Marriage 3052
Love and marriage is primarily a 20th Century invention and
primarily in the Western Civilizations. In the vast part of the world marriage
is an arranged institution between families that subject the younger generation
to the protocols that may lead back many generations and be prescribed in a
book of law that dates back to antiquity.
All along there has been notions of young love that both
result in family tragedies or the elopement and subsequent banishment and shunning.
These stories are the rare examples of divergence from the pressures placed on
the young to conform to the family requirements.
Marriage has historically been a matter of legal
interpretations to determine who the inheritor of family and personal wealth is
at the death of a spouse. Only the children of a duly documented union are able
to inherit in most cases. Bastard children may be able to make a claim in some
societies but they usually get short shrift in most.
Unions between spouses of widely varying family wealth may
be entered into only after pre-nuptial agreements are firmly in place.
In instances of aristocratic matrimony family power may be
the goal of the union where upon one monarch would not march on the kingdom of
another because their children were married to each other. The marriage was
supposed to ensure that peace prevailed.
The Church and big business Corporations prefer that the men
of the congregation are duly married and ready to make parishioners and
financial shackle that help endure obedience and conformance to the rules that
are laid out to control the men. A businessman with a wife and 2 children, a
mortgage, a car payment and doctor bills is far less mobile and able to switch
employers. The same goes for a man who wishes to not be excommunicated and/or
sent to hell by an angry deity for failure to remain loyal to the Church.
In most societies marriage conveys some rights and benefits
that are unavailable to the single man or woman. Here in the USA, health
insurance was for a long time exclusively available only by virtue of the
employer paying the premium. This left women uncovered unless she was married
to a man with coverage. The employment of women was considered extraneous,
temporary and for the most part, part time. She did not meet the conditions the
corporations wanted in recruiting and retaining male employees and managers.
Marriage was essential to a woman who wanted anything more
than minimal rights. Hence, there was a time when a woman could not obtain
credit in her own name. Although those days are gone in the USA, women around
the world are still subjected to some of the cruelest conditions and
punishments for the least infractions of local law.
As the centuries pass, the conditions that are present in
this dark 21st Century, will brighten. Certainly a thousand years will soften
the rules and conditions placed on women and the whole concept of marriage will
become obsolete.
Without a means of accumulating massive wealth by an
individual, there will be little to inherit or pass along to others of one's
choice. Without the need for a woman to cleave to a man for very sustenance of
her life there will be no need for a marriage contract. There may be a residual
force of love between two people who wish to be together, but there is no
assurance that it won't be between two men, two women, as well as between a man
and a woman.
Living together and being close together may have as much
cache as now being married does. With all individuals being equally able to
have a dwelling, enough food, and medical care, many of the needs of marriage
will not be present 1,000 years from now. Without inheritance and property ownership
to consider, the need for documentation of a promise to keep to each other
forsaking all others will fade into obscurity.
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