I would click the “disagree” button if there was one, because many parts of this post are askew to how I understand marriage, divorce, commitment, etc.,
I think of a marriage as two people deciding to build a life together, and commitment as essentially about being “in” on that shared project. This post seems to be coming at it from a different angle, where explicitly specifying things in advance is much more fundamental. It centers honesty vs. dishonesty, ironclad promises, and public accountability in places where those don’t feel like the central concepts to me.
A few of the places where that disagreement came up most strongly:
The paragraph about marriage beginning “The point of a public pledge is help structure our own incentives to fulfill our commitment.” That does not seem like the main point of having a public ceremony, which IMO is more about marking the occasion of the couple building a life together, in common knowledge so that their surrounding community will treat them as a unit.
The paragraph about the mountain climbing promise. Agreeing to climb a mountain before a divorce is finalized doesn’t actually seem to help with the things this post is describing as important. This promise mainly just seems to be acknowledging that an escape clause (divorce) already exists, and adding in an extra step which perhaps is symbolically meaningful to the couple.
The partial sentence “I want people to build within themselves the machinery to be able to make strict pledges that mean things”. As if a pledge needs to be strict in order to be meaningful. There are plenty of meaningful marriages which didn’t specify in advance criteria for a divorce or social consequences of a divorce.
The complaints in the GWWC Pledge section also don’t seem that similar to the arguments in the section on marriage. Standards like ‘Don’t say false things’ (like “till death do we part”) and ‘make it possible to opt out later on, and acknowledge this possibility up front’ which seemed like central parts of the section on marriage are already covered by the current version of the GWWC Pledge.
Marriage has multiple interpretations, of which both “a shared life” and “a contract to mutually support each other” are valid meanings. They point to different aspects of it. And both are important, though to different degrees depending on the people involved.
If your word is your bond and you really want to be honest and truthful, then the publicity really is about additional incentives to keep your bond (not to imply that’s the only way to achieve it, nor that it’s universal). IMO the only point of a public wedding (for me personally) is the accountability, but I’m also aware that I’m an outlier on that dimension.
If you very much don’t want to break promises (or your word), then it’s very important to have explicit outs. Even if divorce is implicitly understood to be a way out, if you don’t explicitly specify the cases in which you can trigger it, you’re breaking your promise if you get divorced. Which of course doesn’t mean that you can under no circumstances get divorced—it’s just a matter of the lesser evil. Take one traditional vow (from a quick google search):
In the name of God, I, _____, take you, _____, to be my wife/husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until parted by death
That doesn’t allow for divorce. Or for infidelity. Or brain damage. Or a whole lot of other problems. If you want out, then you have to break your word. Each broken promise weakens all your other promises. So if you add an additional escape clause, then you won’t break your promise. The mountain climbing thing allows for an amical divorce without either side having gone against their word. It keeps the sanctity of vows and promises.
A pledge needs to be strict if it is to mean what it says and if others are to be able to trust in what it means. Not if the only meaning you care for is a personal feel good kind of meaning. Which I don’t want to negate here—if it gives you personal meaning, good. But that’s a different thing than mutual information and assurance.
This is the problem with the current GWWC pledge. It’s generally understood implicitly that of course you can opt out if you want. And that its current state is mainly to give you personal meaning and fellowship. Which is a good thing, to be clear. But a pledge is something sacred and breaking it is a sacrilege which weakens all other pledges (both yours and others). The current wording doesn’t allow you to opt out. Which is a problem if you value the literal words of what you say, rather than just the underlying meaning which you want to express.
I would click the “disagree” button if there was one, because many parts of this post are askew to how I understand marriage, divorce, commitment, etc.,
I think of a marriage as two people deciding to build a life together, and commitment as essentially about being “in” on that shared project. This post seems to be coming at it from a different angle, where explicitly specifying things in advance is much more fundamental. It centers honesty vs. dishonesty, ironclad promises, and public accountability in places where those don’t feel like the central concepts to me.
A few of the places where that disagreement came up most strongly:
The paragraph about marriage beginning “The point of a public pledge is help structure our own incentives to fulfill our commitment.” That does not seem like the main point of having a public ceremony, which IMO is more about marking the occasion of the couple building a life together, in common knowledge so that their surrounding community will treat them as a unit.
The paragraph about the mountain climbing promise. Agreeing to climb a mountain before a divorce is finalized doesn’t actually seem to help with the things this post is describing as important. This promise mainly just seems to be acknowledging that an escape clause (divorce) already exists, and adding in an extra step which perhaps is symbolically meaningful to the couple.
The partial sentence “I want people to build within themselves the machinery to be able to make strict pledges that mean things”. As if a pledge needs to be strict in order to be meaningful. There are plenty of meaningful marriages which didn’t specify in advance criteria for a divorce or social consequences of a divorce.
The complaints in the GWWC Pledge section also don’t seem that similar to the arguments in the section on marriage. Standards like ‘Don’t say false things’ (like “till death do we part”) and ‘make it possible to opt out later on, and acknowledge this possibility up front’ which seemed like central parts of the section on marriage are already covered by the current version of the GWWC Pledge.
Marriage has multiple interpretations, of which both “a shared life” and “a contract to mutually support each other” are valid meanings. They point to different aspects of it. And both are important, though to different degrees depending on the people involved.
If your word is your bond and you really want to be honest and truthful, then the publicity really is about additional incentives to keep your bond (not to imply that’s the only way to achieve it, nor that it’s universal). IMO the only point of a public wedding (for me personally) is the accountability, but I’m also aware that I’m an outlier on that dimension.
If you very much don’t want to break promises (or your word), then it’s very important to have explicit outs. Even if divorce is implicitly understood to be a way out, if you don’t explicitly specify the cases in which you can trigger it, you’re breaking your promise if you get divorced. Which of course doesn’t mean that you can under no circumstances get divorced—it’s just a matter of the lesser evil. Take one traditional vow (from a quick google search):
That doesn’t allow for divorce. Or for infidelity. Or brain damage. Or a whole lot of other problems. If you want out, then you have to break your word. Each broken promise weakens all your other promises. So if you add an additional escape clause, then you won’t break your promise. The mountain climbing thing allows for an amical divorce without either side having gone against their word. It keeps the sanctity of vows and promises.
A pledge needs to be strict if it is to mean what it says and if others are to be able to trust in what it means. Not if the only meaning you care for is a personal feel good kind of meaning. Which I don’t want to negate here—if it gives you personal meaning, good. But that’s a different thing than mutual information and assurance.
This is the problem with the current GWWC pledge. It’s generally understood implicitly that of course you can opt out if you want. And that its current state is mainly to give you personal meaning and fellowship. Which is a good thing, to be clear. But a pledge is something sacred and breaking it is a sacrilege which weakens all other pledges (both yours and others). The current wording doesn’t allow you to opt out. Which is a problem if you value the literal words of what you say, rather than just the underlying meaning which you want to express.