When The Blush Is Off The Bloom Of The Rose– Thanks To Eve Marriage Would Never Again Be A Garden Of Eden

Life in the Garden of Eden was what marriage was supposed to be – a life of bliss and perfect harmony.  No responsibilities, no adultery, no bickering over finances or shared household tasks, no shopping, cleaning, or taking care of the children.  Only when God expelled Adam and Eve did all that begin.  Not only would their life together be short, nasty, and brutish but worse, marriage would become death by a thousand cuts – the inevitable bleeding of romance.  Jealousy, resentment, confinement, frustration, and anger would be the order of the day.



It is wrong, say feminist scholars, to blame Eve for the Fall; but where else to look?  The devil as portrayed by Milton in Paradise Lost is a powerful, resourceful, canny angel, resentful that he was cast out of heaven and determined to avenge his unjust fate.  What better way than to precipitate another fall and to destroy the naïve, idealistic vision of God the Creator? Didn’t God know that when he gave Man free will it would eventually and necessarily be used against him? God’s supreme achievement – conferring free will and the human intelligence to use it – was his biggest mistake.  Eve was very human in her defiance, in her arrogance, and her presumptuousness.  Eating from the Tree of Knowledge was forbidden by God because of his jealousy.  He and he alone should have all the world’s knowledge, and his children should remain in ignorance.



So, despite the claim that she was seduced by the devil, she was a free agent and a human being and would have acted with or without the devil.  Feminist biblical scholars are caught betwixt and between when it comes to the story of Eve’s role in the Fall.  If she was seduced, albeit by a supernatural creature, Genesis was setting a dangerous precedent – the weakness and vulnerability of women.  If Eve acted out of her own free will, deceived and manipulated Adam so that he would commit the act of disobedience, then this act – being the first expression of God’s gift – then she must take responsibility for the doom of mankind.

Even more moderate scholars today wince at the many negative depictions of women in the Bible and look for examples of those who are determined, fair-minded, and compassionate.  The women of the Old Testament fare reasonably well – the courageous Hebrew midwives and the daughter of Pharaoh and Deborah the righteous judge are good examples – but the old Eve resurfaces in the story of Delilah.  Despite Sarah, Rachel, Ruth, Leah, and Rebecca who were good but dependent women, loving wives and good mothers, the stories of the cunning and devious Eve and Delilah are remembered best because they are far closer to the post-Lapsarian immoral, survivalist world that we know.  It is difficult, even or especially in the modern world of female authority and independence, to put them out of our minds – especially because Shakespeare made his reputation at least in part on his powerful, cunning, amoral heroines – Cleopatra, Goneril, Regan, Tamora, Dionyza, and Volumnia, all of whom, operating within a distinctly male world, used craft, wiles, and will to pursue their ambitions.



Influential women in the New Testament are few and far between.  Mary Magdalene, Mary and Martha of Bethany, Elizabeth, and Lydia were known for the service, faithfulness and love of Jesus; but women as a group found little support in the Gospels or in the Epistles of Paul.  Traditional Christianity has believed that the statements attributed to St. Paul in I Timothy 2 - that women were created second, sinned first, and should keep silence—and have been the universal consensus since the days of the early Church.  Paul’s letters to the Corinthians are more accommodating of women but barely so.   Feminist critics have suggested that Paul was a misogynist whose comments are those of a sexually immature and resentful male and not a divinely-endowed apostle. 

Perhaps, but the conviction persists.  Shakespeare’s Othello, before being tried and condemned for his murder of Desdemona, tells his accusers that he has done them and all men a favor, ridding the world of one more deceitful, faithless, and untrustworthy woman.   The jealous men of Cymbeline and The Winter’s Tale are no different.  The women of Ibsen (Rosmersholm, The Master Builder, Hedda Gabler) are all Eve’s descendants – manipulative, canny, cunning, and amoral.



It is wrong to judge women too harshly or take too much from Biblical tales and fictional drama.  They have been, after all, men’s chattel for millennia and forced to use their intelligence, cunning, and sexual power to realize the most modest of ambitions.  The best examples of this ability to successfully negotiate a male world are found in Shakespeare’s Comedies.  Rosalind, Viola, Beatrice, and Portia run rings around the men in their lives; and although they have to settle for less when it comes to marriages of convenience, they are the true heroines of Shakespeare’s works.  They are not amoral, vindictive, and cruelly cunning, but simply adept, intuitive, and completely understanding of male weakness.

