Foucault on Sexuality and Beyond—March 30
A big part of any religion is its focus on sexual relationships. Nearly every religion has some kind of commandment or guideline to keep its followers chaste. Or, it has some provision to excuse certain members of consequence when they take multiple partners. As a lifeguard in junior high for a popular water park, I was thankful to not be old enough to work any of the night parties when an organization of any kind could rent the park for its exclusive use. Why was I thankful? Because that meant I didn’t have to say no if they asked me to guard for the gay and lesbian church that rented out the park once a summer. Apparently, the church was a popular one for homosexual couples. To this day, I dismiss the illicit rumors of the event as exaggerations of adolescent minds. Luckily, I don’t remember the rumors very well. What seems to be different about the LDS perspective on sex is that it is neither intrinsically good nor bad. It’s part of the family unit, inasmuch as children are a product of sex. Foucault’s big argument of the sexed society is that it became embodied—sexual acts are a part of the body. However, LDS believe that sex is part of a relationship; and only one kind of relationship. It exists more to bring two people together, rather than provide pleasure for one or the other...hence the aversion to masturbation, which does not contribute to any relationship.
Sex occupies a large portion of our society in general, doesn’t it? Music is sexed up by video. A musician, especially female, is not very marketable unless she has sex appeal; same with males, but on a seemingly less steep curve. Josh Groban, Eric Clapton, Bono, John Mayer: all successful, amazing musicians; but they are so ugly. Of course, in calling them ugly, I make no value-judgment with respect to their character or personal morals. The musicianship for which they are famous is not under critique with my subjective ‘ugly’ comment. I simply comment that they are popular in spite of their looks. Generally speaking, however, modern-musicians are sexed.
Sex appeal has become an integral part of all aspect of popular culture. I can’t figure out what cheerleaders not wearing very many clothes have to do with football. Even more perplexing were the scantily-clad dancers at the Coyotes’ hockey game I went to once. They were dancing on the ice!? That doesn’t even make sense. Maybe they had on special shoes, but it didn’t look like it. Almost Every PG-13 movie seemingly has a requirement for at least one sex scene. You know it is a requirement because oftentimes it doesn’t even fit the story. I’ve just learned that I can still understand the movie without needing to watch that kind of part.
Apparently, I am also a sexed being; although more of a sexed subject than a sexed object. (I raised a concern to my older brother once: “I’m afraid that all these girls who can’t keep their hands off of me just want me for my body and not for my mind or personality.” He didn’t miss a beat: “You know, Der, Sport Illustrated models have the same problem. They never know.”) By me discussing this, moreover being bothered by it, I am making sex an issue. Hence my claim at being a sexed being. Does the fact the Foucault discuss it also make it an issue for him? Apparently, it was not an issue for the Greeks. It was just another part of pleasure; another part of the good life. Today, we cringe at the idea that Greek men had relations with boys. Socrates is even discredited to some extant because of that. While we know that this is wrong from a gospel point-of-view, we cannot rely on a society-based argument and stay logically legitimate. Sex had a different context then compared to now. To those who believe in the exclusivity of sex in marriage, relations with boys must logically be as unacceptable as relations between two consenting adults who are committed to each other, and even maybe “love” each other.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Friday, March 13, 2009
Berger's kind of Missionary
March 13 Berger
Control is one of the major questions of human experience. Most crime is committed in the name of a person wanting control over someone or something else. Politics, so some extent, is the same as crime, only legalized. Bad religion, like the brain-washing cultists and money-digging televangelists, seems to simply be the arena of the savvy, smart criminals. They can do the same things as the common criminals (steal, lie, commit sexual crimes, even kill), but they do not have to force anyone to do it. Rather, they coercion to convince their victims to freely give it. Good religion, those that are known by their “good fruits,” does not employ coercive tactics; but control is still at the center of the issue. Good religion tries to turn control over to responsible individuals who will act in a moral way. Human beings seem to have a propensity to be in control.
