Lately I’ve been re-reading some of my favorite old science fiction, including a bunch of Analog magazines from the Sixties. The very nature of sci-fi implies that it will be wrong about the future far more often than it is right; still, there’s something staggering about the fact that virtually every writer up to and including William Gibson assumed that we’d have spaceflight before we had smartphones.
Truly, we’d have been better-off as a society had it happened that way. The arrival of spaceflight would have heralded a new pioneer era and brought out the best in humanity; the arrival of “constant connection” has turned us into seven billion navel-gazers continually searching for new and better ways to share photos and videos with our friends real and/or imagined. Let’s phrase it in the most heretical way possible:
Spaceflight would have returned humanity to the masculine state: exploring, driving, penetrating, discovering. Smartphones make us feminine: collaborating, communicating, building consensus, being receptive to what others put on our screens and in our minds.
I realize that the current paradigm of feminism, in which women are simply Men Without Dicks, does not agree with such a viewpoint. Nor am I suggesting that men are superior to women, or vice versa. I’m suggesting that we need both sides of the coin and right now Western society has feminized to the point that we are importing rapists to Europe because we subconsciously recognize that something’s out of balance. This picture is making the rounds of the “manosphere” right now because it’s hugely emblematic of the so-called refugee situation in Europe:
At the risk of being indelicate, what you see there is nothing more or less than what happens when women become tired of feminized men. West German society spent seventy years trying to kill its vicious, nationalist inner demons and this is the result: nice young men who would never think about invading Belgium but who also can’t quite keep their women interested. Look in the eyes of that crazy broad and tell me you think that my homebody with the beard there is sleeping alone. Just the body language of the two men indicates who’s going to wind up tapping that ass in the long run.
The preservation of German society is not my personal concern — my ancestors on both sides bid farewell to the mother country in the era of Kaiser Wilhelm, if not before — but the preservation of American society is my concern. And that is why my son has two motorcycles and a TopKart and an orange belt in TKD instead of me raising him as a princess boy or something similar. At some point in the not-so-distant future, someone is going to have to man the ramparts of the last Western civilization on earth, whether that is America or Russia or (think about it) Japan. Might as well be my kid.
I don’t think he will be alone in that. While the Communication Age has done a lot to depersonalize our interactions, it’s also enabled me to meet some truly bad-ass dudes everywhere from NorCal to Florida to Singapore, both virtually and in real life. Most of my readers here will be familiar with our commenter and friend, VolandoBajo. He and I have been discussing a plan to put him behind the handlebars of a Ural motorcycle, and during that planning he happened to mention that his son would be in Columbus for a few days.
It seemed like a good idea for us to get our sons together. As we expected, they got along very well despite their age difference. Volando’s son, Matt, is quiet and soft-spoken but he also appears to be constructed from solid adamantium and I gathered from our conversation that he’s a bit of a scrapper from time to time. I don’t think I’d want to trade punches with him; the kid moves like a jaguar. John thought he was “cool”.
The relationship that Matt has with his father is respectful and supportive; it gives me hope that I’ll be around long enough to be a decent dad to John when he’s in his early twenties and I’m in my late fifties. It also gave me hope that if I don’t make it that far — if I wind up cooked to well-done in some crappy race car or succumb to whatever cancerous cells are probably floating around in me right now — John will have the chance to meet and take inspiration from other young men who haven’t quite disappeared into their own navels. Not that Matt doesn’t use the Internet; he regaled us with a tale of how he picked up a girl from an online poker league and ended up seeing her in real life, to his considerable satisfaction. “Made some money, too,” he allowed, although whether it was from the poker or the girl was a point he chose not to clarify.
It is a goal of mine to meet as many of my readers and online friends as possible. Whether it’s a brief dinner or a motorcycle ride across the country. I’m a solitary cat by nature and given the chance I’d rather be alone with a book than doing almost anything else; still, as human beings we are strengthened and reassured by the genuine connections we make with others. So consider this your call to action for the New Year. Go outside, meet people, make friends. Exchange the screen for the sky, however briefly. I’ll still be here when you get back.
Sounds good to me Jack .
My Son too is made of stern stuff and is quite the scrapper *if* he decides you need your ass whipped .
If you’re ever back in L.A. Land (home to those young men you’re worried about) allow me to buy you a beer and some Mexican food .
You’ll be underwhelmed I’m sure but it’d be interesting at the very least .
-Nate
If you’re ever at a loose end in Houston, I’ll buy the drinks.
