Being a Man

[Era Might]

There's a good article in The Atlantic this month. It's broadly about young black men and violence in New Orleans, but it's a powerful article for ANYONE who cares about being a man in today's world. I'm posting it here kind of as an addendum to the previous thread about masculine spirituality. Part of the article deals with Angola Prison in Louisiana which has taken on a sort of religious reform environment...I'm not really interested in that aspect of it so much as the broader issue of men coming to terms with their actions and redeeming their lives. I recommend reading the whole article but here are the sections that really spoke to me.

The context of these sections is a visit from the New Orleans mayor to the prison to speak to the prisoners and learn from them. So much going on in this conversation, but it's a powerful window into issues like vocation and the need for community, and what happens when young men are trapped and frustrated in a society where there are no meaningful opportunities and nobody to guide them into their manhood. It reminds me of the movie "The Mission" and the Robert DeNiro character whose moral reform is not a pietistic examination of conscience, but a real opportunity to create a new path for himself as part of the Mission. We often write off people who fail in society on moral grounds...they're evil, and just need to be hidden from view. But what can a man be but a monster when he is frustrated from any meaningful integration into society, and when society itself has nothing to offer except empty role playing and meaningless jobs that have no meaning beyond being necessary to production and consumption?

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/a-matter-of-black-lives/399386/

“So let’s pick up where we left off,” Landrieu said. “What don’t I understand? Tell me. What don’t I see?”

“The things we care about are different. At least I know that’s for me,” Burtell Thomas said. “If I had known then what I know now …”

Landrieu asked: “What do you know now?”

“I know that you have to pick and choose. The most precious things can be lost or taken from you very easily. I know now that what you call being a man is not necessarily being a man.”

“What does that mean, to be a man?”

Dennis Hugle answered: “Being a man is doing the one thing you really don’t want to do.”

...

“What could I have done if I were mayor when you guys did what you did? What could I have done to grab you guys before you got where you got?”

“Get kids out of the neighborhoods,” Burtell Thomas said. “You got to expose them to different things. Learn new things. Get them somewhere where they can find a role model.”

“Do you think the young guys coming up now are more dangerous?”

Unanimous agreement: “Yeah.”

“They’re colder,” said one inmate.

“But they can’t take ass whuppings anymore,” Camper said. “They can’t fight. It’s too easy to get guns, and nobody knows how to fight.”

“Hey, if I beat you severely in front of people, you’re going to come back and shoot me,” Landrieu said.

“Let’s be real,” Thomas said. “A lot of people who have missing moms, missing dads, they make it. I can’t blame the dysfunctional family. I read stories about dudes who made it.”

“It’s about critical decision making,” Alvin Williams added. “I think we need more critical-thinking classes. We should have them in the community centers. One decision you make is going to change your whole life. We all know that.”

“You’ve got to find them something they’re interested in,” Jackie Green said. “Certain things grab your interest. We all have negativity, but I started learning in prison. I got a new attitude. I started writing. I started arts and crafts. I started law. I’m going to read law for the rest of my life. I enjoy doing it.”

Landrieu, who is a lawyer, laughed. “That’s a lie,” he said.

“I get high on it.”

“You don’t get a headache from it?”

The prisoners began to talk about their various arts-and-crafts projects.

“It’s a prison, so it’s safe here, in a strange kind of way,” Thomas said.

...

A few weeks later, I went back to Angola, where I met a young New Orleanian man serving a life sentence for first-degree murder. He had been in a gang, and he had done all the things that gang members do. His body was a canvas of threatening tattoos, and he was dour and forbidding in affect. I asked him where in Angola he worked. On the farm, he said, but added, “A lot of the time I’m doing arts and crafts.” What do you make at arts and crafts?, I asked. His face lit up. “Wait here,” he said. He left for a moment, and came back with a large shopping bag filled with pink and magenta hair bows. “I make these. Girls’ hair bows,” he said.

“You make hair bows?”

Yes, he confirmed, and he added that he sells them at the arts-and-crafts festival that Burl Cain runs outside the prison rodeo each fall. “I made $1,900 last rodeo,” he said. The young prisoner got to keep a large portion of the proceeds.

An obvious thought soon occurred to me: What if our society ensured that a creative and entrepreneurial young man could discover his talents, and be shepherded toward success, before he killed someone, rather than after? What if our society designed a gun-free haven for education, job training, and moral instruction that wasn’t also a maximum-security prison costing taxpayers more than $30,000 a year per inmate?

“What a waste,” Landrieu said to me after our visit with Norfleet. “Every time a person is killed on the streets, we lose two lives. I understand he killed a kid and he deserves to spend the rest of his life suffering the consequences. But think of what it could have been for him if he didn’t pull the trigger. Think about what it could have been for us.”

