The wedding industrial complex (E)

0:00In his farewell address to the nation, when he had nothing to hide, nothing to lose, Dwight D. Eisenhower chose to use that moment to warn us about the ratchet of the military industrial complex. We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

0:54Today, in New York City, the typical wedding costs$80 ,000. Hey, it's Kevin Beach, and this is a special archived episode of Akemba.

1:12Compared to the horrors of a runaway military industrial complex, the wedding industrial complex seems practically benign. It doesn't hurt anybody. Why even bother to understand it? Well, I think it's worth understanding it because it will help us understand how our cultural ratchet works and how, in fact, the runaway military industrial complex can happen as well. So how is it that we end up with weddings that cost$50 ,000,$60 ,000, or$80 ,000 for the typical middle-class family? We're not talking about Liz Taylor here. We're talking about the typical family. According to recent data, the average American household is more than$5 ,000 in credit card debt.

2:03And young people, the folks who are most often getting married, have college debt, not to mention mortgage debt. When you add it all up, we're talking about people who are already in debt spending more than a year's income to get married. Now, given that the cost of getting married, having a wedding in the United States, has gone up perhaps 10x since my parents got married, the question is, are weddings 10 times more fun? Are you getting 10 times more of whatever it is you're seeking by spending 10 times more on that wedding? Or maybe, just maybe, you'd be better off putting that money in the bank so that when when your first offspring, 20 or 30 years from now, is ready for college, you could hand her a million dollars.

2:59Because that's really what's on the table. A million dollars 25 years from now, or an all-day wedding that might cost$80 ,000. How do we get here? It's complicated. Most things having to do with culture are. If we go back to the history of weddings, of course, they get driven by a patriarchal society, by dowries, by the idea that the husband is taking on a bride, that this social contract that happens isn't simply between the husband, the dominating one, and the wife who is chosen with the veils and all, but between two families. And I could give you a million examples from history where weddings have been arranged between families because these new family bonds that are created create all sorts of value.

4:00This idea that a wedding ceremony is about two families coming together, that it's about inclusion, that the process of getting married is about a negotiation between two families, two cultures that didn't used to be connected, is important to understand. And that every time we err on the side of inclusion, of including others, of seeing others for who they are, the system, the wedding, works ever better. So if we begin there, we understand that we're dealing with something that's not just a day-long party, but that is fraught with all sorts of messages and meanings. And one of them, in our modern culture, is the message of status.

4:50Who eats first? Who has more than everyone else? Who's better? Who's not better? And what's happened is the wedding industrial complex, the magazines, the videos, the conversation boards, the industry has worked to make it so that brides will measure each other more easily than ever before. Chris Anderson of TED fame has pointed out that snowboarding evolved faster than almost any other sport. And the reason is that it used to be when someone developed a trick on a skateboard or in some other sport, it might take a year before the word spread to everyone. But in snowboarding and in skateboarding and in most other activities now, a new trick is developed, it goes up on YouTube, and it's instantly seen by practitioners around the world.

5:50So the ratchet happens ever faster. Brides Magazine and similar publications used to be the journal that would show people what was the state of the art a year ago or two years ago. But now, of course, we see it moments after it happens, if not in real time. It's essential to note that we're talking about culture here, and so we have intertwined relationships. Whose wedding is it anyway? When I was doing work for the Lifespring Hospital in Hyderabad, what we determined was it's not the pregnant mom who decides where she's going to have her baby. It's the mother-in-law. Because status roles are so important, her expertise is relied upon, and her voice is heard louder than anyone else's.

6:44So this wedding, who exactly is the wedding for? Well, it's not just for the two people who are getting married. It's for their brothers and their sisters and their in-laws. And it's for their cousins and for their friends and for their business associates. And that's what makes culture work. That's why wedding conversations, conversations about same-sex weddings, about weddings between friends, about weddings that are shotgun and happen just overnight, are so laden with meaning. Because it's not just two people. It's two communities coming together, and those decisions that they have to make are awfully similar to the decisions that politicians make every time they think about what to spend money on.