Berger sees this, and seemingly quite clearly. He sees our propensity to construct order out of chaos; to remove ourselves from the construction of our reality. And this element of sociological commentary seems to explain LDS full-time missionary work. Missionaries leave to serve with a degree of expectancy to see a lot of “success.” They may have the idea in their mind that their sacrifice of time, their parents’ money, and their lost opportunities for girlfriends, school, work, or athletics puts them in a position of being owed; as if they now deserve to find, teach, and baptize a lot of people. Some enter this world thinking that they’ve done the work they need to do and made the decisions they need to make, and now the world of missionary work is constructed in such a way to absolve them from the burden of creation. There is seemingly a world already created for them. They have done their part, now all they have to do is go participate.
Now only talking about the missionary who mistakenly feels entitled, he starts to see discrepancy between what they expected would happen and reality. He may start to blame his companion for their lack of investigators. He may blame the members for their lack of referrals. He may even turn against God by reminding Him of the missionary’s grand sacrifices and blessings that have already been promised to the missionary. He will likely give God an ultimatum not unlike “If I talk to ten families a day for a month, then You will send me a family to baptize;” or “If I wake up an hour early every day to exercise then You will give me the gift of tongues.” This will lead the missionary to be more discouraged and confused because they were so set on their pre-conceived notion of what it means to be “successful.”
Very few of this typification of missionary will go home early. (Even as I write about Berger’s theory I feel the need to routinize my analysis.) Most will stay, but they will sink or swim. Those who sink live from P-Day to P-Day, checking them off until the time they can go home. But they do not strive to construct order out of the chaos. The missionaries who swim feel the need to come up with a routine. “But I can’t come up with a routine myself. This is not my time,” he says to himself and to God. “This time belongs to the Lord. I have to do it His way.” The Lord’s way, when serving a mission, is obedience. These missionaries find security in that obedience: it is their reality; the construct that they feel compelled to follow. They search the scriptures for elements of construction that God has already established. The rules and commandments that they are to follow are external to their own world.
However, serving a mission, like just about anything else, is what the individual makes it. As the missionary follows the rules, and in so doing finds the answers that eluded him at his pretentious beginning, he makes those rules his own. They have meaning only inasmuch as the missionary gives them. And if the rules are important enough to the missionary, he naturally finds his will aligning with God’s will, and realizes from then on that it was the missionary’s construct the whole time. And God helped it along.
Control is one of the major questions of human experience. Most crime is committed in the name of a person wanting control over someone or something else. Politics, so some extent, is the same as crime, only legalized. Bad religion, like the brain-washing cultists and money-digging televangelists, seems to simply be the arena of the savvy, smart criminals. They can do the same things as the common criminals (steal, lie, commit sexual crimes, even kill), but they do not have to force anyone to do it. Rather, they coercion to convince their victims to freely give it. Good religion, those that are known by their “good fruits,” does not employ coercive tactics; but control is still at the center of the issue. Good religion tries to turn control over to responsible individuals who will act in a moral way. Human beings seem to have a propensity to be in control.
Berger sees this, and seemingly quite clearly. He sees our propensity to construct order out of chaos; to remove ourselves from the construction of our reality. And this element of sociological commentary seems to explain LDS full-time missionary work. Missionaries leave to serve with a degree of expectancy to see a lot of “success.” They may have the idea in their mind that their sacrifice of time, their parents’ money, and their lost opportunities for girlfriends, school, work, or athletics puts them in a position of being owed; as if they now deserve to find, teach, and baptize a lot of people. Some enter this world thinking that they’ve done the work they need to do and made the decisions they need to make, and now the world of missionary work is constructed in such a way to absolve them from the burden of creation. There is seemingly a world already created for them. They have done their part, now all they have to do is go participate.
