Archive for May 2006

Psychopaths
In today’s Globe and Mail, ‘Focus’ section, there’s an article called ‘The Psychopath in the Corner Office’ about everyday psychopathic people who rise to positions of power. Mostly because the way the business world is, their ruthlessness is rewarded. These types of articles on ‘everyday psychopaths’ pop up every year or so. This stat:

In Prof. Hare’s estimation, the average incidence of psychopathy in North America is 1% of the population. That would mean there are about 300,000 psychopaths in Canada – and close to 3000 reading this very newspaper today. Perhaps you know one. Or are one.

One percent of the population begins to suggest that this is a normal variety of mind, a way they once characterized autism in a previous article from about two or three years ago.

This article on autism began by suggesting that the autistic mind was a result of natural selection – part of the variety of human being. Which is a decent way of thinking about it. ‘Psychopathy,’ writes the article’s author, Alexandra Gill,’…is a personality disorder characterized by a deep lack of conscience, empathy and compassion’.

With my empathy toward psychopaths activated, I wrote this letter to the editor:

From: Timothy Comeau
To: Letters@globeandmail.com
Date: May 27, 2006 4:45 PM
Subject: re: psychopath articleI read the article on corporate (and other) psychopaths with interest but grew concerned as to the validity of intensive background checks to prevent psychopaths from reaching positions to wreak havoc. Wouldn’t extensive screening lead to making these people unemployable and thereby reducing them to a life of welfare and poverty, where they’d become embittered and even more dangerous? As psychopaths are characterized by a deep lack of empathy and compassion, they’d be victimized by our own lack of empathy and compassion toward them. As the article suggests, our society is too geared toward the appreciation of ruthlessness that it comes as no surprise that so many seem to be high up in the food chain, and perhaps are already occupying their proper social roles.

You once ran an article on autism in which it was suggested that the autistic mind is the result of natural selection – producing variety amongst us. A similar suggestion about the psychopathic mind would have been warranted. But it’s funny that we treat autistics so poorly compared to psychopaths, especially considering that the autistics of the past are probably responsible for so many of our great endeavors while the psychopaths have given us our worst.

Timothy Comeau

As I re-read that now, I see that I should have also added that the way we continue to treat the poor is evidence of our own psychopathic society.

Manliness I
There was another article in today’s paper that I appreciated, about home-grown initiation rites. Also found in the ‘Focus’ section, and titled, ‘Saying goodbye to childhood’, it was about a young chap (Scott) who turned 16 and had an unusual birthday party.

Scott’s parents had organized an unofficial rite of passage to initiate their son into manhood. They invited a group of male friends and relatives they respected to talk to their son about what it means to become a man.

Scott’s mother goes on to say that she wanted something more than the usual ways we ‘self-initiate’.

Those who have studied life transitions agree that rites of passage are important – even essential – for adolescents becoming adults. ‘It doesn’t matter what we call it […] if adults don’t respond, adolescents will initiate themselves, often [but] not always, in destructive ways’. Binge drinking, experimenting with drugs or having sex are some of the ways teens in our society self-initiate.

It’s funny that needs saying, as if written for pre-adolescents, ignoring that everyone else not in question has gone through being a teenager, and should be able to remember how important it was to get laid or drunk for the first time.

The fellow quoted above is Ron Grimes, who wrote a book called Deeply Into the Bone: Re-Inventing Rites of Passage and goes on to say therein that ‘whatever the reason, the past two decades have witnessed a resurgence of interest in the construction of rites of passage’. For Scott, this group of men numbered about twelve: a couple of neighbors, the fathers of some of his friends, is gay uncle with his partner. ‘Few of them knew each other, yet they were asked to share some personal experiences and insights into what it means to be a man’.

‘I wanted him to come away with the idea that being a man is honouring all aspects of his person; the physical, the mental, the spiritual and the emotional,’ [Scott’s father] says.He adds that he didn’t really learn how to live his life as a man until he was about 40 years old and attended a men’s-only weekend workshop in Berkeley, Calif. ‘It was like an initiation. It helped me realize what I missed out on … In my family, there wasn’t much talk about being a man. There wasn’t much discussion about my life beyond school’.

As for what the men told Scott…

the men talked about the necessity of doing the right thing, as hard as that may be, staying true to yourself and not following the crowd, finding something important outside of yourself and contributing to it. And when it comes to sex, being in a committed relationship is better than casual sex.