7:39One of the key elements of status, certainly in the case of the wedding industrial complex, but also when it comes to the military, is that many people say, oh, I don't want anything extravagant. I just want something slightly above average. Because after all, we're slightly above average. Our family, the message we are trying to send, the importance of this day. I'm not showing up to have a below average wedding. I'd like one just slightly above average. Well, in order to do that, of course, you need to know what the average is. and the average is always going to go up because most people want what they're doing to be slightly above average.

8:27If you showed up at the Waldorf Astoria in 1974 and said, I want to throw an$80 ,000 wedding, you would have had to go to the top of every list they had. The top wine, the top this, the top that. Today, because the ratchet has turned, that's no longer the case. So consider, for example, the idea of having a live band. Well, let's say you and your beloved really love to dance. Let's say even further than that, you love to go clubbing, to go to dance clubs, and you want to share this joy with your family. Okay, quick question. The last time you went to a dance club, was there a live band or was there a DJ?

9:12The whole idea of the live band is a signaling strategy, a way to say to your guests, this is happening here, analog, in real time. And we pulled out all the stops. It's not a four-piece band. No, no, we got an eight-piece band. Wait a minute. Didn't the Beatles only need four pieces to fill Shea Stadium?

9:38Doesn't matter. we're sending you a signal. And that signal is, even though every other night of the year you don't go out clubbing tonight, we want you to dance with abandon. Because that's our version of what happens when a group gets together and has fun.

10:08so it's$80 ,000 wedding what are you gonna have 200 guests so when I do that math that's$400 a guest let's say you don't want to save the money so that junior will have a million dollars 25 years from now. Let's say you want to spend the$80 ,000. Well, at$400 a person, that means that every single weekend for most of a year, you can take two people or maybe two couples out to dinner at the fanciest restaurant in town with fancy wine and enjoy pleasant conversation. You can go on a canoe trip with your dad and have that deep conversation you've been putting off. You can have one experience after another over the course of a year, or you could sit at round tables making idle chitchat with people you've never seen and you're never going to see again.

11:02It's up to you. And about the round tables, you know those tables for 10? How did we end up with tables for 10? Well, the answer is tables for 10 are mathematically optimal for serving a lot of people in a hurry. plenty of room in the center of the table. You can roll them around. You can fill a banquet hall and then empty the banquet hall. And so the caterer says to the bride, oh, that's what everyone is doing. You don't want to be an outlier, do you? Never mind the fact that tables for 10 almost make it impossible for people to talk to anyone who isn't on their left or on their right. The tables for 10 ensure that there will be a lot of noise in the room and very little in the way of intimacy.

11:52Think back to the weddings you've been to. Can you remember memorable moments that happened at those tables for 10? Were they positive ones? And if the insane expense wasn't enough, consider a paper called The Diamond is Forever and Other Fairy Tales, the relationship between wedding expenses and marriage duration, by Andrew Francis Tan of the National University of Singapore and Hugo Mylon of Emory University's Department of Economics. They studied 3 ,000 weddings, and they found, unsurprisingly, a relationship between the amount of money spent on a wedding ring and a ceremony and the duration of the marriage.

12:38And yes, you guessed it. The relationship is, the more you spend, the shorter the marriage lasts. A wedding and a marriage are different. So there's the idea of status, and then there's the idea of affiliation. Not only do we want the wedding to be slightly better than average, but we want it to be like everybody else's. People like us do things like this. So for example, at every wedding, you'll hear this song played.

13:25Oh, no, no, no. Not this song. Maybe this song.

13:41No, we could have picked either one of those. They're fine for a wedding march, but we use this one.

13:51Why do we use this one? Is it because something in our particular version of the culture, ancestors seven, eight generations ago, picked this one? Very unlikely. It's way more likely that we saw it on a soap opera, that we saw it on Dallas, that we saw it on some movie or TV show that was looking for a cultural shorthand for, here comes the bride. So, the regular kind. Because if I don't pick the regular kind, then as a bride or a groom, I've got some explaining to do. Why wasn't it good enough for me? If it was good enough for my friends and it was good enough for my mom and dad, why isn't that music, why isn't this setting, why aren't those tables good enough for me?

