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
Sunday, June 3, 2012
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.
LOVE:CHANGE YOUR THOUGHTS
Is it possible to attract a romantic partner from out of thin air? I believe it is. The conditions are that (1) you have a real desire for a romance relationship, and (2) you are able to discover a corresponding wanting element in your being and reverse it. As a result, the man or woman of your dreams can emerge from out of nowhere.
In the German romantic comedy, Mostly Martha, Martha Klein is a workaholic chef, single-mindedly obsessed with the perfection of her culinary creations. After her boss, restaurant-owner Frida, catches her arguing with a pair of customers over the quality of her cooking, Martha is ordered to see a therapist to try to work out her control issues and poor interpersonal relationships. Meanwhile, Martha's sister, perhaps her only connection to a world outside of her job, dies in a car accident, leaving Martha in charge of her niece, the sullen and broody Lina.
Martha finds it extremely difficult to emotionally bond with Lina, demonstrating her psychological problems. Martha's world is then further turned upside down when the owner of the restaurant hires funloving and unorthodox Mario as a sous-chef to replace one of the workers there. Along the way, Mario challenges Martha's defenses and bonds with Lina, who begins to accompany Martha to work.
Martha begins to relax and open up to the possibility of a romantic relationship with Mario. However, after a second romantic interlude, it seems her psyche just cannot handle that possibility, and she in essence forces Mario out of her life.
One day after Lina tried to run away to Italy to visit her true father, Martha has an emotional catharsis and deeply bonds with the young girl. At that very instant, Mario knocks on her door, rekindling their relationship, which soon leads to their happy marriage.
What happened was that at the very moment the standoffish, obsessive, compulsive Martha gives into her feelings toward the young girl, the man of her dreams appears at her door, leading to the marriage and happy life that was unavailable to her until that point. By overcoming a deep-seated wanting attitude, life responded and brought the man of her dreams to her doorstep, when the relationship seemed all but over. That is the power we evoke when there is an aspiration for romance matched by a reversal of a limiting part of our being. Life immediately moves on our behalf, attracting the man or woman of our dreams out of thin air.
Here are several other examples of this dynamic:
A mean-spirited retired military officer shifts to goodness by helping a young friend in a trial, and suddenly attracts the woman of his dreams on the way out of the courtroom.
A man who is deeply in love with a woman is unable to win her over. But when he stands up to an abusive boss, from out of nowhere she immediately appears at his doorstep, confessing her love.
A man in love with a woman is unable to win her over in full. However, when he refuses to give in and mock another woman when the entire group gathered at a reception does so, he attracts someone who causes the woman whom he adores to suddenly show great interest in him, leading to their marriage.
When a man who has had a number of failed relationships finally gives is and works hard to earn a living, he attracts the most romantic relationship of his life.
A man changes his arrogant and haughty ways, and suddenly finds out that the woman he adores who has rejected him in the past, now wants him, leading to their romance, marriage, and his greatest happiness and fulfillment in life.
A woman, surrendering to the truth, finally acknowledge the questionable behavior of her family, attracting a wealthy man out of nowhere, leading to their marriage, their deep fulfillment, and vast prosperity for her family that had been teetering on failure.
In each case, an individual had an aspiration for romance, plus made a decisive change in their attitude that attracted their dream partner literally from out of nowhere. That being the case, ask yourself this: Do you aspire for romance? And if so, what key wanting attitude about yourself, life, or work needs to be changed? If you make that adjustment, life can reward you with the most fulfilling romantic relationship of your life.
In the German romantic comedy, Mostly Martha, Martha Klein is a workaholic chef, single-mindedly obsessed with the perfection of her culinary creations. After her boss, restaurant-owner Frida, catches her arguing with a pair of customers over the quality of her cooking, Martha is ordered to see a therapist to try to work out her control issues and poor interpersonal relationships. Meanwhile, Martha's sister, perhaps her only connection to a world outside of her job, dies in a car accident, leaving Martha in charge of her niece, the sullen and broody Lina.
