Brushing your teeth with soap
| DR. GIFFORD-JONES
by rick michaels
Do you enjoy paying dental bills? Or having dentists scraping plaque from your teeth? If it's a pleasure, there's no need to read this column. But I've never enjoyed these regular checkups. Now there's a way to retire dentists, prevent cavities, protect gums and rid teeth of plaque, using cheap, ordinary soap.
My first reaction when I read this report was, "Come on, Dr Judd, you must be kidding! Who would ever brush their teeth with soap?" But Dr. Gerald F. Judd is no nut. He's a retired Emeritus Professor of chemistry at Purdue University.
I admire people who have the intestinal fortitude to question well-established theories that may be wrong. Besides, I discovered he and I both believe dentists are wrong on another issue.
Dr. Judd reports that acid destroys enamel and that cavities would vanish if people rinsed acids from their mouths quickly. Tap water is all that's needed to do the job.
He also claims that bacteria cannot damage the tooth's hard outer enamel that is composed of calcium hydroxy phosphate. The proof is that bones and teeth are resistant to earth-bound organisms. After all, we've all seen pictures of skeletons that have been unearthed after hundreds of years with teeth still intact.
But why use soap to clean teeth? Judd says glycerine is present in all toothpastes and it's so sticky that it requires 27 washes to clean it off. This means that teeth remain coated with a film and cannot rebuild enamel. And if they're not clean, adenosine diphosphatase cannot provide phosphate to enamel.
His next point is what I wanted to hear. Brushing with soap destroys bacteria and viruses. No professor at The Harvard Medical School told me about that. Or that brushing with ordinary bar soap not only cleans teeth but also removes hard plaque stuck to the bottom of enamel.
Removing plaque from teeth is vital as it invades gums, separating them from teeth. This sets the stage for gingivitis, poorly anchored teeth and eventually possible loss of teeth. It's shocking that 25% of North Americans over age 43, and 42% of those over 65 years of age, have no teeth!
Dr. Judd also believes that the fluoridation of water and the use of fluoride toothpaste is a useless, dangerous biological poison. He says calcium fluoride seeps into enamel, making it weak and brittle, destroying 83 enzymes along with adenosine diphosphatase.
I couldn't agree more. Look at the warning on fluoride toothpaste. Parents are told to watch children under six years of age while they brush their teeth. To be safe, only a tiny amount of toothpaste is used, and none should be swallowed. That should tell you something! In 1974, a three-year old child had fluoride gel placed on his teeth. The hygienist handed him a glass of water but rather than rising out his mouth, he drank it. A few hours later, he was dead.
If fluoride toothpaste is the answer to dental decay, why is it that 98% of Europe is fluoride-free? Sweden, Germany, Norway, Holland, Denmark and France stopped using fluoridation 29 years ago. These are not backward, depressed nations.
The sole argument for fluoridation is that it reduces tooth decay. But several studies involving as many as 480,000 children found no beneficial evidence between fluoridated and non-fluoridated communities.
Dr. Hardy Limeback, Professor of Dentistry at the University of Toronto, says children under three should never use fluoridated toothpaste or drink fluoridated water, and mothers should never use Toronto tap water to prepare baby formula.
Will I practice what I've preached in this column? You bet, as I'm curious to know whether I can say goodbye to the dental hygienist who scrapes plaque off my teeth, not to mention the cost. The test will take three months and I'll report the result.
No doubt all hell from the dental profession will descend on me. This doesn't worry me. What does is that my dentist will read this column and keep a big rusty drill handy for my next appointment.
Saturday, June 30, 2012
Sunday, June 17, 2012
JOURNAL: I'M TIRED
I'm tired of waking up by myself. I roll over and there's plenty of room in my bed; there's no one waiting for me in the kitchen.
I'm tired of eating breakfast alone. I turn on the TV so there's some noise while I make my food. It's not conversation, but it's better than silence.
I'm tired of being a third wheel. Or a fifth wheel. Or a seventh wheel. I act like it doesn't bother me when we're all hanging out, but really, it becomes just another reminder that I'm alone.
I'm tired of people telling me that they don't understand why I'm single. Other people, they say, it's easy to figure out why they're alone. They're mean or angry or have no drive. I'm smart, I'm attractive, I'm successful…I should have girls lining up to date. Or so they say. They can't pick anything out that's wrong with me so I shouldn't really be single.
I'm tired of people saying that they're sure I'll meet someone who's wonderful and smart and more beautiful than all of the girls I've dated before. And then, they promise, I'll be so happy that nothing else will matter.
I'm tired of going to weddings alone and having the bride or groom ask why I didn't bring a date. And then remarking that there won't be many single girls there. And then seating me at the rejects table because I don't "belong" with anyone else.
I'm tired of seeing a musical, a play, or some other event that would be a lot of fun to take a date on. And then just not going.
I'm tired of my parents remarking that by my age they already had two kids. And then remarking that they'd like to have grandchildren before they turn 70.
I'm tired of coming home after work to an empty house. I don't get to discuss the day or ask anyone how their day was.
I'm tired of eating dinner alone, on the floor, in front of the TV. My kitchen table gets no use. There's no need for setting it when it's just me eating there.
I'm tired of unwinding by myself. My couch isn't nearly as comfortable without someone to cuddle with.
I'm tired of going to bed alone. The bed is always exactly as I leftit. My side untucked, the other side tucked. It's clear that only one person has slept there. And only one person will sleep there again tonight.
I'm tired of being single.
I'm tired of eating breakfast alone. I turn on the TV so there's some noise while I make my food. It's not conversation, but it's better than silence.
I'm tired of being a third wheel. Or a fifth wheel. Or a seventh wheel. I act like it doesn't bother me when we're all hanging out, but really, it becomes just another reminder that I'm alone.
I'm tired of people telling me that they don't understand why I'm single. Other people, they say, it's easy to figure out why they're alone. They're mean or angry or have no drive. I'm smart, I'm attractive, I'm successful…I should have girls lining up to date. Or so they say. They can't pick anything out that's wrong with me so I shouldn't really be single.
I'm tired of people saying that they're sure I'll meet someone who's wonderful and smart and more beautiful than all of the girls I've dated before. And then, they promise, I'll be so happy that nothing else will matter.
I'm tired of going to weddings alone and having the bride or groom ask why I didn't bring a date. And then remarking that there won't be many single girls there. And then seating me at the rejects table because I don't "belong" with anyone else.
I'm tired of seeing a musical, a play, or some other event that would be a lot of fun to take a date on. And then just not going.
I'm tired of my parents remarking that by my age they already had two kids. And then remarking that they'd like to have grandchildren before they turn 70.
I'm tired of coming home after work to an empty house. I don't get to discuss the day or ask anyone how their day was.
I'm tired of eating dinner alone, on the floor, in front of the TV. My kitchen table gets no use. There's no need for setting it when it's just me eating there.
I'm tired of unwinding by myself. My couch isn't nearly as comfortable without someone to cuddle with.
I'm tired of going to bed alone. The bed is always exactly as I leftit. My side untucked, the other side tucked. It's clear that only one person has slept there. And only one person will sleep there again tonight.
I'm tired of being single.
Thursday, June 14, 2012
JOURNAL; Why the Rich Recovered and the Rest Didn't Posted By: Robert Frank
Why the Rich Recovered and the Rest Didn't
Posted By: Robert Frank
The latest report from the Federal Reserve tells us that wealth of the
middle class declined by more than a third between 2007 and 2010. The
wealth of the top 10 percent, however, grew by two percent.
These statistics will no doubt fuel partisan politics by some who
argue that the rich have gained at the expense of the rest and that
the system is rigged for the rich.
There is, however, a simpler, economic reason behind the disparity.
The wealthy have a greater proportion of their wealth in stocks and
less of it in homes. Stocks and financial investments have rebounded.
Homes haven't. Or at least, not as much.
The latest Fed data doesn't break down the 2010 portfolios of each
group. That data will come later this month. But we know that in 2009,
the top one percent had only 10 percent of their wealth tied up in
their homes. They had much more of their wealth — 38 percent — in
financial investments, including 9 percent of their wealth in stocks.
(While the survey doesn't break out the performance for the one
percent, the stats for the top 10 percent are likely comparable.)
The middle class and upper-middle class, or those in the 50 to 90
percent range, had more than half of their wealth tied up their home.
They had less than a third of their wealth in financial investments
and only 1.6 percent of their wealth in stocks.
Stocks and many financial investments are now edging closer to their
pre-recession peak. Housing prices, however, remain way below their
peak—by as much as a third or more in some markets.
It's not that the wealthy was smarter than the rest. In fact, at the
bottom of the recession, the one percent lost more than the rest of
the population on the stock market slide.
But the wealthy had more surplus wealth that wasn't tied up in their
homes. That allowed them to have more money in financial investments.
Put another way, the one percent owns more than 60 percent of the
nation's individually held stocks. When markets go up, they derive
most of the benefit. When houses go down, they feel it the least.
Again, many will argue about the politics behind these differences.
But the fact is that most Americans don't have much wealth beyond
their homes. Those that do have benefited from the recovery in
financial markets—however long that lasts.
Posted By: Robert Frank
The latest report from the Federal Reserve tells us that wealth of the
middle class declined by more than a third between 2007 and 2010. The
wealth of the top 10 percent, however, grew by two percent.
These statistics will no doubt fuel partisan politics by some who
argue that the rich have gained at the expense of the rest and that
the system is rigged for the rich.
There is, however, a simpler, economic reason behind the disparity.
The wealthy have a greater proportion of their wealth in stocks and
less of it in homes. Stocks and financial investments have rebounded.
Homes haven't. Or at least, not as much.
The latest Fed data doesn't break down the 2010 portfolios of each
group. That data will come later this month. But we know that in 2009,
the top one percent had only 10 percent of their wealth tied up in
their homes. They had much more of their wealth — 38 percent — in
financial investments, including 9 percent of their wealth in stocks.
(While the survey doesn't break out the performance for the one
percent, the stats for the top 10 percent are likely comparable.)
The middle class and upper-middle class, or those in the 50 to 90
percent range, had more than half of their wealth tied up their home.
They had less than a third of their wealth in financial investments
and only 1.6 percent of their wealth in stocks.
Stocks and many financial investments are now edging closer to their
pre-recession peak. Housing prices, however, remain way below their
peak—by as much as a third or more in some markets.
It's not that the wealthy was smarter than the rest. In fact, at the
bottom of the recession, the one percent lost more than the rest of
the population on the stock market slide.
But the wealthy had more surplus wealth that wasn't tied up in their
homes. That allowed them to have more money in financial investments.
Put another way, the one percent owns more than 60 percent of the
nation's individually held stocks. When markets go up, they derive
most of the benefit. When houses go down, they feel it the least.
Again, many will argue about the politics behind these differences.
But the fact is that most Americans don't have much wealth beyond
their homes. Those that do have benefited from the recovery in
financial markets—however long that lasts.
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
THOUGHTS
To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease, and lightness. This state is then no longer dependent upon things being in a certain way, good or bad. It seems almost paradoxical, yet when your inner dependency on form is gone, the general conditions of your life, the outer forms, tend to improve greatly.
See if you can catch yourself complaining in either speech or thought, about a situation you find yourself in, what other people do or say, your surroundings, your life situation, even the weather. To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself a victim. Leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.
Sunday, June 3, 2012
LOVE/THOUGHT/JOURNAL: WHY SO MAN WOMAN CAN'T FIND THE RIGHT GUY
One has to be skeptical of the beautiful, intelligent, fully capable woman who simply says that she can’t find a good man anywhere. I know a couple of woman who are well-balanced and who also appreciate the idea of respecting men in the same way they would like to be respected, have no trouble finding suitable mates. Sorry to break this to you, but the only constant variable in your relationships is a person called YOU. I think that if you have trouble finding a good man its because you have become enchanted with the dream-like alpha male: the guy who fits every single portion of the checklist (height, income, education, toe nail length, swag, etc.), but who may not be available for a monogamous, long-term relationship. What many women seem to forget is that there are some men who always have room for another woman on the roster. If you’re wasting all your time with the lying, cheating, super dog, you might miss out on the chance to be with the man who will love you forever and father all of your children. He may not come in the same package, and by comparing the two without considering the differences in what each of them offers, you may be passing up on your opportunity.
I have heard many woman talk about how they can't find a good man. The truth is, they are not looking in the right places and they are not being true to themselves. A relationship is a "give and take" situation. You have to think about what you are willing to give and what you want out of a relationship to make it work. As much as I hate to say it.... a lot of times what you see is what you get. This is true with guys and women. If you are looking for a woman who will love you, be loyal, and stand by you through thick and thin, then continue reading.
So, if you are wondering "where are all the good men?" - think about all the things you may have said or done to any man you've dated. Chances are, you had a good man, but good isn't good enough. It seems to me that women just want a "perfect" man. You show me a perfect woman, and I'll show you Jesus. Here's a secret about men: love a man unconditionally and he will happily worship the ground you walk on See how that works? It's not easy, but nobody ever said love is easy.. You'll get what you're looking for, and most men will be what you want them to be if you treat them right.
One of the most important qualities for me is her level of intelligence.Finding someone with a similar level of education or intellect ensures you will always have something to talk about and you will not be frustrated with a partner who does not care about or understand topics that you find important. If the relationship is going to last, the woman and man both need to have something to say.
I had a debate with my friend-girl one day about her odds of success versus mine. At the time, I assumed we had the same odds of initially meeting a good man/woman. If 10 random men approached you, how many of them would be, at minimum, boyfriend material? it is rarely above 50% it is my understanding there are more women than men on Earth and in most major cities
A lot of women "not all" (because i have met many that aren't) are looking for that guy that "has it all" in their eyes". So it is not true that men do not like to get married. In my opinion, what is happening is that we have become more picky now since technology allows us to search from a larger pool of candidates (so we keep looking for that perfect match, that truly doesn't exist) and two, despite the advances in technology, there is no perfect system yet that can bring two people on this planet who are made for each other
I hear a lot of women (and sometimes, even myself) complain about not being able to find a guy that measures up to their “high standards”. Sometimes I have to ask what they consider standards, because some of these so-called standards are just ridiculous.
Take for instance a friend of mine who I love dearly, but has some of the most bizarre “standards” I’ve seen. I’m not going to say her standards are ridiculously high, because they’re not. I’ve seen her turn down nice, good looking, respectable, guys and go for better looking guys who happen to be assholes that treat her like crap. If her standards were at all high, she wouldn’t for one minute accept how some of the guys she has dated act.
it occurred to me that most of the women I talk to list certain heights as “requirements”. He can’t be shorter than 6′. He has to be at least 2″ taller than me when I have heels on.
REALLY!? Really? Really.
C’mon, let’s think about this for a second:
Since when has a person’s height had ANYTHING to do with the things that matter? Like if he’ll treat you well, make you laugh, have good conversations with you or even give you great sex!? Give me a one good reason, ladies, that being short has anything do with that without putting your own insecurities out there.
Heres an example. Lets say im only attracted based on my standards to 3% of the population. i dont even notice the other 97% despite there being plenty of good women in that 97%, albeit missing certain qualities here and there. But since im so focused on that small percent the chances are slim to none of me scoring a mate from that "worthy" market. There is pleny of good mates FOR both sides. The question is when do we re-evaluate our standards to focus on must needs instead of wants+needs.
The reason men might have better options is because initially, we don't have that much criteria. Im convinced the majority of men are looking at women from a sexual perspective first. Thats why we dont have the same laundry list of deal breakers that women do. ONce we get past that and get to know a woman better, then we are pulling out our questionnaires to see whats good.
Men also have the f*ck it factor – we are willing to say f*ck it and deal with certain unpleasing qualities in women if the whole > the sum of their parts. Women won't do the same (not that theres anything wrong with that)
What Im saying is that men see women first for their physical characteristics. If that is appealing to them, then they make sure the major points are covered
1) is she crazy? Will she left eye Lopez (RIP) the crib? Will she stalk me?
2) is her personality agreeable? Does she sound like a dumb box of rocks or is she as interesting as drying paint? is she cool?
3) General BG – Who do I know that knows her? School? Job? Is she lookin for a come-up? etc.
These are major points we can ascertain from a few convos or initial meeting. From there its a go. Over time is where men decide whether it can go past physical or just "attraction" to something realer. I would argue thqat 90% of relationships on a mans side originated from "shes attractive I want her" to "shes GF material"
Do you seriously believe that a man's brain works through some sort of algorithm?
(1) Meet woman
(2) Date woman
(3) Have sex with woman
(4) Have LTR with woman
(5) Make decision about woman
(5a) Is woman hot?
(5b) Is woman hot enough?
(5c) Is woman too hot?
(5d) Does woman have good head on her shoulders?
(5e) Does head on shoulders conflict with hotness?
(5f) Perform cost/benefit analysis
(6) Marry / Don't marry woman.
Some things are rational, some are not. Any relationship is a mix of the two. Rational decisions can be applied in RLs, but attraction itself is not rational.
Yes, a man will want to marry a woman with a good head on her shoulders. He will also want to be attracted to her. But I think you are assuming that attraction is based only on looks. Some of it is to do with her looks. Some of it is to do with her personality. The balance of those things is down to the individual man. There is no single answer. The closest you can get to one is that "Men want good personality + good looks". Like I said, common sense should tell you that.
I don't necessarily think there are less "good" men from which women can select. I think there are less men who want the same kind of committed that the majority of women want. I believe the majority of women want a strong, exclusive relationship w/a man she adores and he adores her back. But it seems that a lot of men don't want this until later in their life. I hate the term "settle down" because it implies that one a person decides to commit to one person that they are some how settling. It seems that a lot of men feel that they have to all their fun as a bachelor. Once they are old, tired and spent they will fully commit to someone. Women seem to view a commitment/marriage like the beginning of a whole new world where they will have a partner to enjoy life with and build together. Men and women just view marriage very different. So it's not so much that there aren't good men. I think it's a shortage of men who don't absolutely dread the idea or marriage or long term committment and think it's something embark on once they've squoze every ounce of fun outta their bachelorhood that they can.
When someone uses that excuse that there aren't any good men or not as many good men, I hear that to mean, she doesn't think she has the quan to get the man she wants and needs more chances. If you are happy with the type of men you attract and that approach you, GREAT! However, if you are not, it seems to me that you might want to make a change of some kind because you are not happy with your results and I doubt applying the same formula to the same problem will ever return a different result…namely, because that doesn't make any damn sense. So the problem, if you can call it a problem, is not a shortage of one gender, changes in gender roles, or anything else. The cause lies solely with the person deciding upon who they feel meets their standards. If you decide all you want is to date an educated man or woman with a good personality, you're dating pool opens up. If your ideal mate has to be no shorter than 6'3" or no taller than 5'3", has good hair, skin the color of cafe au lait, commands $75K+ per year, and has a DD cup or 10 inches, then your options narrow…considerably. Many men who have the qualities that most women would deem "good men," ie men who are: handsome, attractive, sexy, have swag, charming, educated, good job, making good money (close to six figures), out-going, fun-loving, romantic, kind, caring, considerate, etc etc etc Do Not necessarily want a long term, committed relationship, much less marriage.You have to become what you want in most all things in this life. Women don't really understand how much power they have. They have the ability to obtain good men – if they are good women. If every man on earth had to be a "stand up guy" in order to get somewhere (sexually or otherwise) with women the perspective would be very different. Men do a lot for the attention of women. Ideally if the requirements change, so does the market – and therefore the results.
I have heard many woman talk about how they can't find a good man. The truth is, they are not looking in the right places and they are not being true to themselves. A relationship is a "give and take" situation. You have to think about what you are willing to give and what you want out of a relationship to make it work. As much as I hate to say it.... a lot of times what you see is what you get. This is true with guys and women. If you are looking for a woman who will love you, be loyal, and stand by you through thick and thin, then continue reading.
So, if you are wondering "where are all the good men?" - think about all the things you may have said or done to any man you've dated. Chances are, you had a good man, but good isn't good enough. It seems to me that women just want a "perfect" man. You show me a perfect woman, and I'll show you Jesus. Here's a secret about men: love a man unconditionally and he will happily worship the ground you walk on See how that works? It's not easy, but nobody ever said love is easy.. You'll get what you're looking for, and most men will be what you want them to be if you treat them right.
One of the most important qualities for me is her level of intelligence.Finding someone with a similar level of education or intellect ensures you will always have something to talk about and you will not be frustrated with a partner who does not care about or understand topics that you find important. If the relationship is going to last, the woman and man both need to have something to say.
I had a debate with my friend-girl one day about her odds of success versus mine. At the time, I assumed we had the same odds of initially meeting a good man/woman. If 10 random men approached you, how many of them would be, at minimum, boyfriend material? it is rarely above 50% it is my understanding there are more women than men on Earth and in most major cities
A lot of women "not all" (because i have met many that aren't) are looking for that guy that "has it all" in their eyes". So it is not true that men do not like to get married. In my opinion, what is happening is that we have become more picky now since technology allows us to search from a larger pool of candidates (so we keep looking for that perfect match, that truly doesn't exist) and two, despite the advances in technology, there is no perfect system yet that can bring two people on this planet who are made for each other
I hear a lot of women (and sometimes, even myself) complain about not being able to find a guy that measures up to their “high standards”. Sometimes I have to ask what they consider standards, because some of these so-called standards are just ridiculous.
Take for instance a friend of mine who I love dearly, but has some of the most bizarre “standards” I’ve seen. I’m not going to say her standards are ridiculously high, because they’re not. I’ve seen her turn down nice, good looking, respectable, guys and go for better looking guys who happen to be assholes that treat her like crap. If her standards were at all high, she wouldn’t for one minute accept how some of the guys she has dated act.
it occurred to me that most of the women I talk to list certain heights as “requirements”. He can’t be shorter than 6′. He has to be at least 2″ taller than me when I have heels on.
REALLY!? Really? Really.
C’mon, let’s think about this for a second:
Since when has a person’s height had ANYTHING to do with the things that matter? Like if he’ll treat you well, make you laugh, have good conversations with you or even give you great sex!? Give me a one good reason, ladies, that being short has anything do with that without putting your own insecurities out there.
Heres an example. Lets say im only attracted based on my standards to 3% of the population. i dont even notice the other 97% despite there being plenty of good women in that 97%, albeit missing certain qualities here and there. But since im so focused on that small percent the chances are slim to none of me scoring a mate from that "worthy" market. There is pleny of good mates FOR both sides. The question is when do we re-evaluate our standards to focus on must needs instead of wants+needs.
The reason men might have better options is because initially, we don't have that much criteria. Im convinced the majority of men are looking at women from a sexual perspective first. Thats why we dont have the same laundry list of deal breakers that women do. ONce we get past that and get to know a woman better, then we are pulling out our questionnaires to see whats good.
Men also have the f*ck it factor – we are willing to say f*ck it and deal with certain unpleasing qualities in women if the whole > the sum of their parts. Women won't do the same (not that theres anything wrong with that)
What Im saying is that men see women first for their physical characteristics. If that is appealing to them, then they make sure the major points are covered
1) is she crazy? Will she left eye Lopez (RIP) the crib? Will she stalk me?
2) is her personality agreeable? Does she sound like a dumb box of rocks or is she as interesting as drying paint? is she cool?
