Cinnamon Sunrise

Weddings. Every woman - according to the sitcoms on TV anyway - is supposed to dream about a wedding. A big white ballgown, fantastic hair, billions of relatives, huge cake. A fairytale come true. A happily ever after.

Like many modern dreams, the white wedding is almost completely the invention of advertisers, although it remains steeped in a dark and patriarchal past. In the very early days, a ‘wedding’ was actually a kidnapping, in which the groom and his men (now represented by the best man) took a woman away by force. After a while, social relationships evolved (a little) and rather than use force, a groom could just buy the object of his desire. A wedding marked the handing over of a woman from her father to a husband - it was a sale, a transaction either explicitly about an exchange of money and land, or implicit, where status and power was gained through alliances. Witness the speech giving at a traditional wedding. The father-of-the-bride and the groom. Does the woman speak? Does her mother?

This isn’t to say that couples didn’t fall in love and get married. Love has always existed, and so have commitment ceremonies. But the big white wedding, the traditions we associate with that, are not so benign.

To many families, the only worth a daughter had was what she would fetch in marriage. Education centered around manners and social awareness. During the Victorian age, a teenage girl would debut, dancing and mingling with many men who would essentially size up the available women and then begin a bidding war. The better a woman looked, and the richer her family appeared, the better value she was.

Specific traditions? Take the wedding cake. During the mighty Roman era, a small cake was broken over the bride’s head on the wedding day. The reason? It showed her subsequent loss of virginity, and the grooms domination of her. Why white icing? During the Victorian age, only the rich could afford refined sugar to make truly white icing. Another status symbol - and it was helped by the association of virginity with the colour white.

To an extent, we have broken with tradition. There are many different colours for wedding dresses, and cakes themed to match. The emphasis is on spectacle. Food, flowers, music, alcohol, and lots of guests - with everything coming in at inflated prices by being tagged ‘wedding’. Over the last decade, the average cost of a wedding sky-rocketed by over 70%. The bridal industry is a big industry. It’s now hovering around the $26,000 mark. The credit crunch and increase in cost of living, however, means that people are starting to find reality again.

What is a wedding actually about? If pushed, most people would say it’s about declaring their commitment and love to their partner in front of family and loved ones. Quite how a $2000 dress figures in that I’m not sure.

Of course, it’s also about theatre and ritual. As human beings, we seem to have a deep need for rituals around times of change - and getting married is a change. For many people, throwing themself into the preperation for a wedding is a way of ignoring - or counterbalancing - questions such as: is this the right person for me? Are there problems?

The pressure to get married is lessening. Many people simply live together as partners without ever going through the legal or religious bit. However, there are still some things that require a marriage certificate - including joining, or being joined by, your partner from a different country. In this case, marriage is seen as ‘proof’ that you love each other, and intend to stay with each other, despite the fact that divorce is now relatively simple.

Should you get married? Your choice. I’m getting married on the 9th June, although I am eschewing most of the traditional accompaniments.

How do you know if something is right or wrong? Disagreements on this matter have spawned some of the ugliest confrontations - consider the pro-lifers versus those who support a woman’s right to choose. Consider fundamentalists taking on homosexuals. Consider the arguments about immigration, about war, about stem cell research and recreational drug use.

I think that we have to have a value system. Murder is wrong. Rape is wrong. Kidnapping, blackmail, robbery, all these things damage others and left unchecked would lead to social breakdown. But where do you draw the line? Is murder okay in defense of loved ones? Is it okay in defense of your country? Is it okay in defense of strangers?

Then there is theft. Unmitigated, Mafia-style armed robbery is one thing. A starving man stealing food is another. Is a junkie a criminal, or is the person that hooked him to blame?

Then there are those born or raised without the capacity for empathy. Whether you call is psychopathy or antisocial personality disorder, there are a tiny proportion of people who are incapable of guilt, or of understand why hurting others are wrong. Are they criminals? Or are they disabled? Is it possible to be ‘born evil’?

I’m simplifying the questions (and the problems), but they make for interesting discussion. What responsibility does society have towards rehabilitation, towards ensuring people have access to food and shelter and clean water?

Money is something that baffles me. Not the fact that it is a medium of exchange, but the fact that it can fluctuate in value, that it can earn interest, that it can exist in a virutal form and yet the use of these invisible numbers can shape the world. I also wonder about why money attracts more money, and why the rich/poor divide grows more sharply by the day.

The universe provides everything we need in terms of money, resources, and food - not to mention beauty, wonder and excitement. By rights, with the level of technology we currently possess, there is absolutely no reason at all for anyone to starve or for anyone to have to work long hours and yet still barely make ends meet. There is also no reason for people to accumulate vast mountains of wealth - beyond a certain point it turns absurd, a ridiculous measure of a person. If you have money, then it is easy to make more money. You can just leave it in a high-interest savings account for a start.

At this point in my life money is important to me - not in and of itself, but as a tool by which I can live and eventually become free. Money is used as a motivator, more than anything. There is this world view that says that people won’t work, won’t produce, won’t be valuable, unless you offer them a carrot (money) and a stick (lack of money). Yet from my perspective it seems as though it is the financially free that produce the most good and are the most creative.

I’ve seen The Secret. I’ve read about the Law of Abundance. I understand that there is enough of everything we need to go around - but with one flaw. Money. Money creates lack. Or, maybe, the concept of profit creates lack. As long as huge, multinational corporations - faceless unweildy beasts - try and raise their profit margin by cutting costs there will be lack in the world.

By most people’s standards I am incredibly wealthy. I have a home, clean running water, easy access to a huge variety of food. If I get sick there are well-trained doctors to help advise me and provide me with medicine. If someone commits a crime against me there is a system in place to try and provide me with protection and justice. Sure, all of these systems could be improved, but that’s the nice thing about life. It’s never so good that it can’t get better.

Yet I simply cannot get my head around why and how there is still poverty in the world. Clean water, basic education, and staple foods are not luxury items. There has to be a base level of human rights. We are a co-operative species. We evolved to use teamwork, to use our brains, to share and to trade. Not to exploit and to starve.

There has to be a workable alternative to capitalism.