As Scott’s Mom says, she couldn’t pay someone to say such things. She saw that the following day he had a spring in his step and a pride in himself.

According to [Scott’s mom] society as a whole suffers from young adults being, as she calls it ‘uninitiated’. ‘Lots of teens don’t want to become men or women. We all known of 50 year old ‘boys’ who never said goodbye to their childhood because they weren’t shepherded,’ she says.A new books suggests that she might be on to something. In researching The Boomerang Age: Transitions to Adulthood in Families Simon Fraser University sociologist Barbara Mitchell interviewed 2000 adults from 19 to 35 years old in the greater Vancouver area who had either left home and come back, or never left at all. The majority said their were in their parent’s homes for economic reasons, but about 25% of them (mainly young men) said they were still at home because they weren’t psychologically or emotionally ready to leave.

A lot of the so-called artists I know/knew don’t want to be men or women either.

Manliness II
There appears to be something in the air though, since I’ve noticed attitudes toward manliness are up for discussion. The rise of ‘metrosexuality’ a couple of years ago caused a lot of talk and about 15 years ago there was a lot of talk too about these types of men-only circles (like what Scott’s dad must have gone too) where’d they go out to the woods and howl.

As a young man, trying to find my way without the benefit of young Scott’s experience, and dissatisfied with the initiations I did go through of the usual binge drinking and virginity-loss, I find that I’m also both intrigued and bothered by how the popular ideas about being a man are simply degrading. Why is it, for example, that fast food restaurants try to sell hamburgers by appealing to a fucked-up sense of manliness?

There used to be Harvey’s commercials that did this, and currently there’s a Burger King commercial I’ve seen, with a bunch of men walking tall and proud because they got their meat sandwich. Further, there are those Bud Light commercials advertising a coupon for steaks. WTF?

Recently, a book was published by Harvey Mansfield called Manliness (and this is what comes up when you Google that term as the first result, in addition to its reviews). All the reviews point out Mansfield’s harping against feminists and how, as Mark Kingwell said in his Globe and Mail review some time ago (March 18th, from which I paraphrase), ‘how it manages to offend all sorts of people at once’.

It’s almost to begin to imply that being a man today, or claiming to be one, is to be offensive. Which brings up Aristotle, who’s merely offensive because he’s a Greek Philosopher. That is, Artistotle is a dead white male, a pejorative phrase which Wikipedia tells us:

is a rhetorical device used to deride the emphasis on Western civilization in schools […]. The term was used pejoratively in the early 1990s by those advocating multicultural studies. The term finds widespread usage among members of the educational establishment who see students as agents of social change.

Why is that, to expand our minds and our study to something beyond our immediate context (such as Western Civilization and its heritage) we have to first insult it, or imply that it is offensive?

Nevertheless, it was in Kingwell’s review that I was alerted to Artistotle’s list of manly attributes, found in his Niomachean Ethics.

Ethics are the application of morality, and morality we should consider not as something religious or superstitious but as simply the collection of ideas we have about living a good life. For some, enjoying a cup of tea before bed time is part of a good life, and thus is a moral action, and it thus follows that not buying tea is unethical. For many, enjoying a pint on a patio with friends is a part of a good life, and therefore it would be unethical to shut down all the bars or to quit drinking. Because I’m deeply interested in the variety of moral worlds that you find once you get past the idea that morality has something to do with Jesus (in that sense, it merely represents The Bible’s idea about what a good life is because it’s God’s idea about how we should live our lives), I’m interested in how Artistotle formulated his ideas about what a good Greek life was for a man 2300 years ago.

By Googling for it, I did come across this article earlier this week, written by an apparently young fellow in the States named Jason Roberts who’s dividing time between college and the military according to the posted profile. One almost suspects by this fellow’s way of writing and infatuation with the Classical past (in addition to a seemingly thinly-veiled misogyny) that he hasn’t yet been initiated the traditional way into manliness through sex.

However, he presents Aristotle’s thoughts on being a man through a blockquote from The Niomachean Ethics which we can break down like this –

A man, according to Aristotle, is one who is:

• confident in the face of danger
• moderate in his use and enjoyment of opulent things
• magnanimous in estimation of his own worth
• ambitious in his desire of honor
• patient in response and dealings with his passions
• truthful in his life and dealings with others
• righteously indignant when done wrong
• and just towards himself and others.

