Matchmaker
For centuries, the matchmaker enjoyed the
honored, if occasionally ridiculed position
of ensuring ethnic identity and
compatibility. Groups that wanted this
assurance regularly employed the services of
a matchmaker, whose commission was a certain
percentage of the dowries. Today, the modern
version of the matchmaker is found as easily
as turning on your computer. Computer
programs can allegedly match individual
backgrounds and traits so accurately that
two people brought together for a date can
be assured of “common interests” for the
very least. In any event, it is only the
dating that can be arranged, not marriage.
So matchmaking of a sort has not
disappeared; it has merely changed its
appearance and emphasis, as is the case with
any custom that expresses enduring human
needs.
|
|
|
