Once RNI finishes his series, I will read the essays 1st to last again ( and hopefully a book in the future as it is good intellectual candy).
Addressing marriage from a Human nature perspective and looking to the animal kingdom as well, male/female rearing are present observationally. There is a correlation. Yet, there are also instances of single and multi rearing.
The essence of RNI’s thinking is legality. While nature is bedrock foundation supporting the institution under law. Since laws should and ultimately be objectively then his arguments are non contradictory and defendable.
The essays do note monogamy as a key attribute of marriage, distinguishing it from poly relationships.
My question wasn’t about force vs choice. The thought was more around if monogamy IS a fundamental attribute of LEGAL marriage, then how are we legally and morally to address couples who choose to open marriages?
If it is choice, then this slope becomes icy and once again open the door to argument that choice supersedes the definition of marriage. Which it should not.
While we haven’t seen RNI’s additional essays on legal of kind and difference yet to address alt marriage situations, one would think that if a marriage legally were to then become open that would have to be a DIFFERENT type of legal arrangement?
Brad: I have followed you for a LONG time. This is excellent work, well thought out and thoroughly explained. However, experienced as I am in taking “metaphysical” marriages apart, I keep returning to the utter folly of it all. I have urged you to consider “human nature,” not so much what it IS, but what the term actually means. I know what you are trying to do , but, at 81, I know you are pissing in the wind. I have concluded, after many years in the trenches, that we - the human race - are in the later stages of entropic disintegration. People no longer respond to logical argument, no longer think like we do, no longer think much at all. It is frightening where we are headed, and the good thing is that I will not have to endure it as long as you will. Sorry about that. Keep on trying. I appreciate you.
It is an incontrovertible fact that stepparent relationships are not, overall, as nurturing for children as biological parents. It is an uncontroverted fact that every gay marriage is a non-biological parenting relationship, and thus suffering from this known deficiency. Yet the argument turned to "How will it hurt you?" The question of how it hurts children has been utterly sidestepped by this disingenuous society. And so much for "agree to disagree." To object to gay marriage is verboten and hateful. I argue it's the other way around.....
It’s the argument so often heard today. “It’s self evident and if you can’t see that you are deficient intellectually and or morally. These “pond scum thinking” attackers refuse to ever go deep, they cancel their own thoughts and ignore any idea or narrative that does align with their beautiful Lilly pads floating on the pond.
If monogamy is fundamental to marriage, how can we reconcile the conflict of willing spouses to explore potential agreed upon and open relationships if both parties consent?
An example that comes to mind is Ayn Rand and her relationship with Nathanial Brandon. She was open with her husband, it was known and agreed upon, and while many outside the inner circle were critical of the actions she never backed down ( as I am aware) that her actions were moral and self virtuous.
The answer it to allow, while also supporting and explaining true and time tested Human nature to the ignorant and innocent.
If an adult couple does indeed want to explore, experience or test boundaries, then who are we to stop them? No one can guarantee a marriage; people grow and change.
Marriage is obviously a very complex institution, meant to address more than one need for both participants and their offspring. We can't force it upon ANYONE. It must be chosen.
Note that the article here doesn't ask about how "same-sex marriage" will VIOLATE your rights. Instead, the article IGNORES rights completely - except, of course, the entirety of the article is offered as a RATIONALIZATION for VIOLATING the individual's right to his OWN life and his OWN effort, including the right of contract.
Put simply, this article does NOTHING but treat EVERYONE as the PROPERTY of the Collective, to be disposed of as the Collective sees fit, to satisfy the Collective's desires. It is the DEFINITION of ANTI-Rights and consequently the DEFINITION of ANTI-American.
Hi Rad4Cap: Just wondering if you've read all the essays in my marriage series? And for your information, I will be addressing some of the issues you raise in future essays.
*"Just wondering if you've read all the essays in my marriage series?"*
Since you asked, I started backwards through them. I have a TON of objections to the premises and arguments you made in Five alone - including your conception of rights (not to mention the applications of that conception). But reading the comments, you explicitly declare:
*"I plan to publish a couple of essays on the proper relationship between marriage and government"*
Since that "relationship" is the crux of my argument, and you claim you have NOT yet addressed that "relationship" in ANY of your essays, that means my objections here have NOT been addressed in your Marriage Series to date - just as you did NOT address a single argument I made with your reply here.
Thus reading back will only have me raise MORE issues against your philosophy without the fundamental problem being addressed in ANY of them.