3) General BG – Who do I know that knows her? School? Job? Is she lookin for a come-up? etc.
These are major points we can ascertain from a few convos or initial meeting. From there its a go. Over time is where men decide whether it can go past physical or just "attraction" to something realer. I would argue thqat 90% of relationships on a mans side originated from "shes attractive I want her" to "shes GF material"
Do you seriously believe that a man's brain works through some sort of algorithm?
(1) Meet woman
(2) Date woman
(3) Have sex with woman
(4) Have LTR with woman
(5) Make decision about woman
(5a) Is woman hot?
(5b) Is woman hot enough?
(5c) Is woman too hot?
(5d) Does woman have good head on her shoulders?
(5e) Does head on shoulders conflict with hotness?
(5f) Perform cost/benefit analysis
(6) Marry / Don't marry woman.
Some things are rational, some are not. Any relationship is a mix of the two. Rational decisions can be applied in RLs, but attraction itself is not rational.
Yes, a man will want to marry a woman with a good head on her shoulders. He will also want to be attracted to her. But I think you are assuming that attraction is based only on looks. Some of it is to do with her looks. Some of it is to do with her personality. The balance of those things is down to the individual man. There is no single answer. The closest you can get to one is that "Men want good personality + good looks". Like I said, common sense should tell you that.
I don't necessarily think there are less "good" men from which women can select. I think there are less men who want the same kind of committed that the majority of women want. I believe the majority of women want a strong, exclusive relationship w/a man she adores and he adores her back. But it seems that a lot of men don't want this until later in their life. I hate the term "settle down" because it implies that one a person decides to commit to one person that they are some how settling. It seems that a lot of men feel that they have to all their fun as a bachelor. Once they are old, tired and spent they will fully commit to someone. Women seem to view a commitment/marriage like the beginning of a whole new world where they will have a partner to enjoy life with and build together. Men and women just view marriage very different. So it's not so much that there aren't good men. I think it's a shortage of men who don't absolutely dread the idea or marriage or long term committment and think it's something embark on once they've squoze every ounce of fun outta their bachelorhood that they can.
When someone uses that excuse that there aren't any good men or not as many good men, I hear that to mean, she doesn't think she has the quan to get the man she wants and needs more chances. If you are happy with the type of men you attract and that approach you, GREAT! However, if you are not, it seems to me that you might want to make a change of some kind because you are not happy with your results and I doubt applying the same formula to the same problem will ever return a different result…namely, because that doesn't make any damn sense. So the problem, if you can call it a problem, is not a shortage of one gender, changes in gender roles, or anything else. The cause lies solely with the person deciding upon who they feel meets their standards. If you decide all you want is to date an educated man or woman with a good personality, you're dating pool opens up. If your ideal mate has to be no shorter than 6'3" or no taller than 5'3", has good hair, skin the color of cafe au lait, commands $75K+ per year, and has a DD cup or 10 inches, then your options narrow…considerably. Many men who have the qualities that most women would deem "good men," ie men who are: handsome, attractive, sexy, have swag, charming, educated, good job, making good money (close to six figures), out-going, fun-loving, romantic, kind, caring, considerate, etc etc etc Do Not necessarily want a long term, committed relationship, much less marriage.You have to become what you want in most all things in this life. Women don't really understand how much power they have. They have the ability to obtain good men – if they are good women. If every man on earth had to be a "stand up guy" in order to get somewhere (sexually or otherwise) with women the perspective would be very different. Men do a lot for the attention of women. Ideally if the requirements change, so does the market – and therefore the results.
JOURNAL; Why Can't Obama Bring Wall Street to Justice? by Peter J. Boyer , Peter Schweizer
Obama’s 2009 White House summit with finance titans, in which the president warned that only he was standing "between you and the pitchforks"
Why, despite widespread outrage, financial-fraud prosecutions by the Department of Justice are at 20-year lows
Attorney General Eric Holder’s lucrative ties to a top-tier law firm whose marquee clients include some of finance’s worst offenders
How Obama’s trumpeted “task force” for investigating risky mortgage lenders—announced in this year’s State of the Union speech—is badly understaffed and has yet to produce any discernible progress
With the Occupy protesters resuming battle stations, and Mitt Romney in place as the presumptive Republican nominee, President Obama has begun to fashion his campaign as a crusade for the 99 percent--a fight against, as one Obama ad puts it, "a guy who had a Swiss bank account." Casting Romney as a plutocrat will be easy enough. But the president's claim as avenging populist may prove trickier, given his own deeply complicated, even conflicted, relationship with Big Finance.
Obama came into office vowing to end business as usual, and, in the gray post-crash dawn of 2009, nowhere did a reckoning with justice seem more due than in the financial sector. The public was shaken, and angry, and Wall Street seemed oblivious to its own culpability, defending extravagant pay bonuses even while accepting a taxpayer bailout. Obama channeled this anger, and employed its rhetoric, blaming the worldwide economic collapse on "the reckless speculation of bankers." Two months into his presidency, Obama summoned the titans of finance to the White House, where he told them, "My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks."
The bankers may have found the president's tone unsettling. Candidate Obama had been their guy, accepting vast amounts of Wall Street campaign money for his victories over Hillary Clinton and John McCain (Goldman Sachs executives ponied up $1 million, more than any other private source of funding in 2008). Obama far outraised his Republican rival, John McCain, on Wall Street--around $16 million to $9 million. As it turned out, Obama apparently actually meant what he said at that White House meeting--his administration effectively would stand between Big Finance and anything like a severe accounting. To the dismay of many of Obama's supporters, nearly four years after the disaster, there has not been a single criminal charge filed by the federal government against any top executive of the elite financial institutions.
"It's perplexing at best," says Phil Angelides, the Democratic former California treasurer who chaired the bipartisan Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. "It's deeply troubling at worst."
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Strikingly, federal prosecutions overall have risen sharply under Obama, increasing dramatically in such areas as civil rights and health-care fraud. But according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data-gathering organization at Syracuse University, financial-fraud prosecutions by the Department of Justice are at 20-year lows. They're down 39 percent since 2003, when fraud at Enron and WorldCom led to a series of prosecutions, and are just one third of what they were during the Clinton administration. (The Justice Department says the numbers would be higher if new categories of crime were counted.)
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Getty Images (3); Paul J. Richards / AFP-Getty Images
"There hasn't been any serious investigation of any of the large financial entities by the Justice Department, which includes the FBI," says William Black, an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, who, as a government regulator in the 1980s, helped clean up the S&L mess. Black, who is a Democrat, notes that the feds dealt with the S&L crisis with harsh justice, bringing more than a thousand prosecutions, and securing a 90 percent conviction rate. The difference between the government's response to the two crises, Black says, is a matter of will, and priorities. "You need heads on the pike," he says. "The first President Bush's orders were to get the most prominent, nastiest frauds, and put their heads on pikes as a demonstration that there's a new sheriff in town."
Obama delivered heated rhetoric, but his actions signaled different priorities. Had Obama wanted to strike real fear in the hearts of bankers, he might have appointed former special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald or some other fire-breather as his attorney general. Instead, he chose Eric Holder, a former Clinton Justice official who, after a career in government, joined the Washington office of Covington & Burling, a top-tier law firm with an elite white-collar defense unit. The move to Covington, and back to Justice, is an example of Washington's revolving-door ritual, which, for Holder, has been lucrative--he pulled in $2.1 million as a Covington partner in 2008, and $2.5 million (including deferred compensation) when he left the firm in 2009.
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Putting a Covington partner--he spent nearly a decade at the firm--in charge of Justice may have sent a signal to the financial community, whose marquee names are Covington clients. Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Deutsche Bank are among the institutions that pay for Covington's legal advice, some of it relating to matters before the Department of Justice. But Holder's was not the only face at Justice familiar to Covington clients. Lanny Breuer, who had co-chaired the white-collar defense unit at Covington with Holder, was chosen to head the criminal division at Obama's Justice. Two other Covington lawyers followed Holder into top positions, and Holder's principal deputy, James Cole, was recruited from Bryan Cave LLP, another white-shoe firm with A-list finance clients.
Justice's defenders point out that prosecuting financial crime is a complicated matter requiring the highly specialized expertise found in the white-collar defense bar. But some suggest there is also the potential for conflicting interest when the department's top officials come from lucrative law practices representing the very financial institutions that Justice is supposed to be investigating. "And that's where they're going back to," says Black. "Everybody knows there is a problem with that." (Two members of Holder's team have already returned to Covington.) A spokesperson for Covington was not available for comment. (Newsweek uses the firm as outside counsel.)
Top bankers after meeting with Obama, who told them “my administration is the only thing standing between you and the pitchforks.” (Mark Wilson / Getty Images)
Justice's inaction regarding the big Wall Street firms is not for a lack of suspicious activity. Three different government entities exhaustively examined the practices that contributed to the financial collapse, and each has referred its findings to the department for possible criminal investigation. One such matter involved a 2007 transaction by Goldman Sachs, in which Goldman created an investment, based on mortgage-backed securities, that seemed designed to fail. Goldman allowed a client who was betting against the mortgage market to help shape the investment instrument, which was called Abacus 2007-AC1; then both Goldman and the client bet against the investment without informing other clients (whose investments were wagers on its success) how the securities included in the portfolio were selected. These uninformed clients lost more than $1 billion on the investment. In 2010, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Goldman with securities fraud "for making materially misleading statements and omissions" in marketing the investment. The SEC, which conducts only civil litigation, referred the case to Justice for criminal investigation.
A year later, in April 2011, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Democrat Carl Levin, after a two-year inquiry, issued a fat report detailing several transactions, including Goldman's Abacus deal, that Levin and his staff believed should be investigated by Justice as possible crimes. The subcommittee made a formal referral to the department (as did the federal Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, chaired by Phil Angelides), and Levin publicly stated his view that criminal inquiry was warranted. Goldman executives, including the firm's chief executive officer, Lloyd Blankfein, started hiring defense lawyers.
Meanwhile, Obama's political operation continued to ask Wall Street for campaign money. A curious pattern developed. A Newsweek examination of campaign finance records shows that, in the weeks before and after last year's scathing Senate report, several Goldman executives and their families made large donations to Obama's Victory Fund and related entities, some of them maxing out at the highest individual donation allowed, $35,800, even though 2011 was an electoral off-year. Some of these executives were giving to Obama for the first time.
Justice insists that political operations such as fundraising are kept strictly distanced from the department, in order to avoid even the appearance of political influence. But the attorney general and his team are not unfamiliar with the process; Holder was himself an Obama bundler--a fundraiser who collected large sums from various donors--in 2008, as were several other lawyers who joined him at Justice.
It would be a leap to infer these Goldman contributions were made--or received--as quid pro quo for dropping a criminal investigation. Still, the situation constitutes what one Justice veteran acknowledged is a "bad set of facts."
Maintaining public faith in the justice system is one of the reasons why people such as Angelides continue to call for a rigorous criminal investigation into Wall Street. "I think it's fundamental that people in this country need to feel that the justice system is for everyone--that there's not one system for those people of enormous wealth and power, and one for everyone else," he says.
In July 2010, three months after the SEC charged Goldman in the Abacus case, the agency reached a settlement with the firm. Goldman agreed to pay $550 million, but admitted no wrongdoing. The agency touted the amount of the fine as the biggest ever--but to Goldman it was a relative pittance. The fine amounted to about 4 percent of the sum that Goldman paid its executives in bonuses ($12.1 billion) in 2007, the year of the Abacus transaction.
Earlier this year, it was reported that Goldman executives were feeling optimistic that the Justice inquiry would not result in criminal charges against the firm, or its executives. Goldman declined to comment on the case, as did the Justice Department. But spokeswoman Alisa Finelli said, "When we find credible evidence of intentional criminal conduct--by Wall Street executives or others--we will not hesitate to charge it. However, we can and will only bring charges when the facts and the law convince us that we can prove a crime beyond a reasonable doubt." Holder, speaking in February at Columbia University, said that while "we found that much of the conduct that led to the financial crisis was unethical and irresponsible ... we have also discovered that some of this behavior--while morally reprehensible--may not necessarily have been criminal."
Midway through his State of the Union speech this year, President Obama announced plans "to create a special unit of federal prosecutors and leading state attorneys general to expand our investigations into the abusive lending and packaging of risky mortgages that led to the housing crisis," and he vowed again to "hold accountable those who broke the law."
That portion of the speech had a familiar ring. In November 2009, Attorney General Holder, with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner at his side, announced the creation of another special unit--the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force--that was similarly charged with investigating securities and mortgage fraud that contributed to the financial meltdown. Since its creation, that task force, which critics say was drastically under-resourced, has produced not a single conviction (or even indictment) of a major Wall Street player related to the financial disaster.
Some who heard the president's State of the Union speech thought they discerned a hidden purpose behind his new "special unit"--the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group, as it would be called. The day before the president's speech, state attorneys general from around the country met in Chicago with Justice officials to discuss a proposed national settlement with five major banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, over questionable foreclosure practices. The administration was pushing the settlement, as were the banks. But a handful of attorneys general were resisting the settlement, believing it gave too much away to the banks--including protection from mortgage-related investigations that were still unfolding. These holdout state officials were supported by a coalition of activists, who argued that the banks would never make meaningful concessions--such as the reduction of principal on underwater mortgages--unless they faced the threat of investigation.
One of those activists, Mike Gecan, of the Industrial Areas Foundation, says he was disheartened when he heard Obama's speech, and the news that New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman would be co-chairing the new "working group." Schneiderman, who is in the tough-guy mold of his predecessors, Eliot Spitzer and Andrew Cuomo, had been a leader of the state holdouts; now, Gecan feared, Schneiderman had been co-opted by the Chicago Way. "I'm from Chicago, I've seen this game played my whole life," he says.
Gecan's view seemed vindicated two weeks later, when Obama announced that the settlement had been reached.
Nearly three months later, it is not clear what, if any, progress the "working group" has made. The unit was only promised 55 investigators, attorneys, and support staff--a tiny fraction of the resources afforded to similar groups investigating the S&L and Enron/WorldCom scandals--and it is not clear that even that commitment has materialized. "I think what happened is what usually happens: the administration rope-a-doped," says Gecan. "There's no office, there's no director, there's no staff, there's no space, there's no phone."
Last month, Gecan wrote an op-ed article for the New York Daily News, calling upon Schneiderman to quit the group in protest (Schneiderman's office did not respond to requests for an interview). In the meantime, Gecan said, he will work to bring pressure on Obama. "There's a little presidential campaign that's going to start, and we're going to make this issue central to this campaign," he said.
It may be, as the attorney general points out, that Wall Street was greedy, stupid, and immoral, without actually breaking any laws. But the powers of the Justice Department are immense, and a more aggressive prosecutor surely could have found cases to make. Black, the UMKC professor, says the conduct could well have violated federal fraud statutes--"securities fraud for false disclosures, wire and mail fraud for making false representations about the quality of the loans and derivatives they were selling, bank fraud for false representations to the regulators."
The absence of prosecutions, and the fact that the cops on the beat hail from the place that represents the banks, does not sit right with many who hoped Obama would fulfill his promise to hold Big Finance accountable. The left's frustration fuels the Occupy movement, and chills the Democratic base. And it gives Romney, the career capitalist, an opening he is avidly exploiting.
Through last fall, Obama had collected more donations from Wall Street than any of the Republican candidates; employees of Bain Capital donated more than twice as much to Obama as they did to Romney, who founded the firm. By this spring, however, resolution had come to the GOP contest, and Wall Street could see a friendly alternative to Obama. While most of Romney's contributions so far come mainly from the financial sector, Obama's donations from Wall Street have dropped sharply.
But this turn may yet help Obama, playing into the Romney-as-plutocrat theme. Just the other week, the Republican candidate quietly slipped into a fundraiser at the home of hedge-fund king John Paulson, who made a killing shorting mortgage futures (including about $1 billion on the Abacus deal). The Obama campaign pounced. Obama may yet fully liberate his inner populist--that Obama who in 2010 in an off-Prompter moment uttered a sentence that made blood run cold on Wall Street: "I do think at a certain point you've made enough money."
Why, despite widespread outrage, financial-fraud prosecutions by the Department of Justice are at 20-year lows
Attorney General Eric Holder’s lucrative ties to a top-tier law firm whose marquee clients include some of finance’s worst offenders
How Obama’s trumpeted “task force” for investigating risky mortgage lenders—announced in this year’s State of the Union speech—is badly understaffed and has yet to produce any discernible progress
With the Occupy protesters resuming battle stations, and Mitt Romney in place as the presumptive Republican nominee, President Obama has begun to fashion his campaign as a crusade for the 99 percent--a fight against, as one Obama ad puts it, "a guy who had a Swiss bank account." Casting Romney as a plutocrat will be easy enough. But the president's claim as avenging populist may prove trickier, given his own deeply complicated, even conflicted, relationship with Big Finance.
Obama came into office vowing to end business as usual, and, in the gray post-crash dawn of 2009, nowhere did a reckoning with justice seem more due than in the financial sector. The public was shaken, and angry, and Wall Street seemed oblivious to its own culpability, defending extravagant pay bonuses even while accepting a taxpayer bailout. Obama channeled this anger, and employed its rhetoric, blaming the worldwide economic collapse on "the reckless speculation of bankers." Two months into his presidency, Obama summoned the titans of finance to the White House, where he told them, "My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks."
The bankers may have found the president's tone unsettling. Candidate Obama had been their guy, accepting vast amounts of Wall Street campaign money for his victories over Hillary Clinton and John McCain (Goldman Sachs executives ponied up $1 million, more than any other private source of funding in 2008). Obama far outraised his Republican rival, John McCain, on Wall Street--around $16 million to $9 million. As it turned out, Obama apparently actually meant what he said at that White House meeting--his administration effectively would stand between Big Finance and anything like a severe accounting. To the dismay of many of Obama's supporters, nearly four years after the disaster, there has not been a single criminal charge filed by the federal government against any top executive of the elite financial institutions.
"It's perplexing at best," says Phil Angelides, the Democratic former California treasurer who chaired the bipartisan Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. "It's deeply troubling at worst."
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Strikingly, federal prosecutions overall have risen sharply under Obama, increasing dramatically in such areas as civil rights and health-care fraud. But according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data-gathering organization at Syracuse University, financial-fraud prosecutions by the Department of Justice are at 20-year lows. They're down 39 percent since 2003, when fraud at Enron and WorldCom led to a series of prosecutions, and are just one third of what they were during the Clinton administration. (The Justice Department says the numbers would be higher if new categories of crime were counted.)
Photos: Who They Are—and What They Got Away With
Getty Images (3); Paul J. Richards / AFP-Getty Images
"There hasn't been any serious investigation of any of the large financial entities by the Justice Department, which includes the FBI," says William Black, an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, who, as a government regulator in the 1980s, helped clean up the S&L mess. Black, who is a Democrat, notes that the feds dealt with the S&L crisis with harsh justice, bringing more than a thousand prosecutions, and securing a 90 percent conviction rate. The difference between the government's response to the two crises, Black says, is a matter of will, and priorities. "You need heads on the pike," he says. "The first President Bush's orders were to get the most prominent, nastiest frauds, and put their heads on pikes as a demonstration that there's a new sheriff in town."
Obama delivered heated rhetoric, but his actions signaled different priorities. Had Obama wanted to strike real fear in the hearts of bankers, he might have appointed former special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald or some other fire-breather as his attorney general. Instead, he chose Eric Holder, a former Clinton Justice official who, after a career in government, joined the Washington office of Covington & Burling, a top-tier law firm with an elite white-collar defense unit. The move to Covington, and back to Justice, is an example of Washington's revolving-door ritual, which, for Holder, has been lucrative--he pulled in $2.1 million as a Covington partner in 2008, and $2.5 million (including deferred compensation) when he left the firm in 2009.
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Putting a Covington partner--he spent nearly a decade at the firm--in charge of Justice may have sent a signal to the financial community, whose marquee names are Covington clients. Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Deutsche Bank are among the institutions that pay for Covington's legal advice, some of it relating to matters before the Department of Justice. But Holder's was not the only face at Justice familiar to Covington clients. Lanny Breuer, who had co-chaired the white-collar defense unit at Covington with Holder, was chosen to head the criminal division at Obama's Justice. Two other Covington lawyers followed Holder into top positions, and Holder's principal deputy, James Cole, was recruited from Bryan Cave LLP, another white-shoe firm with A-list finance clients.
Justice's defenders point out that prosecuting financial crime is a complicated matter requiring the highly specialized expertise found in the white-collar defense bar. But some suggest there is also the potential for conflicting interest when the department's top officials come from lucrative law practices representing the very financial institutions that Justice is supposed to be investigating. "And that's where they're going back to," says Black. "Everybody knows there is a problem with that." (Two members of Holder's team have already returned to Covington.) A spokesperson for Covington was not available for comment. (Newsweek uses the firm as outside counsel.)
Top bankers after meeting with Obama, who told them “my administration is the only thing standing between you and the pitchforks.” (Mark Wilson / Getty Images)
Justice's inaction regarding the big Wall Street firms is not for a lack of suspicious activity. Three different government entities exhaustively examined the practices that contributed to the financial collapse, and each has referred its findings to the department for possible criminal investigation. One such matter involved a 2007 transaction by Goldman Sachs, in which Goldman created an investment, based on mortgage-backed securities, that seemed designed to fail. Goldman allowed a client who was betting against the mortgage market to help shape the investment instrument, which was called Abacus 2007-AC1; then both Goldman and the client bet against the investment without informing other clients (whose investments were wagers on its success) how the securities included in the portfolio were selected. These uninformed clients lost more than $1 billion on the investment. In 2010, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Goldman with securities fraud "for making materially misleading statements and omissions" in marketing the investment. The SEC, which conducts only civil litigation, referred the case to Justice for criminal investigation.
A year later, in April 2011, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Democrat Carl Levin, after a two-year inquiry, issued a fat report detailing several transactions, including Goldman's Abacus deal, that Levin and his staff believed should be investigated by Justice as possible crimes. The subcommittee made a formal referral to the department (as did the federal Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, chaired by Phil Angelides), and Levin publicly stated his view that criminal inquiry was warranted. Goldman executives, including the firm's chief executive officer, Lloyd Blankfein, started hiring defense lawyers.
Meanwhile, Obama's political operation continued to ask Wall Street for campaign money. A curious pattern developed. A Newsweek examination of campaign finance records shows that, in the weeks before and after last year's scathing Senate report, several Goldman executives and their families made large donations to Obama's Victory Fund and related entities, some of them maxing out at the highest individual donation allowed, $35,800, even though 2011 was an electoral off-year. Some of these executives were giving to Obama for the first time.
Justice insists that political operations such as fundraising are kept strictly distanced from the department, in order to avoid even the appearance of political influence. But the attorney general and his team are not unfamiliar with the process; Holder was himself an Obama bundler--a fundraiser who collected large sums from various donors--in 2008, as were several other lawyers who joined him at Justice.
It would be a leap to infer these Goldman contributions were made--or received--as quid pro quo for dropping a criminal investigation. Still, the situation constitutes what one Justice veteran acknowledged is a "bad set of facts."
Maintaining public faith in the justice system is one of the reasons why people such as Angelides continue to call for a rigorous criminal investigation into Wall Street. "I think it's fundamental that people in this country need to feel that the justice system is for everyone--that there's not one system for those people of enormous wealth and power, and one for everyone else," he says.