Martha finds it extremely difficult to emotionally bond with Lina, demonstrating her psychological problems. Martha's world is then further turned upside down when the owner of the restaurant hires funloving and unorthodox Mario as a sous-chef to replace one of the workers there. Along the way, Mario challenges Martha's defenses and bonds with Lina, who begins to accompany Martha to work.
Martha begins to relax and open up to the possibility of a romantic relationship with Mario. However, after a second romantic interlude, it seems her psyche just cannot handle that possibility, and she in essence forces Mario out of her life.
One day after Lina tried to run away to Italy to visit her true father, Martha has an emotional catharsis and deeply bonds with the young girl. At that very instant, Mario knocks on her door, rekindling their relationship, which soon leads to their happy marriage.
What happened was that at the very moment the standoffish, obsessive, compulsive Martha gives into her feelings toward the young girl, the man of her dreams appears at her door, leading to the marriage and happy life that was unavailable to her until that point. By overcoming a deep-seated wanting attitude, life responded and brought the man of her dreams to her doorstep, when the relationship seemed all but over. That is the power we evoke when there is an aspiration for romance matched by a reversal of a limiting part of our being. Life immediately moves on our behalf, attracting the man or woman of our dreams out of thin air.
Here are several other examples of this dynamic:
A mean-spirited retired military officer shifts to goodness by helping a young friend in a trial, and suddenly attracts the woman of his dreams on the way out of the courtroom.
A man who is deeply in love with a woman is unable to win her over. But when he stands up to an abusive boss, from out of nowhere she immediately appears at his doorstep, confessing her love.
A man in love with a woman is unable to win her over in full. However, when he refuses to give in and mock another woman when the entire group gathered at a reception does so, he attracts someone who causes the woman whom he adores to suddenly show great interest in him, leading to their marriage.
When a man who has had a number of failed relationships finally gives is and works hard to earn a living, he attracts the most romantic relationship of his life.
A man changes his arrogant and haughty ways, and suddenly finds out that the woman he adores who has rejected him in the past, now wants him, leading to their romance, marriage, and his greatest happiness and fulfillment in life.
A woman, surrendering to the truth, finally acknowledge the questionable behavior of her family, attracting a wealthy man out of nowhere, leading to their marriage, their deep fulfillment, and vast prosperity for her family that had been teetering on failure.
In each case, an individual had an aspiration for romance, plus made a decisive change in their attitude that attracted their dream partner literally from out of nowhere. That being the case, ask yourself this: Do you aspire for romance? And if so, what key wanting attitude about yourself, life, or work needs to be changed? If you make that adjustment, life can reward you with the most fulfilling romantic relationship of your life.
LOVE;WHAT IS LOVE?
For 2.000 years we in the West have heard that genuine love is unselfish. You should – “think of others, not of oneself”. A man who loves his wife does not do it for his own sake, the song goes. He does not love his wife because he gets pleasure from sleeping with her. His love is, if it is pure, “spiritual”, unselfish and clean, not “carnal”, selfish and vulgar.
But is love unselfish? *Can* love be unselfish?
Well, try to imagine what it would mean to love another person without there being “anything in it for you”.
You meet a woman. She is fat. She has pimples. Her clothes are dirty and unkempt. You feel no attraction to her at all.
But you feel sorry for her. You think – “According to the Christians and socialists I should think of *other* people´s happiness, and not my own. I should sacrifice myself in order to make others happy. And I should “lift up” the lowly and depraved. This woman does not care. She does not bother to make herself attractive for a man such as me. So I must help her. I must give her a hand. I must say to her that I love her. I must be kind to her. I must be unselfish. I shall put her happiness above my own. I shall give her a happy life, without there being anything in it for me. I shall be a good person, according to the altruist conception of the good.”
So you take this woman out to dinner. You give her flowers. You whisper sweet words in her ear. You date her. Eventually you propose to her. And she does not realize that you are unselfish. She takes it for granted that you would not propose to her, unless you *wanted* to marry her, because she made *you* happy. So she answers – “yes” – to your proposal.
