The Noisome Pestilence

“Surely he shall deliver us from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence,” declares David in the 91st Psalm. Indeed, he proclaims, we may find refuge under the shadow of the Almighty.

Pestilence is not a word we encounter often in our contemporary vernacular. Likely it is due to the fact that pestilence comes from 13th Century Middle English and described contagious diseases such as the Bubonic Plague. That we in the 21st Century have all but eradicated communicable, infectious disease as a common cause of death is a great achievement of modern science. The fear that stalked people in their interactions with others for most of human history is something for which we have no point of reference. Yet there is merit in attempting to recover the metaphoric value of the word pestilence as we consider our post-modern society and the ills that plague us today.

For we are infected with a communicable disease of the soul, one as ravenous to us spiritually as the Ebola virus is to its victims physically. This pestilence has been around no doubt since Cain and Abel–the drive for outward success and the internal self-flagellation we encounter when we fall short. But in the era of Facebook and Twitter, FourSquare and Klout, it is a mutated virus that not only spreads faster, but is far more deadly.

The Advertising Age showed us images of people consuming products that we were then supposed to want as a result of having seen them. The real-life Don Drapers of the 60s and 70s pioneered the mass marketing culture that spawned sentiments like “Keeping up with the Joneses.” We could see the idealized movie star or model on TV wearing a particular article of clothing, driving a certain car, or wearing a cologne, and we could see our neighbor and perhaps our co-workers with those things as well. We might think that envy would be the result of this, and perhaps for some people it is, but I would submit the far more pervasive reaction was an internal sense of inadequacy–the feeling that “I’m less of a person because I have not been successful enough to afford that thing.”

The Church accommodated the mass marketing culture, but it did not roll over to it entirely. Materialism and consumerism were attacked from the pulpit as antithetical to the teachings of Christ. Certainly the ‘health and wealth’ heresy of the Joel Olsteens of the world stands as proof that the denouncement of materialism was not uniform, but nevertheless it could be reasonably predicted that a conversation with a pastor in most of America’s prominent denominations of Christianity would yield a greater or lesser degree of disdain for this part of the culture. The counter-cultural movement that emerged from secular radicals similarly decried a change in values away from people and toward stuff.

Then something strange happened. My generation was born. Generation Y could be said to have come up during the denouement of mass market materialism. The Dot-Com Era in which we emerged from adolescence and into college and adulthood began to radically reshape our values. No longer is conspicuous consumption the mark of achievement, but a host of other external validation checklists against which we now judge ourselves. In the Start-Up world, these things can range from the quality of one’s Venture Capital investors to whether you were invited to TED or had a speaking slot at SXSW or rubbed elbows with David Cameron at Davos. It could be the number of “exits” or how frequently you travel for business. The extent of the list is obvious to people living it.

The 70″ TV and Mercedes in the driveway are not this generation’s metric for success. Indeed it seems my generation doesn’t want to own much of anything at all and could even be said to be characterized by a yearning for nomadicism, a no-strings-attached approach to life, unanchored by family or church, or any other encumbrance. Child-rearing is viewed as something that must nearly always be delayed until one has the resources to not be encumbered by the children either. And so we see many people, including many of my friends, becoming more anxious about their biological clock ticking over and against a seemingly uncooperative professional life that can’t quite move fast enough to give us the leeway to do these things that our instincts tell us we ought to be doing.

All of this leads to the pestilence infecting Generation Y. On the surface we are the most optimistic, even bubbly generation that has ever lived, particularly if you run in the technology or non-profit circles. Everybody is changing the world by day. But by night we are addicted to anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medication. Ritalin turned to Adderall turned to Xanax as we grew up. Although alcoholism is not the same as it was in the days of the blue collar factory worker coming home drunk and beating his wife, there is a more subtle form that pervades Generation Y, acting as a numbing agent against the anxieties and depressions we suffer but don’t talk about.

This suggests a level of cognitive dissonance we would do well to acknowledge. Our external optimism does not flow from our internal state of being, but from the belief that we are expected to behave in that way and that behaving in that way is a sign of success in life, the same way that driving a BMW was an external sign of success to our Baby Boomer parents. While we are no longer measuring ourselves by the price of our car or the square footage of our house, we are nevertheless measuring ourselves against the achievements and abilities of our peers.

When I talk to people my age about questions of faith, religion, and theology, most have either come to treat it as a sterile, almost academic subject about which they have this or that theory, or else they view it as one category of their life that supports their professional development or their philanthropic checklist. They go to church the same way they go to a bar, for a quick fix or a cheap thrill. This isn’t our fault, though. We aren’t really offered any decent alternatives.

It is no wonder that “organized religion” is almost a curse word to Generation Y. Even worse are the few exceptions, churches genuinely trying to walk a path commensurate with Christ’s teachings, who ask us to renounce the pursuit of worldly success. How could I possibly renounce the pursuit worldly success? What would my friends think? How can I stop caring about whether I’m on a panel at SXSW–everybody will be there!