In July 2010, three months after the SEC charged Goldman in the Abacus case, the agency reached a settlement with the firm. Goldman agreed to pay $550 million, but admitted no wrongdoing. The agency touted the amount of the fine as the biggest ever--but to Goldman it was a relative pittance. The fine amounted to about 4 percent of the sum that Goldman paid its executives in bonuses ($12.1 billion) in 2007, the year of the Abacus transaction.
Earlier this year, it was reported that Goldman executives were feeling optimistic that the Justice inquiry would not result in criminal charges against the firm, or its executives. Goldman declined to comment on the case, as did the Justice Department. But spokeswoman Alisa Finelli said, "When we find credible evidence of intentional criminal conduct--by Wall Street executives or others--we will not hesitate to charge it. However, we can and will only bring charges when the facts and the law convince us that we can prove a crime beyond a reasonable doubt." Holder, speaking in February at Columbia University, said that while "we found that much of the conduct that led to the financial crisis was unethical and irresponsible ... we have also discovered that some of this behavior--while morally reprehensible--may not necessarily have been criminal."
Midway through his State of the Union speech this year, President Obama announced plans "to create a special unit of federal prosecutors and leading state attorneys general to expand our investigations into the abusive lending and packaging of risky mortgages that led to the housing crisis," and he vowed again to "hold accountable those who broke the law."
That portion of the speech had a familiar ring. In November 2009, Attorney General Holder, with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner at his side, announced the creation of another special unit--the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force--that was similarly charged with investigating securities and mortgage fraud that contributed to the financial meltdown. Since its creation, that task force, which critics say was drastically under-resourced, has produced not a single conviction (or even indictment) of a major Wall Street player related to the financial disaster.
Some who heard the president's State of the Union speech thought they discerned a hidden purpose behind his new "special unit"--the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group, as it would be called. The day before the president's speech, state attorneys general from around the country met in Chicago with Justice officials to discuss a proposed national settlement with five major banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, over questionable foreclosure practices. The administration was pushing the settlement, as were the banks. But a handful of attorneys general were resisting the settlement, believing it gave too much away to the banks--including protection from mortgage-related investigations that were still unfolding. These holdout state officials were supported by a coalition of activists, who argued that the banks would never make meaningful concessions--such as the reduction of principal on underwater mortgages--unless they faced the threat of investigation.
One of those activists, Mike Gecan, of the Industrial Areas Foundation, says he was disheartened when he heard Obama's speech, and the news that New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman would be co-chairing the new "working group." Schneiderman, who is in the tough-guy mold of his predecessors, Eliot Spitzer and Andrew Cuomo, had been a leader of the state holdouts; now, Gecan feared, Schneiderman had been co-opted by the Chicago Way. "I'm from Chicago, I've seen this game played my whole life," he says.
Gecan's view seemed vindicated two weeks later, when Obama announced that the settlement had been reached.
Nearly three months later, it is not clear what, if any, progress the "working group" has made. The unit was only promised 55 investigators, attorneys, and support staff--a tiny fraction of the resources afforded to similar groups investigating the S&L and Enron/WorldCom scandals--and it is not clear that even that commitment has materialized. "I think what happened is what usually happens: the administration rope-a-doped," says Gecan. "There's no office, there's no director, there's no staff, there's no space, there's no phone."
Last month, Gecan wrote an op-ed article for the New York Daily News, calling upon Schneiderman to quit the group in protest (Schneiderman's office did not respond to requests for an interview). In the meantime, Gecan said, he will work to bring pressure on Obama. "There's a little presidential campaign that's going to start, and we're going to make this issue central to this campaign," he said.
It may be, as the attorney general points out, that Wall Street was greedy, stupid, and immoral, without actually breaking any laws. But the powers of the Justice Department are immense, and a more aggressive prosecutor surely could have found cases to make. Black, the UMKC professor, says the conduct could well have violated federal fraud statutes--"securities fraud for false disclosures, wire and mail fraud for making false representations about the quality of the loans and derivatives they were selling, bank fraud for false representations to the regulators."
The absence of prosecutions, and the fact that the cops on the beat hail from the place that represents the banks, does not sit right with many who hoped Obama would fulfill his promise to hold Big Finance accountable. The left's frustration fuels the Occupy movement, and chills the Democratic base. And it gives Romney, the career capitalist, an opening he is avidly exploiting.
Through last fall, Obama had collected more donations from Wall Street than any of the Republican candidates; employees of Bain Capital donated more than twice as much to Obama as they did to Romney, who founded the firm. By this spring, however, resolution had come to the GOP contest, and Wall Street could see a friendly alternative to Obama. While most of Romney's contributions so far come mainly from the financial sector, Obama's donations from Wall Street have dropped sharply.
But this turn may yet help Obama, playing into the Romney-as-plutocrat theme. Just the other week, the Republican candidate quietly slipped into a fundraiser at the home of hedge-fund king John Paulson, who made a killing shorting mortgage futures (including about $1 billion on the Abacus deal). The Obama campaign pounced. Obama may yet fully liberate his inner populist--that Obama who in 2010 in an off-Prompter moment uttered a sentence that made blood run cold on Wall Street: "I do think at a certain point you've made enough money."
LOVE: REASON WHY I HAVEN'T FOUND THE ONE
10 reasons why I can't STILL find my soulmate
I may not believe in destiny or fate but, for some odd reason, I believe in finding my better half or my soulmate. For years, i’ve been trying to find one through the method of “collect and select”. Sad to say, I can’t still find him. I know that this may not be the proper time yet to find him and be my husband but, I would gladly meet and entertain him any time. I know that you may not really know it at first sight but, you’ll feel it when you actually met him. I’m such a hopeless romantic. Needless to say, i’ve been thinking of any reasons if I can’t find him and I’ll just move on with my life without any man at my side. I came up with 10 reasons on why I can’t find my dearest soulmate.
10. He/she may have already died or killed himself/herself.
Think about it. He/She may have met an unfortunate accident before we actually meet them. Sad to say, this can happen. He/she might have died before birth or after birth. In a more negative point of view, he/she may have killed himself/herself, believing that there’s no one else in the world that would love them or care for them.
On the side note, may their souls rest in peace.
9. He/She may have been with the wrong person all along.
This is quite inevitable. Almost everyone has experienced this. We think that we found the right person yet, he/she isn’t the ONE we’ve been waiting for all our lives. Also, he/she might have been forced into an arranged marriage/marriage out of convenience. Well, that can certainly happen as well.
8. He might be a priest right now or someone who can’t marry due to his/her duties.
No doubt about it. I know that I may be going to hell for this but, sometimes, I think that there are priests that may be our soulmates. However, they chose to be with God. there’s nothing wrong about it, i guess.
7. He/She forgets about love due to his/her career/studies/obligation.
Yes. There are a lot of people like that. They forget about the aspect of love due to their love for their career and such. They chose to be loyal on what they do in life. This isn’t really selfish at all if you’re doing it for mankind. Needless to say, it’s still a loss for love and a gain for humanity.
6. He/She may be gay or a tomboy.
Sometimes, this happens too. There’s nothing with it. We could only accept them as they are right now. This may sound cliche but, if there are happy with their lives right now, we could only be happy for them as well. He/She may find their love.
5. He/She might really love someone else more than you.
This is harder to accept than anything else in the world. :(
4. He/She might be in a coma or have a physical/mental sickness right now.
This could also happen as well as if, time has stopped for them in this world. There’s nothing wrong with this. Just be patient, okay.
On the side note, let’s pray for them to get well soon.
3. He/She’s still in the process of finding you.
Hey! Out of 7 billion people in this world, almost 3.5 billion people can be your soulmate. He/She may still be a child or already an older man/woman. Love has no age or boundaries as well so, live with it! It’s hard to find you, you know.
2. He/She’s still trying to accept you.
Believe me. This is harder than we thought it could be. We may not believe that he/she is our actual soulmate. He/She may be far from our ideal man/woman or we’re far from his/her ideal man/woman. Well, he/she may or may not accept you.
1. We’re just too blind.
Let’s not forget that we have our own faults as well. Sometimes, we’re just too blind. Our soulmate may already be infront of you yet, we ignore them because we can’t accept the fact that he/she’s our soulmate. He/she may be the person who got friendzoned by you. We might be the one who ruined the chance of finding our soulmate. Sometimes, we’re just too insensitive, i guess. So, Be careful, ne? Whatever decision you’ll make in your life might lose our chance on finding the ONE.
I may not believe in destiny or fate but, for some odd reason, I believe in finding my better half or my soulmate. For years, i’ve been trying to find one through the method of “collect and select”. Sad to say, I can’t still find him. I know that this may not be the proper time yet to find him and be my husband but, I would gladly meet and entertain him any time. I know that you may not really know it at first sight but, you’ll feel it when you actually met him. I’m such a hopeless romantic. Needless to say, i’ve been thinking of any reasons if I can’t find him and I’ll just move on with my life without any man at my side. I came up with 10 reasons on why I can’t find my dearest soulmate.
10. He/she may have already died or killed himself/herself.
Think about it. He/She may have met an unfortunate accident before we actually meet them. Sad to say, this can happen. He/she might have died before birth or after birth. In a more negative point of view, he/she may have killed himself/herself, believing that there’s no one else in the world that would love them or care for them.
On the side note, may their souls rest in peace.
9. He/She may have been with the wrong person all along.
This is quite inevitable. Almost everyone has experienced this. We think that we found the right person yet, he/she isn’t the ONE we’ve been waiting for all our lives. Also, he/she might have been forced into an arranged marriage/marriage out of convenience. Well, that can certainly happen as well.
8. He might be a priest right now or someone who can’t marry due to his/her duties.
No doubt about it. I know that I may be going to hell for this but, sometimes, I think that there are priests that may be our soulmates. However, they chose to be with God. there’s nothing wrong about it, i guess.
7. He/She forgets about love due to his/her career/studies/obligation.
Yes. There are a lot of people like that. They forget about the aspect of love due to their love for their career and such. They chose to be loyal on what they do in life. This isn’t really selfish at all if you’re doing it for mankind. Needless to say, it’s still a loss for love and a gain for humanity.
6. He/She may be gay or a tomboy.
Sometimes, this happens too. There’s nothing with it. We could only accept them as they are right now. This may sound cliche but, if there are happy with their lives right now, we could only be happy for them as well. He/She may find their love.
5. He/She might really love someone else more than you.
This is harder to accept than anything else in the world. :(
4. He/She might be in a coma or have a physical/mental sickness right now.
This could also happen as well as if, time has stopped for them in this world. There’s nothing wrong with this. Just be patient, okay.
On the side note, let’s pray for them to get well soon.
3. He/She’s still in the process of finding you.
Hey! Out of 7 billion people in this world, almost 3.5 billion people can be your soulmate. He/She may still be a child or already an older man/woman. Love has no age or boundaries as well so, live with it! It’s hard to find you, you know.
2. He/She’s still trying to accept you.
Believe me. This is harder than we thought it could be. We may not believe that he/she is our actual soulmate. He/She may be far from our ideal man/woman or we’re far from his/her ideal man/woman. Well, he/she may or may not accept you.
1. We’re just too blind.
Let’s not forget that we have our own faults as well. Sometimes, we’re just too blind. Our soulmate may already be infront of you yet, we ignore them because we can’t accept the fact that he/she’s our soulmate. He/she may be the person who got friendzoned by you. We might be the one who ruined the chance of finding our soulmate. Sometimes, we’re just too insensitive, i guess. So, Be careful, ne? Whatever decision you’ll make in your life might lose our chance on finding the ONE.
LOVE/THOUGHT/JOURNAL: YOU ARE LOVE REMEMBER
For years, I tried to find "The One.” Everywhere I went, I was looking. Dinner parties, political functions, Sunday morning services, the dry cleaners, the subway car Not even going to the market at midnight gave me a reprieve from my relentless search. Yet, in spite of all this looking, I never found HER anywhere. If I was trying that hard and still couldn't force love to come my way, how can I now suggest that you actually commit yourself to finding something which we apparently have little to no control over?
Here’s why. The love I sought remained out of reach until I’d actually set an intention to find love and committed myself 100% to becoming the man I would need to be in order to attract it. I'm convinced of it
Remember, in our inmost being, we are all completely lovable because spirit is love. Beyond what anyone can make you think or feel about yourself, your unconditioned spirit stands, shining with a love nothing can tarnish.
After a few (or many) bad relationships, it’s so easy to shut down, give up, and stop believing that the right person is out there for us. Our hearts yearn to fall in love, but our minds insist it’s not possible, and we enter into a tug-of-war with ourselves. It’s as if one part of us is screaming, Yes! I deserve a great relationship! while another part insists, I’ll never find him or her. When our beliefs contradict our desires, we experience an inner conflict that not only paralyzes us, but can actually prevent us from recognizing the possibilities for love that exist all around us.
The universal Law of Attraction states that we draw to us those people, events, and circumstances that match our inner state of being. In other words, we attract experiences that are consistent with our beliefs. If we believe that there is plenty of love in the world and we are worthy of giving and receiving that love, we will attract a different quality of relationships than someone who believes in scarcity or feels unworthy of happiness. If we believe the world is a loving and friendly place, then most of the time that will be our experience. If we believe the world is a chaotic, stressful, and fearful place, then eventually that will become our reality. So, believing and knowing that your soulmate is out there is a critical first step in the formula for manifesting him or her into your life.
It amazes me that people think their soul mate is going to show up in their life at this predestined time and be this flawless person. A true soul mate is a mirror of yourself, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. Sure, they have a common upbringing, similar interests but they have the one thing you don’t have which is the introspection to help you become great. What use is a soul mate if they can’t help free you from yourself so you can live your life mission?”
What is it which makes a man and a woman know that they, of all other men and women in the world, belong to each other? Is it no more than chance and meeting? no more than being alive together in the world at the same time? Is it only a curve of the throat, a line of the chin, the way the eyes are set, a way of speaking? Or is it something deeper and stranger, something beyond meeting, something beyond chance and fortune? Are there others, in other times of the world, whom we should have loved, who would have loved us? Is there, perhaps, one soul among all others--among all who have lived, the endless generations, from world's end to world's end--who must love us or die? And whom we must love, in turn--whom we must seek all our lives long--headlong and homesick--until the end?”
Here’s why. The love I sought remained out of reach until I’d actually set an intention to find love and committed myself 100% to becoming the man I would need to be in order to attract it. I'm convinced of it
Remember, in our inmost being, we are all completely lovable because spirit is love. Beyond what anyone can make you think or feel about yourself, your unconditioned spirit stands, shining with a love nothing can tarnish.
After a few (or many) bad relationships, it’s so easy to shut down, give up, and stop believing that the right person is out there for us. Our hearts yearn to fall in love, but our minds insist it’s not possible, and we enter into a tug-of-war with ourselves. It’s as if one part of us is screaming, Yes! I deserve a great relationship! while another part insists, I’ll never find him or her. When our beliefs contradict our desires, we experience an inner conflict that not only paralyzes us, but can actually prevent us from recognizing the possibilities for love that exist all around us.
The universal Law of Attraction states that we draw to us those people, events, and circumstances that match our inner state of being. In other words, we attract experiences that are consistent with our beliefs. If we believe that there is plenty of love in the world and we are worthy of giving and receiving that love, we will attract a different quality of relationships than someone who believes in scarcity or feels unworthy of happiness. If we believe the world is a loving and friendly place, then most of the time that will be our experience. If we believe the world is a chaotic, stressful, and fearful place, then eventually that will become our reality. So, believing and knowing that your soulmate is out there is a critical first step in the formula for manifesting him or her into your life.
It amazes me that people think their soul mate is going to show up in their life at this predestined time and be this flawless person. A true soul mate is a mirror of yourself, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. Sure, they have a common upbringing, similar interests but they have the one thing you don’t have which is the introspection to help you become great. What use is a soul mate if they can’t help free you from yourself so you can live your life mission?”
What is it which makes a man and a woman know that they, of all other men and women in the world, belong to each other? Is it no more than chance and meeting? no more than being alive together in the world at the same time? Is it only a curve of the throat, a line of the chin, the way the eyes are set, a way of speaking? Or is it something deeper and stranger, something beyond meeting, something beyond chance and fortune? Are there others, in other times of the world, whom we should have loved, who would have loved us? Is there, perhaps, one soul among all others--among all who have lived, the endless generations, from world's end to world's end--who must love us or die? And whom we must love, in turn--whom we must seek all our lives long--headlong and homesick--until the end?”
POETRY:AS I STAR LONGINGLY AT YOU
Raven-haired lover, so dear and so warm,
cling to me tightly - unfurl all your charm.
Darkling, yet radiant - wild, gentle, serene -
Beneath all your cover - a mystery unseen.
Fantastic, delightful, emotional creature -
Love's "vessel of bon-bons", a quadruple feature.
Shy and retiring - wild as March gusts.
Playful, deceitful - harbinger of trust.
Deceiver of minions - not used to her ways,
my senses arousing as coyly she plays -
upon my emotions - a lightning-hot glance...
thrills and enthralls me - I haven't a chance.
Beckoning, spurning - just one step ahead.
A hunt run too swiftly - prey, skillfully led.
Turning, retraceing - triumphant when caught
Proud and submissive - a purchase well-bought!
PART II
It's been a long, long time.
I have seen you over and again.
The smile that reaches across my heart
hasn't faded, despite all the change.
As I stare longingly at you,
from across the room, you don't know
what thoughts cross my mind...
Or images which pass before my eyes.
And maybe you
can see into my heart...
After many years,a spark
has risen inside yours.
We can laugh at the damnedest things...
Smile at a joke, we only, know.
Grimace, at a memory between us,
and look forward to many more.
Hearts broken by so many others,
yet, not allowed to search together.
Kept apart by a mystery to me...
But it keeps coming back to my heart.
And maybe you can see
that I am still here.
After many years,
I can't seem to break your spell.
You have such a hold on me!
If only you could see the way I smile,
so deep inside...
All the tears, in solitude, I cried.
Some things I just can't quit.
Even a love unrequited...
And maybe you would be
able to feel the love.
And maybe you would
see inside my heart.
It could be so good,
A love for all time...
If only you would
let us cross that line...
It could be me,
And...
Maybe...
You???
cling to me tightly - unfurl all your charm.
Darkling, yet radiant - wild, gentle, serene -
Beneath all your cover - a mystery unseen.
Fantastic, delightful, emotional creature -
Love's "vessel of bon-bons", a quadruple feature.
Shy and retiring - wild as March gusts.
Playful, deceitful - harbinger of trust.
Deceiver of minions - not used to her ways,
my senses arousing as coyly she plays -
upon my emotions - a lightning-hot glance...
thrills and enthralls me - I haven't a chance.
Beckoning, spurning - just one step ahead.
A hunt run too swiftly - prey, skillfully led.
Turning, retraceing - triumphant when caught
Proud and submissive - a purchase well-bought!
PART II
It's been a long, long time.
I have seen you over and again.
The smile that reaches across my heart
hasn't faded, despite all the change.
As I stare longingly at you,
from across the room, you don't know
what thoughts cross my mind...
Or images which pass before my eyes.
And maybe you
can see into my heart...
After many years,a spark
has risen inside yours.
We can laugh at the damnedest things...
Smile at a joke, we only, know.
Grimace, at a memory between us,
and look forward to many more.
Hearts broken by so many others,
yet, not allowed to search together.
Kept apart by a mystery to me...
But it keeps coming back to my heart.
And maybe you can see
that I am still here.
After many years,
I can't seem to break your spell.
You have such a hold on me!
If only you could see the way I smile,
so deep inside...
All the tears, in solitude, I cried.
Some things I just can't quit.
Even a love unrequited...
And maybe you would be
able to feel the love.
And maybe you would
see inside my heart.
It could be so good,
A love for all time...
If only you would
let us cross that line...
It could be me,
And...
Maybe...
You???
LOVE/THOUGHT/JOURNAL: INFATUATED WITH A SINGLE SOUL
There will come a time in your life when you become absolutely infatuated with a single soul. For this person, you'd do anything & not think twice about it, but when asked why, you have no answer. You'll try your whole life to understand how a single person can affect you as much as they do, but you'll never find out. & no matter how badly it hurts or how badly you hate it, you'll love this person for the rest of your life without regret. And even though she doesn't believe in love, he's determined to call her bluff don't let anyone ever promise you that they won't ever hurt you because at one time or another, it'll happen. the real promise is if the time you spent together will be worth the pain in the end.
I kinda miss the bond we shared. I mean, who wouldn't miss that comfortable feeling with a person?
Where we could talk for hours about everything, anything, and not have a problem with the silence in the middle. Can't forget all the ridiculous stuff we did. Stupid or not, everything was just so fun. Endless nights, real talks, the "remember whens", I remember it all. And it's funny what life does, how it could just give you things and take it away so soon. I really can't get it out of my head that you grow distant from people and that good things come to an end sooner or later. But along the way, I learned one good thing about life; it goes on, you just gotta pick yourself up and learn to keep up.
So you make up excuses for why she never comes around. And I know she's going to show up saying she misses you, but honestly whose fault is that? Your address is the same and your phone numbers haven't changed. There's just no excuse for it this time.
That's what you do when you care about someone. You fight like hell to make sure you keep them. Even if they aren't yours. You fight just to know you're alive. Because you know that without them, you'd have no reason to breathe.
Truth is, sometimes you scare the shit out of me. You make me feel as if I’m not alone. Yet, I know any minute you have the ability to rip that feeling from me. Truth is, I love you, and that in itself, is scary enough.
I'm done with the bullshit. Love is a four letter lie when it comes to you.
You turned around and lied without a second thought.
Did I even cross your mind? Or were you just too busy planning with him
Strength isn't about how much you can handle before you break. It's about how much you can handle after you break.
Maybe I fell for your smile, or the way you always say what you mean...without ever actually saying what you mean. I don't know why or how, but I fell. So here it is, my confession to you...I'm insanely and unnaturally in love with you.
You are an amazing creature. You deserve to be loved until your insides melt. Don't give up on all the things you want. When you meet the right person you will have zero doubt in your mind. Zero.
I kinda miss the bond we shared. I mean, who wouldn't miss that comfortable feeling with a person?
Where we could talk for hours about everything, anything, and not have a problem with the silence in the middle. Can't forget all the ridiculous stuff we did. Stupid or not, everything was just so fun. Endless nights, real talks, the "remember whens", I remember it all. And it's funny what life does, how it could just give you things and take it away so soon. I really can't get it out of my head that you grow distant from people and that good things come to an end sooner or later. But along the way, I learned one good thing about life; it goes on, you just gotta pick yourself up and learn to keep up.
So you make up excuses for why she never comes around. And I know she's going to show up saying she misses you, but honestly whose fault is that? Your address is the same and your phone numbers haven't changed. There's just no excuse for it this time.
That's what you do when you care about someone. You fight like hell to make sure you keep them. Even if they aren't yours. You fight just to know you're alive. Because you know that without them, you'd have no reason to breathe.
Truth is, sometimes you scare the shit out of me. You make me feel as if I’m not alone. Yet, I know any minute you have the ability to rip that feeling from me. Truth is, I love you, and that in itself, is scary enough.
