Today, Feb. 14, is Valentine’s Day, and to be a bit cliche, it’s hard not to feel the love in the air right now. This is a time of demonstrations of affection, personalized gifts, many flowers and extravagant date ideas for couples, many of whom have been looking upon and preparing for this one day for weeks on end. Even for those who don’t have a special someone to spend the day with, it’s hard to escape the discussion of the day’s festivities and everything that comes with it. As such, for the purposes of this newspaper, it’s a unique opportunity to analyze the ties that bind us. Recently, these pages have been fraught with discussion about the additional value, or lack thereof, that serious dating can bring to one’s life and personal development, about how it should only add to and never take away from one’s life or about how it can tie down those who participate in it. Yet, what’s missing from this discussion is an investigation of why it is in those terms that we define the decision to date. If dating is meant to be a partnership between two people, why is our conception of its value only in terms of what we can gain from it?
It begins with American individualism, which is overtly present in this generation and our ways of relating to each other. We are in a time wherein people are no longer defining themselves through social integration, but rather through an “individuated paradigm,” according to sociologist Joseph Veroff. We are overwhelmingly focused on our own direction in our lives and no longer understand our identities through roles we fill and we’re focused on expressing our own unique inner voice and feelings. This has been an ongoing process since the 1950s and has led us to a society that is less empathetic, socially connected and generally less interested in people other than ourselves. For one example, look at a recent Harvard study, which shows that children across America are reporting personal achievement as being more important to them than caring for others.
When we combine these findings with the lowering of societal coercion for people to get married, specifically through the political and economic enfranchisement of women, it creates a context in which dating (and by proxy marriage) becomes much more of a personal choice. On its face this is not a bad thing, people should be free to choose or not choose whether to have such relations. However, the discussion then turns into a question of “what defines people’s choices?” The answer is undoubtedly capitalism.
Social identities in a capitalist society, when shifted onto an individual level, are increasingly defined by consumption. We are what we buy, watch, listen to, wear and drive so much so that eventually the hierarchical status of such things begins to transition onto ourselves so much that our status is defined by them. The fancier our stuff, the more expensive, the more that we are as a result. We turn ourselves into an object that has an exchange value equal to the things around us, a commodification of the self.
As a result, our self-definition and goals become more instrumentally focused, specifically on how they can increase our own value and the wealth of things we can acquire. However, it doesn’t stop there, because it gets to a point where this becomes the way we define our relationships too. If someone isn’t there to help you become the greatest version of yourself, they can get out. If someone makes you sad sometimes, if they harm your self-discovery, if someone doesn’t have the same quality of things you have, if they can’t provide you with things that increase your value, then why keep them around? Self-optimization is the American Dream isn’t it, and if it costs some relationships to get there then what’s the real harm?
There’s clearly some uncomfortable imagery there and it’s undeniably a bit of a logical extreme, but the base logic is present in our everyday society. Yet, it fails to understand the point of relationships. A bond between two people, romantic or otherwise, is not instrumentally valuable. It’s ultimately our relationships which keep us grounded in life to communities, to places and to sentiments that may not be useful in racing to the top of the ladder, but they are the things that keep us alive. When talking about relationships, it’s about more than gaining from another person, it’s about being part of something greater than oneself. As Valentine’s Day comes and goes, understanding the importance of interpersonal connection and what should connect people is hopefully at the forefront of everyone’s minds. As the great author C.S Lewis once said, “One doesn’t realize in early life that the price of freedom is loneliness. To be happy is to be tied.”