#85 Men, agents of and pathway to cultural metanoia (parenting)

 Although most would consider “education” to be important, if not essential, to a healthy development of children, there are some glaring gaps that could be biting us in the back side.

Training in financial management, budgets, household prioritizing and the processes required to achieve some kind of balance (of accounts, and more importantly of power) continues to be a blind spot in educational curricula in North America. Some financial institutions, and life-skills coaches albeit, are including these complex issues in their mostly remedial work.

Similarly, the highly complex and even more highly relevant subject of parenting is left primarily to one’s own parents/guardians, the parents/guardians of one’s friends and, for those slipping through the cracks, social service agencies.

A camp director of some 300 children reported recently, “I spend much of my time providing the missing parenting that these children did not receive in their own home

In her book Act Natural: A Cultural history of Misadventures in Parenting, Jennifer Traig writes: “The verb (to parent) is only about 45 years old—it came about in the 70’s…Before that, they reared their children but mostly they left that in fact to other people—to staff, to older siblings, to other relatives…A parent’s job was to have the kids, not necessarily to raise them.” Reported on CBC, February 18, 2019, from an interview with the author by The Current’s Anna Marie Tremonti.)

The interview continues with some very provocative, troubling and now dissonant information: Quoting from the CBC report cited above:

In 18^th century Europe, it was common to send your infant child to the country. To live with a wet nurse, who would breastfeed and care for the child for money.

The practice was particularly common in France, Traig said, where one year 17,000 of the 21,000 babies in Paris were sent off to wet nurses. Only 700 newborns were nursed by their own mothers that year, she said. It wasn’t just done by the rich, Traig explained, but added that ‘the poorer you were, the farther out in the country your kids went. So wet nurses also sent their kids out to even poorer wet nurses, because a lot of families preferred that just one nurse take care of the child, and not nurse her own children.’

Sometimes, prepubescent girls would pose as wet nurses and feed babies a mix of flour and water, said Traig.

People once believed that babies wouldn’t be able to ‘assume human form’ unless it was forcibly imposed upon them, Traig said. To achieve that in medieval times, ‘children ere swaddled from head to toe like mummies,’ she told Tremonti. ‘The idea was that this would make their limbs grow into human limbs, and their trunk stay a human trunk.’

In ancient Rome, it’s believed that families often abandoned children, Traig explained. ‘It’s just unthinkable to us now, but for them it really functioned as a form of family planning,’ she said. If families couldn’t take care of a baby, they would be left in a ‘designated area,’ where they could be adopted by other families, taken by slave traders—or sometimes eaten by animals. Like the story of Romulus and Remus, ‘a lot of the founding myths of cities, including Rome, are about foundlings who are raised sometimes by animals, sometimes by peasants,’ she said.

Easily accessible by Google are such theoretical and potentially practical schemata that, for example, depict “four parenting styles,” dependent on  degrees of sensitivity/punitiveness, and demanding/no enforced limits…resulting in two “authoritative/authoritarian, and permissive or uninvolved categories.

Some studies conclude that “authoritative parenting is consistently linked to the best outcomes in kids. (From Parenting for Brain website, May 09, 2020)

Like teaching itself, since everyone has been to school, and everyone has been ‘raised’ somehow by someone(s), it appears that different ‘strokes for different folks’ has led, over the centuries to a pendulum swing of immeasureable dimensions.

From ushering children off to wet nurses, or leaving them in a designated area for adoption, to some of the gurus (like Dr. Spock, in generations past), and more recently to the proverbial and often discussed “helicopter parenting” in which parent ‘hover’ over their child’s every move, every thought, every feeling and clearly every troubling experience.

So significant is this development that recent evidence documents an exponential spike in childhood anxiety, depression, suicide and the inevitable public discussion, especially focused as it is now that North America (and other continents) are sequestered in our homes, confined with our children, for undetermined periods, depending on the jurisdiction.

Kate Julian, writing in the most recent edition of The Atlantic, reports from an interview with Lynn Lyons, as therapist and co-author of Anxious Kids, Anxious Parents, the childhood mental-health crisis risks becoming self-perpetuating:

“The worse that the numbers get about our kids’ mental health—the more anxiety, depression, and suicide increase—the more fearful parents become. The more fearful parents become, the more they continue to do the things that are inadvertently contributing to these problems.”

Julian continues: This is the essence of our moment. The problem with kids today is also a crisis of parenting today, which is itself growing worse as parental stress rises, for a variety of reasons. And so we have a vicious cycle in which adult stress leads to child stress, which leads to more adult stress, which leads to an epidemic of anxiety at all ages. (The Atlantic, May 2020, page 31)

Where are the men in these pictures? Some have simply walked away perhaps believing that, given the spectre they have that their spouses have taken the reins over about child-rearing. Others have perhaps gone silent, in the belief (perception) that mothers are more important to the raising of children than are fathers, although the evidence suggests precisely the opposite, and not only fathers with sons, but also fathers with daughters. Other men have perhaps become so engrossed in their professional/provider roles that barely any energy and attention is left over for serious pursuit of parenting, except perhaps while on vacation. Others, too, have adopted the helicopter parent style, and in so doing, have wrapped the mantle of over-protection around their child, in keeping with the maternal instincts, aspirations, protections and patterns.

(Personal anecdote: Once, after receiving a passing swipe on my head from the hand of a four-year-old seated with his parents behind me at a Toronto Blue Jays game, surprised and a little stunned, I uttered, “Hey!” only to hear the child’s mother utter, “Stop picking on my child!” )

While theories abound about the potential risk to children of the prevalence of digital social media, and the bullying that it conveys, resulting in the anxiety and depression that such bullying incurs, (and there is considerable evidence in support), the attitudes, behaviours and perceptions, aspirations and expectations of parents have a significant role in the parenting of children.

Ms Julian’s report includes these statements:

Anxiety disorders are well worth preventing, but anxiety itself is not something to eb warded off. It is a universal and necessary response to stress and uncertainty. I heard repeatedly from therapists and researchers while reporting this piece that anxiety is uncomfortable buy, as with most discomfort, we can learn to tolerate it…Yet we are doing the opposite: Far too often, we insulate our children from distress and discomfort entirely. And children who don’t learn to cope with distress face a rough path to adulthood. A growing number of middle- and high-school students appear to be avoiding school due to anxiety or depression; some have stopped attending entirely. As a symptom of deteriorating mental health, experts say, ‘school refusal’ is the equivalent of a four-alarm fire, both because it signals profound distress and because it can lead to co-called failure to launch—seen in the rising share of young adults who don’t work or attend school and who are dependent on their parents. (Op. Cit. p. 31)

Clearly, while these figures and observations have an American base, the broader issue of men and women attempting together to raise children is both complicated and potentially one of the most rewarding/risky/threatening aspects of family life.

