Confused. That is how I feel when I look upon some of the men my friends date. Obviously, sometimes guys who seem like schmucks on the surface turn out to be diamonds in the rough. Unfortunately, that is not always the case. On multiple occasions I have noticed that female friends date guys with one or more characteristics that indicate they are in possession of significantly less social capital than thenon as concerns men, but I feel that it is very different in their ca ladies themselves.

We are all familiar with this phenomese. Older men who reach a certain income bracket sometimes end up with girls half their age and several shades of fake tan darker than the average woman. This is an instance of when women become status symbols. While the argument could be made that their nubile presence is a guard against male insecurity, it is more about projecting an image of power: “look how hot the chick I can get is.” They date hot girls who might not be aspiring world leaders, but, in terms of attractiveness, are way out of their league.

There is no need to iterate the myriad insecurities the average woman combats in today’s world. Women handle insecurities differently than men, and I feel they are generally more destructive, making women’s loads a bit more difficult and masochistic to carry. Despite our advances, we still live in a patriarchy. So often I hear friends lamenting about the guy so-and-so is dating, who is dumber than she is. He is shorter, he is poorer and takes her money, he is a waste of her talents and beauty. We are friends, by and large, with our equals, right? Why are the rules so different for romantic relationships? How do these guys who do not have their shit together get beautiful, talented, financially stable women? How do such women manage to get into relationships with them?

I’m sure the problem is rarely rooted in genuine cluelessness. She probably knows the whole time that she could find someone whose conversation has her firing on all cylinders, but if this guy is already present, what is the point of going elsewhere and giving up a sure thing? Why challenge yourself and face your fears of being alone when you can settle? It’s so much faster.

The answer is simple: it provides her with a false sense of security. Security, because she is choosing to spend her time with a man who perhaps could not do better. She has given him a great catch; in his life there is no competition, and that much, at least, he knows. The security of being in a relationship makes insecure people feel better. In relationships built on mutual respect and attraction, where you might fall in love and put yourself at significant emotional risk by gambling your happiness on another’s will, you have to examine your strengths and weaknesses because that’s what the other person will be doing.

A dear friend of mine is the sole female at a big engineering firm in a big city. She is one of the most logical people I have ever known; if she feels you are being less than perfectly logical and reasonable, she will not hesitate to let you know in rather harsh terms. She has a lovely apartment, her own car, health insurance for herself and her cat, regular vacations, and a great complexion. Her boyfriend said he was just going to stay with her for a few weeks until he found his own apartment. About 4 months later, as his stuff piled up, she finally demanded that he pay rent and utilities. This guy is skeptical about evolution; he refuses to believe that he ‘came from a monkey.’ He subscribes to raft theory (which crazies use to explain the presence of similar fossils in Africa and South America while refuting Pangaea).

What the hell? I can no longer ascribe their relationship to boredom on her part! If they broke up, she would have no friends. Except for work, she would have no social reason to leave her lovely apartment. As long as he is there, she does not have to be alone. She does not have to deal with worries about being unremarkable or unattractive or unmarketable. She doesn’t have to worry about her social insecurities and anxieties. She does not have to suffer from the worry that as a female engineer she will be seen as masculine. There is a clear series of insecurities within her that she can rest upon his scrawny, pasty shoulders.

We all think of the perpetually single, suspicious of men, lonely, mean woman as the dreaded ‘Old Maid.’ Just today I saw one on the subway and suffered a brief moment of panic that I could end up like her. On some level, we are all scared of that. However, I think women need to stop allowing singleness to magnify everything negative that they think about themselves. It is almost as if in not having her life crowded by another, the un-distilled self-examination will suffocate her. But becoming mired in another person is merely a mechanism to say the inevitable. As long as she knows that she is better than her relationship and she doesn’t take it seriously, she can’t be hurt when it ends. But we have to work for the things in life that are really worth it, right? And security and self-esteem are definitely worth it. In my honest opinion, stability alone is not a good enough reason for a relationship to continue. Yes he’s there, but what would she learn about herself if he weren’t? The security that he brings is a mere placeholder for self-worth and self-esteem that is lacking. This security is false because it is born of insecurity.

Without the feeling of never being good enough to deserve her paycheck, her good sense of style, her apartment, she would be guilty of woman’s greatest sin: pride. This relationship makes our friend feel safe and in control of her life and that of another. (Unfortunately, we may never quite rid ourselves of that petty creature deep within who secretly loves to control others.) Our friend has created for herself a secure space where she is able to be free from some of the fear and pain of dating and rejection. Even if this guy leaves her, she will be able to talk herself out of caring or being hurt because she never really wanted him in the first place. If she dates someone she respects, likes, and wants to impress, and he burns her, it could be really hard to take. Making herself vulnerable to rejection by someone she wants to be accepted and desired by is very scary, so she fervently avoids it.

But allowing herself to exist in this space of reluctance and comfort masquerading as happiness, she is only closing herself off to the possibility of kindling a real relationship with a person she considers her equal. In order to find someone who loves her and wants to be with her for the sheer happiness that they can bring to one another based in respect and appreciation, a woman must let go of the fear that anchors her to what is in the end an unhealthy relationship, and decide to embark on a venture with higher risk but
higher potential return. She must know herself in order to let another know her.

