It does seem apparent that this country no longer wants independent, self-sustaining people and communities. The moves towards everyone being a dependent is chugging along, and has been in some capacity for decades, and even centuries, slowly chipping away at the sense of self, overall identity, expectations, security and rights.

Marriage – people seem to go down that road for many reasons. Social reasons, economic reasons, religious reasons, and so on. Being in love isn’t enough. You have to show it with a license, contract, a ritual, and then rules thereafter. Binding you and your spouse to the state as much as each other. I personally have been down that road twice now, and divorced twice, and before that, hadn’t given that much real thought towards the whole system. Because you are brought up to think it’s normal and expected, with old words like barren and spinster hanging around from earlier decades to help to influence decisions. Yet there is another side to it that I began considering over the years, of how the ‘rules of marriage’ were set up to be of benefit, not for love or commitment.

And who benefits from that arrangement? Unfortunately, men will be slightly in the firing line here, but they have been used for purpose as much as women have. Because it seems that some of the previous ‘rules’ in society towards women, directly held them back and down from individual opportunity, some things only being possible with a husband. Like having a bank account or dealing with finances. You know, the thing that ‘they’ decided was essential for sustaining yourself, was restricted, unless, you had a man around to do it for you – either husband, father or I guess sibling. So, like mentioned above, many people settled or got married just so they could live, could eat and actually ‘be allowed’ to take part in society in what we consider today as normal. If women wanted to breed, they had to be married or great shame would be heaped upon them, or the children would be taken away, adopted or hidden. Not so much for men. Women have been used as pawns for the longest time, and the result of much of that appears to be that many women picked men, that ordinarily wouldn’t have had a chance if it was just down to love and treating your partner with respect.

We even have arranged marriages as a species, which seems like a handy way to continue a tradition of making sure your offspring marry and breed, however, I see a psychological problem with and one that spreads into online dating in my mind. Because there is a similarity in my mind, where you vet the potential candidate, check out their history, their stats, what they are offering and so on, like the parents would with an arranged marriage. Taking away any spontaneity or a chance meeting face to face, it becomes an ordered and arranged affair.

Making women dependent on men, and men dependent on the state. I have already written about a certain aspect of this in Digging for Gold, or Freedom? examining the obstacles and conditions that seem to have led to that strategy developing. Then, strangely, a change occurred and suddenly women weren’t just allowed to work, they were allowed their own finances, full on careers and what we would call ‘freedom’ to do what they wanted, on their own if they wanted. But it wasn’t that simple, because in that there were also rules you were supposed to follow about having a career or family, not both, with shame still being wheeled out when needed, from both sides. Because the mindset of generations of conditioning doesn’t just disappear or change overnight, or in one decade or even two. It takes time and a fair amount of work to make people think how you would like them to, as my article Consumerism discusses. But now you had a changing landscape, where the state doesn’t seem to want anyone having any opportunity anymore, no freedom or choice or long-term plans.

And them being involved in people’s relationships, is just one of the many intimate interferences of the ‘rulers’ into people’s personal matters. Along with your birth, your health, education, finance, and death, they are also there to facilitate an upgrade or downgrade to your relationship status, or when you grow your family, after they themselves have put the rules of those relationships and family in place. Forcing you to adhere to the ‘terms of society’, with exclusion and torment if you don’t do as you are told. Quite a busted-up system really, where we are ‘allowed to adult’ with certain rights we are told we have, but are actually treated very much like children. And it does seem as though a rather childish tone has overtaken society currently, with the most childish and immature attitudes coming from the government itself. But if you get to always spend someone else’s money, and have no responsibility for that, then I guess it does lead to an entitled, childish attitude. But if we are the ones funding them, surely that means they are ones who are dependents…

(c) MKW Publishing