Friday, December 28, 2007

A Modest Proposal

Well here we are. Facing what everyone fears, being alone, dying alone. Yet we can't make our relationships work.

Maybe we should learn from our enemies. Muslims may be a bunch of murderous bastards (they killed Benazir Bhutto yesterday for the crime of being a woman who intended to democratize her country) but I suppose they love their wives and their wives love them. The problem is that they treat their wives, and women generally, like s__t. But what if they didn't? How might polygamy and polyandry work in a free egalitarian society?

If a man could have four wives and love them and cherish them and be bound to them for life, would that be more stable than having only one, as we attempt to do? Could a woman have four husbands and love and cherish them and be bound to them for life?

In the old days it wouldn't have worked because men would have insisted on knowing which children were theirs. But now we have DNA testing that can establish that. And the hot blood of youth would be a problem for competitive young men. Women have their own careers and property so the relationship is no longer inherently unequal as in Muslim societies. For people past fifty it might work. As absurd as it sounds, it is worth trying because what we have now, serial monogamy, is clearly not working.

I have very little real likelihood of having one woman alongside my deathbed. But there is a real possibility I might have four. And I might have a happier life with four wives than with an intermittent series of ones. A woman might be happier with four husbands than with an intermittent series of ones.

If someone has a better idea I would be glad to hear it, but that is the best idea I have been able to come up with so far.

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous7:10 AM

    I like that proposal Jack. Am I one of your four? Will you be one of my four?

    ReplyDelete
  2. So how do you know who Anonymous is? It could be Jasmin, it could be a guy, it could be the ghost of Hitler.

    ReplyDelete