A Skeptics Thoughts

Maybe I'm a questioner, maybe I'm just a pessimist, but there's something to be said that we're the only species that marries. On rare occasions, animals in nature share their lives with only one mate. RARE, mind you. Are we one of those rare species? Doubtful. Look at the stats on divorce. Maybe we're not all that different from the majority of the animal species. We may be rational beings who understand the awareness of our own bodies, but we're also behind so many destructive forces that it makes you wonder how much we value life--And life with another person for that matter. We can easily call a lawyer and make it an official split, with divisions of nearly everything in sight worth splicing in two. So, does two really become one, or is it a simple equation of dividing two?

It seems that with so many people splitting, I wonder if people really would be happier being alone. Animals make a simple decision to have what we affectionately call "open relationships." In the human world, this is looked upon unfavorably...but why? They still reproduce in the wild to create a new population and regenerate the species. It's beyond likely that this would occur in the human world. Is it necessary to live with two incomes in a "family?" Not necessarily. Before we necessitated living in a world with money, people traded goods and lived off the land. Animals have survived doing this for far longer than we have. Does this mean that we evolved into something more because we use a system that includes money exchanged for things instead of trading things for things? I highly doubt that.

So, is it for the tax cut that we decide to marry? No, not really. (The perks can't be that significantly different.) Personally, I prefer to have my finances managed by me, myself, and I. So, why is it that perfectly rational beings tend to fall into a norm of marriage? I'm not going to be so forward as to suggest that I have any real answers here, but I find it hard to believe that this institution should be so highly desired when it so rarely fails. A perfectly happy, independent person doesn't need the financial security, nor the daily affirmation of self-worth that another person could provide. Having good friends can essentially give you the same sort of satisfaction and as long as you have your own financial means, is "the other half" truly needed? Even the term "the other half" implies that you aren't whole unless you have something (read: someone) else in your life. Well, I refuse to believe that I wouldn't be a whole person without someone else. I can just as easily spend the rest of my life with friends and family and achieve the same sort of social interaction.

Then, aside from procreation, what is the need for another person to share your life with? Animals switch partners to reproduce effectively in the wild. Really, with the divorce rate what it is, we do the same thing. In the same right, if the significant other passes on, as a society, we frequently find another mate. Isn't that the same thing that happens in the wild? The only difference is that we spend a significant amount of time with the person we are married to before they pass and we find another partner. Often, after a divorce, we find other mates as well and for some reason decide to remarry. So, really, why bother getting married in the first place?

I don't come from a broken family. My parents are still happily married. My closest grandmother never remarried after her husband passed away. My other set of grandparents had a similar fate, yet my grandfather did remarry after his first wife passed away. But, the outstanding statistic remains this: 50% of my aunts and uncles on EACH side of my family were divorced. Half of the 50% divorcees have remarried. And outlandishly, 50% of my grandparents remarried because of a passing in the family. Sounds to me like a family trend. None of these divorces or remarriages have significantly affected me.

Where does that leave us? Going nowhere fast. I consider my argument to be completely null. Merely thoughts stirring in my head, that will yet again be resurfaced at another time.