HOLD ON to your lunches kids, it's that time again. That's right, Valentine's Day. As Feb. 14 once more approaches, some of us buy pink and red doily-covered cards and overpriced chocolate, while others run screaming from Hallmark's money-making creation. Taking a more extreme path than the usual scoffs and slanders of Valentine's Day haters, former U.Va. Professor E. Mavis Hetherington has decided upon the most disillusioning path imaginable. In her newly published book "For Better or Worse: Divorce Reconsidered," she informs us that divorce might not be such a bad idea after all.
Not only is this publication's argument misconceived, but it is itself directly representative of the deeper social problem that lies at the root of issues like divorce. It is just this kind of rationalization that leads to an air of flippancy toward all things in our society, and which allows for us to drift increasingly farther off the right track.
In the year 2000, 50 percent of first marriages and 60 percent of remarriages ended in divorce (http://www.divorcemag.com/statistics/statsUS.shtml). Quite a disheartening statistic, especially for a generation that no doubt will be considering marriage in the somewhat near future. Since we are the ones who control either the termination or perpetuation of this trend, we need to ask one very important question: Why are these rates so high?
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The answer to this question is simple, yet it is one that has eluded us - perhaps due to our own unwillingness to see the harsh reality of the situation for all too long. As our society advances, technology increases and our economy grows, we are allowed increasingly more independence from our fellow man. In addition, the tendency of our society to value hard work, success and personal autonomy - while in and of themselves good things - over all else lends itself to this same potentially dangerous self-sufficiency.
In many obvious ways, this is a good thing. This is what gives us our freedom, allows us to make lives for ourselves and gives America the phenomenal growing power that it has. However, this type of mentality also lends itself to many dangers. As independence and the drive for success become the dominant ideologies in our society, the harmful counterparts of these values also begin to take hold. There is a dangerous and growing tendency in our society toward selfishness and materialism, and these problems are at the root of many of the social issues we face today.
Hetherington's book, which claims among other things that 40 percent of divorcees are "not lastingly effected" by such an experience, is very telling of the direction in which we are moving as a society. In our age of political correctness, there is a tendency to want to justify nearly any behavior without first examining its moral implications. By attempting to validate divorce with ambiguous statistics like "75-80 percent of children of divorce go on to become fairly well adjusted adults," the air of flippancy which already exists toward marriage (as seen by the high divorce rate) is perpetuated and made to seem acceptable.
When one acknowledges the hedonistic nature of the society in which we live, the disturbingly high divorce rate is no surprise. More upsetting is the fact that we're so far gone as a society and are so immersed in these self-indulgent values, that we begin to see divorce as something natural, or at least acceptable. Once in awhile divorce truly is merited, but this is rare. In most divorce cases, the cause merely is that the two individuals never should have been married in the first place. Focusing too much on the pursuit of success and pleasure, we lose sight of who we really are and choose our mates based on the wrong things. In our world of fast-food restaurants and online shopping, we are used to immediate gratification. This mentality can have disastrous consequences - and does for 50 percent of married couples and their one million children - who are forced to deal with divorce each year.
The solution is simple. It will be a bitter pill for many Americans to swallow, but it needs to be done. We need to realize that everything is not okay. We need to realize that there are a set of values that are crucial to a good society and a good life for an individual. Most importantly, however, we need to stop worrying about offending people and stand up for what is right.
Author Henry Miller once said, "the greatest lesson to be learned is that the most difficult way is, in the long run, the easiest." This is something that no one wants to hear, but that we all need to accept. By championing moral relativism and trying to believe that we are self-sufficient, we only dig ourselves into holes from which we never truly can escape.
We need to realize that the efforts we have been seeing to justify things like divorce are unacceptable. We need to stand up against these ideas and live our lives thoughtfully and carefully, considering first what is the right action before we make a move.
(Laura Parcells is a Cavalier Daily associate editor. She can be reached at lparcells@cavalierdaily.com.)
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