You marry each other. And you yourself are not happy. You are barely able to carry out sexual intercourse with her, since it does not give *you* any happiness to sleep with her. You feel that each day that goes by in her company is bleak. You begin to become depressed. But you pretend that she makes you happy. You keep up a front. And it is all because you want *her* to be happy.
What do you think will happen? This unselfish “love” will not accomplish anything good. Sooner or later your wife will realize that you only married her because you pitied her, and because you wanted to make *her* happy. Do you think that she will thank you for it, when she discovers the truth? No, she will curse you all she can. She will think that you were a dirty rotten swine. Her heart will break.
So you see? Unselfish “love”, by its nature, is an impossibility. But you may say – “No, it was not the *unselfishness* which was the problem in the scenario above, but rather the *dishonesty* and *duplicity*.” But the truth is that the concept of “unselfish love” itself *cannot* be anything but a lie. Because selfishness is an inseparable part of all love. To love another person is one of the most selfish actions that a person ever can commit.
When you love a man or a woman, you care about him or her because his or her happiness respectively, means everything for your *own* happiness. A man or a woman, who loves his or her partner, is grieved and depressed, if and when the partner gets cancer, or dies in a fire, or develops Alzheimers. As these examples demonstrate, it is obvious that when you love your partner, the partner´s wellbeing means enormously much for *your* own happiness.
The Christians and the socialists devalue and despise love when they say that it should be “unselfish”. To pick a man or woman to be *the one* who means more for your own happiness than any other person besides yourself, that is to confer a sublime honor on the other. But to say to a man or woman – “I love you without having any interest in your fate. My happiness does not depend in any way on your happiness. I love you without any gain. I do not become happier when you do.” – does that sound appealing? No, it is a way to drag love down into the mud.
No, when 2 people love another, the one of them becomes happier when the other does. Love is an expression of mutual self-interest. When you love another, your own happiness becomes intimately intertwined with the loved one´s happiness. Your own happiness comes to depend largely on the other´s happiness. That is why a man or a woman is often willing to die for their loved one´s sake. A selfish person safeguards the things that he values. So when a man risks his life to save the life of his wife, for example if she is drowning, he demonstrates that he is selfish, and that his wife is one of the few values which he ranks as being as important as life itself.
If a man values an antique car which he owns, then he will show it with the extensive care which he devotes to the car for the sake of his own happiness. He devotes several hours every Saturday to waxing and polishing the car. He washes the windows of the car carefully. He spends many thousands of dollars a year keeping the car in good shape. In a similar way a man demonstrates that he values the woman whom he loves, when he showers attention on the woman for the sake of his own happiness. He takes the woman out to fine dinners. He gives her beautiful flowers. He always remembers her birthday. He spends thousands of dollars buying her beautiful clothes and jewelry. He gives her tender kisses and caresses every morning when she wakes up. The only difference between a man´s love for his antique car, and his love for the woman that he loves, is that of course he loves his woman enormously much more than he loves his car. Many men would give their lives for their woman´s sake, but there is hardly any man who would give his life for the sake of his antique car!
The philosopher Ayn Rand expressed this principle eloquently in her novel The Fountainhead. One of the heroes says there – “In order to say `I love you´ you must first be able to say `I´”.
The philosophical principle is that a *value* presupposes a *valuer*, i.e. a subject for which the value is good. A man or a woman cannot be a value, cannot be loved, unless there is a woman or man for which she means something. For to value and love someone, you must yourself derive some value from the love, otherwise the “love” would be indifferent. And “indifferent love” is a contradiction in terms.
So genuine love *cannot* be anything but selfish.
But is love unselfish? *Can* love be unselfish?
Well, try to imagine what it would mean to love another person without there being “anything in it for you”.
You meet a woman. She is fat. She has pimples. Her clothes are dirty and unkempt. You feel no attraction to her at all.