Competition between parents, as individuals, as well as with competing values, is a ubiquitous volcano rumbling most likely silently, under the surface of any conversations about the lives of the kids. Unspoken and denied or avoided competition, too, is frankly even more dangerous. And if and when it surfaces after a decision has been taken by one child and one parent, without the knowledge and participation of the other parent, then all hell erupts, and it should!

However, what were the pre-curser developments to which at least one parent was oblivious? How was power being exercised, shared, discussed, decisions made and potential repercussions anticipated, that resulted in a complete breakdown of family structure, and not merely of family communications.

And this chapter of masculinity, being a father, is so deeply fraught with images of both extreme positivity and negativity, imprinted throughout the childhood of the new father. How his own parents acted, deceived, denied, avoided, protected, punished, rewarded, and even dressed and fed that “boy” is indelibly imprinted in his psyche. Whether there are issues of separating from an over-protective mother, or liberating from an excessively demanding father, or worse, extricating from the pressures of both parents, the new father is likely to be unconscious at worse, or  barely aware at best, of his own issues. These trend lines, doubtless, are much longer than the life of one generation.

Fathers whose work, career, professional status, social circle leave a deep and lasting impression on their young sons and daughters. And, without ever rising to the level of a kitchen table conversation, the relationship between a new father and the mother of his new child, is also not only on display but actually engenders much of the body language that transpires and is picked up by the child. The intuition of the child, not unlike that of a pet dog, is sticky, and absorbent and not easily expunged. One depressed cry of anguish from a parent, for example, will live forever in that child’s memory. And that analogy, whether positive or negative, will leave repeating ripples in the mind of the new parent.

Human life, as we have so shockingly re-discovered, entails much more than stock and employment numbers, tax rates and graduation rates. And, too often, men have been remiss, albeit unconsciously, in permitting family issues to be relegated to the family section of the daily paper, as well as to the last moment of the day, when energy has poured out earlier in “important work and decision-making”. All men know that this pattern is endemic to our lives, and depending on whether or not our spouse has tolerated or merely resigned to our pattern, nevertheless, we know we share some sadness, perhaps shame and guilt, or at least regret, for our emotional absence, if not our actual physical presence.

We are not ascribing blame, either overtly or inadvertently to any single parent, or to either gender of parent for the current state of our children. We are, however, recognizing that in the patterns of child-rearing over the last half to three-quarters of a century, the contribution in emotional, conversational, and time-spent terms by fathers, while not necessarily documented by researchers, has been less than it could have been. And it is not only the children who have been deprived; so too have the fathers short-changed ourselves.

And it is not only in the amount of time or those “one-on-one conversations that men participate. It is also in whether or not a father succumbs to the excessive protection of a child, without offering a legitimate, reasonable, and operational option for situations that he/we likely already experienced, even if we did so regretfully. As fathers, we are given a do-over for many of the mistakes of our lives, dependent as they are on the gaps in our own upbringing. And it is our ‘false modesty’ (at least as one of the contributing factors) and our laser focus on other important matters.

Fathers know that accommodating a child’s fears is detrimental to the child as well as to the family. And what father is himself not aware of his own fears that were left unmentioned, unaddressed and unsupported in his youth? Fathers’ fears, even  and especially in adulthood, just as they would have been in youth, are available and accessible keys to unlocking the intimacies that can only serve, with some tension, to bring all members of the family closer and more honestly supportive.

Men do not have to succumb to our so deeply ingrained stereotype that we cannot have or especially cannot show fear, weakness, insecurity, uncertainty, ambiguity or even profound anxiety. There is some reason to speculate that our withdrawal from self-disclosure, including our tears, our nervous agitations, our ‘time-out’s’ and our worries about ordinary questions to which we might not have answers, not only robs us of the needed support but also robs our families of their opportunity to discern what is an authentic anxiety and what is tolerable.

Just because parenting is more complicated than ‘putting food on the table and a roof over head,’ does not mean that those complications are beyond the scope and capacity of every authentic, and open and receptive and unfinished father.

#84, Men, agents of and pathway to cultural metanoia (reflection, silence, not always ACTION)

I knew a very vibrant, gregarious, affable, and highly enthusiastic gym “head” a few life-times ago who, upon suffering a serious heart attack, immediately after began a rigorously disciplined schedule of a daily three-mile brisk power walk.  Grant’s capacity to relate, to engage, and to embrace each and every human being and every situation in a ‘healthy and supportive manner’ was simply platinum. I have not seen his like before or since.

And although he is now deceased, after several years of disciplined exercise, it is the impact of the dramatic change in habit that draws my focus here. What are the required ingredients of individual, organizational and eventually global change? When, why, how, do we as individuals and as groups make significant shifts, beyond an obvious and minimal tweeking of our processes? Or is it, as the social scientists keep reminding us, change, real lasting change can and will come only after extensive, persistent and highly disciplined pressure?

We have all been taught the various intellectual pillars of thought/belief, including rationalism, Manicheanism,  romanticism, existentialism, pragmatism, modernism and post-modernism into which, or from which we each insert/derive sign-posts for the paths we choose to walk. Intellectual, cognitive nuggets themselves, also ride a current of moral/ethical guideposts, the origins of which emanate from various religious, philosophic and psychological impulses. Thought patterns, moral obligations and experiences flow in the crock-pot of our lives into a personal, social, cultural, identity “stew”…and that stew both nourishes us and, when offered to others, also evokes a “taste-test” response.

As sentient beings, we are sometimes enthralled by, repelled by, or soothed by various kinds of persons, experiences, relationships and challenges. And the compendium of heroes, devils, waltzes and high-impact events is like a gestalt composer scoring our unique melody, rhythm, musical form and song. And, there are different ‘periods’ of our lives, which, upon reflection, we can reflectively classify as our “blue” or “green” or “brown” or “black” period, just as can the art critics evaluate their artist subjects and their work.

Much scholarship seems to focus on the work of an individual, whether scientist, historian, poet or prophet, with the latter two, currently undergoing what can almost be considered an etherizing from the culture. Nevertheless, the poet/prophet takes pics from a different perch: from the perch of distance, some withdrawal, and almost ruthless risk-taking, given that his/her work is not constrained by an academic department, a professional peer-review, a replication in another lab, or a treatise of empirical data that refutes the vision.

