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This reminds me of something else:

Interestingly, one of the oldest guidelines for sales and marketing in any medium is to sell the benefits, not the features, so we shouldn’t really have to harp on this here. Sadly, the web is so smothered in vaporous content and intangible verbiage that users simply skip over it. Of course, the more bad writing you push on your users, the more you train them to disregard your message in general. Useless content doesn’t just annoy people; it’s a leading cause of lost sales. (source)

Yesterday I lived in a pre-millennial dream of the future. I spent the day going over my pictures and other files on a computer far more advanced than was available in the 1990s. I watched a video clip on YouTube and downloaded one to my hardrive. A delivery in the afternoon dropped off the municipality’s new compost bins. Unpacking this revealed numerous reading materials and a DVD to watch. I placed one of the enclosed biodegradable plastic bags in the new kitchen bin and threw away my first plum pit.

Later I went to the grocery store to get some things (like soy-based coffee cream, since this morning I used my father’s lactose free skim milk) so off I went to the grocery store, where I got the stuff ?ج�? new coffee filters (unbleached ‘organic’), Jiff crunchy peanut butter, some canola oil, and the Silk soy-cream. The 1-8 items lane was closed so I went through the self-checkout. Punch the buttons on the screen, scan the items, swipe the card and key in your personal code. It’s as if I’m writing for a futurist design magazine in 1987 as I type this now. Then it’s home, and TV watching ?ج�? Simon Schama’s History of Britain episode 2: ‘Conquest’ which I borrowed from the library.

Afterward, going around the channels, I came across the Frontline episode from earlier this year on the Iraqi insurgency, and so was thrust into the middle of this early 21st Century war and political reality. This was obviously re-broadcast due to the assassination of al-Zarqawi last Wednesday. After this, I found CBC’s The National that had a story on the Supreme Court hearing a case about these security certificates; this story was followed by a mournful press conference featuring the two men in England who were mistakenly arrested on suspicion that they were building a chemical weapon. Both men had shaven heads and long beards. All of this drove home the fact that our time is strangely polarized between Muslims and whatever the fuck the rest of us are.

Meanwhile, somewhere in Ottawa was Michael Ignatieff. Earlier in the day I saw him awkwardly read from a speech in the House of Commons, and with his academic background, the speech was well researched and well argued. Although, as an MP he lacked the charisma he’s shown at other podiums, where’s he’s prone to break up his points by telling us what he’s told us (’I've mentioned this … and that…’). He was arguing against Bill C-10, an act to implement mandatory minimum sentences. He was answered by the Conservative MP from Peterborough, who quoted Julian Fantino’s blustering about ‘hug-a-thug’ policies, making this MP look like little more than a hot-head. His over-sized body also made an impression of being a somewhat stupid bovine. The Hansard doesn’t register the change in tone of this MP’s voice, which put quotes around ‘hug-a-thug’ and ‘paradigm’ the later as if to mock Ignatieff’s inteligence and background.

Ignatieff responded as one does when one is tired of stupidity, and went over his points, saying that the Liberal policies during the 1990s did not contribute to a ‘hug-a-thug’ mentality, but that the stats clearly show a reduction in crime overall during this period. Afterward, an MP from Quebec, a Bloc Quebecois, complimented the speech in the way that one does when one is impressed and trying to encourage someone who’s been unfairly attacked by a bully, showing sympathy and mentioning how well researched it was, directing a question to Ignatieff about it all.

I was very impressed myself and dearly hope he becomes Prime Minister ?ج�? because here was an example of a intelligent voice ‘raising the level of debate’. The MP from Peterborough suddenly seemed so old fashioned, a symptom of the raucous, dysfunctional, and stupid Parliments that have produced little to be proud of and a lot to be bored and unimpressed by. Ignatieff bringing brains to Parliament was another way in which I felt yesterday to be living in the 21st Century.

Later in the day, the house voted on wether to send C-10 to second reading. Ignatieff and M?ɬ�nard (the BQ MP) voted against it, but it nevertheless carried at 157-116.

