Most of my life I’ve had a secret interest in men’s issues. Secret for a lot of reasons but primarily I’m not sure too many people (men especially) realise there is such a thing. I’ve tried many time to have conversations with my mates about life, what’s going on in theirs and how they feel about it but, surprise-surprise, men don’t particularly like being asked about their masculinity, especially at the pub after a few beers. So I turned to the INTERNET and just in time it turns out too.
In about January this year I gave re-birth to Popmedium. I was inspired after finding Mark Pollards blog and realising that, yes, there are some great men out there talking about life and no, that doesn’t make them wussy. There is this poisonous idea amongst men that you’re just supposed to deal with everything privately. That you’re somehow less of a man if you burden anyone else with your problems. Well, it tunes out that in Australia, young men commit suicide at more than three times the rate of women of the same age. Further, mental illness and drug and alcohol dependency is severely affecting men aged 16-24.
In about June this year The Inspire Foundation launched a campaign called #Manweek designed to raise awareness of these issues. A number of Australian bloggers supported this campaign, sharing their thoughts, challenges and experiences with their readers. I was absolutely inspired by some of the stories that were being told and by the community that formed and helped share them.
Gavin Heaton and Mark Pollard were at the centre of the conversations and decided to collate all of these stories and make them in to a book. Something that I wrote made it in to the collection and I feel privileged to be a part of something so powerful.
All of the profits from the sale of The Perfect Gift For A Man are being donated to The Inspire Foundation.
I just found a letter I wrote to Bonds. I’m still not sure I really want to post this because it makes me seem weird. Oh well, when in Rome!
Dear Chesty,
I am writing to express both my satisfaction and devestation with relation to the discontinuation of the Bonds Lo-Rider Brief (mens). I first discovered this life changing brand of underwear in the summer of 2006. I was in the market for some dacks that were comfortable and allowed me to express a little bit of personality. My initial survey of the undies wall left me feeling a little empty, lost. Stacked from foot to forehead were mediocre impersonations of some of the big brand, big buck pants – Calvin, Hugo and several other dudes I’ve never been too close to. I was beginning to slide my way over to the lady-pants section with some half baked idea to Frankenstein a pair of Skinny Minis, all for the sake of getting a little colour, a little comfort back in to my life. Just as I’d almost given up hope, from the corner of my eye I spotted a dash of Canary Yellow. Curious, I cocked my head. Low and behold, stacked way up high were the fabled pair of Lo Rider Briefs I’ve become so comfortable with.
Over the coming years I would take my monthly trip to K-Mark and select a new pair of Lo-Riders. I amassed quit a collection! All the colours of the rainbow and many in between. With out a doubt they are the best pair of dacks I’ve ever worn. I’ve told all my friends and converted more than half. I event tried to start an “underwear under there” party in the vein of the Tupperware parties my mum used to have when I was a child. Needless to say my friends weren’t that interested.
But alas, good things never last! I knew the day would come when I would find the mens wall devoid of colour, of character. I knew the Lo Rider was not meant to be forever, but I never expected it to end this soon. I’ve looked in several K-Marts over the last few weeks and I can not find any Lo Riders. As far as I can tell they have been taken off the market.
I’m writing this letter in a state of desperation. PLEASE, BRING BACK THE LO-RIDER BRIEFS. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD AND ALL THAT IS HOLY (as some of my favourite pairs are), BRING BACK THE LO-RIDERS.
Yours in disbelief and disappear,
Joel
They never did reply. Not sure why. I also wanted to add a picture but these underpants a so mysterious even Google doesn’t know what I’m on about.
It’s Man Week and I thought I’d share some of my experiences and thoughts on masculinity. I’m mostly going to speak from personal experience because I’m not sure if my understanding of masculinity is universal. I suspect that it might be but I’m not going to be that presumptuous. Maybe Man Week can help me sort that out!
Growing up without a dad
My Dad left when I was pretty young. My mum, my sister and I were living in Darwin and he called up one day and said that he was in Sydney. Won’t be coming back. At the time I didn’t think this meant he was gone from my life completely, he just wouldn’t be living with us but “he can still come over can’t he, Mum?”. From then on it was pretty much just me, Mum and my sister.
