{"id":2910,"date":"2011-07-11T09:02:59","date_gmt":"2011-07-11T13:02:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/?p=2910"},"modified":"2015-08-18T10:01:26","modified_gmt":"2015-08-18T14:01:26","slug":"counting-wives-a-tale-of-three-polygamists-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/counting-wives-a-tale-of-three-polygamists-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Counting Wives – a tale of three polygamists – Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"This time, the second and final part of our tale. (Part 1.<\/a>) It features staggering scientific breakthroughs and moderate fool-pitying, so it should be suitable for all audiences.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Bill went on to serve for several decades at the Central Police Station, and often enjoyed regaling guests or fellow employees with tales of the two most confused polygamists<\/strong> he\u2019d run across. \u201cProbably too much of the firewater,\u201d he’d opine, \u201cor else, too much metaphysics!\u201d He even gussied up the stories a bit, making the first feature identical triplets, and the second, two sets of conjoined twins. (In the improved version, the man insisted that he\u2019d only two wives, but plainly, he had four \u2013 just, in pairs).<\/p>\n

But the young Bill never expected the amazing advances in science<\/strong> that took place throughout his career, and for the most staggering alleged polygamy case he could imagine. In brief, it\u2019d been discovered that Aristotelian-Thomist dualists were correct<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

A human self, it turned out, was the combination of a body and a substantial form, or soul. Both physicalists and Cartesian dualists now receded to the shadows for good, along with phylogiston chemists, ether physicists, and phrenologists. People now laughed at the bad old days when people dismissed souls out of hand as undetectable. Now, souls could easily be detected<\/strong>, and it could now be observed, via instruments, for example, that the soul leaves the body about five minutes and forty seconds after brain waves have ceased. And the rough date of \u201cquickening\u201d was known as well. Early fetuses, it turned out, lacked souls, and so were not human persons, until about mid-way through the third month.<\/p>\n

It had been awhile since Bill had seen a polygamy prosecution, but on this particular day, officer Young brought him a distraught young man named Mr. Gill Tea<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\u201cMr. Tea,\u201d queried Bill, \u201cI see that you\u2019re charged with polygamy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m guilty as sin,\u201d bawled the young Mr. Tea.<\/p>\n

This is a new one, thought Bill. I guess they don\u2019t\u00a0all<\/em>\u00a0deny it. \u201cGuilty, eh. How many wives do you have?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTwo, sir. But I didn\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat, you couldn\u2019t tell them apart?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, well, no. Well, sort of.\u201d<\/p>\n

It turned out that Gill had married what he thought was a young woman named Sue<\/strong>. Sometimes, Sue was mellow, slack, almost depressed. And at other times, her life was a manic whirl of activity, and she was the life of the party. At these times, she called herself \u201cSuzie<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought it was just her style, to use that zippier, more upbeat sounding name when she was \u2018up\u2019. And she responded so well to the meds.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMedicine?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, for manic-depression. When she took that, she was always Sue. Little did I know!\u201d<\/p>\n

It turned out that what looked like one woman was in fact two women sharing a body<\/strong>. A human being, everyone now knew, was a soul combined with a body. But thanks to the new soul-detection technology, it was known that this body contained two souls, only one of which could \u201cdrive\u201d the body at a time. The medicine in question, it turned out, simply prevented the Suzie-soul from taking the driver\u2019s seat. But it still composed Suzie all along, just as the same body plus a different soul composed Sue.<\/p>\n

And the pitiable Mr. Tea had unknowingly married both<\/strong>. After inadvertently courting the both of them, he married Sue is a lovely traditional ceremony. Then, on a trip to Vegas, he was surprised when Suzie insisted on hitting a drive through wedding chapel, and redoing the paperwork and everything with the name \u201cSuzie.\u201d He called this event re-affirming their vows, but he eventually noticed that Suzie simply called it their wedding.<\/p>\n

As Bill knew, this was actually a well-known phenomenon. It had turned out that what used to be called \u201cmultiple personality disorder\u201d victims (a diagnosis now discarded) fell into two camps: malfunctioning selves, and multiple selves sharing a body. Gill\u2019s wives Sue and Suzie were examples of the latter \u2013 their souls two, but with only a body between them.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wouldn\u2019t be too worried, Mr. Tea,\u201d said Bill. You\u2019ll just have to divorce one. Society is very tolerant of adultery these days, especially if your spouse has no objection to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a\u00a0good<\/em>\u00a0Mormon!\u201d blurted Gill.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sure you are, son. Say, have you ever thought of refuting the charge?<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, you\u2019re a polygamist only if Sue and Suzie are not the same wife.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut, what if you argued that they are the same wife?\u201d suggested Bill.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s nonsense. A wife just is a certain woman<\/strong>. And we all know that they\u2019re not the same woman, for a woman is a soul-body compound, and Sue is one such compound, and Suzie\u2019s another.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNot so fast. What if you admit that a woman just is a certain soul-body compound, but argue that different women can be the same wife?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t understand. A wife just is a certain woman. I pity the fool<\/strong> who relies on that argument.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMr. Tea, stop your fool-pitying. I\u2019ve seen a lot of cases like this. Bear with me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m listening.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSee, you admit that Sue is not Suzie, and Suzie isn\u2019t Sue. But you urge that they should be counted as one.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat does that mean, though?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt means that they share a single body.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, well… that seems like, I don\u2019t know, an abuse of language. I mean, Sue\u2019s a good wife. Suzie is not such a good wife. So, they just can\u2019t be\u00a0the same<\/em>\u00a0wife. If they were, they\u2019d be equally good or bad at wifing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI see your point,\u201d conceded Bill. He gave up his attempt to coach the pitiable Mr. Tea. In the end, Mr. Tea too was convicted, but only of\u00a0involuntary<\/em>\u00a0polygamy, and the judge suspended his fine.<\/p>\n

Bonus internet nonsense here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This time, the second and final part of our tale. (Part 1.) It features staggering scientific breakthroughs and moderate fool-pitying, so it should be suitable for all audiences.\u00a0 Bill went on to serve for several decades at the Central Police Station, and often enjoyed regaling guests or fellow employees with tales of the two most… Read More »Counting Wives – a tale of three polygamists – Part 2<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2911,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9,36,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-philosophy","category-stories","category-theories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2910"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2910\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36107,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2910\/revisions\/36107"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}