Ural is a sweet ride - a 1930s era BMW clone with modern treats such as Brembo brakes AND two wheel drive?! It’s a perfect German/Soviet engineering mash-up.
Actually the two wheel drive is only useful on glare ice .
People buy it thinking of old Jeeps and are disappointed .
Go look on you tube for videos of single wheel Urals oulling stumps and easily getting out of mud bogs that’d swallow any Jeep….
Quirky and sturdy , are Urals .
-Nate
There’s one on Craigslist by me selling for $7500. Unfortunately I don’t have the type of money where I can waste 7500 on a Ural but thanks to the wonderful people who comment here, now I want to.
Scott ;
You have to understand : these are not ‘ ! Collectible ! ‘ so showing up with a fistful of hundred Dollar bills might get it .
I only paid $750 for my first Ural (I still have , it’s my favorite one) , running and registered with title .
-Nate
Well Nate, unfortunately, Urals have become the darling of the Hipster set, so prices, even on old ratty ones, have gone nuts.
That’s a *very* sad thing .
I live in So. Cal. home of lazy jerkoffs and worthless hipsters (I actually know a few very talented hipsters,VERY few) and I rarely see any other Urals no matter where I go .
Being a geezer I have 90° corners , being hip is the last thing I’d ever want to be .
I still find affordable Urals every time some one asks me about them though .
The main thing about a Hack Rig is : you _DRIVE_IT_ not ride it and there’s a huge difference as it’s a lot of upper body workout .
Plus of course , they’re slow in the twisty bits where I like riding best .
-Nate
FWIW ;
My 1996 Ural 650 Solo was for sale for almost three years before I ponied up for it and it was only $1,000 , Adult owned from new , one owner .
-Nate
Ah, perhaps it’s just more up north? I’ve got friends in the Seattle area that have mentioned Urals being hipster mobiles and have seen stuff online (hipster lumberjackasses lusting over the utilitarian image of the Ural).
Currently I live in the land of “small” bikes, Japan. The licenses are split into 4 classes (moped/scooter, small, medium and unlimited) so most people ride 250s or 400s here as anything bigger requires passing a pretty hard test and anything bigger than a 250cc requires shakken (safety/emissions inspection) every two years, adding more cost to ownership. Being in such an oddball market does lead to some interesting bikes though. Twin-cam 50cc 60s Honda race bike repros that will rev to 15000 and hit over 80mph with minor mods? Yes please.
” Unfortunately I don’t have the type of money where I can waste 7500 on a Ural ”
~ Anyone who begins by thinking ‘ Motocyles are wasted money ‘ probably would enjoy even a free one Scott .
Motocyles are one of life’s best teaching tools but only for those who have open minds .
-Nate
@ sabotenfighter ;
If you want one , they’re out there dirt cheaply .
I bought my ’94 for $700 in Washington State , I was the _one_ fool who drove out in the rain and looked at it , kicked it to life and wheezed it up and down the road before offering far less than the asking price .
Hipsters are jerkoffs , don’t ever worry about what they might of might not do .
Driving a Ural CAN be the most fun you’ll ever have with your pants on =8-)
Women , Children and Dogs all love them , they’re better than an E Typ Jaguar if you’re that shallow .
-Nate
Jack,
As a reasonably astute armchair anthropologist, you’re all too right in observing that exploring and inventing - as is not presently the fashion - are rather masculine endeavours and that inane blathering - as is presently the fashion - is a far more feminine pursuit, but I’m afraid that you conflate cause and effect in your conclusion.
It’s not the smartphone’s fault that navel-gazing is du jour anymore than it’s the leopard’s fur spots that make him such a competent carnivore. The leopard would still be a fearless man-eating bio-machine even if you shaved him bald in exactly the same way and for exactly the same reasons that the limp-dicks of the so-called “Civilised World” (ie. the “Democratic” West) were born to be the cuckolds of the Mussulmen hordes from the East. If it wasn’t phablets, it’d be something else. Since the baby boomers, North Americans have “just wanted nice things,” and so here we are : lying in the bed we’ve made.
The only thing protecting the castrated United States from the same fate as Europe - now and for the foreseeable future - is the breadth of the Atlantic Ocean and the somewhat limited carrying capacity of airplanes relative to sea-faring boats and roads paved with IMF funds. That the Pacific Ocean is similarly enormous - and that the Chinese simply can’t be bothered to invade the Americas en masse, just as they could’ve but didn’t back when Zheng He was the man to beat on the high seas - means only that the US finds itself carrying the torch of Byzantium, aka the decrepit refuse of the Roman Empire : increasingly isolated, culturally bizarre, and of interest only to itself.