Since I presented more than one idea in my last post, your singular response of "Outstanding" does not identify which idea is "marked by superiority or distinction; excellent; distinguished". And it certainly does nothing to identify WHY any of those ideas are supposedly "outstanding" to you. That leaves the one word response with essentially no meaning whatsoever.
No. I identified THE fundamental point - that the individual has the RIGHT to his OWN life and his OWN effort and there is NEVER a RATIONALIZATION for VIOLATING that individual - ie there is NEVER a RATIONALIZATION for RAPE.
The ONLY thing you did in response is post an EMPTY "Nu uh!". That is not a *rational*, let alone a moral (aka rights-respecting), response.
1) Would you rather it be called something different?
That way, the definition of Marriage would be untouched by the Liberal desire to subvert it: Other unions could be called "Espousal" and the participants can be called "matched" or "coupled".
Would that help?
2) Because, at the end of the day, Mankind IS moving away, biologically, socially, mentally, etc., from traditional and long held understandings of Men and Women. The entire race is evolving, whether you like it or not. The sexes are blending and the definitions are no longer clear. This is Fact.
3) And attempting to police this new frontier IS EXACTLY how Liberals try to manipulate, destroy, condone and control thought, emotion and behavior, sir.
How are you going to prevent the deformation of marriage?
Will you become one of them? An Orwellian ideolog hell bent on maintaining status quo?
More simply, marriage is the societal affirmation of the biological imperative to reproduce and raise children under the most optimal arrangement: a mother and father committed to supporting and nurturing each other and their children through numerous acts of selflessness and sacrifice. Marriage is a legal, and often religious, demonstration of that commitment. Cohabitation and all other couplings are cheap imitations that are motivated by something else. Simply put, if you aren’t prepared for the sacrifice and commitment required to raise children, even if you can’t have any, you shouldn’t be having sex.
Spiritually and mentally healthy societies have a powerful interest in endorsing marriage as a union only between man and woman because it affords the best environment for raising the next generation. Societies that endorse all the other cheap imitations tacitly endorse promiscuity and self-indulgence; character flaws that lead inexorably to personal and societal moral decay, as we have painfully witnessed over the last 30 years. Self-indulgent, immoral people cannot govern themselves properly and societies saturated with those people devolve into an environment of low trust, intolerance, and oppression. Free, high trust societies only exist when self-discipline and selflessness are engrained in the culture.
All the self-evident perverseness today of men in women’s restrooms, locker rooms, and sports and the grooming of prepubescent children by exposing them to sexually promiscuous and confused adults and their behavior and their sexual indoctrination—far beyond children’s ability to comprehend at their stage of development—started with societal acceptance and endorsement of deviant sexual behavior, then the elevation of couplings based on it to the same status as traditional marriage. Yes, your lack of self-discipline and acceptance and endorsement of the perverse doesn’t affect my marriage when it’s rare, but as it becomes commonplace it does adversely affect my marriage, my kids, and my society. It creates an environment where raising kids to be healthy, moral, responsible adults becomes increasingly difficult and often requires taking them out of public schools and limiting their exposure to activities where the acceptance and indoctrination of immorality is ubiquitous. The royal road to personal—and societal—happiness and prosperity is paved with self-discipline and selflessness.
Hi Lauren: Thanks for you comment. I'm wondering who the "your" is in the second sentence of the third paragraph. Does it refer to me or are you using is generically to refer to all people or those who promote postmodern marriage?
Your definition (first paragraph) is intriguing...
And then you choose to set a moral boundary that's very shortsighted and impossible to police: "if you aren’t prepared for the sacrifice and commitment... you shouldn’t be having sex."
This is a very troubling statement. People have feelings. People aren't robotic. They don't understand the way you do, they live in incredibly disparate conditions, mental, financial and emotional structures. You cannot police them. You have no right to do so.
The best we can do is MATURE Mankind. We must inform them... but we can only point the way. They must choose.
Good dissection of postmodern marriage but the institution was in trouble before the alphabet people showed up with their advocacy. "All good marriages are the same but but bad marriages are each bad in their own ways". Meaning that good ones require perfection and if any component fails, the whole enterprise crashes. Since people are far from perfect, there are lots of crashes. Good marriages in the real world require ignoring small imperfections. But it depends on the definition of small. Some people evidently regard abuse as small and stick with it. Not my definition of small. And the weirdness is old. "Caesar's wife must be above suspicion ". Consider also Octavian's sister who was married to Mark Anthony. She raised the children he had with Cleopatra after their suicides. Duty called.
Once RNI finishes his series, I will read the essays 1st to last again ( and hopefully a book in the future as it is good intellectual candy).
