A doctrine of alienation

[TheRocketSurgeon]

I do quibble (a little) with your summary of my position, but I'll start by answering your final question. First, I think it's impossible to give up our individuality, because we are individuals, and there's not really a way to get around that.

I would point out, only in western culture. Right now billions of people grow up with a family/society first, and their are no individuals. The individual pieces never exceed the family itself. Whether you see this is good bad or indifferent, my point in individuality is taught or a learned/ unchecked behavior and not universal truth.

This is a good point. Our notions of "self" are largely culture-based programming, and this should not be overlooked. I'm not sure I go as far as Pinker's conclusions in The Blank Slate, in terms of how much this programming influences how our brains work, but I certainly concede this point.

But, like a soldier joining a Special Ops fireteam, we can learn to behave as if  we were a single unit. To me, marriage is like that.

And I would argue this works only 50% of the time, or so say the marriage stats.

True. However, modern studies have suggested fairly conclusively that only about half of the human race is biochemically equipped to be monogamous, on a genetic basis (genes for a set of neurochemical receptors that cause longterm mate-pair bonding). It's one of two strategies we seem to have evolved. The other is a "4 year itch" serial monogamist strategy in which a short-term bonding system causes romantic infatuation, which fades when the initial dopamine-reward-system ceases to be triggered by the person. In effect, there's a three-tiered sytem: a lust-attraction system, based on testosterone (yes, even in females), a romantic-infatuation system, based on dopamine, and a longterm pair-bonding system based on vasopressin (mainly in men) and oxytosin (mainly in women). You can read about it from the US National Institutes of Health, here:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK97287/

In other words, marriage isn't for everyone, but we go on teaching that it is, and that "something is wrong with you" if you're not the marrying type, so a lot of people get married who should never do so. We expect 100% of couples to be faithful, and about half don't even have the systems to allow this sort of pair-bonding to happen. That 50% figure seems right in-line with that datum. I wish our society allowed people to be more honest about that. I'm a monogamist, but I've historically been attracted to women who turned out not to be.

We are strong where the other is weak, and vice versa, and by working together it is possible to "survive, adapt, and overcome", as the military says, no matter what the situation is. I do not think that designating "the one with the penis is the leader" is a wise idea, simply because there may be times when you are out of your element but she is not, and her leadership could prove decisive in that situation.

...And if the one with the penis disagrees? then both parties circle the wagons battle it out.

If the one with the penis disagrees, then he can discuss it with his equal partner until they reach a concensus or compromise, or else they're not equal partners.

Besides, Biblical-type or not, any married man will tell you that there are times you just gotta let her do what she wants.

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So my quibble is that I am not suggesting that ideal marriage is retaining individuality; I am saying we cannot help but retain our individuality, and the key to happiness/success is accepting the equality of both partners, in every way, then figure out what skills/abilities each has or doesn't have, and learning to mesh those attributes into a marriage-team that can take on all comers.

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And I disagree in saying I am nothing like I was, when I was on my own. I was funny, thin (er), and had hair.. Plus I was selfish, impatient, and did only what I wanted to do. I am not me anymore. I'm us. the difference between an marriage team and 'us' a team is two working individuals working toward a single goal. (which again is a successful model 1/2 the time.) the "One flesh/One being biblical model" has the man and wife both die to self. Meaning it's not about two people working as one, it's about two people becoming one, in word thought and deed. That is why Christ said:"What God united let man not separate." Because when it is right you can not separate one with out destroying the other.

When you were a kid did you ever jam red playdoh with blue playdoh? once you made purple playdoh could you ever successfully put all the blue back in it's container and all the red back into it's orginial container? no of course not. That's the Idea of a scriptural marriage to make purple playdoh rather than try and make something out of the blue and red while keeping them both separate yet bridge a gap that the two combined can cover.

Becoming a SeAL unit member transforms you in numerous ways, physically and mentally, as well. Yet the SeAL is still an individual, in addition to his place on the team. And I agree that we change greatly from the experience of falling in love with someone on a level deep enough to even consider life-partnering with them, since it's a radical change from being an sing individual to being a part of a two-person team in which you would unhesitatingly lay down your life or sacrifice individual goals in favor of adopting their happiness as part-and-parcel of your own happiness. I get that. I like the playdoh analogy, except I'd call it something like this, where your individualities merge to make purple at the places where you have fused, but there's still plenty of blue and red.

In the traditional model, only the male gets to retain his individuality, while the woman is expected to completely subsume herself into the complete role of wife and mother and housekeeper. I find this model simply incompatible with the basic premise of "feminism is the radical notion that women are people", which is one of my guiding principles.

Maybe in the corrupt onesided version of what most people believe to be a biblical marriage. But again, a woman submitting to her husband is only 1/3 of the equasion. The man must wholy and fully transform Himself to be the working model of Christ in His house hold. It's been more than a decade and I'm still working on that transformation. Imagine changing yourself for more than 10 years, how much of your original self would remain?

No argument from me on this, except to say that "wives submit to your husband" is much more controlling, since he's standing right there, telling her what to do or not do, than "husbands submit unto the Lord", since other than the guiding principles in the Bible, the specifics are much, much more nebulous and open to personal interpretation... not even counting the tendency of people to "cherry-pick" out of the Bible when determining what God really wants of them. (Some of the cherry-picking is a good thing, since we don't really want people stoning their children for talking back to dad, now, do we?)

Bottom line is Biblical marriage is not about who get the choice job and who gets stuck with the crap jobs in the house hold, its about two becoming one and working together in such away as to become one person expressed in two separate bodies. Because otherwise it is not possible to do/be the man or woman God would have us be if we tried to hang on to our individuality. Unfortunatly this concept is almost all but lost to time, at least in this culture.

:thumbsup: Except I don't say "unfortunately".