I'm done with the bullshit. Love is a four letter lie when it comes to you.
You turned around and lied without a second thought.
Did I even cross your mind? Or were you just too busy planning with him
Strength isn't about how much you can handle before you break. It's about how much you can handle after you break.
Maybe I fell for your smile, or the way you always say what you mean...without ever actually saying what you mean. I don't know why or how, but I fell. So here it is, my confession to you...I'm insanely and unnaturally in love with you.
You are an amazing creature. You deserve to be loved until your insides melt. Don't give up on all the things you want. When you meet the right person you will have zero doubt in your mind. Zero.
LOVE/THOUGHT: SERENIPITY
Sure, there are people who say this film is terrible, or that it's bullshit. But have you seen how boring their partner's are? Have you seen how unimaginative their conversation is? 'SERENDIPITY' is about faith. It's about believing life means something. It's about not just feeling a connection with someone but taking the risk in acting on it. It's about believing that when you make a choice, or stumble upon something; that it's meaningful. It's about people. It's about your friends. It's about the people you meet in the street and the people you ignore in Starbucks.
We're all connected, we're all a moment away from a missing love, or a needed friend, or an inspiring opportunity. 'SERENDIPITY' is here to remind us to give a shit. To believe in life. To know it's worth it.
But it takes work. They're not sitting around like people who just watched 'The Secret' and expecting a Ferrari. These characters looked and searched and suffered and gave up and tried and hoped and lived. And sure, maybe love isn't real and maybe there's no God and maybe we all die and sink in the mud but what fun is there in that? I'd rather believe in the synchronicity of New Yorkian Serendipity. The fact that two years ago I wrote little blogs, mumbling to myself; and now YOU are HERE and reading and talking and sharing; that's amazing! You were meant to be here, I was meant to know you!
We've all experienced it. Probably a few years before we got so cynical and hardened. We bumped into someone in the middle of 5th Avenue, or Trafalgar Square, or an elevator in Tokyo. In the movie, they believed in it, and they kept pushing for it. In reality, we stutter and mumble and walk away; or we believe in that critical voice that says to ignore it or get back to work. But what if we didn't? Who knows. What if I'd stuck around talking to that pretty Counting Crows fan in HMV nine years ago? What if I'd not said "I've got to get back to work?" to that woman in that little coffee shop somewhere near Holborn Station back in 2007?
We live life as we choose. You think Serendipity is not believable? You think it's cheesy? Great. Let's sit at home and fill in our tax forms, let's settle for the partner's who moan at us for forgetting to bring the milk home, let's sit and watch the world and say to each other "things never used to be this bad" and "things are too difficult right now."
Or we can go to New York City, or any city -- and we can open our eyes and look and see all of the amazing human beings that stumble into view from all around us. Who are they? What could they mean to me? How could knowing them make life a little more interesting?
We're all connected, we're all a moment away from a missing love, or a needed friend, or an inspiring opportunity. 'SERENDIPITY' is here to remind us to give a shit. To believe in life. To know it's worth it.
But it takes work. They're not sitting around like people who just watched 'The Secret' and expecting a Ferrari. These characters looked and searched and suffered and gave up and tried and hoped and lived. And sure, maybe love isn't real and maybe there's no God and maybe we all die and sink in the mud but what fun is there in that? I'd rather believe in the synchronicity of New Yorkian Serendipity. The fact that two years ago I wrote little blogs, mumbling to myself; and now YOU are HERE and reading and talking and sharing; that's amazing! You were meant to be here, I was meant to know you!
We've all experienced it. Probably a few years before we got so cynical and hardened. We bumped into someone in the middle of 5th Avenue, or Trafalgar Square, or an elevator in Tokyo. In the movie, they believed in it, and they kept pushing for it. In reality, we stutter and mumble and walk away; or we believe in that critical voice that says to ignore it or get back to work. But what if we didn't? Who knows. What if I'd stuck around talking to that pretty Counting Crows fan in HMV nine years ago? What if I'd not said "I've got to get back to work?" to that woman in that little coffee shop somewhere near Holborn Station back in 2007?
We live life as we choose. You think Serendipity is not believable? You think it's cheesy? Great. Let's sit at home and fill in our tax forms, let's settle for the partner's who moan at us for forgetting to bring the milk home, let's sit and watch the world and say to each other "things never used to be this bad" and "things are too difficult right now."
Or we can go to New York City, or any city -- and we can open our eyes and look and see all of the amazing human beings that stumble into view from all around us. Who are they? What could they mean to me? How could knowing them make life a little more interesting?
LOVE/THOUGHT/JOURNAL: YOUR SOULMATE WILL B ABLE TO MAKE LOVE TO YOU IN WAYS NO ONE ELSE WILL
When we are born it begins a journey. Along the way on this long winding path we eventually end up seeking many things. One of which is love. In the beginning, it is from our Mother & Father, then our family, community and so on. Eventually, assuming everything goes right, we begin to find we have a void within us, which other forms of love can’t seem to fill.
We have all known loneliness, a dark emptiness within our soul which seems to stretch for an eternity. We feel like we are apart of nothing, just drifting aimlessly upon the sea of humanity with no destination, nor land in sight. At times despair is like our wet clothing as we shiver cold and alone in the darkness. To distract ourselves we dream of “The One” and how they will lift our spirits and take away the emptiness, this absence of life.
For some, eventually someone comes along and brings light to this darkness. But as humans, sometimes we are by this time so starved to be “touched” that we unknowing make compromises which, if we were rational we would not make. Thus the saying. “Blinded by Love “. Because, of these compromises, we may never find our true predestined love.
Many of you now, are not in a “Soulmate” relationship. The truth is you got tired of waiting and you settled for the best “offer” at the time. This was your choice, and now is your Karma. But in your heart, in your soul, you know if someone is your Soulmate, for it goes beyond just love. It is a form of joining.
When you meet your, soul mate this person will have an instantaneous effect on you. A Soulmate is someone who makes your knees go weak and you want to catch your breath. With but a single glance they lesson your burden and but a smile, warms your heart. You will feel a sense of connection affinity with this person. They will touch you so deeply on so many levels, you will want to share your inner most secrets. For the first time in your life someone will make you feel like almost like divine. Once you have met your soul mate for better or sometimes worse, your life will never be the same.
One of the things which makes this experience unique is the sense of a meaningful spiritual experience. You both feel like this is to be and that you’ve been together before in a past incarnation. Normally for some, it is several months, weeks or days before physical intimacy sex occurs. But when you meet your soul mate something happens, the pull or drive to become physically intimate overwhelms many, and one finds it happening basically in the initial meeting.
There’s a sense of safety with this person. You knowingly let go of your defenses as an empathic like bond is formed. Unlike other relationships, in the past, there will be no game playing or hidden agendas which plagued you in the past.
Sometimes the best way to find something, is by not looking for it. With this in mind, you probably will meet your Soulmate when you’re not looking. Since life revels in making things difficult, you’ll probably meet them in the morning when your on the grave yard shift. For many it will be after a bad relationship or several bad relationships.
If you’re lucky you won’t have to wait until your 50 to meet your soul mate. But if you do. Well at least you’ll appreciate it’s significance more, than someone in there twenties. You have had the benefit of experience, the perspective of age and the knowledge, such love is once in a life time.
The point here is***** “Serendipity”****, so forget about taking that “Singles” bus tour to the Circus. Sure you’ll meet a lot of nice people and perhaps you really should get out, but just be prepared to ..Well, meet some real clowns.
The universe is a funny place, don’t be surprised if your Soulmate is older or younger. Soulmate’s don’t care about age. How much older or younger ? From my observations, expect years like 7 to 20. In a true soul mate relationship it won’t matter, if anything it will make you stronger. Life is not neat, nor has it ever been. So why should it start now ?
There is something about the Passion you share with an soul mate. It goes beyond just ” body parts”. For a moment in time you two are the only ones who exist in the universe. Hearts beating in rhythm as your souls have intertwined themselves becoming one. Your personal energies meld and you feel the flame of creation move through you like a wave of the ocean on a hot summers day.
Soon you begin to lose track, of where you begin and your partner ends. From within the depths of your raw passionate union, your soul mate will know how and where to touch you. It will be different, intense and more gratifying than lovers of your past.
They will look into your eyes and you will feel your soul open wide. For some people, there is the “Rush”. All the love, all the lust, all the need will surge forth from your soul like captives from a prison. At this moment you will know what it means to get lost within someone’s eyes. You will experience a touch you have never felt before and your lust will rise to new levels. Often, in the case of true Soulmates, you can get so carried away you can actually hurt yourself. But in the end as you lay there, as the warm afterglow begins to fade, you will realize what just happened was not sex. “Sex, simply doesn’t feel this good.”
To put it simply, your soul mate will be able to make love to you in ways no one else will be able to match.
It is within our nature as human being to fuck things up. The very thing which makes Soulmate love so special, is the one thing which can bring it down. The simple fact is, the unparalelled love & passion is terrifying to many people.
We learned how to have relationships from our parents or primary giver. If your primary givers relationships were dysfunctional, then chances are so are yours. There are many people in this world who in relationships maintain an extreme amount of emotional control. They take pride in the fact that their partner is madly in love with them.
By being able to “wrap them around their finger” they feel safer. Thus, all their relationships become based on this pattern. Then one day their soul mate comes along and wham!. Quickly they discover the control over their heart and the relationship is gone. Now they must relate on a level playing field, and for many, they run.
For those of you who are runners let me tell you what you already know. It doesn’t work. You can move to the other side of the planet, marry someone else and fill up your spare time with some cause. But the simple truth is, your soul mate will be there in your soul. No matter how hard you try, no matter how busy you make yourself, everyday they will enter you thoughts. So then many try and fuck them out. But that doesn’t work either, for it becomes just sex and as you lay there afterwards you will feel empty and cheated.
A good measure of this is a simple test. After you have just made love to the person who you are using as a safe substitute, do you find yourself wanting to “get away” from them? A kind of “Okay, I got off..now get away from me feeling”? (LOL!) This is assuming that you can still get off. In some cases your orgasms are just barely, if you’re lucky. When you were with your soul mate, didn’t you feel the need to remain close, to pull each other tightly and melt into each other? That’s the difference….and one which is very hard to hide from yourself.
If you run, then you’ve made the conscious choice to doom yourself and the other person to be haunted for the rest of your life. Sure, you may eventually fall in love with someone who fits your preconceived image or expectation (cute, rich or successful) of what your partner should be. But as time moves on…you never forget, you always wonder and then you eventually regret. I have a saying:
The Soulmate relationship is worth putting up a fight, but there comes a time when you have done all that you can do and you can do no more. At some point, the one who runs has to choose to stop and come to their senses. Life is sadly cruel, just as it is grand.
It is like having your tender soul ripped from your body. You feel lost, abandoned and betrayed. There is a sense of panic which permeates your very being and personal existence. You find yourself saying, “never again”. You did something you had never done before, you willingly let another in….all the way.
Eventually, after the shock, the depression comes, then the anger and then you just want it all to end. You wish you could just stop feeling…but you can’t. And no matter how much you drink, smoke or eat, you can’t make the pain go away. Yes, regular love hurts too..and badly. But when you lose your soul mate, no matter how enlightened, wise or talented, in both will and spirit you are it is devastating.
Many of us sadly, fail to recover and we truly never “Love” again. Those who are really weak, try to kill themselves. Be it with a car speeding on a wet winding road after drinking, or “J” walking on 42nd street, to just taking one too many pills. The end result is the same if we succeed, suicide is suicide whether you leave a note or not.
In the end, we don’t even want to see the person, because that just tares open the wound over and over. Right or wrong, that’s just the way it is. Eventually, you go on with your life and you stop hating them because like you they will never forget either.
Every now and then life gives us a happy ending. Sometimes, after trying to get their soul mate out of their minds, the “runner” comes to realize what they had lost. A few are wise enough to do whatever it takes to correct the situation and get back into their Soulmates arms. Hopefully, not enough time has gone by so that the situation is salvagable. But oftentimes it’s not. All I can say is TRY. With Soulmates there is NO pride, and there CAN be forgiveness. We are destined to meet our Soulmate, what you do after that is “your” choice.
As I walk my chosen path I say to those …follow me
We have all known loneliness, a dark emptiness within our soul which seems to stretch for an eternity. We feel like we are apart of nothing, just drifting aimlessly upon the sea of humanity with no destination, nor land in sight. At times despair is like our wet clothing as we shiver cold and alone in the darkness. To distract ourselves we dream of “The One” and how they will lift our spirits and take away the emptiness, this absence of life.
For some, eventually someone comes along and brings light to this darkness. But as humans, sometimes we are by this time so starved to be “touched” that we unknowing make compromises which, if we were rational we would not make. Thus the saying. “Blinded by Love “. Because, of these compromises, we may never find our true predestined love.
Many of you now, are not in a “Soulmate” relationship. The truth is you got tired of waiting and you settled for the best “offer” at the time. This was your choice, and now is your Karma. But in your heart, in your soul, you know if someone is your Soulmate, for it goes beyond just love. It is a form of joining.
When you meet your, soul mate this person will have an instantaneous effect on you. A Soulmate is someone who makes your knees go weak and you want to catch your breath. With but a single glance they lesson your burden and but a smile, warms your heart. You will feel a sense of connection affinity with this person. They will touch you so deeply on so many levels, you will want to share your inner most secrets. For the first time in your life someone will make you feel like almost like divine. Once you have met your soul mate for better or sometimes worse, your life will never be the same.
One of the things which makes this experience unique is the sense of a meaningful spiritual experience. You both feel like this is to be and that you’ve been together before in a past incarnation. Normally for some, it is several months, weeks or days before physical intimacy sex occurs. But when you meet your soul mate something happens, the pull or drive to become physically intimate overwhelms many, and one finds it happening basically in the initial meeting.
There’s a sense of safety with this person. You knowingly let go of your defenses as an empathic like bond is formed. Unlike other relationships, in the past, there will be no game playing or hidden agendas which plagued you in the past.
Sometimes the best way to find something, is by not looking for it. With this in mind, you probably will meet your Soulmate when you’re not looking. Since life revels in making things difficult, you’ll probably meet them in the morning when your on the grave yard shift. For many it will be after a bad relationship or several bad relationships.
If you’re lucky you won’t have to wait until your 50 to meet your soul mate. But if you do. Well at least you’ll appreciate it’s significance more, than someone in there twenties. You have had the benefit of experience, the perspective of age and the knowledge, such love is once in a life time.
The point here is***** “Serendipity”****, so forget about taking that “Singles” bus tour to the Circus. Sure you’ll meet a lot of nice people and perhaps you really should get out, but just be prepared to ..Well, meet some real clowns.
The universe is a funny place, don’t be surprised if your Soulmate is older or younger. Soulmate’s don’t care about age. How much older or younger ? From my observations, expect years like 7 to 20. In a true soul mate relationship it won’t matter, if anything it will make you stronger. Life is not neat, nor has it ever been. So why should it start now ?
There is something about the Passion you share with an soul mate. It goes beyond just ” body parts”. For a moment in time you two are the only ones who exist in the universe. Hearts beating in rhythm as your souls have intertwined themselves becoming one. Your personal energies meld and you feel the flame of creation move through you like a wave of the ocean on a hot summers day.
Soon you begin to lose track, of where you begin and your partner ends. From within the depths of your raw passionate union, your soul mate will know how and where to touch you. It will be different, intense and more gratifying than lovers of your past.
They will look into your eyes and you will feel your soul open wide. For some people, there is the “Rush”. All the love, all the lust, all the need will surge forth from your soul like captives from a prison. At this moment you will know what it means to get lost within someone’s eyes. You will experience a touch you have never felt before and your lust will rise to new levels. Often, in the case of true Soulmates, you can get so carried away you can actually hurt yourself. But in the end as you lay there, as the warm afterglow begins to fade, you will realize what just happened was not sex. “Sex, simply doesn’t feel this good.”
To put it simply, your soul mate will be able to make love to you in ways no one else will be able to match.
It is within our nature as human being to fuck things up. The very thing which makes Soulmate love so special, is the one thing which can bring it down. The simple fact is, the unparalelled love & passion is terrifying to many people.
We learned how to have relationships from our parents or primary giver. If your primary givers relationships were dysfunctional, then chances are so are yours. There are many people in this world who in relationships maintain an extreme amount of emotional control. They take pride in the fact that their partner is madly in love with them.
By being able to “wrap them around their finger” they feel safer. Thus, all their relationships become based on this pattern. Then one day their soul mate comes along and wham!. Quickly they discover the control over their heart and the relationship is gone. Now they must relate on a level playing field, and for many, they run.
For those of you who are runners let me tell you what you already know. It doesn’t work. You can move to the other side of the planet, marry someone else and fill up your spare time with some cause. But the simple truth is, your soul mate will be there in your soul. No matter how hard you try, no matter how busy you make yourself, everyday they will enter you thoughts. So then many try and fuck them out. But that doesn’t work either, for it becomes just sex and as you lay there afterwards you will feel empty and cheated.
A good measure of this is a simple test. After you have just made love to the person who you are using as a safe substitute, do you find yourself wanting to “get away” from them? A kind of “Okay, I got off..now get away from me feeling”? (LOL!) This is assuming that you can still get off. In some cases your orgasms are just barely, if you’re lucky. When you were with your soul mate, didn’t you feel the need to remain close, to pull each other tightly and melt into each other? That’s the difference….and one which is very hard to hide from yourself.
If you run, then you’ve made the conscious choice to doom yourself and the other person to be haunted for the rest of your life. Sure, you may eventually fall in love with someone who fits your preconceived image or expectation (cute, rich or successful) of what your partner should be. But as time moves on…you never forget, you always wonder and then you eventually regret. I have a saying:
The Soulmate relationship is worth putting up a fight, but there comes a time when you have done all that you can do and you can do no more. At some point, the one who runs has to choose to stop and come to their senses. Life is sadly cruel, just as it is grand.
It is like having your tender soul ripped from your body. You feel lost, abandoned and betrayed. There is a sense of panic which permeates your very being and personal existence. You find yourself saying, “never again”. You did something you had never done before, you willingly let another in….all the way.
Eventually, after the shock, the depression comes, then the anger and then you just want it all to end. You wish you could just stop feeling…but you can’t. And no matter how much you drink, smoke or eat, you can’t make the pain go away. Yes, regular love hurts too..and badly. But when you lose your soul mate, no matter how enlightened, wise or talented, in both will and spirit you are it is devastating.
Many of us sadly, fail to recover and we truly never “Love” again. Those who are really weak, try to kill themselves. Be it with a car speeding on a wet winding road after drinking, or “J” walking on 42nd street, to just taking one too many pills. The end result is the same if we succeed, suicide is suicide whether you leave a note or not.
In the end, we don’t even want to see the person, because that just tares open the wound over and over. Right or wrong, that’s just the way it is. Eventually, you go on with your life and you stop hating them because like you they will never forget either.
Every now and then life gives us a happy ending. Sometimes, after trying to get their soul mate out of their minds, the “runner” comes to realize what they had lost. A few are wise enough to do whatever it takes to correct the situation and get back into their Soulmates arms. Hopefully, not enough time has gone by so that the situation is salvagable. But oftentimes it’s not. All I can say is TRY. With Soulmates there is NO pride, and there CAN be forgiveness. We are destined to meet our Soulmate, what you do after that is “your” choice.
As I walk my chosen path I say to those …follow me
JOURNAL; Jamie Dimon and the Fall of Nations By SIMON JOHNSON
“Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty,” by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, is a brilliant and sometimes breathtaking survey of country-level governance over history and around the world. Professors Acemoglu and Robinson discern a simple pattern — when elites are held in check, typically by effective legal mechanisms, everyone else in society does much better and sustained economic growth becomes possible. But powerful people — kings, barons, industrialists, bankers — work long and hard to relax the constraints on their actions. And when they succeed, the effects are not just redistribution toward themselves but also an undermining of economic growth and often a tearing at the fabric of society. (I’ve worked with the authors on related issues, but I was not involved in writing the book.)
The historical evidence is overwhelming. Many societies have done well for a while — until powerful people get out of hand. This is an easy pattern to see at a distance and in other cultures. It is typically much harder to recognize when your own society has an elite less subject to effective constraints and more able to exert power in an abusive fashion. And given the long history of strong institutions in the United States, it appears particularly difficult for some people to acknowledge that we have serious governance issues that need to be addressed.
The governance issue of the season is Jamie Dimon’s seat on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Mr. Dimon is the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, currently the largest bank in the United States. This bank is “too big to fail” — meaning that if it were to get into difficulties, substantial financial support would be provided by the Federal Reserve System (and perhaps other parts of government) to prevent it from collapsing.
I am well aware of the moves afoot to carry out the intent of the Dodd-Frank reform legislation and to make it possible for such banks to fail, with consequent losses for their creditors. In my assessment, we are still a long way from putting in place the necessary resolution mechanisms and backing them up with sufficient political will.
If Greece were to default tomorrow — a hypothetical scenario, although I am worried about the current European trajectory — and this had devastating effects on the European and thus the United States financial system, would JPMorgan Chase be allowed to go bankrupt in the same fashion as Lehman Brothers? It would not.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York would be a key player in the decision on how to provide support and on what basis to huge financial institutions in distress — although the final determination would presumably rest with the Board of Governors in Washington.
In the Acemoglu and Robinson tour de force, I find one of the greatest elite wealth-making (for themselves) strategies of all time to be underemphasized. Persuade the government to let you build a big bank; take a great deal of risk in that bank (particularly by increasing leverage, i.e., debt relative to equity); pay yourself based on the return on equity, unadjusted for risk; get cash payouts while times are good; and when events turn against you, the central bank can bail you out — and keep you in place because you are regarded as indispensable. This is the history of modern America.
We had strong institutions for a long time in this country — including effective checks on the power of bankers. Many people remember that history and still hold its image in their mind’s eye as they look at modern Wall Street. It’s time to wake up. In recent decades we abandoned the governance mechanisms that previously served us well. Global megabanks have obtained excessive and inappropriate power – the power to take a great deal of risk, with cash for their executives on the upside and huge damage for the rest of us on the downside.
Since I wrote about this issue here last week, a great deal of support has been expressed for the recommendation that Jamie Dimon should step down from the board of the New York Fed — including by over 32,000 people who signed the petition I drafted. (The petition is addressed to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, as only it has the power to remove a director of a Federal Reserve Bank. I have requested an appointment with a governor on Monday, in order to deliver this petition and discuss the substantive issues; a relevant Fed staff member is currently checking availability. I hope to write about that meeting here next week.)
The pressure on Mr. Dimon is increasing with a steady flow of news articles concerning the care with which risk has been managed at his bank — including the suggestion that the risk committee of the JPMorgan Chase board lacks sufficient experience to understand or monitor the complexity of the bank’s operations. (See also the coverage from Forbes and CBS MoneyWatch.)
We need an independent inquiry into exactly how JPMorgan lost so much money so quickly on its London trading operations — which supposedly were just “hedging.” It would also be helpful to know how Jamie Dimon, widely regarded as a good risk manager, did not know what was happening in London until Bloomberg News brought it to his attention — and why even then he denied there was a serious issue. Is this a systematic breakdown in management and risk control systems? What exactly went wrong with the relevant models? What can we learn that would help improve the safety of the financial system? Have the largest banks grown too big and too complex to be managed safely?
