Page 18 - Asheville NC Revised2

might vastly improve if we drastically reduced the number of children conceived. Also, the major divorce detriment to children is not necessarily the end of the marriage, but the fights leading up to the end, and the inaccessibility of either parent after the divorce. Conscious serial monogamy is designed to minimize the fireworks that occur when mates separate. The subsequent better feelings stabilize society and should allow the two parents to live close enough so the kid retains ready access to both.
Again, the majority wisdom recoils: “Countless studies have shown monogs to live longer and healthier lives and miss fewer work days than those who haven’t married.” I believe them. But longevity isn’t everything. Sometimes it’s only more boredom. Intensity can be a great compensation for lost years, especially creative, passionate intensity. Maximum productivity in a nation that has more than enough stuff has also lost some of its luster.
Let me hedge like hell here. I’m not arguing against marriage. It’s the ideal. I’m just trying to make a case that my life is not all sinful, destructive fornication. That missing marriage and embracing serial monogamy doesn’t mean I’m an uncommitted sick person.
Maybe an institutionalized form of serial love could make traditional marriage more holy. If you have significant doubts about death-do-us-part monogamy with the person then maybe you should contract for a limited monogamy. Don’t go insulting marriage by vaguely swearing unlimited fidelity. If we separate the real monogamists from the potential semonogs, divorce rates might plummet. Fundamentalists might see that society’s ability to keep the Ten Commandments is increased with decreasing divorce and adultery rates.
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The other consideration that Grace’s inspiration made crystal clear is the no-fly
zone in my head. The avoidance of the planes thing. It was part of a wider consumer difficulty that, yet again, prevented me from being committed to the American mainstream.
I think it started with several, month long camping trips our family took out west. Their natural excitements seem to exceed the relatively dull joys of luxury hotels in New York and L.A. We seemed as happy and productive as Swiss Family Robinson.
But mainly there were the little things. Like Dad teaching me to shave with Ivory soap, hot water and a washrag rather than using the hundreds of shaving creams invented in the fast fifty years. Or that the difference between one-edge razors and two or three is minuscule at best. And that the superiority of chromium to stainless steel or the latest big deal was even more microscopic, if at all. When you think of the