But, I knew what Robyn meant. She had been adopted by a white, middle- class, Baptist family when she was an infant and raised in a Minneapolis suburb filled with other white, middle-class families. Her only Asian friend was another Korean adoptee in her Sunday school class who was also raised by a white middle-class family. She attended a Lutheran private college founded by Norwegian settlers in the northern plains of Minnesota where, her friends were white, her professors were white, and her boyfriends were white. Several years have passed and she is now engaged to a white mechanic from a small town so typically middle-class-white-Americana that he could have walked straight out of a Bruce Springsteen tune. Every aspect of Robyn’s cultural reality was, and still is, influenced by the typical white, middle-class suburban American experience. DNA and country of origin may beg to differ, but my friend Robyn is as white as they come.

Robyn is not the only American whose DNA doesn’t match her cultural reality. Many Americans are quickly learning about their own genetic and cultural complexities thanks to a new, astoundingly popular hobby called recreational genealogy. Armed with mail-in genetic testing kits and easily accessible family tree websites, recreational genealogists mine for the treasures of their past. For a nominal monthly fee, history buffs are invited into website communities where they can research their ancestry, post and compare family trees, and blog nostalgic of times long past and relatives long dead. For a larger fee, the more scientifically-minded genealogists can have their DNA analyzed to reveal their racial make-up.

And what are these recreational genealogists learning? Generally, they’ve learned a lesson that has been obvious to Robyn since she was a child: we are not necessarily what we are made of. “Just for the fun of it” DNA tests and family trees have divulged a history of widespread racial crossbreeding. Many have found that, despite their lily-white skin, the sanctioned rape of countless enslaved African Americans is not just the blight of our communal history, but also the very real experience of their foremothers. Others have learned they are descendants of a frisky bunch who were willing to test racial taboos in the bedroom if not in the Public Square: 80% African, 25 % Hispanic, 15 % Native American, or 35% European. No matter how the numbers break down, one thing is certain: the only place you’ll find a room full of purebreds is at a dog show.

These genetic discoveries beg several questions of social significance. Just how much of a minority does one have to be in order to qualify for a scholarship or a coveted affirmative action position? Who is allowed to reap the spoils of tribal casinos? Should racial make up of potential parents factor into the adoption of a minority child? Did Bill beat Barack to be our first black president?

And then there is immigration. The debate is framed in fear and colored by threats of a culture in jeopardy. But the DNA results of recreational genealogists could alter the whole picture. Perhaps it is naive to think that the Oath Takers and Proud Boys might take a different approach to immigration if they understood that their DNA, the most personal aspect of their physical being, was linked to the DNA of the brown faces staring at them from across the fence. Perhaps.

The anti-immigration side of the debate promises that if we don’t close the nation’s borders our daughters are doomed to be raped and our sons destined to be gunned down in drug wars all while our youngest tikes learn to sing “Feliz Navidad”. This contingency forgets, or is unwilling to admit, that the culture we cling to is sculpted as each new generation of immigrants assimilates into general society where necessary and maintains beloved traditions when possible.

But those of us honest about our history can look at our own DNA and recognize that we are built from the blood of the desperate refugee, the optimistic immigrant, and the unwilling enslaved. We can see, calculated in percentages on a piece of paper, that we are built from the genes of very individuals who created this culture. When we truly understand that our own DNA flies in the face of the fear mongering, those who cry wolf on behalf of our supposedly endangered culture are silenced.

And then the debate changes. When we admit that our own DNA proves our culture is constructed, not demolished, by immigrants, the debate becomes purely administrative. We could begin a constructive discussion about population control, about the number of immigrants we can feasibly sustain, and about responsible reproduction on the part of those already living here. We can be honest about the amount of social aid we are willing to pay for on behalf of immigrants and we can calculate the financial and ethical costs (or benefits) of closing our borders. With fear gone, the arms of discussion are opened wide.

Collective change in mentality often begins at the grassroots level and this trend in recreational genealogy sparks pivotal personal questions about the importance of family history and the nature of personal identity. Families who welcomed foreign-born adoptees into their lives illustrate the significance (or lack there of) of DNA. These families will likely attest: ethnicity should be a cherished aspect of identity, but should not define identity. A tattoo of the Korean flag and her biological mother’s name sits proudly on Robyn’s upper arm. It is an enduring reminder of the culture from which she was removed and a respectful nod to the country that (and woman who) bore her. Still, it was the loving family that took her in 30 years ago, not her DNA, which nourished her body and fostered her dreams. She may be genetically predisposed to intelligence, but it is the American school system that honed her mental abilities. She may have grown hard-skinned and brazen as she deflected the ” low information voter” calls of “slant-eye” and “chink,” but she also grew generous, sincere, honest, and dependable under the moral tutelage of those who cared for her with no regard for her race.

And so it is with all who immigrate here. Assimilation simply happens. Culture and experience override DNA to shape identity. The children of those who could speak no English chat with the ease of the English-speaking talking heads on TV. Cultural garb and social norms are replaced by American standards. Now they will wear blue jeans and listen to indie rock and talk too loudly on their cell phones while riding the bus. They will participate in American style capitalism, purchasing goods, and consuming beyond their means. They will pay taxes. And when generations have passed and the ways of their ancestors are a distant memory, they will practice religions and traditions that hold forgotten meaning – but only on the holidays. They will recall the story of their ancestors who moved their family to America – even if only because a grandchild writing a school report has asked them.