[Gabriela]

I agree. And not to sound feminist-y or to put down the importance of forming men as men, but dead-end jobs and no opportunity of self-fulfillment create a feeling of trapped-ness in women, too. Granted, it doesn't usually manifest in violence against others. Typically we hurt ourselves.

it's a powerful window into issues like vocation and the need for community, and what happens when young men are trapped and frustrated in a society where there are no meaningful opportunities and nobody to guide them into their manhood.... We often write off people who fail in society on moral grounds...they're evil, and just need to be hidden from view. But what can a man be but a monster when he is frustrated from any meaningful integration into society, and when society itself has nothing to offer except empty role playing and meaningless jobs that have no meaning beyond being necessary to production and consumption?

This immediately recalled about a dozen social encyclicals. Of course you're right.

That being said, I think this video is apropos:

 

[Anomaly]

But what can a man be but a monster when he is frustrated from any meaningful integration into society, and when society itself has nothing to offer except empty role playing and meaningless jobs that have no meaning beyond being necessary to production and consumption?

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/a-matter-of-black-lives/399386/

 

The idea that there is no option but be a monster is BS even from your excerpt. Some men are becoming "Men" while in the meaningless role of prisoners.   

Alvin Williams has it right.  It's about critical decision making.  It teaching and showing that there are consequences and you have to work to find options.   You may be in a situation where you have limited options , but there there.   Saying misery is inevitable is killing hope and killing humanity.  We can endure being a brick in the wall if that is not where we invest our spirit.  Like the ex-gang banger doesn't invest his whole identity in the misery of being a prisoner, he can make hair bows and make a small, but powerfully positive impact to his spirit. 

[Era Might]

The idea that there is no option but be a monster is BS even from your excerpt. Some men are becoming "Men" while in the meaningless role of prisoners.   

Alvin Williams has it right.  It's about critical decision making.  It teaching and showing that there are consequences and you have to work to find options.   You may be in a situation where you have limited options , but there there.   Saying misery is inevitable is killing hope and killing humanity.  We can endure being a brick in the wall if that is not where we invest our spirit.  Like the ex-gang banger doesn't invest his whole identity in the misery of being a prisoner, he can make hair bows and make a small, but powerfully positive impact to his spirit. 

You're making my point. "Critical decision making" assumes that you have a context in which to make decisions...which is exactly what young men lack. Even young men in mainstream society lack a meaningful context in which to live and act, let alone young men in ghettos and other situations. Of course, it is possible to discover a context in which to live and act even in bad situations...whether it's in a broken home or in a prison. But nobody thinks a prison is a positive environment...prisoners who find themselves in prison do so because they have a space in which to reflect and discover themselves. The prison itself is just a frustrating place that goes nowhere, not unlike schools and jobs in general. The whole point of a community is to guide the young into the community so that they can grow and be able to make their own decisions within the community...this has broken down in many ways in modern society, for many different reasons...the nature of our economy, a culture of individualism, loss of traditional structures, the violence caused by our social contradictions, and prisons themselves.

Part of becoming a man is learning to live within the frustrations and contradictions of society, but that is a long process which our society makes impossible for many young men. We put them through a byzantine system of schooling, and if they fail that, and if they fail to find a place in the economy, then we put them through a byzantine system of imprisonment, or we just write them off as dead weight and let them find their way in homelessness and meaninglessness.

Gangs and bad decisions ARE young mens' attempts to make decisions...good or bad, that is the only context real to them, but that is written off as moral backwardness rather than recognizing their attempts to navigate their way in the world...however imperfectly.

You say he can make a positive impact to his spirit...man is not just a spirit, he needs a context in which to live, and not just any context but a meaningful context, and yes, society and community is responsible to young men...because that's what society and community exist for, unless we just want a dog eat dog world where the strong win and the laggers are SOL.

Another good resource on this is the book "Work" by Studs Terkel. He interviews people in every job imaginable, and records the struggle, the perseverance, the despair, and the hope among real people in our society. Man is remarkable able to endure in many situations...he is also remarkably able to fail in any situation. If we care about society and community, then we have a responsibility to improve the situation for men in both situations, to make life worth more than just enduring, and to make is possible to discover life and redeem it.

Edited August 13, 2015 by Era Might

[Anomaly]

Era, 

what is it like to be committed to such a negative view of society along with the idea one has no influence on the circumstances of your life?   You make Russians seem like optimists.  

It's not where you are in life, its what you look for that is the greatest influence of what you find.   If you spend your efforts looking for misery and meaninglessness in the world around you, you will be sure to have it around you. 

Edited August 13, 2015 by Anomaly

[Era Might]

Era, 

what is it like to be committed to such a negative view of society along with the idea one has no influence on the circumstances of your life?   You make Russians seem like optimists.  

