I was raised Roman Catholic, but my dad was Militant Agnostic. My mother pulled me from Catholic school when she decided I was getting too weird and I'm glad she did. I stumbled over the Alan Watts lectures on our local radical radio station and realized THAT was a much wiser world view. It helped that Watts' upbringing in Episcopalian was a good bridge for my understanding but he also was a very articulate speaker and writer.
I was also fortunate that my parents encouraged reading widely and thinking for myself. Oddly, for all the reputation of Catholicism as being dogmatic, the nuns constantly reminded us that the bible is allegory, it is not literally true. So there absolutely was no reason for faith to interfere with scientific thinking - they're complimentary and expanding understanding of the natural world also expands wonder.
A great deal of pressure drops away when you do NOT have to keep everything in order and demand that everything line up with your world view. Sure, you don't have Absolute Certainty which means you've got to work things out for yourself but that's okay. You don't have to have all the details worked out.
Your story of kit foxes brought back a happy memory. In the early naughts, a family of kit foxes built a warren into a berm a quarter mile from my place in Landers. The following year, modular homes began to dot the neighborhood and the foxes were gone.
I also witness the permanent damage from off roaders on a daily basis. They don't ride through the big wash that bisects the place where I live now every day, but often enough that the destruction is a daily reminder of what this beautiful wash full of desert willows and Joshua trees looked like before it became their personal freeway. A wash that floods can't be blocked or fenced, unfortunately.
Apropos nothing at all, how odd you should mention the Gia Fu Feng translation. I was looking through my books yesterday, sorting some that could go, and there it was. I'd entirely forgotten about it. I kept it naturally. I have the companion I Ching/Tai Chi book also.
♂ While I didn't have the words for it that I have now, I observed and decided at a very young age that human traits grouped into "feminine" and "masculine" were available to anyone, so why not take the best from each? With this I doubted any notion of biological determinism for such traits, even before anthropology and sociology demonstrated that I was right.
In particular, cruelty, vengeance, and violence were expected of me, and I considered that stupid when I was a littler kid on the receiving end. These are the specific traits that come to mind when the words "toxic masculinity" comes up.
When I hit my growth spurt and it was presumed that it was my turn to inflict this stuff, I opted instead for the role of protector, which does happen to have been gender-normative at the time. The growth spurt years are also when misogyny pivots from sexist disdain of girls to outright loathing and abuse of women, which I also rejected as stupid.
I did not encounter much philosophy about any of this as a boy, though gym class peddled a dogma that embraced the stupid and toxic things, with the zero-sum assumption that to win meant defeating somebody else. This sort of preps young males for military training or for business school, but not for being decent men. Bendiness, I had to pick up in the streets, man.
Removed a comment claiming that reproductive anatomy defines gender. I have no time for that kind of unscientific crap.
I was raised Roman Catholic, but my dad was Militant Agnostic. My mother pulled me from Catholic school when she decided I was getting too weird and I'm glad she did. I stumbled over the Alan Watts lectures on our local radical radio station and realized THAT was a much wiser world view. It helped that Watts' upbringing in Episcopalian was a good bridge for my understanding but he also was a very articulate speaker and writer.
I was also fortunate that my parents encouraged reading widely and thinking for myself. Oddly, for all the reputation of Catholicism as being dogmatic, the nuns constantly reminded us that the bible is allegory, it is not literally true. So there absolutely was no reason for faith to interfere with scientific thinking - they're complimentary and expanding understanding of the natural world also expands wonder.
A great deal of pressure drops away when you do NOT have to keep everything in order and demand that everything line up with your world view. Sure, you don't have Absolute Certainty which means you've got to work things out for yourself but that's okay. You don't have to have all the details worked out.
This is one of those essays that I will return to again and that I plan to share with the men in my life.
Your story of kit foxes brought back a happy memory. In the early naughts, a family of kit foxes built a warren into a berm a quarter mile from my place in Landers. The following year, modular homes began to dot the neighborhood and the foxes were gone.
I also witness the permanent damage from off roaders on a daily basis. They don't ride through the big wash that bisects the place where I live now every day, but often enough that the destruction is a daily reminder of what this beautiful wash full of desert willows and Joshua trees looked like before it became their personal freeway. A wash that floods can't be blocked or fenced, unfortunately.
Apropos nothing at all, how odd you should mention the Gia Fu Feng translation. I was looking through my books yesterday, sorting some that could go, and there it was. I'd entirely forgotten about it. I kept it naturally. I have the companion I Ching/Tai Chi book also.
There was no US military draft in the 1980s for you to register for. Why lie??? It signals unhealthy attitudes.
See, now this is why I usually limit commenting to paid readers.
Go Google “Carter draft registration 1980” . I’ll wait here for an apology.
♂ While I didn't have the words for it that I have now, I observed and decided at a very young age that human traits grouped into "feminine" and "masculine" were available to anyone, so why not take the best from each? With this I doubted any notion of biological determinism for such traits, even before anthropology and sociology demonstrated that I was right.
In particular, cruelty, vengeance, and violence were expected of me, and I considered that stupid when I was a littler kid on the receiving end. These are the specific traits that come to mind when the words "toxic masculinity" comes up.
When I hit my growth spurt and it was presumed that it was my turn to inflict this stuff, I opted instead for the role of protector, which does happen to have been gender-normative at the time. The growth spurt years are also when misogyny pivots from sexist disdain of girls to outright loathing and abuse of women, which I also rejected as stupid.
I did not encounter much philosophy about any of this as a boy, though gym class peddled a dogma that embraced the stupid and toxic things, with the zero-sum assumption that to win meant defeating somebody else. This sort of preps young males for military training or for business school, but not for being decent men. Bendiness, I had to pick up in the streets, man.