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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024

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In my culture we see divorce in the same way that I see limb amputations. There are times where it is absloutely necessary, but you should do everything humanely possible to avoid it unless there are no other options left. Westerners see divorce as like leaving a job, much less serious. Raising the costs of a divorce (e.g. through shaming) is probably a good thing.

Except the divorce rate is going down consistently. The main reason there was such a high level of divorce in the 70's and 80's is a lot of bad marriages finally had valve releases, and a lot of people headed for the exists. Now, you can think that was a bad decision or whatever, but I doubt even many conservative-leaning people are going to be OK with, "let's go back to 1955 norms about marriage."

Westerners see divorce as like leaving a job, much less serious.

I would be careful not to generalize Westerners in this case. There are plenty of groups (in the US at least) where divorce is viewed much more like your limb amputation analogy. For example, I grew up in small town conservative Christian culture, and there it's considered pretty awful to have a divorce. Not necessarily shameful (because sometimes it really is the only option left), but definitely it's viewed as a bad thing which should be avoided if possible.

I think this is more about the messaging being wrong and close to what you describe as opposed to what people actually think. People don't think a divorce is like changing a job, but a lot of messaging around it is like that.

I think it's the age old tale of the majority of people hearing a message are people who are in need of the opposite and it leading to more harm than good. The messaging is intented to help people get out of toxic relationships, avoid shaming and discrimination etc. Only, this group is tiny and the group anti-needing this message is large.

It's kind of similar to fat acceptance and other similar campaigns. There is a sympathetic intention but it fails to consider that this might be somewhat of a zero-sum game and that there are a costs involved.