Sunday, March 28, 2004
Amending the explicit should be difficult
Dr. Weinberger, fuzziness fanatic, lover of leeway, implicitness-empassioned imp, and newly Berkmanized blogger, has published another (and possibly the last -- say it ain't so, David!) edition of Journal of the Hyperlinked Organization.
I realized that there was a link between this thought:
The reason that the definition of marriage is such an emotional topic is precisely because it is one of the few EXplicit social bonds that we recognize. And society, in its collective wisdom, does not take this explicitness lightly. Like the U.S. Constitution, the barriers to amending the definition of marriage are high. Properly so, in my humble opinion.
I realized that there was a link between this thought:
[Friendster (and its ilk) attempts] to recreate our social network by making us be explicit about it. But our social bonds are necessarily implicit. Making social relationships explicit uproots them, distorts them and can do violence to them . . . [e.g.] . . . Am I a friend yes-no of some person I met once and don't know if I like?and this one, much further down the page:
You could. . . argue against heterosexual marriage because if we allow it, then inevitably we're going to face demands that gays and lesbians be allowed to marry . . . Then, sure, we'd be saying we're ok with child marriages, people marrying their goldfish, or whatever absurd Z you want to come up with. But that'd be a ridiculous precedent to draw.Here's the missing backwards link:
The reason that the definition of marriage is such an emotional topic is precisely because it is one of the few EXplicit social bonds that we recognize. And society, in its collective wisdom, does not take this explicitness lightly. Like the U.S. Constitution, the barriers to amending the definition of marriage are high. Properly so, in my humble opinion.
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