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Saturday, June 9, 2018

The Dating Project

I happened to watch a documentary yesterday called "The Dating Project", an interesting look at dating, or perhaps the death of dating, in the US. Curiously, it seems that the more readily and easily we are able to communicate, via text and social media and so on, the less we actually do so on a meaningful level. This would be true in the realm of ideas--politics, religion--as well as in social interactions between the sexes. With instant, and often anonymous, communication has come innocuous abbreviation, careless incivility, and a sort of emotional laziness. Dating and courtship have been replaced by hooking up, casual encounters, the whim of the moment, the fuck-buddy. And as it turns out, fewer and fewer people know how to date anymore. They don't know what it is. 

The Dating Project itself is a course designed by a university professor in which students must choose another person to ask out on a date. They must first, of course, learn what this is--what is a date, what differentiates it from a 'hook-up', what pattern is to be followed, and so on?  One of the first things the students discover, naturally, is that this is much more difficult than typing a sentence and hitting the send button. Here, you are putting yourself out there, you are taking the rather frightening step of acknowledging that you are particularly interested in a specific person, so much so that you would like to spend time together one-on-one, not in group gathering, a party, or what have you. You are interested in getting to know this person. 

The documentary was an interesting look at the social scene in America, the deterioration of traditional goals and patterns, the challenge of interacting authentically in a digital society; and yet most interesting to me was the automatic comparison to what I see in Indonesian society, which, despite social networking, retains a character in sexual interaction and expectations that is much like that which existed in the America of the 1950's.

As an example, my friend Hendra happened to mention to me yesterday that he and his girlfriend, Ratih, would be married in three years. They had a contract, he said. I asked if Ratih knew about this and he said Of course. That is our plan. We talked about it. 

Hendra and Ratih have been going together for less than a year, yet they speak of commitment, a plan for the future. They have even decided how many children they will have!

It is the same with Resy and with Adi. They have their girlfriend and they have a plan. Ideally, fashioning  the proper circumstances comes first, security, maturity, and then marriage. This is not to suggest that they do not have sexual relations. Of course they do. So did boys and girls in the 50's. It is to say that the patterns of tradition, expectation, the proper course, a distinct and well-defined goal are still very strong in this society.   

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