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Helen Fisher on Love, Lust (and Divorce)

Just like the Water business earlier I came across this next video through serendipity. While on the TED website I could not resist the urge to search the site for “divorce” and I came across this interesting analysis by anthropologist Helen Fisher. It’s a study of romantic love, sex and attachment. Helen Fisher is interested in what goes on in the brain when we talk about love and attachment. Watch the video. Trust me.

Open Document – the Divorce Arguments

Here is the blogging equivalent of linux. In order to contribute to the multilayered discussion (even if we think that there is nothing really to discuss at a principle level) we are providing a beta version chart of the arguments that will have to be dealt with and choices that have to be made in the Divorce Debate. Please note that this is a chart – some of the beliefs mentioned in the chart are our own, not all. Although we may seem schizophrenic at times and possessed of a multiple-personality we cannot possibly be held liable for all of them at once. Feel free to suggest changes.

The Arguments

1. Constitutional (the works)

  • Majority Rule: (the belief that) introducing divorce requires some form of approval that is based on the will of the majority of the country.
    • should this be an electoral mandate (party manifesto)?
    • should this be a consultative mandate (consultative referendum)?
    • should this be a propositive mandate (divorce by public referendum)?
      • Requires constitutional change, PLPN barrier
    • can it be subjected to confirmation (abrogative referendum)?
      • already exists, no PLPN barrier
  • Minority Right: (the belief that) introducing divorce is not a matter of majority decision. Divorce should be an accessible right to the persons who want to avail themselves of this right – the majority cannot impose its will on the minority.
    • should this be by an electoral mandate (party manifesto)?
      • Time-barred (at least 2013), PLPN barrier (none of the two seems prone to include a commitment to introduce divorce as a government bill), Private Members’ Bill would not work
    • should there be a consultative/propositive measure anyway?
      • no longer useful once you accept it is right for the minority you accept the argument that the majority/minority will need not be quantified
    • can it be subjected to confirmation (abrogative referendum)?
      • it already exists, no PLPN barrier
    • Is Private Members’ Bill feasible?
      • outside the issue of mandate but raises question of duty for other parliamentarians, still forces debate
    • a majority vote of current members of Parliament should suffice
      • MPs are representatives (not delegates) and are voted to represent (The country’s constitution does not recognise political parties. How much less, then, does it recognise the electoral programmes of those political parties. Party electoral programmes have no force of law. A political party need not have a manifesto at all. – (from the Runs)) see Spiteri – Wrong Reactions after divorce shell-shock

The Values (Morality, Religion and Tradition)

  • Divorce as a personal issue
    • the right to remarry/second chance argument (see Cassar – When the trust is gone)
    • the right to reset civil status and ancillary rights beyond patchwork measures (cohabitation)
    • the right to determine one’s own lifestyle choices
    • divorce as closure (Some people are interested in divorce because they do not want to be party to something that’s no more than a legal fiction).
  • Divorce as a social curse
    • the damaging effects of divorce (and consequences)
    • the potential increase in divorce (vs separation statistics)
    • the devaluation of the married unit
  • Divorce as religious anathema
  • Myths

The Penalty (a suggestion)

The rules of Association Football are over a hundred years old but rarely need a revamp. Of course recent improvements in technology have meant an increase in calls for fairer methods to ensure that the original rules are applied more thoroughly. Some may beg to differ since the original rules envisaged a fallible human as referee and not a robot or techno eye in the sky. Having said that you do often get a hunch that the rules of the game could do with a bit of polishing up – which is why the busybodies behind J’accuse (that’s the Royal We) have come up with an alternative use for penalties within the 90 minutes of the game (and possibly also within the 30 minutes of extra time).

The inspiration behind this audacious suggestion is the hunch that all too often penalties seem too harsh a meter with which to mete out punishment to the team having (a) fouled an opponent; (b) handballed  or (c) committed whatever other outrageous crime within the deisgnated area. We also considered the problem of the “penalty seekers” – those strikers or midfielders who float into the penalty box with the deliberate intent to obtain a penalty in their favour by hook or, as is more often the case, by crook.

As with all suggestions to change a century old way of thinking and applying the rules the J’accuse Penalty Rule will of course be as controversial a suggestion as any other but we urge you to look at this option as objectively as you can. Here goes.

Essentially the rule is as follows. Excepting for penalties in a penalty shoot out, any other penalty awarded in the course of a game and successfully converted does not automatically amount to a score goal. The team having converted a penalty will be awarded the goal if, and only if, the opposing team scores a subsequent goal.

Imagine Red United playing Blue City. The score is 0-0 when at the 15th minute, Oscar, the United attacker is brought to the ground by Hatchet, the City defender and the referee points to the spot. Puntov duly converts the penalty. At that point the score remains 0-0 and United are awarded a ghost goal that will only figure on the score sheet should City score a goal in the next seventy-five minutes of play.

So if for example City did score in the sixtieth minute then the score would automatically be 1-1. Even if the Reds had scored more goals in the meantime, let’s say two goals after the converted penalty and City score when Reds are 2-0 up then the score is transformed to 3-1.

This rule would transform the penalty into a defensive rather than attacking bonus in the sense that the team converting the first penalty has not automatically won the match with the penalty but obliges the other team to attack and cancel out the potential conversion.

In order to avoid the abuse of this rule by defences (fouling to keep the match at 0-0) then we could add that two converted penalties would amount to a score independently of whether the other team manages to score a goal in the interim. I.E. two ghost goals = one normal goal.

I know it sounds complicated but for starters it is far simpler than the offside rule and given the low-scoring nature of todays’ game it has an added incentive:

1) Penalties risk being less decisive on the end result – favouring in game goals.