Surely our parents thought the same thing about BMWs and 10,000 square foot houses. But it is worse for us. There is something prima facie inconsistent with the 10,000 square foot house and the teachings of Jesus to sell everything you have and give it to the poor. Generation Y’s raison d’être is deceptively less problematic. We are changing the world, after all! Isn’t that what Jesus told us to do?

I chose the phrase “pursuit of worldly success” rather intentionally. Worldly success–that invitation to TED isn’t really the problem. The problem is when we want it, and we orient our actions to its pursuit. As Christ said “Seek first the kingdom of God and all of these things will be added unto you.”

But there is a far more important truth to comprehend here. Our renunciation of the pursuit of worldly success does not happen in isolation. That alone would also not resolve the pervasive anxieties of our generation. Rather, it comes as a package deal with another kind of renunciation–one that is in fact more difficult, but immediately rewarding: the renunciation of worldly failure.

When we come to understand ourselves in our true state, as Kierkegaard might frame it “alone before God,” we understand the reality of Kipling’s exhortation to “meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same.” The freedom that comes in renunciation, of seeing ourselves alone before God, is the freedom from all of our failures, from beating ourselves up over lost opportunities, shortcomings, and the painful comparisons to the people we follow on Twitter.

Perhaps if we so freed ourselves from the tyranny of failure on the inside, we might just be capable of truly changing the world, and smiling on the inside while we do it, knowing we are protected from that noisome pestilence.


Originally posted by Skinner Layne at
http://skinnerlayne.com/2012/07/06/the-noisome-pestilence/

Meritocracy? Not Even Close

The middle class in every country really just wants three things: Liberty, Prosperity, and Dignity.

Socialism denies all three in the name of protecting them. Our current model of (Crony) Capitalism limits their accessibility to only a few people and declares that there’s simply not enough to go around and that ‘at least we have a meritocracy to decide who gets what.’ It’s a sham meritocracy, though. Yes, it benefits the people who got good grades in high school and made it into Harvard. But who gets into Harvard? The children of people who went to college, who could afford SAT prep courses, who had the money or time to drive their kids to extracurricular activities, children who could take that service trip to Honduras instead of working two jobs to help pay their families’ bills. That’s not a meritocracy. That’s a lie.

It’s a rigged system, rigged for the elites by the elites. Not maliciously. It’s just that they know not what they do. The system has been designed to make them feel good about themselves. As long as it looks like a meritocracy, they don’t feel bad about the inequality of opportunity. As long as there are a few token kids of extraordinary intelligence pulled out of the ghetto and given a free ride to Yale, they can suspend their disbelief about how the system they designed, the system they support keeps the masses from Liberty, Prosperity, and Dignity. They aren’t bad, they’re just ignorant, perhaps willfully so.

The worst are often the people who came from humble beginnings and ‘made it,’ who joined the Club, and now have an inflated sense of self-importance. These people are as zealous as reformed smokers–”If I can do it, anybody can. Everybody else is just not as smart or doesn’t work as hard as I did.” When in reality, by accident of genetics, they ended up with the particular kind of intelligence that the system measures, and they are the lucky ones ushered into the Club to prove that it’s really a meritocracy.

Unfortunately the defenders of the system are ruining the reputation of capitalism and discrediting the liberating and democratic nature of free markets. They claim it’s a level playing field when everybody else knows it isn’t. Until we reject the lie of the meritocracy, we will continue to feel the pressure toward more failed socialist experiments.

To the elites: It’s time to let go.

http://skinnerlayne.com/2012/06/20/meritocracy-not-even-close/

Confidence

Confidence is not the certainty that you will succeed, but the suspension of disbelief about the overwhelming odds against you.

The suspension of disbelief is the root of all faith.

Faith is the substance of things hoped for. 

Faith, then requires the hope of something.

If the thing hoped for is meaningless, Faith is in vain.

Therefore, to have Confidence in one’s endeavors, one must Hope for things which are good.

http://skinnerlayne.com/2012/05/22/confidence/

Male-Male Relationships, Gay and Straight

If there is any word that might accurately describe the vast majority of human relationships, it is "dysfunctional."  This is all the more true when describing males' relationships with other males.  Recent studies show that young men are more emotionally damaged and prone to destructive behavior than young women when experiencing difficult romantic relationships.  As the article states, it is partially because men tend to rely on their romantic relationships for all forms of intimacy, where women tend to have one or more close friendships from whence they gain non-sexual emotional intimacy.  

In our continuing discussion of masculinity, I wanted to write a brief piece on male-male relationships, both gay and straight, and identify how men in our current age have become extremely isolated, with fewer and fewer emotional ties to the rest of society, and how in the absence of such, have turned to alcohol, drugs, and promiscuous sexual behavior as substitutes for real intimacy.  

