Child Marriage in America

Re:Child Marriage in America by eternalban on Sunday May 28, 2017 @08:25AM (#14434119)

They probably don't think about it. It is a social mechanism that developed in their culture to get a man and a woman together in a social contract given an edge case. Just like we don't think about the fact that our (well my demo) mechanism typically involve (a) hitting on someone already in a relationship, (b) getting boozed up, (b) trivially entering and leaving relationships with little social cost.

I think it reasonable to judge a mechanism's efficacy and continued relevance. However judging members of a cultural regime seems misguided and (per the modern dating/relationship scene) somewhat hypocritical. (Yes people are getting raped in both regimes. No, our regime doesn't reward the rapist. Yes, both regimes are trying to affect social stability and what you see also says a lot about how that culture got there ..)

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Re:Child Marriage in America by EliRivers on Sunday May 28, 2017 @08:54AM (#14434203)

However judging members of a cultural regime seems misguided and (per the modern dating/relationship scene) somewhat hypocritical.

I think I disagree with this. Starting with the axiom "raping children is bad" (which, granted, is an axiom and not a universal truth like a law of physics), I believe it is not somewhat hypocritical to judge people who endorse this, even if I come from a dating/relationship scene in which casual consensual sex happens.

That said, I know that I do have a belief that one of the few true "sins" is the removal of personal agency from someone, and handing one's child over to her rapist is very much that; I wouldn't be surprised if I considered that action to be bad to a greater degree than others would. Still, at least I'm aware of my own prejudices in this.

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Re:Child Marriage in America by eternalban on Sunday May 28, 2017 @09:11AM (#14434259)

You should read my remark in the sense of 'social regimes are damned difficult to resist' and it appears humans have coping psychological mechanisms for individual members to deal with these sort of collective/individual dynamics, so focusing a judgmental gaze on individuals is misguided. We should look at the larger social construct, its evolution (how it got there), and finding possible cultural pathways to guide them out of their moral culdesac.

[with p.s. to add regarding the "guiding" part: assuming our own moral condition is in fact in a healthy condition.]

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