To understand this thought, let me back up a bit. Last summer, I was vacationing in Big Bear with my family. The house we were in was a beautiful rustic log-cabin-looking place, built on the side of a mountain and overlooking a valley below. I mean this place was amazing. It had, I found out, been built by a retired fellow who had done some-such and amassed enough wealth to buy the land and the materials. But he hadn't hired a bunch of construction workers, no. He built this place himself! He, his wife, and I guess his dogs and maybe a couple contractors here and there, built an amazing home in the California wilderness, and now fill it with yuppie tourists from the big urban behemoth below.
One evening, I was sitting on the porch overlooking the valley and reading Little House on the Prairie to my cousin. The semi-autobiographical story, as I'm sure you know, is about Laura Ingalls Wilder's family struggling to carve a living out of the harsh life in Indian Territory before it became Oklahoma. Early on the book, Laura's father and mother build a house on the prairie after having travelled for months by wagon. They go on to plant and raise crops, hunt game, and live a nearly self-sufficient life (when they aren't getting their butts saved by American Indians, that is).
I think that's when the thought really hit me, square in the face. Man, I don't know how to do anything! I couldn't assemble a house, even if the zombie apocalypse finally happened and the life of my all-American family (complete with my beautiful, but gritty, model of a wife and my 1.5 children) depended upon it! The extent of my handiness is limited to the simplest of tasks: the other day, the light in the bathroom of our apartment went out. My girlfriend pointed this out to me, and I stood on a chair and fixed it.
Another time the power in half our apartment inexplicably went out. I remembered from somewhere deep in the recesses of my brain that this probably meant we'd tripped a fuse. I went to the circuit breaker and reset the fuse.
One time, I built a table from Ikea.
"Oh, you're so helpful! I'm so glad I have a MAN around," my girlfriend will say to me, from time to time. Maybe after I opened a particularly troublesome jar.
I just laugh to myself, in silent, pathetic derision. How can this be what it means to be a man in America? I don't know how to build anything, or do anything, really, except maybe criticize stuff that other people have created.
I should say that I don't want this to come off as some ill-advised chauvinistic blah blah. I'm not saying it's MAN'S JOB to build houses or to farm. Women are perfectly capable of all this too -- and that fact is deftly delineated in Little House On the Prairie. I'm just viewing this conundrum through the lens of my man-ness. And besides, you ladies are attracted to men who, like, know how to build things and stuff, right? And yet now you're faced with a generation of man-children who know nothing.
Okay, this is kind of turning into a rant. Sorry about that, dear reader. But anyway, all this -- as most things do -- reminds me of an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It's from season 1, so don't expect it to be great or anything. Here's a link to the full episode, if anyone's interested (TAKE THAT HOLLYWOOD!!). Anyway, it's called "When the Bough Breaks," and in it the Enterprise stumbles upon a legendary society, living on a planet that is run by an incredibly advanced super computer. The computer has automated all of the menial tasks that occupy so much of our time. The people in this society use all their free time to devote their lives to the pursuit of happiness and art. Seems like paradise, right? Well, unfortunately, over the generations, everyone has forgotten how to do anything that the super computer is responsible for. And, of course, the computer starts to malfunction. The populace of the super-advanced civilization don't even know how to fix their own computer, because they were all too busy finger painting. Thankfully, Captain Picard and the Enterprise is there to save the day.
I feel like the concept of the episode is happening to me. I'm not worried about our entire civilization, per se, after all there are almost 7 billion of us now, and plenty of us still know how to farm and build houses. But why aren't we teaching this stuff in school anymore? Oh, sure, there's shop class. But that's one class. Just because we all live in cities now doesn't mean we should be ignoring the basic foundations of what makes our civilization function. I think everyone should have at least a rudimentary understanding of farming, carpentry, etc. I think this would produce better adults in our society, too. Certainly more self-sufficient ones.
Sure, we can send our boys to their local Boy Scouts of America troop. But I'd rather not support a racist, sexist, and homophobic organization if I can avoid it. Unless they make delicious chicken.