Now only talking about the missionary who mistakenly feels entitled, he starts to see discrepancy between what they expected would happen and reality. He may start to blame his companion for their lack of investigators. He may blame the members for their lack of referrals. He may even turn against God by reminding Him of the missionary’s grand sacrifices and blessings that have already been promised to the missionary. He will likely give God an ultimatum not unlike “If I talk to ten families a day for a month, then You will send me a family to baptize;” or “If I wake up an hour early every day to exercise then You will give me the gift of tongues.” This will lead the missionary to be more discouraged and confused because they were so set on their pre-conceived notion of what it means to be “successful.”
Very few of this typification of missionary will go home early. (Even as I write about Berger’s theory I feel the need to routinize my analysis.) Most will stay, but they will sink or swim. Those who sink live from P-Day to P-Day, checking them off until the time they can go home. But they do not strive to construct order out of the chaos. The missionaries who swim feel the need to come up with a routine. “But I can’t come up with a routine myself. This is not my time,” he says to himself and to God. “This time belongs to the Lord. I have to do it His way.” The Lord’s way, when serving a mission, is obedience. These missionaries find security in that obedience: it is their reality; the construct that they feel compelled to follow. They search the scriptures for elements of construction that God has already established. The rules and commandments that they are to follow are external to their own world.
However, serving a mission, like just about anything else, is what the individual makes it. As the missionary follows the rules, and in so doing finds the answers that eluded him at his pretentious beginning, he makes those rules his own. They have meaning only inasmuch as the missionary gives them. And if the rules are important enough to the missionary, he naturally finds his will aligning with God’s will, and realizes from then on that it was the missionary’s construct the whole time. And God helped it along.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Feminism
March 12, 2009 Feminism
What are some of the things that have been invented by men? We have Democracy, as made famous by Caesar; Fascism, as made famous by Hitler. There is this popular device called the internet; but like global warming and other Al Gore inventions, it’s probably just a passing fad. Don’t forget about the United States of America, calculus, and nuclear power. And we would be doing ourselves a disservice if we forgot about the Sistine Chapel, Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony, the pyramids, and Lord of the Rings. When we think of the wonders of this world, how much of that thinking is occupied by putting it in gendered context? We really don’t think of whether a male or female accomplished it. This could mean lots of different things about who we are, but I am thinking of a couple of things in particular: individuals’ experience far outweighs all other factors, or their gender outweighs all other factors.
Of course, what is experience when taken out of its original context? Is it the same experience? And what is context if it excludes some of the factors that constitute it? When studying our world, are we allowed to be choosy about what factors we deem relevant? Was Joseph Smith simply another product of the Great Awakening? Were the Founding Fathers just a group of rich land-owners who didn’t want to pay taxes to a foreign government? Was Dorothy Smith a flower-child who wanted to jump on the coat tails of the hippie sixties?
As I ask myself these questions, I begin to believe that it really doesn’t matter. We can remove Smith from the early nineteenth century just as easily as we can vote George Washington as President today; or (while we’re daydreaming) remove our current government officials. To think differently would be fruitless. Sorry, Rational Choice Theorists. In a descriptive science like sociology, we cannot answer the question of “What if it were different?” It is not different. Deal with it.
Modern sociology was invented by men. This, apparently, is the basis for Smith’s argument in favor of Feminism. Since men invented sociology, it will naturally have a masculine flavor. However, more, hmmm, “dynamic” feminists might use a word more like “taint” or “stench.” So, to rid the discipline of such a bias, we must re-look at it through another’s eyes. We must break it down, start all over again, and build it up again. Only this time, we look at it from the women’s standpoint. How does a woman see the world? How do they act and think? In what ways are they oppressed? If she is arguing that things made by males need restructuring, then we need to basically reinvent the wheel—the wheel here referring to all of man’s inventions. Although I do not know for sure that it was an individual with non-matching chromosome pairs who invented the wheel, the idea is that elements of our lives upon which we rely so heavily and that have served us quite satisfactorily to this point don’t need reinventing.