Photo taken 23 April 2003. Click for a higher resolution version.The site of Toronto’s new opera house, which has its premiere performance tonight.

Wednesday 12 June 1996. Now the day before, with the landlord shit, I made a call for an appointment with our landlord Mr. S. So I got up at 12.30, and at 1.10 was out the door, to Duke St, where I got some money and then caught a bus to go to Fairview. The appointment was at 2pm, but at 2 I was at the mall, and since I would be a half-hour late, I called and rescheduled for the next day. So I took the number 1 bus back, getting off at Oxford, to go to the Kings College Library. What a beautiful place! I’m not really one for architecture, but that place was awesome. There, I borrowed Michelangelo’s poems, and then walked home. To class and I did a weekly brief, but it couldn’t print, and I tried and tried and gave up. After class, home with music and Michelangelo’s poems and candlelight to save power. This was a bad day, overcast, me tired, and I concluded that day with the thought that I should never have even gotten up. It was one of those days.

That night I dreamt I was in junior high school again, in Grade 7, and we had these projects we had been working on. There was a boy, we called him Artaud, and he was a silent, moody fellow, anti-social and unknown. Actually I found out a little later that Artaud was a girl, a cute one to. The day came to present her report. I was given a stop watch, to time it. I pressed the start button and dropped it to the floor. Artaud didn’t say a word - more moodiness I thought instantly, but immidately someone jumped onto her chair and applauded enthusiastically. And then I got it, and I too jumped on my chair with screams of bravo! The moodiness - it had all been a grand performance art peice, and that had been her project. Her statement was that ‘alone you are more with people than you are when you’re social,’ as was exemplified in that, after me, the whole class got it and we all cheered her and supported her. Alone she was supported. Had she been part of the crowd, she would have not been supported. Like pegs in a peg board, if one falls, the others still carry the burden and cannot help her, but alone, she is supported by the plank underneath.

So afterwards we were in the cafeteria her and I, and we talked. She was now enormously cute to me, and she had gorgeous jet black hair, straight, falling past her shoulders, and it had a silky sheen. I was facinated by her, by the genius of her project, and she was facinated also by me, saying I was intelligent and very creative. We spoke French to each other at one point. But alas , as it always happens, I woke up, her face imprinted on my mind. I also dreamt of J. that night, but I always do anyway so I don’t remember details.

~Ten years ago I sat in a dark room, reading my Michelangelo poems after class. I was alone, I put the radio on, and listened to CBC. Did I strum the guitar? Probably, trying to learn the chord positions. Was the chair a rocking chair? For some reason I think so, but then, what happened to it, and where did it come from?Ten years later it’s a day spent with the canvases that were then unpainted, a day spent with a new digital camera that I hadn’t yet heard of, snapping pictures to download and process using the techniques I learned in art school, which I would be beginning in three months. But that night I did not know any of this, and I was sad, so I wrote: ‘This was a bad day, overcast, me tired, and I concluded that day with the thought that I should never have even gotten up. It was one of those days.’I did not yet know how the memory of that afternoon’s walk would stay with me, and how by the end of the year I would return to the grounds of Kings College to take photographs of the old trees and the fa?ج�?ade of the library, which I’d been too and had appreciated. I did not know that in ten years I would glimpse one of those photographs and be reminded that I had gone back in November, having found out about it in June.Nor did I know how the memory of that afternoon’s walk would become my mental-visual marker defining the year, the leaves glistening as they were with late afternoon sunlight breaking through the otherwise gray sky of the day - this shininess signaling for me a new turn of events in my life and it the decade - it was all there, the misery of the early half of the 1990s, and the brilliance of the later part.

What follows is my 2001 correspondence with W. Warren Wagar, who died in November 2004, and whose book, A Short History of the Future provided me with much food for thought during the period I was reading it. (And anyone who knows me might remember how I went on about it during 2000-2001).

———–
1.From: Timothy Comeau
To: W. Warren Wagar
Date: Apr 10 2001 - 9:40pm
Subject: A Short History of the Future questions

Dear Mister Wagar,I’m aware that you follow and contribute to the WSN forum, but since this mostly involves questions about your book, I wanted to write to you directly.