He paints a beautiful portrait of this person, saying that this man:

• “????does not take petty risks
• nor does he court danger
  • because there are few things that he values highly
• but he takes great risks
• and when he faces danger he is unsparing of his life
  • because to him there are some circumstances in which it is not worth living
• he is bound to????speak and act straightforwardly????and
• he cannot bear to live in dependence upon somebody else
• he does not nurse resentment
• In troubles that are unavoidable or of minor importance he is the last person to complain or ask for help
• his gait is measured, his voice deep, his speech unhurried.????

Mr. Roberts then writes (interspersed with my italicized comments delimitated by ‘//’):

But today, every single element of manliness that Aristotle described is under attack. The 1960’s ushered in the era of the Feminists. Unlike intellectual trends, feminism became a cultural trend. But not only was their view of womanliness skewed, their view of manliness was also dangerously wrong. Sadly, this view has come to dominate our culture, beit in the form of the metrosexual, the effeminate man, or the man in touch with his feminine side.

// I consider myself to have a healthy dose of metrosexuality, so that I at least have a fashion sense, unlike the fellows you see in the fast-food stereotypes.

Instead of a man who is courageous and confident in facing reality, men are now told that it is okay to be soft and cowardly.

// Agree

Instead of a man who is moderate, men are now told to indulge themselves in the luxuries of life; to spend huge sums on fashionable clothes, stylish haircuts, and manicures.

// I also agree this isn’t admirable

Instead of a man who is magnanimous, men are now told to be pusillanimous; to apologize for their greatness and expound upon their defects.

// ‘pusillanimous’ is defined as: ‘lacking courage and resolution : marked by contemptible timidity’. Is a contraction of this word from whence we get ‘pussy’? In other words, men are now told to be pussies, to apologize for their greatness (in whatever way they are great I suppose – great handymen, with the barbecue, as lovers? – ) and expound on their defects: geesh is that ever true. We trade stories of misery just not seem better than other people.

Instead of a man who is ambitious in his desire of honor, men are now told to seek the lowly and to be meek. Instead of a man who is patient in response to his passions, men are now told to cry uncontrollably, to let their emotions pour out. Instead of a man who is truthful, men are now told that white lies are okay, and that it is better to flatter than to “offend”. Instead of a man who is righteously indignant, men are now told to turn the other cheek; to forgive and forget; to be compassionate to our worst enemies.

// I agree with all of this up until the dig at compassion. Showing compassion to one’s enemies is something only a strong person can do. We see it even in the way Alexander the Great treated his defeated enemies. Showing compassion makes us better than psychopaths.

And instead of a man who is just, men are now told to trade favors, to barter for social acceptance, to achieve by means of social connections, to be tolerant of all opinions, and to love thy neighbor as thyself.

// ‘to love thy neighbor …’ means that true Christians are pussies and have been since the fall of the Roman Empire? This dig begins to get at Nietzche’s ideas about a Master and a Slave Morality, the later of course being the ‘good life ideas’ of the Christians.

This interests me because of my developing ideas about being a man in this society where feminism has been wonderfully successful, and as I grow away from the way I felt about patriarchy at age 25.

My visceral loathing for Bush II began with that disgust for patriarchy, but I should develop this to say that patriarchy is and was repulsive to me because of it’s lunk-headed stupidity, especially in the face of oppression and environmental destruction. It is further exemplified by the way the media uses fat and stupid men in sitcoms to be ‘everyman’ who find a sense of manliness through the eating of meat. Overweight, unhealthy men who obsess over a food which should be a rarity, (not a staple) represent ‘everyman’? I don’t think so. There is also an unfornuate characteristic of patriarchy that glorifies in combat and competition, which is why I could tell during the debates Bush had with Al Gore in 2000 that he’d get the country into a war somehow, since he was such a patriarchial figure-head.

Why are sophisticated wine-snobs never represented on sitcoms or commercials without also being pusillanimous at the same time? Think of Frasier on the eponymous sitcom and his brother Myles. Think of how Myles is also the name of the character in the 2004 film Sideways, the sophisticated writer and wine-snob who is also timid and emotionally devastated by his divorce, while his friend Jack is the lunk-headed fun-loving (probably meat-eating) fellow out to get laid before his wedding day, behaving in a way that is unethical in more than one moral context.