Masculine intimacy is taboo in Western culture.  The people that might be expected to advocate it generally reject the value and benefits of masculinity itself, while the more primitive advocates of masculinity tend to view male intimacy (especially with other males) with great suspicion, if not motivated by outright homophobia.  It is true that men are less social creatures, than women, but they are not a-social, and the lack of a proper balance of healthy interactions with other people can lead to anti-social behavior (something men are far more prone to, on average, than women).  

There are few modern examples of intimate male friendships that are not the subject of the rumor mills, hoping to out some celebrity or public figure as being gay because of the friendships they keep (think Matt Damon and Ben Affleck).  Notwithstanding the minor pop-cultural craze over "bromances," real society sees very little intimacy in male relationships with one another.  There are no fond exchanges of letters between modern Thomas Jeffersons and John Adams.  I have in fact witnessed the toll of the intimacy deficit on straight men I know--the lack of having a trusted confidant with whom one can be transparent and open without fear of judgment.  Perhaps, as we have seen, the cause of this is the failure of society to provide appropriate forums for ceremonial combat between males and this leads men to view their intimate private lives as their realm of superiority over their fellow male.  

Because most of my friends are straight men, I am acutely aware of these issues.  Gay men, though, are not substantially better off.  In one sense, they are not afraid of male intimacy, which perhaps makes the remedy more accessible, but they nevertheless suffer from the same lack of examples of positive male intimacy as straight men.  Gay men in fact turn to sex (frequently very promiscuous sex) as a substitute for genuine intimacy, and this behavior is accepted--even celebrated--by the gay clubbing/hookup culture.  This is perhaps why gay male relationships are on average shorter than straight relationships and lesbian relationships--once the sex (that is, the intimacy substitute) is gone, there is nothing left binding the relationship together (especially since raising children is not yet widespread amongst gay men, particularly younger ones).  

If the stereotype of the gay man being "more in touch with his feelings" were true, one would expect longer-lasting gay relationships.  The absence of such, however shows both a lack of emotional maturity and a lack of broad understanding of how to relate to another male in a fundamental way.  It is much easier for men to ignore the emotional aspect of relationships in favor of sex in any context, but this is amplified when the relationships is with another man.  Similarly, male friends (straight or gay) that are characterized by the presence of more intimacy than would otherwise be expected are prone to "breakups" since men are not well-equipped (nor taught) to healthfully handle conflicts that are inevitable in intimate relationships (be they sexual relationships or platonic ones).  

The embrace and understanding of masculine intimacy is essential to the continued progress and development of society.  Stable, healthy gay partnerships will be a boon to the culture, while intimate friendships will help rescue straight men from their atomized isolation, reducing substance abuse, crime, and other anti-social behavior.  Simultaneously, it will aid society in moving away from its casual attitude toward sex (which has emerged precisely because of the lack of genuine intimacy of the old regime combined with the post-modern stripping away of the old regime's social norms and mores), helping solve the public health crisis surrounding sexually transmitted diseases and encouraging people to move away from their consumerist attitudes toward sex and relationships that has destabilized families and perpetuated the cycle of poor socialization of the young.  

Posted via email from The Mulling Stone

The Beginning of Men (Part II)

Virtually all of society's contemporary problems can be traced to a failure in the socialization of the young.  The nihilism of the 1960s counter-culture, in one generation, wiped away centuries of understood social norms and the expectation that children (at least in respectable society) are to be reared in such a manner that they grow up to behave within a particular set of constraints.  The entire notion of "self government" upon which the United States was supposedly founded can only exist in a context in which the young are socialized to behave in a self-governing manner (drive at reasonable speeds, do what you say you will do, don't steal, don't cheat people, tell the truth, etc.).  Because of the advent of post-modernity (which is not altogether a bad development), socializing the young has become stigmatized.  There seems to be a desire (whether active or simply motivated by laziness) that children should be raised as "blank slates" and encouraged to come up with their own set of values as they interact with the world.  Folly does not even begin to describe this approach.  

"Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him." (Proverbs 22:15)

Our experience with post-modernity has been necessary for social progress, and it has broken down many social norms that needed to be discarded.  The culmination of the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason into a nearly 75 year period of questioning and rejecting almost everything has allowed for the emancipation of women, the inclusion of openly gay people in mainstream society, the Civil Rights movement and a dramatic reduction in systemic racism, the rejection of the Church's anti-reason claims (6,000 year old earth, etc.), and many other things that have been net-positive.  But, as Chesterton said, "the whole point of opening one's mind, as one's mouth, is to eventually close it around something solid."  

We can no longer afford to ignore the issue of socialization in our public discourse.  The almighty supremacy of the State in contemporary society has emerged because there are no other arbiters of right and wrong in the post-modern world.  The arbitrary nature of the State and its claims to legitimacy strike at the core of the history of human existence.  When we had a King, we longed for the "rule of law," and now we have no rules but the law, nor could we bear them if we did, as the law has transformed from a check on the tyrant to the tool of tyranny for the political class and the bureaucracy. 

