A letter on dating, and a method for public debate in the 21st century

we have to start somewhere, don't we?

Dec 10, 2023

This post is quite different from everything else I've shared via Substack so far, for a couple of reason:

it is what I hope will become the first of a "letter exchange", that is a series of posts in which two authors converse in public on the title topic, that is dating, marriage and kids in a digital, more and more materialist age
it gives me the occasion to share what I wanted to share since well before the beginning of this newsletter, that is a suggestion on how to try to engage fruitfully with someone with very different ideas, something that is badly, badly, badly needed everywhere these days.

(should the text be less clean than previous issues, it’s because I’m still recovering from the flu, but really wanted, no: needed to get it going, after keeping the draft in my computer for weeks…)

Part 1, on dating, marriage and everything

About 3 months ago, I published some "Thoughts and tips on the State of Dating". Later, the author of Von's Substack , after sharing the general concept of letter exchanges in a Substack forum, commented) as follow that post of mine:

(I was sent this link, with the suggestion that we might find things to exchange about:) Well, I certainly can see some ways in which we agree, and others where we disagree. Although most of the latter seem to me to be a question of, "Did you ask yourself this question?" For example... "Is dating actually a good thing? What is or should be its goals? Is it a good way to get married?" And further... what should be our overall goals?

You state, for example, "If you don't want to have kids, that's absolutely OK" and I would disagree... both for yourself, and for society as a whole. It looks like we have a lot to discuss :)

Indeed, a quick comparison of mine and Von's Substacks (done with full awareness that it could never give a complete picture) is enough to show that we may have quite different opinions, not to mention (publishing) priorities, about many topics. So here I am, finally, to answer Von's questions in the spirit and way noted above.

First two questions: What is or should be the goals of dating? Is dating actually a good thing?

For simplicity, as a good starting point if nothing else, I'll stick to the definition by the Oxford Learners Dictionary, according to which dating would be (emphasis mine) "the activity of having a romantic relationship with somebody, or meeting people who you might in future have a romantic relationship with".

Starting from there, I would answer that dating is surely a good thing for people who do want to find, in order to start a romantic, sincere and lasting relationship, another person with the same goals, as long as such a relationship is what both parts really want and need. Full agreement (of whatever kind) about sexual activities will be an essential part of what makes that relationship last, but never its reason. If this is dating, I do declare that it is good, and can't help observe that digitization of life and society hardly helps here. But we already knew that.

Third question: Is dating a good way to get married?

I couldn't answer this without answering first, in this order:

what is marriage?
is it good getting married?

Before even starting: personally, I'm very happily married, and have been for a long time now. But whatever marriage is or should be, surely marriage, or any other kind of couple relationship, it is NOT the only way to live a happy, perfectly fulfilling life.

As marriage goes, for brevity, simplicity and reasons I'll mention at the end, here I take "marriage" to mean "only" a life-long partnership between two people that:

as a minimum (because of course it could also have religious value) is a civil contract among those people that is officially recognized by the state, officially sanctioned by a state representative in a dedicated ceremony, possibly granted some privileges (e.g. lower taxes)
automatically confers by law, on both the spouses and all their children, both responsibilities and rights of, again for brevity, mutual respect and assistance
can be terminated, but only with some formal procedure a.k.a. divorce, that, according to law, formally settles all material issues and protects the weaker parts (at least, the children)
gets its privileges and obligations, including the fact that it cannot be terminated on a whim, because it contributes to make society fairer, more stable, less uncertain (especially for kids, in theory) which is arguably the kind of real innovation we need more urgently today.

Fourth question: What should be the overall goals?

See above. For individuals, I'd say the overall goals should be having health (in all senses and at all levels), serenity, and enough time and means to do whatever it is that one was truly born to do, which more and more often is none of the jobs that are and will remain available, or that should remain available. For society, the goal should be to support every individual to pursue the same goals, according to the principle of subsidiarity. I explained this point in much detail here.

On a (not really!) side note: regardless of its raw size, a society with too few kids is a society without enough life, for all its members. And I don't mean that as in "who will pay for pensions?", albeit that's a huge problem too. I mean that no large community is mentally sustainable, and really happy to exist unless, as someone else said, it always has and involves at least three generations. So yes, I also argue that worldwide we already are - since demography is the science that tells you what you should have done thirty years earlier - at the stage when it's important to actively support fertility. By this I do NOT mean that every woman or couple, as you prefer, should have kids. I mean that people who really want to do it should be supported as much as possible to have and raise 3, 4 or more children.

Part 2, the GENERAL message and method

From what I found on Von's Substack, I guess we cannot exclude that Von and I would be at the same time happy and concerned, if any combination of our own offspring announced that "we're getting married soon". But this is one of the main reason why I welcomed starting this particular exchange.

In the first part of this post I have done my best to give and explain my actual definitions and views on dating, marriage, parenting and other things in terms that are (hopefully) precise enough to be a useful starting point for discussing both personal choices and public policies on those topics according to one's values, faith, identity and so on...

and at the same time vague enough to, again hopefully, make it actually possible to start such discussions, instead of being lines in the sand that most people with "extremist" positions of any kind, origin or color on the same issues would die on, rather than cross, or look beyond.

Why? Because my complete positions on dating, marriage and so on, are much more complex, and sometimes much stronger too, than what I shared here. But in these times, on Substack or anywhere else, we must all be willing to discuss any issue, and eventually take action about it...

starting from what unites or is common about that issue, no matter how small it is
isolating that discussion and corresponding actions as much possible from all the others

Because getting certain things done as soon as possible, in any field, is much more urgent, much more likely to succeed and, I dare say, much holier and imbued of truly sincere missionary spirit than virtue-signalling martyrdom of any stripe, no matter how sincere.

Nobody is or should be forced to participate in every discussion on every conceivable issue, or to have a position about it. But in and out of Substack, things have come to a point where, if we want to change something, anything, we have no other choice than to accept debating and "working" on it in a really compartmentalized way. This highly unprofessional graph tries to show what I mean:

Consider 2 issues A and B: they may be anything, really: marriage equality and the Middle-East situation, Ukraine and abortion, pandemics and gender issues... anything, really, in any conceivable combination.

The graph tries to show the reality that, whatever those two issues are, there will be "extremists", i.e. people who fully agree about one of them, but completely disagree about the other. In the graph, person 1 completely refuses issue B and person 4 completely supports it, but both are 100% in favour of issue A.

What I say is that those two people should learn to discuss issue one at a time, all the time. That is, act together (discuss, march, raise funds..) to promote Issue A in the mornings, and pacifically oppose (by marching, boycotting, whatever) the other about Issue B in the afternoons. Every day.

Schizophrenic? Maybe. But effective, if not the only way out for anybody who actually cares to make at least some of the things they really value in life to happen while they're still around to enjoy it.

And easier than ever too. If there is one thing good in this damned fragmentation and atomization of society, is that it should make it much easier than in the past to act in this way.

Concretely, speaking to Von but being of course very interested in everybody's comments: is there some parts of my answers you like, or at least would accept as common building ground or at least issue of non-belligerence, if we were, say, two political activists in the same district?

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