Travelling to a far destination can be boring if you are going alone. But if you connect with someone going to your destination, you assist each other and enjoy your trip companion, whether trekking or driving. Yet, if you do not know or have a specific destination, you either remain stagnant or continue competing in other peoples’ destinations. If you find companions without having a clear destination, they remain stagnant with you if you are stagnant, or they abandon or join your aimless competitions. Without identifying their life’s purposes and seeking compatible companions to their purpose, people create either stagnant or chaotic families or relationships.
Presently, there is high level of marriage and family crisis in different parts of the world. The wave of infidelity, discontentment, emotional, verbal and physical abuse, selfishness, bitterness and multiple divorce scare many unmarried people from marriage. Feminists complain about women’s abuse in the “institutionalized prison” called marriage, even after second, third or fourth divorce and remarriage. Some people now prefer being single, having uncommitted sexual partners and adopting children or pets. Marriage and family life now appear scary to the upcoming generation, heralding an oncoming wave of extreme individualism and civilizational collapse. However, marriage and relationships are not the problems; our reasons for marriage and relationships are the problem.
All humans seek happiness, and every human activity, quality or possession is valued according to its capacity to provide us happiness.[1] Due to their varied influences and understandings of happiness, people seek happiness through different sources. So, happiness can be divided into two: material and internal happiness.
- Material happiness is the pleasant feeling from having and using nonmaterial and material things. They include feelings from food, sex, companions, entertainment, skills, power, beauty, comfort, social recognition and other material and nonmaterial elements. Material happiness is the feeling which humans share with animals for gathering, protecting and using resources for their pleasure. Despite having material satisfaction, man always finds himself unfulfilled, never satisfied on the throne of conquered material success,[2] therefore he seeks a supernatural happiness.[3]
- Internal happiness or fulfilment is the peaceful satisfaction which we experience by discovering, developing and using our potentials for common good. This feeling rises inside us because of our supernatural side which makes us responsible for harmonizing growth in the world. For humans are the only natural beings with rationality, moral responsibility and creativity for implementing harmonious growth in the world. When we respond to our supernatural side by developing and using our potentials and resources for harmonious growth, we feel happy internally. After helping someone in real need, solving social problems or saving a situation, we feel internally happy as if our heart says: “this is how I am supposed to be”. Internal happiness does not come from what we have, but from the rational, creative and moral things we do with what we have. Our hearts appreciate us for using our potentials and resources according to our supernatural side.
Family provides the foundation to launch into our destiny. It provides the first direction for seeking happiness, whether going for material happiness or internal happiness. When family is primarily seen as foundation for internal happiness, people who have discovered their potentials choose life-partners that inspire them to develop and use their potentials for common good starting from their immediate communities and extending to the global community. Such a marriage or relationship is like travelling to a beautiful destination with a compatible companion for mutual support. Then, their love becomes a readiness to make sacrifices for the other person to attain full measure of internal happiness by finding, developing and using their potentials for common good and self-sustenance. Being committed to their destination of common good, they guide future members of their union, like their children toward internal happiness to also find, develop and use their potentials for common good. Then their ambition for social and material possession is guided by their need to contribute to common good and their own sustenance.
Families founded for internal happiness require knowledge about their social destination, and strong will to reach their destination. Though women can be strong-willed, men seem to be more endowed with sacrificial strength for directing families to social good. And despite recent political emasculation and feminist attacks against masculinity, men’s physical and emotional strengths are the major factors for creating, providing, protecting and leading the family to internal happiness. Even with moderate resources, the masculine ability to direct the family to internal happiness keeps the family focused and contented. So, apart from physical strength, men require more wisdom[4] to direct their families to internal happiness and social relevance.
On the contrary, when we primarily see family as a foundation for material happiness, we choose life-partners based on their ability to produce, sustain or increase our material happiness. Then, qualities like money, power, fame, status, beauty and sexual prowess become main drives for marriage. Since human’s material desires are insatiable, we keep competing with other people for more pleasure. But as these qualities do not directly satisfy our ignored but active desire for internal happiness, they soon become boring and start diminishing in our partners. Then, we begin losing interest in them until we seek separation, and look for younger or better sources of material happiness. This type of relationship or marriage exemplify seeking a companion to enjoy a comfortable car, without a clear destination. After initial pleasure in wandering aimlessly and competing with other cars on their race, we become bored and seek new companions.
The love professed in such relationships or marriage is a brief captivation by beauty, demand to satisfy material desires or experimenting how long they satisfy our desires. It aims at gaining from the other person’s beauty, naivety, power, status, money, etc. for as long as possible, not at direction to internal happiness by finding, developing and using their potentials for common good. Hence, the person who has more resources easily gets bossy, while the other becomes passive or rebellious. And when the resource for material happiness depreciates, the relationship begins to die.
Social factor for disorganizing the family
The postcolonial system undermines the masculine role of provision, protection and leadership in the family. It does so by centralizing the major factors of production, which are land and resources, under the neo-colonial government. With the dispossession, many men have to overwork themselves just for peanuts. With such draining and poorly rewarding jobs, they have little time or resources to guide their families to internal happiness. And when they do not meet up with current demands the basic material needs, they psychologically lose their authority for family leadership.
In conclusion, apart from material happiness from getting and using wealth for individual pleasure, humans need the internal happiness according to their supernatural nature. This internal happiness comes from discovering, developing and utilizing our potentials and resources for common good and sustenance. The family provides the foundation from which individuals launch into this journey of self-actualization and social relevance. And men’s emotional and physical strength obliges them to create, provide, protect and lead themselves and all members of their family to internal happiness. So, a father is primarily an educator, a mental, spiritual and physical guide to the family, not just a sponsor.
[1] Cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean ethics, p.1
[2] Battista Mondin, Philosophical anthropology (Rome: Urbaniana University press: 1985) p.196
[3] Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae Ia IIae question Part 2. Q1, a7-8.
[4] Knowledge of fundamental causes