Chemical Brothers

A series of ads are making their way on the air, and they have me thinking.

Once upon a time, two people looking to meet might have to rely on parents or friends or their own initiative to find someone, then go through the usual courtship rituals, and if all went well, get married (assuming the goal was marriage).

But this is the 21st century, and web has sprouted up businesses that languored a bit in other mediums, including online dating. Of the dating services, perhaps the best known is eHarmony. eHarmony has some restrictions, its most notable is they don't accept gay relationships.

They claim that they have not focused their complex algorithms in that direction, and have no particular desire to do so. This can be viewed in several ways. First, a company doesn't have to cater to everyone. If you want to run a dog-sitting service, you're not compelled to run a cat-sitting service, a babysitting service, and so forth. Maybe you like dogs better.

But it does say something interesting about eHarmony. It suggests that the powers that be that run the company don't approve of gay relationships and want no part of it. That may be false, but given that eHarmony's apparent value is in the way it handles matches, the public isn't privy to the real reasons why they have this policy.

But this being a capitalistic society, someone's gotta want to fill the need, and already you see ads for this. I was watching the French Open's women's final (well, the first set, before I got called by a friend who wanted to talk at some length, thus I missed the rout of a second set) and an ad for chemistry.com came on.

It's pretty humorous. A guy is looking at a magazine. It appears to be a Playboy magazine of sorts. He says "Yeah, yeah" as he turns the magazine on edge to show an ostensible centerfold.

"Nope, I'm still gay".

Followed by "Rejected by eHarmony". It's a pretty clever ad striking at a deficiency of eHarmony.

That had me thinking about India.

Again.

Bollywood films usually center on romance. Indeed, if you were to watch Indian films, you'd think that love marriages were the norm. Love marriages are in contrast to arranged marriages, which are still very common in India. I've seen maybe three or four Bollywood films, so my sample size is small, but you rarely ever see people in arranged marriages where parents play a significant role. Indeed, these films seem to model relationships on the West.

But, much like American films which feature a lot of shooting, or highly erotic love scenes, or people who are crudely funny, the vast majority of the viewing public does not imitate what they see on film. If pressed about the issue, they might say "well, that's just the movies--it's not real life".

Yet, take that same American viewer, have them watch a Bollywood film, then immerse them in Indian culture, and you might exclaim "The women wear skimpy Western clothes. They sing songs proclaiming their love for one another. The parents are hardly visible. Why doesn't the public have more love marriages?"

The answer might be the same. Those are just movies. Arranged marriages don't make for good drama. They involve parents trying to vet families. Conservative families still prefer to marry within the caste, even as there have been marriages outside the caste and outside the religion. Typically, love marriages have had some more flexibility.

Now, how do the two topics relate? Love marriages in India vs. dating services in the US?

In a sense, the dating service is a kind of matchmaking, though modernized. Computer algorithms allegedly figure out compatible personalities, a thought that would have seemed utterly ludicrous years ago. It's the same kind of belief that arranged marriages are utterly ludicrous to Americans. Most Americans don't trust their parents to pick someone they would like, though many Americans (I read an article that 1.5% of the public is ultra-shy and never get into any relationships) make an effort to meet people, so they have at least some nominal skill and desire to find someone to, at the very least, date.

Given how shy the average person is, finding someone to date is challenging. It would perhaps surprise the typical Indian, used to speed of arranged marriages, that
couples can date years before deciding to get married (though dating can mean living together and engaging in sex, so it's practically marriage, but not in the legal sense).

Let me back up some. Why are arranged marriages so quick? Let's do some role-playing. Suppose you have a daughter or son. You've been spending some time trying to decide who they should marry. As a parent, your considerations aren't quite the same as, say, the children themselves. A typical American might decide based on a number of factors, including, how hot is the other person.

While parents may take appearance into consideration, a bigger key is the (for sake of example), the bride-to-be's family? Are they a good family? What do they do? Are they of a suitable caste (if you're Hindu)? And so forth. Arranged marriages have always been more about marrying families rather than finding the person your offspring would like to be with most.

This goal may indeed make Indians more friendly. If you're a crazy family, full of trouble, no one will want to to marry into your family (or they might--who knows?).

Let's say you find a perfect girl for your son. You make negotiations with the girl's family. Both sides agree the other side is acceptable.

Now, the key is the wedding itself. How long do you want to spend for the wedding? Several years? Since it's not you that's getting married, you probably want to get it done as soon as possible. Thus, have the whole thing arranged and done within six months. To wait years seems futile since you've already made your decision. It seems more like a decision to purchase a car than a decision that you might regret if you don't spend years trying it out.

Once it becomes your own decision, that decision may not be so final after all. And if there's high rate in divorces, then you may want a trial period deciding whether this will work or not.

Americans might be surprised about arranged marriages and their speed, while Indians may scratch their heads wondering why Americans take so long to get married (especially, once they realize that they do things that married couples already do). They may even be more surprised that a couple, dating years and year, living together, having sex, would decide, after all that time, not to get married. The concept might be shocking (well, those not that accustomed to Western decadence).

I look at India and wonder, are they where Americans were 50-60 years ago? Will they begin to go to love marriages? If so, will this cause the "breakdown" of Indian society, where divorces might go up, where drinking and casual sex become the norm? Or will the society, which has never gotten rid of the caste system, be able to maintain itself, with its emphasis on family and tradition, even in the midst of Western morality (or lack thereof).

And is America thinking that having others do some of the arranging isn't such a bad idea, even as algorithms try to find compatibility, at least as a first step? This idea which would have seemed so bizarre years ago is wrapped up in words that don't suggest machines (like eHarmony's emphasis on harmony, a non-technical word evoking idealistic relationships).

What amounts to be something of a chemical process (falling in love) and something of a biological imperative (the success of the human race) has created many different solutions, and those solutions have impacted how societies form and what their beliefs are. It is perhaps very prescient of Isaac Asimov to note that perhaps people's aggregate behavior can be predicted. While he left these equations completely nebulous, as you look at societies and how they run, you get a sense that certain global belief systems may drive people to act the way they do, and that throwing in new variables can change how societies behave.

Fascinating, really.

(What about the lolcats!)