All of this is a proper preface for our discussion of the destruction of masculinity and the "end of men," for we must understand the decline of the male in the context of the failure of socialization of the young and the elevation of the State as the most important (perhaps the only) institution in society.  Men have been socialized in a classroom environment in the public schools (at least in America) where the vast majority of their teachers are females, and where now the vast majority of school administrators (particularly in the lower grade levels) are also females.  The feminization of schools means that young men are excoriated for their "bad" behavior while girls are rewarded for being conformist rule-followers.  The feminized school system is heavy on rules and short on meaningful discipline.  Male children, as a result, rebel against the rules knowing they will not be punished in any meaningful way.  

As Alastair pointed out in his post, the school system has come to lack any competitive features that encourage males' ceremonial combat, other than athletics.  Because the contemporary distortions of masculinity consider bookishness to be a feminine trait, and in-class competitiveness has been discouraged by the ill-considered notion that "everybody is a winner," the last haven of "masculinity" is in sports, not academics, and 40 years of this crisis has led to the logical end--the middle-aged man whose life revolves around drinking beer and watching sporting events.  

Consequently, we must reconsider how we educate and socialize young men, from the time they are infants all the way through college graduation.  Coeducational schooling must be abandoned en masse.  Here I argue not for single-sex schools, but merely for single-sex classrooms.  The learning environment should be free from the learning style conflicts that necessarily arise from one's gender.  Young boys should have predominantly, but not exclusively, male teachers, while young girls should have predominantly, but not exclusively female teachers.  As they progress toward high school, these numbers can gradually move toward an even split.  

The coeducational classroom environment is far more destructive to boys than girls.  Boys engage in their ceremonial combat in inappropriate ways in the presence of females in order to impress them, even from a very young age.  In the classroom setting, this often means they do say through acting out, engaging in an attempt to prove their dominance over the ultimate authority figure, the teacher.  Perhaps this is one reason I, as a gay male, was able to excel over my other male classmates as a child--I did not have the biological, psychological, or sociological drive to dominate my teachers in order to impress the females.  Gay male courtship also follows far different patterns (and within the gay population, far more diversity as well, depending on the roots of one's homosexuality, be they primarily genetic, biological, or psychological), so there was also no corresponding need to impress the other young males.  This helps offer an alternate explanation of why gay males have excelled generally in education in the last 20 years other than the fact that they "fit in" the feminized educational environment.  

Within the male classroom environment, grading standards must be manifestly different than the grading standards used for females.  Throughout the school year, the male grading system should be based on a strict bell curve, with publicly posted grades and a greater emphasis on oral evaluation with the other students present.  Where this might be intimidating and damaging to the female student, it causes adrenaline-driven learning, stimulating the natural biological disposition of the competitive young male.  Boys and young men, motivated by the desire to avoid public embarrassment and underperformance, will finally have a reason to seek out assistance from their instructors for material with which they are struggling.  A system of secret grading that allows a boy to hide his underperformance only compounds the problem, and seeking assistance would be perceived to be an admission of their failure.  In the competitive, public setting of the classroom, the embarrassment of asking for help after class would be considered by the young student to be the lesser evil when juxtaposed with the prospect of public excoriation.

Given only one year of implementing different teaching styles with males, standardized test scores would equalize between the genders.  Male students should be encouraged to defeat their classmates on exams, while female students should be encouraged to "do their best."  These differing approaches would exact optimal performance out of young men.  We have stigmatized male success and their drive to "be the best", and that is why they have become lazy an unproductive. 

If we want to look to the areas where men are still wildly successful in life, we need look only to the Forbes List, where males continue to dominate, even in the younger generation.  What we find should disturb us--nearly all successful self-made billionaires are college dropouts.  Where the contemporary collegiate environment has discouraged the exhibition of the biological traits that make men excel, those who managed to maintain their passion to be the best and destroy the competition simply excluded themselves from the academic setting and went off on their own.    The academic setting must be reformed to encourage these traits within the context of formal education so that our successful men also possess knowledge of history, the arts, languages, and civics.  Instead, they have become atomized and isolated, without proper socialization.  There are positive exceptions to this--Bill Gates is surely an example of the well-rounded person who has a competent understanding of society and how to interact properly with it.  But all too often, mis-socialization leads to people who commit heinous frauds in their quest to "get ahead."  The consumerist culture that has emerged in the last few decades is in fact one of the symptoms of our failure to properly socialize young men and instill in them the notion that civic duty, honor, and trust are more admirable traits than owning and possessing luxury goods.  If men cannot be super wealthy, they have no self-worth.  The dangers of this cannot be understated.

