Unhooked and Unsettled: Reduce Your Divorce Rate

By Nicolle

It should be illegal for anyone to get married before they reach the age of 25.

I’m only marginally exaggerating. As I watch friends get engaged, hear of couples I know contemplating divorce and read article after article about how men and women are dissatisfied with their relationships, I wonder if anyone is really thinking about their age and maturity level when entering into what is supposed to be an eternal social contract.

According to a National Institutes of Health study, your brain (and mine) isn’t fully formed until around age 25 (it can vary from person to person). The part of the brain that understands, interprets and inhibits risky behavior isn’t completely developed until a person’s mid-20s.

That statistic is a little scary on multiple levels (especially since we give teenagers access to a driver’s license at the age of 16), but it also interacts with our decision-making process involving relational matters.

I’d classify deciding to commit myself to one person for life as a risky behavior (removes some of the romanticism, doesn’t it?). And if I’m going to make that decision at a point when my brain may or may not be fully mature, it’s hard to argue that I’m making the best decision.

Courtesy of Photoxpress

Couple brain immaturity with these Rutgers University study results:

• 18-year-old newlyweds have a 75 percent divorce rate.
• 20 to 24-year-olds have about a 40 percent divorce rate.
• 25 to 29-year olds have about a 17 percent divorce rate.

Twenty-five seems to be the magic cutoff age – make your marital commitment after quarter life, and your likelihood of producing an enduring relationship increases. Could it potentially be linked to brain development?

My high school statistics teacher Mr. Domingos would tell me that correlation doesn’t prove causation; just because brain maturity and decreased divorce rates after age 25 seem to be related doesn’t mean they actually are. And even though he looked like Robin Williams, watched Gilmore Girls and kept marshmallow Peeps lined up on his chalkboard, Mr. Domingos would be right.

But, it’s still interesting to consider. And if I’m pledging my life to another person, I want to be pretty damn sure that I’m making my decision once I have all my brain capacity.

An Altruistic Angle: “Beware the Ides of March”

By Anna

On these upcoming Ides of March (Idus Martias) Julius Caesar will not resurrect from his 2,054 year slumber beneath the earth, but the day should, nevertheless, be held in high regard as our ancestors held it.

Few (if any) military parades will take place, and praises for the god Mars has a slim chance of happening, but I think Hipsters and punks alike are bringing back the recognition, if not fear, for the Ides of March. Though I’m uncertain as to whether I fall in either of those groups, I would like to reflect upon the foreboding words with a foreboding of my own.

Beware the Ides of March for a time will come when we will no longer be, and for some that time comes sooner than for others in part because of continual humanitarian crises. According to Crisisgroup.org, an organization committed to responding to international crises, Islamism, energy issues, and HIV/AIDS are some of the top reasons why conflict ensues in various countries throughout the world.

Conflict arises from fear of citizen deaths, fear of disease, and fear of an unstable climate. Most of the world continues to play by the bigger is better mentality, which is directly causing these issues and is in opposition to fundamental moral truths many of these countries believe. For example, bigger cars emit more CO2 and cause climate instability; a greater number of deaths on earth leads to a great number of awards in the after life; and a greater number of women leads to a greater number of people contracting diseases.

Crisis Group recognizes that personal freedoms (particularly for women) leads to less conflict overall. As we globalize without acknowledgment of our actions, conflict continues to rise and the Ides of March continue to haunt. Let us not be vain as Caesar was, but let us humbly lead into a new era in which Crisis Group can recognize more improved conflict states than ongoing conflict states.

Unhooked and Unsettled: Tom Cruise Can’t Make Me Happy

By Nicolle

I have a lot of strange, compulsive habits but my newest one is weirder than making extensive to-do lists that include taking a shower. I recently started checking the left ring fingers of men and women alike to see if a symbol of eternal commitment graces their hands. If a sparkly rock or a shiny band is secured around that fourth finger, I wonder about that person’s spouse. What does she look like? Do they have kids? Does he ride the bus to work too?

If a ring is absent, I conversely wonder why. Was she once married? Did he lose the one he wanted?

My curiosity about strangers’ marital statuses does not logically stem from an obsession with getting married (trust me). I’m not looking to get married anytime soon, nor do I think that marriage is an ultimate goal in life.

What is a goal (one that almost everyone would attest to striving for) is happiness. And I’ve been struggling with what happiness looks like in an unpredictable world.

In our modern society, marriage is often touted as a road to happiness, a pathway to internal completion. Jerry Maguire says it perfectly when Tom Cruise bursts through Renee Zellweger’s door after he realizes what’s missing from his life: “You complete me.”

But does she complete him? Can she complete him? In Plato’s famous work The Symposium, he details a dinner party during which playwright Aristophanes explains the reason why humans have deep, innate longings for connections with other humans. Aristophanes declares in his mythical story that humans were once two-headed, eight-limbed creatures – basically two modern humans fused together. This fusion made them emotionally and spiritually complete. But the two-headed humans got arrogant because of this total fulfillment and began ignoring the gods, says Aristophanes. Zeus’ anger with humans’ arrogance caused him to split them in two, making them what we know as humans today.