More broadly, how can we rely on the Federal Reserve to oversee and constrain the actions of Mr. Dimon while he continues to sit on the board of the New York Fed — with the job of overseeing and potentially constraining the actions of that organization?
Esther George, president of the Kansas City Fed, made a strong statement at the end of last week, emphasizing that all Federal Reserve Bank board members had a responsibility to uphold the integrity and perceived legitimacy of the Federal Reserve System. She ended with a powerful line that cuts to the center of the current debate: “No individual is more important than the institution and the public’s trust.”
Those who would still prefer to keep Mr. Dimon in his current position rely on some combination of three counterarguments.
First, one line is that Mr. Dimon is elected to “represent the banks,” so he is just doing his job when he argues his corner — for example, against financial sector reform. Ernest Patrikis, former general counsel of the New York Federal Reserve, takes exactly this position; I quoted him in my column last week.
As a factual matter, any such statement defining Mr. Dimon’s responsibility as a board member at the New York Fed is inaccurate. Here are two passages from the first paragraph of the Guide to Conduct from the Board of Governors’ Web site:
Directors of Federal Reserve Banks and branches have a special obligation for maintaining the integrity, dignity, and reputation of the Federal Reserve System.
To ensure the proper performance of System business and the maintenance of public confidence in the System, it is essential that directors, through adherence to high ethical standards of conduct, avoid actions that might impair the effectiveness of System operations or in any way tend to discredit the System.
Ms. George made this point clearly and effectively in her press release last week. All board members have a responsibility — first and foremost — to the Federal Reserve System. If they have a problem with that, they should avoid serving or step down when appropriate.
For example, Jeffrey R. Immelt — chief executive of General Electric — stepped down from the New York Fed board in April 2011 when it became clear that GE Capital would be regulated by the Fed as a systemically important financial institution. That was an entirely appropriate decision, removing any perception of a potential conflict of interest. (To be clear, both Mr. Immelt and the New York Fed said that he resigned because of pressures on his time.)
The second line — including from Mr. Dimon himself — is that at the New York Fed he plays “an advisory role.”
Again, this is not factually accurate. Here is some relevant text from the Guide to Conduct:
In their capacity as directors, these individuals are charged by law with the responsibility of supervising and controlling the operations of the Reserve Banks, under the general supervision of the Board of Governors, and for ensuring that the affairs of the Banks are administered fairly and impartially.
Plenty of governmental or quasi-governmental bodies have advisory groups. I’m on two — for the Congressional Budget Office (for economic forecasts) and for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (for the resolution or liquidation of systemically important financial institutions). Advisory groups do not oversee budgets and are not involved in personnel decisions.
I have no problem with the Federal Reserve — or anyone else in government — seeking and receiving input on local economic conditions. But that is no reason for a “too big to fail” banker or any other excessively powerful special interest to be on the board of the New York Fed.
The board of the New York Fed is not “advisory.” If Mr. Dimon really thinks that, he needs another orientation session with New York Fed officials. Or he could read the Federal Reserve Act.
The third position acknowledges that governance at the regional Feds is an anachronism, but argues that Mr. Dimon has done nothing wrong and that these boards can be fixed only by legislative action (see this editorial in The Financial Times on Wednesday, for example).
To be clear, I am not accusing Mr. Dimon or anyone else of any wrongdoing. I am calling for an independent inquiry into the JPMorgan losses — along the lines that my M.I.T. colleague Andrew Lo has suggested for all serious financial “accidents.”
I am also agreeing with Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner who, when asked about Mr. Dimon’s role at the New York Fed, told the PBS NewsHour:
It is very important, particularly given the damage caused by the crisis, that our system of oversight and safeguards and the enforcement authorities have not just the resources they need, but they are perceived to be above any political influence and have the independence and the ability to make sure these reforms are tough and effective so we protect the American people, again, from a crisis like this.
Legislative action to further adjust the governance of the New York Fed will not happen this year and is not likely in the near future. Frankly, saying in this context “we’ll wait for Congress” is the functional equivalent of saying, “let’s not fix it.”
Undermining the “integrity, dignity, and reputation of the Federal Reserve System” in current fashion poses grave risks. A powerful elite has risen with control over global megabanks — and the ability to mismanage their way into disaster, with huge negative implications for the broader economy.
We should be strengthening the power of the New York Fed and other institutions to constrain reckless risk-taking. Instead, we are standing idly by while our “extractive elite” (to use a great term from Professors Acemoglu and Robinson) enrich themselves and endanger the rest of us.
If you want to see where we are heading, on our current course, read “Why Nations Fail.”
The historical evidence is overwhelming. Many societies have done well for a while — until powerful people get out of hand. This is an easy pattern to see at a distance and in other cultures. It is typically much harder to recognize when your own society has an elite less subject to effective constraints and more able to exert power in an abusive fashion. And given the long history of strong institutions in the United States, it appears particularly difficult for some people to acknowledge that we have serious governance issues that need to be addressed.
The governance issue of the season is Jamie Dimon’s seat on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Mr. Dimon is the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, currently the largest bank in the United States. This bank is “too big to fail” — meaning that if it were to get into difficulties, substantial financial support would be provided by the Federal Reserve System (and perhaps other parts of government) to prevent it from collapsing.
I am well aware of the moves afoot to carry out the intent of the Dodd-Frank reform legislation and to make it possible for such banks to fail, with consequent losses for their creditors. In my assessment, we are still a long way from putting in place the necessary resolution mechanisms and backing them up with sufficient political will.
If Greece were to default tomorrow — a hypothetical scenario, although I am worried about the current European trajectory — and this had devastating effects on the European and thus the United States financial system, would JPMorgan Chase be allowed to go bankrupt in the same fashion as Lehman Brothers? It would not.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York would be a key player in the decision on how to provide support and on what basis to huge financial institutions in distress — although the final determination would presumably rest with the Board of Governors in Washington.
In the Acemoglu and Robinson tour de force, I find one of the greatest elite wealth-making (for themselves) strategies of all time to be underemphasized. Persuade the government to let you build a big bank; take a great deal of risk in that bank (particularly by increasing leverage, i.e., debt relative to equity); pay yourself based on the return on equity, unadjusted for risk; get cash payouts while times are good; and when events turn against you, the central bank can bail you out — and keep you in place because you are regarded as indispensable. This is the history of modern America.
We had strong institutions for a long time in this country — including effective checks on the power of bankers. Many people remember that history and still hold its image in their mind’s eye as they look at modern Wall Street. It’s time to wake up. In recent decades we abandoned the governance mechanisms that previously served us well. Global megabanks have obtained excessive and inappropriate power – the power to take a great deal of risk, with cash for their executives on the upside and huge damage for the rest of us on the downside.
Since I wrote about this issue here last week, a great deal of support has been expressed for the recommendation that Jamie Dimon should step down from the board of the New York Fed — including by over 32,000 people who signed the petition I drafted. (The petition is addressed to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, as only it has the power to remove a director of a Federal Reserve Bank. I have requested an appointment with a governor on Monday, in order to deliver this petition and discuss the substantive issues; a relevant Fed staff member is currently checking availability. I hope to write about that meeting here next week.)
The pressure on Mr. Dimon is increasing with a steady flow of news articles concerning the care with which risk has been managed at his bank — including the suggestion that the risk committee of the JPMorgan Chase board lacks sufficient experience to understand or monitor the complexity of the bank’s operations. (See also the coverage from Forbes and CBS MoneyWatch.)
We need an independent inquiry into exactly how JPMorgan lost so much money so quickly on its London trading operations — which supposedly were just “hedging.” It would also be helpful to know how Jamie Dimon, widely regarded as a good risk manager, did not know what was happening in London until Bloomberg News brought it to his attention — and why even then he denied there was a serious issue. Is this a systematic breakdown in management and risk control systems? What exactly went wrong with the relevant models? What can we learn that would help improve the safety of the financial system? Have the largest banks grown too big and too complex to be managed safely?
More broadly, how can we rely on the Federal Reserve to oversee and constrain the actions of Mr. Dimon while he continues to sit on the board of the New York Fed — with the job of overseeing and potentially constraining the actions of that organization?
Esther George, president of the Kansas City Fed, made a strong statement at the end of last week, emphasizing that all Federal Reserve Bank board members had a responsibility to uphold the integrity and perceived legitimacy of the Federal Reserve System. She ended with a powerful line that cuts to the center of the current debate: “No individual is more important than the institution and the public’s trust.”
Those who would still prefer to keep Mr. Dimon in his current position rely on some combination of three counterarguments.
First, one line is that Mr. Dimon is elected to “represent the banks,” so he is just doing his job when he argues his corner — for example, against financial sector reform. Ernest Patrikis, former general counsel of the New York Federal Reserve, takes exactly this position; I quoted him in my column last week.
As a factual matter, any such statement defining Mr. Dimon’s responsibility as a board member at the New York Fed is inaccurate. Here are two passages from the first paragraph of the Guide to Conduct from the Board of Governors’ Web site:
Directors of Federal Reserve Banks and branches have a special obligation for maintaining the integrity, dignity, and reputation of the Federal Reserve System.
To ensure the proper performance of System business and the maintenance of public confidence in the System, it is essential that directors, through adherence to high ethical standards of conduct, avoid actions that might impair the effectiveness of System operations or in any way tend to discredit the System.
Ms. George made this point clearly and effectively in her press release last week. All board members have a responsibility — first and foremost — to the Federal Reserve System. If they have a problem with that, they should avoid serving or step down when appropriate.
For example, Jeffrey R. Immelt — chief executive of General Electric — stepped down from the New York Fed board in April 2011 when it became clear that GE Capital would be regulated by the Fed as a systemically important financial institution. That was an entirely appropriate decision, removing any perception of a potential conflict of interest. (To be clear, both Mr. Immelt and the New York Fed said that he resigned because of pressures on his time.)
The second line — including from Mr. Dimon himself — is that at the New York Fed he plays “an advisory role.”
Again, this is not factually accurate. Here is some relevant text from the Guide to Conduct:
In their capacity as directors, these individuals are charged by law with the responsibility of supervising and controlling the operations of the Reserve Banks, under the general supervision of the Board of Governors, and for ensuring that the affairs of the Banks are administered fairly and impartially.
Plenty of governmental or quasi-governmental bodies have advisory groups. I’m on two — for the Congressional Budget Office (for economic forecasts) and for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (for the resolution or liquidation of systemically important financial institutions). Advisory groups do not oversee budgets and are not involved in personnel decisions.
I have no problem with the Federal Reserve — or anyone else in government — seeking and receiving input on local economic conditions. But that is no reason for a “too big to fail” banker or any other excessively powerful special interest to be on the board of the New York Fed.
The board of the New York Fed is not “advisory.” If Mr. Dimon really thinks that, he needs another orientation session with New York Fed officials. Or he could read the Federal Reserve Act.
The third position acknowledges that governance at the regional Feds is an anachronism, but argues that Mr. Dimon has done nothing wrong and that these boards can be fixed only by legislative action (see this editorial in The Financial Times on Wednesday, for example).
To be clear, I am not accusing Mr. Dimon or anyone else of any wrongdoing. I am calling for an independent inquiry into the JPMorgan losses — along the lines that my M.I.T. colleague Andrew Lo has suggested for all serious financial “accidents.”
I am also agreeing with Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner who, when asked about Mr. Dimon’s role at the New York Fed, told the PBS NewsHour:
It is very important, particularly given the damage caused by the crisis, that our system of oversight and safeguards and the enforcement authorities have not just the resources they need, but they are perceived to be above any political influence and have the independence and the ability to make sure these reforms are tough and effective so we protect the American people, again, from a crisis like this.
Legislative action to further adjust the governance of the New York Fed will not happen this year and is not likely in the near future. Frankly, saying in this context “we’ll wait for Congress” is the functional equivalent of saying, “let’s not fix it.”
Undermining the “integrity, dignity, and reputation of the Federal Reserve System” in current fashion poses grave risks. A powerful elite has risen with control over global megabanks — and the ability to mismanage their way into disaster, with huge negative implications for the broader economy.
We should be strengthening the power of the New York Fed and other institutions to constrain reckless risk-taking. Instead, we are standing idly by while our “extractive elite” (to use a great term from Professors Acemoglu and Robinson) enrich themselves and endanger the rest of us.
If you want to see where we are heading, on our current course, read “Why Nations Fail.”
LOVE/THOUGHT/JOURNAL: GIVE LOVE AND LOVE WILL BE RETURNED
They say you don’t know what you have till its gone.” Well, I know exactly what I want. I know what I want and I don’t even have it. See, in my past I was so caught up in the superficial race to put as many notches in your belt as possible. Now, now I realize that love is real, love exists, and to love means you care. Personally, I have said I love you to no more than ten people in my life, my parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters, and my animals. Love is an over used and under emotional word that just happens to exist between lovat and love affair in the dictionary. I never truly knew until now how much power was held in only four simple letters. My college roommate asked me one time if love was real, he said, “Hey do you ever think about settling down and actually being with someone and only loving them?” Being young and naive I naturally said no and that I was too young to worry about such a thought. Back then, it was all about who could I call for a midnight booty call just to satisfy me thru the next day. I don’t regret anything I did, I only regret not finding my soul mate sooner. However, all things, all people you meet, and every action you make happens for a reason. Everyone has a destiny in this life and mine was to be with someone who truly makes me happy and accepts me for me. Love is blind, Love is Evil, Love is harsh, and Love is gentle. Love is all the mistakes we make, the recoveries that happen along the road, and the heart breaks. To feel heart break means you felt love. For if one does not feel heart break ever in life, then they truly haven’t experienced love. To care about others you have to start with caring about yourself. A lot of people look at marriage as two people with a common agreement of love. Love isn’t measured by years, love isn’t measured by the amount of things your partner has bought you, and it damn sure isn’t measure by an agreement. No love, Love is the little things. You know the simple things of taking out the trash, or telling her she looks beautiful even if she looks like hell. No girl wants to be told she look’s ugly, need’s to change, or most importantly told she look’s tired. To them, that’s the same as saying hey… You’re looking rough. Back to the subject, if I find someone I truly care about, I don’t want to just share a bed with someone for the night. I want to share my bed, my heart, and my soul with that person forever. The sanctity of marriage is in jeopardy now days with all the divorces. People are getting married and then divorced faster than a jackrabbit can re populate. The sad thing is, is that people thinking its okay. That when the slightest of problems arises that you can just run away from them and never look back. Wrong. Guys, we don’t do enough for our ladies. We don’t, they do everything, they clean, they cook, they take care of kids, they work, and they still find time to make you happy. Women are the modern day super heroes and deserved to be treated like beautiful queens. Your woman is your queen as you are her king. So show it… show her how much you love her. Whether it be telling her you love her, or saying she’s beautiful, or even getting her flowers just because its Wednesday and you just want to show her how much you appreciate her. So here I will leave you on a couple final notes. For starters, all women are beautiful. They’re just beautiful in they’re own way. Beauty isn’t measure by looks; it is measured by who they are on the inside. Next, you can never say you’re beautiful to a woman enough. Woman love and I mean absolutely love being told that. Lastly, every girl is insecure. Do not ever call them out on it, don’t ever use it against them, and honestly, pretend like it doesn’t exist. Give love and love will be returned. Give thanks and thanks will be returned. Give hate and hate is what you will get. Appreciate every thing you have and never take the ones you love for granted. Women were made to be loved not understood.
LOVE/JOURNAL/THOUGHTS; THE HUMAN CONDITION
I can't say I'm happy, nor can I say that I'm utterly depressed... though at the moment a familiar downward spiral pulls at me, beckoning me down into obvious oblivion. However, I doubt I will descend much farther into the pit. Really, it does no one any good, for how can I do anything for those around me as abysmal as I if I myself am likewise incapacitated by the seductive waves of despair? Not that I don't care for myself, as well... but I become increasingly convinced my own soul is forfeit to the darkness that pervades my mind. I long for release, but I know it will not come anytime soon. I am stranded here, in this limbo of happiness and sorrow... the world in which I operate. I recognize that my life is not all too strenuous, and I really have no plausible explanation for my sadness, but it's there, plain and leering. Perhaps I lament for the pain and problems of those around me, though I hardly think I am this selfless. Why can I not escape the turmoil that rages within me, the constant battle against myself? Why can't I just love and accept what and who I am? Some mysteries are meant for closer scrutiny, I suppose.
If you're still reading, I'm surprised you haven't gone on to other things out of pure disgust. I myself am ashamed for writing this, but my options are limited, and I'm losing the ability to hide my musings from my immediate world. I feel trapped with myself, the only one I can really talk to. I realize how I must sound... so terribly melodramatic, pleading for attention, hoping someone, anyone will care... though with any luck they won't. I won't lie. I do want someone to care, to tell me I'm not as alone as I believe I am. And even though I know this will only burden those that read it, I selfishly choose to publish it, and for this I am sorry. I cannot justify hurting people to feel better about myself, and I won't try to.
As these paragraphs progress I can't help but notice how much you must disdain me by now, as I myself am becoming sick from this overly played out sympathy rag. But as it's darkest before the dawn, if you are still there, bear with me as I tell the second side to this depressing tale. Don't think that I have given up just yet to pursue some semblance of happiness. My current state is simply that: current. It will pass, and I will forget it soon. Even now, the sunbeams that pierce the glass of my window warm me to pleasanter thoughts. After all, the world is not shrouded in the cold night forever. The light of day smiles down upon the earth in turn, leaving us everlastingly yearning for its embrace, its promise of happiness. So it is now. My current problems are not as horrible as I make them out to be. Life is not over for me, as much as I sometimes will it to be, and at the moment, I see no reason for it to end just yet. Many adventures still wait to be had; people I have yet to meet. Death will not claim me for many years to come, unless Nostradamus be proven right.
And so I leave you on a happier note than when you began. Perhaps it has eased the resentment that must have been building inside you when you began this literary journey. Perhaps you can forgive me for dragging you through my dark and filth-ridden mind, which I certainly hope is possible. Love and friendship, I find, is no commodity today. But I do not expect you to love me, as I believe I have reiterated throughout this work. I only wish for you to know me as I am in the present moment, to feel how I recurringly feel. I wished to share this mind before it could be wasted. But however doubtful it may seem, with luck my musings have helped you somehow, instead of the hurt I dread it has caused.
As humans, pain is our inheritance... but peace is our reward.
If you're still reading, I'm surprised you haven't gone on to other things out of pure disgust. I myself am ashamed for writing this, but my options are limited, and I'm losing the ability to hide my musings from my immediate world. I feel trapped with myself, the only one I can really talk to. I realize how I must sound... so terribly melodramatic, pleading for attention, hoping someone, anyone will care... though with any luck they won't. I won't lie. I do want someone to care, to tell me I'm not as alone as I believe I am. And even though I know this will only burden those that read it, I selfishly choose to publish it, and for this I am sorry. I cannot justify hurting people to feel better about myself, and I won't try to.
As these paragraphs progress I can't help but notice how much you must disdain me by now, as I myself am becoming sick from this overly played out sympathy rag. But as it's darkest before the dawn, if you are still there, bear with me as I tell the second side to this depressing tale. Don't think that I have given up just yet to pursue some semblance of happiness. My current state is simply that: current. It will pass, and I will forget it soon. Even now, the sunbeams that pierce the glass of my window warm me to pleasanter thoughts. After all, the world is not shrouded in the cold night forever. The light of day smiles down upon the earth in turn, leaving us everlastingly yearning for its embrace, its promise of happiness. So it is now. My current problems are not as horrible as I make them out to be. Life is not over for me, as much as I sometimes will it to be, and at the moment, I see no reason for it to end just yet. Many adventures still wait to be had; people I have yet to meet. Death will not claim me for many years to come, unless Nostradamus be proven right.
And so I leave you on a happier note than when you began. Perhaps it has eased the resentment that must have been building inside you when you began this literary journey. Perhaps you can forgive me for dragging you through my dark and filth-ridden mind, which I certainly hope is possible. Love and friendship, I find, is no commodity today. But I do not expect you to love me, as I believe I have reiterated throughout this work. I only wish for you to know me as I am in the present moment, to feel how I recurringly feel. I wished to share this mind before it could be wasted. But however doubtful it may seem, with luck my musings have helped you somehow, instead of the hurt I dread it has caused.
As humans, pain is our inheritance... but peace is our reward.
POETRY;I WANT SOMEONE TO LOVE ME
I want someone to hug me
I want someone to kiss me
I want someone to tell me I'm handsome
Someone to say I'm perfect the way I am
But it's not going to happen
I have scars that run deeper then most can know
If I could only find the one capable with me
The one that doesn't care that I've been hurt
And the one that doesn't care I'm ugly
The one that doesn't care that I'm too skinny
I close my eyes and sigh
Where it matters
It grieves me to know this
My soul is saddened
So I keep thinking that my angel
Is right around the corner
When I know she's not
And my wishful thinking is staying here
Here in my head
Where it won't bother anyone in the world
Ever
Again
I just want someone to hug me
Someone to kiss me
I just want someone to tell me I'm handsome
Someone to say I'm wonderful
I just want someone to care about me
Someone to say they love me, and MEAN it
I just want that one person to be with me
Someone to love and cherish
I want someone to kiss me
I want someone to tell me I'm handsome
Someone to say I'm perfect the way I am
But it's not going to happen
I have scars that run deeper then most can know
If I could only find the one capable with me
The one that doesn't care that I've been hurt
And the one that doesn't care I'm ugly
The one that doesn't care that I'm too skinny
I close my eyes and sigh
Where it matters
It grieves me to know this
My soul is saddened
So I keep thinking that my angel
Is right around the corner
When I know she's not
And my wishful thinking is staying here
Here in my head
Where it won't bother anyone in the world
Ever
Again
I just want someone to hug me
Someone to kiss me
I just want someone to tell me I'm handsome
Someone to say I'm wonderful
I just want someone to care about me
Someone to say they love me, and MEAN it
I just want that one person to be with me
Someone to love and cherish
LOVE:THE MIDDLE EAST WAY TO LOVE
We in the West hear little about romantic love in other parts of the world, and this has led many people to believe it does not exist in non-Western cultures, or that it is a recent innovation, following on the heels of the global spread of Western media. In what follows, we will explore this question from the viewpoint of Arab Muslim culture in general, and Morocco during the last decade in particular. We begin with the Arab poetic tradition that influenced European notions of courtly love, and then examine the ideas of current Muslim authors on the position and influence of Islam on love, sexuality, and couple relationships. Finally, we look for evidence of these ideas in current experiences of love for Moroccan young people, living at a time when marriages arranged solely by parents are being replaced by those desired by the couple and approved by parents. In these matches, and the relationships preceding them, young men are more likely to feel love so strongly as to be "possessed," while young women always have a practical eye open, even when strongly drawn to a suitor.
Western views of love and romance
Most Americans today plan to "fall in love" and to choose a spouse on this basis. In Morocco, and in most of the world's cultural history, this has not been the primary basis for marriage; instead, marriage was an alliance between families, and the couple involved were meant to get along but did not need to be "in love." Yet the idea of love existed, and is becoming more important for young people in many parts of the world. Just what is "being in love," and is it similar in different cultures?