Addressing marriage from a Human nature perspective and looking to the animal kingdom as well, male/female rearing are present observationally. There is a correlation. Yet, there are also instances of single and multi rearing.
The essence of RNI’s thinking is legality. While nature is bedrock foundation supporting the institution under law. Since laws should and ultimately be objectively then his arguments are non contradictory and defendable.
The essays do note monogamy as a key attribute of marriage, distinguishing it from poly relationships.
My question wasn’t about force vs choice. The thought was more around if monogamy IS a fundamental attribute of LEGAL marriage, then how are we legally and morally to address couples who choose to open marriages?
If it is choice, then this slope becomes icy and once again open the door to argument that choice supersedes the definition of marriage. Which it should not.
While we haven’t seen RNI’s additional essays on legal of kind and difference yet to address alt marriage situations, one would think that if a marriage legally were to then become open that would have to be a DIFFERENT type of legal arrangement?
Brad: I have followed you for a LONG time. This is excellent work, well thought out and thoroughly explained. However, experienced as I am in taking “metaphysical” marriages apart, I keep returning to the utter folly of it all. I have urged you to consider “human nature,” not so much what it IS, but what the term actually means. I know what you are trying to do , but, at 81, I know you are pissing in the wind. I have concluded, after many years in the trenches, that we - the human race - are in the later stages of entropic disintegration. People no longer respond to logical argument, no longer think like we do, no longer think much at all. It is frightening where we are headed, and the good thing is that I will not have to endure it as long as you will. Sorry about that. Keep on trying. I appreciate you.
It is an incontrovertible fact that stepparent relationships are not, overall, as nurturing for children as biological parents. It is an uncontroverted fact that every gay marriage is a non-biological parenting relationship, and thus suffering from this known deficiency. Yet the argument turned to "How will it hurt you?" The question of how it hurts children has been utterly sidestepped by this disingenuous society. And so much for "agree to disagree." To object to gay marriage is verboten and hateful. I argue it's the other way around.....
It’s the argument so often heard today. “It’s self evident and if you can’t see that you are deficient intellectually and or morally. These “pond scum thinking” attackers refuse to ever go deep, they cancel their own thoughts and ignore any idea or narrative that does align with their beautiful Lilly pads floating on the pond.
If monogamy is fundamental to marriage, how can we reconcile the conflict of willing spouses to explore potential agreed upon and open relationships if both parties consent?
An example that comes to mind is Ayn Rand and her relationship with Nathanial Brandon. She was open with her husband, it was known and agreed upon, and while many outside the inner circle were critical of the actions she never backed down ( as I am aware) that her actions were moral and self virtuous.
Thoughts?
Thank you for the meaningful thoughts.
The answer it to allow, while also supporting and explaining true and time tested Human nature to the ignorant and innocent.
If an adult couple does indeed want to explore, experience or test boundaries, then who are we to stop them? No one can guarantee a marriage; people grow and change.
Marriage is obviously a very complex institution, meant to address more than one need for both participants and their offspring. We can't force it upon ANYONE. It must be chosen.
Note that the article here doesn't ask about how "same-sex marriage" will VIOLATE your rights. Instead, the article IGNORES rights completely - except, of course, the entirety of the article is offered as a RATIONALIZATION for VIOLATING the individual's right to his OWN life and his OWN effort, including the right of contract.
Put simply, this article does NOTHING but treat EVERYONE as the PROPERTY of the Collective, to be disposed of as the Collective sees fit, to satisfy the Collective's desires. It is the DEFINITION of ANTI-Rights and consequently the DEFINITION of ANTI-American.
Hi Rad4Cap: Just wondering if you've read all the essays in my marriage series? And for your information, I will be addressing some of the issues you raise in future essays.
*"Just wondering if you've read all the essays in my marriage series?"*
Since you asked, I started backwards through them. I have a TON of objections to the premises and arguments you made in Five alone - including your conception of rights (not to mention the applications of that conception). But reading the comments, you explicitly declare:
*"I plan to publish a couple of essays on the proper relationship between marriage and government"*
Since that "relationship" is the crux of my argument, and you claim you have NOT yet addressed that "relationship" in ANY of your essays, that means my objections here have NOT been addressed in your Marriage Series to date - just as you did NOT address a single argument I made with your reply here.
Thus reading back will only have me raise MORE issues against your philosophy without the fundamental problem being addressed in ANY of them.
Outstanding.