This is really the only explanation required to rationlise the diseased behaviour of status updates that include a picture of a KFC Double Down Dog with the comment “lolz ima get me a hard attack eatin this. yolo.” Not that every “dude” does this (really, what “seven billion” ? ISIS on the one hand and Chinese electronics assembly workers earning $0.35/hr on the other hand would like to know), but the petabytes of USG/AWS hard drives dedicated to nothing more important than precisely this is all that’s needed to allow this claim to stand in its broadest sense.
In any event, your kid seems to have a well-above-average shot at beating the odds ; even if the odds today seem long, they’re never zero. As for the jaguar kid, he’ll learn a lot more from poker than from his old man, even if the same would probably be true regardless of his parentage.
Africans and ISIS members and Chinese assembly workers have smartphones — they just don’t have iPhones. Every four years or so, the industry builds enough smartphones for the entire population of Earth: http://www.statista.com/statistics/263441/global-smartphone-shipments-forecast/
I’ll argue that humans are fundamentally tool users and our behavior is, in a large way, shaped by our tools. I’m the same person I was when I was twenty-two years old but I interact with people very differently because of the available tools. Just look at something minor like Tinder — it’s changed millions of lives, often for the worse.
I will also point out that the vast majority of British conscripts in WWI arrived at the railroad stations without shoes and without the knowledge necessary to tie them. Our ancestors were often just as moronic and useless as we were, but they were processed by systems that were designed to support and defend the Western way of life.
Industry predictions and Africans aside, as neither is particularly germane nor useful, this is precisely my point. ISIS and the Chinese also have smartphones, but they’re still increasing their market share of the world - if by different means - whereas Americans can’t even deploy a few thousand combat-ready soldiers, and so employ mercs (not benzes) and gameboy-drones in lieu. That only “The West” seems to have this problem with smartphones would indicate that the problem is indeed inside of them, not the fault of “the industry,” just like it’s Jennifer Lawrence’s fault that she’s paid less than her male co-stars.
Yes, we are tool users and yes, again, this is exactly backwards in terms of cause and effect. While it’s true that we’re shaped by our environments, the very definition of progress (despite the sullying of the word by liberalists) is that we increase control over our environments. If it wasn’t Tinder, it’d be those evil cafes where kids would get into no end of trouble, just as was the concern in 17th century England. Plus ca change.
As to our forefathers, the only system that allowed them to defend the Western way of life was the system that sent worthless young boys to die in war that men may return, just as ISIS is doing today. The feminine estimation of all life as being worth infinity billion dollars, despite the obvious economic and practical impossibilities as well as the corrosive social implications thereof, is the only thing standing in our way today. Not that it’s a small thing to overcome.
….Seriously?
You’re massively overthinking this both in cause and importance.
Everything is about sex, except sex, which is about power.
You want to explain how ISIS works, look NO further than that. They have a supply of vagina to people who will fight for them.
The feminization of the west isn’t caused by smartphones, nor is it the cause of smartphones. Just a symptom of the problem, which was pretty much what Jack was pointing out. Along with the fact that we have smartphones before spaceflight being indicative of that mindset.
Peter,
Ironically, I’m busy tonight parenting but I wanted to let my inner Aspie out for a moment.
Industry predictions for smartphone production are relevant because by and large production meets the target. As I know you are aware, with virtually any mass-produced good of nontrivial cost nowadays, from automobiles to smartphones, the factories produce what they plan to build and the pricing is adjusted until everything is sold… or perhaps you’re aware of some unsold full-sized-in-the-gas-crisis-era ’73 Chevrolets out there?
Secondly, to equate Tinder with 17th-century cafes is willfully obtuse. With Tinder and the consequent social-attitude adjustments, it’s possible to have sex with a new partner every night of the week if you work hard enough. We now regularly read about educated, middle-class women who Tinder their way to fifty or more partners in the course of a year or two. Prior to the arrival of the mostly anonymous Internet, that kind of behavior was limited to prostitutes and borderline personalities.
You might as well say that eBay has had no affect on the transaction prices of vintage books, which is demonstrably untrue, or that… I think you’ll like this one… “paper gold” had no effect on the gold price.