No political scientist, for example, would even dare to challenge the premises of Margaret Atwood’s surfacing, or The Hand Maid’s Tale, or The Testaments, all of them based on a penetrating and prophetic vision and voice of a passionate female advocate for a level of decency, decorum, acceptance, respect and even an honouring of the monumental divide between men and women in the capacity to impact the nature of contemporary culture. Both men and women, of all ethnicities, cultures and geographies are indebted to Ms Atwood for her diligence, her courage, her imagination and her unbounded “fire” of both heat and light in our relative darkness. Will the totality of her literary legacy move our glacial culture in a direction that erodes the disparity, discrepancy and disgrace in which women are, even today, far more vulnerable in terms of survival, to the ravages of COVID-19?

On the other hand, Liz Plank writes fervently about the toxic poison of testosterone that plagues North American political culture, and the damage it does to both men and women. Will her voice move the culture, in a collaborative, supportive and even creative melting toward a vision both she and Atwood would enthusiastically endorse? Clearly, there are more voices in the Atwood “choir” than in the “Plank” ensemble, and the voices may not be talking ‘to’ rather than ‘at’ each other, as is so often the case. (Atwood herself once described the Quiet Revolution in Quebec, in their determined bid for provincial/national sovereignty, as a “dialogue of the deaf” with the rest of Canada.)

Threading the needle by attempting to arrange various colours, shapes, shadows, and abstractions on a canvas that might draw a few male eyes, ears, minds, hearts and potentially a river of influence on masculinity, both healthy and sabotaging is, has been and will continue to be the focus and the purpose of these pages. Different from both Atwood’s and Plank’s pages, these pages are both less creative  and less data-based, more overtly subjective, experiential, diary-and-journal-like, and more akin to a litany of letters to a Dad whose person I loved and whose voice I deeply regret not hearing more frequently, more earnestly and more courageously.

Yesterday, my wife and I watched the film, The King’s Speech again, for the “umpteenth” time. “Bertie’s” serious speech impediment serves as a legitimate, tragic and provocative metaphor for the serious speech impediment, not only of my own father, but also, of the millions of men around the world who, by virtue of default have let healthy and resilient and sustainable and spiritual masculinity slip away and be voraciously devoured by needy, greedy, and opportunistic men with whom it is inconceivable for us to identify with, or to support.

Neither a Republican nor a Democrat, a socialist or a capitalist, neither a Christian nor a Muslim, neither an executive nor a pawn, neither a gardener nor an industrialist, neither an investment banker nor a street person, the scribe here is just an ordinary, struggling, often blinded by fear and the repetition of early trauma, searcher, seeker, journeyman explorer. And it is both the inner life I am living and its links to the inner life of the culture (and the planet) to and from which these  scribblings are derived and dedicated.

Paying attention, or showing up, as the 12-step program argues is 90% of life’s requirements and expectations, is nevertheless an eminently worthy maxim. Often, paying attention generates more anxiety than might be warranted, given the early and non-reflective reporting and digesting of information, like the recent military exercises by Russian forces in the Arctic that divides Canadian defence scholars about the seriousness of the threat to both Canada and Denmark. Sometimes, too, paying attention provokes questions for which answers are not available, and may not be for some time. Paying attention, in a masculine perspective, can also be offensive, given the competitive spirit of other men who may not have ‘caught’ some important pieces of information, or trend lines, normally considered outside their range of interest and competence.

As a non-scholar, a non-reporting, independent and unauthorized observer of the “way of the world,” this scribe is essentially free to call it however he sees it. It is not that these observations, conclusions, reflections and ‘pontifications’ are anything more than one man’s ‘take;’ they are not. However, adding this voice is the one thing I can do in my own way to offer whatever I can to what I see as the potential for both the survival and the uplifting of the generations yet unborn.

It is a longer than a digital stock ‘crawl’ perspective, and a broader than headline summation, and a more complicated attempt to connect dots not being seen to be connected that these pages are dedicated.

For example, this morning I listened as Richard Haas, head of the Council on Foreign Relations, former member of both Republican and Democratic administrations, speculate that the COVID-19 impact on international relations would be to “deglobalize” those efforts. Protesting against such a development, Haas strongly offered his antidote, “resiliency” rather than turtling. And while his words are, on television, bereft of the much more complex and nuanced details of contextualizing, including history, developing trends in military, in bio-engineering and in crypto-criminality, there is implicit in his informed, seasoned and mature judgements, a fundamental premise: that humans can, by taking specific actions, impact the  outcomes in whatever field of human endeavour we choose.

What not denying the partial truth of that premise, it is long past time for those who exercise intellectual, and professional and political and economic power, (primarily men) to release our grip on that very premise. There is a difference between statements of ideological/political/historic and even philosophic aspiration and the time line for such cogent and highly informed statements to “land” and to be “digested” and to be “debated” and to be “refined” and even to be “considered” by those in positions of making policy recommendations. Underlying contemporary events, including the coronavirus, AIDS, Ebola, Swine Flu, and the plethora of natural threats, there is also an underlying threat of man’s hubris, blindness, inflexibility, and resistance to larger, deeper and more lasting patterns in which we are all embedded.

Yesterday, in conversation with family, we learned of the heroic, disciplined, loving and compassionate hourly work of an elderly man committed to doing everything he can to sustain and to enhance the life and well-being of his seriously ill spouse of more than six decades. And in our conversation, the words hero, victim, martyr, guilt, and succumb came up, in a gestalt of several archetypes being enacted. Decisions about how to help, however, were few, if any, given the established patterns of engagement between the couple.

In any situation, the question of which archetypes are ‘having’ us, acting through us, giving form, dimension, rhythm, melody and harmony to our individual and our collective lives, is pertinent, relevant and cogent. The specific proposals for “solutions” take a back seat to a shared appreciation of, and identification with the plight of these two. No one consciously aware of the interior drama can help but be impacted by it. Whether it points to a “resistance” to repeating such drama, or a “blocking” the pain out of our consciousness, or a new receptivity to our own mortality, each of us is nevertheless impacted by the story.

And stories, it says here, are not menus for correction. These pages are not and cannot be defined as recipes for correction, neither of men nor of women. Stories, per se, on their own merit, have a way of shedding light, garnering empathy, evoking compassion, sticking a foot in the door of an otherwise locked attitude and offering the hope of options never before encountered.

And, while most men are in the habit, not to mention the belief, that our actions, our words, our beliefs and our ‘contributions to our circle of influence are determinative of the outcomes, there is much to be acknowledged about the seemingly passive, and non-combative and non-participatory line from John Milton, a writer ostensibly dependent on his eyes, his vision, when he wrote, (of course theologically and philosophically) “We also serve who only stand and wait.”

Let’s pause for a moment, and resist dismissing that comment as coming from a Puritan, someone whose theology is today disdained vehemently. Or is it?