I should say that I don't want this to come off as some ill-advised chauvinistic blah blah. I'm not saying it's MAN'S JOB to build houses or to farm. Women are perfectly capable of all this too -- and that fact is deftly delineated in Little House On the Prairie. I'm just viewing this conundrum through the lens of my man-ness. And besides, you ladies are attracted to men who, like, know how to build things and stuff, right? And yet now you're faced with a generation of man-children who know nothing.
Okay, this is kind of turning into a rant. Sorry about that, dear reader. But anyway, all this -- as most things do -- reminds me of an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It's from season 1, so don't expect it to be great or anything. Here's a link to the full episode, if anyone's interested (TAKE THAT HOLLYWOOD!!). Anyway, it's called "When the Bough Breaks," and in it the Enterprise stumbles upon a legendary society, living on a planet that is run by an incredibly advanced super computer. The computer has automated all of the menial tasks that occupy so much of our time. The people in this society use all their free time to devote their lives to the pursuit of happiness and art. Seems like paradise, right? Well, unfortunately, over the generations, everyone has forgotten how to do anything that the super computer is responsible for. And, of course, the computer starts to malfunction. The populace of the super-advanced civilization don't even know how to fix their own computer, because they were all too busy finger painting. Thankfully, Captain Picard and the Enterprise is there to save the day.
I feel like the concept of the episode is happening to me. I'm not worried about our entire civilization, per se, after all there are almost 7 billion of us now, and plenty of us still know how to farm and build houses. But why aren't we teaching this stuff in school anymore? Oh, sure, there's shop class. But that's one class. Just because we all live in cities now doesn't mean we should be ignoring the basic foundations of what makes our civilization function. I think everyone should have at least a rudimentary understanding of farming, carpentry, etc. I think this would produce better adults in our society, too. Certainly more self-sufficient ones.
Sure, we can send our boys to their local Boy Scouts of America troop. But I'd rather not support a racist, sexist, and homophobic organization if I can avoid it. Unless they make delicious chicken.
And so I turn to Ernest Hemingway. Good ol' reliable, realistic, Hemingway. But all he does is remind me that I will never be as good as him. I will never sail out to sea and wage an epic battle with a huge marlin only to have to defend my prize from an onslaught of bloodthirsty sharks (which, by the way, actually did happen to Hemingway). Hell, I'll never take part in the running of the bulls, either. I mean that's played out, right? In this post-modern age where we watch everything "ironically," something like that is too authentic, isn't it?
So where does this leave me? With an amazing girlfriend, I guess. Thankfully I don't have to be good at anything to win her affection. I just have to know how to screw in lightbulbs.
I resonate so much with this, Daniel. I've always regretted that when I went to school girls weren't allowed to take shop. One of my dreams is to build furniture. I even looked into it online - there are camps that you can go to that will teach you carpentry and in a week you will come home with a piece of furniture! We should sign up together. And to be honest, you have to admit you have done a lot of things to win the affection of your amazing girlfriend!
ReplyDeleteThis is a great point. Look at websites like The Art of Manliness (http://artofmanliness.com/) or AskMen (http://www.askmen.com/). There is a certain need for a modern man to be old-fashined manly. I would argue this is because women have ascended in society in the past couple hundred years by a substantial amount to the point that now there are more women in the work force. It has never been this way before and I think it is driving men to go one of three ways: the way of the "manly man" who strives to be an old-fashioned man's man, the way of the "tamed man" who takes on the responsibilities once placed upon the woman, or the way of the "man boy" who rebels by refusing to mature psychologically (think Will Ferrell). Anywho, great topic. Check out the two websites I mentioned above, I think you'll like them.
ReplyDeleteGreat topic. I am from Kentucky and the meaning of being a man or what manliness means greatly differs here in Los Angeles versus other places in the country and world. Today, more than ever, I think the meaning of manliness is changing quicker and quicker. I think there really isn't a clear meaning of what a man does and what he doesn't do. However, I think it is important that we kind of 'define' it so children coming up can have a model and several models of what a man is. In Kentucky, men do a lot of hard labor and work outdoors. I haven't seen any men in Los Angeles doing that work except the ones that are getting paid for it.
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