Early men lived as hunters and gatherers. They did not settle at a singular place. This constant movement and displacement did not allow them to have a very familial life. They obviously did not restrict themselves with the number of mating partners they had. Man was an animal and lived like one, in all aspects. It runs in our blood, it is in our DNA. All concepts of social constructs and whatnot were non-existent.
As cavemen became more evolved to agrarian civilisations and settled down in large groups, a need for more stable and suitable arrangements grew imminent. This gave birth to one such concept called marriage. Marriage back then had very little to do with religion and love.
It was more a business alliance.
Marriage, as its first purpose, serves to bind a woman to a man as his property and to produce children. In this day and age, it sounds very sexist and misogynistic but this was a very normalised idea centuries ago. Somehow, a matrimonial connection guarantees a man’s offspring as his true biological heirs.
Love came into the picture much later. As partners began to spend more time together they developed deep mutual feelings for each other, a profound sense of care and concern for an individual. And thus love became embedded into the ideology of marriage. Men and women started to marry for love and to share all of eternity together.
Now that the history lesson is over, let us look into what marriage really is and how it works in the current times.
We have evolved from a long line of living organisms and some of the genes passed down for aeons still linger in us. The animalistic instincts and feral behaviour, if you may, still run in our bloodstream. Monogamy is not ingrained in our DNA. In fact, we are meant to have multiple sexual partners. But somehow we came up with this idea of marriage that makes us legally bound to one person for life, or until the marriage lasts.
We can safely assume marriage is a social construct invented by humans for convenience, presumably.
So much of hype is created around this institution that the sanctity of matrimony is slowly decaying. In a very religious and sentimental standpoint, marriages quite make sense but in the real world, the core beliefs and laws followed by these institutions are shaken.
Wedding preparations and rituals have become a whole production for the entertainment of guests and onlookers. The very nature and purpose of a marriage is replaced with the need to please the crowd. The wedding industry has become very capitalistic and is estimated to be worth around 300 billion USD and is still growing at an exponential state. No one really cares if the marriage works out in the end or not, they are more invested in the pomp and party of one wedding night.
Marriage has also become a reason now to bear children. Even if a child is born out of wedlock, in majority of cases, the parents are expected to tie the knot. This match assures the presence of two consenting adults to bring up a child in this world. Or it can be the other way around. Children may be the consequence of a marriage.
Wedding and marriages are so incorporated in our lives and in our cultures that we cannot accept the fact that they are mere examples of social constructionism. To live a life freer without such commitments and satisfying our needs by having multiple partners is looked down in our society although there is actually nothing wrong about it. It is a lifestyle the world is not ready for. Years and years and generations and generations of enforcing marital ideas in young minds to keep us grounded and in check has made us all obligated to follow that path. And maybe, to live a nomadic life in this day and age would prove quite cumbersome and we eventually resort to societal norms imposed on us.
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