We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
The college screechers disparage manliness, but the real world continues to value specific, ideal manly qualities because they are so useful in life and helpful to others. Young men, listen up.
Historically, the path from boy to man was hard-earned and marked by specific achievements. With the modern invention of adolescence and "extended adolescence", the lines are blurred. Like the song says, a "mannish boy" is not a man. Puberty does not make a man, nor does sexual activity.
Are the ideal "manly" qualities today very different from those of the past? I don't know. I can tell you what qualities my friends aspire to and work towards as a life-long project: providing for and protecting family and progeny, independence, courage and shame for weakness, the willingness to take risk, the willingness to be tough and forceful when needed, a seriousness about life while remaining cheerful, physical fitness and athletic development, mental fitness, spiritual development, skill development of all sorts, community involvement, responsibility and integrity, kindness and being a good friend, having constructive life goals, generosity of spirit, etc etc. We discuss these things in our men's Bible study group.
It's a tall order, and that is exactly the point. We all raise boys to aspire towards these qualities, knowing full well that it is a challenging and difficult path with many speed bumps and disappointments. (How different or difficult the path is for women is not something I feel qualified to discuss.)
When I went off to prep school at 13, on the first day the Headmaster said to us (paraphrased from memory): "Welcome, boys. You have said your goodbyes to your parents and have had a nice lunch. We are delighted to have you now officially join our school. I am sorry to tell you that we will make it very hard for you and you will suffer many disappointments but we expect that you boyswill become adult young men who are a credit to this school when you graduate. One more warning. Disappoint us too deeply and you will be sent home to your Mom. Please do not do that. Since we picked each of you carefully and personally, we expect that each one of you will have victories too in whatever areas you choose. If you have troubles with something, let us know. We are on your side but we will be tough in expecting and demanding your success, so get ready for the adventure. Give everything your best. You have one hour to settle into your rooms, and then report to the Field House for your health and physical fitness and sports assessments. Good luck, boys, and I will see you tomorrow morning in Chapel."
Good little speech about male privilege. Although the intellectual challenges were intense, overall it seemed secondary to their focus on personal development, to expand oneself to become the best, most developed person you could be. School, or parents, same message.
Call them self-employed, or gig workers, or outside contractors if you want. People who get no paychecks or job benefits.
For people who value independence and being their own boss, the price paid in uncertainty, lack of external structure, and anxiety, is worth it. There is nothing new about this. If you are a plumber with a truck you are a gig worker. So is a guy with a barbershop.
Last week I posted on Does Language Shape Our Thoughts? The subject provoked some discussion. It is true that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis turns out to have little empirical support, but I'll stand by my experience that a new word or phrase, and the concept in them, certainly effect the ways I think and can even give me a new tool to think in a new way. Heck, that is called "education." (a quote on the topic below the fold)
I think one problem might be taking the implications of a theory too far, too globally. This brings me to the notion of "social construction," popularized by Berger and Luckmann's The Social Construction of Reality.After I read it, I asked my professor whether social constructionism might be a social construct.
Berger and Luckmann's claims were stimulating and I am certain that they have limited application despite being unreinforced by data. (I don't know how one gets data on such types of epistemologic theorizing.) However they were welcomed by radicals and deconstruction postmodernists who took them to extremes, sometimes to psychotic levels of subjectivity, because they appeared to support the ideas of the infinite malleability of the human mind and heart, and the impossibility of objectivity.
It seems self-evident that language and ideas shape our thoughts. Almost nobody ever has an original thought, but new words and new ideas we obtain from others and from the past are exciting (or disturbing) because of their shaping or re-shaping effects.
There is some Goethe quote that we can only see what we know. If you see a "fighter jet" and I see an F-16, our mental representations of the thing are entirely different. Similarly, if you see "woods" and I see an Oak-Beech climax forest. Knowledge embedded in language shapes our perceptions and thus our thought.