I don't have a negative view of society, just high expectations for it. We have an influence on some circumstances of our life, not on others. The problem is that life is a process of growth...and without an objective society and community in which to grow, life is frustrated and finds its own outlets, whether it's shooting each other, eating yourself to death, having sex with anyone you can find, whatever. The goal of society is not that it function well and smoothly, but that it create a space where everyone can grow. And those who have been integrated into the society/community have an obligation to help keep that space open and guide the young into it. We are failing in this basic duty for millions of young people. Knowledge of self and a philosophical discovery of freedom is great...I am all for that...but expecting young people to achieve that without a community to help them is anti-human IMO. Young people need a real and meaningful environment in which to grow, to have objectives to attain to. And no, a "free market" or the mere political freedom to do this is not enough...they need community, and that means effective and functioning political institutions such as media, education, etc. Of course, many of our young people are able to find these and that's great...but I don't measure a society by it's successes but it's failures. We have the highest prison population in the world and young men shooting each other dead. Yes, self-knowledge and critical decision making are key to help them see beyond those choices, but they still are human creatures who live in human community, and without that meaningful social context which they cannot create themselves (nobody creates their own society), then what are we giving them? I don't know if Russians were optimists or not, but I do know that they had millions of peasants living inhuman lives under an imperial state, and that came back to haunt Russia. America has a similar permanent underclass in our ghettos, on our streets, and in our prisons, and it's OUR responsibility as a society, not simply their responsibility as individuals.

[Anomaly]

Final comment, you're beginning to harsh my buzz. The fact that you judge society  by it's failures, is in fact indicative of your negativity. Society is a conglomeration of cooperative individuals. We shouldn't judge individuals by their failures either. 

 It's a shared sense of responsibility. Society and individuals.  An individual can't give up and say come to hopelessness because society is failing them. It's not just society's fault, they have responsibilities for themselves as well  

[Era Might]

Final comment, you're beginning to harsh my buzz. The fact that you judge society  by it's failures, is in fact indicative of your negativity. Society is a conglomeration of cooperative individuals. We shouldn't judge individuals by their failures either. 

 It's a shared sense of responsibility. Society and individuals.  An individual can't give up and say come to hopelessness because society is failing them. It's not just society's fault, they have responsibilities for themselves as well  

I don't accept that definition of society as "a conglomeration of cooperative individuals." I agree that cooperation is a key element of society/community, but we are also born into a society that exists before us, which creates our social spaces and the context in which we act. That is a great good...we do not have to create our own worlds, we have a world into which we can be part, which creates our myths and work and tasks. Modern society is good at a lot of things...but not very good at that.

I reject the premise of American optimism that we are what we make ourselves, every man makes his own life in a great free society. What a bleak society to live in, where we must create our own world. That works for Tony Robbins disciples, not for me. And it's not because I think human beings are helpless creatures. Self-knowledge and self-liberation are really the only hope we have, and I'm all for it...but what a poverty to be born without a world that you do not create and manipulate, but to which you have a genuine place.

Nobody should be hopeless. Many are, and I can't blame them. The difference between an individual and society is that I am not part of another individual...I am part of society, and can speak on it, whether I'm right or wrong.

I'm an optimist, with this proviso:

It is always a continual coping with the next situation, and a vigilance to make sure that past freedoms are not lost and do not turn into the opposite, as free enterprise turned into wage-slavery and monopoly capitalism, or the independent judiciary turned into a monopoly of courts, cops, and lawyers, or free education turned into School Systems.

--Paul Goodman

[Nihil Obstat]

 

[Lilllabettt]

new rule: all boys have to watch Clint Eastwood's filmography upon reaching their 15th year. As a producer and director, he's a master. His films openly ponder masculinity and what it means to "be a man."   That's real daring in today's production climate, preoccupied as it is with ridiculing masculinity, apologizing for it, or denying its existence. He's the only person in the industry doing it, and maybe the only one who can.

 

 

 

[little2add]

Being a man is not rocket science 

Love your wife (in good times and bad)

Provide for your children (for life)

be faithful (see above)

work hard

Live hard

Love hard

Edited August 14, 2015 by little2add

[Credo in Deum]

Die hard!

[little2add]

 

 

Edited August 14, 2015 by little2add

[Era Might]

Being a man is not rocket science 

Love your wife (in good times and bad)

Provide for your children (for life)

be faithful (see above)

work hard

Live hard

Love hard

Kurt Vonnegut has a funny video about how all stories can be diagrammed on a line, e.g., boy meets girl and wins her. Of course, anyone who's read literature knows how complicated the middle is...stories rarely follow a straight line, but I guess they do ultimately, in a roundabout way.

new rule: all boys have to watch Clint Eastwood's filmography upon reaching their 15th year. As a producer and director, he's a master. His films openly ponder masculinity and what it means to "be a man."   That's real daring in today's production climate, preoccupied as it is with ridiculing masculinity, apologizing for it, or denying its existence. He's the only person in the industry doing it, and maybe the only one who can.

 

 

 

A little off-topic, but if you're a Woody Allen fan, his new movie "Irrational Man" is pretty good, I saw it the other day. I guess Woody deals with "being a man" more in a existential way than with masculinity as such.

Edited August 14, 2015 by Era Might

[little2add]

A little off-topic, but if you're a Woody Allen fan, his new movie "Irrational Man" is pretty good, I saw it the other day. I guess Woody deals with "being a man" more in a existential way than with masculinity as such.

is that the same woody allen who married his step-daughter?  I'm not a rocket scientist but wouldn't that disqualify one to "being a man"