Tag: contemporary thinking

Gender Equality: A Lesson in Polite

polite2Since Valentine’s Day is only a few sleeps away, it’s time for a cautionary tale.

A little while ago, I got picked up in a bar.  It was a shameless act; the woman was old enough to be my granddaughter.  She asked me if I was alone; I coyly said I was waiting for someone, and she sat down.  Gender rituals have obviously changed in half a century.  BTW, despite what anybody who knows me will tell you, my ego is not so large that I considered (even for a nanosecond) that she was interested in me.  I’m fully aware that my best before date was a long time ago and about the only thing I have to offer young people these days is hackneyed advice.  Which, it turns out, was exactly what she wasn’t looking for.

Her story was the usual one: girl meets boy, boy treats girl like Disney Princess, girl treats boy like he’s the Prince, neither one of them is, the unsustainable passion ebbs, everybody gets pissed off.  She asked me why.  I’m too old a wily coyote to jump into that creek without a paddle, so I hesitated.  Then, call it ego, captive audience or one too many hefty white wines but – whatever! — she proceeded to explain it to me.

Apparently, the battle of the sexes has changed dramatically since Ricky and Lucy used to fight it out every week back in the 50s.  It seems men, no longer interested in women, have quit being polite.  They’re greatest failing, aside from bathroom etiquette, is an obstinate refusal to hold doors open.  This archaic practice, above all others, is the major reason why older couples (she tipped her glass to me) have stayed together all these years.  I have an ex-wife who could have provided stern evidence to the contrary, but since I obviously wasn’t waiting for her, I kept my mouth shut.

Yet there was more.  Since doors had become a sort of feminine DIY item, men just weren’t even trying anymore.  They certainly polite3don’t dress the part – not like in the old days.  Nor do they hold coats, chairs, flowers or their bodily emissions in check.  I stopped her there.  There are some things strangers don’t let strangers share.

She went on for another wine and a half and since I wasn’t about to have three pale ales on an empty stomach, I said I was late, excused myself, and went outside to wait.

She was right, you know.  We men are not as gallant as we used to be.  Chivalry is not necessarily dead, but it is in intensive care.  It’s a casualty of gender equality and our increasing descent into permanent Casual Friday.  It’s difficult to be on your best behaviour when you’re wearing flip flops and a sweatshirt, especially when your companion is falling out of most of her clothes.  Besides, the quintessential act of opening a door for someone has become a chauvinistic minefield.  Polite might not be seen as patriarchal, but it’s not always smart to take it on faith.  There isn’t a guy over 16 who hasn’t been stitched up after an encounter with the feminist fascisto, who don’t always make their presence known – until it’s too late.

Of course, there is a moral to the story.  I wasn’t aware of it at the time or even standing outside in the dizzily rain.  For all her caustic observations, it never occurred to my new friend that I hadn’t ever invited her to sit down.

Images by Dina Goldstein

The Lost Art of Lying

lying1Throughout history, from Pinocchio to Bill Clinton, there have been fantabulous liars in our midst.  Unfortunately, appreciation of the art has fallen out of vogue.  Personally, I blame Dubya and Cheney, who, having convinced half the world that Saddam Hussein had WMDs under his bed, finally (in a burst of weird integrity) admitted they never found any.  Honestly, if you’re going to lie, at least have the cojones to see it through.

Despite lying’s bad reputation, it is absolutely essential to modern discourse.  Lies pedestal our good intentions by rounding off the sharp edges of our conversations.  They give us a way in and a way out of difficult situations and grease the social wheels so we can get on with things.  Without lying, couples would suffer grievously and the breakup rate would triple (quadruple?) overnight.  Office workers would be at each other’s throats — on a daily basis — and salespeople, telemarketers and lovesick teenage boys would disappear entirely.  You see, we can’t tell the truth: at least, not all the time.  The problem is that dress does make you look fat, some questions are WTF stupid and we’re never going to do lunch – “real soon” or otherwise.  These are truths; however, it serves no purpose to broadcast them.  In fact, shooting your mouth off could open the door to tons of problems which, if just ignored, would solve themselves.  For example, the hideous dress will end up in the back of the closet or the landfill eventually – why push it?  Likewise, neither one of us wants to do lunch: we can’t stand each other.  So rather than descend into open warfare, we just pretend to be polite.

Every single person on this planet lies at least a half a dozen times a day, despite what we tell the neighbours, and none of us thinks it’s morally reprehensible to do so.  That’s why we call them “white lies” (sometimes we even add “little” to emphasize the point.)  We’re convinced, and rightly so, that these lies are not only harmless but, in fact, necessary.  They are an integral part of our human experience, and we accept that.  Yet, when it comes to institutionalized lies, we blow a gasket.  Why?  Because we hate being lied to — even though sometimes, it’s in our best interests.