My favorite question is "Who was the genius who invented numbers?" Are numbers "real"? . Remarkably, not all cultures have/had numbers. Numbers make a huge difference in how we perceive the world. And colors are just handy bunching of slices of the humanly visible electromagnetic spectrum.
I suggest that we get our own act together instead of waiting for utopia. There is no utopia, and heaven, I am told, is like a boring vacation. A harp is a fine instrument, but all day long? Not to say that meeting God would not be an exciting moment.
"I drink beer whenever I can get my hands on any," Merton confessed. "I love beer, and by that very fact, the world." But even in the hermitage, Merton struggled with other people's infatuation with his hermit identity.
In an age where there is much talk about "being yourself" I reserve to myself the right to forget about being myself, since in any case there is very little chance of my being anybody else. Rather, it seems to me that when one is too intent on "being himself" he runs the risk of impersonating a shadow. . . I am accused of living in the woods like Thoreau instead of living in the desert like St. John the Baptist. All I can answer is that I am not living "like anybody." Or "unlike anybody." We all live somehow or other, and that's that. It is a compelling necessity for me to be free to embrace the necessity of my own nature.
Betrayal is a common catechism in the Church of the Self. Hymns to Me are the hosannas it hurls at an empty heaven. The politics of such a church require as First Things a rejection of all things not of, by, and for the self. A religion or a country of the people, by the people, and for the people is high on the list of things to be abhorred since it requires an allegiance that is other than to the self. The Church of the Self effectively mandates treason, and we see it now manifested daily in the bright robes of “unstiffled dissent” which shroud an increasingly vicious anti-Americanism that has its roots, not in reasoned criticism, but in unreasoned hate. We hear the hate but what we have not been allowed to see is the treason behind it.
"Sorting yourself out is harder than you think." It's just a good chat about foolish youth who want to save the world. Peterson is right. It's adolescent narcissism.
There goes a job. I had never encountered a robotic parking garage until last weekend in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. (By the way, Fort Greene was once a scary place. Not anymore. Very pleasant, with a perfect cozy neighborhood Italian joint, Belli on Fulton St.)
The garage had rack parking 3 floors underground. You park the car on the elevator, get out, and down it goes. When it's time to go, you watch the robot lift your car off the rack on the video camera. Robot places your car on the elevator, and up it comes.
Illuminating review of Peterson's new book by somebody who was prepared to trash it. He includes comments on Peterson's psychotherapeutic work too:
I’m really embarrassed to say this. And I totally understand if you want to stop reading me after this, or revoke my book-reviewing license, or whatever. But guys, Jordan Peterson is actually good.
His only quibble is with the foundations of Peterson's idea of the good life: "Reduce suffering." If there is a better idea outside of religion, I either haven't heard it or cannot understand it.
Several gals I know read this book to understand how (many) men function. They want to be man-savvy and particularly predator-savvy.
It seems like a how-to book for guys who have been disappointed in their romantic or simply sexual pursuits. Some guys are luckier than others. Some guys are chick magnets, and they are not all tall, dark (or orange), and handsome.
It's not just rich and powerful guys who decide to give their instincts free rein. It's not just guys, either.
Interesting to me that nobody needs to write books for women about how to get appealing males into bed. It just comes naturally to them.
Walk a Manhattan sidewalk, and try to guess who has a credit line of $10 million and who has one of zero. Take a transcontinental business class flight—who paid $5,000 for it and who saved up his frequent flyer miles for a year to travel in style? The guy in the jogging outfit and the girl in a business suit have no real clue of where the other falls in the social hierarchy...
It is true for sure. However, I think his observation applies more to guys than to gals. Most guys prefer to dress in as relaxed a manner as they can except when they need to "dress for success" for meetings. Billionaires do not need to dress for meetings.
Families without good father role models do not work well, statistically. Where are the good men? And why do women go along with this program if it works poorly for their kids?
From 
There goes a job. I had never encountered a robotic parking garage until last weekend in 
Several gals I know