In defense of arranged marriages

The idea that "intense" affection is a pre-requisite for marriage has caused the institution of marriage itself to decline in the West

Marriage ought to be seen as an essential "rite of passage" - not a luxury good https://unherd.com/2020/02/why-arranged-marriages-make-sense/
Everyone has the right to a married life...

Even the most un-social, unskilled, unintelligent among us

Only arranged marriages ensure that

In a "love marriage" set up you see enclaves of excellence as an outcome of assortative mating

And a LOT of Incels
Incels (involuntary celibates) are a menace to society

Men are brutes by nature. They need marriage to civilize them
This conception of the fairer sex as the naturally "social" and "level headed" gender who civilizes the male through marriage has fallen by the wayside in the West

Lifelong Monogamy has become an ideal achieved by high EQ men - that's a shame

It ought to be an ideal for all
In fact I'd go to the extent of saying that the decline of arranged marriage and the primacy of love also promotes social inequality

It creates enclaves of similar tastes, similar IQ, similar habits

Where positive traits get reinforced endlessly and so do negative traits
The roots of "love" as the basis for marriage are likely in early Christianity as evidenced by the stories surrounding St Valentine

But it likely picked up with the Protestant reformation and the rise of divorce - Henry VIII an early example
Divorce was common enough in the pagan world.

Christianity had stalled it. But post 15th cen it appears to have returned along with "love" what with the reformation and also the cultural revolutions that accompanied it (Shakespeare's plays being a case in point)

A heady combo
What marks out India is that in our civilization, marriage was always defended as a sacred union unlike in the pagan cultures of Greece & Rome

Though polygamy was common among the rich, there were ideals of monogamy from v early in our history

Shri Ramachandra a stellar case
But at the same time, Indian religion did not idealize love as a pre-requisite for marriage

Rather positioned love / devotion as something that builds within a marriage
So we sort of avoided the course of both classical pagan cultures (which downplayed the sacred permanence of marriage) and Christianity / modern secular West (which overplayed the importance of consent and later love)
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