Link to Adobe Headquarters Tour

I've been using Adobe products in the workplace for years and have purchased more than one for home use. While waiting for them to load, I often would browse the credits in the splash screen. One name in the Photoshop credits always jumped out at me -- "Seetharanan Narayanan." Wow, I thought. How could you top a mellifluous name like that for a software engineer? Well this photo tour of Adobe headquarters (which looks exactly as I imagined Adobe headquarters would look), finally put a face to the name!

I Now Pronounce You Liable For Damages

Today's post from renniekins described a conversation with an Egyptian emigrant who, from the perspective of his cultural divide, can't understand why she's not married. In eloquent terms that speak for themselves, she explained to him why so many American women do not feel any need to desperately throw themselves at the first "good enough" guy who's stable and acceptably worth having to put up with having sex with him. Here, our friends fill in for our family-- they need to be deliberately cultivated that way.

In the comments, cannibal played devil's advocate for the position that everyone should get married:
"What happens if you fall over and bang your head at 4am, then lay bleeding and unconscious? Your friends, unless they live with you, aren't there for that. Cats are not sufficient.
Friends move away. There's an effort involved in finding and keeping up new friendships.
The investment isn't as deep. You can count on friends for moral support, but if things get really bad you can't expect them to go into debt for your medical bills. Virtual family vs real family is sort of like an HMO vs traditional insurance... the old-style insurance stuck with you no matter what, once you'd signed the contract. The HMO pays for the first $300 with a $400 deductible. Of course, real insurance doesn't exist anymore, it got replaced with a PPO.
If you got laid off, would your friends take a second job to help support you? Support you while you went back to school?
I can think of times when I've taken care of my friends, and they haven't done the same in return for me."

In Egypt they might be shocked to hear this, but marriage as a mere business arrangment is a form of prostitution. What cannibal describes is insurance. Insurance is gambling, and in gambling there is a winner and a loser. If you cash in on your insurance policy, you win and the company loses. If you don't, your premiums are wasted and the company wins.

Compare this to the One True Forever Love from storybooks who makes lavish, extravagant promises like "I love you more than all the other people in the whole world" and "till death do us part." Do people realize how much that is to ask of someone? It's... everything. Weddings shouldn't go setting up a damn passionless insurance contract on terms like that. "I now pronounce you liable for damages, you may indemnify the underwriter."

You can lose at the marriage gambling game, and you can lose big time. That is a cesspool of brooding resentment and regrets, a nightmare from which the only escape is dishonorable abandonment of the devil's contract that you signed in blood at the wedding altar just because you were afraid. If you go that route the devil will come back and have his or her due, because even if you win the gamble and end up as the invalid being cared for, you will know your spouse only gives up the rest of the prime of their life just because you've got your hooks in.

Whereas if you cultivate close relationships with people, they will come to your aid not because you're calling in the wedding wager, but because they want to. If so, they want to help you whether you marry them or not. Marriage to such a person is a wonderful and beautiful thing, but the wedding is pretty much a public celebration of something that was already there. So, if you don't think your friends have your back, the solution is to find new friends. Oh, and by the way, you need to have their backs when they're in trouble. That's the way it works. I've seen it in action and it's beautiful. I've seen more medical bills eliminated from the donations of a hundred cheerful friends than from the crippling, life-ruining, all-consuming subservience of one slave. If you're so concerned about late-night accidents, get a frickin' roommate.

The wedding vows are wonderful promises, only if they're spontaneously felt, and genuine. But if not... if you immediately run out and search desperately for a "good-enough" who you settle for... you'll grow bitter. The bottom line is that the cards life deals you might mean a different form of social structure will work for you.