Furthermore, proper socialization of young men must be altered to de-stigmatized what have become "feminine" pursuits.  Theatre, art, music (real music, not the guitar), competitive debate, academic competitions, etc., must be encouraged.  Modern women complain that they cannot find acceptable males who are refined and cultured precisely because straight males are discouraged from participating in artistic activities by the stigma attached to it.  Simultaneously, gay men should be highly encouraged to participate in sports and to develop themselves physically from a young age, and to take active part in the more "alpha" male competitive pursuits.  Well-rounded "renaissance" men are a great gift to society.  The versatility once associated with male talent has disappeared due to the feminization of education and the stigmatization of artistic pursuits.  The straight males who do participate in the arts became a special subculture like the "hipsters" since they are not accepted by their football-playing counterparts.  

Our schools are not the only venue in which this proper socialization must take place.  The Church and the Home are equally as important.  In the Church setting, great care must be taken to show the masculinity of Biblical examples without the chauvinism that accompanies the narrative amongst modern conservative commentators.  We must show boys and young men that Jesus exhibited traits of righteous anger as well as great compassion. At times he cried, at others he yelled, at still others he refrained from showing emotion at all.  The Church should be a training ground for the Christ-like leadership traits of young men.  

At home, fathers must take an active role in the cultivation of this new masculinity as well.  Fathers must abandon their own entertainment pursuits to encourage their sons not only in athletics, but in academics and the arts as well.  Fathers must accompany their sons to the symphony and the theatre.  They must teach their sons about poetry and languages.  They must encourage these things alongside competitiveness.  Fathers, taking a more active parenting role, must allow "boys to be boys" and rather than discouraging sibling rivalry for the sake of "peace" (the mother's eternal pursuit with more than one male child present).  Sibling rivalries should be channeled into healthy competitions between brothers, and in the absence of a second male child, the father must play the role of the rival, sometimes winning their ceremonial combats and sometimes allowing the child to win.  The workaholic father who outsources his parenting duties solely to his wife and the schools is among the chief causes of the mis-socialization of our young men, and the more this takes place, the more difficult it is to rescue society's circumstances, since the cycle means fewer and fewer well-socialized men to serve as examples for the youth.

By synthesizing the recent degenerated view of masculinity with the historic aristocratic view of masculinity, we will simultaneously encourage a man that is both more masculine and more sensitive.  Encouraging oral argumentation and verbal sparring (where understanding the opposing viewpoint is essential) in the academic setting will lead to men who can better communicate with their female partners in a relationship setting.  By encouraging young men to participate in athletics and forms of academic competition, we will create men who know how to bond with each other in the absence of beer and televised football.  By de-stigmatizing young men's participation in the arts, we will find men more culturally adept, restore them to their historically prodigious production of refined music, art, and literature.  Like the Gentlemen of old Europe (and old America), they will be well-groomed and well-dressed, and yet ready at any moment to spar with an opponent on the "battlefield" whether in a match of physical or intellectual prowess.  These are men who can be proud of themselves, with clear aspirations that are not rooted merely in the accumulation of material possessions or an escape from the pain of failing to do so (which leads to alcoholism, sports addictions, and heavy use of recreational drugs).  

I am confident that we can redefine masculinity in the contemporary context to encourage all of the positive traits of historic aristocratic masculinity but in a way that recognizes the equality and value of women in society and avoids the chauvinism that has become the ersatz masculinity of the American male who has not succumb to feminization.  I am equally confident that this new masculinity will yield great benefits to young gay men, primarily in the form of more healthy and stable long-term domestic partnerships (that is a topic I will consider in the future in greater depth).  

The one element that is notably absent from my proposed solution set is the State.  The State is impotent to effect a new masculinity.  Not only that, its interests are diametrically opposed to such an effort.  The paternalistic Welfare State benefits greatly from emasculated men. Society, especially single women and single mothers, turn to the State in the absence of healthy masculinity in society.  The State promises to protect us from terrorists, from economic turmoil, instability, and all of the other risks of life.  The State of course cannot deliver any of these things, but the illusion, in the absence of an alternative, is sufficient.  This is why women in the modern age tend to support the paternalistic State in far higher numbers than men.  The numbers become even more disparate amongst unmarried women.  The feminist movement's discouragement of marriage and "relying on men" has led to a dramatic rise in State intervention in everyday life.  State socialism and feminism have had a symbiotic relationship over the last 40 years.  The return of healthy, non-chauvinistic, masculinity can serve as a bulwark against the further advances of the State, and this is one reason we can rest assured that public schools will never implement the recommendations I have made in this essay.  The educrats will claim that my recommendations fly in the face of egalitarianism, and would create a "separate but equal" scenario where women will receive an inadequate and inferior education (such claims would have no basis in fact, but it does not reduce their rhetorical value).  

Churches and private associations, in conjunction with strengthened nuclear and extended families must then pick up the slack, voluntarily, out of a desire to rescue society from its coming fate (remember the dangers of bored and unmotivated men?).  This is something we cannot legislate in the halls of Congress or the houses of Parliament.  Rather it is something that can only be legislated in the hearts and minds of people who want to put an end to society's rapid deterioration and have decided that they will turn off the television, log out of facebook, and do the necessary work to build a society where everybody is valued, where young men and young women are socialized in a  a way that encourages their best traits and talents in their own unique ways, and where everybody contributes to the creation of a rich new culture that is not rooted around base consumption.  Let us hope there are more than a few people interested in doing so.