The stupid men stereotypes are the ones prone to be defended by women who should know better (as the sitcom men where once for me) as ‘representing everyman’. Is this because it conforms most readily to their anti-masculine ideology?

This ideology permeates the art world. Take this press-release from last September for example, with my emphasis:

Celebratory Angst: Riggin’ the Exhaust
Steven LaurieUniversity of Western Ontario MFA Thesis Exhibition
Location: ArtLab (UWO Campus/ Visual Arts Building)
Dates of Exhibition: September 16 – 30
Opening Reception: Friday, September 16, 5-7 pm

Description of Exhibition:
Through the use of the suburban backyard/garage as a platform, I am interested in the ideas, images, and behaviors that are culturally recognized as ‘normative’ masculine qualities, and how they influence gender performance. This body of work makes use of the contradictions found within gender-based constructs while attempting to critically address the relationship between labor and leisure and the performances of the everyday.

My current studio practice involves the modification and tuning of gas powered machines that meld the impetuous activities of burning rubber and revving with the aspects of utility and desire. Through isolating and amplifying particular actions, stereotypes and clich???s usually assigned to a masculine proviso, I develop hyper-masculine tools that emphasize the relationship between the male body, extension/attachment and exhibitionism. By using steel, readily available machine parts and exhaust tips I am exploring the intricate ideas of masculinity through the critical perspectives of anxiety and celebration.

My objections to this are that I don’t think gender is any more a performance than sex – that is, the ‘performance’ is very much preprogrammed. We thrust our hips therein instinctively, not because we took fucking lessons. The so called ‘normative’ of male behavior is also very much instinctive, but includes the behaviour of intelligent and sophisticated men, not just the fools, of that common majority that creates the ‘normative’ idea in the first place.

So, Mr. Artist is interested in it, and that means what? – he does a bunch of stuff mocking the subject matter. Imagine if anthropologists, instead of writing descriptive papers and documenting and archiving the culture, enacted performances that mocked their subjects. ‘I’m a native tribesman, I fuck 12 year old girls, I slaughter wild pigs with my bare hands and I believe in forest spirits’. The girl who hates men does a dance, her face skewed into a ugly pose, as she tried to bring out the primitive brutality of her tribal fellow. The audience sips beer and laughs. Afterward they congratulate her. The art world becomes a bunch of self-satisfied assholes who want to mock and encourage divisiveness.

Through my art-world dealings, I find myself on the defensive at times about being a straight (white) man, and why? I see men degraded all around me today and find that as offensive as what women experienced in the 1950s. What does it mean to be a man today, and why should we put up with feminist degradation? I think this is both a fair question and a fair critique of the environment encouraged by feminists, many of whom would prefer to view gender as a performance rather than something deeply genetic. But this is not to say that type of testosterone shock-jock (who are the male gender’s bimbos who degrade us all) is something acceptable either, but is something uncivilized and barbaric.

This type of research into what could be called conservative patriarchal bullshit is thus leading me to want to read Aristotle’s Niomachean Ethics which as I’ve already said, is part of the larger project of understanding different moral/ethical orders as differing visions of the good life.

Which brings me to Brad Pitt; perhaps he best exemplifies our culture’s considerations of manliness. He certainly leads a good life, at least according to what this culture values. He dated Gwyneth Paltrow when she was marketed as the perfect woman, then he married a TV star when she was considered the perfect woman, and now he’s having a baby with a woman considered to be the sexiest woman alive or some such thing. Beyond his famous good looks he’s wealthy and said to be smart, with an interest in architecture (friends with Frank Gehry no less). And, he’s a vegetarian. When you need a manly man for a movie (which function to advertise a variety of moral visions), who does’t eat ‘mheeet’ Pitt’s your man.

He’s Achilles in 2004’s Troy but he is also Tyler Durden in 1999’s Fight Club, which is perhaps our fucked up culture’s version of the Niomachean Ethics. Fight Club‘s a morality tale that had resonance with me, presenting a vision of a good life based on an anti-consumerist ethic and mocking corporate psychopathy. It is also one that begins to question our society’s ideas about manliness. As in for example, this line

Now why do guys like you and me know what a duvet is? Is it essential to our survival, in the hunter-gatherer sense of the word? No.

Or, this:

Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who’ve ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see us squandering it. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.