It’s true that growing up without a father figure denies you direct, everyday contact with a role model, but that doesn’t mean that you’re not surrounded by the proposition of masculinity in just about every part of your life. If you can’t look within your own family you can turn to chaps like Jason Bourne or Tom Hanks from Sleepless in Seattle. Dr. Karl. Culturally we’re almost drowned in artefacts that define masculinity for us and it’s not hard to get some cookie-cutter idea of what a man is, or should be.
In some ways growing up without a Dad can make life even less confusing. Instead of learning from someone else, trying to follow your Dad’s massive footprints on the beach, you become more independent and you have to take everything that is being thrown at you and make some kind of sense of it by yourself. You’re forced to decide what to take stock of, what to discard and in the process you get some kind of idea of what a man is meant to be and what kind of man you would like to become.
When you grow up with women your idea of masculinity comes from the female perspective, which I think is a good thing given that the female is the counterpoint to the male and as a young man I can say that just about everything I’ve done in my life, stupid or otherwise, has been the result of female influence. And I don’t mean this in some macho “I lead with my dick” way, but in more of a holistic Yin and Yang kind of way.
Wrestling with your ego
A big part of my journey in to manhood was defined by the struggle I had with my ego. Ego is central to masculinity and in my opinion is one of the big barriers men have to overcome when trying to live up to this ideal of a decent man. It’s a personal journey and you have to learn what ego is, how to control it and when to let to run a muck. My journey began in my teenage years and lasted all the way through until I was about 24 and in my third year of University. I’m not willing to say I’ve overcome all the negativism of ego, but I’m much further along than I used to be and I don’t think it rules me in the way it used to.The story is partly chronicled in an online journal I kept, one that I hope never sees the light of day. When I look back on some of the things I wrote about about uni, life away from home, girls, love, mateship etc. I cringe, but in a weird way, writing down and sharing my experience with strangers really helped me. I’m in the place I am because of that journal.
Having one bad role model is important
This sounds a bit nuts, but my Dad was shit and he wasn’t around and he didn’t live up to this idea of what a man should be and having that kind of bad role model in your life really helps to you to understand what it is to actually be a man. I don’t want this to sound like a Dad bashing paragraph and I’m not after sympathy, but I knew that he didn’t feel any sense of responsibility to his family, he wasn’t brave and his values were all out of shape. If you have a problem to solve, sometimes the best place to start is with the solution. Conversely I knew that if I wanted to be a decent man all I had to do was start with a bad man and work backwards.
Having such a strong desire to be a good man was always kind of a ‘fuck you’ to my Dad. I can be a good person, a man and successful and I can do it without you. Some of this anger is still there but I’ve mostly let it go.
Gen. Y Man
Sounds like some sleek clothing label (which, oddly, is appropriate) but I’m talking about my male contemporaries and their place in the world. Boomers, Xers and everyone else seem so eager to define Generation Y and to be honest, it can get a little annoying. According to their definition of an entire generation we actually posses some qualities that are out of sync with the standard idea of masculinity. Gen Y can’t commit to anything, are flakey, move around a lot and stereotypically the men are more effeminate than previous generations. Instead of saving for a home we buy iPods, eat out heaps and get drink a shit load of cocktails. Gen Y also have a different set of values compared to previous generations and I think this is resulting in a rejection of some of the ideas traditionally associated with masculinity. I can’t wait to see what future-man looks like. Maybe Matt Corby will be our next PM.
I’m still trying to figure out exactly what it means to be a man and I hope it’s something I have to strive for the rest of my life. It’s true that men need to lose some of the shit they carry about with them and learn to talk to each other. About life, football, ladies, whatever. I think Man Week rules and I’ve loved reading what my fellow men have to say about being men. Man!
Oh and just to prove I do have a sense of humor, I’ve included a video that might teach you all a little more about Gen Y.
Traditionally, banks and other financial institutions have succeeded by managing risk, not avoiding it. But as the world has become increasingly connected, their task has become exponentially more difficult. To see why, it’s helpful to think about power grids again: engineers can reliably assess the risk that any single power line or generator will fail under some given set of conditions; but once a cascade starts, it’s difficult to know what those conditions will be – because they can change suddenly and dramatically depending on what else happens in the system. Correspondingly, in financial systems, risk managers are able to assess their own institutions’ exposure, but only on the assumption that the rest of the world obeys certain conditions. In a crisis it is precisely these conditions that change in unpredictable ways.
