Marriage and Divorce

What is government's role in marriage?  Recent court rulings have raised the question.

Issues of fair and equal treatment under the law brought the same-sex marriage question to the forefront.  'Under the law' is particularly narrow, but it spilled out into questions of definition and discrimination.

Marriage didn't arise from our law; its history precedes existing governments.  It has been understood among peoples around the world in a variety of ways. Governments have enacted laws after the fact to handle issues of property rights, inheritance, and taxation. Too, it's been necessary to deal with polygamy, to protect children from forced or coerced marriage, to recognize interracial marriage, and to defend married women from abuse.  Marriages have been performed by both civil and religious authorities, as well as by tribal and community groups. In earlier years, marriage was a private matter without official ceremony.  The church has made laws and rules also.

From our recent history, the occasion of marriage has been recognized by the individuals and their community in a particular fashion and often tied to deep personal conviction.  In our Judeo-Christian tradition, it's a covenant between husband and wife, and more.  The secular government's needed role was to recognize the change in status of the two individuals and little else.  The government's intruding with a new legal definition of marriage has perhaps been the critical difficulty for many.


Today, we're faced with a legal redefinition of what marriage is, a new meaning for a word we've commonly used all our lives.   The term 'marriage' has had a precise use in our culture, shaped by faith and conviction, but now without the consent of the church or the people, the word has been redefined.

It would perhaps be equally onerous if government were to enact law defining a 'Christian' or a 'Muslim' as a checklist of qualifying conditions.

Governments face the extraordinarily difficult task of negotiating from within cultural change.  No easy answers and not a job I envy.

One wonders if it isn't time to divorce government's role from the institution of marriage entirely.  Doing so raises a number of problems, of course, but the question is now in the public forum.

The word and its definition are not the issue, IMHO.

Marriage has become less common.  The U.S. and EU have seen a decline in marriage rate in recent generations.  Married households in the U.S. fell by a third since 1960.  Do we know why?

Reasons offered from the social and political arena include:

• Gay marriage
• Government subsidies
• Women increasing in the workforce
• The demasculation of men
• The divorce rate
• The media and their sensual focus
• The economy, particularly affluence

None provides a clear path of cause and effect.
It's an opportunity for thoughtful inquiry, perhaps.  What has changed?  Is it changing now, or is the change well behind us?


Statistics from the Pew Research Center: "About four-in-ten Americans think that marriage is on the rocks. No, not their marriage. The institution of marriage ... No matter what one thinks about the institution’s future, there’s no getting around its stark contraction during the past half century. Some 72% of all adults in the United States were married in 1960. By 2008, just 52% were ... most Americans now embrace the ideal of gender equality between spouses. ... some 62% say that marriages are better when husbands and wives both have jobs and both share responsibility for the household and kids."
Source: Pew Research Center. The Decline of Marriage and Rise of New Families.  Pewsocialtrends.org. 11/18/2010.

Note: such survey numbers reflect opinions expressed anonymously rather than actual behavior or conscious decision, but the results do suggest that cultural values have changed whether by thoughtful decision or unconscious acquiescence.

Survival Level

2015 Federal Poverty Guidelines – 48 Contiguous States & DC

Persons in household      2015 Federal Poverty Level

1                                                $11,770

2                                                $15,930

Daily News reporter Chelsia Rose Marcius is

doing the food stamps challenge of eating

only $29 dollars worth of food for a week.

Read 'poverty level' as 'survival level'; just the basics, just food and shelter perhaps.  Getting an education, staying healthy, eating well, having a stable home in which to do homework, those are unlikely at the survival level.  Ask any inner-city school teacher.  Add perhaps the costs of a car so you can get to work, clothes for the kids, gas and electricity so you can cook and stay warm, insurance; it adds up to more than you've got.  Survival is just that; not dying.The poverty level (survival level) marks the upper limit of that category; families and individuals within the category fall variously below that line.

From the census bureau's most recent report:

• The official poverty rate is 14.5 percent.
• There are 45.3 million people in poverty. 
• The poverty rate is 2.0 percentage points higher than 2007, the year before the most recent recession.
• The poverty rate for children is 19.9 percent. ¹

Things that help and things that make progress difficult ...

Studies measuring the differences between income before and after taxes and government transfers, have found that without social support programs, poverty would be roughly 30% to 40% higher than the official poverty line indicates.^[1][2]

A week's food, assuming they only use the money they
have for food and not shelter or clothing or medicine or ...
Living in such circumstances ensures your long term
continuation in poverty, health problems, educational
deficiency,and reduced life expectancy.