But you feel sorry for her. You think – “According to the Christians and socialists I should think of *other* people´s happiness, and not my own. I should sacrifice myself in order to make others happy. And I should “lift up” the lowly and depraved. This woman does not care. She does not bother to make herself attractive for a man such as me. So I must help her. I must give her a hand. I must say to her that I love her. I must be kind to her. I must be unselfish. I shall put her happiness above my own. I shall give her a happy life, without there being anything in it for me. I shall be a good person, according to the altruist conception of the good.”
So you take this woman out to dinner. You give her flowers. You whisper sweet words in her ear. You date her. Eventually you propose to her. And she does not realize that you are unselfish. She takes it for granted that you would not propose to her, unless you *wanted* to marry her, because she made *you* happy. So she answers – “yes” – to your proposal.
You marry each other. And you yourself are not happy. You are barely able to carry out sexual intercourse with her, since it does not give *you* any happiness to sleep with her. You feel that each day that goes by in her company is bleak. You begin to become depressed. But you pretend that she makes you happy. You keep up a front. And it is all because you want *her* to be happy.
What do you think will happen? This unselfish “love” will not accomplish anything good. Sooner or later your wife will realize that you only married her because you pitied her, and because you wanted to make *her* happy. Do you think that she will thank you for it, when she discovers the truth? No, she will curse you all she can. She will think that you were a dirty rotten swine. Her heart will break.
So you see? Unselfish “love”, by its nature, is an impossibility. But you may say – “No, it was not the *unselfishness* which was the problem in the scenario above, but rather the *dishonesty* and *duplicity*.” But the truth is that the concept of “unselfish love” itself *cannot* be anything but a lie. Because selfishness is an inseparable part of all love. To love another person is one of the most selfish actions that a person ever can commit.
When you love a man or a woman, you care about him or her because his or her happiness respectively, means everything for your *own* happiness. A man or a woman, who loves his or her partner, is grieved and depressed, if and when the partner gets cancer, or dies in a fire, or develops Alzheimers. As these examples demonstrate, it is obvious that when you love your partner, the partner´s wellbeing means enormously much for *your* own happiness.
The Christians and the socialists devalue and despise love when they say that it should be “unselfish”. To pick a man or woman to be *the one* who means more for your own happiness than any other person besides yourself, that is to confer a sublime honor on the other. But to say to a man or woman – “I love you without having any interest in your fate. My happiness does not depend in any way on your happiness. I love you without any gain. I do not become happier when you do.” – does that sound appealing? No, it is a way to drag love down into the mud.
No, when 2 people love another, the one of them becomes happier when the other does. Love is an expression of mutual self-interest. When you love another, your own happiness becomes intimately intertwined with the loved one´s happiness. Your own happiness comes to depend largely on the other´s happiness. That is why a man or a woman is often willing to die for their loved one´s sake. A selfish person safeguards the things that he values. So when a man risks his life to save the life of his wife, for example if she is drowning, he demonstrates that he is selfish, and that his wife is one of the few values which he ranks as being as important as life itself.
If a man values an antique car which he owns, then he will show it with the extensive care which he devotes to the car for the sake of his own happiness. He devotes several hours every Saturday to waxing and polishing the car. He washes the windows of the car carefully. He spends many thousands of dollars a year keeping the car in good shape. In a similar way a man demonstrates that he values the woman whom he loves, when he showers attention on the woman for the sake of his own happiness. He takes the woman out to fine dinners. He gives her beautiful flowers. He always remembers her birthday. He spends thousands of dollars buying her beautiful clothes and jewelry. He gives her tender kisses and caresses every morning when she wakes up. The only difference between a man´s love for his antique car, and his love for the woman that he loves, is that of course he loves his woman enormously much more than he loves his car. Many men would give their lives for their woman´s sake, but there is hardly any man who would give his life for the sake of his antique car!
The philosopher Ayn Rand expressed this principle eloquently in her novel The Fountainhead. One of the heroes says there – “In order to say `I love you´ you must first be able to say `I´”.
The philosophical principle is that a *value* presupposes a *valuer*, i.e. a subject for which the value is good. A man or a woman cannot be a value, cannot be loved, unless there is a woman or man for which she means something. For to value and love someone, you must yourself derive some value from the love, otherwise the “love” would be indifferent. And “indifferent love” is a contradiction in terms.