How enmeshed are we, (North American men and women, but especially men) in the protestant, puritan ethic of self-denial, self-effacement, self-commitment to diligent and even punishing and penurious labour, even self-sacrifice especially of those who “have not made it” into the higher echelons of power and wealth? How blinding, for example, is our perspective on the immediacy of today’s trauma, and today’s symptoms, not only in the COVID-19 pandemic, but also in the long history of grabbing whatever human and natural resources we can to “provide” for our immediate and all-consuming needs and desires?

It is not only profit versus people, as the placards carried by the protesting meat-packing plant workers shout. It is also what and who we are to each other, including all others, on this side of the globe as well as on the other side of the globe. Surely, we are conscious, if not overwhelmed, by our own complicity in our fate, a fate which was not seeded in some wet market, or some Wuhan lab, but rather seeded in our preposterous and hubristic presumption that we can dominate nature.

Our pretentious posturing about “wealth” and about “most highly educated” and about “visionary” and about “deglobalizing” or “retreating” and our interminable water-cooler babblings about the blatant immoralities and venal ambitions of the trump administration, in which misogyny looks like a pimple when compared with the overall narcissistic, self-serving, self-indulgent dissociation from reality that is literally killing thousands.

We are better than being seduced by hollow aphoristic chants of “great” and “perfect” and “better than everywhere else” and “blaming” everyone else for our epic insubordination and flagrant destruction of the truth and all efforts at human civility, decency and hope.

Saying “No” is a first step, for all men, (many women have already shouted their NO!) to the current malaise in which we are all impaled. However, it is far from the last step. The prophet in each of us (men) needs revisiting, reviving, re-inflaming and re-inserting into the public and personal discourse. It starts at our kitchen table, extends to shouting back at the television screen writing our own letter to the editor, and then engaging in more than water-cooler gossip.

We men do know better, and can do much better. Just look at the courage, the commitment and the passion of King George VI in confronting his own imperiled voice. Where would we be without that individual commitment when the blitz was being dropped from the sky?

#83, Men, agents of and pathway to cultural metanoia (neither sheep nor goats)

In This Hideous Strength, C.S. Lewis writes, “In relation to God, we are all female.” (quoted by Scott Peck, People of the Lie, p. 12) On the same page, Peck writes these words: “ is not neuter. He is exploding with life and love--even sexuality of a sort….Certainly I consider God androgynous.”

In many Christian churches, as recently as last Sunday (digitally) sermons about “sheep” and “goats” are delivered, with the underlying, implicit and deceptive dualism that ‘those who believe and follow Jesus Christ are ‘sheep’ while those who fail in that undertaking are deemed “goats”. Stereotypically, as documented on many websites including travelChinaguide, sheep are “meek, usually very quiet and gentle, holding themselves aloof from the world. In a herd, all the sheep tend tpo listen to their leaders and show esteem to them. Because of the obedient character, sheep are among the most popular animals beloved by mankind.”

Goats, on the other hand, as outlined by Susan Schoenian, a sheep and goat specialist at the University of Maryland on the website, Sheep 101, “goats have 60 chromosomes, sheep has 54 (humans 46);…goats are independent and naturally curious; sheep prefer to flock together and are more aloof…most goats have horns…mountain goats can jump 12 feet in a single bound, according to National Geographic…in bright light, the pupil in a goat’s eye is rectangular rather than round.

In the parable of the sheep and the goats, in Matthew 25: 31-46, “Jesus uses the example of a shepherds who separates his sheep from his goats in order to help his followers understand what judgement will be like. Jesus explains that people will be separated into two groups: those who have lived good lives and believed in God will be put on one side and have a place in Heaven; those who have rejected the belief in God and sinned in the their lives will be placed on the other side and will go to Hell. (BBC)

In Luke, another reference to the lost sheep, being found this time by Jesus, refers to sheep as sinner, depicting God’s desire to find sinners and bring them back into the fold.

It is more than a little tricky and potentially deceptive to hold fast to a single stereotypical image of sheep and/or goats, as a relevant theological exegesis. Literalism, reductionism, the absence of ambiguity, and simplistic menu’s that offer and promise salvation are worthy neither of a homilist nor of a deity worthy of the name. The risk is in the absolutism, the certainty, the absence of context, nuance, complexity and necessary reflection that engenders the spiritual path one dof life’s most challenging and potentially rewarding, as well as most mis-apprehended paths.

In a first-year seminary class in Field Education in 1988, one adult student uttered, pontifically, “We all know that Hitler will not be to Heaven.” Naturally, the room of some incipient clergy, a dozen fundamentalist biblical literalists, and half a dozen ‘liberal’ non-literal, searchers seemed to erupt in tension. The first group loudly concurred with the pronouncement; the latter group denounced it. As one of the latter group, today, I am deeply concerned with a faith that hangs on a literal reading of scripture, and then is propagated in pulpits among “Christians” across North America, as the absolute, sacred and incontestable truth.

In his 1983 best-seller, People of the Lie, Scott Peck, a Christian psychiatrist details many biographic narratives, including one of his own. In his search for those responsible for the My Lai massacre in Viet Nam, through the corridors and offices of the Pentagon, Peck could find no one who took responsibility. Legendary, too, are the reports that the American people were lied to about the actual facts on the ground in that war, as a political refuge to protect the administration against protesters, who resisted the conflict, and eventually prevailed in its terminaltiy, along with the withdrawal of then President Lyndon Johnson from the forthcoming presidential election in 1968.

In his book, Why We Lie: The Evolutionary Roots of Deception and the Unconscious Mind, David Livingston Smith, philosopher and evolutionary psychologist elucidates the essential role that deception and self-deception have played in human-and animal-evolution and shows that the very structure of our minds has been shaped from our earliest beginnings by the need to deceive. Smith shows us that by examining the stories we tell, the falsehoods we weave, and the unconscious signals we send out, we can learn much about ourselves and how our minds work. (from Goodreads.com) In a comment on the text, “Athena” writes these insightful observations:

As stated by Dr. David Livingston Smith, PH.D, ‘while it I strue children are taught not to lie, they are actually more frequently8 taught how to lie in a socially acceptable manner,’ Every time you receive a gift, you must put on a Duchenne Smile and pretend you are grateful, no matter whether you like it or not. Every time an event upsetting to adults occurs, you are taught not to laugh or grin foolishly. We were taught to hide our emotions and show only what ‘should be shown’ to others. Why? To make a good impression. To make friends. To impress teachers and employers. To form connections. To exploit society. To increase the change of having a ‘successful life’. Lying is biological. It gives one an upper hand in society.” (from Goodreads.com)

There is no inference here that those homilists who preached about sheep and goats were dissembling, deceiving or even necessarily distorting, merely simplifying, eliminating the complexities, the counter-thoughts and the rigorous theological exegetical work which those (virtual) congregants were hungry. Those people in the offices of the Pentagon, too, were refusing to take responsibility, leaning firmly and confidently on the notion that a ‘committee’ is as close as anyone will ever come to finding the author of that historic massacre.