Yet, the age of the modern woman is still recent.  It takes time to get the kinks out, to let the dust of the gender wars settle, and for a new paradigm to be established.  In the meantime women still have issues with unfaithful husbands, are as demanding of them to fulfill domestic responsibilities as ever; and despite the radical insistence that there is no such thing as femininity,  femaleness, or female behavior, women and men are different.  Different levels and type of sexual interest.  Different social perceptions and abilities.  Different persuasions, self-image, and demeanor.  Many women, convinced that the pursuit of male power, authority, and dominance is alluring; and able to use their femininity and an acquired male aggression and competitiveness have been very successful in business and politics. They are the notable in today’s gender-fluid world just like Ibsen’s heroines were radical outliers in theirs.



For the rest, life is a bit of a muddle.  On the one hand feminists insist that women are fully independent, capable, and strong; but concede that they still need protection and social support.  Safe spaces, politically correct speech, institutional intolerance of male behavior, and suspension of due process in favor of women’s interests belie the notion of female invincibility.  Yet more moderate men and women concede that both are true.

Men of course have not only never changed, but never will.  It is not so much that men are simply hanging on to old patriarchal notions of male superiority; they are far more comfortable with their traditional, natural maleness than women think. Competition, sexual pursuit and endless desire, aggressiveness, confidence, physicality, and male will are part of a quite acceptable package.

It is inevitable, therefore, that marriages are consistently problematic.  How can they be otherwise in a society in which radical sexual politics are changing perceptions and attempting to influence behavior? Less confident, more susceptible men have accepted feminist rhetoric and have convinced themselves that they are the obstacle to female satisfaction, and such satisfaction is of a higher good; and that sublimating or subjugating their natural desires and behavior is the price one has to pay for equality.   More savvy men negotiate around women’s new demands, giving when it is strategically necessary, but holding out when serious battles are at stake.  Such men have been wonderful at doing the little things – child care, housework, affection – to assure their wives’ complicity in their adultery and male wandering.

None of this ever works completely or even that well.  Men are always found out and must pay with a pound of flesh.  Women always seem to organize, arrange, plan, and settle family life to such a degree that even the most complaisant and tolerant husband refuses, resents, and dismisses his wife’s intrusions.

Marriage is at best a difficult often sorry affair; but as Edward Albee, no fan of marriage, admitted, it is the crucible of maturity.  Without the confines of marriage, men and women would be free to flee at the first sign of difficulty, avoid responsibility, and never grow up.  True as that may be, and as permanent as the institution of marriage might seem, it as Winston Churchill said about democracy, it is the worst of all possible systems except for all others.

The Delights Of Doing Good–Why Does Helping The Poor Have To Hurt?

In the halcyon days of the World Bank, project officers on their way to supervise bank loans travelled first class, were allowed two-day stopovers in Europe to break the long trip to India, Bangladesh, and beyond, and were on full expenses.  Three days and two nights in London on company expense, even after a well-tended flight from Washington, were thought absolutely necessary.  The delicate negotiations between Bank representatives and their host country counterparts were of high values – tens  of millions of dollars were at play and any inattention on the part of Bank staff would be immediately exploited by knowledgeable, canny, crafty, and well-rested nationals.

So Francis Plummer, a project manager in the South Asia Division, took full advantage of the compensatory travel – ‘compensatory’ because the Bank deliberately avoided the term ‘benefits’ which would have suggested rewards.  No, averred Bank officials, the first class travel, long European stopovers, and full expenses were not meant to encourage loyalty or reward high performance.  They were, in Bank parlance, ‘functionalities’ – add-ons to normal professional routines to ensure quality and efficiency.

Plummer, like most of his Bank colleagues dismissed the idea entirely.  Too much had been made of arduous travel, time change, and predatory counterparts; business class was good enough for a decent sleep, and better to jump in feet first and naked into foreign waters than to prolong the separation from home, family, and ease.  Yet far be it for him to suggest to HR and Travel that he didn’t need first class, that ordinary hotels would do, and that a modest per diem would easily cover expenses.  As long as the Bank was offering its largesse why not take full advantage of it?

Near the end of the Bank’s First-First-First policy (First Class air travel, First Class Hotels, and First Class Meals), his supervisors looked at him a bit critically when signing off on his travel request, but never challenged him on his itinerary and accommodations.  As long as Bank regulations allowed for what might be considered elite travel, he would approve requests consistent with them.   And as long as Plummer’s expense reports were filled out correctly with the proper documentation, HR could do nothing but approve.

