Relationships

Image via WikipediaRecently I read this article. I think it could inspire conversations.

The Atlantic: All The Single Ladies

Some observations I made:

(1) Having a job and paying her own bills is still such a big deal for this woman. This is 2011. You'd think having a job by now would be something to take for granted for women.

(2) There is no one right lifestyle. True. But a lot of people end up with default lifestyles rather than the one they would actively pick for themselves. If you are to stay single, make sure it is an active, conscious choice.

My favorite part of the article was this one:

In her new book, Unhitched, Judith Stacey, a sociologist at NYU, surveys a variety of unconventional arrangements, from gay parenthood to polygamy to—in a mesmerizing case study—the Mosuo people of southwest China, who eschew marriage and visit their lovers only under cover of night. “The sooner and better our society comes to terms with the inescapable variety of intimacy and kinship in the modern world, the fewer unhappy families it will generate,” she writes.

The matrilineal Mosuo are worth pausing on, as a reminder of how complex family systems can be, and how rigid ours are—and also as an example of women’s innate libidinousness, which is routinely squelched by patriarchal systems, as Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá point out in their own analysis of the Mosuo in their 2010 book, Sex at Dawn. For centuries, the Mosuo have lived in households that revolve around the women: the mothers preside over their children and grandchildren, and brothers take paternal responsibility for their sisters’ offspring.

Sexual relations are kept separate from family. At night, a Mosuo woman invites her lover to visit her babahuago (flower room); the assignation is called sese (walking). If she’d prefer he not sleep over, he’ll retire to an outer building (never home to his sisters). She can take another lover that night, or a different one the next, or sleep every single night with the same man for the rest of her life—there are no expectations or rules. As Cai Hua, a Chinese anthropologist, explains, these relationships, which are known as açia, are founded on each individual’s autonomy, and last only as long as each person is in the other’s company. Every goodbye is taken to be the end of the açia relationship, even if it resumes the following night. “There is no concept of açia that applies to the future,” Hua says.

This is exotic, don't you think?

The Censorship Bill Is About The Nation State

Image via WikipediaIn a few swift decades, faster than most realize, the Internet is going to be literally the first country most people on the planet belong to. The Internet is beginning to challenge nothing less than the very concept of the nation state itself. And that is what the censorship bill on Capitol Hill is primarily about. Look how both parties are in agreement! And this goes way beyond old media companies buying out politicians. No. This is the politicians themselves feeling threatened. They can feel the ground shift, and it is not China knocking on the doors.

There are those who play this countdown game of where China has become the number one country. Does that happen in this decade? Two decades from now? Or in 2050? The entire paradigm of that debate is foolish. In 2050 there will be no China, not the China we know today.

The political class feels threatened. Because they are wed to the nation state. A future where the nation state framework recedes to the background makes them feel irrelevant. And they would like to fight back to keep the status quo for as long as they can. They know they are fighting a losing fight. They are fighting a tsunami with a spoon. But they will not be the first batch of people in history to take a last stand.

Old America is Britain. The pioneers of the Internet are like America's Founding Fathers. The battles can not be avoided. I am glad it will be a war of words.