Searching for truth, unwrapping the veil of self-deception each of us has in our perceptions, as well as the ensuing assessments evaluations, judgements and the new insights that poke their green stems through the earth of our previous conscious awareness, while itself exhausting and potentially psychically crippling, also affords the authentic psychic archeologists and anthropologists of our biographies new and ultimately freeing notions of what really happened and what those happenings mean as formational of one’s identity.

There is a new NBC series entitled Council of Dads, in its infancy, in which a dying man creates a ‘council of dads’ who will be there for the family if anything should happen to him. One ‘daughter,’ an aspiring writer searches for the real story about her past life, including an ‘adoption’ and ‘re-think’ and then somewhat heroic parenting by her now sober father. Her part in his sobriety is life-giving, surprising and her discovery hangs over the now-deceased father’s closest friends, prior to disclosure, as worrisome. Dancing around the full story, once again, is indicative of our social conditioning, while “breaking through” is considered a relief, even if its full apprehension may at first be challenging.

Thematically, the hidden and protective shield all of us, men and women, put on our traumas, our alcoholic ‘uncles’ and our unmarried aunts, as well as our ancestors’ most dark nights of their souls, robs us of the rich legacy in which we have all been nurtured. None of us has an ancestral narrative free of pain, conflict, danger, sickness, disease, faulty judgements, or even aberrant and shameful moments. Keeping the vault of those events locked in the attic of our memory, or some photo album, or some official and buried documents, diaries, tombstones, and classmates’ accounts robs both those imperfect and even despicable people of their full disclosure.

Mya Angelou on being interviewed on npr (March 27, 2013), says this about her early life:

At one time in my life, from the time I was 7 until about 13, I didn’t speak. I only spoke to my brother. The reason I didn’t speak, I had been molested and I told the name of the molester to my brother who told my family. The man was put in jail for one day and night, and released. And about three days later, the police came over to my mother’s house and told her that the man had been found dead, and it seemed he had been kicked to death. They made that pronouncement in my earshot, and I thought my voice killed the man. And so it’s better not to speak. So for six years I didn’t speak.”

The words are so graphic, so tragic and so poignant that no one on hearing/reading them can help but be moved. Her book, Mom & ME & Mom, details her tortured and redemptive relationship with the mother who sent her away at three to live with her grandmother, then took her back and only decades later did the two women evolve a relationship based on profound intimate and difficult personal disclosure.

Each of us, both men and women, have turbulent troubling stories in our family history whose entanglements have both ensnared and confounded us for years, while continuing to confront us with questions about the why of another, the what meaning can be attributed to, the light that continues to lie in the darkness of unknowing. And one of the significant questions of a life fully lives is whether the environment in which we dwell is supportive of our ‘dig’ into our own family’s fossils.

If the truth, however, of the public square, is considered so destructive of the stability of that square, and the people occupying offices and positions that are dedicated to the institution’s integrity and authenticity that it must remain hidden, and then wrapped in the ideological ‘gift-wrap’ of a particular administration, in order to guild the lily of that administration, then the truth-telling of the ordinary folk also unpalatable. The model of dissembling, reduction, deception and covering up has overtaken the public discourse.

Just this morning, the Attorney General of the United States, in defending the historic implications of the Justice Department’s withdrawal of charges against Michael Flynn, for National Security Chief to trump, for lying to the FBI, made this statement:

“Well, history is written by the winners!”

And therein lies the cultural, governmental, and now legal justification for any and all decisions of the current administration. And who are the winners: the men who occupy the seats of power in the U.S. administration, and the sycophants and acolytes who uphold the men and the public utterances of those men, while the world watches fully cognizant of the back story that reads just as tragically as the biography of the little girl we know as Mya Angelou.

There is a difference between a literal death of a man and the literal interpretation of a poetic parable. And that difference can help us to discern the complex realities of the events in our lives and the metaphoric, mythical and interpretative readings of those incidents which provide the contextual, psychic and rhythmic melodies, including their overtones, that elevate each of us from a stick-drawing or a cardboard cut-out to a living, breathing, thinking, feeling, sensing and pulsating human spirit, that cannot be contained in a literal reading of any holy book.

While our diaries, journals and letters hold some of our secrets, they are a garden of flowers, fruits, and even weeds seeking discovery. And, in this springtime of our pandemic, when time seems to hang barely above the freezing mark, when hundreds of thousands of humans have perished, and their families have been left without the gifts of the story-telling that remained locked behind the closed doors of polite behaviour, smooth and comforting words, constrained smiles, and tightly clenched lips and fists, this weekend, Mother’s Day offers yet another opportunity to have the conversations we have dreaded for decades.

Who knows what new chapters will be written, based on stories previously secured in memories so shamed and fearful that their complexity precluded release?

And, while women are more comfortable than men with the details of their lives, men too are not without the psychic muscle, discipline and emotional maturity to being their own walk into the beach of their previously resisted lake, river, or ocean of being.

#82 Men, agents of and pathway to cultural metanoia (Too Tall Poppies and other disposables)

Let’s take a look at some of the ways/situations/encounters/exchanges in/by which men sabotage other men! We have spent considerable time looking at how individual men self-sabotage. Yet perhaps the depth and persistence of conflict/competition and the underlying psychic “soil” from which these situations grow and develop, while not open to excavation, or certainly elimination from the hard wiring, warrants a deeper and more exhaustive look.

Men sabotage other men directly and indirectly, in different ways.