2) The team conceding a penalty is statistically often the more defensive of the two. The rule obliges it to take on a more attacking mentality and avoid the consequences of the penalty.

What do you think?

Divorce – the Viral

There is of course the adage about lies, damned lies and statistics but it is inevitable that in a discussion on divorce the dreaded ‘s’ word will surface time and again to prove the point of one side or another. Now J’accuse has long declared that its vote in the divorce issue is a thundering “about effin’ time” so our bias in the matter is clear. Having said that it does not mean that we will not fulfill our journalistic duty of presenting you with subjects that might serve to feed the debate further. So here goes one of those instances:

Yesterday’s L’Essentiel (a luxo metro-style journal) carried two articles related to marriage. The first was a reproduction of various articles that have been appearing in the syndicated press about a recent study at a US university concerning the links between divorce and social networking (SN) (geek warning: this is classic social networking not SN of the facebook type – the latter would fall within a smaller circle of our imaginary venn diagram). It would result, from a scientifically conducted experiment, that divorce can be “contagious” along the lines of social networks. Enter the short catchy statements destined to become modern day old wives’ tales as they result from the study:

  1. Divorce tends to spread among the networks of people having already divorced. (Basically divorcing becomes less difficult if everybody else around you is doing it too). Luxembourg seems to follow this rule since the number of divorcees has increased to 45% nowadays from 9.6% in 1970.
  2. Now for the SN effect. Friends of divorcees see the chances of themselves getting divorced within the next 2 years (from their friends divorce) increase to 147%.
  3. If it is your brother or sister who isdivorcing that increases the chances of your own divorce by 22%.
  4. Married parents with children are less influenced by divorces within their social network than childless couples, and the more children the couple has, the less the influence. “Interestingly, we do not find that the presence of children influences the likelihood of divorce, but we do find that each child reduces the susceptibility to being influenced by peers who get divorced,” the report says.
A segment of a social network
Image via Wikipedia

Interesting no? Here is (Yale associate fellow) Rita Watson blogging about the results of the study:

But is the contagion factor the only reason for divorce in later years? Edward O. Laumann suggested that it may also have to do with our age, health and longer life span. A sociology professor at the University of Chicago, he is the analyst for the Global Study of Sexual Attitudes and Behavior, a survey of 27,500 men and women 40 to 80 years old in 29 countries.

Dr. Laumann explained to me that “in the early 20s those who marry exhibit a two-year age difference. If you plot a graph, you begin to see differences as time passes. Between ages 18 and 45 the gap widens between women and men with regard to age difference in marriage. “At age 44 it becomes interesting, the lines cross at 44 which is when women become less likely to be in a sexual partnership. By age 70 we find that a full 70 percent of women will not have a partner. But if you take a look at the men at age 70, just 35 percent will be without a partner.” He added that “men trade up for younger women. And the more sexually active will die in the arms of a woman, whereas older women often die alone in nursing homes.”

If divorce is looking too good to men, what is wrong with marriage? A theory making headlines these past few weeks is that we simply do not know how to be married. Therefore, the federal government and the military are funding marriage-education programs that are being called successful. A strong dissenting voice sounded in Psychology Today from Bella DePaulo, a social scientist and visiting professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara. She is the author of “Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After.”

When I spoke with Dr. DePaulo, she expressed some frustration with media misinterpretation of studies, in particular the Building Strong Families (BSF) program. “BSF studies were conducted in eight different locations, and the participants were unmarried couples who were expecting a baby or just had one. What was the bottom line from scholars who summarized the results from the more than 5,000 couples? Fifteen months after entering the program, the relationship outcomes of BSF couples were, on average, almost identical to those of couples in the control group.”

She added, “In one of the studies, people were more likely to have broken up and less likely to be living together and not married.” As for the contagious-divorce theory, Dr. DePaulo thinks that “the idea of social norms is potentially important. What people around you do does influence behavior.” If divorce is contagious and marriage programs are failing, here’s hoping that newly divorced and divorcing women are not suddenly looked upon as today’s Typhoid Mary — infecting men with their single status.

The tiny country of Luxembourg might have been tempting for a comparative idea of what would happen in Malta. It is not the case though since attitudes to divorce and marriage here are extremely different to the situation in Malta. Even insofar as entitlement of couples to certain rights – such as tax benefits for the purchase of a house – all that is needed is an official declaration that two people live under the same roof or consider themselves a unit. Cohabitation? C’est quoi? As for the PACS – a social contract for couples that is not marriage, the news yesterday is that the Luxembourg PACS has just been strengthened legally with more rights:

Les couples pacsés auront désormais davantage de droits. Les députés ont voté, jeudi, une loi qui attribue certains droits d’un couple marié aux partenaires.

Ainsi, ils pourront bénéficier de congés pour la mort d’un membre de la famille du partenaire ou prendre un congé sans solde après la naissance d’un enfant. Une Union civile, contractée à l’étranger, sera reconnue au Grand-Duché. Pour les socialistes et les Verts, les changements ne sont pourtant pas suffisants car des inégalités par rapport aux couples mariés subsistes.

Telle la succession qui doit être réglée par un testament entre les partenaires. Depuis l’introduction de l’Union civile en 2004, 92% des couples pacsés sont hétérosexuels. Un projet de loi pour rendre le mariage civil accessible aux couples homosexuels sera déposé la semaine prochaine.

In short the new rights include: bereavement leave upon death of partner, unpaid leave in case of birth of child, civil unions contracted abroad will be recognised in the duchy. Changes still remain to be made such as in the field of inheritance. Since the introduction of the PACS (Civil Union that is not marriage) in 2004, 92% of the couples that have benefited from the union are heterosexual.

You have just been exposed to a flood of statistics. The debate continues….

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