POINTS TO PONDER XCVI

From Reader's Digest 

David Murray

   For an anthropologist, the widespread failure to marry is a sign of impending disaster. All societies that survive are built on marriage because it creates kinsmen out of strangers; it turns hostile outsiders into in-laws.

   In Africa, there is a saying: "They are our enemies, so we marry them." Marriage  helps families multiply their economic capital - and, perhaps even more important, their social capital. You and your wife's uncle may no like each other, but marriage imposes a set of reciprocal obligations; you are at least partly responsible for each other's well-being.