Although the topic of romantic love has been neglected by social scientists until recently, there are several important general discussions of this topic. In a 1992 book, Helen Fisher uses a natural history approach to analyze the occurrence of love (as well as monogamy, adultery and divorce) in various cultures. Fisher describes being in love or infatuation as being "Awash in ecstasy or apprehension ... obsessed, longing for the next encounter ... etherized by bliss" (1992, p. 37). She goes on to argue that "above all, there was the feeling of helplessness, the sense that this passion was irrational, involuntary, unplanned, uncontrollable" (1992, p. 40). Obstacles to the relationship seem to make the passion more intense. Finally, she concludes that this feeling must be universal among humans. She is supported in this by the research of two anthropologists, William Jankowiak (the editor of this book) and his colleague Edward Fischer (1992). They looked at data from 168 cultures worldwide, and found that 87 percent of them showed evidence that romantic love existed.
Tennov (1979) cites some evidence on the European attitude toward limerence or romantic love in the Middle Ages which resonates with the attitudes expressed in Islam and the Islamic culture of Morocco. She cites a thirteenth century handbook for witch hunters, the Malleus Maleficarum (Witches’ Hammer) by Kramer and Sprenger, prepared at the request of a Pope. The authors claim that "all witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is in women insatiable (Kramer & Sprenger, 1971, p. 122). As we will see below, some Muslim scholars feel that Islam mandates separation of the sexes based on a similar fear of women's seductive capacity. Thus being in love with a woman was said to be the cause of all evil, and the beloved woman controlled a man's actions by bewitching him (Tennov, 1979, p. 236). The Art of Courtly Love, a tenth/eleventh century work by Andreas Capellanus, also sees men who are in love as enslaved by women, and while the author excuses the men, he blames and condemns the women. His statement on women and love is echoed by one of the young Moroccan men we will quote below:
The mutual love which you seek in women you cannot find, for no woman ever loved a man or could bind herself to a lover in the mutual bonds of love. For a woman's desire is to get rich through love, but not to give her lover the solaces that please him.... (19_, p. 200).
Tennov notes that these attitudes supported a change from matrilineal to patrilineal descent with an accompanying control by males. She asserts males blamed females for a limerence or infatuation that tied them to women, concluding that "limerence may have been a persistent thorn in the movement to control women's reproductive capacities" (1979, p. 240). We suggest below that a similar ambivalence about women’s role in male romantic affections characterizes modern Moroccan society.
Love and lust in Arab Islam
The position of Islam on love and sexuality, at least in the western part of the Arab world, is convincingly summarized by a Tunisian author, Bouhdiba (1975/1985). Bouhdiba argues that Islam is pro-love and tolerant of sexuality when sanctioned by marriage:
Unity is attained by the affirmation of Eros. ... God himself is a being in love with his own creatures. From the thing to the Supreme Being, love exists as a guarantee of unity (Bouhdiba 1975/1985, p. 212).
Sexual pleasure in marriage is thought of as both a privilege and a duty. Congugal bliss is described as a foretaste of paradise and a proof of God’s love. On the other hand, Islamic accounts of love and sexuality often conclude that this divine model is seldom attained by human beings, and Bouhdiba suggests that "one must probably be a prophet oneself ... if one is to grasp, conceive of and above all achieve this essential unity" (ibid.). The rhetoric of love and erotic passion sanctioned by the religion has often led, according to Bouhdiba, to the unleashing of excessive libidinal force, and to the subjugation of women as the objects of male lust:
By confining woman to pleasure, one turns her into a plaything, a doll. By doing so one limits love to the ludic and one reduces the wife to the rank of woman-object, whose sole function is the satisfaction of her husband's sexual pleasure. Marital affection is reduced to mere pleasure, whereas in principle pleasure is only one element of it among others. But by stressing the child-bearing role of women, one valorizes the mother (Bouhdiba 1975/1985, p. 214).
Bouhdiba contends that the privileged yet closely circumscribed role of the mother in the Arab Muslim household, as well as the sharply gendered roles prescribed for adults, have created a cult of the mother that is the central dynamic in Muslim child-rearing and a cause of modal personality styles in "Arabo-Muslim" societies (ibid.). The corollaries of this basic personality structure include: unequal responsibility for control of one's passions, with the male allowed freer rein even as the female is blamed in instances of fornication; a mother-child bond that is the strongest tie in the society; and sharply contradictory expectations by the males reared in such households of women as both idealized nurturers and sex-objects. The mother-centered Arab household confronts the male child with a world of women he must eventually renounce, and many of the connotations of this early immersion in a society of mother, aunts, and sisters have erotic implications. The boy is taken to the hammam (public steam bath) by his mother, and Bouhdiba asserts that this and other experiences of physical intimacy with women leave a legacy of charged images that are evoked in the context of adult sexual activity, so that "the Arab woman is the queen of the unconscious even more than she is queen of the home or of night" (Bouhdiba 1975/1985, pp. 220-221). It is this primal, ambivalent, femaleness, we believe, that the adult male faces in the jinniya, `Aisha Qandisha, who possesses men and makes them her sexual slaves. Behind the idealized image of the pious and pure mother/sister is an antithetical fantasy of a fallen woman--lustful, seductive, and dangerous:
Arab man is still obsessed by the anti-wife whom he seeks in every possible form: dancer, film star, singer, prostitute, passing tourist, neighbour, etc. The dissociation of the ludic and the serious examined above still continues, then, and acts as a stumbling block to the sexual emancipation not only of women but also of men (Bouhdiba 1975/1985, p. 243).
The contemporary societies of North Africa, in Bouhdiba's view, are experiencing a sexual and religious crisis, as women seek to move beyond the traditional roles assigned them, and men resist this change:
Today Arab woman is striving to renounce the illusory kingdom of the mothers and is aspiring to an affirmative, positive rule, rather than a mythopoeic one. ... She is determined to affirm her ability to give. ... I give love, therefore I am. ... And yet there is a curious ambiguity inherent in the concept of female emancipation, as if the partners could be dissociated from the question, as if one could emancipate oneself alone! As if Arab man were not alienated by his own masculinity! (Bouhdiba 1975/1985, p. 239)
The Moroccan sociologist Fatima Mernissi has written several important works on gender differences in contemporary Moroccan society and the relation of these to Muslim history and modern political and economic conditions. In an argument similar to Bouhdiba's, she argues that gender politics are rooted in Islam and deeply revealing of the political issues facing North African society today:
The conservative wave against women in the Muslim world, far from being a regressive trend, is on the contrary a defense mechanism against profound changes in both sex roles and the touchy subject of sexual identity. The most accurate interpretation of this relapse into "archaic behaviors," such as conservatism on the part of men and resort to magic and superstitious rituals on the part of women, is as anxiety-reducing mechanisms in a world of shifting, volatile sexual identity (Mernissi, 1975/1987, pp. xxvii-xxviii).
Mernissi argues that, in contrast to Muslim praise of legitimate sexual pleasure, conjugal intimacy threatens the believer's single-minded devotion to God, and hence the loving couple is dangerous to religious society. While Bouhdiba asserted that the true basis of Islam is a unity through love (whether attainable or not), Mernissi concludes that "the entire Muslim social structure can be seen as an attack on, and a defence against, the disruptive power of female sexuality" (1975/1987, p. 44). Mernissi develops this argument from the concept of fitna or "chaos" (lit., temptation, enchantment), frequently applied to fornication, which she contends is embodied in women's erotic potential, so that society maintains its equilibrium only by controlling women's behavior. From the time of the Prophet on, Mernissi argues, males have felt the need to veil and seclude women and to surround sexual activity with rule in order to keep men safe from the seductive potential of women. The emphasis on female sexuality as the force that drives erotic relations for both partners in heterosexual encounters accords well with our reading of the role of magic and possession in love affairs. The male is anxious about his powerful longings for physical intimacy and the loss of autonomy it implies, and he projects desire onto the female, casting her as the agent of unrestrainable lust.
The Arab poetics of love: Layla and Majnun
In an influential work on the origins of Western European romantic discourse, Rougement argued that the seminal tradition of courtly lyrical poetry in 12th century France owed its origins to the confluence of Persian Manicheanism and Middle Eastern Sufi rhetoric transmitted by Muslim Spain (Rougement, 1954, pp. 102-107). These Eastern sources of romantic imagery and practice drew on Arabian models in the qasidas (odes) of Imru' al-Qays and other oral poets of the late pre-Islamic period (Sells, 1989), and this native Arab romanticism is a well-spring of passionate language for modern society, with sources at least as deep as those of Western Europe. A thousand years before Romeo was moved by the radiance from Juliet’s window, the oral poets of Arabia rhapsodized about the qualities of the remembered belovéd.
The most persistent and evocative of the early Arabic romantic stories has probably been that of the star-crossed lovers, Layla and Qays/Majnun, whose unconsummated passion has inspired both the scholarly and the popular imagination of the Arab world for many centuries. The legend of Layla and Majnun probably has pre-Islamic roots. The earliest recorded version is that of Ibn Qutayba (d. 889), and a variety of anecdotes attributed to the love-crazed poet were recorded in the ninth and tenth centuries A.D. (Khairallah, 1980, p. 49). The early sources attribute to Majnun a variety of poetic fragments also credited to other poets, including all those that mention a female beloved named Layla (from the Arabic l-y-l, night) (Khairallah, 1980, p. 53). Arab and Western scholars are divided on whether there was an actual Qays bin al-Mulawwah, of the Beni 'Amir tribe, who lived in the seventh Christian (first Muslim) century. In any case, the verses attributed to him passed from the oral tradition to a more or less stabile text when they were compiled a century later (Khairallah, 1980, pp. 60-61). By 1245 A.D. a written corpus of Qays/Majnun's poetry existed, and this and other versions are widely read today. In later centuries the story of Majnun and Layla was adopted and expanded by the Persian sufi poets Jami and Nizami; and it has retained a fond place in the popular imagination of both Arab and non-Arab Muslims. The modern Egyptian poet Ahmad Shawqi (d. 1932) wrote a a verse tragedy "Majnun and Layla," and an immensely popular version in song was created by the Egyptian composer/singer Abdel Wahab, and this is still widely played and sung on Arabic radio stations.
The story itself, as recounted by Ibn Qutayba, has two children, Qays and Layla, of neighboring clans, growing up together in the proud herding culture of Arabia. The two meet as children and, each being perfect in beauty and grace, fall immediately in love:
I fell in love with Layla when she was a heedless child,
when no sign of her bosom has yet appeared to playmates.
Two children guarding the flocks. Would that we never
had grown up, nor had the flocks grown old!
(Khairallah, 1980, p. 136)
Qays begins to compose poetry to Layla, but she is unwilling to respond in public to his praise of her beauty, and her family is shamed by this broadcasting of love. Qays becomes as one possessed by jnun, the usually invisible beings who share the earth with humans, and he is thereafter known as "Majnun," possessed. He tears off his clothes and lives alone in the desert with his poetry, and he will converse only with those who ask him of Layla. All attempts to mediate between the two families and arrange a marriage fail, and Qays/Majnun spends his life as a wandering mendicant, communing not with the real, but with the imagined Layla:
You kept me close until you put a spell on me
and with words that bring the mountain-goats down to the plains.
When I had no way out, you shunned me,
But you left what you left within my breast.
(Khairallah, 1980, p. 136)
Majnun's poetry is itself the source of his estrangement from Layla, in the sense that her parents object to the notoriety it brings them through her--and Layla herself is described as complaining of Majnun's poetical divulgence of the secret of their love (Khairallah, 1980, p. 65). Khairallah argues that in the Arabic tradition from which the Majnun corpus springs, "love and madness are pretexts for poetry" (1980, p. 66). Majnun's love-torment may therefore be seen as drawing on his poetic gift, since a talent for poetry is associated with a tendency to powerful cathartic emotion, and with possession by a creative daemon. Madness is also a metaphor for passion, however, and it may be “feigned in order to claim inspiration and total bewitchment by the muse of love and poetry” (ibid.). Not only is the actual Layla of the legend portrayed as the natural stimulus for Majnun's passion, but her name is used in incantatory verses reminiscent of Sufi dikr, in which chanted repetitions of evocative syllables induced a meditative trance analogous to that of the Prophet Mohammed when he received each part of the Quran. The powerful need to divulge the message received in poetic form through such cathartic experience has remained a feature of popular practice in many parts of the Arab world, and a recourse to poetry for expression of the strongest and most personal feelings is characteristic of many traditional Arab men and women (cf. Abu-Lughod).
The love of Majnun for Layla is fated, inexorable, transforming, and undying, and it is compared to a magical spell under which he labors and by which he is inspired:
She's Magic; yet for magic one finds a talisman,
and I can never find someone to break her spell.
(Khairallah, 1980, p. 74)
Majnun’s passion for Layla has been represented in each era of Arab and Persian writing. For the 13th century philosopher Ibn 'Arabi, as for other Sufi writers, Majnun's love is represented as ultimately transcending the real, physical Layla to attain a mystical union with her idealized form (Khairallah, 1980, p. 78). From the earliest of the verses ascribed to him, Khairallah argues, it is "difficult to draw a demarcation line in Majnun's poetry between the erotic and the mystical, or between the profane and the sacred" (ibid, p. 81.). For a thousand years this tragic love story has inspired Arabic-speakers, and millions can quote a stanza or two of Majnun's poetry, such as his reaction to finding himself one night at the camp of Layla's people:
I pass by the house, the dwelling of Layla
and I kiss this wall and that wall.
It's not love of the dwelling that empassions my heart
but of she who dwells in the dwelling.
The examples we present below of love and romantic longing come from a society geographically and temporally distant from the Arabia of Qays and Layla, but one in which romantic love is still extolled, and men are still possessed and obsessed as a consequence of passion.
Zawiya, the community in which we have heard most of the examples of passion and obsessive love that follow, is an Arabic-speaking town of roughly 12000 in the Rharb, an agricultural region of northern Morocco. We have been interested in Zawiya for over 25 years, and one or both of us has visited every year or two. In 1982 we spent a year in Zawiya as part of the Harvard Adolescence Project, conducting fieldwork on adolescence (cf. Davis & Davis, 1989). We observed family dynamics and child-rearing practices and interviewed over 100 young residents of Zawiya about a variety of topics, including love, marriage, and sexuality. In 1984, susan returned and recorded open-ended interviews with twenty adolesents, and in 1989-90 she recorded young adults in Zawiya and in Rabat (the Moroccan capital) their beliefs and experiences concerning love and marriage.
The Demon Lover: `Aisha Qandisha
One sort of love-possession seen in Morocco is of a less poetic sort than experienced by Majnun, but its sufferers are described with the same epithet--"majnun," possessed by jnun. Experience of the jnun, invisible beings with whom humans share the earth, is pervasive in Morocco. Crapanzano, whose work on the ethnopsychiatry of possession in Morocco is the best in English, has presented several examples of possession by the most distinctive of these beings, the jinniya (singular female of jnun) `Aisha Qandisha (Crapanzano 1973, 1975, 1977). Capable of appearing in visible human form, she is the most commonly named of the jnun, who are most often referred to generically. Males are the usual victims of Lalla (Lady) `Aisha, as she will often be called to avoid the risk of explicitly naming her. She dwells near wells and water-courses and may appear either as a seductive and attractive woman or as a hideous hag. If the victim does not notice her cow or goat feet and plunge an iron knife into the ground, he will be struck (mdrub) and inhabited by her (mskun). He is then likely to become impotent or to lose interest in human women, and he may suffer a variety of physical or psychological effects unless and until his possession is brought under control by the intervention of one of the popular Moroccan curing groups. Although there are many of these in all parts of Morocco, the Hamadsha (cf. Crapanzano, 1973) are the group particularly concerned with possession by `Aisha Qandisha. Members of the Hamadsha are found in most neighborhoods of northern Morocco. They are likely to have themselves been possessed by `Aisha Qandisha or other jnun before joining the group, and they have learned to alleviate the effects of possession by means of distinctive trance-inducing musical performances and sacrificial rituals. Several of the accounts we have heard in Zawiya of males overwhelmed by sexual or romantic problems were attributed to possession by `Aisha Qandisha or other of the jnun, and several of these have been successfully treated by Hamadsha performances.
In a detailed account of Hamadsha history and practice recounted for Douglas in 1982, a Hamadsha member from Zawiya attributed the central role of `Aisha Qandisha in Hamadsha belief and curing to the fact that the jinniya had fallen in love with one of the patron saints of the Hamadsha, Sidi (saint) `Ahmed Dhughi, several hundred years ago. Sidi Ahmed was inspired to play the flute and drum of the Hamadsha, and women heard him and fell instantly in love. The attitude of the Hamadsha toward Qandisha is ambivalent. On the one hand she is seen as the source of the suffering they and their clients experience and which draws them to the Hamadsha music and trance. Yet many of the terms used to refer to her connote respect or deference, and this does not in every case seem to be a mere attempt to evade her wrath. And just as the jnun number among themselves Muslims and unbelievers, those influenced by `Aisha Qandisha and other jnun may be seen as good and pious people, spoken of as struck by "clean" `Aisha, or as derelict, violent persons transgressing against Islam, and hence stuck by "dirty" `Aisha (cf. Davis, unpublished).
Crapanzano notes that the language of possession offers the sufferer a collective symbolism for experiences of problems of sexuality, marriage, or family responsibility. Males who are unable to carry out expected roles of suitor, husband, or family provider may undergo an experience of possession by `Aisha Qandisha, whose emotional demands and jealous interference with relations with human women externalize the apparent psychological conflict. Both Crapanzano's published accounts of possession by `Aisha Qandisha and those we have heard frequently involve possession after a failed love affair, an estrangement from a spouse, or the death of a family member.
Tajj: An example of love-obsession
Milder forms of suffering caused by failed or unrequited love are often attributed not to the jnun explicitly but to magical influence, as in a case recounted to Douglas in 1982. The young man described, N., was a friend of our friend and research assistant, Hamid Elasri. The first meeting with him occurred on one of the long night-time walks around Kabar, a small city near Zawiya, during the Ramadan fast--a time when many people stay awake much of the night after breaking the day-long fast with a heavy meal, and walk about town visiting with friends. N. called out to Hamid, and they had a brief conversation on a street-corner, agreeing to meet to talk later in the evening. Hamid gave the following account of N.'s troubles:
N., who was about 24 years old in 1982, had been engaged khotbato a girl for several years. They were both elementary teachers in a nearby large city. He wanted to break the engagement, but he was both worried about the dowry money he would have to repay and afraid of the magic [suhur] he believed her family had put on him. He believed they put something in his food which caused him to be obsessed [tajj] with the girl. He also became impotent, and he found himself giving a lot of money to her family. What money he had left he was increasingly spending for wine to try to forget her. The girl's family were apparently pressing him to turn over his entire salary to them. He told his father about this, who took him to a fqi--a man with Quranic and practical religious training. The latter examined his hand [muhalla] and wrote something there as a means of telling the subject's current situation and future, said N. had indeed been the victim of magic, and performed some counterspells.
Like other accounts of which we heard concerning infatuation, there is an assumption here that the feelings of love are overwhelming and pathological, and that they imply supernatural influence. Blame for the male's inability to deal with his love reasonably, or to put it aside, is laid on the female beloved (and her family). N.'s father intervenes on his behalf, calling on the white magical powers of a fqi to counter the black magic of the girl's family. A few days later, Hamid and Douglas met N. in another town, and he said he was enroute to visit relatives. Hamid assumed, however, that N. was in fact going to visit a nearby beach resort, where we had just seen the brother of his fiancée, but that he had been ashamed to admit this evidence of how obsessed he still was. The following week, near the end of Ramadan Douglas had occasion to talk with N., whom we met on another night-time walk. He asked about Douglas's interest in Moroccan psychology, and pointedly asked what he thought about the problems that arise when a man and woman in the same line of work marry, as is the case with him and his fiancée as newly trained primary teachers. N.’s problem had not resolved itself when we left Morocco at the end of the year.
N.'s inability to reconcile himself to marriage to his fiancée, despite his obsession with her, is a more extreme form of a male love-dilemma of which Douglas heard repeatedly. The male finds a young woman toward whom he is powerfully drawn sexually and emotionally, but either there are powerful obstacles--often in the form of family opposition or limited economic resources--in the way of a marriage. Gradually the man grows suspicious or hostile toward the woman, and he begins to expect or experience physical and emotional symptoms he attributes to magical influence. Moroccan popular culture is permeated with the concepts of magical influence and poisoning, although suspected instances are treated with circumspection by the concerned parties out of fear of the uncanny.
Romance, love, and marriage in Morocco
Many changes are occurring in Morocco today. While the population was mainly rural in the 1960s, it is now about equally rural and urban. Public education barely existed before Morocco became independent from France in 1956, while today all children should attend at least primary school. Although this goal is still being pursued in remote rural areas, in cities nearly all children attend. Many young people attend high school, while few parents did; in the mixed classes, young people have a chance to meet. Marriages in earlier generations were mainly alliances arranged between families, to which the young people were supposed to agree. Today many of the young, especially males, select a potential mate and request their parents' approval. Girls too may have someone in mind, but it is not culturally acceptable for them to make such suggestions.
These trends were apparent in the semi-rural town of Zawiya, where we carried out research on adolescence in 1982 (Davis and Davis 1989). When we asked 100 adolescents who should select a marriage partner, 64% of the girls and 55% of the boys said the parents should choose. Older youth, and those with more years of education, were more likely to want to make the choice themselves. Among a smaller number of their older siblings, about half chose their own spouse, but only one fourth of the adolescents said they wanted to do so (1989:126).
When we pressed him for estimates about the frequency of pure love marriages, Hamid suggested that 5% in his experience marry for love, 30% through family arrangement, and another 20-30% when forced by legal or family pressure after the girl became pregnant.
This conversation grew out of Hamid's recounting of the story of A., a Zawiya friend whom he and Douglas were planning to visit at a beach resort where he was vacationing away from his estranged wife. He had married a beautiful local young woman who had been previously married off by her family to an older Moroccan man in France. The first husband divorced her a year later, when she hadn't produced a child. She became pregnant by A., and her family pressured his family to arrange a wedding. After the marriage, A.'s mother increasingly put down the bride, and she would become angry, catching A. in the middle. A. was in the process of divorcing the wife, because he couldn't fight his mother. He still loved the wife, who bore his child after they separated.
Hamid and Douglas found A. at the beach resort, and spent an evening with him listening to Arabic and Western music and talking about life and love. A. was intensely preoccupied with his wife, and he had spent much of his vacation week at the resort listening to romantic music and dreaming about her. He was fond of Elvis Presley's song, "Buttercup," with its vivid imagery of the palpitations of passion:
When I'm near the girl that I love the best
My heart beats so it scares me to death.
I'm proud to say that she's my buttercup
I'm in love, I'm all shook up.
The Arabic song to which A. was especially devoted at this time was a poignant piece by the popular female singer Fathet Warda. It's refrain, a drawn-out "You have no thought [of me],"ma'andikshshifikara, seemed to A. to capture the feeling his wife must be having for him, and made him realize how he longed for her. A few months later, A. and his wife were reconciled.
