Last night was “garbage night” in our rural neighborhood. A beautiful night, strangely insect free, made taking out the garbage cans as great an experience as taking out the garbage cans can be. I dragged some cans and boxes up the driveway; my spouse also dragged up a can. It was a shared experience, but not one that we need to share. Basically whoever remembers that it is “garbage night” puts the cans by the mailbox, and whoever is out by the mailbox the next day drags them back down the driveway. For all the years of our marriage, we’ve simply taken on the task at hand, one carrying out when the other is otherwise occupied. Mutual volunteerism.
But there are all those old stereotypes of women “assigning” the task to men. The task is bothersome but necessary in a world that produces so much garbage while simultaneously trying to clean itself up for the neighborhood. So, we understand that in some households taking out the garbage is a chore that sometimes leaves the occupants miffed. The miffing comes for two different reasons: One miffs that the task is his; the other miffs that she has to tell him to do it. At least, that’s the stereotype.
Two online headlines caught my attention this morning. The first is “Can humans ever understand how animals think?” By Adam Kirsch. The second is “CNN: Women marrying themselves as a symbolic expression of self-love” by Katherine Hamilton.*
You’re going to ask now, “What can the two have in common?”
First, if there’s any animal whose thinking is beyond complete understanding, that animal is the human one. Second, proof of the last statement lies in the second title.
So, I learned a new word today: Sologamy. And as a man, I’m perplexed by the female brains that engage in its practice. Marrying oneself seems to be fraught with as many problems as it is with solutions. The problems include taking out the garbage on garbage night. The solution is that there can be no argument about who is responsible for the task.
The woman who marries herself—and if you read the article, you’ll see she goes through the whole ceremony thing—has vowed to stay with herself for better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and health, till death undoes her. This is one marriage in which one spouse never outlives the other. I assume that none of these public ceremonies is a simple elopement. Why run away, after all, when you can buy an expensive dress and throw an elaborate party so you can walk down some aisle to greet yourself? (Are there mirrors included in this ceremony? Does the bride kiss the bride’s reflection? So many questions…)
Certainly, the movement of those seeking to marry themselves is a logical progression of our times—or at least of our occidental affluent times. Selfies galore, pics of what we are about to eat at a restaurant, tens of thousands of pics and videos on our phones, every moment captured for a memory chip so full it has to be supplemented by the Cloud: This is the contemporary world in which westerners live (I can’t speak for those in societies with less affluence and more adherence to tradition). Are we so enamored of our selves that we have become modern Narcissuses? Or are we narcissistic because we have been convinced that we are victims incapable of dealing with injuries of any kind, believing as we do that the Cosmos has handed us specifically a bad life that requires some spiraling inward for solace?
Whatever the motivation of women who marry themselves, they still face the problem of taking out the garbage. The seemingly “ugly” parts of life, the unwanted but necessary chores, remain. We all have to deal with “bad hands,” bad events, sometimes even outright evil people. And whereas it is true that all such episodes can leave lasting marks on the hippocampus, they do not have to drive us to acts that defy both common sense and reasonable social norms.
What has brought us to this seeming aberration other than our inability to understand how the human animal thinks? Or why it thinks the way it does? Should we embark on a longterm study of sologamists? What would we discover? That they live marriages that are argument-free? That they tend to have many nights-out until their friends are all occupied with their own marriages? That they have a lower divorce rate than traditionally married couples?
Did the rise of the modern world in which we do not grow our own food, have more luxuries than ancient kings could dream of, and wallow in more idleness and leisure than 200,000 years of humans have had bring us to this point? Should we blame people like Robert Burton for starting us down the path of self-wallowing with his 1628 book Anatomy of Melancholy, a book whose culmination in our times is excessive concern for feelings, especially hurt feelings? Should we point to Freud for initiating in our culture a new quest, the quest for Identity in a burgeoning population? Or is sologamy merely the natural outgrowth of teenage confusion enhanced by confused mentors and acquaintances who “never found themselves”?
See, I guess I’m one of those who cannot understand how the human animal thinks or why the human animal thinks the way it does. People wanting to assert their Identity have for generations adopted various fashions and rejected commonality. Teens in Goth black, bikers acting tough, gang members defying reasonable law, and professors in tweed jackets—we humans are a strange lot because of our need to be different as a way to establish Identity. And now, we find ourselves marrying ourselves.