This is partially true but not quite all the way there. While it’s certainly the case that (Tier-X) component suppliers (ie. of microphones, speakers, LED screens, gyroscopes, CPUs, etc.) make such production targets and are largely bound to them by the simple size of the capital investment, what comes out the other side and into the consumer’s home is rarely confined to the initially intended market segment simply on account of fundamentally unpredictable market demand. Do you know which pair of Allen Edmonds you’ll wear the last Friday of next February ? It’s for the same reason that economic predictions are so fragile and so painful when they go wrong, as the Ukrainians under Stalin found out only too well.
So whereas the aforementioned components might have originally been intended for smartphones, as demand for such devices peaks and then ultimately wanes, those component supplies, with the help of the front-line companies we know and love, will simply invent themselves whole “new” classes of products that are really product lines that previously existed (ie. cars, watches, TVs, etc.) but are now sold as “feature-enhanced”, “connected”, and “smart” devices, when in fact they’re little more than dumping grounds for (mostly) Chinese component manufacturers who’ve achieved such economies of scale and have so much skin in the game that they must offer their widgets to vendors for “almost free.” The net result is that the product market of almost every consumer category is flooded with so much pointlessly “improved” crud that it’s damn near impossible (and if not yet, it will be before long) to buy a basic dishwasher with a manually rotating settings dial that will last for 30 years, for example.
Lol this shit’s news to me. I must need to expand my horizons. In any event, that you’re reading about this more only means that you’re reading about this more ; it doesn’t provide any information as to the relative frequency of such behaviour either past or present. The unbearable triviality of the ever-present “news” cycle has no bearing on reality. Sluts are just sluts. Period. You don’t get to pretend like modernity invented Tinder which in turn invented sluts. If modernity invented anything, it’s the “educated, middle-class woman,” which is obviously a label being thrown around a bit too liberally to be descriptive.
… And if you’re ever in the vicinage of R.M. 620 and Deepwood Drive in the bedroom community of Round Rock, let me know.
Minneapolis here. I met Bark a year or two ago when TTAC was doing reader ride reviews. Would be great to meet the other Baruth if you are ever in the area! That reminds me, I don’t think the review of my car was ever published. Darn, I even let Bark have extended time with the car!
In regard to your main discussion, I am finding it harder and harder each day to continually bite my tongue at the various newsposts my left leaning “friends” and family post on Facebook. It is a great sense of relief knowing that there are still fathers out there encouraging their sons to unapologetically be men. One of the main reasons I still support my local Boy Scout troop even though I’ve been out for years. I don’t fear a zombie apocalypse as much as I fear a Wall-E-esque future.
Your review was done right around the time that we had a changing of the guard and we stopped doing reader ride reviews. I am desperately sorry for that. Your Jaguar was a great car, and I appreciated the opportunity to drive it.
Shit, I should just write it here—except that I don’t remember any of it 🙂
Haha, no worries at all. If you ever want to drive it again, just let me know!
Jack, keep up the good work with your son. Although we are the same age, my son is 15 and throughout his childhood I’ve introduced him to as many “man worthy” activities as possible. He plays guitar, studies BJJ, swims for his high school team and can handle any firearm from a FAL to a HK45. And yes, only automatic watches for him. I applaud you for not raising a beta male.
That German “man” is going to be a cuckold, no doubt.
Smart phone navel gazing is path of least resistance -Its way easier to text than to socialize in person, which takes skills. Little kids with iPhones, a digital pacifier, keeps them out of parents’ hair. Lazy parenting - path of least resistance.
I always thing back to Disneys WALL-E spaceship full of humans glued to screens whenever I see people at a bar, a bus stop, a park busily updating…something
Denver. Like-minded deviant. If you (or your brother) are ever in town I’ll buy the first round.
Next time an event brings you to Richmond International Raceway, let me know! I’ll do everything in my power to get that day off and make the drive out there.
Or maybe “get the band back together” and have you and Bark do a gig at the Birchmere. I’d love to have an excuse to go that venue again. It’s been over 10 years now.
I work around the corner from RIR. A meet up would be interesting, although I think it far more likely Jack could be found at VIR, quite a ways away from Richmond.
First, take yesterday’s comment as a complement I would have said the same thing to one of my brothers or close friends.
Second, I am not an outgoing, slap happy type but with the kids, recently grown up I am trying to broaden my friend base. I have fallen in with a neighborhood men’s club, some I have known for a while some are new friends. So far we got together and drank bourbon and played cards, have outings into the dark reaches of the big city, bonfires and fine red wine on sunny winter days and tonight night x-skiing (this year they have to make snow and lay a track). We have also done big talk about fishing trips other things to do. I was thinking about having everyone over for some binge watching of Peaky Blinders and we all have to drink Irish whiskey whenever Tommy or Arthur does.