Zawiya attitudes toward marriage
To better understand young people's feelings on who should choose a spouse, we devised a marriage dilemma that we discussed late in 1982 with twelve young women and three young men who were especially comfortable talking to us. We said there was a couple who loved each other and wanted to get married, but the parents were opposed. We had to stress that they were really in love, because there is an expectation that a young man may declare his love just to convince a girl to spend time with him; this is a semi-rural setting where dating is disapproved. When we asked what the couple should do, eight people said they should follow the parents’ wishes, and six that they should pursue what the couple wants, but in a way to reach a compromise and make it socially acceptable, including entreating relatives to convince the parents. Only one young man, aged 18 and in high school, said that the couple's wishes were clearly more important than those of the parents.
If that boy gets married to the girl he likes, they will certainly live happily. Because money is not happiness; happiness is something the heart feels. The boy must have the feeling that the girl likes him. This is why I say that if the boy is hooked on a girl and he truly loves her, he should go and propose to marry her no matter what she's like. It is not the father who should choose for the son a girl he doesn't like. It is the son who should decide what he likes. ... It is not the father who is getting married.
A more typical response was that of a young woman of nineteen who had attended primary school.
She should follow her parents' decision. Parents come first. ... If she goes against their wishes it will be her own reponsibility. She'd be ungrateful [literally, cursed by them], very much so. If she marries him against their will, she'll face a catastrophe, an accident or something--or even death, some kind of death. They may have an accident or something--she shouldn't. Her parents told her not to marry him: she shouldn't marry him, period. ... Since she has grown up, [her parents] have taken good care of her: they clothe her, give her money, provide for her needs. Whatever she asks for they provide, and then at the end they give an opinion and she rejects it. This is not possible; it is not admissible that she doesn't accept that advice.
Like many others, she notes the respect due to parents, and fears negative consequences of disobedience. Others said more specifically that if they married against parental wishes, they would have no support in marital disputes, and nowhere to return to in case of divorce.
This young woman's response reflects both a social conformity and a practicality in matters of the heart that we found in most young women, single and married, semi-rural and urban. We have noted elsewhere that young women in Morocco develop a sense of socially responsible behavior (`aql) sooner than their male counterparts (Davis and Davis, 1989, p. 49), and this is reflected in their attitudes toward romance. While Douglas heard several tales of young men's infatuations and longing, Susan heard very little to suggest that young women had similar experiences. They did have romantic encounters, and did care for the young men, but not as totally and intensely as the young men--or it was not apparent in the way they spoke. Furthermore, they nearly always had a practical eye open to the consequences of their relationships, which could be social censure, but that they hoped would be marriage.
Young women's personal experiences of love
When girls discussed magical influences on them related to love, they usually mentioned a spell cast to keep them from marrying, not something done by a male who wanted to possess them. Only a few young women talked about love in a way that approached the kind of intensity described in early and current Arabic songs and poetry, and which Douglas encountered in young men. One case was that of Amina, a Zawiya woman in her twenties with a primary education.
A girl has to go through a period of intense attachment (rabta). The girl feels a great love for a boy. They start talking, kidding around. She starts learning new things [from him]. They exchange thoughts. The girl starts to become aware of things [lit. awakens].
Amina notes that it is all right for couples to have such interactions now, though discreetly, and how things have changed.
In the past it wasn't right. It was shameful for a boy to talk to a girl. A boy would have one week to ask for a girl's hand and marry her ten or fifteen days later. He only gets a good look at her when she moves into his house.
Amina describes her own experience of romance:
A boy will tell you "I trust you. I care for you...If I don't see you for just half a day I go crazy; it seems to me I haven't seen you for a year." And at that time the boy does have feelings. He cares for you. Truly. Powerfully. But he doesn't have any money [to marry], and you just keep sacrificing yourself for him, talking to him, laughing with him. And you lose your value [reputation]--and your family's. Okay, people see you together, but you say, "They don't matter to me. Because even if I'm standing with him, he'll marry me, God willing."
And finally, he doesn't marry you - how do you feel? It feels like a calamity, like a "psychological complex." You feel angry at home, and you're always upset, because you don't trust anyone, even your parents. You sacrificed yourself for that boy, talking to him even in public.... (Davis and Davis 1989, p. 123).
Notice that Amina repeats the boy's intense statements, but not her own. She clearly felt strongly about him, both risking her reputation to be seen with him in public, and evidenced by her condition after they broke off. But is the core of her concern lost love or a lost opportunity for marriage? Which was it that motivated her to take the risks of which she was clearly aware?
Another young woman reports romantic experiences close to what Douglas heard from young men, but still with somewhat less intensity, and, certainly, an awareness of the consequences of her actions. When we spoke Jamila was married and in her twenties. She had grown up in a small town but now lived with her husband in the city where she had attended the university.
Jamila describes a typical way of couples getting together, something she first experienced around fifteen:
There were guys who followed me, but I did not feel anything towards them. Nothing; I had no reaction to them. They were classmates, but I never thought of having a relationship with any of them. And when anyone wrote me a letter telling me about his feelings toward me, I thought it was humiliating; I thought he just wanted to make fun of me and take advantage of me. I got mad at him and wouldn't talk to him anymore.
At sixteen, one young man who had been just a friend became something more. She found herself
wishing to be near Karim. I used to hope to meet him all the time, and I started desiring kissing and hugging him. That was because when I was near him, I used to feel very relaxed; I felt a great pleasure at being near him. Also, when I was going out with him, I tried everything possible to meet him. When he told me to meet him at night, I would go out at night, even when it was dark...I used to tell [my mother] that I was going to study with Naima...
Yes, he taught me a bit of courage. When we were together, he told me about a movie he had seen or a book he had read. Sometimes he kissed me, but when he wanted to sleep with me, I couldn't accept. I wouldn't let him. I never had sex with Karim...I used to tell myself "If I sleep with him, I will stop liking him." That was my idea; I don't know why. ... I used to have worries. I knew there was the possibility of getting pregnant. The other possibility was that he would lose control and then I would lose my virginity.
While she gives practical reasons for avoiding sex, Jamila also describes the ideal of platonic love a bit later.
Emotions are strong in youth. I think that if I had slept with Karim, I wouldn't have remained so attached to him. ... That's called platonic love. In platonic love, however, there are no kisses, no sexual relations, nothing. One loves a girl and they know they love each other, but they don't meet. Our love was in a way ideal. If we had slept together, we probably wouldn't have stayed--I personally still feel attached to him and still think about him. I don't know about his feelings.
The relationship finally ended after about four years. Yet even in its midst, Jamila was not entirely carried away.
I also used to tell myself that because of the problems with Karim and his family, I was certainly not going to remain with him a long time. Despite my love for him, our relationship was doomed to stop. I was always afraid of the future. ... There was no hope.
Partly because of this, and for other practical reasons, in spite of her love she refuses Karim's offer to take things into their own hands and elope.
Once he suggested I run away with him. ... I said no. I didn't want to do that. I told myself that even if I had run away with him, I would have had to go home sometime, and they would have refused to take me. I was worried that it would hurt my father and be embarrassing to him. My family gave me a certan freedom to go wherever I wanted to. They didn't ask me for anything as long as I passed my exams at the end of the year, They also used to buy me whatever I wanted. So in the end, I just couldn't leave. It didn't make sense. ... But any day I wanted to meet [Karim], I did.
Other young women described marrying their husbands because they loved them, but in a matter-of-fact rather than passionate way. Qasmiya is a small-town woman in her twenties, married for three years. She describes the process of her marriage to a husband she cares for. It provides a good example of the results many traditional young women (she has a primary education) hope for when they venture to interact with men in an environment where dating is not accepted.
I met him one day when I went out to the country...he was working. He said "Hey, girl," and I said "Yes." He said "Would you knit me a sweater?" and I replied "When you are ready, I'll knit for you." One day I was passing by, and he was on his way to visit his friend, our neighbor's son. ... He asked his friend, "Does this girl live here" and the other said yes. He asked, "Can I speak with you?" I answered, "If it is something serious, I will speak with you, but if you are going to take advantage of me and then abandon me...." I spoke with him over about fifteen days, and then he came: he brought his family and came to propose officially. He proposed quickly, I mean, we didn't wait long...When I spoke with him, I found what I wanted. I talked with my mother. I told her there is a guy who wants to come and propose to me. I told my mother because it is not proper to tell my father such a thing. I told my sister first. ... and she told my mother.... I said, "I don't speak with him, but they are coming to propose," and his sisters and family came and my parents agreed.... When I spoke with him, I knew that he is good. He has a white heart; he is not nasty. From his warmth, I knew that he is good. He buys me clothes, gets things [presents] for me. ... My husband takes good care of me; I mean, we assist each other. He loves me. ... I mean, I show my pride in him to my girlfriends and he shows his pride in me to his boyfriends.
Another young matron says she married her husband because she loved him, but her description is hardly rhapsodic; her concern with the practical is evident. She was in her twenties and had completed high school, and been married and living in a medium-sized town for about three years when we spoke. She had met her husband in his office.
At the beginning, I was not sure that he was a good man. I married him because I loved him, that's all. You cannot know if he's good. I used to speak with him on the phone. ... because in [a small town] I couldn't meet him--impossible. Someone could see us and tell my father or something or tell my family.... He is serious. Before marriage I wasn't sure about that. I couldn't know, because you have to live with someone; it's life that lets you know if a person is good. I found out that he is serious from what people say and from what I see. Since I don't work, I rely on him for many things.
An urban young woman near thirty said she had been through two "shocks" or crises before she married her current husband at twenty six. Although she didn't go into detail, the crises involved men she didn't marry. She met her husband through relatives, and married him after three months. She was currently working and taking university courses, and had two small children.
I had decided to marry him, and to convince my parents if it was necessary. ... I had experienced a shock in my life, and it affected me. I said "I might find a husband, or I might not;" I got sort of a complex.... [One] was frivolous: he used to date many girls and lie, and my husband was not like that. So I was attracted to him and said, "Anyway, he won't lie to me or take advantage of me."
Marriage for me must be founded on love; one cannot marry someone without love--impossible. Then one has children and they become everything to you; you have to raise them. That is marriage for me, hapiness. There are ups and downs, of course, but with love you can surpass them, you can make sacrifices.
Farida, an urban teacher and graduate student of thirty who is still single discussed her problems in finding the right man, and her family's reactions.
Everybody in my family is upset; my mother wasn't, but now she is. There is a problem: it's really unbelievable. ... I'm a little concerned, but not in the same way as my family. I'm concerned because I cannot find a perfect match. I've been meeting young men, but I haven't been satisfied....
At the beginning I say, "This is the man of my life," but when we talk and become more intimate I get another picture of him. I dislike every one for a different reason. I don't want to marry for marriage's sake, just to have children and a family. I want someone who shares my studies, my interests. I want something besides marriage and home, something that would link us more...I may be wrong, because everybody says that you can't find a perfect match....
They say in my family "You must marry a rich man, someone who has a car".... In my family they don't insist on his youth or good looks. No, what is important is that he has money.
Although Farida disapproves of marriages based on material concerns, she says the family has much influence with such demands. She describes a friend of hers who loved a young man and had a good relationship, but he was not rich. In the end the girl decided she wanted a more comfortable life, and did not marry him.
Susan encountered a similar view in a discussion with a Moroccan social scientist in his early thirties. She said that she thought marriage in Morocco was changing, and that while in the past it was an alliance between families based largely on economic considerations, today romantic love between the partners was more involved. He said no, it was almost the opposite. In the past, money wasn't that important, but today, if a young man didn't wear a suit and have a car, a young woman wouldn't consider him, even if she cared for him.
Western views of love and romance
Most Americans today plan to "fall in love" and to choose a spouse on this basis. In Morocco, and in most of the world's cultural history, this has not been the primary basis for marriage; instead, marriage was an alliance between families, and the couple involved were meant to get along but did not need to be "in love." Yet the idea of love existed, and is becoming more important for young people in many parts of the world. Just what is "being in love," and is it similar in different cultures?
Although the topic of romantic love has been neglected by social scientists until recently, there are several important general discussions of this topic. In a 1992 book, Helen Fisher uses a natural history approach to analyze the occurrence of love (as well as monogamy, adultery and divorce) in various cultures. Fisher describes being in love or infatuation as being "Awash in ecstasy or apprehension ... obsessed, longing for the next encounter ... etherized by bliss" (1992, p. 37). She goes on to argue that "above all, there was the feeling of helplessness, the sense that this passion was irrational, involuntary, unplanned, uncontrollable" (1992, p. 40). Obstacles to the relationship seem to make the passion more intense. Finally, she concludes that this feeling must be universal among humans. She is supported in this by the research of two anthropologists, William Jankowiak (the editor of this book) and his colleague Edward Fischer (1992). They looked at data from 168 cultures worldwide, and found that 87 percent of them showed evidence that romantic love existed.
Tennov (1979) cites some evidence on the European attitude toward limerence or romantic love in the Middle Ages which resonates with the attitudes expressed in Islam and the Islamic culture of Morocco. She cites a thirteenth century handbook for witch hunters, the Malleus Maleficarum (Witches’ Hammer) by Kramer and Sprenger, prepared at the request of a Pope. The authors claim that "all witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is in women insatiable (Kramer & Sprenger, 1971, p. 122). As we will see below, some Muslim scholars feel that Islam mandates separation of the sexes based on a similar fear of women's seductive capacity. Thus being in love with a woman was said to be the cause of all evil, and the beloved woman controlled a man's actions by bewitching him (Tennov, 1979, p. 236). The Art of Courtly Love, a tenth/eleventh century work by Andreas Capellanus, also sees men who are in love as enslaved by women, and while the author excuses the men, he blames and condemns the women. His statement on women and love is echoed by one of the young Moroccan men we will quote below:
The mutual love which you seek in women you cannot find, for no woman ever loved a man or could bind herself to a lover in the mutual bonds of love. For a woman's desire is to get rich through love, but not to give her lover the solaces that please him.... (19_, p. 200).
Tennov notes that these attitudes supported a change from matrilineal to patrilineal descent with an accompanying control by males. She asserts males blamed females for a limerence or infatuation that tied them to women, concluding that "limerence may have been a persistent thorn in the movement to control women's reproductive capacities" (1979, p. 240). We suggest below that a similar ambivalence about women’s role in male romantic affections characterizes modern Moroccan society.
Love and lust in Arab Islam
The position of Islam on love and sexuality, at least in the western part of the Arab world, is convincingly summarized by a Tunisian author, Bouhdiba (1975/1985). Bouhdiba argues that Islam is pro-love and tolerant of sexuality when sanctioned by marriage:
Unity is attained by the affirmation of Eros. ... God himself is a being in love with his own creatures. From the thing to the Supreme Being, love exists as a guarantee of unity (Bouhdiba 1975/1985, p. 212).
Sexual pleasure in marriage is thought of as both a privilege and a duty. Congugal bliss is described as a foretaste of paradise and a proof of God’s love. On the other hand, Islamic accounts of love and sexuality often conclude that this divine model is seldom attained by human beings, and Bouhdiba suggests that "one must probably be a prophet oneself ... if one is to grasp, conceive of and above all achieve this essential unity" (ibid.). The rhetoric of love and erotic passion sanctioned by the religion has often led, according to Bouhdiba, to the unleashing of excessive libidinal force, and to the subjugation of women as the objects of male lust:
By confining woman to pleasure, one turns her into a plaything, a doll. By doing so one limits love to the ludic and one reduces the wife to the rank of woman-object, whose sole function is the satisfaction of her husband's sexual pleasure. Marital affection is reduced to mere pleasure, whereas in principle pleasure is only one element of it among others. But by stressing the child-bearing role of women, one valorizes the mother (Bouhdiba 1975/1985, p. 214).
Bouhdiba contends that the privileged yet closely circumscribed role of the mother in the Arab Muslim household, as well as the sharply gendered roles prescribed for adults, have created a cult of the mother that is the central dynamic in Muslim child-rearing and a cause of modal personality styles in "Arabo-Muslim" societies (ibid.). The corollaries of this basic personality structure include: unequal responsibility for control of one's passions, with the male allowed freer rein even as the female is blamed in instances of fornication; a mother-child bond that is the strongest tie in the society; and sharply contradictory expectations by the males reared in such households of women as both idealized nurturers and sex-objects. The mother-centered Arab household confronts the male child with a world of women he must eventually renounce, and many of the connotations of this early immersion in a society of mother, aunts, and sisters have erotic implications. The boy is taken to the hammam (public steam bath) by his mother, and Bouhdiba asserts that this and other experiences of physical intimacy with women leave a legacy of charged images that are evoked in the context of adult sexual activity, so that "the Arab woman is the queen of the unconscious even more than she is queen of the home or of night" (Bouhdiba 1975/1985, pp. 220-221). It is this primal, ambivalent, femaleness, we believe, that the adult male faces in the jinniya, `Aisha Qandisha, who possesses men and makes them her sexual slaves. Behind the idealized image of the pious and pure mother/sister is an antithetical fantasy of a fallen woman--lustful, seductive, and dangerous:
Arab man is still obsessed by the anti-wife whom he seeks in every possible form: dancer, film star, singer, prostitute, passing tourist, neighbour, etc. The dissociation of the ludic and the serious examined above still continues, then, and acts as a stumbling block to the sexual emancipation not only of women but also of men (Bouhdiba 1975/1985, p. 243).
The contemporary societies of North Africa, in Bouhdiba's view, are experiencing a sexual and religious crisis, as women seek to move beyond the traditional roles assigned them, and men resist this change:
Today Arab woman is striving to renounce the illusory kingdom of the mothers and is aspiring to an affirmative, positive rule, rather than a mythopoeic one. ... She is determined to affirm her ability to give. ... I give love, therefore I am. ... And yet there is a curious ambiguity inherent in the concept of female emancipation, as if the partners could be dissociated from the question, as if one could emancipate oneself alone! As if Arab man were not alienated by his own masculinity! (Bouhdiba 1975/1985, p. 239)
The Moroccan sociologist Fatima Mernissi has written several important works on gender differences in contemporary Moroccan society and the relation of these to Muslim history and modern political and economic conditions. In an argument similar to Bouhdiba's, she argues that gender politics are rooted in Islam and deeply revealing of the political issues facing North African society today:
The conservative wave against women in the Muslim world, far from being a regressive trend, is on the contrary a defense mechanism against profound changes in both sex roles and the touchy subject of sexual identity. The most accurate interpretation of this relapse into "archaic behaviors," such as conservatism on the part of men and resort to magic and superstitious rituals on the part of women, is as anxiety-reducing mechanisms in a world of shifting, volatile sexual identity (Mernissi, 1975/1987, pp. xxvii-xxviii).
Mernissi argues that, in contrast to Muslim praise of legitimate sexual pleasure, conjugal intimacy threatens the believer's single-minded devotion to God, and hence the loving couple is dangerous to religious society. While Bouhdiba asserted that the true basis of Islam is a unity through love (whether attainable or not), Mernissi concludes that "the entire Muslim social structure can be seen as an attack on, and a defence against, the disruptive power of female sexuality" (1975/1987, p. 44). Mernissi develops this argument from the concept of fitna or "chaos" (lit., temptation, enchantment), frequently applied to fornication, which she contends is embodied in women's erotic potential, so that society maintains its equilibrium only by controlling women's behavior. From the time of the Prophet on, Mernissi argues, males have felt the need to veil and seclude women and to surround sexual activity with rule in order to keep men safe from the seductive potential of women. The emphasis on female sexuality as the force that drives erotic relations for both partners in heterosexual encounters accords well with our reading of the role of magic and possession in love affairs. The male is anxious about his powerful longings for physical intimacy and the loss of autonomy it implies, and he projects desire onto the female, casting her as the agent of unrestrainable lust.
The Arab poetics of love: Layla and Majnun
In an influential work on the origins of Western European romantic discourse, Rougement argued that the seminal tradition of courtly lyrical poetry in 12th century France owed its origins to the confluence of Persian Manicheanism and Middle Eastern Sufi rhetoric transmitted by Muslim Spain (Rougement, 1954, pp. 102-107). These Eastern sources of romantic imagery and practice drew on Arabian models in the qasidas (odes) of Imru' al-Qays and other oral poets of the late pre-Islamic period (Sells, 1989), and this native Arab romanticism is a well-spring of passionate language for modern society, with sources at least as deep as those of Western Europe. A thousand years before Romeo was moved by the radiance from Juliet’s window, the oral poets of Arabia rhapsodized about the qualities of the remembered belovéd.
The most persistent and evocative of the early Arabic romantic stories has probably been that of the star-crossed lovers, Layla and Qays/Majnun, whose unconsummated passion has inspired both the scholarly and the popular imagination of the Arab world for many centuries. The legend of Layla and Majnun probably has pre-Islamic roots. The earliest recorded version is that of Ibn Qutayba (d. 889), and a variety of anecdotes attributed to the love-crazed poet were recorded in the ninth and tenth centuries A.D. (Khairallah, 1980, p. 49). The early sources attribute to Majnun a variety of poetic fragments also credited to other poets, including all those that mention a female beloved named Layla (from the Arabic l-y-l, night) (Khairallah, 1980, p. 53). Arab and Western scholars are divided on whether there was an actual Qays bin al-Mulawwah, of the Beni 'Amir tribe, who lived in the seventh Christian (first Muslim) century. In any case, the verses attributed to him passed from the oral tradition to a more or less stabile text when they were compiled a century later (Khairallah, 1980, pp. 60-61). By 1245 A.D. a written corpus of Qays/Majnun's poetry existed, and this and other versions are widely read today. In later centuries the story of Majnun and Layla was adopted and expanded by the Persian sufi poets Jami and Nizami; and it has retained a fond place in the popular imagination of both Arab and non-Arab Muslims. The modern Egyptian poet Ahmad Shawqi (d. 1932) wrote a a verse tragedy "Majnun and Layla," and an immensely popular version in song was created by the Egyptian composer/singer Abdel Wahab, and this is still widely played and sung on Arabic radio stations.
The story itself, as recounted by Ibn Qutayba, has two children, Qays and Layla, of neighboring clans, growing up together in the proud herding culture of Arabia. The two meet as children and, each being perfect in beauty and grace, fall immediately in love:
I fell in love with Layla when she was a heedless child,
when no sign of her bosom has yet appeared to playmates.
Two children guarding the flocks. Would that we never
had grown up, nor had the flocks grown old!
(Khairallah, 1980, p. 136)
Qays begins to compose poetry to Layla, but she is unwilling to respond in public to his praise of her beauty, and her family is shamed by this broadcasting of love. Qays becomes as one possessed by jnun, the usually invisible beings who share the earth with humans, and he is thereafter known as "Majnun," possessed. He tears off his clothes and lives alone in the desert with his poetry, and he will converse only with those who ask him of Layla. All attempts to mediate between the two families and arrange a marriage fail, and Qays/Majnun spends his life as a wandering mendicant, communing not with the real, but with the imagined Layla:
You kept me close until you put a spell on me
and with words that bring the mountain-goats down to the plains.
When I had no way out, you shunned me,
But you left what you left within my breast.