But has sociology served us as well as the internet? Are the conflicts we face all the time evidence of a broken sociology? one that needs reinventing, fresh from a masculine standpoint? To Smith: Yes. Smith presents a foundational sociology with elements of the subject, not the object. “We don’t need Sociology,” Smith seems to say. “Sociology needs us!” Sociology doesn’t teach us anything. Sociology doesn’t even have a law upon which to rest its assumptions, like Economics and Physics do. Theory doesn’t teach us anything. Human experience teaches us. And since experience is embodied starting when we grow up, and since we grow up mostly around women, let’s start with them.
What are some of the things that have been invented by men? We have Democracy, as made famous by Caesar; Fascism, as made famous by Hitler. There is this popular device called the internet; but like global warming and other Al Gore inventions, it’s probably just a passing fad. Don’t forget about the United States of America, calculus, and nuclear power. And we would be doing ourselves a disservice if we forgot about the Sistine Chapel, Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony, the pyramids, and Lord of the Rings. When we think of the wonders of this world, how much of that thinking is occupied by putting it in gendered context? We really don’t think of whether a male or female accomplished it. This could mean lots of different things about who we are, but I am thinking of a couple of things in particular: individuals’ experience far outweighs all other factors, or their gender outweighs all other factors.
Of course, what is experience when taken out of its original context? Is it the same experience? And what is context if it excludes some of the factors that constitute it? When studying our world, are we allowed to be choosy about what factors we deem relevant? Was Joseph Smith simply another product of the Great Awakening? Were the Founding Fathers just a group of rich land-owners who didn’t want to pay taxes to a foreign government? Was Dorothy Smith a flower-child who wanted to jump on the coat tails of the hippie sixties?
As I ask myself these questions, I begin to believe that it really doesn’t matter. We can remove Smith from the early nineteenth century just as easily as we can vote George Washington as President today; or (while we’re daydreaming) remove our current government officials. To think differently would be fruitless. Sorry, Rational Choice Theorists. In a descriptive science like sociology, we cannot answer the question of “What if it were different?” It is not different. Deal with it.
Modern sociology was invented by men. This, apparently, is the basis for Smith’s argument in favor of Feminism. Since men invented sociology, it will naturally have a masculine flavor. However, more, hmmm, “dynamic” feminists might use a word more like “taint” or “stench.” So, to rid the discipline of such a bias, we must re-look at it through another’s eyes. We must break it down, start all over again, and build it up again. Only this time, we look at it from the women’s standpoint. How does a woman see the world? How do they act and think? In what ways are they oppressed? If she is arguing that things made by males need restructuring, then we need to basically reinvent the wheel—the wheel here referring to all of man’s inventions. Although I do not know for sure that it was an individual with non-matching chromosome pairs who invented the wheel, the idea is that elements of our lives upon which we rely so heavily and that have served us quite satisfactorily to this point don’t need reinventing.
But has sociology served us as well as the internet? Are the conflicts we face all the time evidence of a broken sociology? one that needs reinventing, fresh from a masculine standpoint? To Smith: Yes. Smith presents a foundational sociology with elements of the subject, not the object. “We don’t need Sociology,” Smith seems to say. “Sociology needs us!” Sociology doesn’t teach us anything. Sociology doesn’t even have a law upon which to rest its assumptions, like Economics and Physics do. Theory doesn’t teach us anything. Human experience teaches us. And since experience is embodied starting when we grow up, and since we grow up mostly around women, let’s start with them.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
The Gospel, Phenomenoligically
March 11, 2009—The Gospel as Phenomenology
I believe in relationships. I believe that interaction is the clearest, most definitive way to define our respective humanity; human being-ness. We see clear proof of this in business and commerce with sayings such as “It’s not what you know, but whom you know.” Among sports teams, the coaches strive to build camaraderie between his teammates because teams with close friendships perform better. In missionary work, the investigator-then-convert is much more likely to progress and grow his or her testimony if introduced to the gospel through a member-friend. Eternally-speaking, we see exaltation in terms of family units. Even the Zen-seeking, bleeding-heart tree-huggers talk about their relationships with nature as self-defining.