On the “direct” front, a rather recent model, originating from Australia, has been termed the “Too Tall Poppy Syndrome.” Premised on the concept that all poppies (workers) should grow to the same height, this syndrome finds anyone who is working above and beyond the minimum/modest/moderate level in an employment situation, is attacked, in what many would argue is an blatant attempt to “bring him/her down” to the level of the ordinary workers’ performance. We have all witnessed this dynamic under a variety of rationales, some example of which include:

·        He/She is just sucking up to the boss by demonstrating excessive energy and ambition and creativity

·        He/She is working to impress for a superlative reference in the process of seeking that promotion

·        He/She is what in some contemporary North American workplace cultures just being another of those FNG’s (----ing New Guys) who is, like that new broom trying inordinately hard to make a first impression

·        He/She is demonstrating a new operating procedure taught to all new recruits, that just ridicules the way we have been doing things for centuries (even if the new methods are designed to protect workers from injury)

·        He/She thinks she knows everything and wants to show everyone around here up

·        He/She came here from the big city where they all think they know it all, and wants to ‘convert’ everyone to their sophisticated level

·        He/She is a grad of “X” school where they all believe they own the world, and the boss likely believes his/her ‘brand’ will improve the prospects for investor participation

·        He/She is from country “x” or “y” known as (here fill in the most superficial, reductionistic stereotype of that country) and we all know how they operate

·        He/She just arrived in this country, and needs to spend a few years proving him/herself, before attempting to exert any influence, even if that influence sis healthy for the enterprise

·        He/She comes with a high recommendation from a personal friend of the boss, and that is enough to delay, block, preclude his/her successful entry here

Debilitating and undermining activity is costing billions both in lost revenue and lost opportunity to cut costs not to mention the wounds such activity inflicts on the psyches/emotions/aspirations/confidence and potential loyalty of the target worker. And the only “reward” is the personal “self-aggrandizement” of the perpetrator, and that in itself is another of the faux-rewards many seem ready willing and able to fall for. The polar alternative, of gushing supportive and potentially condescending words over a co-worker is, equally, despicable. As in so many other facets of public discourse, there has been a growing trend of binary options as the only two available for the average person.

The poverty, not only of generosity and objective mentoring, but of the plenitude of approaches from one worker to a colleague, comes from a dry desert of expectations about how we are expected to treat each other in our  workplaces, and even in our homes. Is it our imaginations that have been starved of examples of empathy, help and support? Or are we so insecure, generally, that, in order to strengthen our sense of ourselves, we have to bring another down. Are we frightened of being “ostracized” by co-workers if we befriend a new worker, or especially a worker from a different ethnicity, culture, language or faith? Are we needing to ‘fit in’ with those workers currently working alongside us that what is a new person, idea, suggestion, process, strategy, tactic, especially if it comes from one of those “tall poppies,” that we easily and glibly and predictably dismiss, disdain, undermine, sabotage both the person and the idea?

There is a perhaps infrequently paradox in the act of saying “No” (in any of the millions of ways and circumstances we say it out loud or silently). When we say  “No” to another, we are in truth, also saying “No” to ourselves. That paradox may not be easy to digest, to assimilate and to accept.

Nevertheless, think about it! We see something, hear something, learn something that strikes us as “irritating” or off-putting, insulting, demeaning, presuming, assuming and often based entirely on a rumour which is, itself, based on another bit of gossip. And when that ‘something’ has a name and a face to which it can be easily attached, then that person, in our cast of acceptable characters, drops a peg or two, perhaps even consciously or unconsciously we push that person off the dock of our “associates” list. And in the course of our own process of alienating the other, we, in fact, eliminate ourselves from the potential to heal the rift, shed light on the partial, and potentially damaging “something” and ‘move forward’ as the counsellors keep telling us we all need to do.

This is not to argue that men, more than women, are demonstrating what a Russian professor of Comparative Education, at the University of Ottawa, ridiculed as the Russian method of solving problems: eliminate it. It is to concur with that wise and unforgettable professor (Dr. Ramunas) that elimination is a highly preferred method of considering, assessing and disposing of a problem, especially a personnel problem. After all, in a masculine mind set, the “task” take precedence over the “person” and the “person” is more susceptible to judgement than any of the other “resources” in any plan, given that a person is both likely to “screw up” (given our own experience of screwing up and projecting that potential onto all others), is right in our face and is potentially unlikely to change whatever it is/was that set us off in the first place.

Human nature, that most complex, mysterious, fascinating and perplexing of creatures, is both the most significant and the most costly resource in the corporate/organizational/social/political panel of instruments/influences. And, the cost of ensuring the predictable, dependable, profitable performance of the process (no matter the theatre), through human labour is considered the “highest” and most easily disposed cost item in the budget. Every single male (and female) in a position of executive responsibility has weaknesses, vulnerabilities, a past, and a highly polished and perfected sheen on the Mask s/he has created to “pass muster” in the long litany of interviews, drinks, papers, theses, projects, teams and achievements that litter his/her biography.

And each of those leaders has a clear picture of the kind of person s/he has found it both comfortable and smooth to work with, as well as a cast of characters who have been troublesome, conflicted, or as we now euphemistically put it, “high maintenance.” (Men especially use this term to describe a ‘high maintenance spouse” whose intricate eccentricities he will also often admire and smile in recounting.)

“High maintenance” workers, like magnets, attract such descriptives as “hard to manage,” “threatening to power,” or “narcissistic and unmanageable,” and as soon as signs poke through the ashphalt of the CEO/corporate culture’s consciousness, those in the inner circle begin to take note. This worker is not fitting into our culture. S/He is not learning how we do things here. This worker is one we will have to watch carefully, and potentially find a way to usher him/her out.

Executives have a myriad of creative, if manipulative, road maps for completing the divorce, including such demonic approaches as, “Do you think he will leave if we load his plate so high that he simply cannot accomplish the job?” Another favourite, “S/he seems very friendly with one of our favourite (men or women) and that friendliness is dangerous, if not grounds for beginning a file because we will need evidence when we dismiss.” Perhaps, if neither of these would prove useful, we might find another tact: “Things have gone missing in the office/back shop/supply room/ and it seems to happen coincident with the appearance of this person in that area; we need to take note!”

Oh, I can hear the cries of “Why are you so contemptuous of quality control? After all, all businesses, corporations, and organizations depend on a smooth running of the operation, as designed by the originators, and our history has always honoured both their persons and their ingenuity. We have found that we function more effectively (and more profitably) with those who conform to our expectations, without acting like a burr in our shoe. And when we find those counter-productive and counter-intuitive to our culture, we simply have to eliminate them.

This will not suffice as an academic treatise on workplace tensions. It is, rather, based on a litany of experiences, both personal, and reported, from a rather extensive working life, spanning seven decades, and literally dozens of supervisors. From a grocery clerk, to civil servant, to salesman, to beer store clerk, to teacher, coach, vice-principal, assistant department head, student, intern, chaplain in training, counsellor trainee, entrepreneur, clergy, mailman, and project manager, many male and female co-workers and supervisors have crossed paths.

And, if there is a single observation about people in positions of power and responsibility, from my experience, that merits reflection, it is that most, if not all, are highly attuned to their “polling” (whether formal or more importantly informal). If individuals who seem to ‘count’ among the working staff, take issue with the executive, that is a warning sign. If workers who are known to be both diligent and committed take exception to decisions of the “top,” that too is a signal of warning. If a new idea is proposed, depending on the proposer’s reputation (and not on the merit of the proposal) the idea is either investigated or dropped like a nuclear device.

