We love to live not because we are used to living but because we are used to loving. True, there is always madness in love. But there is always reason in madness.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
I do not quite agree with the great Nietzsche on his view of marriage and why it should not to be founded on love. Although his reason is rational and practical, many would find it not applicable, or simply not possible in reality per se.
Marriage, I say now, should be founded on love, but should be constantly cultured accordingly to the motions of the changing time so that respect and reverence between the couple, the chief requirements of any relationships, would outlive both of them.
While it is true that we cannot institutionalize love for it is a creative force that opposes all functionality, rationality and generality, hence volatile, we should not also dispose of the thought that with out the advent of love, the very institution of marriage would fail to exist. For the inspiration of marriage comes right next after the experience of love, hence, marriage as institution is founded on love.
What Nietzsche wanted to address to us young adults is that we should act with rationality and should be guided with reason when we choose to enter married life. He wanted to say that marriage is not all about love by itself, for love by itself is frail and stubborn; love by itself is undefined and irrational. That is why, perhaps, it is wrong to anchor the institution of marriage, which is not just governed by individual’s personal sovereignty, but also by other institutions like the church and the law, to such fleeting and fickle feeling of love alone. Marriage, as an institution should also count on individual’s need for economic security and for companionship because after all, marriage’s own origins lay on these matter-of-fact necessities.
Marriage should be viewed with level-headedness. It should be considered as a project in action rather than the ultimate conclusion of love. We should see it as an open-ended relationship, not impervious to life’s many idiosyncrasies but rather welcoming to such thoughts or changes. Marriage should be treated as if it transcends the elusiveness and ephemerality of sexual romances and the capriciousness of human emotions.
That marriage is to be seen as independent of love or not dictated by love is radical and unthinkable especially on conventional societies like ours. The convention is that two people marry because they love each other. Nobody marries if love is not at stake. Nobody goes through the whole process of wedding if the couple is not assured of each other’s love. It is taboo for someone to marry not for love but for the promise of financial freedom. That is why match-making game shows are still postmodern, unconventional. Marriage without love defies the very reason why people get married in the first place. That is why, most often, many of us equate marriage with love.
It is a sad fact that a lot of marriage fail just because the couple failed to fan the burning flame of love. Couples marry for love, and so when love is gone, they think the right thing to do is to dissolve the marriage. This, no doubt, accounts for the crisis of modern marriages.
Concomitantly, love has also regulated marrying. A lot of young adults now, some even half past their marrying age dawdle on being single, not because they are ill-equipped for married life, but because today’s young people have become fastidious in looking for ‘the right one’, or putting it in another context, have become very particular with the requirement of love in marrying.
I think no one can blame our generation for delaying marriage in the hope of finding one and only true love. With the fast changing world accelerated by globalization, today’s youth has faced so much indifference and lack of emotional warmth that they find love, sexual romance or otherwise, as the most reassuring requisite for them to meet the dictum of modern life. It would then be disturbing to marry someone you do not love, or like the least. Our generation values the perpetuity of marriage, that is why we are finicky in choosing who we want to spend eternity with.
A number of societies today face a predicament with in the institution of marriage not because of the growing number of failed marriages but because of the declining number of couples marrying. In a highly industrialized country likeJapan, the concept of marriage has become aloof especially among its young, working class population. For once, there is no need for marrying for economic security. Secondly, marrying and having a family afterwards would curb one’s economic opportunities. Quite ironic how the young, successful people have acquired a sense of independence by material affluence then become dependent on it that nobody, it seems, would like to trade financial assets for some other thing, such as marriage (or someone for marriage).
So where then would love and intimacy situate themselves in the context of marriage in the postmodern time?
We can answer this question by recalling how our institutions work as links from one generation to another. Marriage as an institution should install the survival of generations. It should fulfill this responsibility first, among others. That is why it is foolish to leave the fate and existence of the coming generations to such short-lived sentiments like love, and petty romances. Love may come and go but not the institution of marriage.
Perhaps, in postmodernism, we should have an enlightened view of love; one that is not ruled by madness alone, but by madness with reason.
20 something, quarter-life crisis, loss of love, name it, nothing's weird.
