|
|
|
|
Marriage in the Orion's Arm Civilization |
The original human baseline concept of marriage was found with some
relatively slight variations in every culture of Old Earth. Originally, human
baseline marriages were between a man and a woman. More rarely, they
were contracted between a man and two or more women, and even more
rarely between a woman and two or more men, usually brothers. Mate
choice preceding the marriage was somewhere on the continuum between a
love match and a marriage arranged by parents or community elders,
depending on a variety of cultural and economic factors. Marriages
contained the following elements:
a) An alliance for mutual legal, financial, emotional, and social
support (sometimes this extended to the couple's kinship groups).
b) Cohabitation, either permanent or on a regular basis.
c) Sexual satisfaction.
d) Procreation and the raising of children.
e) Exclusivity
In most traditional societies of Old Earth, the absence of one or more
of these often led to dissolution of the marriage, by formal or
informal means. By the late Information
Age, reproduction had become an option rather than the general
rule. Moreover, the rise of wage paid
jobs, together with the availability of labour-saving devices and the
option to hire out services (via restaurants, construction contractors,
cleaning services, etc.) made mutual alliance a matter of convenience
rather than survival. The marriage memeplex began to break into its
component parts under the impact of these changes, although cultural
inertia and the force of innate human drives allowed the central idea
to survive. The addition of new technologies and new sapient life forms
further eroded the concept. Most societies did not solidify new
traditions and laws to meet these changed circumstances until well
after the Nanoswarms
Era.
Marriage in various forms is common in the modern age. This may be
because the majority of beings in the terragen sphere are of human
derivation, whether by direct descent, by design, or through
provolution. Conversely, there are many clades in which any form of
marriage is irrelevant given their programming and/or biology. This is
particularly true of xenosapients.
Prior to Terragen contact, some of
these were familiar with the concept only through study of subsapient
life forms that had pair-bonding instincts. Attempts in the past to
force
some form of marriage on non pair-bonding clades and species through
memetic
engineering have typically failed in the long term.
In some clades and cultures, marriages are arranged by other parties.
At the S<1 level, those
other parties may be parents, clan
elders, a specialized community council, or even the local government.
Such arrangements are most common where resources are limited and
inheritance is an issue. Particularly draconian customs have prevailed
in small orbital habitats or early in the colonization of hostile
environments. In a few polities today, matches are made by agents of
the ruling Archailect.
In yet others, prospective parties seek the aid
of expert systems, or even the advice of interested S>1 beings,
in choosing a match. In most such polities this is purely voluntary,
since it tends to give very satisfactory results, but in a few of these
places marriages have no legal standing unless they have received
S>1 or other AI approval.
Most polities recognize several grades of marriage, according to which
of the basic memetic components (alliance, cohabitation, sex,
reproduction, and exclusivity) are present, and according to the number
and kinds of participants. To avoid social and legal confusion, there
are contracts and customs for each local variant. A single component of
the memeplex is usually not sufficient for the union to be recognized
as a marriage, though it may have a social or legal definition of its
own such as "room mate", "friend", “gigolo”, or
"business partner". For instance Faber
reprogroups, Tavi
mobs, and the polygamous arrangements of typical
gorilla provolve clades such as among the Ngagi are
regarded as marriages, whereas the
life-long alliances sometimes formed between adult chimpanzee provolves
are
usually not. Marriage in the Old Earth sense remains common in human
nearbaseline societies, although given the extended lifetimes of modern
times serial monogamy is typical regardless of the social ideal.
As on Old Earth, enforcement of marriage agreements is maintained by a
combination of legal and social sanctions. Ironically, given the
“non-coercive” boast in the region’s
name, the highest legal component is found in NoCoZo
polities, where
according to the dominant memetic every aspect of every relationship is
governed by formal quid pro quo agreements. When questioned concerning
this, NoCoZo citizens usually bypass the issue of the fines and other
penalties, and point out the extraordinary flexibility of their
arrangements, with optional clauses to cover every contingency.
Cross-clade marriages are possible, though are not common except
between the most closely related clades. Usually the
biological/hardware and mental/software differences are so great that
such desires to not arise in the first place. If they do arise, the
parties involved often require professional assistance to establish and
maintain the relationship, and yet more assistance if they desire to
produce offspring. Usually success is achieved by limiting or
eliminating some aspects of the complete marriage memeplex. For
instance, consider the case of a human baseline who becomes emotionally
attached to the extent of participating in a Faber reprogroup. While
she might be a member socially and financially, and could provide
design assistance, and memory uploads for the new generation of Fabers,
and help to raise and educate them, she might derive sexual
satisfaction from contact with other humans, possibly even to the
extent of being a partner in a regular human marriage outside the
reprogroup. Obviously arrangements such as this have serious pitfalls. Reproductive
Counsellors are a commonly
accepted feature in many polities.
There have been cases of marriage between lower level transapients
and nearbaselines, though what meaning the transapient partner
actually attaches to such a relationship is purely speculative.
Offspring are possible from such unions if the S>1 partner
creates an appropriate avatar.
Some S>1 entities claim to have formed liaisons which include
all of the standard elements of a marriage plus one or more others.
Attempted explanations to S<1 entities concerning the additional
concepts behind such "marriages" are confusing and contradictory, and
unsatisfying to the nearbaseline mind.
Some
patterns of marriage
Monogamous —
marriage between two persons only. Includes
marriages between opposite sexes (still the most common among human
derived clades), same sex marriages, marriages between hermaphrodites
and asexual marriages.
Polygamous — the adoption of many wives by one male;
common among prim
and retro human societies and the default condition in some clades of
tweaks, rianths and provolves. Male
domination of a breeding group is common among mammalian provolves;
among alien xenosophonts the situation is more complex. Polygamy is
sometimes adopted in order to increase the population of a small colony
rapidly by natural methods.
Polyandrous — the adoption of many husbands by one
female.
Common among early clone societies; a clone colony often had need of
male workers specialized for heavy labour. Since the early days of the
Terragens expansion most human clades have developed so that there is
little difference between male and female strength and stamina, so
polyandry has become a lifestyle choice.
Marriages between members of clades with more than two sexes (such as
the Genen Keymales)
are known as trigamous, quadrigamous, and so on.
Polygynandry, or group marriage, is common amongst group minds
(such as
the Unity sect) amongst
clones and
amongst certain provolves, but can occur as a lifestyle choice among
many other clades.
Exogamy, or cross-clade marriage, is now defined as marriage between clades or species which would not normally produce viable offspring without technological help.
