I wanna tell her that I blogwatch but the point is probably moot…

Dappled Things: “In addition to all the religious things one could say, this feast reminds us also of the annual Perseid meteor shower, known for centuries as the burning Tears of St Lawrence.” Plus a lot of other interesting link-goodness, and thoughts on do-it-yourself eugenics a.k.a. children as lists of qualities, syndromes, abilities, and defects, the value of each to be determined by the parents with heavy pressure from society.

Krubner: Quote mania. Hayek: “If the ‘community” or the state are prior to the individual, if they have ends of their own independent of and superior to those of the individuals, then only those individuals who work for the same ends can be regarded as members of the community. It is a necessary consequence of this view that a person is respected only as a member of the group, that is, only if and in so far as he works for the recognized common ends, and that he derives his whole dignity only from this membership and not merely from being man.” (Oh hey, this seems obviously related to the do-it-yourself eugenics link above.)

A very interesting post on marriage, communitarianism, and loneliness. Made me think of The Schwa in “Judge Me, O God,” which I can’t link because my story archives are still fubar’d. Another intriguing one on unhappiness as the goad that spurs humans to great deeds. I disagree with some of the unspoken theology underlying this post (responses to the world and to others’ success cannot be judged solely on their utilitarian effects; they also need to be judged on intrinsic rightness, thus envy is always wrong even though it often has good effects) but there’s a lot to chew on there. Ratty acutely described the members of the debating society where we met as “pursued by Furies”; we’ve also joked that members have “the mark of Cain.” There’s a drivenness and an outsider stance that provokes hard work, philosophical reflection, and a ferocious desire for the good even when that good conflicts with social norms.

Excerpts from Jo Freeman’s “Tyranny of Structurelessness.” So true: “Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is no such thing as a ‘structureless’ group. Any group of people of whatever nature coming together for any length of time, for any purpose, will inevitably structure itself in some fashion. The structure may be flexible, it may vary over time, it may evenly or unevenly distribute tasks, power and resources over the members of the group. But it will be formed regardless of the abilities, personalities and intentions of the people involved. The very fact that we are individuals with different talents, predisposition’s and backgrounds makes this inevitable. Only if we refused to relate or interact on any basis whatsoever could we approximate ‘structurelessness’ and that is not the nature of a human group.

“This means that to strive for a ‘structureless’ group is as useful and as deceptive, as to aim at an ‘objective’ news story, ‘value-free’ social science or a ‘free’ economy. A ‘laissez-faire’ group is about as realistic as a ‘laissez-faire’ society; the idea becomes a smokescreen for the strong or the lucky to establish unquestioned hegemony over others. This hegemony can easily be established because the idea of ‘structurelessness’ does not prevent the formation of informal structures, but only formal ones. Similarly, ‘laissez-faire’ philosophy did not prevent the economically powerful from establishing control over wages, prices and distribution of goods; it only prevented the government from doing so. Thus ‘structurelessness’ becomes a way of masking power, and within the women’s movement it is usually most strongly advocated by those who are the most powerful (whether they are conscious of their power or not). The rules of how decisions are made are known only to a few and awareness of power is curtailed by those who know the rules, as long as the structure of the group is informal. Those who do not know the rules and are not chosen for initiation must remain in confusion, or suffer from paranoid delusions that something is happening of which they are not quite aware.

“For everyone to have the opportunity to be involved in a given group and to participate in its activities the structure must be explicit, not implicit. The rules of decision-making must be open and available to everyone, and this can only happen if they are formalised. This is not to say that normalisation of a group structure will destroy the informal structure. It usually doesn’t. But it does hinder the informal structure from having predominant control and makes available some means of attacking it. ‘Structurelessness’ is organisationally impossible. We cannot decide whether to have a structured or structureless group; only whether or not to have a formally structured one. …An unstructured group always has an informal , or covert, structure. It is this informal structure, particularly in unstructured groups, which forms the basis for elites.”

I wrote about this same issue here and here (with a wider-ranging look at the interplay between authority and individuality).