I think this men’s club is a good throw back to the good old days when men socialized together more. These days the wives have taken over with their own social scene - bunko, book club, movie night, wine and whine night, you name it. No problem there but it seems the men are left at home alone and don’t know what to do or how to act.
I am down for whatever, whenever!
Oh, I knew what you meant.
You were right, too.
Thinking about the picture, I think the perception that the white german guy is not getting it with the girl is a (white persons’) bias towards what seems exotic. What would we imagine if the picture was the german guy, german girl and an asian girl, for example ?
It’s the body language.
It’s totally in the body language, and the framing of the picture. The bearded gent occupies the center dominant position of the picture, and is seated in a superior position to everyone else.
“Search the Sky,” by Pohl and Kornbluth?
I found it exceptionally depressing Frederik’s passing was barely given a footnote by the modern SF community while they were endlessly waxing eloquent over Banks’ death. I can only hope Pohl and Kornbluth are reunited now, once again cynically showing everyone just what the future will look like.
Very nice, Jack.
Thanks again for your hospitality to my son while he was on your stomping grounds. He had as much fun with you and your son as you guys did.
Though just for the record, Matt’s a sly dog when it comes to the ladies, very laid back and in no hurry, seemingly reticent, almost shy, but with a wicked sense of humor combined with a boatload of character and integrity, but he’s no pimp. He’s self-taught at poker, and has accumulated enough points to be able to sell some for some extra spending money.
The lady in question is one who has caught his attention as someone “a cut above” the run of the mill, and from what I can gather, the feeling is mutual.
Matt has learned a great deal on his own, but contrary to what my favorite glass curtain and bitcoin shill Dushe-inski said in his snide comment, he has also learned a great deal from me, a fact he not only will freely admit, but is also proud of. I think Pete must still be butt-hurt from my calling him out on his arrogant attitude of superiority to virtually everyone who didn’t agree with his point of view. But you know what they say, if you throw a rock into a pack of dogs, the one that yelps is the one that got hit. IIRC, he tried to take Bark to task for his objection to his daughter being a campus escort for prospective college athletes, with an incredible display of supposed enlightenment about how Bark was a troglodyte in his attitude towards his daughter.
And I know not to get in a spraying contest with a skunk, or to try to teach a pig to sing…you’ll get dirty and it will only annoy the pig…but on that occasion I couldn’t resist.
Bark and I may have disagreed about the evolution of men’s suit styles, but I have a great deal of respect for his willingness to be a father and to take a stand that may be unpopular with liberals such as Pete who feel that Bark has no right or ability to deter his daughter from engaging in what Bark and I both feel borders on unpaid prostitution in support of college athletics.
The Ural project has been taken under advisement…our third family member, the love of my life, has reluctantly admitted that if Matt is determined to learn to ride a motorcycle, perhaps a sidehack rig might be a good place to start.
So taking a page from a time when I got a used Jag quite cheap just by being patient, when the car was on a used car lot a hundred miles from the nearest dealer, I am keeping my eye out, waiting for one with a reasonable price to sit long enough to have a motivated seller. And I appreciate your offer to help facilitate things if it works out.
I like your description of the way Matt moves, like a jaguar. I hope you get a chance to see him on a basketball court some day. He epitomizes the idea of the speech in Basketball Diaries where DiCaprio gives Pete Carroll’s speech about how some players move frantically, but he tries to move around the court like a large feline…I think he might have even said a jaguar.
I was fortunate enough to receive some very special martial arts training, including from the former head of weapons and hand to hand combat training for the Tokyo police department, and I have passed what I have learned on to Matt. And to his credit, the only time he used that knowledge was to protect a smaller friend of his from a larger schoolyard bully, and he made the Karate Kid look like a piker…it was done entirely by the kind of subtlety embodied by jiu-jitsu and nothing of the board-breaking style of martial arts…and the bully, though much larger, never tried anything else. AND Matt engineered it so that the teachers would turn just in time to see him sidestep an attempted push into a fence from behind, followed by the bully taking a first swing, which he ducked and countered. The bully got three days suspension, plus a sharp rap in the solar plexus…and Matt got a brief lecture to be sure to continue to try to avoid fighting.
I didn’t mean to go off on so much of a tangent, but Pete simply has no idea of who either Matt or I are, but once again, he has shown who he is.
I can understand why you respect his intellect, because he is obviously well-educated. But I personally find him to be by and large a pompous airbag with an inflated opinion of himself. But if he ever does successfully leave the ranks of the incels, we’ll see what kind of son he raises, and how.