I am an artist in Toronto who first read your book, A Short History of the Future last summer and have found it both endlessly facinating and very entertaining. I am outside of the academies now, and have conducted a sort of independent study of the text in my spare time. Understandably, you can imagine that I find the passages dealing with art in the future to be of particular interest. I’m wondering if you could answer some questions I have.

SUBSTANIALISM
Lately, I have been most intrigued with the substantialist art of the Commonwealth. On the weekend it occured to me that what you describe as substantialism is a form of renewed humanism, (you do mention “integral humanism” but this seems to be more of a political thing than spiritual) a belief of man’s purpose arising from the scientific discoveries of cosmology and genetics. I am beginning to see what you describe as neorealist art celebrating the common person in terms of what occurred in the late Middle Ages, when medivael art achieved a new realism and incorporated a sense of the divine with that of the human - and which we call the Renaissance. (The Renaissance being a rebirth of ancient learning, but isn’t our own time in the midsts of a new re-birth, with our archaeological discoveries re-infusing our culture with knowledge of Lascaux and Chauvet?)

In attempting to describe what a “social realist” substantialist painting might look like to a friend, I pointed out the work of the BC artist Chris Woods (-albeit his paintings explore consumerism). Are you familiar with his work? (They can be viewed here: http://www.dianefarrisgallery.com/artist/woods/ )

ART IN 2200
In the autonomous society, where critics lament fossil art and that artists reject most of post modernism and modernism in favor of “simpler” forms: I have interpreted this to be conducive to the democratic infusion that the Commonwealth gave humanity, in line with the Preamble. Are medieval and folk art practiced because it is of the people? I have interpreted the rejection of pomo and mod based upon their consumerist and capitialist aspects, which I guess would vanish in the Catastrophe right?

As an artist, I am too often surrounded by the proverbial Philistines that I find anyone outside of the art discipline who talks about it as intelligently as you do to be a fellow conspirator - and I’m curious as to what your tastes are with regard to contemporary art, and what your background is with regard to its study. My own experience with professors in university was that they didn’t like to answer such questions, but as an historian of world politics, I am curious about how you see art intersecting the world system.

So, I’m wondering if you could elaborate a bit more on these ideas.

Finally, I just wanted to express how much I like the book. I especially like the format of incorporating letters and diary entries to flesh out the historical narrative. Eduardo Mistral Ortiz’s Diary entry is one of my favorites.

Thanks for your time,

Timothy Comeau

———–
2.From: W. Warren Wagar
To: Timothy Comeau
Date: Apr 11 2001 - 6:47pm
Re: A Short History of the Future questions

Dear Timothy Comeau,

Many thanks for your e-mail of yesterday. I’m glad that you found my book
of interest, but almost embarrassed that its few slender passages on the
arts could mean something to a working artist. By trade I am an
intellectual and cultural historian, so I know a little about a lot, but my
speculations about the arts of the future are based more on brave ignorance
than any sort of knowledge in depth. In my own personal life, the only art
form I know well is classical music, mostly of the period since 1880. My
comments follow.

At 09:40 PM 4/10/01 -0400, you wrote:
> Dear Mister Wagar, I’m aware that you follow and contribute to the
>WSN forum, but since this mostly involves questions about your book, I
>wanted to write to you directly. I am an artist in Toronto who first read
> your book, A Short History of the Future last summer and have found it
>both endlessly fascinating and very entertaining. I am outside of the
>academies now, and have conducted a sort of independent study of the text
>in my spare time. Understandably, you can imagine that I find the passages
>dealing with art in the future to be of particular interest. I’m wondering
>if you could answer some questions I have. SUBSTANIALISM a belief of
>man’s purpose arising from the scientific discoveries of cosmology and
>genetics. I am beginning to see what you describe as neorealist art
>celebrating the common person in terms of what occurred in the late Middle
>Ages, when medieval art achieved a new realism and incorporated a sense of
>the divine with that of the human - and which we call the Renaissance.
>(The Renaissance being a rebirth of ancient learning, but isn’t our own
>time in the midsts of a new re-birth, with our archaeological discoveries
>re-infusing our culture with knowledge of Lascaux and Chauvet?) In
>attempting to describe what a “social realist” substantialist painting
>might look like to a friend, I pointed out the work of the BC artist Chris
>Woods (-albeit his paintings explore consumerism). Are you familiar with
>his work? (They can be viewed here:
>http://www.dianefarrisgallery.com/artist/woods/) ART IN 2200
>practiced because it is of the people? I have interpreted the rejection of
>pomo and mod based upon their consumerist and capitialist aspects, which I
>guess would vanish in the Catastrophe right?

