Last night I was watching a special on CNN about the United States in the 1960s. A women’s rights activist complained that being home all day with two small kids was mental torture. She was nearly in tears. I totally get that. I love kids, but being around them for more than ten minutes feels like brain death. You can’t think your own thoughts, do what you want to do, or take your eyes off them. And 80% of your interactions can be unpleasant if you are the disciplinarian.

Being a parent on a school night can be torture. The schools load up the kids with hours of homework and hand them off to their parents, tired, restless, and unsatisfied. The workload is beyond what most kids can handle without a struggle. The parents compensate by yelling and threatening their children. The family environment is a cage fight on a good day.

You know what would solve that?

Get rid of marriage.

The only reason the local school system can crap on kids with truckloads of useless homework is because they hand-off the problem to parents. If kids were under one set of rules all day (such as the school’s rules) that wouldn’t happen. The schools would adjust the workload to be reasonable because THEY would have to deal with the fallout, not the poor parents coming home from long days at work.

I’m not suggesting that schools raise kids. I’m only going to make the case that marriage is civilization’s biggest mistake and we’re all too brainwashed to admit the obvious.

For the sake of comparison, imagine a system in which kids are raised by some sort of organized partnership of parents, teachers, and medical professionals. Parents can spend as much quality time as they want with their kids, but mostly for mentoring and social reasons. The jobs of discipline, healthcare, feeding, fitness, and education would be handled by the greater organization.

When a kid is in school, one teacher controls 20-30 kids. That is an efficient system, and the teacher probably doesn’t mind the work. When two kids come home to one parent (often) you have a 2-1 disadvantage for the parent. That’s just bad social design, but again, we’re brainwashed to think it’s the best way.

Do you know why millions of Americans have no healthcare? it’s because of marriage. Marriage creates entities against which you can discriminate. If there were no marriages, all citizens would be equal, and my guess is that healthcare would be universally available. Today, if I can get healthcare for my family, you’re on your own.

Perhaps you believe that in a marriage-free world only the well-off would buy healthcare insurance. But without marriage, there would be enough money for everything you want. Marriage is what is making us poor (compared to my hypothetical alternative of child-raising co-ops.)

Do you know why nearly every parent doesn’t eat right and doesn’t exercise enough? Answer: Marriage. Kids.

Do you know why most adults are self-medicating with alcohol, illegal drugs, and prescription drugs? Answer: Because married life sucks and single life sucks just as much. (Single life sucks because society is organized for marriage.)

Do you know why so many adults can’t get the training they need for a job? Answer: Marriage and kids. Not enough time or money left over.

Now look around at your friends over thirty and ask yourself which ones have financial problems. Is it the divorced ones? Yes, it is. Marriage leads to divorce about half the time, which often leads to emotional and financial ruin.

I grew up in a family with modest means, but my mother insisted that all three kids go to college. I got lucky because my mother showed me a doorway to a better life. But I know people whose parents never mentioned college because they knew they couldn’t pay for it, or they didn’t recognize its value. Why did those kids get screwed? Answer: Marriage. If an organized collective raised kids, all of them would have the same options and information.

My best guess is that 75% of kids are damaged by bad parenting. Here again I am comparing it to some sort of co-op arrangement in which the kids are never the captive victims of a drunken parent, a stupid parent, a violent parent, a mentally disturbed parent, an unreasonable parent, a too-demanding parent, and so on. And in the co-op system, no one is making their son play football because it is fun to watch despite the brain injuries.

How about terrorism? That’s mostly a marriage problem in the Middle East. In this case, the powerful Muslim men marry multiple women and there are no other religion-approved outlets for male sexuality. That creates millions of young male zombies willing to die for a chance to get laid in heaven. Literally. That’s their best option.

Women reading this are doing face-palming and scoffing so hard that spittle is everywhere. But it is a fact of life that men with no options for female attention drift toward thoughts of suicide. Society has taught us, and biology has primed us, to value the mating/reproductive process as our main purpose in life. People who have no purpose look for other options.

Why is a young, male, terrorist’s best option for female attention to kill himself in an act of terror? It’s because the preferred form of marriage in ISIS territory makes that the best available choice for some young people.

You can read a version of this opinion in the New York Times. You’ll find this idea more compelling coming from a more credible messenger.

Yes, there are plenty of “reasons” for terrorism in the 2D world. But in the 3D world of moist robots, most of the problem is because of too many men with too few options that are compatible with their biology. The way they rationalize their terror is through filters of politics, religion, and other ridiculousness. That’s what makes it okay, in their view. But all causes are biological. Science knows we are meat puppets that rationalize our actions after the fact.

How about happiness in general? What does marriage do to that?

Take the example of two single people over 40 going on a date. At least one of them, probably both, has kids at home with a sitter, or maybe out causing mayhem in one way or another. Those two parents are not really in the room with each other if they brought their phones, which they did. Those two are still with the kids, one text message after another. I call this situation dating a cyborg, because the person and the phone are one. How can you fix it?

Get rid of marriage. Marriage caused the family unit and then caused the broken family unit with no support. If the kids had always been part of the co-op system they would have plenty of people to answer their questions while their parents are out having fun.

Climate change? Totally a marriage problem. Marriage causes single family homes with too many cars, long commutes, and about 5X the wastefulness of a better-designed system. The one-kid-per-parent system that marriage creates (on average) can’t compete with one adult monitoring 20 kids.

How much driving does an average family do every day? Lots. And most of it is one parent driving one kid from the family home to where other kids are clustering and back. Those kids should be in the same place all the time. Get rid of marriage and get rid of the driving.

In my view – and I mean this literally, not satirically – marriage is the biggest contributor to mental health problems, crime, poverty, drug abuse, climate change, terrorism, violence, rape, incest, poor health, and ignorance. But you have been brainwashed to not see it.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Note: The tell for cognitive dissonance in the comments and on Twitter will be the oversized anger followed by an insult of the author’s intelligence. People who object for real reasons will mention them. Also look for “Wow” and other dismissive responses without reasons.