Love and the society

Love is a feeling between two persons, mostly man and woman. Each of them attracted to the other, in similar or different ways. We often find ourselves attracted to similar type of persons.

Society sees love as the precursor to marriage. Although love and marriage are two distinctive subjects. In prehistoric societies, a dominant male may possess several females. Later societies ritualize these possessions into a ceremony called marriage. However, as societies in ancient times are not productive, many males could not afford to feed another person, as such, one rich (dominant) male often married several females. Modern society retained marriage, however, it no longer practices polygamy, which is probably due to a better capacity for males to feed the entire family and the more socially powerful females demanding more possession of males.

Marriage is important because its the fundamental unit that ties a person to its place. We do not belong because of a house, or property, but because our social nature rooted our domain onto a group of persons, mostly family members. In a family, the adults take care of the young and old. It has a stabilizing effect on the society. No wonder we celebrated and defended marriage throughout history, often implemented harsh punishments to those how broke the bonds.

Today, with the rise of large corporations, mobile workforce, and global network, I felt that family as the foundation of the society is deeply shakened. Increase in divorce rate were often said to due to reasons such as 3rd party, violent behaviors, or irrespsonsiveness. But I felt the enabling factor for divorce is the shift of the socially powerful from a family-centered communities to a commercially-centered communities. Our wealth, success, and fame is driven by our recognition in the corporate world. Thus, family is no longer look upon as an institution that governs our lives. Its the big companies, our colleagues, and customers. We only answer to the latter and the former is becoming dispensible.

Family will still retain the role of comfort and care giving. The enabling factor for comfort and care, I would argue, is much base on love. Naturally, man and woman has needs and they have to be satisfied. Love, no matter if its between a husband and wife, or any other persons, will contain a strong emotional bonding and maybe physical intimacy. In the case of a Geisha offering comfort to her customer, it can be love although she was paid to do so. Payment is a way for society to share resoures to the worthy. When some man gives money to his wife, we do not call him the customer but the function is similar. At the end of the day, we need to be counselled, comforted, be emotionally healed by our love ones through kind words and feeling of security. But when this function is no longer afforded by a family, the residents may break off and family fall apart.

I do not know where this entails our society. Higher divorce rates, and possibly multiple relationships throughout ones life. However, the happiness of the person shifting between relationships cannot be assured, and its much base on the maturity of the society to cope with liquidating resources and handling emotions. Also, in conservative society, where divorce is not encouraged, potential divorcees may hurt themselves more in starting the process through bad mouth and cumbersome administrations. Nonetheless, many of the legal and social processes will change and a more love-efficient society should emerge.