Posted via email from The Mulling Stone

The Beginning of Men (Part I)

Alastair's post in response to the Atlantic article declaring the End of Men was both lucid and prescient.  He is particularly right in condemning the article for its expansive use of anecdote and speculation, particularly when it comes to claims that men are simply not suited for the modern economy.  On the issue of the competitiveness of men and the destructiveness of the modern classroom environment, which has become highly feminized, Alastair's analysis could not be more on-point.  Because I find myself in almost universal agreement with his conclusions, over and against those of the article in question, I will confine the rest of my comments to the slight areas of disagreement and, more importantly, I shall attempt to add a further dimension to the discussion of "masculinity," since as a gay male, I have a perspective that may be useful to consider in the context of this broader discussion of the roles of men and women in society.

If we have now seen the end of men as they once were, we must decide what the new beginnings will be if we are to avoid being subsumed by the feminization of society and the accompanying isolation of men from its leadership and economic benefits.

The entertainment media are wont to portray men either as egomaniacal chauvinists (military officers are a perfect example) or as lazy slobs, un-attentive to the needs of women, completely out of touch, and most often as alcoholics, marijuana users, etc.  Certainly this is not universally the case, but it is more common than not.  The exceptions are the with-it, sensitive gay men who understand women, are "in touch with their feminine side" and who are sophisticated, refined, well-dressed, and hold down a stable professional job (Will, of Will & Grace is the archetype).  I contend that these various characterizations have distorted, if not decimated a reasonable cultural sense of what masculinity is and what it isn't.  The rise of the "metrosexual" during the last decade (excellently caricatured by South Park in Episode #104 "South Park Is Gay!") further complicates and confuses what is expected by society when it comes to masculinity.  

Much of this confusion is derived from the feminist movement, the gay rights movement, and the political correctness gestapo.  But I would contend there is another culprit, one that is even more politically incorrect to identify, and that is the drive toward egalitarianism in the United States and Europe.  For hundreds of years, aristocratic society had a clear understanding of masculinity.  The idea of what comprised the ideal man may have varied from Spain to France to England to America (which was always a bit more egalitarian anyway), but at the root, the masculine man was basically the same: well-dressed, well-educated, competitive (but not aggressive), cultured, religious, and possessing a strong sense of honor.  

The last hundred years has all but obliterated the respect of aristocratic culture, and with it, the historically Western sense of masculinity.  Egalitarianism, no doubt, has been among the weapons of the feminist movement, a movement I am sympathetic to, and applaud for many of its successes.  But it is guilty of causing serious collateral damage that must now be repaired if society is to be saved from a further regression to primeval man and his antics.  For an unemployed, disenfranchised male population with no purpose in life is not just a drain on society, it poses a clear and present danger to public safety and political stability.  The causes may be different, but the disenfranchised Arab male should be our cautionary tale.  Bored, and with no purpose, the Arab male has created an ersatz vocation that  (combined with incendiary interventionism in their home region by the United States and its allies) has brewed into a toxic and explosive mix that is economically destructive and threatens lives both there and abroad).

The trouble of course is that we are now nearly too late to fix this problem by traditional means of cultural transfusion.  The World War II generation, perhaps the last of the old guard aristocracy, is dying off and is in no position to set an example for today's youngsters.  The men of today's governing generation are split between the cultural and ethical nihilism of the 1960s and the ignorant chauvinists that tend to comprise the traditionalist camp, who do not have the refined sense of existence that the older aristocracy possessed.  The advocates of virile masculinity in the United States are primarily those who might align themselves with such movements as "Promise Keepers" and other organizations of the right-wing evangelical community.  Numerous books have been published on the subject by these people who argue for "traditional gender roles" without even understanding what those roles have traditionally been, but have rather contrived a sense of "masculinity" that is offensive in almost all regards, demanding a reversal of the genuine progress of women and homosexuals in gaining legitimate status in society. 

This view generally advocates a "traditional family" with a strong male leader, a domestic housewife, etc.  They have come up with such preposterous ideas as the "ex gay" movement and "sexual orientation therapy" because they view gays (especially gay men) as a threat to masculinity.  The scapegoating of gay men when it comes to the feminization of culture is rampant in conservative America, nowhere more evident than in the debate over the repeal of the ban on open homosexuals from active service in the US military.

I contend that gay men have actually been among the chief victims of the feminization of culture, rather than its beneficiaries.  Contemporary "gay culture" is, like the beer-drinking-football-watching-lazy-sloven-straight male culture, an escape from masculinity.  Because the feminist movement, and women in general, have been the leading advocates of gay rights in society, it has been easier for gay men to associate with women and their political causes, than might otherwise naturally be the case, in the absence of rejection and derision by their straight counterparts.  The overt discrimination against openly gay men in collegiate and professional athletics has either kept them in the closet, or pushed them into other endeavors (such as the arts) where they are more accepted by their peers.  

