𝐃𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐇 𝐓𝐎 𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐋𝐄 𝐌𝐄𝐍?

Sometime last year, 2022, whilst I was in the middle of working with my latest and nineth book, MACHONA GRIT – Onslaught On Hate, I came across an Instagram reel that caught my interest fleetingly. In this reel, the speaker made fiery, disparaging, and violence instigating remarks against single men. The speaker is a prominent American religious leader whose thoughts influence hundreds of millions of people across the world. However, not all will be direct adherents of his unique religious flock within the broader global faith movement of the umbrella religion, which could be Christianity, Judaism, Islam, or any other. They all serve the same purpose: harnessing of our primitive instincts, limiting the extent to which we can think we are free-thinking, independent individuals. Religion, a tool of oppression as destructive as can be.     

I choose not to name the religious leader because I’ve failed to find the said Instagram reel for a concrete reference source. Nevertheless, I have throughout all my adult life so far, come across innumerable sentiments like those uttered by the man of God vis-à-vis men living alone without women as their marital partners.

Basically, the unmarried men haters’ contention is that solitary living unmarried men are not real men; because they are not real men, they are anti-God, and thus they deserve to die. The unmarried men haters say that God must kill single men, and it is the duty of all married men serving God to ensure that God’s will is fulfilled: death to the unmarried. Amen!

It’s strange that Catholic priests don’t get married, though. Celibacy doesn’t mean abstinence. Catholic priests do get caught doing the hanky panky too. When the priests sexually abuse small boys, I wonder about where God is when all this happens. Does he turn blind eyes? In that case, God is an accessory to a heinous crime.  

Personally, such emotional abuse and death threats I’ve outlined above are beneath me; they don’t scathe me even a single bit. I’m sixty-three years old. I’m single, and I’ve never been married by choice. Over the years, I’ve on various fora already mentioned that I’m under no obligation to explain, to justify, or to defend my unmarried, solitary living to anybody. All men-of-God wanting to kill me for my choice to stay young, free, and single must just bring it on anytime. God himself is such an illusion so full of contradictions I have not time for.

For God so thrives in tyranny he made man in his, undefinable, multifaceted, illusory image. He accordingly polarized man; made man into a treacherous, murderous creature of fellow man for transgressions of frivolous, ill-defined, prejudicial so-called sins. A God of love who rules by threats and application of murder does not make sense to me.

To solve a dominance problem, brothers believing in the same God go to war against one another; as in, say, the current case of Russia against Ukraine. They simultaneously pray the same God for protection of themselves on the one hand, and power to annihilate the other on the other hand. For the time it shall take as to location of the war and the relative strengths of the warring parties, absolute mayhem, pillage, and murder could go on until the last man. Somebody might set off atomic bombs, and then we’ll all be gone tomorrow. Adios, God!

Killers praising God for strength. The dying praying God for mercy. Priests praying God to receive the spirits of the dead in heaven; whilst the shredded body parts, if not ground flesh of the dead rest in eternal peace on earth fertilizing Ukrainian killing fields, if not the Congolese killing jungles. God nowhere to be seen. Not a sound from God.

No, the whole idea of the existence of an omnipresent God does not make any sense to me at all. God as an idea and a possible entity amongst us defies all logic. But, of course, his believers can have him. We are all already burning here on the hell that is planet earth, anyway. Heaven is in the minds of the free-spirited seekers and propagators of humane truths in pursuance of fairness and justice for mankind on earth.

In my countering the idea of death to men-without-women, I take the liberty to speak for the voiceless, the weak and vulnerable, the oppressed; the afraid. I do so simply because I can. I am no Messiah. I am a free spirit that scientifically knows that apart from the fundamental genetic coding that separates humans from other animals, each human being has an own unique subordinate genetic makeup that characteristically distinguishes them from other human beings. That distinction manifests itself in all aspects of being human, from state of health and its vulnerabilities to behavioural proclivities that may or may not reflect or condition our values in adulthood.

To the extent that human beings share a common physiological essence of being, it means that, although individually unique, our personal human attributes expressive traits are not finitely closed to the individual. Therefore, each our respective individual behavioural patterns, as reflected and influenced by our cognitive powers and processes, will cross, and interact with others. This is how relationships are formed, both voluntarily or through coercion. Human social organizations of all sizes and all sorts of interests, agendas, philosophies, and aspirations stem from here.