Far below the poverty line, we've had to add another category; extreme poverty.

• In the U.S., there are 1.5 million households with children living in extreme poverty (less than $2/person/day; there are more if you include the elderly and others without children.
• About 2.8 million children live in extreme poverty households.  

A recent policy brief by the National Poverty Center (NPC) reports the number of  U.S. households living on less than $2 a day per person has increased by 130% since 1996, from 636,000 to 1,460,000 such households today.

That means about 4 million people in “the richest country on earth” (according to capitalism’s apologists) are surviving on less than $60 a month each, i.e., essentially not survivable.  

So what do we need to know and what can we do, individually and collectively, that will make a difference?

Just inches away ... (NV-17)

John woke in an instant.  It had been quiet, just some outside noises muffled by the walls of his refuge.  Suddenly, an intruder grabs him by the arm and drags him violently toward the exit. The grip on his arm tightens, and the bones break under the pressure.  The shoulder separates and muscles are torn; tendons stretch to the limit and are torn from their roots. Flesh tears and separates as the arm is pulled free.  He bleeds, and in pain intense beyond description, he becomes aware of the same crushing grip, now on his leg ....  John dies, just inches away from being born.  He'd expected another few weeks before making the trip, but even this early, he might have lived.  

April was born prematurely at 25 weeks gestation.  She survived.  She a year old now.

Viability is just one measurement.

Among the issues before us these days and in the upcoming election as well, what will be the future of personhood? If a child is a person after being born, how about seconds before?  Or days?  And at what point does parental responsibility begin?

In our culture, this is not a simple yes or no.  Unintended pregnancy is the first and perhaps most important decision point, and many are not equipped with information or answers. For a preventative solution, we're perhaps encumbered by widespread abandonment of our earlier moral principles, by a sexualized advertising industry, and by an objectivization of women and girls. Feminists have attacked the problem, Christians have spawned a homeschool and family counterculture, thoughtful subculture segments have pulled back from the mainstream. Generally, they agree.  They hope to protect their children from the shallow, irresponsible behavior so commonly associated with sexual freedom in our world today.  Why did that behavior arise, and how might it be appropriately reigned in?

Beyond that, there's the extraordinary burden of choice a pregnant mother faces.  How might she face a complicated pregnancy or congenital defects and the longer term implications?  While we might have personal convictions about the right answer, culture and science provide a gray area where it's left to individual choice.  It's often framed in 'likelihood of survival' and 'likelihood of physical or mental difficulties'.

It's all both thoughtful and defensible. Every purposefully pregnant mother is pro-life in some measure, but can circumstances intrude and make a different choice acceptable?  For many, yes. Many.

Such difficult questions are the basis of defensible choice and of leaving the choice to the mother.

Is life sacred?  Of course.  Choices should reflect that fact.  With liberty comes responsibility.  Great responsibility

Deal with it and move on

Community folks pray over a new well in Burkina Faso

Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.  Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.

Eph 4:31-32

So, what if we actually did that?  If we followed the counsel we're given, would it change things?

• A Peace Corps friend told me of his early years in Burkina Faso and in Somalia. 
• In Somalia, they were one tribe and culture, closely related, and they hated each other, my friend remembers.  When meetings were held to deal with local issues, there was always finger pointing and name calling among clan members, like, "I'm not dealing with you, your grandfather stole my uncle's cow!" 
• In Burkina Faso, the Burkinabé (local folks) just dealt with problems. "You did wrong, you pay him a goat," the elder would say, and to the other, "You were wronged, he's going to pay you a goat. That settles it, so make peace and let's move on."
• One culture carries a grudge for decades, another makes things right.  Imagine the difference in daily life and in the lessons the children learn.

Interesting observations, nothing more.  In the decades following these observations, Somalia collapsed and has not recovered.  Burkina Faso has fared only slightly better, since countries are more complex by far than villages.  Marxist influences and power players have made things more difficult.  Folks are making progress now with help from the French.  

You can't help but wonder, though.  What if we followed the good counsel we're given, what kind of towns and churches would we have?

Republicans and Democrats Agree!

In a fascinating study, 5,522 folks were asked what an ideal distribution of wealth might look like, one which they deemed to be fair and just.  They were also asked to estimate today's distribution of wealth in the U.S., i.e., how much does each 20% have.