As a realist and a child of at one time immigrants myself, I recognize how important it is to acknowledge our freedoms. I am also aware this word “freedom” has mutated into something scripted, something colloquial and almost mundane, something that bobs back and forth between political parties and religious zealots so frequently that we have developed an aversion to the term. Our senses so dulled to the surface we forget what relevance lies beneath. Yet what we are immersed in, here in America every single day, is more satiating and sustaining than any one single word — however meaningful — can possibly describe. We should be eternally thankful for our founding fathers who created this complicated unprecedented, literally revolutionary plan; a balance of powers and a representative democracy.

Perhaps one day, we will all choose to sit at our home computers on a quiet night and download the results of a DNA test we will have purchased and be shocked at the results. We may marvel at the fact that our cultural identity and our DNA may not be close as we thought to an exact match. And on that quiet night in front of the computer screen I hope that we remember that it is in our democratic participation that we preserve our freedoms and that is what makes us, in turn, truly American.

Role-playing is probably something everyone has done, or at least thought about/heard about. From the “customer” walking into the “bakery” and being asked if they would “like a large cannoli,” to the “plumber” over at the apartment to “lay some new pipe,” role-playing in the bedroom normally takes on everyday professions. The doctor and “head” nurse, the French maid, the lonely businessman who orders an escort; hell, I’ve even heard of a “caddie” and Tiger Woods, complete with Nike cap and red sweater, golf club, of course, “his own.” These are real-life situations taken on by real-life people. Although these are fun and very sexy (big fan of the baker scenario), I wanted something a little more enticing and risqué, that would bypass Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia. I wanted to break in costumes from a different time period… and it all came together one weekend in March.
Act. I. I thought of it one day while watching a trailer for Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Every girl loves that Jake Gyllenhaal, and I thought the outfits were quite intriguing: leather, armor, weaponry. I figured films of this nature are hot right now, what with Clash of the Titans, Robin Hood (yes, another one of these f-ing Robin Hood movies), and Prince, warrior movies are all the rage for 2010. Now for her, and since this was my fantasy – soon to be hers – I chose vampire: black leather boots, heels, red nails and lips, a black cape, dark eye makeup, white button down that can easily be torn off with my “sword,” slick hair… This wasn’t Elvira, rather Mr. and Mrs. Smith meets Catwoman meets Twilight. This was hot and a date needed to be set.

Act 2. I had my eyes on a Friday – no work the next day and a few days to recover from the “acting.” The week before I had to plan the adventure and set the scene. I had brushed up on the classics like Ben-Hur, Spartacus, Gladiator, and mixed in some Braveheart. I even practiced an Irish brogue (even though it had nothing to do with Persia, I liked it better). Next I went to a local NYC costume shop and picked up the necessary garb. I even grabbed a Roman soldier’s helmet, complete with red bristled top, sort of like a broom on my head.

Act. 3. The scene. When creating the perfect role-play experience, background music is quite effective. When you work out you wear an iPod, no? Same reasoning applies here. I waited at the door for her 9PM arrival. I paced, gold and leather gladiator gear shining from the dimly lit light that left a glow in the room. Strap-up boots, chest armor; I used me lady’s skin cream to get a glistening affect on my legs and arms. I was ready for war – and then the bell rang and the door swung open….

Act 4. I looked at the open entrance and there she stood, exactly how I had planned. The black latex shined like a beacon, her hair was wet and pulled back, she wore a white sheer see-through shirt pinned tight against her body, while a black cape flowed behind her. I could see her red nails as sharp as knives, and her red lips and powdered face completed the vampire look. Her dark eyes followed me as I slowly walked over to her. Soon we were face to face and she kicked the door closed without looking. Not a word was uttered and we stood there for what seemed like an eternity – warrior versus vampire.

The Final Act. I grabbed her around the waist and pulled her against me. I could feel her excitement and I know she felt mine. With one quick motion, I had her by the hair and she lunged for my neck, slowly nibbling and sucking. I pulled her to the bedroom and then… Some things are better left up to the imagination. I will admit that my foray into the world of role-play was much to be desired.

Epilogue. We woke up the next morning, costumes somewhere strewn across the room. I still happened to have my man-sandals on, and felt my neck was very sore so I went to the bathroom and noticed the blood on my neck and shoulder – signs of a very good night. “Let’s do that again sometime,” she said. “I have another role to play.” If it was anything like a vampire, I’m all game.

2. Short eye contact, to the floor= I’m flirting, get it? Averting my eyes to any person or object but you = no, I’m not flirting.

3. Short, abrupt movements, beware. I’m about to run to safety, so get out of the way.

4. If I suddenly have to go to the bathroom, just when you thought the conversation is getting interesting. It’s not. And the bathroom sounds more interesting right now.

5. One word answers. Yes, no, sure, ok, maybe, and a slight smile and head nod are all indications of complete boredom and irritation. I’m not an idiot, I know how to have a conversation, I’m simply choosing not to.

6. Though it may be my good side, if I turn away from you, it’s likely not a good sign. Perhaps it’s your bad breath, your overwhelming smell of cologne, either way it’s a, “Next!”