So genuine love *cannot* be anything but selfish.
Sunday, May 27, 2012
JOURNAL;Harder for Americans to Rise From Lower Rungs
Harder for Americans to Rise From Lower Rungs
By JASON DePARLE
WASHINGTON — Benjamin Franklin did it. Henry Ford did it. And American
life is built on the faith that others can do it, too: rise from
humble origins to economic heights. "Movin' on up," George
Jefferson-style, is not only a sitcom song but a civil religion.
But many researchers have reached a conclusion that turns conventional
wisdom on its head: Americans enjoy less economic mobility than their
peers in Canada and much of Western Europe. The mobility gap has been
widely discussed in academic circles, but a sour season of mass
unemployment and street protests has moved the discussion toward
center stage.
Former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, a Republican candidate
for president, warned this fall that movement "up into the middle
income is actually greater, the mobility in Europe, than it is in
America." National Review, a conservative thought leader, wrote that
"most Western European and English-speaking nations have higher rates
of mobility." Even Representative Paul D. Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican
who argues that overall mobility remains high, recently wrote that
"mobility from the very bottom up" is "where the United States lags
behind."
Liberal commentators have long emphasized class, but the attention on
the right is largely new.
"It's becoming conventional wisdom that the U.S. does not have as much
mobility as most other advanced countries," said Isabel V. Sawhill, an
economist at the Brookings Institution. "I don't think you'll find too
many people who will argue with that."
One reason for the mobility gap may be the depth of American poverty,
which leaves poor children starting especially far behind. Another may
be the unusually large premiums that American employers pay for
college degrees. Since children generally follow their parents'
educational trajectory, that premium increases the importance of
family background and stymies people with less schooling.
At least five large studies in recent years have found the United
States to be less mobile than comparable nations. A project led by
Markus Jantti, an economist at a Swedish university, found that 42
percent of American men raised in the bottom fifth of incomes stay
there as adults. That shows a level of persistent disadvantage much
higher than in Denmark (25 percent) and Britain (30 percent) — a
country famous for its class constraints.
Meanwhile, just 8 percent of American men at the bottom rose to the
top fifth. That compares with 12 percent of the British and 14 percent
of the Danes.
Despite frequent references to the United States as a classless
society, about 62 percent of Americans (male and female) raised in the
top fifth of incomes stay in the top two-fifths, according to research
by the Economic Mobility Project of the Pew Charitable Trusts.
Similarly, 65 percent born in the bottom fifth stay in the bottom
two-fifths.
By emphasizing the influence of family background, the studies not
only challenge American identity but speak to the debate about
inequality. While liberals often complain that the United States has
unusually large income gaps, many conservatives have argued that the
system is fair because mobility is especially high, too: everyone can
climb the ladder. Now the evidence suggests that America is not only
less equal, but also less mobile.
John Bridgeland, a former aide to President George W. Bush who helped
start Opportunity Nation, an effort to seek policy solutions, said he
was "shocked" by the international comparisons. "Republicans will not
feel compelled to talk about income inequality," Mr. Bridgeland said.
"But they will feel a need to talk about a lack of mobility — a lack
of access to the American Dream."
While Europe differs from the United States in culture and
demographics, a more telling comparison may be with Canada, a neighbor
with significant ethnic diversity. Miles Corak, an economist at the
University of Ottawa, found that just 16 percent of Canadian men
raised in the bottom tenth of incomes stayed there as adults, compared
with 22 percent of Americans. Similarly, 26 percent of American men
raised at the top tenth stayed there, but just 18 percent of
Canadians.
"Family background plays more of a role in the U.S. than in most
comparable countries," Professor Corak said in an interview.
Skeptics caution that the studies measure "relative mobility" — how
likely children are to move from their parents' place in the income
distribution. That is different from asking whether they have more
money. Most Americans have higher incomes than their parents because
the country has grown richer.