Their results are given (right) along with the actual distribution.

It's called the GAP between the rich and all the rest; economic inequality. The participants knew about the spread but not the extent.  Did you?  That the bottom 40% of Americans possess about 0.3% of the country's wealth?

The participants were asked to choose where they'd prefer to live if given the choice between these two hypothetical societies, A and B.

Of the study participants, 92% chose society B.  Interestingly, it matches their suggested ideal distribution rather nicely.  It's a common desire among all the participants and perhaps the rest of us as well.

Society A represents the U.S. as it was in 2012.  Society B is fictional but approximates Sweden's distribution of wealth.

Surprisingly, 93.5% of Democrats and 90.2% of Republicans prefer and approve of the more equal distribution.

Finally, they agree on something of substance.  Now all they need is to admit it and figure out how to make it happen.  When President Obama raised the issue in 2013, both parties in Congress shut him down.  Understandable, perhaps; they and their friends are all top 2 percent wealthy and maybe haven't really seen the rest of the country.  Trump's plan will expand the GAP even more.  Of course.

You can see the source published article here for all the scholarly details.
Michael I. Norton, Harvard Business School, Boston, MA; and Dan Ariely, Department of Psychology, Duke University, Durham, NC

Wait, wait; 93% of Democrats and 90% of Republicans would rather live in Sweden?  Okay, that's bizarre.

When does economic inequality become a problem?

An economic difference between households is perhaps normal and a necessary element of capitalism.  Everyone hopes to improve, and perhaps the difference in wealth we see helps us define our goal.  The motivating question we face, however, is not 'do I have enough' but 'can I get more'. That's the cultural context we live with in the western world.

The result of such thinking is broadly visible both in market and government policies, regulations, and favoritism.  The rich get richer without any particular impediment, and certainly not because they work harder.  Is that a problem?

The dilemma with such a self focus is that it is quite content to advance at the expense of others. All others.  It protests against the less fortunate, its victims, blaming them for not having stepped up.

What might be the motivation for having a hundred or thousand times more than you or your family could ever need?

Fishes live in the sea

Our noble intent is a fair world for all, equal opportunity, education, safety,  ...

Income inequality refers to the extent to which income is distributed in an uneven manner among
 a population. In the United States, income inequality, or the gap between the rich and everyone
 else, has been growing markedly, by every major statistical measure, for some 30 years.

'Getting ahead' was an early goal of western civilization, the chance for your children to have a better life than you. Today for much of the population, there are impediments to such hope.

Wages in the post-war years were based on a worker having a share in corporate productivity,
improvement, and success.  Beginning in the 70's, wages for the workforce became a liability
to be managed and minimized for the benefit of the bottom line.  

Despite the extraordinary rise in national productivity, it seems only the fortunate (in the U.S. and elsewhere) are benefiting.  Real wages are generally flat over the last four decades.




Among the world's nations, we see a similarly disproportionate benefit from globalization.  Wealth from resources and labor streams from the developing countries to the developed world at an accelerating rate.  In many countries, the inequality gap widens at an accelerating rate over the decades.

Despite the advances in productivity and average income by nations, the benefit is commonly to the upper income half of the economy.  Segments of

the population for each and every one of the advancing nations are unimproved in circumstance since 1980.  

The marketplace, whether fruit or flowers or finance, increasingly favors the wealthy with each passing year. Government policy and trade regulations are purchased by wealth and influence, it would appear, to the detriment of many.

From what we have seen, what might we expect from continuing the current path?

Below are campaigns we might consider supporting today:

• The Interfaith Worker Justice’s campaign, Paystubs for All Workers. This campaign aims to make it a federal requirement for employers to issue pay stubs to all workers as a deterrent against wage theft.  (Wage theft by employers exceeds all robbery, auto theft, burglary, and larceny, combined.)
• The National Employment Law Project’s campaign, Raise the Minimum Wage. This campaign puts pressure on federal, state, and municipal lawmakers to reasonably raise the minimum wage for all workers.
• The Institute for Policy Studies’ campaign, Close the Billionaire Loophole. This campaign aims to put the brakes on concentrated wealth by restoring the estate tax.
• Americans for Tax Fairness, a diverse campaign of national, state and local organizations united in support of a fair tax system that works for all Americans.
• Oxfam’s new campaign, Even It Up. This global campaign focuses on tax fairness, investing in public health and education, and establishing fair wages for all.
• The Robin Hood Tax campaign. This campaign aims to secure a Financial Transaction Tax on Wall Street transactions.
• The Jobs with Justice campaign, Change Walmart, Change the Economy. This campaign urges Walmart to reform its business practices to set the stage for changes across the retail sector.

