Why It's Harder to Love Someone in This Era of Extreme Capitalism

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/sex-amp-relationships/why-its-harder-love-someone-era-extreme-capitalism



Love is older than capitalism. But the romantic variety, along with its peculiar pains, takes cultural center stage just as capitalism makes its debut. That’s no coincidence. Capitalism and romantic love have grown together, reinforcing and reflecting each other in ways that we hardly notice.

Our society’s organization has a lot to do with the way we understand our perceptions and experiences, including love. Depending on what values we emphasize and the way we imagine ourselves in relation to others, our expectations can bring us fulfillment or crash on the rocks of disappointment.

In the High Middle Ages, the tradition of courtly love among the nobility focused on a knight’s bond to his lady fair; a reflection of the relationship between vassal and lord. Reciprocity was a strong feature of this connection. Women like the powerful Eleanor of Acquitaine, who could often both inherit and manage property in the feudal system, found that courtly love offered them a way to freely express sexual desires outside of the conventions of patriarchy. They could put chastity aside, along with the need for the legitimacy of children. Feudal values, based on a system of private jurisdictions, fed the possibility of love for both men and women outside the bounds of marriage.

The Renaissance turned things in a somewhat different direction. In the 16th century, bourgeois writers like Thomas More (a major figure in the court of Henry VIII), didn’t have much use for female sexuality and influence. They were preoccupied with the emergence of the mercantile and manufacturing economy, and under the early capitalist model, sexuality was to be regulated, religious devotion encouraged, and public life circumscribed. Instead of reciprocity, hierarchy was the primary structure of relationships between king and subject, man and woman, and, eventually, employer and employee. Patriarchal family values were restored. For women, love had to lead to marriage and it had better not stray beyond that boundary. (Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII's second wife, famously got caught in the crosshairs of this shift.)

[cali]

1. What is happening to alternet? This is another ill researched nonsense article.

No, Thomas More, like most religious figures of the period didn't have much us for sexuality- and not just female sexuality. But move beyond England in that period and there's plenty of evidence of ribald sexuality. Furthermore, Ann Boleyn is hardly a good example of the restrictions on female sexuality.

[otherone]

2. most couples fight over money

show me the money, and I;ll show you the fight..