Preserving one’s position/power/legacy/reputation, by the chief executive, is the primary objective of those in power. (Of course, it will be argued that if that edifice begins to crumble, there will be inevitable damage to the institution!) Nevertheless, the status, income, power and impunity with which most Chief executives currently operate is so far removed, and so highly remunerated, as to warrant a severe dart in that balloon. We have become a culture of single-operator tyrants, in a culture in which their circle incestuously and gratuitously genuflects at that altar of executive power. And, once again, males are predominantly responsible for this development, along with the concomitant development of eviscerating worker rights of both safety and compensation.

And the most recent pandemic continues to document for all to see, the almost unbelieveable divide in danger/safety as well as in income/influence. Those our culture/society/economy/ most needs are those most seriously and negatively impacted by COVID-19. Those in power, (with exceptions) too often incarnate contempt for those on whom the health of everyone depends, shown by withholding protective equipment, and/or failing to resource needed ventilators.

It may well be time for the economy to be overturned, with a profound recognition, both in attitude and in corresponding policy and law, that vacuums the inflation from the perks and the investment options, the power and the single-and-unquestioned power and authority of an individual executive. The voices of all of those “tall poppies” who do not precisely “fit” into the corporate culture are needed now more than at anytime in my lifetime.

And this is one space where tall poppies will find embrace, support, welcome and encouragement. They may find opportunities for seizing the ‘whistleblower’ megaphone; they may find opportunities to expose the alcoholism of their chief executives in favour of time out for treatment and no longer a protracted denial and cove-up; they may find voice and alliances for other, especially men, who no longer are willing to be assassinated through rumour, innuendo, or especially political opponents.

 And, just yesterday, the world learned that the strategists of the upcoming campaign of the current occupant of the Oval Office have brashly announced that their prime goal and modus operandi will be to “assassinate” the character of the Democratic nominee, Joe Biden.

Hate speech has long since fallen by the wayside as a determinant of civility. So has truth fallen as a measure of value and integrity. So too has the quality of one’s policy proposals drifted into the floor of the polluted ocean of public opinion, like so much detritus, plastic, and garbage.

We are left with a minimalist, pre-adolescent, immature, indefensible and unsustainable prospect of a presidential campaign unworthy even of the name. And, once again, men are at the forefront of the kind of battle we will be offered.

Other men, (there have to be more than those members of the Lincoln Project, former Republican, non-trumpers) who see the world in ways similar to the perception from the north shore of the St. Lawrence river, just across the bridge from New York State, where the current governor is offering a humane, intelligent, compassionate and also non-eliminating, non-reducing masculine voice to the effort to mitigate the heinous and lethal plague, COVID-19.

Is there more than a ‘mindful’ masculinity in the cultural womb awaiting the appropriate and needed mid-wives and agencies to give it birth? It says here that a healthy masculinity, for which we all work and pray, will come more likely from men telling our stories, than from prescriptions of processes and attitudes and behaviours.

#81 Men, agents of and pathway to cultural metanoia (honouring Liz Plank's advocacy of men)

Liz Plank, author of For the Love of Men: A New Vision for Mindful Mascuinity,  studied gender relations in London where the professors and the classes were comprised primarily of women, with a couple of men seated in the back of the lecture halls. As she considers the current definition of masculinity to be the greatest threat to humankind, she has taken it upon herself to advocate for men around the world.

The current definition of masculinity, she terms as testosterone poisoning depicts a kind of backlash to feminism, and we heartily concur.

    The absence of men at women’s conferences, (“Oh they should show up and shut up!” as she reported hearing that specific quote when attending a woman’s conference and the fact that

    research illustrates men drive much farther than women (because they/we will not ask for directions) and that

    men do not recycle nearly as much as women

    men lose their jobs over the last couple of decades much more frequently than women…

these data points, while true, and useful for conversation and for stimulating interest in a subject that men have been resistant to exploring in any meaningful, thorough, and penetrating manner, are part of a contemporary snap-shot. The use of guns, the politicization of all public issues into zero-sum conflicts, the insouciance about the existential threat of global warming and climate change…these too are relevant to the discussion about contemporary masculinity.

So too are the panoply of scenarios, addressed previously here, that dig and then plant a masculine footprint indelibly into the foundations of western culture, although not necessarily with a malignant or narcissistic motive. Our culture’s appetite for the sociological/political/gender politics menu of current affairs is legion, and it is especially voracious in the United States. In a culture so highly individualized, competitive, addicted to the latest ‘thing’ (fad, star, theory, invention, innovation, song, movie, television drama), what tends often to get lost is the broad and long sweep of history. Occasionally, a public statement will surface which evokes another public statement from a previous public figure, and certainly comparisons are being made to the numbers of deaths that resulted from the Civil War, the Korean and the Iraq/Afghanistan wars with the loss of life resulting from COVID-19.

The span of the last three-quarter of a century, dominated as it is by the rise of feminism and the concomitant turtling of probably the more healthy examples of masculinity along with the insurgency of a toxic and even lethal masculinity, to both genders and to their families coalesce in the emergence of an author/scholar such as Ms Plank. For her eloquent, detailed, empathic and challenging advocacy for a ‘mindful masculinity’ all men are rightly grateful. Men can be ‘faulted’ for many things, one of them being the resistance to talking about ourselves as a group and, unless covered by confidentiality, even about ourselves. There are, fortunately, some men who have resisted this reticence, in a manner similar to our’s.

Also, as previously noted in this space, some of the “work” being conducted to seed, nurture and celebrate health masculinity by men, focuses on a return to a rigid “morality” of promise-keeping while holding to the heroic images of war, athleticism, competitive bread-winning and corporate mergers and take-overs. This masculinity is also at the core of the climate denial, gun-toting, capital punishment advocacy, gay-hatred, racial bigotry, immigrant blocking, populist nationalism energies that have moved from creeping to “power-walking” in many centres around the globe.

Domination of anything or of anyone depends upon a limiting of the boundaries, possibilities, a constriction of the mental images, the imagination and the ‘frightening’ prospect that others, regardless of political ideology, or religious belief, or ethnicity may and even do have ideas as good as and likely even better than those we are propagating. Both left and right, in the political spectrum of North America, share responsibility for the current state of national and geo-politics, the failures to work more collaboratively on many issues that, taken together pose challenges for which many argue current systems and institutions are unprepared to confront.

On the gender issue, it is not only the right (Republicans, nationalists, populists, racial and ethnic white supremacist bigots) who have set the table for the formal and informal study of a process whereby equality and equity of genders might foresee a higher potential for international even global co-operation, in the interests of something as significant as human survival. On the left, too, has been demonstrated such a narrow, perfectionistic, judgemental perspective, including policies, processes, accusations and decisions that have literally ruined lives.