Some conservatives say this measure, called absolute mobility, is a
better gauge of opportunity. A Pew study found that 81 percent of
Americans have higher incomes than their parents (after accounting for
family size). There is no comparable data on other countries.
Since they require two generations of data, the studies also omit
immigrants, whose upward movement has long been considered an American
strength. "If America is so poor in economic mobility, maybe someone
should tell all these people who still want to come to the U.S.," said
Stuart M. Butler, an analyst at the Heritage Foundation.
The income compression in rival countries may also make them seem more
mobile. Reihan Salam, a writer for The Daily and National Review
Online, has calculated that a Danish family can move from the 10th
percentile to the 90th percentile with $45,000 of additional earnings,
while an American family would need an additional $93,000.
Even by measures of relative mobility, Middle America remains fluid.
About 36 percent of Americans raised in the middle fifth move up as
adults, while 23 percent stay on the same rung and 41 percent move
down, according to Pew research. The "stickiness" appears at the top
and bottom, as affluent families transmit their advantages and poor
families stay trapped.
While Americans have boasted of casting off class since Poor Richard's
Almanac, until recently there has been little data.
Pioneering work in the early 1980s by Gary S. Becker, a Nobel laureate
in economics, found only a mild relationship between fathers' earnings
and those of their sons. But when better data became available a
decade later, another prominent economist, Gary Solon, found the bond
twice as strong. Most researchers now estimate the "elasticity" of
father-son earnings at 0.5, which means that for every 1 percent
increase in a father's income, his sons' income can be expected to
increase by about 0.5 percent.
In 2006 Professor Corak reviewed more than 50 studies of nine
countries. He ranked Canada, Norway, Finland and Denmark as the most
mobile, with the United States and Britain roughly tied at the other
extreme. Sweden, Germany, and France were scattered across the middle.
The causes of America's mobility problem are a topic of dispute —
starting with the debates over poverty. The United States maintains a
thinner safety net than other rich countries, leaving more children
vulnerable to debilitating hardships.
Poor Americans are also more likely than foreign peers to grow up with
single mothers. That places them at an elevated risk of experiencing
poverty and related problems, a point frequently made by Mr. Santorum,
who surged into contention in the Iowa caucuses. The United States
also has uniquely high incarceration rates, and a longer history of
racial stratification than its peers.
"The bottom fifth in the U.S. looks very different from the bottom
fifth in other countries," said Scott Winship, a researcher at the
Brookings Institution, who wrote the article for National Review.
"Poor Americans have to work their way up from a lower floor."
A second distinguishing American trait is the pay tilt toward educated
workers. While in theory that could help poor children rise — good
learners can become high earners — more often it favors the children
of the educated and affluent, who have access to better schools and
arrive in them more prepared to learn.
"Upper-income families can invest more in their children's education
and they may have a better understanding of what it takes to get a
good education," said Eric Wanner, president of the Russell Sage
Foundation, which gives grants to social scientists.
The United States is also less unionized than many of its peers, which
may lower wages among the least skilled, and has public health
problems, like obesity and diabetes, which can limit education and
employment.
Perhaps another brake on American mobility is the sheer magnitude of
the gaps between rich and the rest — the theme of the Occupy Wall
Street protests, which emphasize the power of the privileged to
protect their interests. Countries with less equality generally have
less mobility.
Mr. Salam recently wrote that relative mobility "is overrated as a
social policy goal" compared with raising incomes across the board.
Parents naturally try to help their children, and a completely mobile
society would mean complete insecurity: anyone could tumble any time.
But he finds the stagnation at the bottom alarming and warns that it
will worsen. Most of the studies end with people born before 1970,
while wage gaps, single motherhood and incarceration increased later.
Until more recent data arrives, he said, "we don't know the half of
it."
By JASON DePARLE
WASHINGTON — Benjamin Franklin did it. Henry Ford did it. And American
life is built on the faith that others can do it, too: rise from
humble origins to economic heights. "Movin' on up," George
Jefferson-style, is not only a sitcom song but a civil religion.