And yet, gay men idealize and adore straight masculinity, with gay men frequently wishing that attractive straight celebrities "played for our team."  Indeed, one of the most puzzling things for me as a gay man is to examine the overt disconnect between idealized masculinity and the "culture" of most gays.  I am painting with broad strokes here, but I do not think it is off the mark to say that most gay men find the muscular, athletic male physique, the "greek god" look, to be the idealized male physical form.  As easy as it may be to scapegoat gay rights and the acceptance of gays into mainstream culture for the feminization of society and the death of masculinity, I would contend that nothing could be more off-base.

How, then, can men, gay and straight, be called away from their escapes from masculinity to redefine what maleness means and how it is to be practiced in the contemporary cultural milieu?

This will be the subject of my next post, but in the meantime, I look forward to any thoughts, comments, or questions on this topic.

Posted via email from The Mulling Stone

Is Communitarian Capitalism Possible?

The Christian in the 21st Century who takes his faith seriously must at some point struggle with the ethical side of our global economic system.  Generally speaking the world operates under capitalist principles, that is, property ownership is recognized and protected by law, and the means of production are in private hands.  Most economies operate with a major caveat, which is that the State maintains the ability to confiscate large percentages of the revenues derived from capital in the form of corporate income tax, which could arguably call into question whether the system is capitalist or not.  For the sake of argument, we will stipulate for the time being that this is a non-issue.  

The capitalist system, which has been in operation on a global scale only really since the Second World War (and for much of the world, even more recently).  Generally speaking, the colonial systems of the European Empires were mercantilist by nature, and not capitalist.  However, the domestic industrial revolutions in America and Britain birthed modern capitalism, and it is their legacy that has brought us to our present state of affairs: relatively free trade, open international markets, globalization, free movement of capital & goods.  This system has brought more wealth into the world in the last 60 years than has existed in all of the eras of history combined.  

Yet, we look around ourselves and we see people living in abject poverty in all corners of the globe, even in the so-called "developed countries."  Poverty and hunger are ubiquitous in places like Africa and Asia, and 40 years of foreign aid has done little to alleviate that pain.  We look to other corners of the world and see wealthy bankers making billions of dollars on complex financial instruments that the average person doesn't understand (and likely never will), and it it certainly enough to make a thinking, compassionate Christian alert to the fact that something is horribly wrong.

The liberal wing of the mainline Churches in the United States have seized on the issue of poverty and inequality as an ersatz theology to fill a void left by their abandonment of the scriptures and 2,000 years of tradition.  Their concern for the poor may be genuine, and it is undoubtedly appealing to those of us who believe Christianity is about binding ourselves to the person of Christ, who himself showed great love and empathy for the outcasts and downtrodden of society.  But to paraphrase G.K. Chesterton, they may be right about what is wrong, but they are wrong about what is right.

For they would have us believe that capitalism is the great satan, the creator of inequality, the depersonalization of humanity, run by robber barons and plunderers.  They are quick to advocate State intervention to remedy these perceived social injustices through punitive taxation and the creation of entitlement programs to "help the less fortunate" (the Radical Orthodoxy crowd being a notable exception).  But they rely on appeals to emotion, and not on facts and evidence to support their claims.  They ignore (quite to their own peril, and everybody else's) the reality of incentives and economizing behavior in the creation and distribution of goods and services.   And they continue to ignore the longterm consequences of entitlement programs, both to the people they are designed to help, and to the economic health and stability of the world at large.  The economies of the developing world are now going to suffer global economic instability because of the licentious fiscal behavior of the Western countries over the last 50 years.  Surely a system predicated on theft, debt, and default does not fit into the ethical framework of the New Testament.

One alternative, as I alluded to in the previous paragraph, is that provided by the Radical Orthodoxy movement, which favors what I would call Left-Libertarian / Anarcho-Socialist solutions to these problems.  The followers tend to oppose globalization, prefer localism (especially consumption of things produced locally), and favor the use of cooperatives in lieu of corporations.  They extol the virtues of the democratic governance of cooperatives in making decisions about production and consumption--a veritable utopia of workers united in solidarity with one another making choices for the common good.  

Although the longterm fiscal implications of wealth transfer programs contemplated under State Socialism are not present in this anarcho-socialist vision, neither are the proper incentives of economizing behavior given to us by capitalism.  Until the other side of this debate can provide a comprehensive, cogent argument that switching to such a system of exchange would not cause a collapse in the division of labor (the increase of which is the sine qua non of economic growth), then we cannot begin to take seriously their claims, no matter how theoretically appealing they may be.  