“Substantialism” is my version of the dialectical materialism of Marx &
Engels as revised by the French Marxist Jean Jaures. It argues that the
evolution of human consciousness has brought with it a new dimension of
being–”trans-being”–capable of repealing the laws of pre-human nature and
constructing a higher order of substance, a conscious, willing substance
that can make and re-make itself. The problem with modernism and pomo
alike is that they not only succumb to capitalist consumerism but also
erect an artificial barrier between the artist and his/her society. Art
becomes something produced only for other artists, a cop-out whereby
humankind at large is deliberately left in the dust. The reproduction of
this art takes full advantage of the mechanisms of the market-place,
simultaneously mocking and exploiting the hapless consumer, who is
simultaneously angered and humiliated by its seeming unintelligibility.

By contrast, art under the Commonwealth would become democratized and
would celebrate what all of us have in common. This happened, before, in
the art movements of the second half of the 19th Century, with the realism
of Courbet and the impressionism of Manet and all their followers; even
the post-impressionists (Van Gogh, Gauguin) eventually found a broad public
able to connect with their sensibility. All of this work is an art of
common humanity. The form that it would take a century from now is of
course unguessable.

world politics, I am
>curious about how you see art intersecting the world system. So, I’m
>wondering if you could elaborate a bit more on these ideas.

Several lines of your letter seem to be missing here. I would just add
that in the “House of Earth,” I anticipate the arts taking on a greater
variety of forms and media of expression, in keeping with the greater
variety, freedom, and complexity of life in such a heterodox culture. But
again, the arts would grow out of communal life, not a standardized
metropolinized “one size fits all” life.

Somewhere I think you also asked me about my own preferences. I feel the
strongest connection to the art of the second half of the 19th Century and
the first half of the 20th, through Picasso and Magritte. My musical
tastes are even narrower, essentially the music of the post-Wagnerian
generation, circa 1880-1920. My favorite composers are Gustav Mahler and
the little-known English composer Frederick Delius. Does any of this “make
sense”? You tell me!

Cheers,

Warren Wagar

———–
3.From: Timothy Comeau
To: W. Warren Wagar
Subject: Thank you for answering
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 22:48:11 -0400

Thank you for responding. You have given me a lot more to think about!

My own take on art history is whereas academic history is a narrative of recorded events, art history offers a record the psychology of the times. I sometimes define an artist as a “psychological historian”. That’s why I appreciate your inclusion of “a short art history of the future”. It’s one thing to be taught that World War I was the first industrial, mechanized war, it’s other to be taught that due to the medical advances of the time, people were surviving injuries that would have previously killed them, which was greatly shocking to the people of the day, to see the maimed “living monsters” as they thought of them, and this in turn is represented in German expressionism of the 20s(Grosz, Beckman).(I realize that’s somewhat simplistic, but I think it illustrates quite well what I am talking about - and it’s how I understand the nihilism of Leroy du Rien).

As it is, I have so far only had a vague working knowledge of Courbet and the 19th Century, but now I’m much more interested. From “the catching up,” I’ve done over the past few days, I can see what you wrote about with greater clarity. It does make a lot of sense.

I admit that my preferences lie more toward what is being done now, the contemporary art of today’s galleries and prizes. But I fully agree with your statements in your letter, art being something produced for other artists (and hence my interest in it - your point exactly) a cop-out
leaving humankind behind. My own take on this is a result of what you call “credicide” in the book.