I’m befuddled. I’ll never understand the human animal.
*https://www.theguardian.com/news/2023/may/30/can-humans-ever-understand-how-animals-think and.https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/05/30/cnn-women-marrying-themselves-as-symbolic-expression-of-self-love/ Both accessed May 31, 2023.
But there are all those old stereotypes of women “assigning” the task to men. The task is bothersome but necessary in a world that produces so much garbage while simultaneously trying to clean itself up for the neighborhood. So, we understand that in some households taking out the garbage is a chore that sometimes leaves the occupants miffed. The miffing comes for two different reasons: One miffs that the task is his; the other miffs that she has to tell him to do it. At least, that’s the stereotype.
Two online headlines caught my attention this morning. The first is “Can humans ever understand how animals think?” By Adam Kirsch. The second is “CNN: Women marrying themselves as a symbolic expression of self-love” by Katherine Hamilton.*
You’re going to ask now, “What can the two have in common?”
First, if there’s any animal whose thinking is beyond complete understanding, that animal is the human one. Second, proof of the last statement lies in the second title.
So, I learned a new word today: Sologamy. And as a man, I’m perplexed by the female brains that engage in its practice. Marrying oneself seems to be fraught with as many problems as it is with solutions. The problems include taking out the garbage on garbage night. The solution is that there can be no argument about who is responsible for the task.
The woman who marries herself—and if you read the article, you’ll see she goes through the whole ceremony thing—has vowed to stay with herself for better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and health, till death undoes her. This is one marriage in which one spouse never outlives the other. I assume that none of these public ceremonies is a simple elopement. Why run away, after all, when you can buy an expensive dress and throw an elaborate party so you can walk down some aisle to greet yourself? (Are there mirrors included in this ceremony? Does the bride kiss the bride’s reflection? So many questions…)
Certainly, the movement of those seeking to marry themselves is a logical progression of our times—or at least of our occidental affluent times. Selfies galore, pics of what we are about to eat at a restaurant, tens of thousands of pics and videos on our phones, every moment captured for a memory chip so full it has to be supplemented by the Cloud: This is the contemporary world in which westerners live (I can’t speak for those in societies with less affluence and more adherence to tradition). Are we so enamored of our selves that we have become modern Narcissuses? Or are we narcissistic because we have been convinced that we are victims incapable of dealing with injuries of any kind, believing as we do that the Cosmos has handed us specifically a bad life that requires some spiraling inward for solace?
Whatever the motivation of women who marry themselves, they still face the problem of taking out the garbage. The seemingly “ugly” parts of life, the unwanted but necessary chores, remain. We all have to deal with “bad hands,” bad events, sometimes even outright evil people. And whereas it is true that all such episodes can leave lasting marks on the hippocampus, they do not have to drive us to acts that defy both common sense and reasonable social norms.
What has brought us to this seeming aberration other than our inability to understand how the human animal thinks? Or why it thinks the way it does? Should we embark on a longterm study of sologamists? What would we discover? That they live marriages that are argument-free? That they tend to have many nights-out until their friends are all occupied with their own marriages? That they have a lower divorce rate than traditionally married couples?
Did the rise of the modern world in which we do not grow our own food, have more luxuries than ancient kings could dream of, and wallow in more idleness and leisure than 200,000 years of humans have had bring us to this point? Should we blame people like Robert Burton for starting us down the path of self-wallowing with his 1628 book Anatomy of Melancholy, a book whose culmination in our times is excessive concern for feelings, especially hurt feelings? Should we point to Freud for initiating in our culture a new quest, the quest for Identity in a burgeoning population? Or is sologamy merely the natural outgrowth of teenage confusion enhanced by confused mentors and acquaintances who “never found themselves”?
See, I guess I’m one of those who cannot understand how the human animal thinks or why the human animal thinks the way it does. People wanting to assert their Identity have for generations adopted various fashions and rejected commonality. Teens in Goth black, bikers acting tough, gang members defying reasonable law, and professors in tweed jackets—we humans are a strange lot because of our need to be different as a way to establish Identity. And now, we find ourselves marrying ourselves.
I’m befuddled. I’ll never understand the human animal.
*https://www.theguardian.com/news/2023/may/30/can-humans-ever-understand-how-animals-think and.https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/05/30/cnn-women-marrying-themselves-as-symbolic-expression-of-self-love/ Both accessed May 31, 2023.
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