However, some people’s human proclivities constructs will be so incongruent from others that they cannot easily fit into any structured social organization cage reflecting certain strictly defined control and manipulative values, such as religion, political movements or orientations, marriage, and many more. These are the eccentrics, the think-outside-the-box types, the innovators, the critics who, for the good or bad, question everything.

Through the epochs, there arise, amongst others, unconventional analysts, critical thinkers, philosophers, artists of all talents, social change makers, rebels, radicals, and freedom fighters whose thoughts and actions have lasting impacts on society. So, much as not everyone can be a rocket scientist; and not everyone can be an Usain Bolt, or be a religious fanatic, not every man can want to marry, or will be married by force or hook or crook. Marriage is not for every Jack and Jill.

Marriage does not define a man. Marriage is a concept a man gets into. With or without marriage, a man is a man. A brilliant man will be brilliant irrespective of whether they are married or not. In my private and professional lives, I have come across many idiotic married men. I can write volumes about idiotic married men. But for now, I’ll reduce all that to the total lack of respect these men subject their wives to.

Married men who beat up their wives disgust me. Married men who spend minimum time with their wives but unashamedly ‘f’ around with other lovers and mistresses do not score high in my books. Many of these abused and neglected wives are some of the most melancholic women I’ve ever seen. In my travels around Europe many years ago, I met a grown-up lady who once said to me something like, “Simon, it’s taken me thirty years to realize that I got married to an a-hole of a man!”

Thirty-three years later, the couple now older and even more weary of each other, their marriage is still going strong. That’s because, “We are Catholics. We don’t divorce!”
Oh, help me God!
Which reminded me of what a dear brother of mine once said to me about women who hang on all their lives to marriages with a-hole men, “According to our African cultures, divorce is unthinkable for many a woman. Divorce is ‘haram’, you see!”
Jeeezzuzzz!!!   

I’m not anti-marriage. Reality is that I’m a great fan of marriage. Serious. If ever the poet’s one fine day finds me at the right time and place, I could get married at the snap of a finger. Marriage is good. That to the extent that it mutually fulfils both the conceptual and functional expectations of the marriage partners.

By the conceptual I refer mainly to the subjective sentiment of love, the feelings it induces, and the expectations and obligations it imposes on those in love. Simply because we can never read people’s minds, we can never know the feelings of other people, just as we can never know their expectations and self-defined obligations when in love. But fidelity and devotion are principles I’ve learned that they play an even more critical role in marriage. If these hold, marriage has chances of a long life.

Functional expectations in marriage are about the objective practicalities of day-to-day life that the married will and do encounter in their living together as a couple and, subsequently, as parents if children do come into the picture in time. Here are included aspects of family economic strength; an important consideration in the determination of how and where the family shall live. Other crucial questions to address will include division of duties in the home, management of extended families and other social relations, faith, culture and traditions, political affiliations, career development and ambitions, family wealth creation and sustenance, as well as many other practical considerations.     

In my world, a marriage that fails to deliver on the mutual conceptual and functional expectations for the married couple cannot hold. It need not hold at all cost, ‘haram’ or no ‘haram’. Marriage is not supposed to be an institution reminiscent of slavery. Neither is marriage supposed to be an institution of permanent dependency of women to physical-emotional abusive men.

Marriage is not an institution carved in stone. In any case, marriage is not an inherent feature of being human. Marriage is but one of many institutions man-created for purposes of social order maintenance, or social engineering. I fail to see how a non-functional, degrading marriage can contribute to social order. This brings forth the element of divorce, of which I’m as great a fan too. Whereas, indeed, marriage is good, divorce liberates. If ever I do get married at some point in the future, I’ll be the first to file for divorce as soon as I detect irreconcilable dysfunctionalities in my marriage.

People that are deeply in love, and wish to be together for life often look forward with glee to getting married. The same enthusiasm could be shown for impending, or desired divorce from a bad marriage. Women must not be afraid of divorce. There’ll always be a better, stronger, and more caring man for a lover or new husband according to what civil status the divorced woman wishes to have. It’s ok to be single also. Again, in both my private and professional lives, I’m familiar with divorcee women that live happily ever after; divorce having given them a chance to pursue new paths towards fulfilling and sustainable self-reinvention efforts.                 