14:36And so the cycle continues. We have the issue of status. We have the issue of affiliation. And then there's the issue of dominance. Because slightly above average would be fine, but even more above average, that would be great. Or look at the increase in destination weddings, where you say to your dozen or two dozen closest friends, give up your vacation, not just your weekend. Buy the airplane tickets. We're all going to a destination wedding because then we can have even more fun. Well, maybe you can. Or maybe this is an example of someone taking their special day, the groom say, and getting carried away by turning it into a special week and by dictating how people will spend their day.

15:22So if a wedding is fun, how come we don't do it every week? How come we don't go back to the Hearthstone Manor for some broiled chicken next week with a half a dozen friends? No, I don't think that's why a wedding is fun. I think a wedding is fun because it's associated with something important in our life or the life of someone we care about. It's similar to the idea of logos and brands. If I ask you to name a logo that you really admire, go ahead, picture it. It's certainly likely that you will pick a logo associated with a brand you admire. People never pick a logo for like a Yugo car, something that breaks down on every corner, because the logo has come to be associated with our feelings for that brand as well.

16:14And so the same thing is true for weddings. We associate the happiness, the wonder, the care that we feel about the other, about our friends, about our relatives. We associate all of them with the rubber chicken in the table for 10 in the live band.

16:34Even though the expensive parts of that not only don't contribute to our happiness, but they often saddle the bride and groom with crippling debt, not to mention the anxiety and stress that goes along with being slightly better than average, but not too much, fitting in, but not too much, and trying to get everyone in the bridal party and their guests to do exactly what we want on our special day. And so now back to the military-industrial complex. The military-industrial complex obviously is about spending more than$80 ,000 on a wedding. It involves matters of life and death. But what we know is that the people in power in every country have money to spend, money that's not theirs, money that they could spend on long-term things like education and healthcare, but it's viscerally more fun to spend it on slightly above average weapons.

17:39That if those other people have weapons, we better get more weapons too. Hence the arms race. What people don't ask about the arms race is racing toward what? How do you know who wins? Is it good to win the arms race? What happens when you win the arms race. And so the cycle continues because the military part of the military industrial complex is satisfying the need for people in charge to feel like they're in charge. And the industrial part? The industrial part knows who their customer is, and they are always dreaming about how to deliver something a little bit above average. What's rarely mentioned is that the weapons companies that make things for Team X also make them for Team Y.

18:32And so the ratchet continues, and around and around and around it goes. If I had a straightforward solution to the military-industrial complex problem, I would certainly share it with you. But maybe we could just start with the wedding-industrial complex, because it comes down to design thinking, asking the questions, who's it for? and what's it for? This wedding we're doing, who is it for exactly? Who are we trying to please? If we're trying to please the mother-in-law, let's be really clear with ourselves that that's what we're trying to do and not saddle this decision with all sorts of other detritus that isn't relevant to the change that we're trying to make.

19:18Who's it for and what's it for? Once you know who it's for? What are they dreaming of? Why are they dreaming of it? If you're a bride or a groom, what is it about this wedding that's validating something for you? How will it validate something for you? Why is that validation more important than connection, than intimacy, than vulnerability, than peace of mind, than having the resources that lead you to becoming debt-free? Are you making these choices simply because of today's status quo, knowing that tomorrow the status quo won't even be what it is today? If the entire mindset that you're approaching this special day is that it's a special day, that the wedding is more important than the marriage, well then it's inevitable that you will get caught into this maelstrom of the ratchet that only turns in one direction.

20:17What would happen if we started with nothing? We started with a park. Oh, well, let's add a tent and maybe some tofu salad. Then what do we need to add? Who's it for and what's it for? So I'm not completely a curmudgeon. I love it when people find the place that they are trying to go with the person they want to go there with. What amazes me is that we can spend all this time and spend all this money and not even have a good time. Thanks for listening. I'll be back in a minute with answers to your questions from last time. Hey Seth, it's Maria. Hey Seth, my name's Kyle. Greetings, Seth. This is Stephen out in Madison, Wisconsin.