Further, a relationship-based ontology and Phenomenology are not mutually exclusive. They don’t necessarily contradict each other. Actually, the absence of some kind of ontology within Phenomenology prevents it from contradicting much at all. If Phenomenology is the study of the world as experienced or how it is lived, how in the world, literally, are we supposed to learn about things outside our experience? How do we explain that we know about things that happen on the other side of the world that had nothing to do with us? How do we account for our understanding of religion, or history? Phenomenology, on the surface, may not be able to explain second-hand learning.
However, one of the elements that Phenomenology adds, that Crotty brings up, is the value of language. Through language, we are able to recount and record experience. And when read or listened-to, that experience can become a part of someone else’s experience. So putting the gospel in context of Phenomenology, the scriptures become critical in religious experience. There is even a spiritual gift that enhances the scriptures and language (D&C 46: 13-14). Through scripture, we can all be fed as the 5,000; or be caught up in the belly of a whale; or experience a host of other miracles without them actually happening to us first-hand.
People new to the gospel, then, must accustom themselves with a new kind of language; another Crotty contribution. Where else is the word “ward” used to describe a church congregation? I’ve only heard about “wards” in hospitals and jails besides church; as in “mental ward” or “maternal ward.” The word “quorum” is used very little outside talking about a group of Priesthood holders, but would another word really do justice in describing the brotherhood shared between men engaged in the work of the Lord?
Triteness and cliché, now, become road blocks in Phenomenology. Over-usage of seemingly significant language reduces the effectiveness of that language, and in turn, the value of second-hand experience. Just as a good song played in excess on the radio becomes boring and not preferred to its listeners, commonly-used language can become boring and less-substantial. It becomes unfit for the purpose. Eventually, it doesn’t do justice to the experience.
Progressive meaninglessness and altered meaning has crept its way into Mormon lexicon. For example, do people fully understand what it means to say “I know this is what God wants me to do?” I would think that if this truly is the case, the individual would by this time have made such a strong relationship with God that whatever “this” may be is not only what God wants to have happen, but also what that person wants to have happen. Maybe what this pious, faithful person really means is “This is what I want to do, and God is on my side about it.”
Of course, true submissiveness and discipleship means having an attitude of “It doesn’t matter what I want. I only want that Thy will be done.” But my point is that we should look beyond the words that are used to the meaning that we wish to be portrayed.
I believe in relationships. I believe that interaction is the clearest, most definitive way to define our respective humanity; human being-ness. We see clear proof of this in business and commerce with sayings such as “It’s not what you know, but whom you know.” Among sports teams, the coaches strive to build camaraderie between his teammates because teams with close friendships perform better. In missionary work, the investigator-then-convert is much more likely to progress and grow his or her testimony if introduced to the gospel through a member-friend. Eternally-speaking, we see exaltation in terms of family units. Even the Zen-seeking, bleeding-heart tree-huggers talk about their relationships with nature as self-defining.
Further, a relationship-based ontology and Phenomenology are not mutually exclusive. They don’t necessarily contradict each other. Actually, the absence of some kind of ontology within Phenomenology prevents it from contradicting much at all. If Phenomenology is the study of the world as experienced or how it is lived, how in the world, literally, are we supposed to learn about things outside our experience? How do we explain that we know about things that happen on the other side of the world that had nothing to do with us? How do we account for our understanding of religion, or history? Phenomenology, on the surface, may not be able to explain second-hand learning.
However, one of the elements that Phenomenology adds, that Crotty brings up, is the value of language. Through language, we are able to recount and record experience. And when read or listened-to, that experience can become a part of someone else’s experience. So putting the gospel in context of Phenomenology, the scriptures become critical in religious experience. There is even a spiritual gift that enhances the scriptures and language (D&C 46: 13-14). Through scripture, we can all be fed as the 5,000; or be caught up in the belly of a whale; or experience a host of other miracles without them actually happening to us first-hand.
