Polygamy, Mormons & Amish

In the old-timey Bible days, Jacob had two wives, Leah and Rachel. Something must have been wrong with Leah, either she was older or maybe had a mustache or something. Anyway, Jacob didn't want her and Laban her dad couldn't have thought too much about her chances of attracting a husband because he had to con Jacob into marrying her. He worked seven years to get Rachel but had to marry Leah first; he worked seven more years for Rachel. He may have been pissed off about having to marry Leah, especially after working so hard for seven years, but it didn't seem to dissuade him in any way from marrying Rachel later on.

Two wives. When you're 20, this sounds cool. And when you take a few minutes to think about it, it sounds really really cool. Really. But any guy who's been married for more than 24 hours will tell you different.

People get down on marriage. They think that being single is like being free as a bird, to fly and twitter without a care from place to place wherever you want. They think being married is like being in a cage. I don't agree. I think marriage is more like a safe, warm living room with friendly people living in it, and a big bay window in front that you smack into trying to get inside, and break your neck.

See, before you get married, you think marriage is 75% sex. That's because you spend 90% of your time thinking about sex and you're trying to be generous by allowing 25% for little things like having to get used to each other's quirks, and resolving disputes, and communication. But you don't believe it because secretly you know that you'll just be having sex all the time. So two wives sounds awesome! And you don't even have to feel bad about it, because its in the Bible so it must be okay.

Moral issues aside, the reality is that marriage is like 75% conflict and only 5% sex. That's the first year. It goes down after that.

Percentages don't tell the story. You have to think exponents. Just take the amount of conflict in your life and double it. And consider that 1) there would definitely be conflict between two wives, and 2) conflicts between yourself and Wife A would arise because of Wife B, the effect would be exponential. In other words, a man with 12 wives would actually have 2,048 times the amount of conflict in his life than a man with just one. Add children into the mix and it just gets worse. This is the true miracle of Jacob's life; that he had two wives and lived to be like 147.

I don't know how the Mormons did it. Or what they thought the results would be. So polygamy is legal, and let's say there's one little Mormon neighborhood with 10 families that have 12 wives each. That's 120 women. And on the other side of town there's a huge apartment building with 132 bachelors living there. Why are they all single? Because those bastards on the other side of town took all their women!

Well, several different things could happen:

1) The Beta Males (the ones with no women) could start leaving,

2) Instead of trying to convert everyone, they could just concentrate on converting women....however, if they do that, then the non-Mormons will hate them even more,

3) They could be gay, but Mormons don't allow gays, so they'd be shipped out somewhere, or

4) They could just concentrate on having girl babies, like the Chinese do with boy babies.....and come to think of it maybe they could set up some kind of exchange program with the Chinese....

None of those sound like long-term solutions, though.

Anyway, as strange as polygamy is, I think being Amish is even weirder. Sometime in like the 1850s, I think, someone got the idea that they were pretty happy with the level of technology and that any more would be extremely bad. This guy, whoever he was, got a bunch of people to follow him. Back then they didn't stand out so much, because no one had any technology, which is probably why they started growing their beards that way, so that people would be able to spot them. And I guess it wasn't so hard to get people to join back then:

"Hi, I'm Aaron Miller from the First Amish Church down the road. Would you like to join?"
"Well, what do ya'll believe?"
"We don't believe in technology."
"Technology? What's that?"
"Exactly."
"Sure, sign me up!"

There are some advantages to being Amish, though. They don't even notice blackouts or rising gas prices. Fashion is never an issue. If you're young and just starting out, they'll build you a new barn. If there was some huge disaster and civilization collapsed into anarchy, they would be ready. I mean, no cars, no electricity...so what? I guess it would be like Mad Max, except that they're all pacifists.

Or are they? Maybe its all an act. Maybe they're waiting for civilization to collapse into anarchy so that they can take over. This makes sense, especially if the guy who started it all was a time-traveler from a post-apocalyptic future who planned it all. And if they have sleeper agents all over the world trying to instigate a nuclear holocaust.

I wonder what if the Amish had started in the 1950s? They would live in their own little communities and shun all technology developed after 1950. They would all swing dance and the men would all wear big hats to work and say thing like "swell" and "gosh". The women would all wear heels and pearls when they vacuumed the drapes. And they can watch TV but only in black & white.

(See: Things That Were Different 100 Years Ago)

Samantha Vs. Jeannie

Whenever people talk about Jeannie vs. Samantha they always say Samantha was better because she was married to Darren, while Jeannie was nothing but a slave who even had to call Major Nelson "Master". But this is so totally the opposite of true.

First of all, Samantha was a total doormat. Darren wouldn't even let her use her powers. That's like a paraplegic making his wife go around in a wheelchair. Samantha would always go "Way-ul" and Darren would walk around with his big ol' buggy eyes screaming at everyone. Like Samantha couldn't just turn him into a bug and squash him.

Now, Jeannie ruled. And what's more, everyone knew it. She had better outfits, and she may have come off a little dingy but she knew what was what. She put on a good show of doing what Major Nelson told her to do, but she'd turn right back around and do her own thing. And if Major Nelson got mad she'd just say "O Master, you do not mean that" and then shrink him and put him in a bird cage til he came around to her way of thinking.

(See: The Seven Plots of Bewitched)