7. “I’m sorry, I have a boyfriend.” Even if you don’t see him, even if you, without doubt, know I don’t, forget it. Saying the “B” word is every girl’s safety net and our most popular excuse. And no, if I bring up my “boyfriend” this doesn’t mean we can still go on a lunch date as “friends.” At any point in the conversation, if “boyfriend” is mentioned, it’s a “no thanks”. We’re calculating it, it’s on purpose and we’re crossing our fingers that that is the only hint you need.

8. Please refrain from excessive calling. Once, ok. Leave a message, great. Call twice without an initial response- maybe a miscommunication, maybe you’re persistent. Call three times and I still haven’t picked up. Stop! There’s a fine line between genuine interest and stalker behavior. Stalkers are never a good look.

9. And lastly, don’t touch me unless I touch you. As my Dad told me, all men are predators. Thus, an uninvited touch puts me into self defense mode. I’ll go for your throat first, then the knees and possibly that other region you like so much- you didn’t want kids anyways, right? This is heavy stuff, I know. I also know most of you guys out there are decent, and you’ve mastered fundamental people skills and can recognize total bitch behavior. My hope, however, is to make this whole flirting/pick up thing a little more enjoyable with less hurt feelings and awkwardness. It’s basic stuff; just pay attention and remember the line between nice guy and complete creep. With hands in pockets and an invitation, come stand a little bit closer, I promise we won’t bite….hard.

This instinctive response (for which I am now so inordinately proud) wasn’t really a question, rather a statement. Notice the period above. I really couldn’t believe I had said it, and by the look on her face, neither could she: a little bewilderment mixed with joy, ending with a “er no, it’s okay, I’ll get them.” I mean, it’s a common thing every couple deals with, goes through, and what most men, say like 99%, shun. The words ‘birth control pill’ are not part of the male psyche; it’s a “pharmaceutical item” a woman takes monthly (give or take a few days) so she “doesn’t get pregnant.” The topic isn’t off-limits in a guy’s mind, it’s just not there. Not ignored, just never considered. I am wondering how we men haven’t been more hands-on with the whole thing; why isn’t it part of our responsibilities. After all it’s as vital to a committed responsible relationship as, well just about anything else.

It amazes me how far we can get right now – politically we are on the brink of something remarkable, a first, a seismic shift in US attitudes. Then look at something as simple as birth control where our parent’s and even grandparent’s attitudes prevail. (Anything further back in time is a real mystery) But men clam up, don’t do it, never have, the big no-no. It’s as if the word was blasphemous, sent by Satan himself. So I’ll ask the question: Why do men vie away and still view birth control as “magic pills?”

I’ve had my share of relationships, and somewhere, somehow, the question of protection always came up. That casual segway while relaxing on the couch, or a conversation over dinner, or even well into the preliminaries and a breathless advanced stage of undress. “Condom?” “I’m on the pill.” “Er, okay then.” It’s something we ‘talk’ about once and then assume forever after. As in never considered again. Everybody goes through it. We always want to be assured that we are dealing with responsible adults and that the person you are about to have sex with hasn’t been raw dog all these years. I am not being insensitive to the topic and I am aware of the problems of going on birth control: headaches, dizziness, breast tenderness, mood swings, decrease in libido and even, in extremis, thrombosis. These have all been well documented and I am sensible enough to know it is not a topic to be taken lightly.

Until I posed the question I was one of those men, a blind eye at the very thought of birth control: As long as I know she’s on it, ah, it’s out of my hands . Wrong. Why hasn’t this been touched before? We offer/open doors, we pay/offer to pay for dinner, we do purchase gifts, even offer/pull a seat out, wear a condom (voluntarily, not complaining here), yet we have a hard time grasping a 50-50 relationship with birth control pills.

At first I thought it was no big deal, my girlfriend or “friend” just went to Duane Reade on the third Thursday of every month at 9PM on a full moon wearing only red with a blue knit scarf. You know, like most women. It was trapped, hidden from my daily thoughts, something never touched on. I think as men we tend to fall into a malaise, a funk so to speak, letting tradition take hold and never let go. Like my fiancé cooking us dinner. Why? It’s easier. If we followed a pattern of things that were done before us, why change? It’s just one more thing to not think about.

But that’s why we have to change. Come on guys, step up to the plate. Your not in college anymore and you shouldn’t be obliterating the real world in all its glorious technicolors from your lives. There should be nothing, repeat nothing taken for granted in a relationship to ensure success, however embarrassing, expensive or potentially damaging. Best to grow up and face it. Maybe we’ll even get our good name (and cojones) back.

The M4 was not a minor character along my path toward a major career change. Every morning, I would see other people going off to work, both on the bus and along the route. And I envied what I thought they did for a living. They were ad execs, artists, social workers, doctors, and business-owners. I watched them come out of apartment houses on the Upper West Side and wondered what salary they made to enable them to afford such fancy doorman buildings. I would see the women’s shoes and wonder how much they cost – $500, $800, $1000? Likely, more than I made in a week in a job which, I was certain, inflicted more stress on a daily basis than they had experienced in their entire careers. Of course, it wasn’t reality that was playing with my mind each day as I fantasized about how everyone had it better than I did. The only part that was real was the result: I quit my job and found a career I love.