Traditionally I’ve been a “Jump You Fuckers” kind of guy. I’ve never really understood what motivates people who work for financial institutions, besides the presupposed notion of greed. I mean, when does it end? You can make all the money in the world but it never actually ends. There is always more to make always more to be had. I think if I were faced with that kind of proposition I’d get sucked in to some kind of circular-mind-vortex. If your ultimate goal feeds itself but is entirely unattainable, how do you get up in the morning?
Reading Duncan’s article has given me a little more perspective. The global economy is infinitely unfathomable in scale and complexity. How the hell do you plan for anything when absolutely nothing is certain? How could you feel anything but helpless? You can’t make decisions based on your understanding of the paradigm as it currently exists because who the hell knows what it’s going to look like the next day and whether your actions will yield a positive or negative result.
However I guess all of this could be said for any kind of profession or action.
Wow! It’s hurting my mind-cicles. Although I’m glad I came across Duncan’s article, given that several members of my family are in the business of making money.
For those who haven’t already seen it, The Cool Kids (my favourite rap duo, all the way from Chicago) have released a new mixed tape called ‘Gone Fishing’ It’s available for free from their website (http://www.coolxkids.com/).
As soon as it’s finished downloading, I’ll post my thoughts!
Last Friday I went to a burger restaurant in Crows Nest called The Counter. Aside from being all about serving natural produce, the menu system is specific and invites you to ‘build your own’ meal. The concept isn’t entirely original but the menu is broken down in to 6 sections; type of meat, the weight of your meat, basic sides (lettuce, chilli capsicums etc), special sides (beacon, egg), type of bun and sauces. Then of course you have the sides menu, the drinks menu and the desert menu. Each of these little sections contains between 5 and 18 options. All in all you can choose one of 312, 120 burger combinations. This isn’t accidental, in fact it’s one of their main selling points. The pitch being that you will have a unique and different meal every time you visit the restaurant, unlike some of the other burgerjointsintheworld.
So with 312, 120 different possibilities it should be damn near impossible for me to walk away feeling unsatisfied. How could I be? With such an abundance of choice I should have been able to find the perfect burger combination for me. But the truth is I walked out feeling a little less than happy. Not unhappy, but not happy either.
I am meant to feel liberated by this excess of choice and by my ability to choose freely. The scale is relative: the more choices I have, the freer I should feel and freedom is something we value very highly. So why did I walk away feeling discontent? Barry Schwartz gave a TED talk on the ‘Paradox of Choice’ way back in July 2005. He also wrote a book of the same title which argues that choice has made us not freer but “more paralyzed, not happier but more dissatisfied”. His idea being that the excessive amount of choices we are faced with on a daily basis actually works to “erode our psychological well being”. At The Counter I was presented with so many different options that it took me 10 times longer to choose what I wanted and once I had finally settled it was that much easier for me to believe that I could have chosen a better option, that my burger choice (1 of 312, 120 possible combinations) could have been the wrong one. “Would this have been better with tomato? Maybe I should have gone for the Garlic Aoilie instead of the Chilli Sauce?”
When faced with such an intimidating number of desirable choices we begin to consider “hypothetical trade-offs”. We begin to evaluate our options in terms of missed opportunities instead of the opportunities potential. Schwartz is basically saying that a choice overload, such as the one I experienced at The Counter, can make you question the decisions you make before you even make them. Logically we assume that amongst such a large number of choices exists the perfect option but by virtue of the fact that there are so many options, the chances of us choosing the right one is significantly decreased. With so many choices our expectations are unrealistically high and Schwartz tells us that this can make you “blame yourself for any and all of your failures”. In the long run this can lead to “decision-making paralysis, anxiety, and perpetual stress”.
While I didn’t walk out of The Counter with clinical depression, it’s easy imagine what kind of effect this gigantic amount of choice could have over time. Every day I am faced with decisions involving countless amount of choices and potential outcomes. I don’t think solitude is the answer but I definitely think living in the City is both corrosive and invigorating at the same time.
I just came across this at The Long Now via Noah Brier’s blog and it got me thinking. I’ve often wondered what I would do should I ever find myself traveling back through time. I’m ashamed to say I think I would be ill equiped both to steer humanity in the right direction and to profit personally. I guess this is one less thing I’ll loose sleep over.