People new to the gospel, then, must accustom themselves with a new kind of language; another Crotty contribution. Where else is the word “ward” used to describe a church congregation? I’ve only heard about “wards” in hospitals and jails besides church; as in “mental ward” or “maternal ward.” The word “quorum” is used very little outside talking about a group of Priesthood holders, but would another word really do justice in describing the brotherhood shared between men engaged in the work of the Lord?
Triteness and cliché, now, become road blocks in Phenomenology. Over-usage of seemingly significant language reduces the effectiveness of that language, and in turn, the value of second-hand experience. Just as a good song played in excess on the radio becomes boring and not preferred to its listeners, commonly-used language can become boring and less-substantial. It becomes unfit for the purpose. Eventually, it doesn’t do justice to the experience.
Progressive meaninglessness and altered meaning has crept its way into Mormon lexicon. For example, do people fully understand what it means to say “I know this is what God wants me to do?” I would think that if this truly is the case, the individual would by this time have made such a strong relationship with God that whatever “this” may be is not only what God wants to have happen, but also what that person wants to have happen. Maybe what this pious, faithful person really means is “This is what I want to do, and God is on my side about it.”
Of course, true submissiveness and discipleship means having an attitude of “It doesn’t matter what I want. I only want that Thy will be done.” But my point is that we should look beyond the words that are used to the meaning that we wish to be portrayed.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Divorce
Divorce March 4, 2009
Diane Vaughn’s work on divorce made me feel kinda bad, and I’ve never even been divorced! But putting this in context of other relationships, such as dating relationships, has pretty much tagged me as a jerk. Moreover, it made me think about the importance of having clear communication, even with people whom I don’t like very much. (“Wow,” you’re thinking. “This guy doesn’t like the girls he dates. He is a jerk!”)
I’ve been on both sides of the break-up; I’ve been the initiator before. I was the advantaged. I was in the decision-making position. I was whom Marx was preaching against—the emotional Bourgeoisie; only the factors of production I controlled and limited were DTRs, physical affection, and time spent together. The one-woman Proletariat would issue pleas of “Let’s talk about it;” and “Tell me what you’re thinking;” and “don’t shut me out.” I don’t remember precisely how I responded, but it probably included something about having cake, actually eating it while you have it, and how that’s a ridiculous, selfish desire to have. (Of course, the one who ACTUALLY was the ridiculous and selfish one was...)
I had the higher ground in the relationship. Most of the time the higher ground gives you a clear picture of what’s going on below: like how a lifeguard can see down into the water from his perch. (Man, those were some cool 15 year-olds up there.) Or we talk about going to the temple and keeping the commandments in order to be on spiritual high ground—to get above the foggy haze of indecision and meanness. Pres Hinckley asked why we have to be so mean and rude to each other. You think you know the answer, until you have to break up with someone. Then you find yourself on the sharp, poisonous, stinging end of Pres Hinckley’s inspired rebuke.
In Vaughn’s idea of the big “D,” the higher ground doesn’t represent clarity of mind. Here, higher ground is tactical. It is militaristic. Higher ground is my pretending that everything is normal and all right for as long as it takes me to establish an alternative to the status quo, and then jump from one ship to the other without rocking the boat too much.
Why must I first have the alternative? 1) Because I don’t want to end up down by the river in a van. 2) Because I don’t exist outside of experience. Therefore, if I have nothing to go to, then I won't exist, and I won't be able to leave. (Hence, the battered woman syndrome we spoke about.) 3) No one wants to get divorced, even if that ends up being the final decision. Despite this, some still revert to that option. The alternative that has been built up and established by the Initiator allows divorce to offer itself as the preferred option. Can you believe that? The fact that divorce has become the better option, the option that delivers less grief, the option that is the lesser of two evils really says something about the perceived badness of the marriage relationship. Separation becomes a source of relief. Moreover, that feeds into an explanation of why some dads become deadbeats. They are separated from the world that includes their children. Because they are not part of their children’s world, they have no need to contribute to making it better.