Some of the happiest men I know are married. Equally, there’s a hell lot of infectiously happy single, unmarried, never-been-married men I know. Of course, contents of the happiness baskets vary from the one man to the other man, regardless of civil status. Nevertheless, happiness is happiness. Happiness makes for a balanced, productive citizenry.

Conversely, the unhappiest, loser types of men I know, and have known are, or have been married. I have in my time come across extremely lonely married men. Weakened of spirit, and hoping to find happiness and comfort away from their wives, many of these sad married men are prone to extremes of costly promiscuous tendencies. Some end up falling prey to alcohol and substance abuse, with potentially dire consequences. Suicidal tendencies are not uncommon here. So much for marriage as an instrument of social cohesion. There absolutely are other ways to prove that a man is a man and worthy of societal recognition as such than apparently ‘f’-ing around and holding women in the bondage of dehumanizing marriages.

I pity men that get into and remain in unhappy marriages for ‘reasons beyond my control’: family and/ peer pressure, ‘that is what people do’, children, potential impoverishment through loss of accumulated wealth to the ex-wife in the event of a divorce, and other reasons.

It ought to be a given that nation states will strive as much as it is humanely possible to create all necessary conditions for a happy state of existence for the people. The various social interests organizations prevailing in society are there to ensure that the state lives up to its obligations for the people. This is what social justice work is about.

It’s not up to social interests organizations leaders to arbitrarily judge and condemn to death certain categories of their fellow citizens for being non-confirmatory to fluid social conventions such as marriage. Single, unmarried, and/ or never-been-married men deserve to live life to its fullest potential just like everyone else. Jesus was killed for other reasons than for that he was unmarried.

And talking about God, biographyonline.net says, “Swami Vivekananda, [a] spiritual teacher and important figure in Indian renaissance of the late nineteenth century. A great believer in the virtues of celibacy [says] “If one wastes the most potent forces of one’s being, one cannot become spiritual. All history teaches us that the great seers of all ages were either monks and ascetics or those who had given up married life; only the pure in life can see God.”

Furthermore, biographyonline.net says that “Nikola Tesla was a unique inventor who threw himself into discovering new advances in electronics and science. He had no interest in marriage and saw sex as a distraction from his life’s purpose. A famous actress of the time, Sarah Bernhardt, tried to attract him, but, he merely saw her as a distraction. When asked about marriage, he replied: “I do not think you can name many great inventions that have been made by married men.”

WHEN THE MIGHTY FALL ON MARRIAGE

From my debut novel, WHEN THE MIGHTY FALL – rise again mindgames   I’ll read a passage on marriage. That is from p. 63 to p. 66:

“People get married for a myriad of reasons. There are some who seem to have gotten married not knowing why and how it began at all, though. They just found themselves in it. Trying to make sense of it all with time, they simplistically and conveniently conclude that, well, everyone else does it, why not them?

“Culture and social norms dictate it, they shall reason. Inevitably they make a mess of it, making life extremely miserable for themselves, their marriage partners, as well as everyone else who has anything to do with them in about all aspects of life. Many a person in this category marries themselves into murder and suicide, the ultimate tragedy of marriage.

“Marriage is another unnatural institution the functionality of which is a non-ending attempt at structuring, engineering, and regulating instinctive, natural human behaviour in certain predictable directions. If it is instinctive, it happens freely according to its own predetermined, internal logic, irrespective of whether external factors are conducive, congruent or not.

“From society to society, culture to culture, marriage rules determine how many marriage partners one can have in either direction, how often, when. The rules will also specify rituals to be followed in order to sanctify the coming together of people in marriage.

“Sanctification of marriage is enforced through the morals and ethics around it, particularly with respect to aspects of fidelity, respect, trust, duty, and obligation. Meaning that, in a perfect world, once bound in and by marriage, people ought to be together for life; thereby ensuring order, stability, and harmony in society.

“Marriage defines boundaries and territorial integrities of the married, and their subsequent family units. These have to be acknowledged and respected in order to provide for peaceful co-existence, as well as orderly and systematic growth, progress, and development in society.