Plummer saw changes coming, and therefore was sure to enjoy himself to the fullest on this all-expense-paid stopovers in London and Paris.  He ate well, went to the theatre, and invited old friends and former colleagues for drinks, dinner, and entertainment. If anything, Plummer arrived at his final destination far from rested but sated, hungover, and tired.  A night or two at Delhi’s Oberoi or Dhaka’s Sonargaon, however, or even better the Mandarin Jakarta or Bangkok Oriental, would do the trick; and by the time he had his first top-level meeting, he was ready.

The World Bank, which has long since changed its policies to be more in line with bi-lateral agencies which were much more concerned with public image than rested employees, is used to illustrate the persistent, enshrined principle - ‘The Delights of Poor Countries’ which, regardless of actual travel allowances, was operational for all.

Even with the US Government’s nit-picking, niggling, and unrealistic Code of Travel, according to which the modest emoluments, benefits. and supports, and the responsibilities of the traveler were spelled out, US employees and consultants had a fine time.  When it came to expatriate living – housing and accommodating families for extended periods of time – the government was very generous indeed.   Long term expatriates had modern homes equipped with the latest Western conveniences; spacious gardens and pools; and access to the commissary, clubs, and other well-appointed and –maintained official venues.

Francis Plummer had visited over 50 countries on all continents on behalf of the World Bank and other international agencies . He traveled to small villages in the African bush, banged over dirt tracks to reach the most far-flung and isolated hamlets in the tribal regions of Madhya Pradesh, froze in the 17,000 ft. reaches of the Bolivian altiplano, and stayed in the thatched huts of curanderos and witch doctors on tributaries of the Amazon.

He rode colectivo taxis over the Peruvian Andean passes, jammed in the back seat of a banged-up Toyota for the twelve-hour ride from Huancayo to Ayacucho.  He rode reconditioned Bluebird school buses up the narrow, rock-strewn roads of the lower Himalayas teetering above the 1000 ft. gorges on either side.  He traveled across the heart of India third class on the Deccan Queen in high summer, got stranded in the Mauritanian desert, and ground along for interminable hours on the Bamako to Mopti road before the Chinese highway was built.

He wandered through the mazes of markets and bazaars in Old Delhi, Niamey, and Bangkok, took tea with village elders under a banyan tree in North India, drank home-brewed beer in the quartiers of Kinshasa, ate mechoui on the roof of the prefect in a Saharan oasis, and battled flies in dank restaurants in Thana.

However, he stayed in great hotels.  In fact, some of the great hotels of the world – the Oriental in Bangkok, the Grand Hotel in Calcutta, the Raffles in Singapore, the Galle Face in Colombo, elegant grande dame hotels in the Carpathians, five-star hotels on the Corniche in Dakar, the Victorian polished mahogany and teak Splendide and the gingerbread watering hold of Graham Greene, the Oloffson n Port-au-Prince and many, many more.  One can live in luxury and get down and dirty on the same trip.

The Raffles Singapore

The Oloffson, Port-au-Prince

He saw no contradiction whatsoever in living the life of the locals by day – hard, hot, dusty, unaccommodating and often miserable – and the life of the wealthiest of the wealthy by night.  His own organization, the World Bank, had sanctioned such comfort; but even if they had not offered any moral cover to the contraction between the desperately poor and the impossibly wealthy, he would have stayed in the finest quarters of the finest hotels, eaten the best food, and enjoyed all the comforts of spas, air conditioning, and impeccable service.

From a personal point of view – and that, after all, was what counted since Francis went into development not because of any missionary zeal but for adventure – his trips to the most remote parts of Africa, Asia, and South America were value-plus add-ons. Although there was some discomfort involved in remote travel, he got to see parts of the world no one had ever seen and few would ever see.  If his development projects were irrelevant – all projects designed by bureaucrats in Washington, London, or Stockholm were ipso facto doomed to failure because of the impossibility of ‘culture-matching’, another international term to describe the impossibility of the cross-cultural purpose -  then enjoy life after heat-and-dust knowing that one had tried.

