Love and Economics

First on an unrelated note, I've decided to start posting links to new blog entries on my twitter as well as Facebook. If you're interested, you can follow me @NOTdavidu

I'd like opinions on this, so if you feel like you have something to say, please say it.

Economic theory says that the laws of supply and demand are universally applicable, so in this case I attempt to apply them to love. If you increase the supply of relationships one takes part in, do you not dilute the value intrinsic to them? Decrease the quantity of relationships supplied, and do you not increase their value? I'm not talking about the pure pleasure satisfaction that results, because while goals like that can easily be met that sort of hedonism is inevitably hollow and I think undesirable.

I'm talking about the deep and substantive relationships, the kinds that the ancient Greeks conceptualized in their word eros. The desire for two to become one. Going through the motions of having lots of "meaningful" relationships with different individuals, I think, defeats the purpose. Maybe it's just me, but isn't the point of having a meaningful relationship that it is unique in some way? If they're all equally unique and special, is it also not true that none of them are?

I know a few adults who found their spouse during their time in college, and I'm really starting to appreciate now how rare of an accomplishment that is. Maybe the culture was different then, but right now there seem to be zero social institutions in place to facilitate the types of relationships I'm talking about. Everything is about drunk hookups at frat parties and bars. As a side note, I'd like to add that it's nearly impossible to initiate a meaningful relationship or even friendship with anyone while drunk. Drinking should be used to solidify preexisting relationships and not to initiate them, for they, like hedonism are invariably hollow. Given the prevalence of the alcohol in college, the task of the romantic is made that much more difficult.

But back to the initial topic. I know that the process of dating and hooking up is working, albeit circuitously, toward finding a real relationship and that it's not realistic to expect to be able to jump into a deep and profound romantic attachment, but I feel like the process itself inevitably reduces the value of the end result. Say you date a few people. Then you end up in a deeper relationship with one of them. Then you break up. Then the process repeats again, and again, until finally one person agrees to stay 'till death do ye part. That's a slightly depressing yet realistic conception of love as we know it. Do it enough times, and it seems like you never were really searching for anybody, but only using those people to either not be single or to satisfy your own carnal desires.

I know that the preexisting social norms governing courtship exist for a reason, mainly because that in general they work. That eventually people do hopefully find that one person. Of course their track record is not all that great, given that we have extraordinarily high divorce rates of people who supposedly did find that one person, but whatever. But what we have now is ultimately a sham. I decry the culture of hookups for it's lack of deeper significance and creating an illusion of purpose in which it shields itself. I decry it for eradicating any institutions that facilitated otherwise. I decry it for enabling a mentality of hedonism as an end in of itself.

Drunk hookups are fine if you recognize that they are hollow, and that the participants are just using each other for the satisfaction of their own pleasure. Thats fine if you understand that. But please don't fool yourself into reading a deeper relationship in one created by hedonism.

On the flip side of this, I find hope in not assigning profound significance to many relationships so that the value will increase of the few that actually are. I know you can't get that far in a relationship without having a few go sour first. But each one that does should be forever seared into your skull and it should burn every time you hear their name. If not, maybe you need to cut back the significance you assign to your relationships or just not fool yourself otherwise. I think that's a good measure of knowing you had something worth while.