“Perhaps an often-overlooked function of marriage contra instinctive, natural human behavioural tendencies is the population growth control aspect of it.

“Without the perceived and learned value of marriage as a behavioural moderation institution in societal functioning, society would be thrown into total chaos as humans respond unrestrained to instinctive, natural urges of sex, and sexual reproduction.

“Jealousy, power, domination, and control inspired violence in the competition for partners towards letting out, and responding to the said instinctive natural urges would be the order rather than the exception for collective human existence.

“Without the rigidities of formalized marriage rules with respect to family expansion by way of conception, birth, and raising of children, human population pressure on planet earth and its limited resources would most probably be of magnitudes much higher relative to what the situation is today. A recipe for the eventual extinction of the human race on earth due to, among other things, territorial wars making what the world currently experiences of regional wars look like a children’s Sunday picnic in the park.

“Marriage is, therefore, some very serious business. It is not for the non-thinking, and faint-hearted.

“For marriage to work for the married, or yet to be married, and therefore be beneficial to society, people have to fully understand its implications and ramifications. Irrespective of the reasons, or circumstances leading to marriage, it is of vital importance to understand and acknowledge that marriage is ultimately a personal journey.

“Its life-changing implications are huge, they can never be overestimated. Life is never, it will never be the same once married. Chances of marriage being a lasting success are higher in cases where the process and the institution are congruent not only with the feelings of the concerned, but also their beliefs, faiths, values, hopes, dreams, and aspirations, among others.

“Pitfalls of marriage are many, deep, and wide in cases where people unwillingly, or uncritically, fall into the trap by marrying to fulfill expected conventional behaviour. The latter may be in relation to culture, religion, life circumstances, and peer pressure.

“Marriage stands chances of going the distance to the extent that it is both a mutually voluntary, as well as a well-thought-out space of the most intimate of human interactions to choose to venture into.

“There are those who shall base their marriages on love. They deeply love one another above anything or anyone else on earth. Marriage will, therefore, be a natural consummation of that love. But love alone is never adequate to sustain a marriage.

“Love facilitates, and spices up marriage; it does not make a marriage. Love is the key to a potential marriage partner’s heart. Love is a ringing bell into another person’s, a potential marriage partner’s, life. To be sustained and sustainable, love itself needs tender loving care. But it cannot on its own guarantee a happily-ever-after life of marriage.

“To the extent that in many a perfunctorily functional marriage, love may not be the driving force, love and marriage can be mutually exclusive in the same space. Trouble in paradise.

“There is, there will always be much love to get outside marriage. As a natural instinct, people will always know when they are in love or not. Love instinctively gravitates towards love. If there is love in marriage, chances are that the marriage can be kept together.

“Love is a natural force of emotion that knows no colour, race, religion, or creed. Because it is a vital part of, but larger than marriage, any marriage the importance of which is attached more to man-made concepts of culture, religion, and other social conventions than love is doomed to failure.

“The natural urge to want to feed love with, and on love, is ever so strong that people in miserable marriages will as a matter of course and natural predictability go out to look for love elsewhere. That done with either open defiance, or total discretion to the extent it will last. In many cases, this will turn out to be a direct order for the ultimate tragedy of marriage.

“Reality is that when a supposedly unfaithful marriage, or romantic, partner is dead, they are dead, and they are so with all the things the murderer demanded; they will never come back. Much as when the supposedly betrayed marriage, or romantic, partner has committed suicide, there is no knowing that they will find what they demanded of their partners on the other side.”

That’ll be it for today. If you want to get married, do so and be happy; only if the matrimony meets your conceptual and functional expectations; not forgetting obligations to yourself as a person and as a matrimonial partner. If the marriage doesn’t work, get out of it. Fast. The paradox is that you’ll never know if your marriage will work or not until you’ve gotten into it first. If it works, it works. Well and good. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. Leave.

Divorce might cost you a lot of things in the beginning. It is what it is. Freedom doesn’t come cheap. Hang in there. Have hope. Keep the faith. The future is bright. Time heals. Make it your goal to live long enough to see the good that the future has in store for you.    

SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
July 03, 2023