That split, says Aristophanes, caused our human need for completion to come from outside of ourselves. We can’t be whole again until we’re reunited with our other half. Literally, one plus one equals one whole.

Even though Plato is arguably one of the greatest philosophers of all time and Aristophanes is a highly regarded playwright, I venture that their perception of human longing is wrong. One plus one should not equal one; I’d even go so far as to say that it can’t.

We’ve been conditioned by culture to think that we’re incomplete until we’ve found that one person who perfectly fulfills our needs, helps us realize our dreams and keeps us happy for the rest of our lives.

Asking another person to meet that extremely high and unrealistic expectation is like asking me to pass a chemistry exam: there’s absolutely no chance that I’ll succeed. Similarly, I don’t want to be solely responsible for the happiness of another person, because I know I’ll fail. And then who’s to blame? Is my failure really my fault if the bar was set too high for even the most selfless person to reach? Or does it just mean that we weren’t “right” for each other because our fulfillment couldn’t be discovered in the other?

Maybe it’s just that such a requirement is impossible. If I hang all my happiness on one person, I’m destined to be let down before we even say, “I might.”

But it’s not hopeless. Our ideas of happily ever after in horse-drawn carriages might be false, but the concept of happiness isn’t. That happiness just can’t be fully realized in one person. Instead, a beautiful spectrum of different relationships, should they be with friends, family members, coworkers and pets, can walk shoulder-to-shoulder with us as we take time to figure ourselves out.

And figure ourselves out we shall. Because, ultimately, knowing yourself leads to a completion far greater than a two-carat, princess-cut diamond ring – or Tom Cruise’s declaration of love for you (even if he is standing on Oprah’s couch).

An Altruistic Angle: Spring: a salty meltdown

By Anna

Given the three feet of snow in my front yard and the lack of good snow up in Vancouver, my roommates and I were brainstorming what we could do with all this damn snow in the incident that it won’t just melt away this Spring.

We discussed throwing it in the river or into one of our many lakes, but then realized that as white as our snow is, it’s full of CO₂ from our cars and road salt (sodium chloride) from our streets. Montana uses animal remains from slaughterhouses mixed with salt to sticky up their roads, unlike us in the Midwest that stick to the artery clogging stuff, but no matter what each individual state uses, we’ve got salt issues.

“During snow melt, peak chloride concentrations in some urban streams can approach half that of ocean water, far higher than many freshwater organisms can tolerate even for a short period,” according to Lawrence Baker from the University of Minnesota’s Water Resources Center. And then the melted salty snow seeps into the fresh ground water, disrupting and even killing aquatic life.

What we Minnesotans have done to help the environment as well as keep our driving safe, is pre-salting the roads with the minimum amount of salt needed to melt the ice as it builds up, according to Baker. Also, less salt means less corrosion of cars and bridges, which saves us money.

We rely on politicians to keep our roads safe, and conservationist to keep our lakes clean; and although road salt and climate change are not directly connected, salt has indirect affects on the climate. Everything we bring to the world’s table, natural or artificial, ultimately affects the future of the planet. We have no personal decision about how much road salt we use, about 260 pounds per Minnesotan every winter, so being aware of personal use is that much more important.

I like to imagine what it would look like if each person carried around 260 pounds of salt in their trunks to use as they pleased. My guess is we would run out before winter’s end because we’d be hyper concerned for our safety and then we’d ask for more salt, contributing even further to the death of freshwater fish, fish we like to catch in the summers. But we live in an age where we cannot be solely concerned for one species because that will lead to our demise faster than the risk of saltless winter roads.

This week on the internet: 022610

Compiled by Ryan

The links:

-The Hold Steady will release Heaven is Whenever this May.

-Chuck Klosterman talking with Stephen Malkmus is perfect.

-Pitchfork posted some details about Forgiveness Rock Record, the upcoming Broken Social Scene album, including cover art and an mp3 of the song “World Sick.”

-The city council of Madison, Wisconsin may vote the members of Wilco honorary citizens.

-Stereogum has a brand-new design, and I’d say it is much improved.

-I’m still laughing at this RAAAAAAAANDY track from Aziz Ansari’s new mixtape with Dave Sitek (TV on the Radio).

-It’s hard to believe that Justin Theroux and Ben Stiller are still moving forward with a Zoolander sequel.

-GQ profiles the talented Jeff Bridges.

-You’ve probably heard by now that Conan O’Brien is on Twitter, but here is word that he may be developing a traveling stage show in advance of his next television gig.

The YouTube highlights:

I can’t believe I haven’t seen this before, but I’m sure it’s making the rounds.  A new YouTube classic:

Tracy Morgan and Jimmy Kimmel made a video; it’s called IMPREGN8ED:

New music spotlight:

The New Pornographers – Together

The New Pornographers released some of the most-celebrated indie-pop of the last decade, the latter half of which has seen a surge in the solo careers of members Neko Case, Dan Bejar (Destoryer), and leadman A.C. Neman.  The crew is back at it again, starting with the drum-heavy song featured below:

The New Pornographers – “Your Hands (Together),” from the upcoming Together, out May 4 on Matador