07/12/2007 Love and Meaning Is The Tyranny

07/12/2007 Love and Meaning Is The Tyranny

On the topic of romantic love, I'd like to post a question: if there is such a thing as soul-mates, what makes us think that we would know which one is our match?

Now, if any of you are out there thinking, “because I'd feel it”, I'm afraid I must disagree. Think about it; if we are all split into two in heaven and seek our complement on earth, then that means that every one of us out there has one. Not just Brad and Angelina, either. I mean the bum on the streets, your asshole boss, the elderly women with

the walker, the wild eyed carriage-pusher, the rapist, the serial killer. Everyone.

Now, if you're soul-mate was passed out drunk on the street corner smelling like shit and with one eye that won't open, would you “feel it”? I tend to doubt it. A quick personal inventory reveals that when i masturbated over a teenage girl I saw at the supermarket yesterday I was fantasizing about how we would meet and discover our love together. When I meet someone ten years older than me, my “heart” is a flat-line. No one is less qualified to judge who is our soul-mate than we are ourselves. The ass gets in the way, as does the smile, the income level, the sense of humor, what have you. Beautiful women probably have more men deem themselves her soul-mate than anyone could imagine without losing faith in the concept.

Imagine a future in which a machine can analyze you and discover your soul-mate. Would such a society pass a law requiring you to marry your soul-mate? Imagine who you would be paired with. Romance can become tyranny in time, as Christ will attest when he returns to us and judges his own disciples.

It seems logical from all of this that we should now hire matchmakers in order to find someone who has a clear vision of who is our soul-mate. Years ago we had arranged marriages. This is essential to the idea of soul-mates, though it seems counterintuitive. If we trust our destiny (that the two souls are “destined” to be together is the other part of romantic love), then we can only conclude that destiny will match us with our soul-mate. Such mental commitment is required for true love to manifest. A skeptical approach to soul-mates will not change things for the better. If we are going to find who we are meant to be, we can only trust destiny. Therefore our matchmaker must be trusted to arrange our marriage. The current crop of software utilized by internet dating sites will yield nothing, as we go into it as skeptical as we do a singles bar or a tarot card reading. We don't want it to work. And these days, submitting any amount of sovereignty goes against our values, though pluralism has reduced those values to little but shades of gray.

And this concept doesn't have to be limited to romantic relationships. More and more in today's society, we hire other people to find meaning in our lives for us. Yes, there is a “God shaped hole”, but God can no longer fill it.

Health insurance has taken many choices out of our hands, and now happily provides us with “amenities” like therapy and gym memberships. This is called, “preventative medicine” and the relaxing of the definition of medicine in this sense clears the way for all sorts of things. Add this to the fact that it seems inevitable that government take over healthcare in the US, if it hasn't already in your country, and that then the floodgates will open. If a populist (A term that truly describes everyone) gets elected on promises of increased healthcare coverage, then that's a bit of government spending that even the rich can feel. Therapists, already common, could be regarded as necessity. “Know thyself”, right? What's next? Personal coaching. When we are done probing our pasts, don't we need someone to point the way to achieving our goals? Someone to explain how to be happy in the future and to provide a kick in the ass when we fuck up and lay too long on the couch? A cure for obesity?

And beyond that, the matchmaker lays. Aren't we happier and less prone to disease when we are happily married? But I suggest it won't end there. The next step is to have our government assign us this thing we truly lack in this world, and the thing that we absolutely need to achieve happiness: a God. Not a nice, compassionate God, but a brutal, powerful God. One who is no fairer than the one who created us. One who provides both pain and pleasure, and who gives us direction in our lives. And one who punishes us brutally if we fuck up.

Is this not the path before us? We give up the illusion of choice, we can finally find happiness. A God will give us love, purpose, allow us to experience the full array of emotions, and a set of rules that protect us and will not allow us to break them as his predecessor did. This is the fulfillment of a patriarchal pattern from which humanity has been unable to break free for it's entire time on the planet. Capitalism doesn't work. Let's face it. We have never been more prosperous, and never so unhappy.

A nation on credit and antidepressants, our economists are ignorant in the field of human happiness and spirituality. It's time to realize that money doesn't make us happy. Yes, we need to eat and be free of disease. But we, in America, have passed the point of diminishing returns a long time ago. Now we have our own opulence to deal with: and the fact that our dissatisfaction conflicts with our values. The incentive to make more money does not motivate us anymore: most of us have enough. Greed is good, when it's there. But when survival is assured, we end up watching “American Idol” and downloading porn. There will never be direction in our lives until we choose it, and in a way that gives us no oither “choice”.