A Rational Defense of Marriage

Greetings.

Mr. Rowlands: Slavery is repugnant to most of us, except obviously those who "think of the children" and assert a positive right to married parents.

Mr. Stolyarov: You absolutely ignored my response to Mr. Howison’s assertion, which opposes the nature of all binding contracts:

“So, if Tom signs a contract by which he will give $2,000 to Tim if Tim delivers a shipment of tires to Tom’s automobile factory, Tim, once he receives the payment, has the right to “change his mind” at any time and “leave the contract” as he sees fit without delivering on the promised services? That is called fraud, Mr. Howison. A contract mutable by a single party is no contract; it does not have any sort of significance outside of a mere list of ideal circumstances of the proposed value trade. In order for a contract to be voided, all involved parties have to consent to this, and this consent needs to be objectively documented by an impartial arbiter (i.e. the court system or some entity whose testimony can be held up in court).”

If binding contracts are slavery (to whom and for what???), then call me a slavemaster all you want; the word simply loses meaning, just as “collectivism” or “marriage” would under your excessive broadening.

Mr. Rowlands: Your views of indiscriminate sex still only reflect your own mindset.  You classify everything that isn't a permanent marriage as indiscriminate.  Here's something to ponder.  Isn't it possible to discriminate out side of marriage?  Can't you pick someone you like?

Mr. Stolyarov: Yes, an individual can be “discriminating” when he picks one harlot out of a whole bunch of them in order to sleep with. This is not the sort of discrimination I refer to.  Aside from the immense health hazards (undisputed and known for centuries, as a matter of fact) of venereal disease from pre-marital intercourse, the firmness of the non-abstinent (anyone who has intercourse except with his/her legal spouse) is to be put under great question. If a romantic relationship is indeed of the highest possible proximity, and the act of intercourse is its ultimate manifestation, to share the ultimate manifestation with just anyone you happen to “like,” without also committing oneself to the responsibilities resulting from such an affection would mean downgrading “highest possible proximity” to “just something that feels good.” In that case, optimal compatibility goes out the window, and the sort of lecherous lifestyles experienced in abundance today come about.  “Highest possible proximity” loses its fysical capacity for manifestation, and thus is no longer capable of being manifested by the non-abstinent.

Mr. Rowlands: No, the problem is yours.  Your own desperate need for security drives you to begging the government to enslave mankind so you can maintain a firm foundation.

Mr. Stolyarov: “Enslave mankind?” Sounds like desperate demagoguery to me, and ridiculous in the context of what I actually wrote.

Mr. Rowlands: I have a different view.  I don't feel the need to enslave a woman to stay with me.  I offer her a choice.  I offer value for value, and try to make it worth her while to stay.  I don't care for a relationship based on coercion and fear.

Mr. Stolyarov: You seem not to like to agree on things in advance… The only sorts of voluntary agreements you would brook in your relationships would be agreements at the spur of the moment, which may well be mutually beneficial, but most likely will not be without a foundation of more essential principles to draw upon, enumerated in your individual contract (which contract you would not have). Ayn Rand had a name for acting on the spur of the moment without prior guidelines: pragmatism. (And that, too, only when the mentality was dressed up into something respectable in the universities where Dewey and James discussed it; in the hands of leftist hippies, it became whim-worshipping emotionalism, pure and simple.)

So you are essentially willing for your only line of defense for the relationship to be whatever moods you and your partner happen to be at the moment; and if your moods drift away from each other, and lapse into boredom, “diminishing returns,” or just the desire for some “new adventure” with someone else, you leave immediately. Of course, if you live on the spur of the moment, every slightest bit of turbulence or discomfort will spur you from the proper path to success and happiness. In order to live effectively, and to effectively relate to others in a relationship requiring intimacy and commitment, one needs prior foundations, and, moreover, explicit prior foundations to refer to. I suggest (only suggest, mind you!) that, even prior to marriage, one should have informal, non-legally binding contracts with one’s partner… give the partner a trial period, discover common value-premises and applications, attempt to formulate these explicitly, and draft a document of expectations for the relationship, which will be a useful set of guidelines for the future.

