I guess the seriousness varies from person to person, obv, but the gist seems to be that you can be "serious" with more than one person at a time. And they can, in turn, be "serious" with more than one person. And so on. It looks very messy from the outside!
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
I wonder what it looks like once you toss in matters of finance, kids, etc.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Is anyone here a genuine polyamourist? Anyone care to take their side?
It seems (though this may be stigma much in the vein of bisexuals) that they are generally just people sleeping around but posessing the rhetorical skill to make a pass at justifying it (presumably successfully to their partners')
"Son," he said without preamble, "never trust a man who doesn't drink, because he's probably a self-righteous sort, a man who thinks he knows right from wrong all the time. Some of them are good men, but in the name of goodness, they cause most of the suffering in the world. They're the judges, the meddlers. And, son, never trust a man who drinks but refuses to get drunk. They're usually afraid of something deep down inside, either that they're a coward or a fool or mean and violent. You can't trust a man who's afraid of himself. But sometimes, son, you can trust a man who occasionally kneels before a toilet. The chances are that he is learning something about humility and his natural human foolishness, about how to survive himself. It's damned hard for a man to take himself too seriously when he's heaving his guts into a dirty toilet bowl.
I've known some before, and I really don't think they are just people sleeping around but capable of justifying it.
Yes, by known I mean known.
We're stuck in a bloody snowglobe.
So how did they justify it? Surely we would all like to be in a committed relationship but be able to have sex and fall in love with someone else when the feelings arose.
Whats different between your polyamourist who justifies this behaviour and your non-polyamourist who feels the same urges but resists and says "No, i am in a relationship with x and regardless of my current feelings, i will only have meaningful relationships with x."?
"Son," he said without preamble, "never trust a man who doesn't drink, because he's probably a self-righteous sort, a man who thinks he knows right from wrong all the time. Some of them are good men, but in the name of goodness, they cause most of the suffering in the world. They're the judges, the meddlers. And, son, never trust a man who drinks but refuses to get drunk. They're usually afraid of something deep down inside, either that they're a coward or a fool or mean and violent. You can't trust a man who's afraid of himself. But sometimes, son, you can trust a man who occasionally kneels before a toilet. The chances are that he is learning something about humility and his natural human foolishness, about how to survive himself. It's damned hard for a man to take himself too seriously when he's heaving his guts into a dirty toilet bowl.
Among other things having a partner who also was in a committed relationship but able to have sex and fall in love with someone else when the feelings arose.
We're stuck in a bloody snowglobe.
This touches on something I was talking about a few days ago with someone —*given that life expectancies in the decadent West are going up, is it reasonable to expect there is a shelf life to a marriage? That once the kids are pushed through the system, the union is inexorably changed and it's hard to justify it?
Divorce rates in the 50-60+ demographic are up, but I think it's not clear if this has to do with increased social acceptance of divorce or with an actual shift in how we view marriage.
Maybe it's because it's safer and easier for a 65-y-o to get divorced today than it was 30 years ago?
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
That's what I have sometimes thought, except it really was just as easy for them to get divorced 20 years ago in most places.
Which is why I wonder if this is part of a shift in how people asses married lives together.
Was it also just as accepted as it is now?Originally Posted by Dreadnaught
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
Possibly not quite as represented in popular culture, but still very common so at least among the circle of people I grew up with.
The idea of term-contract marriage has been very popular in sci-fi pretty much since the late Golden Era. But churches, olol
Actually, it does raise the question of kiddy-winks, but they suffer already when marriages go down the crapper, so I suppose n-year marriage licenses wouldn't really change anything on that front. Although it might be prudent to separate the legalities of parenthood from the legalities of marriage more, given that they're joined at the hip for the most part right now?
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
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