Aug 30, 2006 02:29
I know my topic is quite broad, and probably raises some eyebrows. Let me get down to why I have been engaged in thinking about this topic for some time lately, and then we'll see where it goes.
I have read, re-read, and started a number of books lately, as well as seen many movies that have inspired me. Many of them have gotten me to think critically about our male-dominated culture. This isn't to exclude women; even many women are exhibiting inherently masculine traits, often to their own detriment. I realize that sounds sexist, but if you read on to the root of the argument, you may see that I am actually exhalting femininity over what I observe as a macho culture.
One book is The Middle Mind by Curtis White. The subtitle is "why Americans don't think for themselves." However true or untrue this may be, White pokes at the American desire to hoard and invest among the powerful, to spend on credit and go into debt among the lower class seeking to appear "in," and the lavish spending of "new money." All of this seems to indicate the fear to lose inherited power, and the desire to simulate it or shout it from the rooftops when it isn't really possessed.
Another book is Bhuddism: It's Not What You Think by Stephen Hagen. Bhuddist precepts teach people to view the world as it is; not what it means to them based on their hopes and fears. A small example of this is a traffic jam. The average person will be in a traffic jam impatiently tapping on their wheel, checking their clock, etc. A more "enlightened" person will see the traffic jam for what it is; an honest mistake by several or more people. The traffic jam itself was not caused on purpose, therefore anger at anyone in particular is useless. All in the traffic jam are victims of circumstance. Wherever the destination, that person will get there eventually. There is no need to worry about whether or not your boss will be mad at you, or the store will be closed. Your boss will understand, or it is someone not worth working for, or who is irrational. The store might be closed; it will be open again tomorrow. Or thinking even beyond this, there is no point in even considering the future; all you can do is with what you have where you are. The only thing that exists is the present, and what you do with it.
People might have noticed in my last pontificate post "on dating," that I used much of this particularly Bhuddist-sounding language. I have always had Bhuddist tendencies; the Truth and Reality have always been very important to me. No, I am not turning Bhuddist, I am just borrowing from their lexicon to describe things I have always thought anyway.
Another book is The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. Don't laugh; I am well aware of the controversy surrounding the book, and am not claiming to believe it's contents at face value. But many items mentioned in the book point toward the death of the "divine feminine," or the absence of extolling virtues stereotypically associated with motherhood, childbirth, etc. These virtues have been replaced by more masculine icons of destruction, power, inpregnability, fearlessness, and strength. I do believe this, firmly. How else could we have enough nuclear weapons to blow the world up several times over? The Hopi word for this is koyanisqaatsi(sp), or "life out of balance." Bhuddists believe this in their teachings. This is a worldwide and ages-old observation from many societies. Even many ardent Christians will agree that the bible, as it is printed today, has language that was the agenda of certain powerful men at the time of its distribution. Anyone curious as to how this is exactly argued in the book should simply read it; I will not attempt to quote from this book as if it were in any respectable academic canon.
Of course, another body of reading is The Lord of the Rings trilogy. In this trilogy, women fight alongside men because they have just as much of a right to, and they accomplish great things (indeed, Eowyn has the single greatest victory in the entire trilogy). Women are revered; Galadriel is revealed as a power roughly equal to Elrond and gandalf, who are practically immortal to the point of being demi-gods. Men answer to women as they do to each other. Anyone particularly interested in this would do well to look into the courtship of Eowyn by Faramir. Their are some other readings, but I believe these will satisfy my point.
I've also been viewing some movies that suggest at this matter. National Treasure, while being an extremely fictional film, hints to the Templar treasure referred to in The Da Vinci Code. This recalls arguments on the divine feminine, while all the while referencing that great treasure, as well as power in government, should be divided for all and not hoarded by few.
In Kingdom of Heaven (which I wish Orlando Bloom had never been invited to) again the Knight's Templar are referenced. More importantly, though, Chrisitanity is viewed in two very different ways. The protagonists of the tale maintain that the will of God are in right action; that by preserving, peace-keeping, and defending, one is serving the only true God. The antagonists of the tale, suprisingly, are not the Islamic. They are the Christian knights who believe that the death of a Sarisan (non-believer, for all extensive purposes) is the path to Heaven. They believe killing Sarisans is an act sanctioned by God. They attempt to start a war in the name of God simply to kill as many Sarisans as they can, at the expense of their kingdom and fellow knights, for glory. Today, we would call that terrorism; the idea that one can kill another to promote his or her own belief. This righteousness, however, is a very American idea; particularly when one examines Vietnam and our reasons for being there. The ones in power were more afraid of others having power and the spread of communism than they were of killing thousands of American troopers. They even were more willing to kill women and children than they were to lose the war, or to be the sissy regime that was responsible for America's first lost war. The word "glory" itself is almost inherently interwined with bloodshed.
Another movie I viewed was a documentary on Howard Zinn, the author of "A People's History of the United States." The book was very controversial at the time of its publication because it told fact-based accounts of America's rather bullish repression of Latin, Native, and African cultures (amongst many other "ursurpations"). Zinn became a spokesperson against the Vietnamese war, and a highly persecuted individual. If anyone wants to see how repressed "free speech" was during the Vietnam war, this documentary along with Steal This Movie based on Abbie Hoffman's book are interesting views.
