Your mileage may vary, and this is a suggestion column that provides you with a unique framework to think about your ethical dilemma. To submit a question, please fill in this question Anonymous form Or email sigal.samuel@vox.com. Here are the questions for readers this week, condensing and editing to clarify:
When combining income and sharing expenses, I want to get married and struggle for the suffering of “fairness”. My boyfriend is twice as good as mine, but doesn’t have to work hard or be more successful (you believe having a PhD in the field of technology can… bring more money?). So he wanted to pay more of our sharing fees, such as rent. I know why this would be considered “fair” but it does resist it.
When someone pays, it feels like they are trying to control me or violate my independence. But, I do think that sticking to the 50/50 way in my relationship is somewhat stubborn, stiff, wrongly “feminist”. what should I do?
There is a very prescriptive way to answer this question: I suggest you list all the ways your boyfriend actually relies on you – emotional labor, family chores, whatever the situation – so that you don’t feel like you’re disproportionately trapped in a dependent role if he pays for more than half of your shared expenses. In other words, I can try to convince you that your relationship is still 50/50. It’s just that he contributes more financially, and you contribute more in other ways.
To be clear, this may be true! Reflection can be a very valuable thing. But if I keep it, I think I’ll cheat you from deeper opportunities. Because this fight not only provides you with the opportunity to think about things like joint bank accounts and rent payments. It provides you with opportunities for spiritual growth.
I say that because your struggle is about love. True love is an omnivore: it will eat in all your beautiful fantasies. If you are lucky, it will crush your preconceived notions. As Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector once wrote A very strange short story:
Few people desire true love because love gives us confidence in everything else. Few people can lose all other fantasies. Some people choose love because love will enrich their personal lives. On the contrary: ultimately, love is poverty. Love means nothing. Love is also a deception that people think is love.
What is the hallucination of destruction? The main content is what you mentioned: independence, control. Believe me, saying so, it makes me not happy because…I like to feel independent! I like to feel like I have control! And if I feel like anyone is invading these things, I’m really struggling. But, a, I do think they are fantasies we use to protect ourselves from our own vulnerability.
No one is truly independent
Many philosophers have long realized that no matter how independent we think we are, we are actually inherently interdependent.
This is One of the key ideas of Buddha. When he lived in India around 500 BC, it was usually believed that everyone had a permanent self or soul-fixed nature that made you a personal, lasting entity. The Buddha rejected this premise. He believes that even if you use words like “me” and “me” which suggests that you are a static substance separate from others, it’s just a handy shorthand, and it’s a novel.
Are there any questions about this suggestion column?
The Buddha said, in fact, you have no fixed self. Your ego always changes in response to different conditions in the environment. In fact, this is nothing more than the sum of these conditions – your perception, experience, emotions, etc. – just as a chariot is nothing more than its wheels, axles and other components.
In Western philosophy, it took a while for this idea to be prominent, largely because the thought of the Christian soul is so deeply rooted. But in the 18th century, the Scottish philosopher David Hume was not only influenced by British experientialists. Maybe it’s Buddhism – wrote:
For me, when I enter what I call II always stumble upon certain special perceptions or other colds, cold, light colors or shadows, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I will never catch myself at any time without perception, and can not observe anything except perception.
He added that a person is “no more than a bundle or collection of different perceptions that succeed each other at unimaginable speeds and are in eternal range and movement.”
Why is this important? Because if you are nothing but a series of different perceptions that are permanent, then there is no “you” that exists independently with your boyfriend and all the others you contact: they are providing “you” at every moment, by providing your perception, experience, emotion, emotion. This means that the idea of you being separated from others is just a fantasy on the deepest level. You are interdependent with them because of yours.
Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, who died a few years ago, enjoys a lovely term for this: socket. He would say, you are dating your boyfriend: your actions and words affect all the ways you are (just like your ancestors, teachers, and cultural heritage).
At first glance, it seems difficult to reconcile with feminism. Shouldn’t we be strong independent women? Without an “independent” position, what should we do?
But, if you look closely at the idea of feminism, you will find that this is a serious misunderstanding.
from Simone de Beauvoir Keep moving forward, feminists don’t completely eliminate interdependence – they’ve been fighting against it Structural inequality Interdependence, women have no choice but to rely on men financially because their work at home is not paid enough compared to men, and their work at home is simply not paid. This is an involuntary, inequality form of interdependence, and the goal is a world where equal encounters. The goal is never a world where we all live on islands.
In fact, many feminist philosophers believe that complete “independence” is neither desirable nor possible. As Thinkers like Carol Gilligan and Nel Noddings have pointed outwe all rely on other parts of our lives – as children, when they get sick as they get older. They advocate a world that acknowledges interdependent reality. This will include government policies such as appropriate child care and senior salaries, as well as greater social recognition of the value of emotional labor and housework, as noted above.
But we still don’t live in that world. American society is particularly personalized. It recognizes that interdependence is neither at the metaphysical level (Buddha and Hume) nor at the social policy level (gla gilligan and noddings). No wonder many women are still vigilant about financial dependence!
Even if you live in a wider environment, I encourage you to take a closer look at the details of your personal situation and consider a crucial difference: true financial dependence versus feel financial dependence. If you have your own job or can easily return to the labor force, you aren’t actually dependent on your boyfriend, even if he’s taking over more than half of the rent. In this case, the real fear here is not about finance at all. It’s about facing a terrible, beautiful, messy fact – a fact that love is revealing to you – you have and have always been interdependent.
Trust me, I know that’s not easy. Feeling very painful. But if you believe that your boyfriend truly sees you as equals-if he proves it through his words and actions–then at some point you have to believe that he will not infringe on your vulnerability for you. If you don’t, you’ll deceive yourself to accept the benefits of interdependence. In a significant sense, it will be you, not your boyfriend, who will make you poorer.
Bonus: What I’m reading
- Related to the idea that self is novel, this week I read a short story that was near the end of the world, titled “All automatons in London are notBeth Singler is Beth Singler, an expert on the intersection of artificial intelligence and religion. I don’t want to give too many spoilers, but enough to say it contains these sentences: “Descartes’s little daughter, this is a clockwork doll that scares a bunch of sailors that they throw away her horror and superstition in terms of horror and superstition. A little bit of gossip to pierce the pride of the great philosopher! How dare he describe people machine! ”
- The worst manifestation of human vulnerability is our mortality rate, and I hope people can do hard work to face losses rather than turning to an AI-driven stalemate – as a new tool, as that tool, The New York Times explainsit is said that you feel like you are communicating with dead loved ones. In my experience, losing someone breaks your hypothetical worldview – your core belief in yourself and your life – is extremely painful, but also extremely productive: it forces you to re-energize yourself.
- this Articles from The Guardian It’s a big deal about a woman who quit her job, closed her bank account and had no money. I think I was too scared to live her lifestyle (and I also think her lifestyle is based on privilege), but that is a bit overlooked: “I actually feel safer than when I make money,” she says, because of the whole of human history, true security always comes from community life. ”