The difference between Francis and many of his colleagues was degree of guilt.  While they stayed at four-star hotels with some moral misgivings, questioned the value of meals at the best restaurants on the peninsular beaches of Luanda, and wondered at the irony of airconditioned travel in Mercedes 4x4’s while the streets of Calcutta were hot, crowded, and nasty; he had no qualms whatsoever.  Not only were comfortable accommodations right and proper for the job, but he joined the profession exactly because of the benefits.  A day’s work was a day’s work, but an evening’s enjoyment with fine food, good company, and gracious surroundings was precisely what he signed up for.

Francis was never a slacker.  He performed at a very high level on every assignment entrusted to him regardless of the likelihood of success.  In fact those who appreciated the inefficiencies of the system, the political purposes of project designers, and the sheer impossibility of reaching first-world targets in the outposts of Chad or Burkina Faso, saw Francis as a model.  A man who did his best even though he knew his efforts would never matter; and who enjoyed himself to the fullest on someone else’s nickel.  A man for all seasons.

The so-called ‘development’ industry already is dying a slow death.  Private sector investments, capital market borrowing, and international business competition are replacing the old do-good style of ‘helping others’.  Those currently ‘on the ground’ will remain and are likely to finish out their careers in the same Third World backwaters where they started; but fewer and fewer young people are opting for the old paradigm.  While travel to God-forsaken places still has allure for the young, it should be done under different circumstances with more accountability, more bottom-line management.

However they proceed and whatever they do, the end will be the same.  They will enjoy high-class living, a glimpse into the interior of the ‘real world’; and some heat and dust; but what they will remember just like the thousands who went before them, will be the Oberoi Grand, the Raffles, the Oriental, and the Mandarin.

Money Can’t Buy Me Love–Of Course It Can And Always Does

It has been a persistent myth of those of modest means that money means little; and the true value of life is found in family, faith, and community.  According to the myth love is an expression of such responsible commitment, an indispensable and expected part of marriage, and the glue that holds it together.

The myth, of course, is only that.  The wealthy not only have family, faith, community, and love, but have much more of them.  A man of means and position can have as many children as he wants by as many women as he can.  Divorce, remarriage, affairs, and mistresses are not only common but expected.  Such a man is not unhappy or dissatisfied because of his wealth, somehow distracted from meaning or higher purpose; but more satisfied, ambitious in his pursuits, and fulfilled than those without money. What man would not want a beautiful wife and mistress, homes in the Bahamas, Pebble Beach, and Gstaad? A private plane, yacht, and a five-star Michelin chef in residence?  Meals at the world’s best restaurants, suites in the best hotels, first class travel, the best tables, the best views, and the best entertainment?

The rest is just sour grapes.

Money does not literally buy love – no Class A call-girls at the Ritz – but the freedom to love whomever for as long or as short as needed.  Divorces are fought over, painful, and recriminatory for those of modest means – who gets what is important and worth fighting over – but are rarely so for the wealthy men who can settle even the most outrageous claims of offended wives.  A man of hundreds of millions is willing to spend whatever it takes to free him from wife and marry another; and herein lies the true value of wealth – freedom. 

Harry (Rabbit) Angstrom, the main character in John Updike’s tetralogy is trapped in a dependent marriage.  A man from a working class family, Rabbit marries a woman whose father owns a profitable car dealership, who gives him an executive position in the firm,  and by so doing assures him a comfortable life.  Yet Rabbit is never happy.  He married his wife Janice out of responsibility not love, is financially beholden to her after she takes over the firm after her father dies, and becomes increasingly irrelevant as his wife takes charge of the business, their home, and what remains of their family.  As Rabbit admits to a former lover, as much as he would like to, he can never leave his wife.  He has no money of his own, no business opportunities outside the dealership; in failing health and with little chance of anything but a depressingly ordinary life in a decaying Rust Belt town, in a spiritless retirement community in Florida, and in a job which, although many steps up from the hard, working class labor of his father, is empty of any promise or promotion.

Yet Rabbit refuses to give in to the life which he has fallen into. 

In his younger years he tries to break out of his unhappy marriage, leave his slow-witted, unattractive wife and child; but makes too many mistakes and too many naïve errors of judgment.  He has wasted his natural talent and intelligence, and defeated, contrite, and ignorantly reformed, he returns to his wife; but soon after reconciliation he realizes that he has made a worse mistake – exchanging his freedom for a narrow, airless, but secure life of little promise.  He was too young, too inexperienced, and too tied to the moralistic code of the working poor to think for himself, to see the necessarily hopeless life to come, and to do anything but accept the hand he has been dealt.

