A special day. David’s 69th birthday. We celebrated David’s birthday with a nice lunch with our good friend Annette.It is always very nice talking with Annette. We discussed and talked about some of the topics on the Eleusis site. First Annette started with some good questions:
What is the purpose of the Eleusis website? And what is the sense of writing and philosophising about all these subjects? And why is the group about men and women and relationships so popular? Why do people make (romantic) relationships so important in their lives?
About the Eleusis site
The mean purpose of this website is sharing and interaction, sharing of common interest and knowledge. With the website we hope to inspire each other in creativity and spirituality and we also hope to develop some involvement in what is happening at Eleusis. This was the easy question to answer.
What is so important about romance?
With the other questions we tried to find the answers together. Maybe the men and women group is popular because it is about daily life. Also a lot of us are struggling in relationships. It is quite a challenge to live in love and peace all the time in a long-term relationship. Annette was blessed with a long and happy marriage and she is wondering if people quit too soon with their marriage. A long-term relationship has many phases. Many people don’t reach some of these stages ever in a relationship.You can’t compare peoples’ lives and relations and then make serious conclusions. Life and relations are rather mysterious.
But we had some points of view in common: a lot of people are struggling with relationships. The modern family is very small and very busy with raising kids, going to work and trying to be very happy in a love life. When the couple is not happy because of different kind of (normal) reasons, like tiredness, not being in the mood for sex, some irritations and so on, they soon have the feeling that there is something wrong.
That brings me to the next question of Annette, “Why do people make romantic relationships so important in their life?” As a widow she has a lot of friends and activity’s and she is saying, ‘There is more in life that makes for fullness besides a love relationship.”
Do we over-value love?
Personally I found the questions of Annette and her point of view very interesting. Maybe one of the reasons relationships are ending is the fact we over value the love relationship and the fact that there is a lack of ‘having a good reason’ to be in a relationship. When the only reason is personal happiness, the pressure on a relationship will become very high.
Is romantic love a good basis for a long-term relationship, when it is the only one, or do we need other good reasons, reasons that gives us a good motivation to stay together and support each other in more difficult times in life and in the relationship? And which reasons are good reasons? Or is love enough?
I think my koan, “What is love” is working again...
'Adam and Eve' - Peter Paul Rubens
Replies
Yes, lots to talk about. Have you seen my item on Contrition, in Buddhism
I quite agree that Menand is probably biassed... and this has also to do with the reputation of the so called french "libertinage". The whole thing is so tricky. What were the real motivations? Who are we to judge? Maybe we need to broaden the topic of discussion. Man and woman relationship is just a mirror of all that is present in our human condition; Having so much discussed "eros" (and the enthusiasm seems here to fade out a little?) what about discussing "thanatos"? Or solitude? Questions in the sand?
I've now read the article by Menand about Sartre & Beauvoir. I agree with Elja that it is not polyamory. Polyamory is a particular value system and it would seem that Sartre & Beauvoir had a different value system, more different even than one might have expected. However, reading the article one does get the feeling that the writer perhaps is biassed. The opinions expressed and the evidence presented do not entirely gell and the "evidence" is, clearly, a motivated selection. My own guess is that Sartre & Beauvoir were experimenting with a certain kind of idea about freedom and honesty, but that it is a rather different idea from that represented by the modern idea of polyamory. The writer suggests that Beauvoir was, perhaps, on the one hand the stronger partner, but on the other hand, a less "liberated" woman than we imagine. This, however, is to judge by modern standards. In her time she was probably as revolutionary as he was.
Menand emphasises their exploitation of young vulnerable women. I'm sure, however, that this is a modern notion projected back. The norms of the time were different. That a powerful person had protégés and expected sexual favours in return seems scandalous to us but was probably much less exceptional in those days. That Beauvoir similarly indulged was, in a way, a blow for female equality, but equality in an area where nowadays we think nobody should venture. Obliquely, this does raise the question whether the quest for "equality" for women is not, in many instances, a quest for the right for women to copy men's bad habits. But then, those "bad habits" are always embedded in a social structure belonging to a particular epoch and judging by the standards of another epoch rarely helps.
Polyamory seems to me to be a distinctly 21st century development, largely driven by women who find the monogamy that once protected them now consigns them to the relative social poverty of the nuclear family where they are expected to be all things at once and do it without support from others - which is a relatively new development in history attributable to our technological and economic development. This is a very different situation to that in the time of S&B.
Thanks for the link to the article about Sartre and de Beauvoir Annette. It is very interesting to read but also quite painful and even cruel sometimes... I don't think they had really a 'polyamory attitude'. Poly maybe... but i am missing the 'amory'...
Tamuly Annette said:
Afterthought! Polyamori is nothing new... Think about the unconventional relationship between jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir (www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/09/26/stand-by-your-man) They wanted to be free, and found themselves entangled in so many problems! And yet, what a philosophical and literary creativity.
Thanks Annettte for your question about the painting. It is Peter Paul Rubens and I edit the picture with tittle and name from the painter.
Tamuly Annette said:
Sometimes I feel love is valuable mainly as a springboard to something broader. Think of the creativity that emerges from love (its happiness, its dissapointments, the loss of it...) in painting ( who is the painter of this Adam and Eve ?) in poetry, literature in general. What about this amazing monument to love which is the Tajmahal or the Kamasutra! Not that love does turn each ordinary person into an artist! But with some imagination, we could at least try to turn our modest life into a work of art by "knitting" new relations with friends, with nature, with books and curiosity for all that is around us. "L'amour n'a de sens que s'il nous permet de réenchanter le monde, or la plupart du temps, il meurt sur les rives du quotidien"