And from around and about the comicsphere, lists of the eleven comic books libraries should stock: Oakhaus, Peiratikos, Sean Collins. I will add only books none of these people mentioned: I shill once more for ElfQuest, Animal Man, Torso, Finder: Sin-Eater, and (since “all-ages” is not a requirement) A Small Killing. You can find my quickie descriptions of These Books And Why They Rock here.

LIVING TOGETHER, GROWING APART: Good post on cohabitation from Sara at the Family Scholars blog. Excerpts, with quotes from an article: “…When my boyfriend and I graduated from college this spring and starting making plans to move to New York (I was coming from Chicago and he was coming from Washington, DC), friendly acquaintances were surprised we weren’t planning on getting a place together (my good friends knew better). ‘You might as well,’ they said. ‘Think about what you could save on rent.’ If we had been moving in together, that would definitely not have been understood as a step toward marriage (in fact, when I would explain my opposition to cohabitation, people often seemed to think we were taking our relationship too seriously too quickly). What I find particularly funny about this is that while young people recognize that what they do in the arena of work and career will have long-term effects on their life, they seem to think that what they do in their romantic life is consequence-free, that the attitudes and habits they might develop while cohabiting won’t impact their ability to have a successful marriage later in life.

“‘In many ways, living together represented an advanced stage of dating, often preferable to living with roommates, while also having some advantages over marrieag (like freedom),’ Sassler writes. ‘Growing commitment to partners and the relationship seems to develop after moving in together.’

“It’s interesting that Sassler calls cohabitation ‘an advanced stage of dating,’ because once upon a time, people dated in order to find someone to marry. But cohabiting relationships, according to Sassler, often do not have that as their goal, they exist for their own sake. And they exist conditionally: part of their appeal is ‘freedom,’ the ability to get out easily if it’s not working for you any more. Moving in together is not a sign of commitment, which develops later, and when it does, it happens without the intention and thoughtfulness that a marriage-oriented style of dating (or, as old-fashioned types like myself call it ‘courtship’) could encourage. One of my great concerns with cohabitation is the way that a couple can slip into marriage after a few years:

“‘Future relationship goals were generally not discussed prior to moving in…and discussions about marriage did not become serious for most until after they had cohabited for several years.’

“The problem with this process is that there is never a point at which young people are looking for a good mate. When they’re young, they look for a good significant other, who may become a ‘partner’ in a cohabiting relationship, who might become a spouse. At no point are they looking for a good husband or wife, a good partner for marriage, a very different kind of relationship from the cohabiting couple. Romantic partners are never chosen with marriage in mind, even the one that you might eventually end up married to.”

whole post here

If you don’t mind hassling with PDFs you can find a piece I did on cohabitation on pages 8-9 here. I think it’s pretty good.

I’M IN THE NY POST…reviewing Jonathan Rauch’s Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America. Nothing unexpected for regular readers of this site and/or MarriageDebate, but still, figured I’d drop the link. Click here for a series of longer and very scattershot posts where I look at different aspects of Rauch’s book. And I will, eventually, post on what I think his best point is, but not this week as work is crushing me like an enormous crushing thing.

You spin me right round, baby, right round,

Like a blogwatch, baby, right round round round…

 

After Abortion: Annie reflects on her experiences as a sidewalk counselor. Both heartening and heartbreaking, as is typical of such accounts. She also links to Sursum Corda’s excellent post on being an abortion escort, and how he ultimately came to change his mind about abortion.

 

Ditch the Raft: Fellow Yalien life form Andi offers an interesting Buddhist response to my post on sublimation. Not being a Buddhist, I don’t share her view of suffering: All sublime experiences and acts require some suffering; avoidance of suffering is not a worthy human goal; we should move through suffering rather than away from it; great suffering and great joy can often coexist, and great joy often has embedded within it a necessary edge of pain. This is the romantic, desiring aspect of Christianity, where the soul longs for God as the deer longs for the running stream. Or, as Maggie Gallagher put it in The Abolition of Marriage, “[Marriage] is the Song of Songs, and the Crucifixion.”

