Here's an article I wrote about two years ago. I'd like to hear your opinions... CHAINS OF MARRIAGE Regardless of the fact that it is a structural component of many people’s subconscious, it is rare to offer a coherent, rational critique of the dominant attitude (at least when official rhetoric and conformism are concerned) that “the idea of marriage, certainly the highest achievement of humankind, the only morally acceptable way of life, is an inevitable consequence of every true love, in accordance with both the earthly, as well as the heavenly ways”. The latter are too high for my reach, so I will deal here primarily with the prosaic marital plains which, in any case, most people roam. It might sound malevolent, still sensing a need to demystify this “primary social cell” (the ambiguity of language allows me to agree with religious zealots here), I would like to stress that marriage as we know it was in no case with us from the beginning of the human race (it is actually a historically younger occurance, which instantly invalidates a simple-minded thesis about some kind of “naturalness” of this institution). When some individuals became richer, rising above other members of the group as a result of their commercial cunning and, all too often, also due to outstanding cruelty, spoils of war and the like, they wanted to fundamentally dissociate themselves from the other members of the tribe since they (thanks to the development of the forces of production) didn’t need to cooperate in the production process any more. Therefore tribes started to disintegrate into smaller production and consumer units – more or less atomized families (thus allowing richer individuals to pass down all their material valuables exclusively to their descendants). Through successive decline of the primeval community others also gradually accepted such a particularization of human relations - monogamy, private ownership over the means of production and a violent, antagonistic and competitive class society. In such a way “the noblest achievement of mankind” is actually a result of special economic interests which marriage simultaneously also perpetuates; it serves those interests and strongly supports them. Marriage represents a particular pact against the world, “egotisme a deux” (egoism in two), a frantic search for a “heaven in a heartless world” (Bob Black). The function of the Church and the State in this case is granting a “licence for copulation”. From times immemorial presented as a defence of sociability, sexual ethics can very well be immoral. Oppressive taboo’s have dire consequences. Large parts of the Middle East for instance, perhaps the most notorious stronghold of sexual purity, are also infamous for the most abominable abuse of (primarily) women, especially if they have wronged against social mores and the patriarchal order. Sexual violence and frustration are omnipresent and from there also spring other forms of structural violence – authoritarian schools, organized religion, neurosis, depression, drug abuse, youth delinquency and more generally aggression and conservative attitudes (see www.violence.de). Nevertheless, that doesn’t stop puritans (religious, “feminist”…) from damning pornography for instance, while at the same time they allow a form of human relations which, despite its outward ”romanticism” (How different it is from that of Blake, Byron or Shelley!), inevitably relies on the existence of a sexual market, sexual competition and other features typical of our four-legged relatives as well. From such an ethical outlook it therefore comes across that “the animal becomes human and the human becomes animal”(Marx). So long as love and tenderness keep on being perceived as a limited resource, humankind will undoubtedly continue to crawl where it crawls today.Unfortunately, it seems that some people haven’t got enough love even for a single person. They consider themselves faithful to each other, yet they distrustfully shiver at the possibility that their partner could have feelings for other people as well. They condemn hippies for promiscuity, in the meanwhile burning children with napalm in some Third-World country or coldly passing by their homeless fellow-creature who sleeps on the city streets, forgotten and forsaken just like other latent suicide candidates. There is a boundary between those who aren’t ashamed to express tenderness and those who consider it a sin, a boundary determined by social attitudes which developed through the process of socialization, but sometimes I fear as a “genetically induced” mentality as well. However, we should bear in mind that a primitive kind of sexual communism was probably the original state of mankind. Anarchopacifist, vegetarian commune presupposes and implies »a man with a different sensitivity and consciousness: people who would speak another language, move differently, be guided by different stimuli; people who have developed an innate impediment towards cruelty, brutality, nastiness. Such reconstruction of instincts is apprehendable as a factor of social change only if it grasps the social division of labour, the relations of production themselves. They would be shaped by men and women who are of clear conscience while being humane, tender, sensual, who are no longer ashamed of themselves– for “the token of achieved freedom is not to be ashamed of oneself any more” (Nietzsche)«(Herbert Marcuse, End of Utopia). In an anarchocommunist society there will be no abandoned children, for “so long as love begets life no child is deserted, or hungry, or famished for the want of affection”(Emma Goldman). There will be no reason and need for prostitution in marital, extramarital or any other sense. Rational, democratic, cooperative production and distribution will replace the savagery of the capitalist market, state tyranny and the exclusivity and detachment of the present-day nuclear family. The estrangement of spirits will lose its institutional basis. Revolutionaries, representatives of a new sensitivity, fighters against every kind of exploitation and oppression, so that work would become play and “humans sacred to each other” (Seneca), shouldn’t remain blind to the emancipatory potential of free love. An awareness of the goals’ interconnectedness is necessary. Disregard for a particular end undermines the means altogether; there is a certain unity between the destination and the journey. Love truly is a child of freedom, and true love is unselfish and compassionate. Through open-heartedness and willingness to give we also receive more. In the words of Emma Goldman: "Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of all laws, of all conventions; love, the freest, the most powerful molder of human destiny; how can such an all-compelling force be synonymous with that poor little State and Church-begotten weed, marriage?" www.altpr.org/apr14/group_sex.html - Communal ethics of eroticism, free love and the extended family www.iisg.nl/%7Ewomhist/socandsex.html - Socialism & Sexuality www.punkerslut.com/sexualityessays.html - thoughts of a free spirit www.polyamorysociety.org-Polyamory Society www.uk-poly.net– UK polyamory forum & personals
Doesn't anybody have any thoughts or feelings on this subject? Am I completely alone here (as usual), and is it only possible in some (still non-existent) society were people COULDN'T BEAR to act towards another human being in present ways? Then again in the 60s...