• 
  
• 
  

- See more here. 

Fair Trade Practices?

From Der Spiegel - August 22, 2011
"... like a pack of wolves" that seeks to tear entire countries to
pieces, said Swedish Finance Minister Anders Borg. For that
reason, they should be fought "without mercy," French
 President Nicolas Sarkozy raged. Andrew Cuomo, the
 former attorney general and current governor of New York,
 once likened short-sellers to "looters after a hurricane."

Curious how the derivatives market works?  

"One might think of derivatives as a random game of online poker.

• You don't know who your opponents are [your counterparty], 
• you do not know if you will be paid [counterparty risk], 
• you do not know if the game is legitimate, [lack of regulation], and 
• your opponents are probably able to see what cards you are holding,  [market domination by large banks]. 
• As well, you are making bets that in many instances neither you nor your opponents fully grasp [complexity of the market]. 
• With each wager you are potentially risking not only your current assets, but your future assets as well. [leverage]. 
• In some cases you do not know how much you are betting. 
• Imagine as well, that you play this game every day with trillions of dollars that you do not have. 

This is the global derivatives market."

 ~ David Hague, 2014

"..., we know that the use of derivative securities played a pivotal role in the ... the financial collapse in The 2007-08 Financial Crisis."    ~  Kristina Zucchi, CFA 

Nothing of substance has been done to mitigate the risks inherent in this unregulated industry.  Bank balance sheets, British central banker Andrew Haldane said caustically, are still "the blackest of boxes."

You might appreciate: The Zombie System: How Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails

Los Angeles vs the Comet

The European Space Agency's Rosetta mission landed on a comet, and we all heard the news.  An interesting note not obvious in the photos from the mission is the size of the comet.  It's illustrated here, actual size, compared to the city of Los Angeles.

The Rosetta spacecraft traveled some 4 billion miles on the way to the intercept.  That's way more than forty times the distance from here to the sun.

It's hard to grasp such numbers in our mind picture of the mission. Maybe it would help if we visualized the earth at about the size of a VW Beetle; then you'd only have to drive 3 million miles to get to the comet.  Okay, still too much, huh.

So if Earth were the size of a grape and hanging on a vine in real-size Florida, the comet would be about the size of a white blood cell floating over real-size Sydney, Australia. Now visualize people living on that grape trying to launch a pair of molecules off to Australia to land on that white blood cell that is so unimaginably far away.  Never mind; I give up. And don't get me started on how far the Voyager mission has traveled.

Space missions are bizarre.

Get a job!

I'd pay a lot to see this uninformed fellow work alongside my friends
in the real world.  He'd lose a little weight and a lot of attitude.

“Some people are self-starters, and some people are born lazy.  Some people are born victims.  Some people are just born to be slaves.”

~ Rush Limbaugh, on economic inequality, a poorly worded but generally consistent expression of current conservative opinion; 60% say the poor are lazy, more than 80% think the poor have it easy.

It's perhaps easy to think we know what's best for others. Does our own success place us somehow above with a comprehensive perspective?  Such thinking is always inaccurate; no exceptions.

Living and working in several countries began to open our understanding on how persistent poverty happens.  It's not from unwillingness to work in any of the venues we've observed.  In the U.S. and elsewhere, poverty seems to persist for a very short list of reasons.

The decline of two-parent families is greatest in the lower

economic demographics.  Cause and effect are controversial.

Lack of opportunity is first and largest on the list.  There are few viable exits from poverty.  Most make the attempt; few succeed.  For the poor, completing their education and getting a job with upward prospects are more difficult than one might expect.

For nations, well intentioned policy efforts are perhaps second. Effects can be destructive.  Unintended consequences of assistance programs in the U.S. include the decline of lower-quintiles' economic mobility, family unity, and a generation of children with absent fathers.

Those are the top-level categories; there are subordinate causal elements from environment and culture.  Regional economic inequality is a useful indicator.

Read 'poverty level' as 'survival level'.  Survival is basic, just food and shelter perhaps.  Getting a quality education, staying healthy, eating well, having a stable home in which to do homework, those are unlikely at the survival level.

The poverty level (survival level) is a threshold, not the income level for all the households in the category.  In the U.S., the number of households with children living in extreme poverty (at $2/person/day) is about 1.7 million; more if you include the elderly and others without kids.