"Outstanding"
Since I presented more than one idea in my last post, your singular response of "Outstanding" does not identify which idea is "marked by superiority or distinction; excellent; distinguished". And it certainly does nothing to identify WHY any of those ideas are supposedly "outstanding" to you. That leaves the one word response with essentially no meaning whatsoever.
Dude, I think you are missing the point.
No. I identified THE fundamental point - that the individual has the RIGHT to his OWN life and his OWN effort and there is NEVER a RATIONALIZATION for VIOLATING that individual - ie there is NEVER a RATIONALIZATION for RAPE.
The ONLY thing you did in response is post an EMPTY "Nu uh!". That is not a *rational*, let alone a moral (aka rights-respecting), response.
1) Would you rather it be called something different?
That way, the definition of Marriage would be untouched by the Liberal desire to subvert it: Other unions could be called "Espousal" and the participants can be called "matched" or "coupled".
Would that help?
2) Because, at the end of the day, Mankind IS moving away, biologically, socially, mentally, etc., from traditional and long held understandings of Men and Women. The entire race is evolving, whether you like it or not. The sexes are blending and the definitions are no longer clear. This is Fact.
3) And attempting to police this new frontier IS EXACTLY how Liberals try to manipulate, destroy, condone and control thought, emotion and behavior, sir.
How are you going to prevent the deformation of marriage?
Will you become one of them? An Orwellian ideolog hell bent on maintaining status quo?
(I'll share your article.)
More simply, marriage is the societal affirmation of the biological imperative to reproduce and raise children under the most optimal arrangement: a mother and father committed to supporting and nurturing each other and their children through numerous acts of selflessness and sacrifice. Marriage is a legal, and often religious, demonstration of that commitment. Cohabitation and all other couplings are cheap imitations that are motivated by something else. Simply put, if you aren’t prepared for the sacrifice and commitment required to raise children, even if you can’t have any, you shouldn’t be having sex.
Spiritually and mentally healthy societies have a powerful interest in endorsing marriage as a union only between man and woman because it affords the best environment for raising the next generation. Societies that endorse all the other cheap imitations tacitly endorse promiscuity and self-indulgence; character flaws that lead inexorably to personal and societal moral decay, as we have painfully witnessed over the last 30 years. Self-indulgent, immoral people cannot govern themselves properly and societies saturated with those people devolve into an environment of low trust, intolerance, and oppression. Free, high trust societies only exist when self-discipline and selflessness are engrained in the culture.
All the self-evident perverseness today of men in women’s restrooms, locker rooms, and sports and the grooming of prepubescent children by exposing them to sexually promiscuous and confused adults and their behavior and their sexual indoctrination—far beyond children’s ability to comprehend at their stage of development—started with societal acceptance and endorsement of deviant sexual behavior, then the elevation of couplings based on it to the same status as traditional marriage. Yes, your lack of self-discipline and acceptance and endorsement of the perverse doesn’t affect my marriage when it’s rare, but as it becomes commonplace it does adversely affect my marriage, my kids, and my society. It creates an environment where raising kids to be healthy, moral, responsible adults becomes increasingly difficult and often requires taking them out of public schools and limiting their exposure to activities where the acceptance and indoctrination of immorality is ubiquitous. The royal road to personal—and societal—happiness and prosperity is paved with self-discipline and selflessness.
Hi Lauren: Thanks for you comment. I'm wondering who the "your" is in the second sentence of the third paragraph. Does it refer to me or are you using is generically to refer to all people or those who promote postmodern marriage?
Your definition (first paragraph) is intriguing...
And then you choose to set a moral boundary that's very shortsighted and impossible to police: "if you aren’t prepared for the sacrifice and commitment... you shouldn’t be having sex."
This is a very troubling statement. People have feelings. People aren't robotic. They don't understand the way you do, they live in incredibly disparate conditions, mental, financial and emotional structures. You cannot police them. You have no right to do so.
The best we can do is MATURE Mankind. We must inform them... but we can only point the way. They must choose.
Good dissection of postmodern marriage but the institution was in trouble before the alphabet people showed up with their advocacy. "All good marriages are the same but but bad marriages are each bad in their own ways". Meaning that good ones require perfection and if any component fails, the whole enterprise crashes. Since people are far from perfect, there are lots of crashes. Good marriages in the real world require ignoring small imperfections. But it depends on the definition of small. Some people evidently regard abuse as small and stick with it. Not my definition of small. And the weirdness is old. "Caesar's wife must be above suspicion ". Consider also Octavian's sister who was married to Mark Anthony. She raised the children he had with Cleopatra after their suicides. Duty called.