“Nothing can bring you peace but the [triumf] of principles.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Mr. Rowlands: But who ever said diminishing returns was evil? 

Mr. Stolyarov: Who ever said that losing values that formerly benefited oneself, due to one’s own decision was evil? Rand did. She called it altruism.

In order to justify indulgence without consequence, you are willing to go so far as to renounce self-interest in principle, just as Ms. Kanabe was willing to renounce self-interest in principle to justify abortion. I call this obstruction by periferals. And in this case, the periferal viewpoint must be wrong, not the basic premise that is renounced.

This debate is ultimately a debate about which lifestyle is moral and prudent; all the name-hurling w.r.t. “slavery, statism, and fascism” are mere cover-ups for the principal objection that you harbor for my theory. As Rand pointed out, dishonesty will be exposed as such inevitably—and thus, the cover-ups become cruder as this debate proceeds.

Mr. Rowlands: You thought that two people, who otherwise love each other, would simply abandon one another over the smallest of problems. 

Mr. Stolyarov: I merely do not assume that people are omnipotent or omniscient; however high their moral standards and affections, however worthy they are of a heroic relationships, this does not immunize them from mistakes of factual knowledge, or occasional slight misjudgments, or blowing those slight misjudgments out of proportion. In a relationship understood to be desirably permanent, these minor errors will be far outweighed by the capital gathered in each party’s “emotional bank account.” However, with the identity-swapper, who shifts commitments and relationships whenever he feels like it, this capital may be lacking, and any negative spur of the moment will bring about the “diminishing returns” you refer to.

Mr. Rowlands: Your comments on boredom carefully avoided discussing whether something can be objectively more boring than something else.  You claim boredom is just a state of mind, which you have full control over.  But that's not right at all.  You can't just turn off boredom, or pretend to be excited.  That's evasion and lying to yourself.

You can, on the other hand, avoid boredom by finding something more interesting to do.  Something interesting. But this just confirms that some things do get boring.

Mr. Stolyarov: No, you just need to take the effort to constantly expand upon your foundations; then you will proceed forward in all areas, without ever exhausting a given field or relationship. You seem to think that the resources to be attained from a given relationship are capped at a certain finite limit. I disagree. If a relationship were comparable to a cup filled with water, you might come to it on a warm day and drink the water and be refreshed—according to your mentality, you would then throw the cup away and move on to find other things.  I say, keep the cup and keep filling it! It can serve you indefinitely, and hold not only water, but soda, juice, coffee, even ice cream, if you wish it! (Of course, the variety of services a cup provides pales greatly in comparison with those of a relationship, but I used a simple analogy as a gateway to understanding a far more complex fenomenon.)

Follow my advice, and you will never be bored! You will have too many plans, undertakings, and ambitions on your mind to ever enter such a state.

Mr. Rowlands: If you get bored with the relationship, why is it that you should struggle to make it the slightest bit interesting?  Why not move on?

Mr. Stolyarov: Because a relationship is not a mere performance to be watched: it requires active participation, contract or no contract. And if you do not respond to it actively, you will be bored, of your own fault! You make the mistake of thinking inactivity is derivative of boredom. I say boredom derives from inactivity.

Mr. Rowlands: First, let me note that you said "It ceases to identify with state-based coercion".  Collectivism is an ethical position, not primarily a political one.  One manifestation is statism, but that's a consequence.  The primary fact is the belief that the group is an entity, with it's own values and interests, and the individuals are to be sacrificed to the collective.

Mr. Stolyarov: Rand’s definition of collecitivism is “[The doctrine] that the individual has no rights, that his life and work belong to the group (to “society,” to the tribe, the state, the nation and the group may sacrifice him at its own whim to its own interests. The only way to implement a doctrine of that kind is by means of brute force—and statism has always been the political corollary of collectivism.” (p. 149, The Virtue of Selfishness)

Note that state coercion is the only way to actualize a collectivist mindset; voluntary associations are automatically excluded from the definition. Some such associations may be altruistic, as may be individuals in a married relationship (for example, a husband who, returning from work each day, gives in to demands by his wife to cede to her the entirety of his earnings for her sole control), but not all marriages are altruistic. Most are not; anywhere where a mutual value trade is seen by both parties, and embodied in the contract, it is not an altruistic relationship.

