Karen Watters Cole wrote:
[snip]
> I wonder if the demographic trend in American schools that has teachers and
> sociologists so concerned has anything to do with "hikikomori"?
> Educators are increasingly noticing that girls are outperforming boys in US
> schools in all age groups, even through grad school. I'd read something
> (and maybe posted) about it previously, but saw a story on 60 minutes last
> night that hit the basic outline: boys are dropping out, not reading as
> well, not competitive in the classroom, not scoring on tests as well as
> before....
[snip]
Think about it: The only reasons males are *needed*
are due to low-technology. Once parthenogenesis is
perfected, men will not be needed for species reproduction,
but, even without any such sci-fi developments, men could
easily be reduced to [paid] sperm donors in a
post-industrial Gynecocracy.
Muscle power ceases to be needed even for killing people in
war, or for big civil engineering projects (John Henry was
on the cutting edge...).... And, to boot, women are
"pumping iron"....
The logical conclusion is that there is no "natural" place --
no *need* -- for
males in the hi-tech Novus Ordo Seclorum.
Either males will find ways to make the women *want* them
to be part of society, or "else".
But what "else"? The options are many, but none of
them look anything like the world we are
accustomed to.
One "else" may already be the new Islamist
movement: the Taliban, Al Qaeda et al.?
Will males in THe West be willing to live out their
lives on a social "IV" (AKA dole, etc.), even if society
is willing to throw the transfer payments their way?
How much "unbound testosterone" will go into gang activities
and other forms of physical "acting out/acting up"?
If there is more than a modicum of truth in the
idea that men have oppressed women through much of
our world (even though the women, like the powerless
in Erving Goffman's books, have found their ways of
"working the system") -- If there is more than a
modicum or truth in the oppression of women by men,
or even if women just find the idea "evocative"
irrespective of its truth, then maybe human agency
will join up with The Invisible Hand of the market and Hegel's
logic of history which works behind men's(sic?) backs**,
to reinforce what-was-his-name's message:
It's payback time.
And just because every generation, or just many generations,
have thought the end of the world was coming
when it did not, does not
mean it is *not* going to happen this time.
--
Just thinking logically, to try to overcome
the "unimaginability barrier" (which is perhaps
even more impenetrable than the "light barrier", etc.)....
\brad mccormick
--
**"The owl of Minerva takes flight at dusk", in Hegel's
lyric phrase. We know what gender Minerva is. What
gender is the owl?
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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