Dangerously reactionary thoughts about marriage

1 Hindu marriage vows
Apparently the Hindu makes a series of vows during the marriage ceremony: one to work to financially support the family, another to have children and a third to treat each other with respect.

All very traditional. All so very quaint.

To the Hindu, though, there must be a reasonably clear answer to the question: What is it to be a good husband?

Is there an answer for the post-modernist? If not, is there not something lacking? Something important.

2 Igbo initiation into manhood
Among the Igbo of Nigeria manhood must involve marriage and this must involve childrearing. Celestine A Obi tells us that the ambition of becoming a father is so essential it is built into some of the Igbo names. One name: Nwabu-uwa apparently means: a child is all the world to me.

Manhood though is something that boys must be initiated into in the right way. Celestine describes the process like this: "As soon as a boy comes to the age of reason, he undergoes a civic juvenile test by which ho is initiated into the juju cult by iba nammuo (the walk to the spirit land). By this ceremony ho is initiated into the secrets of "egwugwu" and told of ana-be-mmuo'. These are secrets which, he can never reveal to anyone of the female sex nor to the yet uninitiated of his own sex."

There are secrets one must keep from one's wife. Is there not a great deal of wisdom in this? And is the essence not: a certain distance – a certain sense of propriety - must be maintained. One must be a man for one's wife. One must certainly not lose one's sense of self – one's sense of difference. Is there not something terribly flaccid and unwholesome in the desire to merge, to disappear and have no secrets?

Oh the wisdom of the Igbo!

3 Igbo womanhood

Celestine has a lovely passage on young Igbo women:

"The girls of the village take particular pains to attract the attention of eligible young men and do not hesitate to advertise their personal charms. On gala days, every available ornament is brought into requisition. The girls revel in dancing and seize every opportunity of displaying their charms". Some Igbo girls add poise to their erectness by deliberately walking upright and chest-out. Why all this show? One would be inclined to ask. You would not blame them, if you understand the motive. This is the time for silent but vigorous campaign for a good husband. This ambition glows fervently inside every girl and restlessly demands an urgent satisfaction before the teeming full and pointing breasts sag and bow to age."

The Igbo (as they were, doubtless) fuse the sex drive, the desire to marry and the desire to raise children. The most primitive drives are still one with the central social roles.

How odd that seems from the perspective of one for whom marriage felt like an empty formality, like some feudal relic, and the thought of having children only arrived at an age at which most Igbo contemporaries would have become grandparents.

What a tremendous fragmentation of passion and society. Not that there is a lack of social life, of socialising (and the Igbo with their separation of girls and boys were probably not the best at socialising) but a lack of society nevertheless.

Aren't these dangerously reactionary thoughts very Alasdair MacIntyre – very "After Virtue". (Note: Must find out about MacIntyre's Thomism if only to avoid falling into it.)

(Check out Celstine's work at http://codewit.com/igbomarriage.php)

Neo-Conservative Enlightenment

It was interesting to hear Mr GW Bush say in a speech in Thailand just now – a speech referring to China – that a people brought up on the right to trade goods will sooner or later demand the right to trade ideas. Habermas would certainly not agree that the democratic practice of penetrating public debate could be adequately described as a matter of trading ideas.

What is Enlightenment? Going back to Kant

We want to get back to Adorno's and Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment as a refreshing alternative to the stale talk of modernism and postmodernism. First step: Kant's essay "What is Enlightenment?" even though A&H don't seem to give this much weight.

So what is Enlightenment for Kant? Here is the first paragraph:

"Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man's inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude! "Have courage to use your own reason!"- that is the motto of enlightenment."

So:

1 Enlightenment is a form of liberation (no more tutelage).
2 Enlightenment is about a change in the way people think: now they think for themselves instead of just parroting what other (supposedly more authoritative minds/texts have said).
3 This could have happened a lot earlier in history because there was never any lack in the capacity for reason (reason is thinking and everyone can/could think assuming they are over a certain age and not yet in a coma).
4 The problem in the past was a mysterious lack of courage – a lack which suddenly seems to be made good in the eighteenth century.

In the second paragraph Kant is content to attribute the late coming of the Enlightenment to laziness and cowardice. However, in the following paragraph there is an acknowledgment that the "guardians of society … made their domestic cattle dumb and have made sure that these placid creatures will not dare take a single step without the harness of the cart to which they are tethered...," implying that it wasn't just laziness. In an interesting twist he says that the dumbed-down public can become so attached to the thoughtless prejudices once spread by guardians with ulterior motives that they can rise up and insist on them when more Enlightened guardians attempt to make more rational reforms.

However, the most controversial aspect of Kant's essay is his distinction between the social order (which may be free or unfree) and the freedom of thought. Although we might think that liberation is above all about ending things like tyranny and despotism, Kant writes as if these changes in the social order are of little consequence unless there is a liberation (Enlightenment) in the way people think. The revolution that is called for is a revolution in thought, not in society, excepting the need for reforms regarding the freedom of speech, for instance. the key imperative in Kant's version of the Enlightenment is that "the public use of one's reason must always be free". The word "public" here refers to public debate and criticism which goes on separately and without having any (immediate?) impact on the business of society. The freedom of this public use of reason is perfectly compatible, for Kant, with a lack of freedom in the "private" use of one's reason, meaning what people must agree to as part of their obligations to society (his examples include the obligations of a soldier to obey commands or of a citizen to pay taxes that they might want to criticise).

Kant acknowledges that people are not free to do do (and sometimes to say) what they agree with, but this appears not to compromise the freedom of thought that Enlightened individuals can exercise after they have fulfilled their social obligations. The freedom of thought is unlimited, despite those irrational social obligations. And there isn't even a problem with hypocrisy in the case of, for instance, a clergyman who is obliged by his church to preach one thing while publishing scholarly works criticising the doctrines he has been preaching. The freedom of the individual is perfectly compatible with social unfreedom, a key idea which comes out most clearly in the last paragraph where he puts the following words into the mouth of an enlightened monarch (words we are assumed to agree with): "Argue as much as you will and about what you will, only obey!"

Mental Pollution

A lot is said about dumping waste in the environment. Not enough is said about dumping rubbish in the mind.

Seeing a close relative in a coma and dying brought this home to me. You might think that in a coma a person is a complete vegetable. Wrong. There is a coma scale and unless you really are at the absolute bottom there is still activity. You move. Your nose itches, you scratch it. The higher functions of the mind are obviously shot to pieces: no reaction to words and if the eyes are open, no recognition of anything familiar, but the brain is obviously still ticking over. Things are going on in there – just the simplest, most deeply rooted things – the last things to go before THE END.

That was when I had a horrible thought about opal fruits (a square sweet popular – once popular – in the UK). I never liked opal fruits but that didn't stop their advertising jingle getting right into the fibres of my being. "Opal fruits: made to make your mouth water." It's a jingle that not infrequently floats up into my consciousness and then insists on going round and round for too long before sinking back down again.

So my nightmare is that I might be on death's door, about to breathe my last, or at the end of a protracted decline brought on by Alzheimer's and instead of a rousing symphony that might give me a foretaste of the enduring strength of the human soul or a profound thought from one of the great minds of the Western canon, all I hear is: "Opal fruits: made to make your mouth water. Opal fruits: made to make your mouth water. Opal fruits: made to make your mouth water. Opal fruits: made to make your mouth water."