 

I also may disagree or wish to add something to Andi’s discussion of love, virtue, and selfishness. I’m not sure, since I’m not sure whether Andi is using “selfishness” here in the ordinary everyday sense. Selfishness in love is wrong; but it isn’t the only way love goes wrong. Women, especially, but men too, are often tempted by a kind of self-immolating romance that is much closer to idolatry than to real love. Then, too, there are the women Frederica Mathewes-Green interviewed for her excellent Real Choices: Listening to Women, Looking for Alternatives to Abortion. Many of these women aborted not to please themselves, but to preserve relationships: with their mothers, with their families in general, with their boyfriends. This isn’t anything we’d ordinarily call selfishness–but neither is it, obviously, the fullness of love.

 

Anyway!–Andi’s post brings up all kinds of fascinating stuff, and you should go read it. Also, anyone interested in these issues would probably find Denis de Rougemont’s Love in the Western World an engrossing read. I certainly did.

 

“Downloading for Democracy“: “While legislators in Washington work to outlaw peer-to-peer networks, one website is turning the peer-to-peer technology back on Washington to expose its inner, secretive workings.” Must-read, via Hit and Run.

 

“Charity Should Begin in Congress“: Ignore the lame title. This George F. Will column is divided between a description of an amazing San Diego ministry, and a wonkish look at a bill that would make it much more difficult to donate your car to charity. Both halves are very much worth your time.

PETITION SITE FOR CATHOLIC SUPPORTERS OF FMA: here.

NEXT UP: ALIEN VS. PREDATOR! Over at MarriageDebate, I’ve been battling Jonathan Rauch. This is a totally disorganized series of posts, and not meant as a syllogistic, Agree Or Be Damned! exercise. Nonetheless, I think a lot of fascinating issues have been raised, and I’d love to know what my readers think. So go, go, Gadget dialectic! Email me if you’ve got something to say about any of these posts.

The series so far: Sunrise, Sunset: Marriage, children, mortality, and singing Jews.

Marriage Promotion: Cultural side-effects of SSM.

How It Won’t Happen: Why federalism can’t be the answer.

The future is a drag, man. The future is a flake. The arguments won’t be much different after state-by-state “experiments” with SSM.

Teach Your Children: The mamas and the papas.

My Baby Just Cares for Me: Care, sex, and exceptions.

Coming up, probably (though not definitely, as I’m madly busy): What should you not do out of wedlock?

Do fidelity rates matter?

Polyamory–should we care?

The Discovery of the Homosexual a.k.a. chewing off one’s own footnotes

The hideous future: Jonathan’s best arguments. (I’ll almost certainly do this one, since it seems wrong to avoid the points where he’s most persuasive.)

…AND I WILL SING OF THE SUN: After the Koch thing about “the future of marriage,” I was asked what I would tell a gay couple to do. And I hear this a lot: You’re very clear on what they can’t do, but what should they do?

My response to that question is necessarily more personal than policy-oriented. It has two branches; the first I expect people have heard before, the second perhaps not so much. What follows is fairly close to a verbatim transcript of what I said over dinner to the Kochheads and Jonathan Rauch.

First: A lot of people find out that they are less homosexual than they thought. They find someone of the opposite sex and marry and have babies. This happens about a hundred times more than we are allowed to acknowledge these days. And it happens to people who only a few years before their marriages would have considered themselves thoroughly homosexual. It is worth keeping this fact in mind.

Second, too: These days we are inclined to think of sublimation as synonymous with repression, when in fact the two concepts are all but opposite. Sublimation is the transmutation of some strong desire (in this case, sexual desire) into something else and greater. Sublimation is intrinsically related to the concept of the sublime.

We hear virtually nothing about this today, but historically one of the basic ways of dealing with same-sex attraction has been sublimation–not repression, sublimation. The three most common forms of gold into which this base metal was transformed have been deep abiding friendship, great art, and personal sanctity. All three of these options are still open to everyone.

I wrote here about the ways in which marriage reconciles us to time and mortality. Great art and personal sanctity do the same.

So I guess that’s what I would say, if I were the Gay Dear Abby, and if anyone would listen: Be something extraordinary. Love deeply. And make your love sublime.