There’s something about being miserable about any aspect of life when you live in New York City – be it work, apartment, wardrobe, or even an order at a restaurant. One needs only to look around to find someone who’s got it better, or as important for a New Yorker, appears to. Once such greener pastures catch the eye, one of two things takes over: utter gloom or complete determination to go for something better. Luckily for me, I gained a renewed sense of purpose and moved on. I suppose it took gumption to drop everything to be a writer, which probably falls in the top five least stable career choices. But I don’t attribute my resolve to having guts of steel. I have only my favorite deadly sin and the Best City to feed my envy. Where else is every choice out there laid out in front of you, every day?

I remember when I was dragged to church as a child, asking my mother the meaning of the word “covet” – as in “thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s wife.” “Envy,” she told me. In our Catholic household, envy was a sin. But it wasn’t until I was older, old enough to choose not to go to church with my mother, that I began to question what was so bad about wanting what other people have. Taking what other people have is one thing, but desiring what they have and then going for it yourself is quite another. How does anyone grow into adulthood unless armed with envy for the things that others do and have?

Victor Hugo wrote, “The wicked envy and hate; it is their way of admiring.” This may be the best articulation of why envy is a sin. The claim is that such longing for the talent, money, or look of another only breeds hate and anger at the one possessed of such fortune. It’s no surprise that Buddhism has an equivalent for envy, called issa – defined as “a feeling of discontent and resentment aroused by and in conjunction with desire for the possessions or qualities of another” – that is also condemned. Craving leads to suffering, making issa an unwholesome place to be.

One might apply the same description to our beloved city. Much of our population comes here in search of the fabulous lifestyle portrayed in television, movies, and the grapevine of rumors similar to those that convinced early immigrants that American streets were paved with gold. Anyone who has lived in New York knows full well that the kind of apartments, social scene, and clothing portrayed in entertainment are not so easily attainable. But thanks to the coveted New York lifestyle, however rare or even mythical some of us believe it to be, our reputation for being fast-paced, hardworking, and uncompromising is anything but fictional. So given that feelings of envy can inspire such drive for success as much as they can inflate feelings of bitterness, it is really the resulting state of mind that should be condemned as the sin.

To me, jealousy is envy’s evil twin. Jealous, one is planted in one’s feelings with no plans or motivation for escape. That, to me, is indeed a sin. There were days on the M4 when my feelings of resentment were dense and unwavering. Yet without anyone to envy, I can’t say that I would have had the motivation to seek a better life for myself – something that would make me happy to go to work every day.

The alternative to envy, honest and unreserved applause for those who have achieved something we would like for ourselves, sounds a bit yuk and let’s face it, you’d have to be dead to be that detached. And to what end? As long as the energy conjured from our feelings of envy are cultivated into a focused, relentless push toward what has been dangled in front of us, then our only sin may be the things we do to get there. And that opens up other, far more socially corrosive alternatives that just happen to take away your freedom to feed your little green friend.

After all, envy is not something that magically disappears and not being able to chase that particular dragon will kill you.

Then, after a months of spending your time with only gay men and girlfriends, you meet a guy who’s actually pretty perfect. He’s sensitive, looks at you when you talk, rubs your back after a hard day, and thinks you’re beautiful. Sure, he’s a tiny bit feminine, but hey, it’s refreshing being around someone who’s in touch with their sensitive side!

One night you two go out to a party. You enter holding hands and things couldn’t be more perfect. But then half way through the night, you walk in on your new boyfriend with his tongue down another guy’s throat. Oh…

The first time a girl accidentally dates a gay guy, is a delicate time. Chances are, confidence has been shattered and a whole new list of insecurities that you never thought you had to worry about before abound. First of all, no you do not look, talk, or walk like a man. He was never hanging out with you because he was romantically interested so relax. Second of all, if you’re distressed because you only seem to be attracting one type of men – the kind who isn’t into women – here’s the thing: every straight girl in a city full of gay men are on the constant lookout for any passably attractive, semi-intelligent, straight guy. Every. Straight. Girl. It’s like all the lionesses in the jungle are starving and there’s only one buffalo at the watering hole. The competition is stiff out there, ladies. And it sucks. But you are a strong, independent woman and you will not sink to attempting to seduce a man who isn’t even into your gender. You definitely don’t need a man to survive. You can occupy yourself by doing other things. Focus on your career. Isn’t that why you came here anyway? Or with a 53% female populaon in New York City, there’s always lesbianism…

You might as well quit while you’re Behind,
 The only way to get ahead is to lose your Mind.

It’s either follow or be followed.
 Followers never lead, they simply have a plethora of paths to walk down, Which is why they always bow their head.
 The leaders of followers,
 So self-absorbed in their bubble of conceit,
 They’d rather look at their screen than at the pedestrian
 Walking in front of their SUV.

Texting while driving is dangerous Texting while walking is deadly
 And texting whilst dating—That’s Just Sad.

It makes me mad to think that my children will never meet The way my mom met my dad.

Because it’s Too scary to walk up to someone and say, “I like your shirt.”
It’s much easier to go Online,
 Make a profile,

Make ridiculous claims about yourself,
 Whose chances of being true are rated as slim to none,
 Even on a Magic 8 ball.
 Now wait. 
Wait some more. 
Get a hit.
 Not interested.
 Get more.
 Get excited.
 Get one that seems okay. 
Sift through whatever pictures aren’t private for any hidden gem of their face 
That way if you misplace your phone, you’d still be able
 To stalk them from memory.

Message. 
Message back.
 Engage in flirtatious word innuendos. 
Meet.
 Realize you built him up in your head.
 Realize he built himself up. 
Go home disappointed and depressed.
 Only to check your message board when you get home to see If anyone contacted you on your date.

