I was reading a post by Ian Welch just now that began with:
What Constitutes A Successful Life?
By Ian Welch
December 23, 2025 at 6:37 pm
I never fully bought into the consensus ideas of what constitutes a successful life. Money, power, 2.3 kids, a house in the burbs.
I was an only child and I spent a lot of time around adults as a kid, especially before my teens. Most of them were spending their lives doing things they wouldn’t have done if they didn’t need money, and most of them didn’t seem happy—in some cases happy about their work, in other cases happy about their lives.
I am well into a belief that what we think of as being “normal” is instead a delusion of what I call Mother Culture (a niece of Mother Nature). (If I can imagine our culture to be a woman I can also make her delusional, so please no telegrams, letters, etc. decrying my misogyny.) We don’t know exactly what shapes culture but we have some good ideas. What launched this most recent post is the idea pushed called “Biblical marriage,” you know ‘marriage is between one man and one woman’. This is touted by opponents of gay marriage as the idea form of relations between men and women. But biblical marriage, really? What a fuck up. Let’s see, we have Solomon and his 300 concubines, to go along with his 700 wives. We have King David fucking another man’s wife and then sending the guy to a war front in the hopes that he gets killed. Then there is the proscription if a man dies without male progeny, his widow is to hie over to her dead husband’s house and spread her legs for his brother, to make sure that her dead husband’s “line” does not disappear. (And, then there is the requirement of a rapist to marry the woman he rapes, paying a fine to the girl’s father, etc.)
Nowadays young people are sold the idea of finding their “sole mate” by relatives, Hollywood movies, books, magazines, and more. Little girls are encouraged to think of themselves as princesses, and who the fuck would want to condemn their girl child with such an existence? Princesses, of course, have their one and only Prince Charmings.
So, one is to find their ideal mate and form a breeding pair (my term). Only when the female becomes pregnant are they described as “starting a family,” since the two of them do not count. The male is supposed to “provide” in the form of security, housing, food, basically most of the material stuffs for the “family”. The female is supposed to “nurture” the family by maintaining the household and rearing the children.
Are you ready to gag yet?
There is obviously too much work for just two adults to do. Currently, with the diminishment of labor in the U.S., women find that on top of all of their family obligations, she needs a job too because the “man” no longer can provide enough income to completely support the “family.” Of course, the man compensates by taking over a share of the household chores … <okay, when you stop laughing, it might have happened, maybe one out of a hundred cases>.
Children in today’s culture are greedy little demanding snots hardly worth the effort. I remember when we had family meetings and our parents told us that we were going on vacation … for the first time, and where we were going and what we would be doing every time after that. They got not a peep from us. In today’s reality, there would be demands that they go to Disney World, or this or that vacation hot spot. Cruise ships used to be serene floating hotels to get away from one’s ordinary life, now they seem to be floating amusement parks … for the kids.
Okay, what if we were to roll this movie back and consider alternatives.
A common trope in movies is for one character to have a romantic interest in two others but he/she can’t decide which of the two he/she is “really serious” about. Examples are the movie “Eva” (When Eva, a young housemaid, gets involved in a steamy threesome with a houseboy and her lady boss, she realizes she has to choose only one of them.) and “You Me Her” (Centers around a three-way romantic relationship involving a loving suburban married couple and another woman.) and way, way too many others to count.
There is an old proverb which says that whenever forced to choose between two options, always take the third. So, why shouldn’t he/she choose both of them? Having a marriage of more than two: three, four … more! …creates a group living situation in which there are more adults to handle to necessary work. The handy guy can do all of the handyman things, while the other guy can do the other manly things. The woman who really likes kids can play the nanny role and the woman who doesn’t care that much for kids can be the chef. Or one of the men can do the cooking and cleaning and one of the women can be the investment banker to bring in the necessary funds. You see there are more people to do the same categories of chores. How you divvy them up is up to the group.
And, the aspect of the “marriage” that is never attended to: sex, is more widely distributed. I have come to the conclusion that monogamous is synonymous with monotonous. These “poly” situations would be more conducive to not becoming monotonous. (Why do we teach high school kids how to balance a checkbook, how to do algebra, how to dribble a basketball, how to read and write, but we leave the dominant characteristic of mature relationships, sex, completely out of it? I suggest this is due to religions deciding that sex was a large lever to control their “flock” members with. Pathetic.)
Think about how much more affordable a four bedroom house would be if four adults lived there? The chores could be split four ways, instead of just two ways and the odds that some needed skill was at hand would be doubled. But the current “Breeding Pair Model” of a marriage (not fucking Biblical, you will note) forces tasks onto the pair they do not have the skills to attend to. And what if one of the breeding pair wants children and the other does not? (A sensible system would provide a contract for the marriage, including things like the production of 1-3 children (if possible), amongst other things. Important to this contract is the obligations the two have to one another and any progeny should they desire to opt out of the contract, a contract enforceable by government (currently you are on your own), you know, an enforceable pre-nuptial agreement.
Note—I can’t wait to read the comments … of course, most of which would be telling me I am daft and I could dismiss those comments as coming from those thoroughly indoctrinated by Mother Culture, but I won’t … can’t learn anything that way. S
Postscript I mistyped the word fuck above, inserting an additional letter, and MS Word’s spellchecker caught it, but “fuck” was not on the list of options I may have intended. I corrected the spelling by hand and then re-started the spell checker and it accepted the word without comment, which means it was in Word’s dictionary, but not to be offered as an alternative. Prudish, much? Or is it just a case of avoiding nasty comments from prudes who misspelling the word “fracking” resulted in a proffered correction “Did you mean fucking?” They will probably claim to be “protecting children” or some other such nonsense.
