The Speculist

'Till Never Do Us Part

So what is Leon Kass so afraid of? If he sees himself as a defender of the status quo, he has much to fear from life extension. If life extension becomes a reality it will change everything. Our entire civilization and all of our institutions and laws have been established with the presumption of a limited life span. Schools, work, retirement, and having children all have in the background this idea of a limited time passing. What exactly will happen to these institutions if the ultimate deadline were postponed indefinitely? Even if the best that could be accomplished is a 150-year average life span, how would society have to change?

Reason at "fightaging.org" discussed how life extension would affect retirement here and here.

How would marriage be affected? If life extension becomes a reality we may find out just how long two people can put up with one another.

I've known couples that were still very much in love after fifty years, and I've known others that seemed to be biding their time. Those biding their time may have had little happiness, but there also seemed little reason to divorce at that late point in life. These are the people that may have stayed together during their earlier years "for the kids." In the end they are staying together because other options have dwindled.

In most ways society benefits from network complexity. The more people in your network, the more powerful you become. "You should really get to know Sam, he's plugged in." Science, commerce, art...most every aspect of human life benefits from network complexity. And yet lifelong sexual monogamy in the form of state sanctioned marriage has always been encouraged. There are four reasons for this.

First, children reared in a two-parent home are less at risk. This may be politically incorrect to say, but it is objectively true. Girls that have a father in the home are less likely to experience teen-age pregnancy. Boys with a father in the home are less likely to become delinquent. Children of either sex tend to perform better in school and are less likely to abuse drugs if the father is around.

But the work of rearing children is over after a couple of decades. Even if a couple were to be married twenty years before having their last child (which would be unusual with today's life spans) their rearing responsibilities would be more or less complete by the fortieth year of the marriage. If both partners were age 60 at that point and were expecting 90 more years of vigorous life, I think its fair to ask how much society benefits from that marriage continuing.

This is an entirely different question than whether the individuals, the husband and wife, benefit from the marriage continuing. If two people are happy together I'm not suggesting that they should be encouraged to split. I am saying that society has always had a role in defining what marriage is. There might come a time when society feels the pressure to offer as "marriage" a contract with an expiration date. A less bizarre alternative would be an easing of restrictions for divorce after a certain point in the relationship – after the kids are grown, for example.

Since women started working outside the home, barriers to divorce have fallen. This is no coincidence. If both spouses are working, neither is likely to become a state charity case after a divorce. Each can make it on his and her own. Alimony can still be granted in cases of need or special merit, but it is granted less often today than 30 years ago.

As the barriers to divorce have fallen there has been a backlash of sorts. Some jurisdictions are offering "covenant marriage" - a sort of "super-marriage" that is harder to get out of. If people start living 150 years, perhaps there will also be pressure to modify this "covenant" so that it becomes a normal marriage after the children are grown.

The second benefit of faithful marriage is disease control. This is not a small matter when AIDS is decimating whole African nations. This will probably be less of an issue in the years to come. In a future where people can live to be 150, certainly something further could be done with disease.

Anyway, AIDS is not an epidemic because people take a new sex partner every thirty years. AIDS is a problem because some people have many partners during short intervals.

The third benefit of marriage is societal stability. With everything changing day after day (and with this rate of change increasing exponentially), there is value in having a place where "everybody knows your name" that's not a bar. One might argue that this stability benefits individuals but not society. I disagree. Society is made of individuals and if everybody is depressed and lonely, society will be a dysfunctional mess.

But like STDs, instability would not be as much of a problem if people stayed together thirty years. If instability is ever a problem it's because some people change partners very often.

The fourth benefit of marriage to society is the civilizing effect it has on its participants – particularly men. It’s the "All My Rowdy Friends Have Settled Down" effect. Unattached men tend to get in trouble and break stuff. All this can be great fun for the men doing it, but a serious drag on society. Men who get married tend to work, pay their bills, and contribute to society.

If a 60-year-old man had a 20-year-old body, would he be driven by hormones or controlled by wisdom? I guess we won't know for sure until it happens, but you may have the best of both worlds – the energy to have fun, and the wisdom to know when to call it a night.

But keeping a man out of trouble might be the best reason for a marriage to continue after the kids are grown. The man benefits, but what would a woman get out of a 100-year marriage? I guess that question will have to be answered case by case.

Posted by Stephen Gordon at March 25, 2004 10:38 AM | TrackBack