Marriage

One of the most fundamental questions that has perplexed humanity for ages, and that perplexes it still is the following: How should we live our lives. This is an issue of intense concern for any reflective person.
Every culture addresses this question and proposes an answer. It comes up with a set of principles, based on experience as well as on the history of human thought; these are the same principles that we are then brought up with. We are indoctrinated to believe that this is the right path in life. Variations are present, but so are similarities. I would like to focus on the latter, namely the institution of marriage.

Marriage in one form or another, is present in virtually every single community on the planet. But what are the reasons behind it? If asked, people will in general say something along these lines: to celebrate your relationship; or to declare your love to the world. It sounds beautiful and it seems true, but it only seems true (at least to a certain extent) because we want it to be true; for you can have all that without the byproducts of the institution of marriage and the paperwork that it entails.
Let us now assume that we cant think of a better reason to get married than the two stated above. Then there is a parallel to be made here between marriage and Facebook( or rather one of its accessories). As much as I hate bringing it up in any kind of serious thought, Facebook is an extremely widespread phenomenon and as such we cannot allow ourselves to ignore it. Moreover, it is not the idea of Facebook that is rotten- to the contrary, it is quite fantastic- it is the people who use it that have made it what it is today. Now, to come back to the point I was trying to make in the first place- the parallel between Facebook and marriage- I ask the following question: Save the party in its name, what is the difference between marriage and setting your relationship status on Facebook to married?