Until then, I have nothing but pride in my son for who he is and how he conducts himself. I try to be the best person I can be, every day, and yet I know he is clearly a better person than I am, even when I am making my best effort.
Pete would do better to stick to something he does know: how to update the blockchain in bitcoins, how to use glass fiber to make curtains that are a few percentage points more energy efficient, or how to use a large vocabulary to attempt to talk down to others. Oh, and I understand he once won a golf tournament at a province wide annual meeting of a bunch of government health inspectors. He’s clearly a better golfer than I am, I will give him that. But his social theories seem to leave a lot to be desired.
If you doubt my assessment, Jack, ask Bark what he thinks of Pete, based on the online conversation that they several months ago. In case you missed it, I assure you if he had talked about John the way he did about Bark’s daughter, you’d be riding up to Canada to discuss it with him face to face.
So naturally, being who he is, he thought it would be cute to make a snide comment about how anything of value about Matt must have had nothing to do with me. As if he would have any way of knowing. Which is why I appreciate your honoring my request for partial anonymity, precisely because of toads like him.
To close on a positive note, I can assure you that if you should happen to cash in your ticket, even if I had already gone on to the happy hunting grounds, I am confident that Matt, of his own volition, would reach out to John out of compassion, to try to be some sort of a big brother or older friend, just because, after having met you and John and liking you both, he would and will consider you to be friends for life.
So thanks for helping Matt learn to reach out to meet a friend of mine, a thousand miles from home, and thanks for the nice things you said about him. He is sleeping now, but I am sure he will be pleasantly surprised to see the nice things you have said about him, as well as his Dad, yours truly…
The picture really says a lot to me…I would like to figure out a way to get it framed and hung up somewhere, and perhaps also get a copy for Matt. It says so much about boys, young men, new friendships in spite of age differences, etc. It makes me happy just to look at it, for so many reasons I don’t even know where to start. Thanks again.
I have been holding off on spending much time writing anyone this past week thinking Matt would be on his way to NC this coming weekend, but had planned to write a bit more to you, about the Ural and other things, once he was gone, in order to maximize my time with him. But since things have changed a bit, so will my schedule and priorities in the near future. But I will definitely drop you a line before long, like I said, about Project Ural as well as some other things. Hasta la vista, my friend…
Volando :
MSF Training should be _mandatory_ for your Son .
Contact this guy to find your local program : charlie@amosocal.com
If I could , I’d pay for it for him , it’s that good and that important .
-Nate
Nate,
If we get that far, I will definitely take you up on your suggestion. I once worked with another consultant at a DMV who was instrumental in promoting the development of the MSF program about three decades ago, or at least something like it in the state we were in, so I am a believer, based on some of the stats he had developed in support of such a concept.
And I have not been put off on the idea of a Ural simply because they are somewhat rough around the edges, nor have I been put off by the fact that I may end up bidding against someone who considers himself hip because he wears a Peterbilt baseball cap and drinks PBR’s.
Although I don’t think driving a Ural would somehow miraculously make me cool, still I find it an interesting thought that I might be driving the same motorcycle that Vladimir Putin rides. And that you ride, for that matter.
Thanks for both tips, the bike itself and the training program tip.
“West German society spent seventy years trying to kill its vicious, nationalist inner demons and this is the result: nice young men who would never think about invading Belgium but who also can’t quite keep their women interested.”
As an American Soldier stationed in Germany for eight years and who married a German woman in 2010, there is some dark truth to this statment.
Jack, as an after thought, how do you reconcile the feminization of western society, with the trend of hyper-masculine men who’s only real contribution to society is the ability to bench 400lbs and kick someones ass one-on-one using their MMA training? Do you see it as a symptom of rejection or backlash against this feminization or something completely separate?
I think that’s a direct consequence of two things:
* The emasculation of the proletariat that happened when all the living-wage jobs went overseas, resulting in a generation of men who can’t feed families or advance in their careers;
* The hundreds of thousands of young men fed through the grinders of the Middle East who return completely broken and aimless. Note that a lot of them are killing themselves on sportbikes — so much so that the armed forces now have “sportbike rules”.
So many of my buddies came back broken. For whatever reason, I did not.
A great example is my college roommate that went into the Marines at the same time I went into the Army. The demons of war have not only damaged him physically, but mentally. He chose to self medicate post-Marine Corps with alcohol. He graduated with a nursing degree (I know, not a traditionally masculine career. He was a Marine Corps .50 cal gunner on a Humvee, so he can do what he wants). However, he isn’t a nurse now because of DUIs. Can’t even sit for the boards.