As he gets older; and as the accommodated and compromised life with his wife, son, and his family becomes even more confining, more accusatory, and less forgiving, he becomes angry and mean-spirited.  Yet his misanthropy – a dislike of his wife, his incompetent, whiny, adult son; his bratty, undisciplined children; and everyone except the three Jews with whom he plays golf in Florida.  Somehow they, Rabbit thinks, have solved the puzzle – how to live an uninteresting, flat life with equanimity and fun.  Yet his depression is too far advanced.  His conviction that he will remain as he is – in place as an overweight, embittered, spiteful man for whom death is appealing.

While many authors have written about the unhappy lives of the rich – J.P. Marquand, F.Scott Fitzgerald, Chekhov, Ibsen and O’Neill among them – their stories are either morally illustrative or literarily tragic.  Gatsby, George Apley; Irina, Masha, and Olga; Rosmer, or Lavinia Mannon all come to sad ends because of ignorance, arrogance, limited vision, culture, or naivete.  Their fates are meant to be indicative lessons for us all.  The dangers not inherent in wealth nor facilitated by it, but more evident because of it. The fall of the high and mighty is not only of popular interest but instructional. 

Ever since Jesus warned that it is more difficult for a rich man to gain heaven than it is for a camel to walk through the eye of a needle, we have made assumptions about the rich.  The state of wealth necessarily and permanently impairs high vision, insight, spiritual growth, and compassion for others.  It is hard to be a good man if you are a wealthy man; or its converse, it is easier to be a good man if you are poor.

The combination of envy (we all, despite the religious blandishments and warnings, all want to be rich and to enjoy the lifestyles of the rich and famous) and self-justifying righteousness (the rich are morally reprobate) is potent; and it is no wonder why the wealthy are often criticized.   The assumption that the wealthy cannot be righteous, happy, or satisfied dies hard.  We want the rich to have their comeuppance, to fall far and hard, and to finally get a taste of our miseries.

Of course not only most rich happy, they are extremely happy; and Jesus’ parable about the rich man and the camel – like many of his admonitions – has only indicative significance.  Yes, a wealthy man might be distracted from spiritual matters by his focus on earnings; but a postal clerk, carpenter, or shoe salesman with no profit margins to consider or wealth to accumulate can be just as spiritually ignorant, slavish to things and circumstances. 

Fitzgerald believed Jesus and subscribed entirely to his vision:

Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different.

Fitzgerald’s assumption is illustrative of the same envy-righteousness as that of most people without wealth, a point of principle rather than fact.

It is easier, more pleasant and agreeable to have a chauffer or ride in a comfortable, high-performance car.  A week at a villa on St. Bart’s is far more attractive than one at Ocean City or the Outer Banks.  A stay in a suite in a five-star hotel is better than an AirB&B on a noisy street.  A dinner at Jean-Georges in New York City far better than ethnic food in Takoma Park.  Armani, Dior, St. Laurent, and Tiffany are more elegant and stylish than off-the-rack, thrift store, mix-and-match urban make-do. The education afforded children of wealthy parents is private, exclusive, selective, and high quality and of no comparison to public schooling.  First class is better than back-of-the-plane below-economy.  Everything is better and everything else is whining.

The most important benefit of wealth – freedom – should never get lost amidst the more obvious and visible ones.  The freedom to do as you please because, thanks to your wealth, you can, is undeniable.  No one wants to live the life of Rabbit Angstrom, but most do.  Most must be satisfied with a difficult life justified by goodness at best and envious vindictiveness at worst.  

All of which is why Americans have never lost and never will lose their very special aspirational quality – to rise in status and economic viability even to the very top.  While for some such a rise only means things – more beautiful things, more fun things, more happy things – for most others it means liberation from the old, shopworn, uninspiring world of family, faith, and work.  For Rabbit Angstrom all three have been confining, debilitating, and depressing.

Fitzgerald thought the rich were different because of their entitled arrogance.  Hemingway who replied to Fitzgerald statement, ‘The rich are different from you and me’, by saying, ‘Yes, they have more money’, was far less romantic and less idealistic than Fitzgerald.  The only difference between the rich and the poor was a question of dollars and cents.  Being poor guaranteed no salvation or goodness. Being wealthy assured no damnation or no misery.

The real difference is this – the rich have more freedom.