Once again, this is a question of terms; I insist on very specific, delimited definitions and applications—you insist on a very broad definition of collectivism and an unjustifiably broad application (leading to the claim that, though not all legally binding marriages are collectivist, their underlying spirit somehow is. How can that be? Blank-out.).

Mr. Rowlands: What I said was that marriage can be a collective.  Not that it necessarily is.  Just that it can be. 

Mr. Stolyarov: We disagree on terms. Yes, some marriages can be altruistic (both in initiation and undertaking), but not all by far. Nevertheless, though you do not think all marriages share this vice you speak of, you nevertheless have gone to great lengths to enshrine these vices as a part of marriage in your essays on “Marriage” and “Valentine’s Gifts.” Then you proceeded, in discussions, to suggest that marriage as an institution was obsolete and legally binding contracts in relationships unnecessary. This looks like you are focusing of the bad possibilities of a given form of relationship, despite the fact that many people in this type of relationship experience almost solely the good possibilities! Malevolent-universe premise? Looks like a clear case of one to me.

I am
G. Stolyarov II

Greetings.

This debate is becoming quite redundant. Mr. Rowlands’ eight posts merely rehashed his old arguments, laden with gratuitous attacks; I am now a “communist” and “blackmailer,” and Mr. Rowlands has also plunged to the level of explicitly mentioning names of genitalia in several of his paragrafs. That much is utterly beneath my dignity to address; I can be fairly tolerant w.r.t. mere tactlessness and ad hominems, though I consider them moral atrocities; but “potty-mouthing” is something I will not sanction in conversation. In this debate, you have intellectually bankrupted yourself, Mr. Rowlands. Admit it.

Now, as for the glitch in the algorithm, my observation has always been that the value of an individual’s Sanction votes would equal Atlas Level + 1, in which Mr. Tingley, at Level 2, would have the ability to contribute 3 Sanctions per vote. If this was a mere glitch, and not a deliberate disenfranchisement, I deserve to apologize for thinking it to be the latter. However, I will not officially offer an apology until Mr. Perigo and Mr. Howison offer theirs for their disgraceful conduct on this thread. It shall then be a gentlemen’s exchange of honors; I will give SOLO what I owe to it, and it will give me what it owes me.

When I again come to Mr. Rowlands’ comments on the chronological queue, I will see if there is any shred of novelty to address in them. For the moment, I shall focus on Mr. Lamont’s words.

Mr. Lamont: If Mr. Stolyarov is not post-rationalizing, it’s utterly amazing that on every single issue of social freedom/individual rights, he comes down on the side of religious conservatism.

Mr. Stolyarov: Cloning? Drug War? Legalization of prostitution? How do my stances on those issues come down on the side of religious conservatism? I support legalized drug use, prostitution, and pornografy, though I deem all the above abhorrent, because I will always support the individual’s right to destroy himself fysically and intellectually; I will never consent to calling such actions moral, however, nor will I assent to granting individuals the power to destroy or harm others, which are implied in abortion, euthanasia, and child abandonment.

As for cloning, my defense of it is to be found at http://www.geocities.com/rationalargumentator/Morality_of_Cloning.html.

I think someone is trying to drop context in order to rationalize his impression of me as a “religious conservative.” No, I think for myself, and have more often been blasted by certain (though not all) religious conservatives for stances where I oppose them than those where I support them.

Mr. Lamont: As has been pointed out at length, the existence of a marriage contract does nothing to enhance the defining characteristics of a romantic relationship. There is nothing inherent in the properties of ink and paper that make people better partners, lovers, companions or friends.

Mr. Stolyarov: See my defense of explicit, long-term planning based on fundamental premises rather than spur-of-the-moment decisions without a prior foundation to build upon. Nothing can be clearer than the written word; if a couple establishes a written agreement of expectations for the relationship, they will be able to abide by them despite forgivable human imperfections (such as forgetting spoken promises, or falling prey to slight misunderstandings once in a while).

