product of metaphysical blindness. People, not knowing themselves and thus being incapable of knowing others, feel incapable of choosing their associations, that is their friends. Instead, they choose to associate only with those who share certain concrete qualities such as being from the same place, living in the same house, working at the same job etc... The family for such an individual, which he or she did not choose, becomes more important than friends, which he or she must choose from amongst voluntary candidates.
The reason such people choose family over friends is because family associations do not require the individual to make a choice about those with whom they associate they simply associate on the basis of some feeling that they are duty bound to do so. The real problem for these individuals comes when they are required to make decisions about who they will add to their family i.e. their group of people whom they associate with based on duty. For many, this is the first and last choice they will make about those with whom they associate. At this point, the light of reason shines on most people and though not all obey it, most are influenced by it somewhat. If people were to obey the light of reason in choosing their associations (in this case their mate), they would choose based on at least three categories: physical attraction, ideological agreement and equality of ability. Before I explain where most people go wrong, let me elucidate the reasons why I believe these three categories are important.
Physical attraction is important because the sexual act is part of how two people express their love for each other. Without this attraction, the love between two people remains the kind of love that friends can share. I think the human race will join me in validating this point.
Ideological agreement is also important because without it people cannot experience the joy of truly knowing each other. Furthermore, the actions of a person follow from their thoughts so two people of differing philosophies will inevitably come into conflict, especially if they dwell within the confines of a home. Now some people will argue that there ought to be some differences because it is out of a couple's conflict that the identity of their relationship is formed over time. This sounds sensible to those with some experience but is the most trite nonsense ever spun. It is true that the couple's identity will be formed but the individual's identity will be destroyed. The destruction of the individual is the antithesis of a productive relationship which ought rather to improve both individuals as part of its function.
The final element of a productive relationship is equality of ability. The relationship between a teacher and a student is one which is usually unequal, the teacher knows and the student does not know. While human history is littered with plenty of examples of teacher-student relationships, they are all peppered with the taint of inequality. The Christian Bible even calls for women to be silent in church (a center of learning) and to learn at home from their husbands. Here feminists, is your patriarchy disabling women from self-representation. Such relationships are inevitably unfulfilling because they involve one participant worshiping the other. This is not to say that someone occupying the role of teacher and someone occupying the role of student cannot transcend this example. They might very well do so, if they are in fact, but not on paper, of equal ability. The products of an unequal relationship are feelings of resentment on the part of the student for never being able to repay the teacher and the same feelings by the teacher because they feel they have sacrificed and not received an equal reward to their sacrifice. Though the teacher in the relationship is often the one held responsible, they suffer equally with the student because the act of worship destroys the worshiper as well as the worshiped.
Now most people intuitively understand that they should benefit from their associations. Even the individual's membership in the family rewards them in exchange for their sacrifice of identity. So when choosing an association which will result in marriage, most people at least aspire to meet all three of these requirements. But here is the most common error: the assumption that the marriage relationship's identity will necessarily and appropriately replace the individual's identity. For most this assumption is unstated. Far worse off are those who marry without considering these categories. As an example, many marry because of the advent of a child i.e. on the basis of their sexual attraction which produced the child. Such a relationship, if not sustained by equality of ability and intellectual compatibility, will either make its participants miserable or simply not last. Worse off still are those who are shamed into marriage by a false ethic, in many cases a religious ethic. They have not even the necessity of caring for a child to unite them but only the assurance that they are ‘doing the right thing.’
In the first case of error (those who assess their mate but assume the loss of their own identity) the error is one of false premises. A whole life may be lived in marriage by two such individuals but there will be a persistent nagging feeling until the very end that despite what they have gained they have lost something irreplaceable (their own identity). Many associate this feeling with a nostalgia for youth (the last time they had an individual identity) and go looking for it when they begin to reflect on its loss (somewhere around the age of 40 or later). But many do not search for it – especially those who are reinforced by a philosophy or religion which upholds altruism as a noble value. This error is in some ways the worst error because an individual may live for years without knowing they have committed it.
In the case of the latter two errors, they are errors of action before thought. In such cases, marriage serves as a justification or rationalization for prior action. Though these individuals are worse off, the errors themselves are easier to avoid and many people are beginning to avoid making them. Nevertheless, religion continues to eclipse the light of reason in the minds of many modern people who are living according to an irrational ethic. Divorce has also provided such people with the option of undoing their mistake on paper though, admittedly, the mistake cannot be wholly reversed if there are children produced by the union.
So what is the proper ethic of marriage? Simply put, a proper marriage relationship grows from: 1) Both individuals consideration of their prospective mate based on the three categories above (possibly more based on individual preference) and 2) Both individuals valuating their own identities as more important than the identity of the couple, which really has no identity without the identities of both individuals. Duty or, as it is often cast in certain circles of thought, ‘altruistic love’ must never enter the picture because any love which destroys those who are meant to share in its delight can be no love at all.
