Boys Today

I watched this TED talk recently, Philip Zimbardo: The demise of guys? | Video on TED.com, where some stats are presented showing how guys are falling behind girls in academia and developing a new fear of intimacy and an increasing social awkwardness, so much so that girls don't really want to date these guys, which feeds back into the problem. Zimbardo blames this on excessive use of the Internet, gaming, and porn. And I'm going to combine that idea with one in another TED talk, Tony Porter: A call to men | Video on TED.com, where Porter basically states that contemporary society implores a emotional repression except for the expression of anger, through which all our emotional energy is then channeled such that sexual violence is a result.

There's definitely a problem with guys today. However, video games and porn are a symtom of that problem, not a cause. And, where I agree that emotional health and awareness would go a long way to towards resolving a lot of these issues, including excessive gaming and watching porn, it doesn't get to the root of the problem.

I'm going to suggest that the problem and the solution is this:

The Maasai people of western Africa once required their boys to face and kill this when they hit puberty.... alone.

And the question I pose to you is, what would that do to a boy... knowing that this was in his future? What goes through his mind as he grows up. Does he decide to spend his time playing video games and furiously masterbating or does he watch men who've gone through the process themselves. Does he focus on understanding his joy, his fear, his anger or does he have to get beyond all that to keep his senses about him.

The thing about rites of passage like these is their symbolic nature. The lion is the possibility... that which the universe could throw at us, the situations for which we must prepare... because, above all, if the time comes, the responsibility falls on us (for the feminists, I'm not saying women don't have a responsibility too). And it's that responsibility that men have to be ready and willing to take up.

Natural and sexual selection have engineered men for this, and it's this recognition of our responsibility that women still find attractive. As guys continue their decline, women are just going become more and more frustrated with dating.

We've spend centuries separating our lives from threats, though. In the last century, since WWII, we filled our live with so much convenience and asked so little of our men that they've had no reason to leave here:

And that's how we get leaders like:

I'm not claiming that we need to reintroduce risk into society or that we need to start sending our adolescents our to kill predators. It's not necessarily the act of killing a lion that matters. It's the psychological and physical preparation, the impetus to shed the mind's selfish concern for its own well-being and its possessions, and the ability to express that preparation in action that we need to once again instill in our boys.

We need them to become men.

No Parking

You may have heard that our wonderful new governor decided that state funded higher education was so inessential that it could do without 50 percent of what it's been getting. I'll let Pitt make the argument for what it needs that money and why everyone benefits from it. To me, it's part of a bigger problem that so nicely summed up by this photo.

A few of these signs have been going up around the convenience store situated in the quiet, little neighborhood in which I live despite the genuine hassle of trying to find a parking spot between the hours of 4-10pm every weekday.

Signs like this recognize a few things: first, that there's a problem; second, someone decided this space can be used to solve that problem; and, third, the person that owns that space said, "fuck you and your problem." The parking problem is bigger than that one landowner. He or she can't solve it on his or her own, and, instead of participating in some sort of assembly (government) to address this larger difficult problem, she posts a sign and has the tow truck on speed dial because it's the local action she can take.... but it does nothing but piss us all off and make the problem worse.

Make no mistake, I'm not pointing the finger at the landowner and saying he or she is the source of the problem, nor am I pointing the finger at our new governor (who, despite this budget, might be insane, though). I'm pointing the finger at myself, at us. We're the ones posting the sign saying, "fuck you and your problem."

Until we start participating and contributing—if not with our time and effort, then with our tax dollars—I could really care less about the governor's budget.

I'm here ready to start (re)building something... and I'm going to call it civilization. When you're ready to join me, you'll know where I am. Until then, save me your lobbying efforts, your campaigns, your press conferences, and leave me alone. How's that for no parking....

End of My Bulking Phase

I've been actively gaining weight since November. The idea is to consume more calories (focusing on protein) than I need in order to encourage muscle growth. Unfortunately, a side effect is an increase in body fat too. I had been consuming around 2400 calories a day, and I have to say I somewhat enjoyed the extra dietary freedom. Tomorrow, though, it's back to about 1800 a day.

What I noticed was that, prior to starting the phase, I had become accustom to 1600 calories a day. I felt full when I reached it everyday. And, at the beginning of the phase, I felt bloated. As time went on, I then started getting used to the extra calories, craving food until I reached my new typical intake. It was also during that transitional period, before I got used to the regiment, that I really added weight to my lifting workouts.... but Christmas and New Years kind of disrupted the routine, so that I'm not sure if I would have continued increasing weight.

Nevertheless, I'm curious to try a sort of "diet confusion," which, like muscle confusion, is never letting my body get used to a routine. It'd be shorter periods of increases and decreases in my calorie intake to coincide with the plateaus of my body's adaption, which has a very Zen like quality in the amount of self-awareness I would need to maintain.

But, first, I have to burn off like ten pounds.