 For those of us who see the immense benefits capitalism has bestowed upon society in the last 200 years (at least in America), the question should not be "with what do we replace capitalism?" but rather, "how do we make capitalism a more ethical system?"  If we want to achieve the permanent alleviation of poverty, we will be forced to make the pie bigger, not merely cut it into ever-smaller slices.  My contention is that there is no system, other than capitalism, that provides the proper set of incentives to accomplish this end.  

Capitalism's opponents contend that the system impersonalizes exchange, and robs our economic behavior of any sort of humanity.  This is why, they argue, that we buy clothing made in Chinese sweatshops by laborers paid pennies an hour, working in horrendous working conditions.  We do not see them, and thus we cannot appreciate the harm we are supposedly causing them.  But I would argue that unless we were to go back to an agrarian society with a very low division of labor (and therefore far less wealth in total), we are never going to know the people who make and supply us with the goods and services we use in everyday life, and indeed this would be quite inefficient.  

(It is worth noting that when we talk about "total wealth" this includes modern medical technology, modern communication & access to information, rapid transportation, and countless other conveniences of the modern age that free us to engage in untold quantities of leisurely pursuits utterly unknown to our ancestors.)

Certainly the idea of the impersonalized world, and the detachment of the post-industrial age should be grievous unto all of us.  One of the collects in the Order for Compline in the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer calls us to be mindful of this reality,

"O God, your unfailing providence sustains the world we live in and the life we live: Watch over those, both night and day, who work while others sleep, and grant that we may never forget that our common life depends upon each other's toil; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen."

So the question we should pose is this: how do we repair capitalism?  How do we transform it from a two-edged sword into a purer force for good in the world?  Is it possible to combine the ethos of communitarianism and the systematic incentives of capitalism to maximize growth while eliminating poverty and hunger?  

I hope to explore these questions in future posts, but would love to hear others' thoughts on the subject in the meantime.

Posted via email from The Mulling Stone

What the EuroPact Doesn't Accomplish

"Revolutions can be neither made nor stopped.  The only thing that can be done is for one of several of its children to give it a direction by a dint of victories." -Napoleon

The Bond Vigilantes and the other Gods of the Marketplace may have been temporarily mollified by the weekend's emergency EU accord, in spite of the fact that none of the agreements can be certain with a constitutional challenge to the entire notion of sovereign bailouts looming in the Bundesverfassungsgerict (the German Supreme Court).  Angela Merkel's party was obliterated in local elections in the Rhine-Westphalia region because of the governing coalition's support of the bailouts--so the bailout itself is far from a certainty, and it is all based on the nebulous concept of "loan guarantees" whereby one bankrupt state whose credit rating hasn't been junked (e.g. Germany) promises to back the debts of another bankrupt state whose credit rating has been junked (e.g. Greece).  So what the markets are cheering here is the idea that things are going to be ok, and certainly not any reality of that.

But that doesn't get us past the real issue.  The markets seem happy today, but the Greeks are still rioting.  If the bailout does in fact happen, they are going to riot even more, what with the myriad of unreasonable conditions accompanying the bailout--telling government employees they can't get paid for 14 months of work in each 12 month calendar year, advising people that they have to work until they are at least 55, or, god forbid, 65.  Europe is in a veritable double-bind.  If the bailouts don't happen, the markets will decimate the Euro, and turn the PIIGS into Argentina circa 2001.  If the bailouts do happen, the Greeks will burn Athens to the ground.  Whatever happens, I don't expect the Greeks will be contributing any actual work to their own recovery.  

Greece's sovereign debt is $405 Billion, about 125% of GDP.  That is about $35,000 per man, woman, and child in the small mediterranean republic. The rescue package for Greece totals out to about $140 billion, which is about what was ultimately spent on the bailout of AIG after Lehman Brothers collapsed. Spain's public debt is approximately $650 Billion.  Portugal is another $200 Billion.  Italy, the behemoth, is more than $2 Trillion.  The sort of financial austerity necessary to get these numbers under control will inflame the latin passions of the Spanish, Portugese, and Italian people, and Rome, Madrid, and Lisbon will soon look like Athens does today.  

There is no bailout that fixes this fundamental problem.  The welfare state is like a drug addiction, and there are a lot of junkies about to be forced to quit cold turkey.  What may please the bond vigilantes today will turn the masses into mobs tomorrow.  There is simply too much debt and not enough equity (real, tangible, underlying assets) in the world.  All of this will pale in comparison to the effect of a downgrade of US or UK sovereign debt--that chapter is yet to come.

In the meantime, I wonder what will happen when the next German general election rolls around and these unpopular bailouts are put to the ballot box test.  Or, perhaps more titillating is the thought of an enterprising Tea Party candidate putting 2 and 2 together and realizing that when the IMF is putting up half of this mammoth rescue package, most of that money is coming directly or indirectly from the American taxpayer.  

As I pointed out more than a year ago--if you borrow from Peter to pay Paul for long enough, eventually Peter will be broke.  

For now, I wouldn't be planning any vacations to Europe. The worst is yet to come.

Posted via email from The Invisible Sand