Sadly, not this Man who has no Dog.
Photo: Daybreak @ Cove Island Park. 39° F. 6:32 a.m. Friday, April 16, 2021
Man Deconstructed. Is it any wonder? Come on Ladies…
August 11, 2015 by 28 Comments
Jessica Bennett, A Master’s Degree in … Masculinity?:
Michael Kimmel stood in front of a classroom in bluejeans and a blazer with a pen to a whiteboard. “What does it mean,” the 64-year-old sociology professor asked the group, most of them undergraduates, “to be a good man?”
The students looked puzzled.
“Let’s say it was said at your funeral, ‘He was a good man,’ ” Dr. Kimmel explained. “What does that mean to you?”
“Caring,” a male student in the front said.
“Putting other’s needs before yours,” another young man said.
“Honest,” a third said.
Dr. Kimmel listed each term under the heading Good Man, then turned back to the group. “Now,” he said, “tell me what it means to be a real man.”
This time, the students reacted more quickly.
“Take charge; be authoritative,” said James, a sophomore.
“Take risks,” said Amanda, a sociology graduate student.
“It means suppressing any kind of weakness,” another offered.
“I think for me being a real man meant talk like a man,” said a young man who’d grown up in Turkey. “Walk like a man. Never cry.”
Dr. Kimmel had been taking notes. “Now you’re in the wheelhouse,” he said, excitedly. He pointed to the Good Man list on the left side of the board, then to the Real Man list he’d added to the right. “Look at the disparity. I think American men are confused about what it means to be a man.”
Read full post here: A Master’s Degree in … Masculinity?
Notes: Drawing by Olena Kassian @ olenakassian.com
Want something to happen at all costs—something, anything
February 5, 2015 by 31 Comments
A zoologist who observed gorillas in their native habitat was amazed by the uniformity of their life and their vast idleness. Hours and hours without doing anything. Was boredom unknown to them? This is indeed a question raised by a human, a busy ape. Far from fleeing monotony, animals crave it, and what they most dread is to see it end. For it ends, only to be replaced by fear, the cause of all activity. Inaction is divine; yet it is against inaction that man has rebelled. Man alone, in nature, is incapable of enduring monotony, man alone wants something to happen at all costs—something, anything…. Thereby he shows himself unworthy of his ancestor: the need for novelty is the characteristic of an alienated gorilla.
~ Emil Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born
Source: Quote – Schonwieder. Photograph – Tim McCoy
Sunday Morning: You Have to Maintain What You Love
August 25, 2013 by 7 Comments
“The Horsemen: The traditional ‘Rounding of the Mares’ has been with the Almonte horsemen for generations. Over a thousand horses are driven across the plains and through the towns of rural Spain. Being a horseman in Almonte is to live the tradition of our ancestors that has existed for over 500 years, to maintain the balance between nature and man. It is something so rooted inside of us, in our blood, that we are born horsemen and our children are born horsemen. The first thing they want to do is go to the marshlands with their fathers and grandfathers. For us the marshlands, the field, the nature, is a religion, a way of life, an identity. It’s a proud responsibility to because you have to maintain what you love. We are horsemen, living in unity with nature and our values. It is a community and a union, between animal and man. I think for a man, where he has lived, what his elders have passed onto him, if he doesn’t preserve this then life has little meaning.”
Live & Learn 