So fucking Sad.

After I somehow brush my teeth and throw on my business casual outfit, I proceed to begin the eternal process of putting on layers to protect me from the blistering winds and 800 feet of snow that my local news station is reporting. When I finally leave my apartment, what seems like three years later, I tend to resemble the Pillsbury Doughboy, a reality that I have come to accept. The next chapter involves the treacherous commute to work, which constitutes descending into the depths of the New York City subway system where the blanket of snow that has gracefully coated my hair and jacket begins to melt and transforms into an endless stream. After taking off a singular glove and fishing for my Metrocard in one of my six jacket pockets, I am usually welcomed into my train platform by a mystical, robot voice in the sky. This voice never fails to tell me that my train has just departed and the next one won’t be arriving for another eleven minutes due to the usual “construction” happening in some unknown location in the alleyways. The final stretch of my journey to work always concludes with me stopping at the nearest coffee shop and spending a ridiculous eight dollars on a burnt of coffee served in the smallest cup size available on the market. At this point, I am sprinting through the street, minuscule coffee in hand, making life-altering judgments about which puddles are two inches deep and which ones extend to the literal core of planet Earth. All this said, my pride in living in New York City outweighs the infinite inconveniences that I encounter on my daily commute.

These propagative accomplishments, needless to say, no longer produce an envied sense of virile achievement in our contemporary society. To father nine sons by countless women does not make you an emperor, but rather the dumb ass who assumed your girlfriend was on the pill. Yet, although our gauge of procreation has adjusted with the times, (i.e. two daughters instead of 12), an archaic and consistent preoccupation with sex still lingers.

Given that our procreative responsibilities need no longer be such (hello in vitro fertilization!), both women and men are now free to explore a multitude of other pursuits and interests. Eggs can be frozen. Sperm can be whipped up and made more potent for later. Surrogate mothering is more accessible now than it has ever been, and if you don’t feel like burdening another woman with your plight, you can always adopt. In the meantime, you could learn 12 languages if you felt so inclined. Read an entire survey of British literature. Master chess. Design an eco-friendly yacht. Learn engineering. Hell, invent a cure for AIDS.

But we don’t. Despite the fact that science has given us the opportunity to shrug off our reproductive entanglements and thereby given us an entire lifetime to enrich ourselves and our minds, we continually succumb to mere sexual thoughts: The woman with the slinky dress at the bus stop. The man at the café with the very pronounced arms. Asses in shorts. Breasts in low-cut tops. Navels and hips. Legs and thighs.

What is this prehistoric sexual preoccupancy costing us in the long run? A couple harmless fantasies while taking the bus to work is, at first consideration, harmless. A ten to fifteen minute mental digression in a boring class is acceptable. But over a series of weeks or years, these moments produce astounding gaps in our productivity, in places where, perhaps, we were almost on the verge of medical breakthroughs, new artistic perspectives, or unexplored philosophical quandaries. In the proverbial foundation of human intellect, these fractures could be keeping us from truly magnificent endeavors.

Examine for a moment the accomplishments of Albert Einstein. Einstein was the father of modern physics with over 300 published scientific works. He also, allegedly, had a round-the-clock obsession with Marilyn Monroe. Now, with her on the brain, he managed to come up with the theory of relativity, relativistic cosmology, the first post-Newtonian expansion, and the first fluctuation dissipation theorem. Can you imagine what else he would have thought up if he hadn’t been simultaneously spinning masturbatory scenery in his head? The loss is surely ours.

Sex, in every form, position, and context, has been done a million times before. All possible scenarios for sexual fulfillment, embarrassment, and disaster are just about as predictable as the missionary position. Infidelity, love triangles, first-times, last embraces; all of these words arouse familiar plots that have foreseeable outcomes, manifested again and again in history, film, music, theatre, and literature. Our biology and our extensive past have allowed all combinations to ensue, and so when it comes to sex, and even love, there is nothing that has not been experienced or tried.

Yet, where our ingenuity and creativity is concerned, we have only begun to understand the capabilities of our own intellect. The human brain, the most complex grey matter of all animals, is still one of the most uncharted terrains in science. And while not all of us are Malcolm Gladwell, Noam Chomsky, Bill Gates, or Camille Paglia, the truth is most of us could be.

Procreative and recreational activities aside, time invested in procuring, maintaining, and considering potential partners all adds up. How would you spend your Friday nights if you didn’t have a sex drive? What about your weekends? What interests or talents might you have if you had directed your curiosities elsewhere (instead of pouring over highly salacious sex tips in magazines)? What might you have accomplished in the time that you spent with your lover, or more substantially, in the time that you spent courting him or her?

The wealth of “what if ” is enough to reconsider all of one’s contributions to the world, a planet rapidly deteriorating to global warming, economic crisis, and faith-based wars. Our problem solving energies are being frittered away contemplating ways to corner our best friend’s wife or obtain a pretty girl’s phone number.

The fixation on sex as the relationship barometer is also a somewhat exhausting gauge. Despite advancements in the field of couple’s therapy (i.e. communications tools, ways to healthily argue), most therapists would agree that sex is the number one dysfunction in most relationships. Esteemed as the “true” component of any romantic relationship, sex can often tear good relationships apart while holding bad relationships together. It seems that our desires, both powerful and incredibly base, continue to override everything else.