I do not want to digress into an anti-American tirade a la Michael Moore. Nor do I care to provide simply a book and movie review. Let me salvage my initial assertion by venturing into the autobiographical realm of things, often a dangerous area for me.
I grew up in the country, under a father who was a truthful and upright person. I grew up mostly with sisters, who were for the most part responsible safeguards of those morals, and of me. I learned at a young age to respect women. My father was perhaps a little too reverse sexist, often not expecting as hard of work from my twin sister as I. My mother, too, perhaps was too much of an influence on me; to this day, I feel awkward kissing a woman without having met her parents. Yet I wonder if this is such a bad thing...
It is important for the reader here to understand that I never felt pressures of physical competition. My only brothers were far older than me. I never played for a sports team. I was always very small for my age, even more so than I am now, and so I was never really picked on. I do not threaten men who are larger than me. I have only gotten in two fights in my life; both were against larger men. In both fights, I did not want to hit either individual, but wrestled them both to the ground and subdued them before any punches were really thrown. I did not feel good about it. I insisted on speaking with both afterward, after things had calmed down. I regained friendship with both men.
All of this is to suggest that I did not inherit "Napoleon's Syndrome," or the desire to gain power or prestige to compensate for my physical size. This is important; given my stature and my upbringing, I have been in a unique position all of my life to, as a man, observe macho culture still from the outside (at least, as much as I can say "outside," still having a functional reproductive system).
This is evident to me every time I leave the house; men drive larger and faster vehicles, and do so aggresively, cutting me off only to have to jam on the brakes at a red light that I saw far down the road, and to which I was happily coasting. It is constantly evident in the bar scene; men buy drinks, lie, and debase one another to impress others, or to increase their chances to have sex with women. Someone asked me once why I hadn't yet had sex with a girl who was into me. I responded saying that I was not attracted to her mentally, and did not want to hurt or confuse her, or lie to myself or her, because I considered myself a gentleman. The response was; "I'm not a gentleman. You better hope your mom, your sister, and your girl don't try to fuck me." Obviously, for this man sexual conquest superceded any morals in place. Either that, or he purposely intoxicates himself until he can overcome his morals, and achieve the conquests that will raise his esteem in the eyes of his peers.
While working in the night club industry, it was embarassing how often women were degraded. If you were a beautiful woman, you were an object. If you were an ugly woman, you were a tool, to be discarded the second a prettier one comes into line. Ugly women seemed hardly to exist, and beautiful women were exalted almost to the point of celebrity status, before ever exchanging a sentence with anyone. Men would elbow each other out of the way to get a chance to debase a beautiful woman by plainly diplaying his sexual intentions. Even worse, too often women responded to this treatment, eventually getting drunk by allowing the purchase of drinks all night, and often getting taken advantage of.
Women aren't the only victims of this night life deviance. Too often the macho culture lead to fights; I have witnessed a man smash a beer stein over another's head because the latter told him that the Coast Guard was not considered part of the armed forces.
Many times when a fight broke out, "scrappy" bartenders would leap out from behind the bar to join in. I did not say "to break it up;" they just wanted to punch someone else. It made them feel powerful; they "got off" on it. I can think of fewer things that sadden me more than this.
Apart from my personal experience, anyone can see this macho culture from home. In my love of things absurd, I often peruse novelty websites that show video footage of someone pranking a friend, or making a public slip of the tongue. Such sites are ebaumsworld.com, break.com, collegehumor.com, etc. Lately, however, I have been increasingly dissappointed upon my visits to these sites. Fewer and fewer innocent blunders are shown. Today I visited one of those sites, and the video content was so "macho" that I was honestly disgusted. In one video, two girls get in a fight outside of school. They are fighting because one slept with the other's boyfriend. That action is tragic enough in and of itself, and the fight even more so. However, at the end of the video, the adult who finally breaks the fight up evokes the largest tragedy. He said, "and you all were just going to stand there?" To my dismay, the kid holding the camera through the whole fight responded "Hell yeah!" and turned the camera to his face, while he smiled.
In another video, someone had modified a car so that the doors would open, and spin around on a hinge. the trunk opened on two flaps, and they all did so by remote control. I could not decide what was sadder; the fact that someone had spent so much time on this pursuit of vanity, or the fact that the video, over a minute long of ganster rap and show-off antics, was posted on such a website. I can't imagine how much money was spent on this pointless endeavor.
Yet another video was a demonstration of how much we exalt drinking games in this country (drinking games are, by the way, invented to get woman drunk to sleep with them). In the video, a man is making difficult shots in "qaurters," where a quarter is bounced off a countertop and placed into a glass. Throughout the whole video, a scantily-clad female is having the quarter bounced over her.
Most of these websites I have observed for quite some time. I have noticed the content become continually more sexual, violent, and overall macho. I do not blame the webmasters, however. They are responding to a public demand. The fact is, all of these sites make a very nice profit, and are very famous, because they exploit macho culture for a demanding macho society.
