THE POST-LOVE CIVILIZATION?
Under agrarianism, the marriage bond was an extension of the existing family and family relations, the want of children, the need to share labor in a household, and if possible, the need to survive, and sometimes if not often – erotic attraction. The ‘family’ was much closer to a ‘tribe’ or ‘clan’ – multiple generations of many family relationships few commercial relationships, and where marrigae meant joining a family (or uniting families).
Love as we think of it, as something more than Eros, but as finding the right person – the kindred spirit – was a 12th century invention of the Troubadores. It was made possible by sufficient wealth from the rise of trade, that we could think in such terms.
The marriage bond was an extension of the existing family and family relations, the want of children, the need to share labor in a household, and if possible, erotic attraction – but now we added compatibility to that list.
During this period we saw the rise of the traditional, nuclear and absllute nuclear families, where increasing mixing of families, and greater independence of families, but still multiple generations in the majority.
In the 1970’s because of contraception and because of the employability of women, and because of the vast post-war wealth, the vast increase in labor-saving home appliances, and the corresponding poverty of the undeveloped world (pre-consumer-capitalist world), westerner’s changed again such that marriage was now primarily a matter of friendship and sex, and only remotely important for reproductive, economic, survival, and security reasons.
Coupled with easy movement and migration this led to the marriage being the ONLY source of familial relationships or the dominant source.
And people became lonely. Alone. Disenfranchised. Alienated.
Capitalism was just the beginning. Feminism was the end.
And the only restoration is the familial corporation at all levels.
Because this model we have chosen is hyper consumptive and suicidal.