I totally get it. Too tired to post anything intelligible, though. I hope one day, like when I can find enough hippies\strange people to hang out with, I can truly feel and act on my unconditional love for everyone. It's something I know is in me but mostly I suppress for obvious emotional-safety reasons. The same obvious reasons most people would say they don't believe in loving everybody, though they believe in being kind. Because right now I'm just trying to survive the effects of our crazy world. I really want to love everybody and be loved by everybody, though. I'm actually the person who started the "I love you! Do you love me?" thread a loooooong time ago under a different name. I forgot the password or something, thats why I started a different account. I think you should post this in the "Rainbow" section. I think the Rainbow family knows what free unconditional love is all about, that's kind of the Rainbow family's purpose - that's why they say "welcome home" to every single person who shows up at a gathering. I'm totally getting myself to the first Rainbow gathering I can, to see if it's really as good as it sounds. *goes back to lurking shyly* Edited: upon re-reading it seems what you posted has more to do with free sexual love + love love, but oh well whatever, it's all basically the same thing... I like how it's all very anarchistic, I'm very much an anarchist too... I'm too tired to post. I want to create a hippie settlement somewhere in the US, sometime in my life you should join it...
Hi, Incense, you really made me feel better (it’s nice to know I’m not the only extraterrestrial on Earth). Firstly, I always value feelings over sex, but since I don’t separate those two, I believe in free love in a sexual way also. That it’s principled rather than opportunistic shows the fact that most people don’t believe in polyamory. Since I’m not talking about one-night stands, it’s not like I "profit" from my approach. I very much understand emotional-safety factors that you mentioned. Of course it’s hardest in the romantic area. In highschool I strongly fell in love with three girls (but it's not like I didn't have feelings for others also), I was in love with them at the same time (I don’t, and wouldn’t like to easily “switch” to someone new like most people seem to be more or less able to), and I’m still paying the price. I just fall in love very easily and I'm quite incapable of "stopping being in love". I’ve read about your plans for a settlement. The places you were thinking about are extremely beautiful. I couldn’t go there for two main reasons: 1- my greatest expectations in life are connected to activism, which is why I came in London from another country in the first place. 2- Silly me doesn’t walk on grass, aaalmost ever. I avoid stepping on insects “whenever” I can (Guess I know how it feels to be trampled on... I just can't find enough motivation to protect myself from that:& , but I don't let it happen to others). If I were more technically inclined, I would have surely come to some better solutions to the problem of protecting insects from hurt (in the more or less distant future) by now. So don’t ask me for my lame solutions to this. I just need to believe we’ll find a way how to protect them better, just like I need to believe (and this is more realistic) that we’ll be able to genetically modify carnivorous appetites of animals, and a “lion will sleep with the (live) lamb”. Oops, I’m rambling… Hugs, Dan Oh yeah, see my plans for a commune at directory.ic.org – under “Love & Nonviolence Commune"
I'm half asleep right now, I'll read it when I'm more awake. But, I skimmed it and so far, you got a cool concept. Dont feel agrivated, I want to read it when I'm more able to.
love is monogamy. I don't understand people today they move in without a ring on their finger or any promise of anything what so ever adn now it's okay to love a whole bunch of people while you're with the person who isn't buying the cow (geez I hate that expression). Personal dignity and respect for yourself and the person you love is all you need not 'free love'. Isn't love free anyway what they really have meant to say for all these years is free fucking no admitance cost of emotions-which is yucky.
Don't be such a petty burgeois You either didn't understand what I was talking about (if you even read the article), or you deliberately tried to misrepresent the issue. What you were talking about can be applied to many swingers who use (consenting) others while remaining emotionally monogamous. Polyamory, on the other hand, means having an open heart for other people as well. If you are incapable of loving more people (and obviously I'm not talking about the phoney and paradoxical "friendly love"), don't automatically assume other people are necessarily like you. "Love shared is love multiplied." http://www.punkerslut.com/articles/heartlessness.html - "Heartlessness in monogamy" http://www.polyamorysociety.org
man, i literally love your vantage point. it's funny because i am trying to argue that free love still exists over in another thread and to come across this is really uplifting....you should check it out in the communal living forum, titled " Please, I need some transcending advice....". it's sad that we as humans have developed this blindness towards free-love. anyways, be well man and just know that your intentions are pure my friend, as far as I can tell.
I didn't get to read everything in this thread, but this is something I've also struggled with.. I have had a very hard time in the past few years of my life, where I had learned to love everyone, and succeeded pretty well through college, but past that its become completely impossible, with everyone creating self-imposed limits on relationships, boundaries...yadda yadda... so in many ways my overflowing cup of love that I had in 2004, has almost been completely covered up and not allowed to spill out all over the place as it used to... I never really thought of it in a real sexual way for myself(being that I was practicing intense yoga at the time and not sexually active) but the implications of truly loving are not understood in this day in age(from what i have experienced)... even the freethinkers around me aren't really into anything revolutionary or fully compassionate, they want to direct their love into one person, one job, one place, one passion... whereas I would love to freely roam and follow my heart in every moment its proved to be extremely difficult and I run(full steam ahead) into walls everywhere I go... I really dunno what the answer is, has anyone found a good balance for dealing with closed-minded individuals when all you really have to give is love, yet no one seems to accept that as your sole resource? sorry, I didn't mean to ramble, but whatever...interested in seeing where this thread leads us! =)