Is there not now a schism in our psyche? There has never been a broader gap between our primeval brain and the demands of our ever-evolving society. Although frequent sexual enthrallment did once have a place, particularly in more primitive days, this propensity does not correspond with our times. According to Did You Know.org, a week’s worth of The New York Times is more information than a person in the 18th century was likely to come across in their entire lifetime. Also according to the website, there are currently 540,00 words in the English language, about five times as many as there were during Shakespeare’s time. Our minds are obviously expanding in ways we don’t even notice.

Where do sexual pursuits weigh into this progression? In the face of constant invention and advancement, sex as a constant engrossment and a concentration seems almost outdated. Like the tonsils we don’t need or the appendix that serves no function, will sex, too, become simply a remnant of prehistory? Has sex, in fact, had its day?

by Aurora Dupin

In contrast to his father, the oldest Hawkins sibling, Danny, graduated from the University of Michigan and married a woman whose earning potential was as high as or higher than his was. Danny took a job in financial services but was reluctant to work the crushing overtime load his bosses expected, so in the mid-1990s he left to become the happy, fulfilled hands-on parent to their two daughters, a stay-at-home father before the term got trendy. According to his own mother, Danny runs a household every bit as well as she did. He shops and cooks with such exactitude that he rarely ends up with leftovers, maintains a budgeting system that involves placing portions of money in a box with sections designated for specific uses, keeps a color-coded family appointment calendar, and has a stair step for each member on which he places packages and other belongings. On Halloween, for fun, he tried doing a statistical analysis of trick-or-treaters to gauge how much candy to buy the following year but decided there were too many unpredictable variables. Over the years, Danny has served as treasurer of the PTA, treasurer of their homeowners association, and sympathizing treasurer of the golf club they belong to. In the evenings he is happy to listen to the workday accounts of his wife, Susan, a senior vice president with the Henry Ford Health System, with her challenges and sharing in her triumphs. “I have told Susie several times that my job is to make her life easier,” says Danny. “And I like doing it.”

Meanwhile, Danny’s younger sister Leslie works in supply-chain management for a Michigan transportation and logistics company, where she has risen to be part of the top leadership team. Her own husband, Damon, who everybody thought would be a hotshot corporate lawyer and the main breadwinner in the family, instead stepped back to become the secondary earner, working as a real estate broker and becoming the on-call parent for their three children. Like his brother-in-law Danny, Damon cooks, ambitiously; golfs, formidably; drives children to lessons and sports games; clean house; and is so comfortably domesticated that when some neighbors arrived for a card game and Damon answered the door holding a dust cloth, the neighborhood began calling him “Coco”. Damon, who is known for his humor, embraced the nickname and the reputation for housekeeping excellence that goes with it.

Another grown-up Hawkins sibling, Rhonda, had no idea what she wanted to do with her life when she was a young adult. In college Rhonda changed majors so many times she stopped counting. Eventually she switched to night classes and took a job as a receptionist at Magna International, a company that supplies systems and components to the auto industry. She began working in marketing, got her degree in that field, and did so well that she finds herself- though she is too self-deprecating to allow that this is a big deal- the company’s head of global marketing. Her husband, Hank, works in the restaurant business and loves what he does, but scaled back his hours when Rhonda got a promotion that required her to take extensive overseas trips on short notice.

Another Hawkins sibling Lori, who works in finance, is in a committed relationship with another woman; both contribute monetarily to the household.
The other Hawkins daughter, Shelly, is a divorced mother of two, supporting her own household with a job in the health-care field. Out of the six adult children of Gary and Marcelle Hawkins, only one- Michael- is in a traditional marriage where he has filled the role of primary earner. Six adult siblings. Five households supported by women. One generation. One complete economic flip.

It’s a profound change in the balance of economic power, a striking role reversal and one that was unplanned, barely noticed, in fact, sneaking up on the Hawkins family when nobody was looking. In a matter of decades, the traditional male breadwinner model has given way to one where women routinely support households and outearn the men they are married to, and nobody cares or thinks it’s odd. The Hawkins family- sane, functional, rooted in a Midwestern state known for family values- offers a convincing vision of what America is becoming. We are entering an era where women, not men, will become the top earners in households. We are entering the era in which roles will flip, as resoundingly as they have done in this family. You laugh, but that Big Flip is just around the corner.

Not that long ago, in 1970, the percentage of U.S. wives who outearned their husbands was in the low single digits. Some of these women were super-achievers, but more often they were women married to men who were ailing, drifting, unsteady, or unemployable. For generations, female breadwinners were mostly poor women- women whose husbands had difficult providing. Forty years later, this template has changed dramatically, as the forces that produce female breadwinners have become more powerful and varied. Almost 40 percent of U.S. working wives now outearn their husbands, a percentage that has risen steeply in this country and many others, as more women have entered the workforce and remained committed to it. Women occupy 51 percent of managerial and professional jobs in the United States, and they dominate nine of the ten U.S. job categories expected to grow the most in the next decade. Part of this ascent is due to the gradual lifting of discriminatory practices that once funneled women into lower-paying sectors and obliged them to quit work when they got married. Part is due to long-term changes in the economy that have chipped away at male sectors like construction and manufacturing while bringing big increases in women’s fields such as education and health care. And a large part is due to women’s own grit and initiative, evidenced by the fact that women now outnumber men on college campuses in the United States as well as around the world.

