Irvine511
Blue Crack Supplier
next week begins the dreaded month of february. for those of us in the northeast, it means 6 more weeks of cold and snow, 6 more weeks of darkness, the Holidays are far behind us, and no vacation days (excluding president's day) until Memorial Day. February is also home to that pernicious, Hallmark Holiday we call Valentine's Day. with all this in mind, i pose this question to the FYM: is romance a hoax?
does it really exist, or do we try to will it into existence because we are saturated with tales of love and romance in everything from Friends to Usher to Jane Austin.
here's a hypothesis: romantic love is a secular cult.
as almost anyon before the 19th century would have told you: the concept is a crock.
Aristotle, paraphrased: it's a benighted attempt to found friendship on beauty.
Montaigne: "impetuous and fickle, a feverish flame."
Shakespeare: "Romeo and Juliet," begins with Romeo's obsessive infatuation withRosalind; then Romeo meets Juliet, and Rosalind isn't even worth an email. Love is like that, Shakespeare seems to imply. It comes; it goes. If taken too seriously, it kills.
let's then compare romantic love with true friendship or parent-child love -- the comparison renders romance a joke of a feeling. yet this joke, as Celine Dion and Josh Grobin tell us, is the secret to happiness.
let's look at societal changes. greater sex equality has (mostly) discredited the idea that no woman is complete without a man. Clinton had a marriage that, whatever else it was founded on, had little to do with romance.
but still, romance is relentlessly sold to us. Britney clones go on dates in kindergarten. boy bands parade as romantic fantasies for a new generation of screaming girls. the political quest for equal marriage rights for homosexuals merges into a cultural campaign for gay romance. the essence of romantic love is not the company of a lover but the pursuit of one. all anticipation, no delivery. the disappointment of having waited 16 years for a new Star Wars movie that turns out to be "The Phantom Menace."
maybe these mixed messages -- mixed messages in American culture! shocking, i know -- have something to do with our divorce rate: excessive expectations, driven by popular culture.
yes, i'm sure for a lucky few, infatuation sometimes does lead to lasting love, and love to family, and family to all the other virtues our preachers and politicians regularly celebrate. For many others, relationships are useful economic bargains and, hopefully, successful sexual transactions, and this tyranny of romantic expectations engenders not warm fuzzy feelings on Valentines Day, but depression, maybe jealousy, loneliness, and a sense of failure at something apparently very important.
the love celebrated on Valentine's Day conquers nothing. it contains neither the friendship nor civility that makes marriage successful. it's a drug -- requiring new infusions to sustain the high. it prettifies sex, but doesn't remove sex's danger or lust. and by elevating it to a personal panacea, we suffer the permanent disappointment of unmet expectations.
let's celebrate, instead of romance, the affection, caring, friendship, the small favors of a husband for a wife, and vice versa, after 30 years of marriage. by knocking romance off its Hallmark pedestal, we might go some small way to restoring the importance and dignity of these less glamorous but more fulfilling relationships.
Noel Coward: "If love were all, I should be lonely."
or maybe i'm pissed that i'm single this February.
does it really exist, or do we try to will it into existence because we are saturated with tales of love and romance in everything from Friends to Usher to Jane Austin.
here's a hypothesis: romantic love is a secular cult.
as almost anyon before the 19th century would have told you: the concept is a crock.
Aristotle, paraphrased: it's a benighted attempt to found friendship on beauty.
Montaigne: "impetuous and fickle, a feverish flame."
Shakespeare: "Romeo and Juliet," begins with Romeo's obsessive infatuation withRosalind; then Romeo meets Juliet, and Rosalind isn't even worth an email. Love is like that, Shakespeare seems to imply. It comes; it goes. If taken too seriously, it kills.
let's then compare romantic love with true friendship or parent-child love -- the comparison renders romance a joke of a feeling. yet this joke, as Celine Dion and Josh Grobin tell us, is the secret to happiness.
let's look at societal changes. greater sex equality has (mostly) discredited the idea that no woman is complete without a man. Clinton had a marriage that, whatever else it was founded on, had little to do with romance.
but still, romance is relentlessly sold to us. Britney clones go on dates in kindergarten. boy bands parade as romantic fantasies for a new generation of screaming girls. the political quest for equal marriage rights for homosexuals merges into a cultural campaign for gay romance. the essence of romantic love is not the company of a lover but the pursuit of one. all anticipation, no delivery. the disappointment of having waited 16 years for a new Star Wars movie that turns out to be "The Phantom Menace."
maybe these mixed messages -- mixed messages in American culture! shocking, i know -- have something to do with our divorce rate: excessive expectations, driven by popular culture.
yes, i'm sure for a lucky few, infatuation sometimes does lead to lasting love, and love to family, and family to all the other virtues our preachers and politicians regularly celebrate. For many others, relationships are useful economic bargains and, hopefully, successful sexual transactions, and this tyranny of romantic expectations engenders not warm fuzzy feelings on Valentines Day, but depression, maybe jealousy, loneliness, and a sense of failure at something apparently very important.
the love celebrated on Valentine's Day conquers nothing. it contains neither the friendship nor civility that makes marriage successful. it's a drug -- requiring new infusions to sustain the high. it prettifies sex, but doesn't remove sex's danger or lust. and by elevating it to a personal panacea, we suffer the permanent disappointment of unmet expectations.
let's celebrate, instead of romance, the affection, caring, friendship, the small favors of a husband for a wife, and vice versa, after 30 years of marriage. by knocking romance off its Hallmark pedestal, we might go some small way to restoring the importance and dignity of these less glamorous but more fulfilling relationships.
Noel Coward: "If love were all, I should be lonely."
or maybe i'm pissed that i'm single this February.
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You poor thing 
I'll spare youse all.
melon and mrs springsteen