I do not watch standard TV, and so the reader of this essay is spared from a great deal more of ranting. Yet I know that any time I turn it on, I could be succumb to the horrors of a man dancing on Jerry Springer because he is not the father of a child sitting two seats away, while a crushed woman weeps. I could accidently switch to a toughman competition, where a man is pulling a semi up a hill while half-naked women cheer him on. I could switch to MTV, which seems to have forgotten that those letters stand for "Music Television." I might have the opportunity to re-prove another adage that I have coined; "MTV is largely responsible for the young generation of music buyers not knowing what an ugly person making music sounds like."
I once read an essay by a Christian man who decided to research pornography to see why it seemed to be linked to so many sexual predator cases. The results were not astounding. In recent years, porno has evolved from the video taping of sexual acts to much more dangerous symbology. Women are often gagged or choked. Some websites depict rape scenes, thrashing, spitting in women's faces, and having them consuming sexual fluids. They are often asked to repeat that they are sluts, pieces of shit, whores, etc. Pornography seems not to just be selling sex; it seems to be selling the need to feel powerful to men who cannot feel so otherwise. And we wonder why a woman is raped every minute in the U.S.?
One needs only to compare the United States to any other civilized nation. The reports of murders, sexual acts of deviance, and substance abuse to prove status are alarming.
Of course, I cannot say why this is. Any number of scientists could come up with any number of theories. the point is, it is out there, and we can see it, everywhere we look. Men commit to macho acts constantly, and too often women reward it. Virtues like grace, patience, and pacifism are shunned. Perhaps it is because we live in a capitolistic, dog-eat-dog society, where getting ahead is much easier when moral systems are eschewed. Perhaps it is because we are obsessed with sports, and pay athletes millions, while teachers and counselors are lucky to get 50k a year. Perhaps it is because we worship celebrities that climb out of thirty-foot limos with bottles of champagne, and spend our money on the products they endorse, and magazines that tell us who they are dating. And yes, perhaps it is largely due to a Christian ideology that places men above other men, and women. It is under the Christian God that the KKK was formed, and Hitler took power. Don't get me wrong; I have a profound respect for the Christological examples of grace and pity in the Bible. Yet the Bible was and is written and interpreted by man, and is not in and of itself an infallible document by any means.
The task we now face is to ask, "what can I do to combat this macho culture that appears to be rotting our society from the inside out?" For that must be the question. The reader, at this point, cannot tell me that women are not debased and degraded, that street fights outside of night clubs are necessary, or America doesn't have a society that rewards strict aggression with regard to almost all aspects of life. I, of course, cannot answer this question myself. I do, however, know what I do to avoid it. I try not to lie to anyone. I try to accumulate good karma. I do not try to have a good time at anyone else's expense. I don't leave home to get laid, take something that isn't mine to get ahead, or insult someone to make myself look better.
There are two kinds of pride; one says, "I know this or I have this, so I am better than you. You will not be as good as me until you know it or possess it too." The second kind of pride says "I know this, or I have this, and I will stay by you as much as I can until you know this or have this as well. That is because I want all of us to be up here together."
Most action films these days actually depict the second type of pride. The hero is protecting something, or someone, because it is the moral thing to do. However, the people watching those films don't seem to get it. They focus on the fighting itself, on the explosions, and the hero getting laid constantly. They do not focus on the morality of the message. I found it hilarious that in Kingdom of Heaven Orlando Bloom follows a moral code that leads to the death of an entire army he is supposed to be a part of, yet without hesitation he balls another man's wife not long after his own wife's death (He thinks the line "how can you be in Heaven when you are still in my heart" of his lost love less than an hour before his adultery in that movie). Hollywood seemed much more concerned with Orlando Bloom looking like a hero and a stud rather than truly being a champion of truth and good will.
I have never in my life adopted any creed other than my moral code. I have never claimed to. I have utilized various religions and beliefs to come to a better understanding of my moral code. I now believe this; that my moral code is the closest thing I have to grasping divinity, as far as other religions state "reaching nirvana" or "doing God's will." Darwin would call my "divinity" simply "herd instinct," and I would not fault him for that. The largest thing that is currently combatting my understanding of divinity and my ability to practice it in everyday life is the macho culture that is shattering the morality of those I see around me everyday.
I make mistakes everyday. I, also, succumb to macho culture when I see a pretty woman walking by, or grab the biggest piece of pizza before others can get to it. But it is enough, I think, to be aware of it, and to try to fight it how you can, when you can.
I must end this essay on account of I am getting very tired, am making continually more typos, and am probably repeating myself. I ask anyone with the amazing ability to have followed this thread to its conclusion to report their thoughts; their observance of a macho culture leading to the decaying of our once shared society; their utter disagreement with everything I've said; or perhaps, with their own solutions that they try to incorporate into their everyday lives. I have written what I have here only because I feel that it should be stated more often, and because I think we need to be constantly critical of society as we should ourselves; to better it.