A contract for a romantic relationship is like a blueprint for a machine; you can be as skilled a technician as there is, but if you lack explicit guidelines for building the machine, you are most likely to err somewhere along the way, which will increase the likelihood of the machine’s dysfunctionality.   

Mr. Lamont: Over in Stolyarov-World, however, they play down the restrictive nature of contracts. They claim that because Ayn Rand focused on man as he could and should be, we can ignore the restrictive nature of contracts, because the ideal man would never consider breaking them. But Ayn Rand did not, for one moment, presume that every man would rise to her vision. If she did, she would have no need to expand on Objectivist politics and law, providing for police, justice, defense, contracts, etc. Ayn Rand recognized that Objectivism would not “overwrite” free will and that men would still choose to be irrational or have honest disagreements.

Mr. Stolyarov: Honest disagreements are precisely why contracts would be needed, to establish a standard for resolving them without annulling the relationship! Men need not be absolutely perfect, moreover, to fit the criteria needed for lasting romantic happiness; men are not omnipotent or omniscient, and Rand knew this, but she also knew that men were capable of heroic deeds, both within and outside relationships, and any expectation of failure runs counter to this sense of life and basic Randian metafysics about the nature of man and the universe.

Yes, some men will choose to be irrational, and suffer (this is not the same as making honest mistakes). Rand advised to let them suffer, but allow them to let no one else suffer! Moreover, their irrationality will not be a standard for my filosofy.

Mr. Lamont: People enter into contracts because they have little visibility of the other party’s moral character, honesty or integrity. We have no knowledge that other party’s word is good enough. A contract makes a promise legally enforceable. As relationships become more intimate, the need for contracts diminishes as we have greater visibility into the other party’s integrity and character.

Mr. Stolyarov: If we have greater visibility of the other party’s character, then we can make better contracts! Those contracts will be more consistent with the other party’s genuine intentions in the relationship, and moreover will announce to the world (as Mr. Tingley had aptly pointed out) that the relationship is exclusive. 

 To say, however, that one needs contracts less the more one knows an individual is tantamount to saying that one needs principles less the more one knows an individual; because a contract is but a binding affirmation of shared principles and a listing of their practical applications. Because of your experience with the individual, you claim the ability to substitute precedent for fundamental understanding, and typical generality for explicit guidelines.  In other words, you abandon the attempt to explicitly chart your relationship through reason in favor of “sensing” your way through it by means of faith in the other person. If Rand taught us anything about faith, it is that faith is the equivalent of intellectual abdication.

No matter how much I value someone, I will not “trust” their integrity “on faith.” I will not sacrifice myself in that manner.

Mr. Lamont: It’s entirely possible for couples to maintain a romantic relationship while remaining financially independent. Indeed, it’s desirable for all the same reasons that individuals should keep what they earn. Funding of joint financial projects/property can be negotiated as they arise. They might even formalize a strategy for how they would fund these in advance, but this needn’t take the form of a marriage contract. Even Stolyarov concedes that it’s unnecessary to collectivize wealth, implying that this isn’t the essence of the arrangement.

Mr. Stolyarov: The only thing I concede is that property-sharing arrangements should be made open to individual decisions in the context of their financial situations. Nevertheless, I have gone to great lengths to show instances in which property-sharing is of optimal benefit (the wealthy heiress example), and why that is true as derived from basic premises (see my segment on this in the treatise, paying special attention to the passage w.r.t. the mind-body integration offered by such an arrangement).

But you said it: where significant wealth is involved (as it usually is in a marriage), it makes sense to have a contract to protect the investment.

Mr. Lamont: However, there is nothing less “technically complex” and more pure than the spirit of a romantic relationship.

Mr. Stolyarov: You think a romantic relationship is the embodiment of simplicity? I would claim that it is the most complex interaction possible. The greater the proximity between two individuals, the greater the complexity, since an increasing amount of facets to those individuals’ personalities come into contact, along with an increasing fraction of those individuals’ material lives—nowhere are the contexts, intentions, and values to be traded more manifold and “technically complex” than in a romantic relationship. By comparison, a business exchange is immensely straightforward and far less