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| Mike Caprio mikecap@world.std.com |
Introduction | Professional Info | Personal Info | Writing |
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Progress would become a thing of the past. No longer would we need to fear or fret over the future and its ramifications; no doubt we would quickly become intensely concerned with our own day-to-day survival. But with the more basic Maslowian needs aside, we can safely approach the much more vital topic I'd like to discuss.
Sex.
With the restraints of civilization removed, we would not be burdened with needless, purposeless, assinine ritual. I daresay we would know by instinct which members of the preferred sex were available, or else it would simply not matter, as the conventions of today would be dissolved. Sounds much easier than answering a personal ad, doesn't it?
Unfortunately, nothing short of a complete societal lobotomy is required to destroy the 10,000 years of learned response we call history; and although it might somehow be accomplished, it could be easier and more economical to simply examine the problem more closely.
I recently underwent a horrendous ordeal sponsored by an airline I will refrain from mentioning (though I will not fly their friendly skies again). The most interesting part of this travesty was, oddly enough, the inflight movie; a little gem now available on video called Somersby, with Richard Gere and Jodie Foster. It was your basic romantic drama formula - with a twist. Gere ends up sacrificing himself in the name of love, a martyr who gives everything to ensure his beloved's future. I'll say this much: hanging for love isn't very high on _my_ list.
Is this what we are inevitably reduced to? Have relationships become so complex and entangled that we must continually sacrifice ourselves to sustain them? If romance novels and romantic films are any accurate reflection of society's opinion, this is indeed the case.
In an ideal world, there would be no need for this foolishness. Relationships would be tangle-free and for the most part selfless and devoid of feelings of posessiveness. So what is it then that acts as the stumbling block between what we experience as relationships now and what we would hope is an ideal relationship? In my mind it can only be one of a small number of things.
Social convention springs immediately to mind. Any and all societal mores can affect the relationship between two people - the way you dress (or in some customs, the way you don't), the ritual of dating, the mode of conversation, and hundreds more examples of silliness that can make or break your relationship.
Of course, the continuation of convention is merely the surface of a much larger, deeper problem. In a country like our own, where culture is fed intravenously via the television tube, reality suffers a severe breakdown. The continual infusion of perfect images subjugates common sense - the suspension of disbelief rules over all reason. Life and relationship difficulties get resolved in half-hour segments on sitcoms; the harsh reality of war becomes a dazzling fireworks display; important details get chopped into over-simplifed sound bites; and happily-ever-afters ensue. The point of all this being that the concept of the relationship gets skewed on the screen. Art imitates life, it is said, but in a TV culture like ours, life often mistakenly imitates art, in the perpetuation of stereotype and misconception.
So what then is left? How can we end this vicious circle of increasing complexity? A good first step towards the improvement of interpersonal relationships, I think, would be to turn off the TV, drop the romance novel, and talk to your partner; in short, abandon the meal of the savior that our culture offers us.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.