This is actually a good story because he’s be sober for over a year and may eventually be able to do what he went to school for. I have dozens that don’t have happy endings.
Thanks for the insight. I’d imagine the case could be made that the loss of all those living-wage jobs only helped to further the feminization. “Masculine Jobs” disappeared and left lots of people with those ambiguous sounding job titles within corporations and the service industries.
Fortunately for me, I’m of the health and mind to finish out my 20 years of service despite my forays into the middle east. Oh and there is more than just sportbike rules, there is full-on institutionalized training and class requirements for all types of motorcycle riders in the military these days.
“Fortunately for me, I’m of the health and mind to finish out my 20 years of service despite my forays into the middle east.”
Double thumbs up. Good to hear that some people made it out of that with some hope intact.
Great post. Great comments.
Well, if you’re ever in Fort Wayne, let me know. I owe you a beer or a meal for the free entertainment and advice choosing a HANS device over competing products. My oldest just turned 5, and I’m taking him to his first race in April to watch me drive at Gingerman. I live about 5 miles from Sweetwater. They have some great one day music programs for kids as well.
Part of the reason that our space travel realty has fallen short of our ambitions can be traced back to the beginning of the Space Race. Von Braun wanted to take a slower, iterative approach to reaching the stars that would have consisted of building reusable infrastructure in space, i.e., trips into orbit would have led to a space station which would have served as a jumping off point to the Moon and so forth and so on. We wouldn’t have landed on the Moon in 1969, but we would have been back more recently than 1972. JFK and the focus on beating the Soviets in the Space Race caused those intricate plans to be scrapped for a more brute force solution that got us there on time but didn’t leave anything for subsequent programs to build upon (in terms of hardware in place). That, combined with the fact that we lost a significant amount of interest in space travel sometime after the moon landings, has hindered our ability to pick up where Apollo left off. I don’t think we’d be flying at warp in the Enterprise if von Braun had realized his vision as planned, but we’d be a hell of a lot better off than we are now.
Also, Jack and Bark, if you all are ever in the Atlanta area, drop me a line.
That is a perspective that simply never occurred to me — thank you!
Bark is ALWAYS in Atlanta.
This is true. Bark is ALWAYS in Atlanta. I’m there again 1/19-1/21.
Bark, I should be available on those dates. Send me an email and let’s see what we can work out.
Jack,
I will expand on this thought when I get around to having a decent half hour to write you directly, but once again, today is not the day…helped move several large pieces of furniture into our home, which is enough to leave me so tired that it is all I can do to run quickly through my email.
But if you want John to develop skills in the area of self-defense, either consider aikido for him (longer to perfect, much less dependent on relative size or strength in the end), or at least make sure he understands that the high kicks which are so well-liked in TKD are literally “the kiss of death” in a life and death situation.
TKD mandates a certain number of high kicks per round, something that they would never have to do if they were as effective as they would like you to believe that they are. On the other hand, the old school Japanese stylists of several different schools, all of which arose out of samurai tradition, counsel against high kicks, and advise never kick above the waist, and seldom above the knee.
The reason is that it is possible to counter high kicks very effectively in actual combat. Think about a forearm block followed by a counterstrike to the area that is exposed when the leg is raised to attack.
TKD has many fine things to commend it, including fitness, confidence building, self-discipline and a number of useful self-defence techniques. But it is primarily a sport (an Olympic one, at that) and as such, is responsive to the need to put on a good show as well as other things which a martial art would be expected to provide.
FWIW, I have seen a four-ten seven month pregnant woman evade a skilled full-on attack by a six-two two hundred twenty pound attacker, and successfully throw him to the ground. Admittedly, it was in a dojo and not in the street, but the attack and counter were not preplanned, nor was the attack slowed down or timed to make the counter feasible.
And yes, her baby was born healthy two months later, though I admit I might have tried to discourage my wife from trying the same thing while she was carrying our son.
Just wanted to give you that tip about the high kicks, though, so that John doesn’t become imprinted with a pattern of resorting to them for self-defense, should the need for him to do so ever arise.