And yes, energy does equal mass times the speed of light squared and no, I’ve never heard of this Einstein fellow.
I’ve never been much of a blogger. I used to have a Livejournal when I was younger and I filled it with half formed ideas and a whole lot of whining. It’s where I learnt about ego and I can honestly say it was a fairly self serving collection of words.
Next came Popmedium over at Wordpress.com. I was in the middle of my Masters and was looking for a way to get some ideas out of my head and in to the world. Popmedium started, then it stopped, then it started again until finally it stopped for good. In between working 9-5 for Warringah Council as and Events Project Officer and writing 6000 word essays on Baudrillard and his ideas on simulacrum, I found it really hard to give a crap about blogging. I was just too busy and to be honest, I really wasn’t enjoying it. Something about it seemed forced and so predictable I gave it up. For good measure I have imported some of my posts across.
Considering these past failures I have decided to make a space for myself on the Internet where I can aggregate all of my activity (twitter, flickr, last.fm etc). Luckily for me Darren Hoyt and Matt Dawson found the time to make Agregado, a free Wordpress theme that aggregates all of you social feeds in one nice little stream (over to your right). I still plan to blog although I can’t say how frequent these posts might be.
I’ll do my best to keep things interesting but I’m making no promises and to illustrate this point I’ve included an image for your evaluation.
not only struggled to find time to maintain this blog, I’ve also had serious problems keeping up with everyone else’s! So much so that I only just found this amazing video on Paul Young’s site. It blew me away! I’m no genius so it’s no wonder it didn’t occur to me before, but the internet is actually changing the way we process and make sense of information! Watch the video and everything will make sense. Then do yourself a favour and head over to the Everything is Miscellaneous blog. Then hit up the Digital Ethnography blog. If you’re half as fascinated as I am you’ll be busy for hours.
I’ve This got me thinking about computers and how they assist people in constructing reality and it struck me that up until recently, traditional GUI based operating systems such as Windows and Apple’s OS have attempted to mirror the traditional systems that rely on classification (what do I mean? Double click on My Computer, then My Documents, the Assignments, Then Semester One etc etc). I’m a Mac user and anyone who’s in to Macs knows that Apple has been trying to fully incorporate Spotlight in to Finder for years. I’m yet to use Leopard, but it seems they may well be getting very close to creating an environment that is moving away from the traditional category based informational organisation and closer to the Google model we all know and use daily.Of course when I say “we” I mean anyone in Western fortunate enough to have constant access to the internet. Holla!
I have always loved a good conspiracy theory and when I saw the above video I got a small tingling in my loins that reminded me of a time when Fox Moulder was more important to me than any girl (a significant admission considering I was waist deep in adolescence at the time).
I haven’t verified any of the information in the video and if I could I probably wouldn’t want to. After all, with all the facts verified a conspiracy inevitably turns in to factual story and where would the fun be in that?
It did get me thinking though. Lets say the United States Government, through various organisations acting on its behalf, established a social media network whose primary aim was to collect information from it’s members and their associates. And lets assume that their motives were evil and rooted in a quest for power and control. Just how accurate could this information be?
I am the first to admit that my online persona(s) don’t cast the same reflection I see every morning in my bathroom mirror. Although they might be close to reality they are still projections of a self that I would like others to see. Online identity is far more malleable than “real life” identity; the latter is shaped by factors that are difficult to control (including race, class, occupation, and level of educational achievement). By means of online identities, people are free to redefine themselves as they wish (Wikipedia).
Many internet users have multiple identities, much the same as in real life (who out there can deny changing the intonation of their voice when speaking to a loved one as opposed to a work college?). So how accurate could this huge, theoretical database of information be? And who is in charge of analysing this mammoth of information? As far as I’m aware computers can’t number-crunch the infinite complexities of human interaction, so even if the information collected were accurate and online identities mirrored “real life” identities, what would be the point of collecting it?
Maybe that’s why I always use my real name online. To me it’s a name like any other and is just as much a reflection of my true identity as it is my online identity.
I imagine a city size data warehouse with skyscraper-super-computers trawling the net and I laugh at the absurdity and futility of it all.
“There’s three people in the mirror, and I’m wonderin’ which of these I should choose” – Jack White III
I founded Umbrella with a friend and we manage bands. Community development, communications, cultural development, social media, event management, video games. Wa-bam!
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