But many researchers have reached a conclusion that turns conventional
wisdom on its head: Americans enjoy less economic mobility than their
peers in Canada and much of Western Europe. The mobility gap has been
widely discussed in academic circles, but a sour season of mass
unemployment and street protests has moved the discussion toward
center stage.
Former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, a Republican candidate
for president, warned this fall that movement "up into the middle
income is actually greater, the mobility in Europe, than it is in
America." National Review, a conservative thought leader, wrote that
"most Western European and English-speaking nations have higher rates
of mobility." Even Representative Paul D. Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican
who argues that overall mobility remains high, recently wrote that
"mobility from the very bottom up" is "where the United States lags
behind."
Liberal commentators have long emphasized class, but the attention on
the right is largely new.
"It's becoming conventional wisdom that the U.S. does not have as much
mobility as most other advanced countries," said Isabel V. Sawhill, an
economist at the Brookings Institution. "I don't think you'll find too
many people who will argue with that."
One reason for the mobility gap may be the depth of American poverty,
which leaves poor children starting especially far behind. Another may
be the unusually large premiums that American employers pay for
college degrees. Since children generally follow their parents'
educational trajectory, that premium increases the importance of
family background and stymies people with less schooling.
At least five large studies in recent years have found the United
States to be less mobile than comparable nations. A project led by
Markus Jantti, an economist at a Swedish university, found that 42
percent of American men raised in the bottom fifth of incomes stay
there as adults. That shows a level of persistent disadvantage much
higher than in Denmark (25 percent) and Britain (30 percent) — a
country famous for its class constraints.
Meanwhile, just 8 percent of American men at the bottom rose to the
top fifth. That compares with 12 percent of the British and 14 percent
of the Danes.
Despite frequent references to the United States as a classless
society, about 62 percent of Americans (male and female) raised in the
top fifth of incomes stay in the top two-fifths, according to research
by the Economic Mobility Project of the Pew Charitable Trusts.
Similarly, 65 percent born in the bottom fifth stay in the bottom
two-fifths.
By emphasizing the influence of family background, the studies not
only challenge American identity but speak to the debate about
inequality. While liberals often complain that the United States has
unusually large income gaps, many conservatives have argued that the
system is fair because mobility is especially high, too: everyone can
climb the ladder. Now the evidence suggests that America is not only
less equal, but also less mobile.
John Bridgeland, a former aide to President George W. Bush who helped
start Opportunity Nation, an effort to seek policy solutions, said he
was "shocked" by the international comparisons. "Republicans will not
feel compelled to talk about income inequality," Mr. Bridgeland said.
"But they will feel a need to talk about a lack of mobility — a lack
of access to the American Dream."
While Europe differs from the United States in culture and
demographics, a more telling comparison may be with Canada, a neighbor
with significant ethnic diversity. Miles Corak, an economist at the
University of Ottawa, found that just 16 percent of Canadian men
raised in the bottom tenth of incomes stayed there as adults, compared
with 22 percent of Americans. Similarly, 26 percent of American men
raised at the top tenth stayed there, but just 18 percent of
Canadians.
"Family background plays more of a role in the U.S. than in most
comparable countries," Professor Corak said in an interview.
Skeptics caution that the studies measure "relative mobility" — how
likely children are to move from their parents' place in the income
distribution. That is different from asking whether they have more
money. Most Americans have higher incomes than their parents because
the country has grown richer.
Some conservatives say this measure, called absolute mobility, is a
better gauge of opportunity. A Pew study found that 81 percent of
Americans have higher incomes than their parents (after accounting for
family size). There is no comparable data on other countries.
Since they require two generations of data, the studies also omit
immigrants, whose upward movement has long been considered an American
strength. "If America is so poor in economic mobility, maybe someone
should tell all these people who still want to come to the U.S.," said
Stuart M. Butler, an analyst at the Heritage Foundation.
The income compression in rival countries may also make them seem more
mobile. Reihan Salam, a writer for The Daily and National Review
Online, has calculated that a Danish family can move from the 10th
percentile to the 90th percentile with $45,000 of additional earnings,
while an American family would need an additional $93,000.
