If my premise is ridiculous, then so is everything that underpins Western civilization. Degrading or discounting the symbols of marriage is the first step to degrading the institution itself.
You can argue that other cultures do things in other ways, but that's not how it's done in this culture. In fact, our way predominates around the planet.
Cultural norms, like those of western-style marriage, come about because over long, long periods of time, people see that some ways of doing things lead to better survival for the group, and other ways of doing things lead to lowered survival potential for all concerned.
In our oh-so modern world, we're throwing away hard won centuries of valuable knowledge and cultural norms with wholesale abandon. The high divorce rate of today ought to give one a clue that maybe we're throwing out the baby with the bath water when it comes to familial unions.
BTW; you must not do much physical work to not seem to understand that a wife or husband would rather have a whole spouse than one whom is a survivor of an industrial accident. Very few older working men wear rings that I know of. The ones who do are taking a great risk, it is more likely to get hung on something than you are to be hit crossing the street. Don't you use you hands far more times than you cross a street yourself?
Yes, divorces are way too common and people need to be more committed in their marriages.No one is denying we have a problem.
But that being said I would take todays culture of allowed to get divorced over the 1920-1950's were married people stayed together due to social norms of the day and were miserable and just hated each other or the wife did not leave even though the husband beat the shiiiite out of her every other day.
I am sorry, but history says even in the US that men did not wear wedding rings, until recently. That is a fairly modern invention.
Even woman taking their husbands names is pretty modern, in the US.
Last names denote heritage, lineage, inheritance - women have not always change their names.
The custom in the US didn’t start until around 1800.
Even wearing wedding rings didn’t start in this country until around 1800 when some say the jewelry industry pushed it. Most people at that time felt the ring symbolized “purchase” of the bride, so it wasn’t for another 50 or so years before everyone had a bride’s ring.
Double ring ceremonies did not begin to gain any popularity until around 1935.
Not wearing a wedding ring is not the downfall of western civilization.