The status quo in a marriage, as many people believe, is to continue being married. That’s the default setting. The problem with this kind of thinking is that it doesn’t fit in with any other part of a responsible, rational person’s life. Who goes to their job and does not try to do it better in hopes of a raise or promotion? What guy goes to play basketball on the weekend with his buddies without an expectation of winning at least one of the games or scoring a few points? We go to school and strive to do better with each assignment or test that comes along. I’m not talking, necessarily, about competition. I’m talking about our motivations to participate—in anything. That is in some way to leave better than we came. Otherwise, why do we come in the first place?
Diane Vaughn’s work on divorce made me feel kinda bad, and I’ve never even been divorced! But putting this in context of other relationships, such as dating relationships, has pretty much tagged me as a jerk. Moreover, it made me think about the importance of having clear communication, even with people whom I don’t like very much. (“Wow,” you’re thinking. “This guy doesn’t like the girls he dates. He is a jerk!”)
I’ve been on both sides of the break-up; I’ve been the initiator before. I was the advantaged. I was in the decision-making position. I was whom Marx was preaching against—the emotional Bourgeoisie; only the factors of production I controlled and limited were DTRs, physical affection, and time spent together. The one-woman Proletariat would issue pleas of “Let’s talk about it;” and “Tell me what you’re thinking;” and “don’t shut me out.” I don’t remember precisely how I responded, but it probably included something about having cake, actually eating it while you have it, and how that’s a ridiculous, selfish desire to have. (Of course, the one who ACTUALLY was the ridiculous and selfish one was...)
I had the higher ground in the relationship. Most of the time the higher ground gives you a clear picture of what’s going on below: like how a lifeguard can see down into the water from his perch. (Man, those were some cool 15 year-olds up there.) Or we talk about going to the temple and keeping the commandments in order to be on spiritual high ground—to get above the foggy haze of indecision and meanness. Pres Hinckley asked why we have to be so mean and rude to each other. You think you know the answer, until you have to break up with someone. Then you find yourself on the sharp, poisonous, stinging end of Pres Hinckley’s inspired rebuke.
In Vaughn’s idea of the big “D,” the higher ground doesn’t represent clarity of mind. Here, higher ground is tactical. It is militaristic. Higher ground is my pretending that everything is normal and all right for as long as it takes me to establish an alternative to the status quo, and then jump from one ship to the other without rocking the boat too much.
Why must I first have the alternative? 1) Because I don’t want to end up down by the river in a van. 2) Because I don’t exist outside of experience. Therefore, if I have nothing to go to, then I won't exist, and I won't be able to leave. (Hence, the battered woman syndrome we spoke about.) 3) No one wants to get divorced, even if that ends up being the final decision. Despite this, some still revert to that option. The alternative that has been built up and established by the Initiator allows divorce to offer itself as the preferred option. Can you believe that? The fact that divorce has become the better option, the option that delivers less grief, the option that is the lesser of two evils really says something about the perceived badness of the marriage relationship. Separation becomes a source of relief. Moreover, that feeds into an explanation of why some dads become deadbeats. They are separated from the world that includes their children. Because they are not part of their children’s world, they have no need to contribute to making it better.
The status quo in a marriage, as many people believe, is to continue being married. That’s the default setting. The problem with this kind of thinking is that it doesn’t fit in with any other part of a responsible, rational person’s life. Who goes to their job and does not try to do it better in hopes of a raise or promotion? What guy goes to play basketball on the weekend with his buddies without an expectation of winning at least one of the games or scoring a few points? We go to school and strive to do better with each assignment or test that comes along. I’m not talking, necessarily, about competition. I’m talking about our motivations to participate—in anything. That is in some way to leave better than we came. Otherwise, why do we come in the first place?
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