Chapter 5/6

Let’s look at a particular case. Lisa has lived all her life in Grass Valley, California, a small town in the heart of the Gold Rush country. Her father is a carpenter, her mother a clerk in Lew Howard’s Drugstore. Lisa is the youngest of eight children. Her eldest sister has children Lisa’s age. She is the only one in the family to have attended college. She is the most devoutly religious. She is twenty years old.

Tim had lived in eight towns all over Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, before going to college. He got his entire high school education from Andy Dekaney High School in Houston, where his father was a petroleum engineer and his mother was a traditional, stay-at-home mom. He has two younger brothers that he has little in common with, except they share the same parents. The family is Presbyterian. Tim lived with Sharly for two years before she left him for another guy. He dated very little for the next year, then began seeing Lisa. He is twenty-five. They met at Oklahoma State University where both were enrolled: she as a sophomore music major, he as a second-year senior marketing major. They have been engaged for a little over a year.

How many different thesis-antithesis-synthesis triads could you make of this? I hope they have spent a good bit of their time together this past year thinking about it, talking about it. For instance, take only one small tension they must deal with. She has two brothers and five sisters, all older and with less education. If she is the thesis, they have been the antitheses, and she now brings to marriage whatever synthesis has been made of that. He is the eldest of three brothers. He has never paid them much attention, while, unbeknownst to him, they have looked on him as their hero. He the thesis, they the antitheses, and he brings to marriage whatever family synthesis this has led to.

The Hegelian dialectic says that all reality exists in this triadic relationship; all history develops dialectically, and, therefore, if we are to be in touch with reality, we must think dialectically—thesis, its antitheses, and the multifarious syntheses possible. Life is complex.

The easiest way to simplify it is to embed “but on the other hand” in our minds. Then be alert and attentive to how much lead time we have before decision must be reached.

Donna was a cut above everyone else in my high school graduating class. We were always a bit in awe of her. She was the smartest and most sophisticated, wealthy and good-looking. Art was the playboy of our class, highly sophisticated, wealthy, handsome, and suave. They married within a year after graduation.
I knew the lady who was their housekeeper. She knew what their marriage was like. And she told me. Donna was often out of the public eye for months at a time, recovering from beatings, waiting for bruises to disappear, and afraid to talk with anyone. She had learned that Art was a heavy-drinking, very abusive man. She took it for three years before putting a bullet through her head.

How did this come about? She was the smartest in our class. Always prepared, always knew the answers, intensely involved, she was loved by all our teachers. Where were her smarts when she said yes to Art Hall? Always thoroughly prepared for classes, why did she not know what she was getting into in this marriage?
My best guess is that, perhaps like most of us, once she “fell in love,” her mind took a vacation. Ordinarily, we give little thought to what marriage involves and what marriage to this particular person entails. We are sure that love will work it all out. Not many take the route of killing either themselves or their spouse, but we are well aware of the numbers who find themselves in miserable and failed marriages.


Herbert and Margaret were the classic high school marriage: a big football hero and the smartest girl in the class. She was committed “until death do us part,” so she stayed with him through all his shady and crooked business dealings. She stayed while he spent a year in prison. Never a happy marriage, but she stayed with him.
When they were in their middle-sixties, they bought an elegant new home. The next year, they celebrated their golden wedding anniversary. Less than a year later, he moved out and rented an apartment across town. Margaret learned of it when she came home from work to an empty house.

Then came the divorce.
(Not long afterward, to the surprise of all of us, she went on a date to Las Vegas with an old man she had just met, and soon they were married.)


After dating Bobby Lee for her first three years of college, Charlene took a philosophy course where I taught the main ideas that I’m presenting in this book. By the middle of November, she had reconsidered a lot of things about marriage, herself, and Bobby Lee. They had been engaged for six months when she came and told me that the course had taught her how to think, and that it led her to realize marriage to Bobby Lee would be a horrible mistake. I didn’t probe, and she didn’t tell me the particulars.

She had put the academic idea of the Dialectic to work, and thought better of the status of her love life. When you learn how to think, and, rather than following others, think for yourself, your life will begin changing, sometimes dramatically.

(Seven years ago, she married a medical student. They now have a handful with three boys, and a new medical practice; the marriage looks good, and they seem happy.)

Don’t get serious about dating anyone without stopping for a dialectical checkup. Don’t even think about marrying, until you have given it a dialectical test. Sex, as prominent, important, and fun as it is, cannot be the main consideration. Trust and reliability should be the foremost considerations. Run as soon as you discover a hot temper—it won’t change, it will only get worse. Finances and in-laws are ignored at great cost. Think like an octopus. There are, always, many other hands to consider.