On the rooftop of her Brooklyn apartment building this past spring, Erika Anderson put on a vintage-style white wedding dress, stood before a circle of her closest friends, and committed herself — to herself.
“I choose you today,” she said. Later she tossed the bouquet to friends and downed two shots of whiskey, one for herself and one for herself. She had planned the event for weeks, sending invitations, finding the perfect dress, writing her vows, buying rosé and fresh baguettes and fruit tarts from a French bakery. For the decor: an array of shot glasses emblazoned with the words “You and Me.” In each one, a red rose…
Self-marriage is a small but growing movement, with consultants and self-wedding planners popping up across the world. In Canada, a service called Marry Yourself Vancouver launched this past summer, offering consulting services and wedding photography. In Japan, a travel agency called Cerca Travel offers a two-day self-wedding package in Kyoto: You can choose a wedding gown, bouquet, and hairstyle, and pose for formal wedding portraits. On the website I Married Me, you can buy a DIY marriage kit: For $50, you get a sterling silver ring, ceremony instructions, vows, and 24 “affirmation cards” to remind you of your vows over time. For $230, you can get the kit with a 14-karat gold ring…
Marriage (to another person) is on the decline. Barely half of all adults in the U.S. are married — a record low — according to a 2011 study from the Pew Research Center. In 1960, 72 percent of adults age 18 and older were married, while today, just 51 percent are wed. People are waiting longer to marry as well: The median age at first marriage is at a new high for brides (26.5 years) and grooms (28.7 years).
Nonetheless, the stigma for single women remains. “It’s left over from centuries of one kind of marriage pattern and one path for women,” Traister says. She recalls reading books as a girl in which the story always ended when the heroine got married, as if that were the ultimate goal. “We’re set up as a culture to treat marriage as the most exciting thing you’ll ever do in your life,” she says. “But if you marry yourself, you can say: My life is just as meaningful as the life of the person who happens to be getting married.”
Things are changing in some strange way, such that some of the people today are no longer comfortable with the ways of the past. All of the changes in preference are changes which would aid one to exploit a resource glut, and they encompass such diverse areas as child-rearing, sexual preferences, sexual age-preference, economic distribution, aggressiveness, competitiveness, monogamy, and loyalty.
If you have never heard of r/K Theory, all of that must be bewildering. And yet if you know r/K it is not just understandable, it is all entirely predictable. Even the switch from a loyal, pro-social attitude to a more envious, selfish, duplicitous, conflict-avoidant, backstabbing, traitorous, self-absorbed psychology is explained:
After eight years of magnanimous humility, servility and deferential governance toward his political opposition, ‘President selfless‘ awards himself the Medal of Distinguished Public Service. Thus, President Obama officially declares himself the greatest public servant during his own tenure.
No. Really, not kidding. He did.
If you expect free resources awarded without any cost, this does not seem strange. If you expect a world of competition, where accomplishment arises from objective assessment of quality, it is weird.
That is why this blog continues. That one idea, that politics is actually the intellectual expression of underlying reproductive strategies, will eventually revolutionize politics. It is just too powerful to suppress, because it explains so much.
When it finally hits, it will have to be taught widely, infecting young minds across the globe, and then everything will change.
Spread r/K Theory, because you want to be a part of the new revolution
[…] Now Women Are Marrying Themselves […]
AnonCon, have you Robert Anton Wilson? He builds on Timothy Leary’s theories about how the human psyche is divided into circuits. Ie food/comfort/shelter, sex/emotion/territory, dexterity/symbols/time, tribe/taboos/morality/status. And then there’s a bunch more, which is the domain of mystics, saints, and such.
See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-circuit_model_of_consciousness
I’ll check it out, thanks.
Is marrying oneself the “left hand path” theosophists liked to talk about? 😉
George W Bush was also awarded the medal by his SecDef.
What change do you predict if r/K is learned widely? What balance?
I think the young will instinctively be repulsed at the thought of being rabbits themselves. They will aspire to be the wolves, and that will open the door to conservatizing them.
Also right now, a person may be attracted to one side based on a single issue, even though they do not agree with the other issues. r/K unites the issues together, and that brings pressure on such people to adopt K, because while one issue may drive them left, once all the others are congealed and united into a counterbalancing force, it should be enough to drive most K, since the species as a whole trends K.
Obama’s Distinguished Public Service Medal was awarded by the Secretary of Defense, not by himself. It was also awarded to W and Bill Clinton at the end of their terms. This does not take away from 0’s narcissistic tendencies, nor does it mean he deserves such an honor; it’s just that there is so much crap about the guy that is true, we should not succumb to resorting to fraudulent or skewed news to prove what a disaster his term of office was.
That being said, politicians should not be getting awards for being elected and re-elected, and for (presumably) doing their job. Awards should be reserved for going above and beyond the call of duty, for doing the extraordinary, for selfless acts of valor putting oneself in harms way for the good or safety of others. Sadly, we have become a “participation award society,” where even our ex-presidents have to be told what good boys they have been. If a president has been truly great, history will honor him. The rest is just so much chaff which will in a few year’s time will be blown away and forgotten – as it should be.
Can’t wait for the schizoid divorce proceedings. “I married a psychotic jackass, Your Honor, and am asking for full custody of the cats.”
Is this why we have shows like ‘married at first sight’.
A show where two people who never meet get marry. They follow them for a month and at the end of the show can decide to continue the married or divorced. Here is the Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Married_at_First_Sight_(U.S._TV_series)
Hey anonymousconservative is show like is a r type world but my question is that do show like this exist for r’s or K’s?
I say this due to the fact that relationship is so cheap it is hard for someone to find a person who is wife or husband material. Due to the lack of K or living in a place full of r’s. Therefor shows can get people like this go on in the hopes that they might find that person.
I don’t know. It is possible that given the state of the world, “entertainment” will increasingly just need to be distracting to assuage amygdala, and may not relate to r/K specifically.
There is (maybe greater) competition between ideas/meme than bio-organism (their genes in fact).
Why do you think political r/K theory would one day be adopted by many people ? (there a many other great and simple ideas that explain “so much” that stays in their niche)
I recognize that it’s simple, elegant, and explain much, and it have some defenders. But is it sufficient to become main stream ?
It doesn’t need to be mainstream, so much as dominant within political science, so it will be taught. Most memes have no place in a classroom, which significantly hamper their exposure. But once you get something like Marx, or Mein Kampf, almost everyone will be exposed to it at some point.
Plus, my read of r/K says the cycle is K-selection unifies the populace by killing off the rabbits. From there, the society will split into increasingly acrimonious factions, until that ignites an outright war, and a return of K-selection. As the partisan acrimony increases, I believe that will fuel interest.
But I am very close to this, and due to the vagaries of chance, nothing is ever clearly certain even if you know all the parameters.
What is your take? Where do you see weaknesses and strengths?
Reminds me of this classic by Robert Heinlein:
http://www.weylmann.com/The_Year_of_the_Jackpot.pdf