Okay, the secret recipe notwithstanding, I want to know what KFC puts in my chicken.  It’s not going to do me any good, but I figure if Colonel Sanders is trying to kill me, at the very least, I should know about it before I give him permission.  That goes double for everything else I ingest, including the air I breathe.  So, when some bureaucrat tells me that the water is perfectly safe and I end up sick as a penguin, I’m hauling out the torches and pitchforks and, in the words of Russell Peters, “Somebody’s going to get a hurting, real bad!”

On the other hand, I really don’t need (or want) to know how close we are to bombing Iran’s nuclear weapons program back to thelying Stone Age.  That’s just counterproductive.  Believe me, I’m not going to sleep any easier tonight if I know that Obama just walked into the Pentagon and shouted “Cry havoc! And let slip the drones of war!” – and, BTW, neither are you.  In fact, we’re both going to get a lot more future Zs if he just tells us everything is fine.  Later on, he can make up another lie about national security or whatever to cover his ass — we’ll believe that, too, if it helps him out.  However, right now, I, and a whole lot of other people, just don’t want to know.

Everybody knows that being entirely honest is not all it’s cracked up to be.  Therefore, it logically follows that good leaders, like good people, should know when to give us the straight goods and when to just flat-out lie.  Unfortunately, contemporary society isn’t very sophisticated.  We believe in all kinds of non sequitur Pollyanna principles and rarely let common sense get in their way.  It’s too bad, though, because our time has produced some extraordinary liars.

The Homily: A Growing Menace

home4You know you’re in trouble when you long for the days of bumper sticker politics.  Way back when, it was pretty easy to “End Apartheid Now!” or “Free Tibet!”  You simply honked and moved on.  After all, you never saw “Enslave Tibet Forever” slapped on the ass of anybody’s automobile.  Besides, nobody believed that Bill Clinton’s limo would ever pull up behind you and he’d turn to Hillary and say, “Hey!  That Tibet deal sounds like a good idea.  Let’s call the Pentagon!”  Bumper stickering was a lot more symbolic than that.  Regardless, those simple days are gone.  Occasionally, you still see an itty-bitty billboard under the turn signal of an old pickup truck or clichéd VW van, but, in general, the streets have been cleared of this kind of pie-in-the-sky nonsense.  Unfortunately, now we have to deal with the replacement therapy.

These days, people have forsaken their vehicles as the medium of choice and are busy spreading the word electronically.  Not only that, but they’ve abandoned Tibet, Blood for Oil and Nelson Mandela to pursue the true path of enlightenment and, more importantly, pass it on to you.  You can’t go six cyber centimetres in this world without running into some idiot affirmation on how to be a better person or live a better life.  These digital drive-bys are very much like the real thing: they might not be intended for you, but if you’re in the general vicinity, you’re going to get caught in the crossfire.  The problem is they have nothing to do with you.  In fact, you’re irrelevant.

People aren’t tossing these Post New Age homilies all over The Net because they home2think you don’t realize that “life is like a box of chocolates…”  Nor are they “sharing” because they’re worried you may have forgotten that “your smile should change the world, not the other way around.”  Actually, that’s the least of their concerns.  Unlike Jehovah’s Witnesses, who are honestly trying to save your soul (annoying as that may seem) these Internet evangelists don’t give a damn about you. They’re posting this stuff promiscuously to proclaim their own high level of enlightenment.  They want you — and everybody else with Wifi — to know that they’ve achieved Maximum Awareness.  And as caring, sharing children of the 21st century, their expanded consciousness just natural overflows into all areas of their lives.

I know there are some people who believe this crap and even those who don’t, have the right to say as they please.  The thing is, though, unlike bumper stickers, whose message was confined to the asphalt and gone at the next left turn, these sermonettes are, first of all, front and centre and secondly permanent fixtures.  It’s like being trapped in an Elsinore elevator with Polonius.  “Life is art: paint your dreams.” “Promote what you love; don’t bash what you hate.”  “Don’t judge…”  “Avoid wrong…” “Eat the penguin…” “Ride the donkey…”  It’s endless and they’re all so staggeringly simple minded, it’s scary.

home3In an age when Playboy Bunny Dumb is considered a career choice, we are in danger of stupiding ourselves to death.  Throwing meaningless homilies into the mix is just accelerating the process.  If we’re not careful, one of these days, “A smile is the prettiest thing you’ll ever wear” is going to sound profound.   When that happens, it’s “abandon all hope, ye who enter here” because we’ll be in Beauty Queen Hell!