Also, BTW, Matt thought that John was a cool young man, also. I am glad that they hit it off so well, though I fully expected that they would…we seem to have a lot in common, and we are raising our sons with similar methods and goals, so it seemed to me highly likely that we would turn out a pair of sons who recognized that there was something special about the other one. Glad I was right…
And you know you are welcome any time you are in this area. We are a twenty minute train ride or drive from the Philly Car Show, and about a two hour drive, park and subway ride to the NYC one. We’re also less than an hour from Englishtown, where I believe they still hold regular drag races, and about forty five minutes from Bridgeport NJ where during the summer months, there is midget car racing every Friday night, I think. Some different types of automotive entertainment, but its there, and nearby. I also think I could finagle a place to crash for the Dover DE NASCAR races. I know they are a lot different than, for example, LeMons or SCCA racing, but we have some other options in the vicinity, just in case you wanted to check them out. Or just come visit and we can run down to the shore. We go there and camp out for the weekend a lot, also.
I have also told Nate essentially the same thing, should he ever get back this way. And it would be even better if both of you showed up at the same time…we have the room. Like the saying goes, make an old man happy.
This certainly does not count as “the street”, but I was suspended from high school for dropping a kid like the proverbial sack of flour with a snap kick to the chin. We were in shop class; he had made some sort of “bo staff”, I kid you not, and started waving it at me.
The problem with my behavior, from the perspective of the school, was that I had snap-kicked a son of a founding member of the Muirfield Village Golf Club.
Yes, Jack, I didn’t mean to imply that high kicks never worked, only that if an opponent knew how to counter that high kicks are highly vulnerable to a forearm block, for example, with the leading arm, followed by basically an uppercut to the jewels…a sure fire show-stopper.
And yes, oftentimes the worst problems can be the aftermath…though I certainly admire your unwillingness to cut that guy any slack based on his family connections.
One of the things that is nice about aikido, among many, is that it is possible to administer a quite resoundingly clear drubbing without doing any permanent, or even visible damage.
In today’s litigious world, that can give considerable peace of mind when in a confrontation, if you don’t have to worry about getting sued for winning, even if attacked.
A true story from a very old Black Belt magazine, quoting an NYC newspaper.
A transit cop happened upon a martial artist in a nearly deserted subway station who was in the process of fending off a mugging attempt by four would-be muggers. The martial artist had not succeeded in making them turn tail, but neither had they succeeded in relieving him of any of his possessions.
The transit cop promptly drew his gun, called for backup, and arrested all five. When they appeared before the judge, he said that he understood why the four had been arrested, but wanted to know why the transit cop had arrested the martial artist.
The transit cop’s answer: “Because he was winning”. No lie…
Fortunately, justice prevailed in that one, and the judge released the martial artist.
From what I read about about the Bernie Goetz case that occurred a few years after that, I’m fairly certain he got the shaft, primarily for being too happy about having had the opportunity to win, coupled with having inflicted permanent damage, and compounded by the fact that it was discovered that he had partaken of drugs on occasion in his past.
But the record of the trial clearly shows that he was neither the instigator, nor a searcher, a la the Charles Bronson movie Death Wish, for such an opportunity…just a random target of a pack of muggers.
When the crack epidemic started up, that ended my decade of decadence in NYC. I moved south for a safer and saner environment. People used to remove the radios from their cars in the eighties, and put a sign on the dashboard saying “NO RADIO”, just to try to prevent their car windows from being smashed in order for a crackhead to raise the price of a rock.
As a closing note, as you probably observed, the willingness to stand up to an attacker who is armed, while you are not, often unnerves the attacker to the point that the weapon is often not much of an advantage, unless of course the other person has a thirty eight, is out of reach, and is a crack shot.
Which is why I support concealed carry permit legislation for any sane, law-abiding citizen who wishes to do so. Statistics have show that that has a deterrent effect on crime.
Which will no doubt earn me a flamethrower blast from the bleeding hearts who think that guns should be banned, in the mistaken belief that that would reduce the number of deaths by guns.
So I might as well set myself up for the full blast:
When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.
Better to be judged by twelve, than carried by six.
But I am always encouraged to find out that there are still people, usually but not exclusively, men, who refuse to be intimidated by bullies, and who have successfully resisted such people and actions.
That is one more evidence of the fact that the feminization of social norms has not become universal.
“Order now for this special copy of Bernhard Hugo Goetz Sings the Classics! You’ll receive such timeless hits like:
Take the A Train
One is the Loneliest Number
Strangers in the Night
If I had a Hammer
And many more!
“Just remember to send $5 to BHG Classics, under the staircase, behind the turnstile.”
Quite a good list, Felis…
You did forget Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, however.
Just for grins, Jack, how much time did they hit you with?
As a friend, I would hope you didn’t get more than a couple of days, but I suspect, given the back story, that you probably got at least a week, maybe two.
Care to let us know?