21:00Hi Seth, Alicia from Charleston here. Hi Seth, this is Anupam. Hi, this is Caitlin. Hi Seth, warm greetings from Curacao. Hey Seth, my name is Nick Ryan from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Hey Seth, this is Rex. Hey Seth. Hi, this is Vasilis from Greece. Hi, this is Roberta Perry. My question is... And that completes my question. Hi Seth, this is Mac Barron from Brookline, New Hampshire. I have a question about tactics and strategies for gamifying our lives a little bit. are there ways that we can go about making the things in our life that we really do care about or the games that we play that we really do love better or strategies we can use and tactics we can use that will make it easier for us to get a leg up on some of the people who maybe don't look at games as the way that our lives are being shaped right now thank you thanks for all that you do.

21:57Love the podcast. Bye. Thanks, Mac. A little bit of history here. A hundred years ago, a guy named Frederick Taylor pioneered scientific management. And the idea was pretty simple, but extraordinary. And what it was, was that the boss had a stopwatch. And what he did, and it was almost always a he, was he would time every motion, every step. And if you got better at doing the job faster, you got to keep your job, or maybe you got a bonus. And if you couldn't keep up, you got fired because managers were in charge and they told workers what to do. Well, over the last hundred years, managers and leaders have discovered that this brute force approach might not be the most effective way to change people's behavior, that there's something in our brains that works overtime trying to win a game, that we like playing a game, we can change the way people behave.

23:05So card companies like the people who make Magic the Gathering or Pokemon somehow use game dynamics to get millions of kids to pay$5,$10,$50 to buy some worthless pieces of paper so they can win a game. That what we know is that cognitive behavioral therapy is the single most effective form of talk therapy for the typical human. And the reason is CBT helps you build a game around your actions and your thoughts. We see programs like YouTube manipulating our game instincts to post more videos, get more likes, respond to comments, see the next recommended video to fit in, to move forward, to be part of something.

23:56And then social networks have taken that times a hundred. They have gamified so many parts of the way we interact. It's a fundamental principle of behavioral economics. All a way of saying that if you don't figure out how to gamify your life, someone's probably going to do it for you. So here's an example. We know that streaks work. We know that in programs like Duolingo, people will show up and spend more time learning Spanish just to keep their streak going. So what happens if you start building streaks into your life or rituals or habits? And Charles Duhigg has written brilliantly about this.

24:40So have many other people. If, for example, you want to be a runner, The time to decide whether or not you're going to go for a run today is not in the morning when it's cold and dark, 10 minutes before your run. You can gamify it. You can make a deal with yourself that you're allowed to stop running, but first you have to make it to the mailbox. You have to put on your shoes and your running clothes and go out the door and run to the mailbox. And then you're allowed to make a decision that you're too busy or too tired to run. That over time, you, the game master, can make decisions that aren't based on how you feel in the moment, but are instead about how you create milestones for yourself so that when you are feeling weak, you will choose to win the game as opposed to rolling over again in bed.

25:40Another idea that seems really subtle, but works and works and works, is the idea of who are you competing with and what are you competing around. So if you're in a book group, social pressure is going to get you to read that book. The act of joining the book group is the hard part. Once you're in the book group, the books are going to get read because now you're playing a game. It's a game you're enrolled in. It's one you want to move forward with. So the act here, the choice, is to choose to build all sorts of game structures into your life? How often will I ask a question when I go to the doctor's office?

26:21Let me write down the number. Last time I went, I only asked two questions. Can I ask four questions next time? What's my score? Can I keep score with other people? And I guess the last thing I would say here, rather than giving you a huge laundry list, is that the easiest way to start creating this game dynamic is to form a group, to find others, to find others and challenge those others to play the game with you. Because we all know that solitaire might be a little fun, but solitaire isn't the kind of game we dream of when we dream of games. We do better when we do it together. Thanks for listening.

27:03We'll see you next time.