RE: Am I just extremely old-fashioned?
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I met my wife via Tinder! Been together 4 happy years now I think, married 1 and a bit. It played to my extremely introverted personality, cause otherwise I would be single and alone forever, guaranteed. And it's not like I'm particularly ugly or have an ugly personality. I just had zero ways of meeting anybody other than routes I'd rather die than take, such as in a pub or... a friend of a friend.
That being said, I certainly got lucky. She worked 10 metres from my home so I immediately cut out the middleman and surprise met her outside the building after only a few days (creepy? I dunno but it worked).
I knew for a long time that the dating app mechanism itself was a dangerous tool, and when I came across this woman who was clearly not of that type, I had to do things the traditional way.
I also think it speaks to a larger problem of globalism. We see cultural elements infecting other cultures, diluting them into nothing, and the only thing that's left standing is an economic zone. Americanisms infect the UK like you wouldn't believe, it's depressing. We even had Black Lives Matter protests even though it makes zero sense in the context of the UK, where 1 black person died at the police hands over the last decade, which is proportionally fewer than white people lol.
Race isn't so much an issue there as the US. It's actually far more about class and religion. We just don't have this race obsession. Yet, it seeped in anyway, defying all logic.
Back regarding dating - it's hard enough maintaining a successful relationship between any two people even if they're from your village with the same beliefs, culture, family structure, education, language and so on.
When you start dating with a pool of 'the entire world', it definitely makes it much harder work for even the most straight-forward couple. Lord knows me and the wife have had to deal with some tricky cultural walls. We get through but it can easily end others. So yeah, internet dating ain't wise. I just got lucky
I'm happy to hear that, it's a sensible take! I'm somewhat familiar with British culture and thought those were just absurd too when they happened, but I thought maybe it's something I just don't get as an outsider. You're right, erasure of our national identities is a terrifying (and very overlooked) aspect of it all.
I wonder though if in a way our life problems/values haven't also become globalized in a sense - views on vaccines, traditional marriage and roles if there, all these things that we seem to talk of across the water as it were. I wonder if those don't supersede our national identity markers. What do you think?
But all that aside, congratulations to you and your wife and many happy years together! What a lovely story. Maybe creepy in some eyes, but it seems to have worked for you and her, so the right choice for sure! :D
I certainly do think there are some shared values all humans hold, as well as other shared values certain sects of humans hold with each other (E.g., 'The West' vs 'East Asia' or something).
But with that in mind, national identity markers are still a thing, just a lower tier close to our hearts. The destruction of any tiers can't possibly be seen as a good thing. Losing, for example, Christianity. For atheists like me, that sounds great on paper.
But without realising, we're losing things that came attached with religion, something that has evolved over thousands if not tens of thousands of years. Values & virtues, treatment of others and charity, aesthetics, culture. Cathedrals to me mean so much more than just a symbol of royal greed. To an outsider, it's either a cool tourist attraction or a plot of land in a prime location for office buildings if we knock the 900 year old structure down.
So I worry we are becoming significantly more depressed and anxious worldwide simply because we've lost all trace of purpose. We only have little brains really and we can only realistically envision things on a small scale. Global scales are very abstract and low resolution. 'Equality' - sure, sounds nice, but what does it even mean? How does that affect my family and friends, or my community or whatever religion that goes on in my neck of the woods?
We're evolved to focus on our own immediate surroundings, and so I don't want to let that get overwhelmed with some vague Universal values
Anyway, I fear I went way too deep - soz lol