Opinion FATALISM IN ATTITUDES TOWARDS MARRIAGE, COMPROMISES AND COMPATIBILITY Subbarao Kambhampati Stanford University (415) 725-0157 We have often been exhorted by those people who make it their business to characterize the "national psyche"--I am referring here to the T. Vaidynathans and the Nirad Chaudharis--that Indians are "fatalistic" in their outlook; that the "whatever will happen will happenay happen" brand of philosophy permeates their thinking, decisions and actions. While I am generally suspicious of such blanket characterizations and cannot really say whether this particular one has any statistical merit to it, I am, however, startled by its potential applicability to the responses of a number of people who have taken time to express their views in response to my "Opinion" on the issue of arranged marriages among educated Indians, in India Currents (July, 1990). Let me summarise a typical argument in favor of the currently prevalent arranged marriages. It starts by saying that "compatibility is more important than romantic love in determining the success of a marriage." Fair enough. It then adds that "Compatibility can never be pre-judged hundred percent" Again very true. But then it over-extends itself by advancing the proposition "at least in arranged marriages the families look into the compatibility issue rather thoroughly, and what is left for the couple is to just fall in love (aka "In India we fall in love AFTER marriage"), make a few compromises and everything will be fine and dandy." For most of us, the obvious fallacy in the third step is apparent. However, when one tries to point this out, one is countered with arguments such as: "Beating up on 3-trip marriages is not going to help. A 10-trip marriage is probably going to be as much of a gamble." What this type of attitude essentially seems to amount to is the following: We will first assume that we are dealing with a binary valued function. Having done that, we can then blithely rationalize our indiscriminate choices by pleading inability to predict with full certainity the exact outcome of this binary valued function for any given choice. But this is too simplistic! In life--be it academic, professional or personal--we are always being faced with situations where we cannot tell the outcome with certainity. And we are called upon to make educated decisions with incomplete information. We don't always resort to or rationalize such cynically indiscriminate choices. So why suddenly now? Why is it that when it comes to the decisions regarding compatibility we show a willingness to delegate them to the putatively all knowing "elders" or to the fatalistic "fate"? Is it after all a ruse to escape any responsibility for critical decisions of our lives? Or is it really because of an ingrained belief that compatibility is a binary valued function whose outcome is completely random and beyond the grasp of us ordinary mortals (and thus best left to "elders" or to "fate")? Of course, "compatibility" is hard to pre-judge. Unlike consonance with one's primary views (e.g the person's position on right to choice), or the satisfaction of one's syntactic predilection (e.g. the color of the person's eyes), which can be determined in a reasonably short acquaintance period, compatibility is a long term property which is difficult to decide a priori. However, does this necessarily imply that there is absolutely no room for individual initiative in "estimating" compatibility? Why do we insist on being pessimistic about making educated decisions regarding compatibility? The real culprits, it appears, are our inability to distinguish between "degrees," the insistence on "guarantees," and a proclivity for looking at everything in black and white. And these very same afflictions seem to influence our arguments which attempt to unconditionally glorify the role of "compromises" in a successful marriage. Before jumping on the bandwagon of "compromising nature as the vehicle for successful marriages," it is imperative that we develop an understanding of the spectrum of extant compromises and introspect our yardsticks for judging the success of a marriage vis a vis the types of compromises made. Consider: * If one partner likes to sleep on the left side of the bed, and their spouse also wants to sleep on the left side, and they compromise--that is one kind of compromise. * If one partner wants to take part in social service, and the spouse not only hates it but is bent on actively discouraging it, and they compromise, that is _another_ form of compromise * If one partner has a predilection for physical abuse, and the spouse accommodates to save the marriage, that too is a compromise-- perhaps of a more reprehensible hue. Some of the compromises--like the first--are trivial in that they do not take off anything from one's essential persona. Others, such as the second above, might involve compromising ones values, and as such affect the essential persona. And finally there are compromises like the third one above, which are none less than sacrificing ones persona in its entirety (so as to satisfy some misguided societal idealization of a successful marriage). If the inability to make the compromises of the first sort shows an immaturity of the parties concerned; an indiscriminate willingness to make the second and third type of compromises to "keep" a marriage demonstrates equally clearly the overly diminished expectations and the fatalistic view of the marriage that that couple harbor. Yes, any cohabitative union at all can be made to work if one or both of the parties are willing to compromise indiscriminately; there is no question of prejudging compatibility. And if we judge the "success" of a marriage based _solely_ on its longevity, we will say that all such marriages are highly successful!! If on the other hand, we start appreciating the nature and the degrees of compromises being made by the parties, we may very well revise our initial opinions about the success of various marriages in our own culture. The same realization may temper our high brow pronouncements on the "triviality-driven divorces" in some other culture. Above all, we may begin to grasp the importance of making well-informed decisions. If we start with no knowledge of the other person, there is a high probability that we will wind up making compromises of second and third sort to "keep" the marriage going. Any knowledge that we glean about the other person will decrease this probability. Here we are no longer talking about guarantees, but of increasing likelihood through our actions. In other words, despite their prolonged courtship period, Palvayantheeswaran and Padmavathi might very well wind up having a perfectly ghastly marriage; while Ramshands and Sitamaalakshmi might go on to live a seemingly happy life even though they went through the completely pre-packaged version--but our willingness to use such isolated instances to justify indiscriminate choices shows an elementary lack of understanding of the essential grayness of life's conundrums. So, what is the punch line? One sign of maturity is the ability to resist the temptation to look at the world and the space of our choices in a binary black and white mode and begin contending with the grayness and uncertainity that is so much a hall-mark of reality. A 10-trip marriage, while not a perfect antidote to its 1-trip counterpart, does at least provide that much higher chance of judging compatibility. Surely, combating this pervasive fatalism by fostering an appreciation for the spectrum--rather than an artificial dichotomy--of choices, is the most effective way of influencing the attitudes towards marriage. -Rao ------------- Subbarao Kambhampati is a research associate with Center for Design Research and Department of Computer Science at Stanford University.