But it’s also true that art is in a double bind. It seeks to criticize the contemporary, while being entrenched with the consumerist system. It is constantly bitting the hand that feeds it. Art exists in opposition to popular culture -as it has now for almost 150 years. As as admirer of
classical music, you see exactly what I’m talking about when trying to find the few radio stations that play it in the midst of all the other Top 40 stuff. But most people don’t appreciate classical music because for a variety of reasons they don’t invest the time to appreciate it, preffering the quick pop medleys to provide a soundtrack to their lives. Classical musicians make no apologies for not “dumbing down,” and neither do contemporary artists.

I have often thought however, that some of today’s contemporary art is comparable to that of the post impressionists: that they too will “eventually [find] a broad public”. But your book gave me a new way of looking at it all, with contemporary art’s connection to consumerism and capitalism that is by no means a guaranteed economic system. So I thank you for that.

Timothy Comeau

———–
4.From: W. Warren Wagar
To: Timothy Comeau
Subject: Re: Thank you for answering

And thanks for your further comments. I know what you mean about
how contemporary art and music takes time to reach a broader public. In a
sense that’s the whole story of the last two centuries, ever since the
invention of the “avant-garde.” Certainly some of the work done in the
last 50 years or so will eventually find an audience outside the ranks of
its initiates, but it would be a mistake to rely too heavily on the
patterns of the past. Abstract expressionism, for example, still comes
across as more curious than expressive. Dada is still a vast joke,
although widely emulated by the contemporary avant-garde. And the serial
music of the 1940s to 1960s, so universally acclaimed by the music
professors of the period, still falls on deaf ears. Yet without a vibrant
living art, culture can petrify and survive only as museum pieces fit only
for reverence. Wags like to refer to the Met in Lincoln Center as the
Metropolitan Museum of Opera, a showcase for Handel, Mozart, Rossini,
Wagner, and Verdi, staged over and over again. The same goes for all past
great work. No wonder so much of postmodernism consists of quotation. As
someone says in A SHORT HISTORY OF THE FUTURE, “all late culture is
quotation.” What a terrifying thought! (And now, lord help me, I’m
quoting myself.)But much of the blame falls on the academy, I am convinced. Just
as science and technology have become more and more minutely specialized
and professionalized, so the arts have been captured, catalogued,
classified, critiqued, and endlessly subdivided by the academicians. I
was on a doctoral committee recently for a novelist. He got his Ph.D.
with a science-fiction novel. And his partner was getting a Ph.D. for
critiquing gay poetry. Professors tell you whether you’re any good. Even
the writing of history (my field) has lost most of its grace and force
thanks to submission to the canons of professionalism. I have been a
professional academic for 43 years now, and sometimes I feel like a Greek
slave teaching Aristotle to a Roman patrician or a mandarin in the
neo-Confucian court of a Chinese emperor. Of course my “credentials” also
gave me the freedom to write A SHORT HISTORY OF THE FUTURE, so perhaps I
shouldn’t complain.

Enough rambling. Best wishes!

———–
Shortly after this correspondence I went out and bought Phaidon’s book on Courbet and read it within a month, furthering my understanding not only of Realism, but leading to the work of Baudelaire as well. Two years before I had borrowed this book from the NSCAD library, but it didn’t hold my interest at the time.

From: steven.laurie
To: timothy c.
Date: May 30, 2006 7:18 PM
Subject: Re: Article

Timothy

I read the article about my work or press release. I found it interesting. I
can see what you are getting at but I have no interest in mocking the subject
matter i am dealing with. Also I agree that masculinity or “manliness” is not
entirely a performance.

Thanks for your comments though. I appreciate the time you took. I would like
to hear more of what you think on this issue.

Thanks

Steven Laurie Artist “Riggin the Exhaust”

(Steven Laurie is the artist whose press-realease I criticized in my previous post Manliness in today’s paper and elsewhere.)

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:

• “?ج�?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?ج�?speak and act straightforwardly?ج�?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.?ج�?

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?ɬ�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.