Comments on: Can I Patent That?

By: James Kabala

James Kabala — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 01:12:58 +0000

I wrote that last one.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 01:12:34 +0000

The average age of marriage has fluctuated greatly throughout history, however. In seventeenth-century England it was about as high as it does today.

By: Dilan Esper

Dilan Esper — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 04:52:36 +0000

Julian is absolutely right. Indeed, the statistics correlate– since the sexual revolution, people have started getting married later.

If you can’t have sex before marriage, and you are horny, that’s going to lead you to get married too early. And in turn, that’s going to lead to a lot of divorces, a lot of domestic violence, a lot of people having babies too young, a lot of people cutting their educations short, and a lot of other social problems.

By: yeselson

yeselson — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 01:18:38 +0000

I should have posted this over at Douthat’s site where I got waylaid by the God police, but the historiography on family and marriage in modern western society–say, since the 17th century–convincingly argues that the linkage of romantic love and a hoped for sexual/personal compatibility under the one-stop rubric of “spouse” is a social construction of increasingly commodified western culture–Lawrence Stone’s definitive work on England, Family, Sex, and Marriage in England, 1500-1800 should be consulted here. Americans are apparently particularly prone to this sentimental conceit: Ann Douglas’s classic, The Feminization of American Culture, about the 19th century shift to a popular culture of cheap sentimentality, is a useful primer in this regard.

It’s great when it happens, but it often doesn’t, and the manifold complexities of sexuality–as consolation, quotidian tedium, ecstatic pleasure, familiar evocation–especially when leavened with the bodily autonomy brought upon by the second women’s movement seem to overwhelm social traditionalists who, under other circumstances, insistently argue for the flexibility and endless creative capacity of the economic market place. Apparently, they don’t understand that these two modern forms of freedom are linked.

An odd intellectual lacunae.

By: James Kabala

James Kabala — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 00:23:58 +0000

Well, part of the answer to that is that most societies before us recognized that “true love,” while a great thing to have, should not necessarily be a prerequisite for marriage, and that the belief that marriages must be full of undying passion would lead (as it has) to a high divorce rate.

By: Matt F

Matt F — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 21:42:07 +0000

“Holy hell, I’m 25 and have never had sex… You! SOUL MATE! NOW!”

I’m reminded of every person I know who went to BYU.

By: steveintheknow

steveintheknow — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 21:14:43 +0000

Nice try on being excessively cynical. I have heard that line from “everybody”, not the least from my own head. At least everyone for which sex and love do not require coupling.

Although….would it not be a little more depressing for the alternative to be true?