One can see a convergence, for example, of the corporate (masculine-dominated) culture’s definition of human resources as little more than raw materials for the increasingly sophisticated and chemically/synthetically/engineered production machine. Link this lethal mind-set to the notion that men, individuals and even more collectively, abhor seeking and accepting and then acting upon reasonable, supportive and especially corrective counsel from any source, especially from medical professionals. And then, that a mind-set that encompasses the parameters of a bottom line (in any enterprise, revenues, expenditures, profits, losses, and probabilities envisaged on the bases of these rather short-term benchmarks), and it is far too easy to envision a controlling, dominating mind-set of immediate gratification measured by literal, empirical, and most often fiscal numbers.

Those whose functions are considered “costs” are naturally deemed much more expendable than those functions deemed “revenue generators” without even a reasonable appreciation for the need of the latter for the tasks and the performers of the former category.

In processes where “people” are allegedly the “raison d-etre” for the existence of the enterprise, like education, religion and worship, social service agencies, health care and even in the last resort, treatment of individuals who are judged to have committed crimes, in prisons and purported rehabilitation, all of the professional who serve are “costs” in the sense that without their contribution, the agencies would cease to exist. Nevertheless, in America, the corporate, for profit, (cost-based) equation not only operates, it dominates in those organizations. The unhealthy masculinity that prevails among those whose responsibilities include the healthy management of such institutions, based on a cultural perspective that seeks first the ‘trust fund’ development, sustainability and cost-based operating budgets can and will barely bend to include such reasonable supports as employee assistance programs. Workers’ associations, unions, and conditions of employment are considered exclusively as “costs” and rarely as requirements, even though lives have been lost in previous historic fights for labour rights.

Denying pensions, for example, to clergy for the first five years of employment, is a case in point, illustrated by the American Episcopal church, for all of its clergy. Similarly, for allegations, accusations, and negative reports, only the most cursory, superficial and pre-determined and pre-judged investigations are conducted inquiring among only those whose evidence will never unveil the full story. And the dominant and prevailing mind-set is one by men, who themselves, fail to fully explore and then challenge their own masculinity, and confront the kind of feminism that has so dominated the “gender issue” as exemplified in the women’s conferences conducted by women, in the absence of and silence of men.

Growing up in a house in which my mother was inordinately abusive, while my father was (also inordinately, passive and compliant, I have questioned, from a very early age, which “force” or “attitude” or “agency” or “behaviour” was more toxic, dangerous, threatening, and venal. And the question of deconstructing multiple situations involving men and women directly, including male suicides and their attempts, male dismissals often executed by men at the behest of women, male sexual improprieties often decades after abuse at the hands of their female guardians, female manipulations of men especially ensuing from previous hurtful encounters with other men….and the too frequent dismissing of whatever the biographies of both the accusers and the accused as peripheral or worse, irrelevant to the immediate ‘case’ is potentially another of  the misguided, mis-apprehended, mis-evaluated and certainly mid-judged modus operandi, primarily by male decision-makers.

Whether the avoidance of complexities, ambiguities, costs, and the perplexing conundrums of most, if not all, encounters of conflict between men and women, and the responsibility of adjudicating their appropriate and measured and reasonable resolution, fairly, with equanimity and with a full knowledge and grasp of the complexities of human relationship, beyond the most superficial underlies these injustices is a question that requires brains and research more able and resourced than this one. One thing seems clear, however. The penchant for quick, easily-disposed and least costly dispositions prevails and such a model is more likely based on a masculinity that defers from wading into such swamp-like complexities.

The very fact of the social, political and cultural attempt to equate a business/corporate/for-profit model to a school, a church, a hospital or a children’s protective agency is, for this scribe, a non-starter. And yet, such an equation, however ridiculous, and however costly and certainly however ineffectual and wasteful of human beings, their creativity and their spirit, prevails, with the persistently held support of most men and many compliant women.

Would a more healthy and ‘mindful’ (to borrow from Ms Plank’s book) masculinity be more likely to ‘see’ and to consider and even to ‘accept’ the significance of a revisioning of this application of the corporate, for-profit model to their schools, their hospitals, and their social service agencies and perhaps even extend such thinking and modelling to include a vibrant mental health option?

In a more geopolitical perspective, would a more mindful masculinity be willing and able to begin to deconstruct the military behemoth, and the production of its mountainous and light-speed innovations of national security, in order to balance the legitimate needs of clean water, clean air and access to quality education and health care of the people of the planet? Certainly the very opposite is unfolding before our eyes, with examples of  turtling by despots, opportunism in scamming process of purchasing and transporting needed medical equipment, in hoarding of needed supplies, in the imposition of the Defence Production Act to force workers in meat-processing plants to return to unsafe work spaces, to feed the uber-wealthy their filet-mignon.

A similar arrogance abounds among the powerful in many quarters (all of them men) in a seemingly impregnable defiance of smog, coal-fired generating stations, plastic suffocation of oceans and their wildlife and habitats, and the selfish, narcissistic pursuit of nationalistic “greatness” at the expense of ordinary lives and livelihoods. And, again, it is primarily men who stand in the way of urgently needed change, adaptation, collaboration and all of it can only be based on a level of compassion, empathy and even love for self and for other.

Unless and until men come to the place where love is released from the bedroom, the intimate cruise, the intimate and elegant dining room, the dance-floor and the elegant and exclusive designer shops and the infant nurseries, the mid-wives, the “obgyn” doctors and the eternal obsession with the pursuit and success of winning a female mate, then the love of all others, including the love and appreciation of the bounty of the planet will go blind to their eyes, deaf to their ears and dumb to their sensibilities.

It may not be rocket science, deserving of the next Nobel Prize, as will be the eventual winner of the race for a vaccine for COVID-19. However, a return of masculine, as well as already far ahead feminine, values, perceptions, attitudes and beliefs, to the verities that have sustained humanity for hundreds of centuries, that value respect, dignity, honour, and yes, love…is our only hope.

And any attempt to intellectualize, compartmentalize, Balkanize, and then to specialize and elevate the specialists to a sacred point of the social, cultural and political pyramid of value can and will only perpetuate a hierarchical, prejudiced, bigoted, unsustainable and seemingly irreversible division of a few who belong and matter and a growing and overwhelming army of ordinary, and likely displaced billions of people. We are already facing the largest mass movement (for it will not remain static or immovable) of displaced persons in human history. And the root causes of that impending collision between those of us who “have” and those of us who have nothing can and will increasingly be traced, legitimately, back to the root of the inordinate power of unhealthy self-sabotaging masculinity.

And the sooner men join Ms Plank in a collaborative and effectual chorus of change, the better off will all of our grandchildren be!