(Khairallah, 1980, p. 136)
Majnun's poetry is itself the source of his estrangement from Layla, in the sense that her parents object to the notoriety it brings them through her--and Layla herself is described as complaining of Majnun's poetical divulgence of the secret of their love (Khairallah, 1980, p. 65). Khairallah argues that in the Arabic tradition from which the Majnun corpus springs, "love and madness are pretexts for poetry" (1980, p. 66). Majnun's love-torment may therefore be seen as drawing on his poetic gift, since a talent for poetry is associated with a tendency to powerful cathartic emotion, and with possession by a creative daemon. Madness is also a metaphor for passion, however, and it may be “feigned in order to claim inspiration and total bewitchment by the muse of love and poetry” (ibid.). Not only is the actual Layla of the legend portrayed as the natural stimulus for Majnun's passion, but her name is used in incantatory verses reminiscent of Sufi dikr, in which chanted repetitions of evocative syllables induced a meditative trance analogous to that of the Prophet Mohammed when he received each part of the Quran. The powerful need to divulge the message received in poetic form through such cathartic experience has remained a feature of popular practice in many parts of the Arab world, and a recourse to poetry for expression of the strongest and most personal feelings is characteristic of many traditional Arab men and women (cf. Abu-Lughod).
The love of Majnun for Layla is fated, inexorable, transforming, and undying, and it is compared to a magical spell under which he labors and by which he is inspired:
She's Magic; yet for magic one finds a talisman,
and I can never find someone to break her spell.
(Khairallah, 1980, p. 74)
Majnun’s passion for Layla has been represented in each era of Arab and Persian writing. For the 13th century philosopher Ibn 'Arabi, as for other Sufi writers, Majnun's love is represented as ultimately transcending the real, physical Layla to attain a mystical union with her idealized form (Khairallah, 1980, p. 78). From the earliest of the verses ascribed to him, Khairallah argues, it is "difficult to draw a demarcation line in Majnun's poetry between the erotic and the mystical, or between the profane and the sacred" (ibid, p. 81.). For a thousand years this tragic love story has inspired Arabic-speakers, and millions can quote a stanza or two of Majnun's poetry, such as his reaction to finding himself one night at the camp of Layla's people:
I pass by the house, the dwelling of Layla
and I kiss this wall and that wall.
It's not love of the dwelling that empassions my heart
but of she who dwells in the dwelling.
The examples we present below of love and romantic longing come from a society geographically and temporally distant from the Arabia of Qays and Layla, but one in which romantic love is still extolled, and men are still possessed and obsessed as a consequence of passion.
Zawiya, the community in which we have heard most of the examples of passion and obsessive love that follow, is an Arabic-speaking town of roughly 12000 in the Rharb, an agricultural region of northern Morocco. We have been interested in Zawiya for over 25 years, and one or both of us has visited every year or two. In 1982 we spent a year in Zawiya as part of the Harvard Adolescence Project, conducting fieldwork on adolescence (cf. Davis & Davis, 1989). We observed family dynamics and child-rearing practices and interviewed over 100 young residents of Zawiya about a variety of topics, including love, marriage, and sexuality. In 1984, susan returned and recorded open-ended interviews with twenty adolesents, and in 1989-90 she recorded young adults in Zawiya and in Rabat (the Moroccan capital) their beliefs and experiences concerning love and marriage.
The Demon Lover: `Aisha Qandisha
One sort of love-possession seen in Morocco is of a less poetic sort than experienced by Majnun, but its sufferers are described with the same epithet--"majnun," possessed by jnun. Experience of the jnun, invisible beings with whom humans share the earth, is pervasive in Morocco. Crapanzano, whose work on the ethnopsychiatry of possession in Morocco is the best in English, has presented several examples of possession by the most distinctive of these beings, the jinniya (singular female of jnun) `Aisha Qandisha (Crapanzano 1973, 1975, 1977). Capable of appearing in visible human form, she is the most commonly named of the jnun, who are most often referred to generically. Males are the usual victims of Lalla (Lady) `Aisha, as she will often be called to avoid the risk of explicitly naming her. She dwells near wells and water-courses and may appear either as a seductive and attractive woman or as a hideous hag. If the victim does not notice her cow or goat feet and plunge an iron knife into the ground, he will be struck (mdrub) and inhabited by her (mskun). He is then likely to become impotent or to lose interest in human women, and he may suffer a variety of physical or psychological effects unless and until his possession is brought under control by the intervention of one of the popular Moroccan curing groups. Although there are many of these in all parts of Morocco, the Hamadsha (cf. Crapanzano, 1973) are the group particularly concerned with possession by `Aisha Qandisha. Members of the Hamadsha are found in most neighborhoods of northern Morocco. They are likely to have themselves been possessed by `Aisha Qandisha or other jnun before joining the group, and they have learned to alleviate the effects of possession by means of distinctive trance-inducing musical performances and sacrificial rituals. Several of the accounts we have heard in Zawiya of males overwhelmed by sexual or romantic problems were attributed to possession by `Aisha Qandisha or other of the jnun, and several of these have been successfully treated by Hamadsha performances.
In a detailed account of Hamadsha history and practice recounted for Douglas in 1982, a Hamadsha member from Zawiya attributed the central role of `Aisha Qandisha in Hamadsha belief and curing to the fact that the jinniya had fallen in love with one of the patron saints of the Hamadsha, Sidi (saint) `Ahmed Dhughi, several hundred years ago. Sidi Ahmed was inspired to play the flute and drum of the Hamadsha, and women heard him and fell instantly in love. The attitude of the Hamadsha toward Qandisha is ambivalent. On the one hand she is seen as the source of the suffering they and their clients experience and which draws them to the Hamadsha music and trance. Yet many of the terms used to refer to her connote respect or deference, and this does not in every case seem to be a mere attempt to evade her wrath. And just as the jnun number among themselves Muslims and unbelievers, those influenced by `Aisha Qandisha and other jnun may be seen as good and pious people, spoken of as struck by "clean" `Aisha, or as derelict, violent persons transgressing against Islam, and hence stuck by "dirty" `Aisha (cf. Davis, unpublished).
Crapanzano notes that the language of possession offers the sufferer a collective symbolism for experiences of problems of sexuality, marriage, or family responsibility. Males who are unable to carry out expected roles of suitor, husband, or family provider may undergo an experience of possession by `Aisha Qandisha, whose emotional demands and jealous interference with relations with human women externalize the apparent psychological conflict. Both Crapanzano's published accounts of possession by `Aisha Qandisha and those we have heard frequently involve possession after a failed love affair, an estrangement from a spouse, or the death of a family member.
Tajj: An example of love-obsession
Milder forms of suffering caused by failed or unrequited love are often attributed not to the jnun explicitly but to magical influence, as in a case recounted to Douglas in 1982. The young man described, N., was a friend of our friend and research assistant, Hamid Elasri. The first meeting with him occurred on one of the long night-time walks around Kabar, a small city near Zawiya, during the Ramadan fast--a time when many people stay awake much of the night after breaking the day-long fast with a heavy meal, and walk about town visiting with friends. N. called out to Hamid, and they had a brief conversation on a street-corner, agreeing to meet to talk later in the evening. Hamid gave the following account of N.'s troubles:
N., who was about 24 years old in 1982, had been engaged khotbato a girl for several years. They were both elementary teachers in a nearby large city. He wanted to break the engagement, but he was both worried about the dowry money he would have to repay and afraid of the magic [suhur] he believed her family had put on him. He believed they put something in his food which caused him to be obsessed [tajj] with the girl. He also became impotent, and he found himself giving a lot of money to her family. What money he had left he was increasingly spending for wine to try to forget her. The girl's family were apparently pressing him to turn over his entire salary to them. He told his father about this, who took him to a fqi--a man with Quranic and practical religious training. The latter examined his hand [muhalla] and wrote something there as a means of telling the subject's current situation and future, said N. had indeed been the victim of magic, and performed some counterspells.
Like other accounts of which we heard concerning infatuation, there is an assumption here that the feelings of love are overwhelming and pathological, and that they imply supernatural influence. Blame for the male's inability to deal with his love reasonably, or to put it aside, is laid on the female beloved (and her family). N.'s father intervenes on his behalf, calling on the white magical powers of a fqi to counter the black magic of the girl's family. A few days later, Hamid and Douglas met N. in another town, and he said he was enroute to visit relatives. Hamid assumed, however, that N. was in fact going to visit a nearby beach resort, where we had just seen the brother of his fiancée, but that he had been ashamed to admit this evidence of how obsessed he still was. The following week, near the end of Ramadan Douglas had occasion to talk with N., whom we met on another night-time walk. He asked about Douglas's interest in Moroccan psychology, and pointedly asked what he thought about the problems that arise when a man and woman in the same line of work marry, as is the case with him and his fiancée as newly trained primary teachers. N.’s problem had not resolved itself when we left Morocco at the end of the year.
N.'s inability to reconcile himself to marriage to his fiancée, despite his obsession with her, is a more extreme form of a male love-dilemma of which Douglas heard repeatedly. The male finds a young woman toward whom he is powerfully drawn sexually and emotionally, but either there are powerful obstacles--often in the form of family opposition or limited economic resources--in the way of a marriage. Gradually the man grows suspicious or hostile toward the woman, and he begins to expect or experience physical and emotional symptoms he attributes to magical influence. Moroccan popular culture is permeated with the concepts of magical influence and poisoning, although suspected instances are treated with circumspection by the concerned parties out of fear of the uncanny.
Romance, love, and marriage in Morocco
Many changes are occurring in Morocco today. While the population was mainly rural in the 1960s, it is now about equally rural and urban. Public education barely existed before Morocco became independent from France in 1956, while today all children should attend at least primary school. Although this goal is still being pursued in remote rural areas, in cities nearly all children attend. Many young people attend high school, while few parents did; in the mixed classes, young people have a chance to meet. Marriages in earlier generations were mainly alliances arranged between families, to which the young people were supposed to agree. Today many of the young, especially males, select a potential mate and request their parents' approval. Girls too may have someone in mind, but it is not culturally acceptable for them to make such suggestions.
These trends were apparent in the semi-rural town of Zawiya, where we carried out research on adolescence in 1982 (Davis and Davis 1989). When we asked 100 adolescents who should select a marriage partner, 64% of the girls and 55% of the boys said the parents should choose. Older youth, and those with more years of education, were more likely to want to make the choice themselves. Among a smaller number of their older siblings, about half chose their own spouse, but only one fourth of the adolescents said they wanted to do so (1989:126).
When we pressed him for estimates about the frequency of pure love marriages, Hamid suggested that 5% in his experience marry for love, 30% through family arrangement, and another 20-30% when forced by legal or family pressure after the girl became pregnant.
This conversation grew out of Hamid's recounting of the story of A., a Zawiya friend whom he and Douglas were planning to visit at a beach resort where he was vacationing away from his estranged wife. He had married a beautiful local young woman who had been previously married off by her family to an older Moroccan man in France. The first husband divorced her a year later, when she hadn't produced a child. She became pregnant by A., and her family pressured his family to arrange a wedding. After the marriage, A.'s mother increasingly put down the bride, and she would become angry, catching A. in the middle. A. was in the process of divorcing the wife, because he couldn't fight his mother. He still loved the wife, who bore his child after they separated.
Hamid and Douglas found A. at the beach resort, and spent an evening with him listening to Arabic and Western music and talking about life and love. A. was intensely preoccupied with his wife, and he had spent much of his vacation week at the resort listening to romantic music and dreaming about her. He was fond of Elvis Presley's song, "Buttercup," with its vivid imagery of the palpitations of passion:
When I'm near the girl that I love the best
My heart beats so it scares me to death.
I'm proud to say that she's my buttercup
I'm in love, I'm all shook up.
The Arabic song to which A. was especially devoted at this time was a poignant piece by the popular female singer Fathet Warda. It's refrain, a drawn-out "You have no thought [of me],"ma'andikshshifikara, seemed to A. to capture the feeling his wife must be having for him, and made him realize how he longed for her. A few months later, A. and his wife were reconciled.
Zawiya attitudes toward marriage
To better understand young people's feelings on who should choose a spouse, we devised a marriage dilemma that we discussed late in 1982 with twelve young women and three young men who were especially comfortable talking to us. We said there was a couple who loved each other and wanted to get married, but the parents were opposed. We had to stress that they were really in love, because there is an expectation that a young man may declare his love just to convince a girl to spend time with him; this is a semi-rural setting where dating is disapproved. When we asked what the couple should do, eight people said they should follow the parents’ wishes, and six that they should pursue what the couple wants, but in a way to reach a compromise and make it socially acceptable, including entreating relatives to convince the parents. Only one young man, aged 18 and in high school, said that the couple's wishes were clearly more important than those of the parents.
If that boy gets married to the girl he likes, they will certainly live happily. Because money is not happiness; happiness is something the heart feels. The boy must have the feeling that the girl likes him. This is why I say that if the boy is hooked on a girl and he truly loves her, he should go and propose to marry her no matter what she's like. It is not the father who should choose for the son a girl he doesn't like. It is the son who should decide what he likes. ... It is not the father who is getting married.
A more typical response was that of a young woman of nineteen who had attended primary school.
She should follow her parents' decision. Parents come first. ... If she goes against their wishes it will be her own reponsibility. She'd be ungrateful [literally, cursed by them], very much so. If she marries him against their will, she'll face a catastrophe, an accident or something--or even death, some kind of death. They may have an accident or something--she shouldn't. Her parents told her not to marry him: she shouldn't marry him, period. ... Since she has grown up, [her parents] have taken good care of her: they clothe her, give her money, provide for her needs. Whatever she asks for they provide, and then at the end they give an opinion and she rejects it. This is not possible; it is not admissible that she doesn't accept that advice.
Like many others, she notes the respect due to parents, and fears negative consequences of disobedience. Others said more specifically that if they married against parental wishes, they would have no support in marital disputes, and nowhere to return to in case of divorce.
This young woman's response reflects both a social conformity and a practicality in matters of the heart that we found in most young women, single and married, semi-rural and urban. We have noted elsewhere that young women in Morocco develop a sense of socially responsible behavior (`aql) sooner than their male counterparts (Davis and Davis, 1989, p. 49), and this is reflected in their attitudes toward romance. While Douglas heard several tales of young men's infatuations and longing, Susan heard very little to suggest that young women had similar experiences. They did have romantic encounters, and did care for the young men, but not as totally and intensely as the young men--or it was not apparent in the way they spoke. Furthermore, they nearly always had a practical eye open to the consequences of their relationships, which could be social censure, but that they hoped would be marriage.
Young women's personal experiences of love
When girls discussed magical influences on them related to love, they usually mentioned a spell cast to keep them from marrying, not something done by a male who wanted to possess them. Only a few young women talked about love in a way that approached the kind of intensity described in early and current Arabic songs and poetry, and which Douglas encountered in young men. One case was that of Amina, a Zawiya woman in her twenties with a primary education.
A girl has to go through a period of intense attachment (rabta). The girl feels a great love for a boy. They start talking, kidding around. She starts learning new things [from him]. They exchange thoughts. The girl starts to become aware of things [lit. awakens].
Amina notes that it is all right for couples to have such interactions now, though discreetly, and how things have changed.
In the past it wasn't right. It was shameful for a boy to talk to a girl. A boy would have one week to ask for a girl's hand and marry her ten or fifteen days later. He only gets a good look at her when she moves into his house.
Amina describes her own experience of romance:
A boy will tell you "I trust you. I care for you...If I don't see you for just half a day I go crazy; it seems to me I haven't seen you for a year." And at that time the boy does have feelings. He cares for you. Truly. Powerfully. But he doesn't have any money [to marry], and you just keep sacrificing yourself for him, talking to him, laughing with him. And you lose your value [reputation]--and your family's. Okay, people see you together, but you say, "They don't matter to me. Because even if I'm standing with him, he'll marry me, God willing."
And finally, he doesn't marry you - how do you feel? It feels like a calamity, like a "psychological complex." You feel angry at home, and you're always upset, because you don't trust anyone, even your parents. You sacrificed yourself for that boy, talking to him even in public.... (Davis and Davis 1989, p. 123).
Notice that Amina repeats the boy's intense statements, but not her own. She clearly felt strongly about him, both risking her reputation to be seen with him in public, and evidenced by her condition after they broke off. But is the core of her concern lost love or a lost opportunity for marriage? Which was it that motivated her to take the risks of which she was clearly aware?
Another young woman reports romantic experiences close to what Douglas heard from young men, but still with somewhat less intensity, and, certainly, an awareness of the consequences of her actions. When we spoke Jamila was married and in her twenties. She had grown up in a small town but now lived with her husband in the city where she had attended the university.
Jamila describes a typical way of couples getting together, something she first experienced around fifteen:
There were guys who followed me, but I did not feel anything towards them. Nothing; I had no reaction to them. They were classmates, but I never thought of having a relationship with any of them. And when anyone wrote me a letter telling me about his feelings toward me, I thought it was humiliating; I thought he just wanted to make fun of me and take advantage of me. I got mad at him and wouldn't talk to him anymore.
At sixteen, one young man who had been just a friend became something more. She found herself
wishing to be near Karim. I used to hope to meet him all the time, and I started desiring kissing and hugging him. That was because when I was near him, I used to feel very relaxed; I felt a great pleasure at being near him. Also, when I was going out with him, I tried everything possible to meet him. When he told me to meet him at night, I would go out at night, even when it was dark...I used to tell [my mother] that I was going to study with Naima...
Yes, he taught me a bit of courage. When we were together, he told me about a movie he had seen or a book he had read. Sometimes he kissed me, but when he wanted to sleep with me, I couldn't accept. I wouldn't let him. I never had sex with Karim...I used to tell myself "If I sleep with him, I will stop liking him." That was my idea; I don't know why. ... I used to have worries. I knew there was the possibility of getting pregnant. The other possibility was that he would lose control and then I would lose my virginity.
While she gives practical reasons for avoiding sex, Jamila also describes the ideal of platonic love a bit later.
Emotions are strong in youth. I think that if I had slept with Karim, I wouldn't have remained so attached to him. ... That's called platonic love. In platonic love, however, there are no kisses, no sexual relations, nothing. One loves a girl and they know they love each other, but they don't meet. Our love was in a way ideal. If we had slept together, we probably wouldn't have stayed--I personally still feel attached to him and still think about him. I don't know about his feelings.
The relationship finally ended after about four years. Yet even in its midst, Jamila was not entirely carried away.
I also used to tell myself that because of the problems with Karim and his family, I was certainly not going to remain with him a long time. Despite my love for him, our relationship was doomed to stop. I was always afraid of the future. ... There was no hope.
Partly because of this, and for other practical reasons, in spite of her love she refuses Karim's offer to take things into their own hands and elope.
Once he suggested I run away with him. ... I said no. I didn't want to do that. I told myself that even if I had run away with him, I would have had to go home sometime, and they would have refused to take me. I was worried that it would hurt my father and be embarrassing to him. My family gave me a certan freedom to go wherever I wanted to. They didn't ask me for anything as long as I passed my exams at the end of the year, They also used to buy me whatever I wanted. So in the end, I just couldn't leave. It didn't make sense. ... But any day I wanted to meet [Karim], I did.
Other young women described marrying their husbands because they loved them, but in a matter-of-fact rather than passionate way. Qasmiya is a small-town woman in her twenties, married for three years. She describes the process of her marriage to a husband she cares for. It provides a good example of the results many traditional young women (she has a primary education) hope for when they venture to interact with men in an environment where dating is not accepted.
I met him one day when I went out to the country...he was working. He said "Hey, girl," and I said "Yes." He said "Would you knit me a sweater?" and I replied "When you are ready, I'll knit for you." One day I was passing by, and he was on his way to visit his friend, our neighbor's son. ... He asked his friend, "Does this girl live here" and the other said yes. He asked, "Can I speak with you?" I answered, "If it is something serious, I will speak with you, but if you are going to take advantage of me and then abandon me...." I spoke with him over about fifteen days, and then he came: he brought his family and came to propose officially. He proposed quickly, I mean, we didn't wait long...When I spoke with him, I found what I wanted. I talked with my mother. I told her there is a guy who wants to come and propose to me. I told my mother because it is not proper to tell my father such a thing. I told my sister first. ... and she told my mother.... I said, "I don't speak with him, but they are coming to propose," and his sisters and family came and my parents agreed.... When I spoke with him, I knew that he is good. He has a white heart; he is not nasty. From his warmth, I knew that he is good. He buys me clothes, gets things [presents] for me. ... My husband takes good care of me; I mean, we assist each other. He loves me. ... I mean, I show my pride in him to my girlfriends and he shows his pride in me to his boyfriends.
Another young matron says she married her husband because she loved him, but her description is hardly rhapsodic; her concern with the practical is evident. She was in her twenties and had completed high school, and been married and living in a medium-sized town for about three years when we spoke. She had met her husband in his office.
At the beginning, I was not sure that he was a good man. I married him because I loved him, that's all. You cannot know if he's good. I used to speak with him on the phone. ... because in [a small town] I couldn't meet him--impossible. Someone could see us and tell my father or something or tell my family.... He is serious. Before marriage I wasn't sure about that. I couldn't know, because you have to live with someone; it's life that lets you know if a person is good. I found out that he is serious from what people say and from what I see. Since I don't work, I rely on him for many things.
An urban young woman near thirty said she had been through two "shocks" or crises before she married her current husband at twenty six. Although she didn't go into detail, the crises involved men she didn't marry. She met her husband through relatives, and married him after three months. She was currently working and taking university courses, and had two small children.
I had decided to marry him, and to convince my parents if it was necessary. ... I had experienced a shock in my life, and it affected me. I said "I might find a husband, or I might not;" I got sort of a complex.... [One] was frivolous: he used to date many girls and lie, and my husband was not like that. So I was attracted to him and said, "Anyway, he won't lie to me or take advantage of me."
Marriage for me must be founded on love; one cannot marry someone without love--impossible. Then one has children and they become everything to you; you have to raise them. That is marriage for me, hapiness. There are ups and downs, of course, but with love you can surpass them, you can make sacrifices.
Farida, an urban teacher and graduate student of thirty who is still single discussed her problems in finding the right man, and her family's reactions.
Everybody in my family is upset; my mother wasn't, but now she is. There is a problem: it's really unbelievable. ... I'm a little concerned, but not in the same way as my family. I'm concerned because I cannot find a perfect match. I've been meeting young men, but I haven't been satisfied....
At the beginning I say, "This is the man of my life," but when we talk and become more intimate I get another picture of him. I dislike every one for a different reason. I don't want to marry for marriage's sake, just to have children and a family. I want someone who shares my studies, my interests. I want something besides marriage and home, something that would link us more...I may be wrong, because everybody says that you can't find a perfect match....
They say in my family "You must marry a rich man, someone who has a car".... In my family they don't insist on his youth or good looks. No, what is important is that he has money.
Although Farida disapproves of marriages based on material concerns, she says the family has much influence with such demands. She describes a friend of hers who loved a young man and had a good relationship, but he was not rich. In the end the girl decided she wanted a more comfortable life, and did not marry him.
Susan encountered a similar view in a discussion with a Moroccan social scientist in his early thirties. She said that she thought marriage in Morocco was changing, and that while in the past it was an alliance between families based largely on economic considerations, today romantic love between the partners was more involved. He said no, it was almost the opposite. In the past, money wasn't that important, but today, if a young man didn't wear a suit and have a car, a young woman wouldn't consider him, even if she cared for him.
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