The U.S. suicide rate among African American men stems pointedly from their inability to find a place where they can join the mainstream, be productive, provide for a family, and get ahead.  Similar distress spans the globe.

In Africa, a father wept in shame and despair because he could not provide for his wife and children no matter how hard he tried.  His lament was not that he had no money but that he had no opportunity, no voice, no significance.

We put a young fellow through trade school and internship only to find that employment was available but not to him.  He's from the wrong tribe, Africa's equivalent to the good old boy network of influence and discrimination we're familiar with in the west.

In Africa as in the rest of the world, it's not the land that brings people to poverty, nor is it an unwillingness to work.  It's a wealth-focused economy (and government and culture) that marginalizes the lower economic segment of the population. Inequality is a weapon by which the few profit at the expense of others.  We in the west who claim the moral high-ground of equality, of law and justice, will perhaps eventually see that such a position is bent by self-interest and that what we have collectively become is in many ways unhelpful, sometimes even harmful.

No one chooses to be poor, to have their children be malnourished or undereducated, homeless or trapped in extreme poverty.  Such circumstances are imposed, not chosen.

As individuals, what options are available to us for a meaningful way forward?  And how do we avoid wrong thinking?

An interesting side note: a technical military career (particularly non-infantry) is a viable path upward for many.  Technical and leadership training, certifications, and years of performance are quite marketable and easily built upon.  Know why?  Recruits show up from everywhere, get groomed and clothed as equals, get trained according to interests and ability, and advance based on effort and skill.  It's an accessible opportunity for some.  A good educational foundation is the prerequisite, of course.  What might we deduce from that proven scenario?

mis·an·thrope

ˈmis(ə)nˌTHrōp,ˈmiz(ə)nˌTHrōp/

noun

1. a person who dislikes humankind and avoids human society.

   synonyms:

   hater of mankind, hater, cynic;  recluse, hermit ;  informal:grouch, grump "he was going to join a group of misanthropes but he disliked all the members"

Art Garfunkel speaking about himself.  “I’m a misanthrope,” he says.

When asked what advice he has given his son, he perhaps humorously offers, “Watch out for traffic.”  His son is 24 now.

Anything else? “Be kind to people. I’m working on that second one myself, because I’m not always kind. I’m judgemental and picky. When I order room service and they get it wrong I try so hard to be kind and I fail. ‘But I only asked for three things! How could you get one wrong?’

"Or to the taxi driver: 'How can this be hard? Listen to the address and take me there. Don't you care about your job?'"

Now in his 70's, Garfunkel sees his life with clarity, and he benefits from a review of his own behavior, his own attitude, and his response to others. There's more to life than what happened decades ago when he split with Paul Simon.

Just how hard is it for us to deal with life?  Can we acknowledge, forgive and move on?  Can we choose to be kind? And not just well mannered, but truly kind-hearted?  Imagine the difference it would make if the years were filled with caring about others (he said, preaching to himself as usual).

Per Person, Per Day

How much folks have to live on - from this year's data for population, productivity, and share.

“Globalization is the result of powerful governments, especially that of the United States, pushing trade deals and other accords down the throats of the world’s people to make it easier for corporations and the wealthy to dominate the economies of nations around the world without having obligations to the peoples of those nations.” — Noam Chomsky

Global Wealth

Global Interests

Global Corruption

Western civilization did indeed have a noble beginning.  Free individuals, free enterprise, equality, democracy, all are healthy but only if healthy folks are the players.  Prospects now are murky and confused as our governments join the ranks of those who forgot whom they serve and why.

We get to choose.

Friends at home.  This is the real world.

The poor and disenfranchised have no voice in the matter, and their circumstances ensure they suffer and die quietly on the outskirts of world awareness.  Shall we leave the discussion quietly and resign ourselves to the status quo? 

Not a chance.

Receiving. And Giving.

Casa Fiz do Mundo   (homemade world!)

Accepting someone’s help is as good as giving someone help. This is a large work I've called you into, but don’t be overwhelmed by it. It’s best to start small. Give a cool cup of water to someone who is thirsty, for instance. The smallest act of giving or receiving makes you a true apprentice. You won't lose out on a thing.

M10:40ff

I hope I understand.

On my short list of heroes, Casa Fiz do Mundo has been helping others for years.  We've crossed paths but never met.  

They work in western Africa; I've met some of the folks they serve so graciously.