I am using Word 2003, so maybe more current versions have corrected this omission but I do not have the energy to check that out.
Uncommon Sense 
This May Irritate the Hell Out of You
Tags: Biblical marriage, cultural indoctrination, group living, religion
I was reading a post by Ian Welch just now that began with:
I am well into a belief that what we think of as being “normal” is instead a delusion of what I call Mother Culture (a niece of Mother Nature). (If I can imagine our culture to be a woman I can also make her delusional, so please no telegrams, letters, etc. decrying my misogyny.) We don’t know exactly what shapes culture but we have some good ideas. What launched this most recent post is the idea pushed called “Biblical marriage,” you know ‘marriage is between one man and one woman’. This is touted by opponents of gay marriage as the idea form of relations between men and women. But biblical marriage, really? What a fuck up. Let’s see, we have Solomon and his 300 concubines, to go along with his 700 wives. We have King David fucking another man’s wife and then sending the guy to a war front in the hopes that he gets killed. Then there is the proscription if a man dies without male progeny, his widow is to hie over to her dead husband’s house and spread her legs for his brother, to make sure that her dead husband’s “line” does not disappear. (And, then there is the requirement of a rapist to marry the woman he rapes, paying a fine to the girl’s father, etc.)
Nowadays young people are sold the idea of finding their “sole mate” by relatives, Hollywood movies, books, magazines, and more. Little girls are encouraged to think of themselves as princesses, and who the fuck would want to condemn their girl child with such an existence? Princesses, of course, have their one and only Prince Charmings.
So, one is to find their ideal mate and form a breeding pair (my term). Only when the female becomes pregnant are they described as “starting a family,” since the two of them do not count. The male is supposed to “provide” in the form of security, housing, food, basically most of the material stuffs for the “family”. The female is supposed to “nurture” the family by maintaining the household and rearing the children.
Are you ready to gag yet?
There is obviously too much work for just two adults to do. Currently, with the diminishment of labor in the U.S., women find that on top of all of their family obligations, she needs a job too because the “man” no longer can provide enough income to completely support the “family.” Of course, the man compensates by taking over a share of the household chores … <okay, when you stop laughing, it might have happened, maybe one out of a hundred cases>.
Children in today’s culture are greedy little demanding snots hardly worth the effort. I remember when we had family meetings and our parents told us that we were going on vacation … for the first time, and where we were going and what we would be doing every time after that. They got not a peep from us. In today’s reality, there would be demands that they go to Disney World, or this or that vacation hot spot. Cruise ships used to be serene floating hotels to get away from one’s ordinary life, now they seem to be floating amusement parks … for the kids.
Okay, what if we were to roll this movie back and consider alternatives.
A common trope in movies is for one character to have a romantic interest in two others but he/she can’t decide which of the two he/she is “really serious” about. Examples are the movie “Eva” (When Eva, a young housemaid, gets involved in a steamy threesome with a houseboy and her lady boss, she realizes she has to choose only one of them.) and “You Me Her” (Centers around a three-way romantic relationship involving a loving suburban married couple and another woman.) and way, way too many others to count.
There is an old proverb which says that whenever forced to choose between two options, always take the third. So, why shouldn’t he/she choose both of them? Having a marriage of more than two: three, four … more! …creates a group living situation in which there are more adults to handle to necessary work. The handy guy can do all of the handyman things, while the other guy can do the other manly things. The woman who really likes kids can play the nanny role and the woman who doesn’t care that much for kids can be the chef. Or one of the men can do the cooking and cleaning and one of the women can be the investment banker to bring in the necessary funds. You see there are more people to do the same categories of chores. How you divvy them up is up to the group.
And, the aspect of the “marriage” that is never attended to: sex, is more widely distributed. I have come to the conclusion that monogamous is synonymous with monotonous. These “poly” situations would be more conducive to not becoming monotonous. (Why do we teach high school kids how to balance a checkbook, how to do algebra, how to dribble a basketball, how to read and write, but we leave the dominant characteristic of mature relationships, sex, completely out of it? I suggest this is due to religions deciding that sex was a large lever to control their “flock” members with. Pathetic.)
Think about how much more affordable a four bedroom house would be if four adults lived there? The chores could be split four ways, instead of just two ways and the odds that some needed skill was at hand would be doubled. But the current “Breeding Pair Model” of a marriage (not fucking Biblical, you will note) forces tasks onto the pair they do not have the skills to attend to. And what if one of the breeding pair wants children and the other does not? (A sensible system would provide a contract for the marriage, including things like the production of 1-3 children (if possible), amongst other things. Important to this contract is the obligations the two have to one another and any progeny should they desire to opt out of the contract, a contract enforceable by government (currently you are on your own), you know, an enforceable pre-nuptial agreement.
Note—I can’t wait to read the comments … of course, most of which would be telling me I am daft and I could dismiss those comments as coming from those thoroughly indoctrinated by Mother Culture, but I won’t … can’t learn anything that way. S
Postscript I mistyped the word fuck above, inserting an additional letter, and MS Word’s spellchecker caught it, but “fuck” was not on the list of options I may have intended. I corrected the spelling by hand and then re-started the spell checker and it accepted the word without comment, which means it was in Word’s dictionary, but not to be offered as an alternative. Prudish, much? Or is it just a case of avoiding nasty comments from prudes who misspelling the word “fracking” resulted in a proffered correction “Did you mean fucking?” They will probably claim to be “protecting children” or some other such nonsense.
I am using Word 2003, so maybe more current versions have corrected this omission but I do not have the energy to check that out.