Even by measures of relative mobility, Middle America remains fluid.
About 36 percent of Americans raised in the middle fifth move up as
adults, while 23 percent stay on the same rung and 41 percent move
down, according to Pew research. The "stickiness" appears at the top
and bottom, as affluent families transmit their advantages and poor
families stay trapped.
While Americans have boasted of casting off class since Poor Richard's
Almanac, until recently there has been little data.
Pioneering work in the early 1980s by Gary S. Becker, a Nobel laureate
in economics, found only a mild relationship between fathers' earnings
and those of their sons. But when better data became available a
decade later, another prominent economist, Gary Solon, found the bond
twice as strong. Most researchers now estimate the "elasticity" of
father-son earnings at 0.5, which means that for every 1 percent
increase in a father's income, his sons' income can be expected to
increase by about 0.5 percent.
In 2006 Professor Corak reviewed more than 50 studies of nine
countries. He ranked Canada, Norway, Finland and Denmark as the most
mobile, with the United States and Britain roughly tied at the other
extreme. Sweden, Germany, and France were scattered across the middle.
The causes of America's mobility problem are a topic of dispute —
starting with the debates over poverty. The United States maintains a
thinner safety net than other rich countries, leaving more children
vulnerable to debilitating hardships.
Poor Americans are also more likely than foreign peers to grow up with
single mothers. That places them at an elevated risk of experiencing
poverty and related problems, a point frequently made by Mr. Santorum,
who surged into contention in the Iowa caucuses. The United States
also has uniquely high incarceration rates, and a longer history of
racial stratification than its peers.
"The bottom fifth in the U.S. looks very different from the bottom
fifth in other countries," said Scott Winship, a researcher at the
Brookings Institution, who wrote the article for National Review.
"Poor Americans have to work their way up from a lower floor."
A second distinguishing American trait is the pay tilt toward educated
workers. While in theory that could help poor children rise — good
learners can become high earners — more often it favors the children
of the educated and affluent, who have access to better schools and
arrive in them more prepared to learn.
"Upper-income families can invest more in their children's education
and they may have a better understanding of what it takes to get a
good education," said Eric Wanner, president of the Russell Sage
Foundation, which gives grants to social scientists.
The United States is also less unionized than many of its peers, which
may lower wages among the least skilled, and has public health
problems, like obesity and diabetes, which can limit education and
employment.
Perhaps another brake on American mobility is the sheer magnitude of
the gaps between rich and the rest — the theme of the Occupy Wall
Street protests, which emphasize the power of the privileged to
protect their interests. Countries with less equality generally have
less mobility.
Mr. Salam recently wrote that relative mobility "is overrated as a
social policy goal" compared with raising incomes across the board.
Parents naturally try to help their children, and a completely mobile
society would mean complete insecurity: anyone could tumble any time.
But he finds the stagnation at the bottom alarming and warns that it
will worsen. Most of the studies end with people born before 1970,
while wage gaps, single motherhood and incarceration increased later.
Until more recent data arrives, he said, "we don't know the half of
it."
JOURNAL;Wall Street Is An Illegal Cartel That Needs To Be Busted Up: William Cohan
The big Wall Street banks have achieved so much control over their industry that they amount to an illegal cartel, says William Cohan, a former banker and the author of many books and articles about Wall Street, including "Money And Power," a book about Goldman Sachs.
The pricing power and profits that the big banks have is similar to that of Standard Oil, Cohan argues, referring to the gigantic oil monopoly owned by John Rockefeller that was broken up a century ago.
Cohan observes that prices of transactions like IPOs and M&A deals are basically fixed across the industry and produce humongous profits. And smaller "boutique" firms are not able to compete on price because they lack the distribution and influence of the biggest banks.
Cohan believes that the government should intervene, breaking the cartel's stranglehold. He notes, however, that a prior case brought against the industry 60 years ago failed. And even if the government were to successfully intervene, the specific remedy is not clear.
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