By the year 2050, demographers forecast, there will be 140 college-educated women in the United States for every 100 college-educated men. Globally, a generation of young women is entering the job market who are better educated than young men are, and poised to become the most financially powerful generation of women in history. In coming years, economists- who study major transitions such as the rise of agrarian society, the dawn of the industrial age, the ascent of the white-collar office worker, the opening of the global economy- will look back and see this as the era when women realized their earning power and, for the first time, outpaced their partners. “The trends are clear,” agrees Gary Becker, the Nobel Prize-winning economist at the University of Chicago who pioneered the economic study of families, even predicting that “we could see a day where women, on average are earning more than men.”

It’s Friday night, and you and your girlfriends are at your favorite Midtown bar/ Chelsea club/ East Village hangout. The music is rockin’, your outfit is bangin’, and you feel like a million bucks. Just as you’re really getting it on, you notice that handsome bloke across the dance floor checking you out with a familiar look in his eyes. Suddenly, he’s sidling up to you, and before you can even judge whether or not you like his cologne, he’s hitting you up with one hopeful question: “How much do you cost?”

Well, not exactly. In reality, the sentence coming out of his mouth is: “Can I buy you a drink?” But is there really any difference between the two?

Variations of this phrase are uttered countless times a night in millions of places across the globe. It has become a common routine in modern culture, yet it seems as though few of us have ever given much thought to the implications behind the proposal. In buying you that drink, your potential suitor is trading his money for your time and attention, elements of yourself not far removed from more intimate things like your body. Sure, everyone does it… but, as our mothers taught us, that does not always make it right.

Prior to the liberated sixties, relationships were usually begun at work or school, or through family and friends. It was rare to even find a woman – single or otherwise – inside a drinking establishment. However, with the roar of the feminist movement at the end of that decade, ladies began flooding into bars and boozing with the boys. Not surprisingly, the boys did not mind. The combination of men, women, and alcohol proved so successful that the trend stuck (although unshaven legs and bra-boycotting did not), and we now have a culture which includes bar-based romance.

Of course, this is all well and good; leaving aside the ‘eye-contact’ benefits’ over the (more often than not) mis-informed swiping right method; I have yet to meet a person who doesn’t enjoy a fun drink and some hot flirtation across the dance floor. Romance and attraction are universal and, one might even argue, essential to the human experience. The real problem lies within the motivation behind the offer of the bought drink, in the implicit assumption that a man must spend money on you to get your attention…. and whatever else. There are a multitude of other ways he could go about showing you that he is worth your time, but somehow we have all been convinced that the only option is for him to buy it cheaply.

How did we end up with this expectation? Biologists would argue that the answer can be found in our genes. Back in the day (the prehistoric one, that is), a woman had a specific and straightforward set of criteria for her mate: he needed to have the strength to provide for and protect a family. Females couldn’t exactly go out on their own to hunt saber-toothed tigers for dinner back then, so males had to prove that they were capable of surviving, with the assumption they would pass on those capable genes to their offspring. The ability to bring home dinner was the number one priority for single cavewomen, and it was this quality that cavemen tried to showcase when pursuing a mate.

Over a few millennia, this demand evolved from basic bodily needs to more material ones. As families moved out of caves and into the suburbs, society mandated that the male half of a couple continue to bring home dinner, now in the form of a paycheck. In turn, women adjusted their criteria from physical strength to financial success. And men started attempting to prove their genetic value by flashing their wallets in our direction whenever possible.

This might have worked for a few hundred years, but when the world finally realized that women also make great employees, our standards should have changed. Females have been a prevalent part of the workforce for over a century. Today, we constitute forty-six percent of the workforce, and a quarter of American women in two-income relationships are the primary breadwinner of the two. Financial success and the ability to provide are no longer necessary conditions in our consideration of mate – we are bringing home our own bacon now, and we can certainly use it to buy our own drinks.

Yet, society still encourages the idea that, if a guy wants to get a girl’s attention, it will cost him.

“A good hunter is someone who’s going to see you, go up to you, introduce himself, and buy you a drink. Nothing is worse than standing at a bar… he’s with his beer.. and you’re like, ‘Why isn’t he talking to me, why doesn’t he offer me a drink, he’s cheap!’

A vast number of women still seem to adhere to this thinking, totally expecting a man to buy them a drink in order to show his interest. We have been brainwashed to anticipate a man to invest something in us if he wants to get to know us better … and somehow we have arrived at the conclusion that an eight-dollar drink is a good option. SERIOUSLY! Aren’t we worth a tad more than that dude?

Because, oh wait, our brains have evolved, too. We may have gotten to this point out of biological necessity, but we are now far beyond worrying about our daily survival in the world. For the first time in the history of womankind, we all have the opportunity to completely disregard physical and financial demands in our consideration of a mate. To top that off, there is absolutely nothing stopping us from taking on the role of the pursuer as well. If we can go after everything else in life that we want, who is to say we can’t do the same romantically?

Ladies, let’s buck the status quo. We have come a long way over the last 50,000 years to get the world to recognize our ability to function independently of anyone else, so why should we insist on perpetuating such a backwards mating ritual? It is time to let society know that there are better ways to start a relationship. The next time the cutie across the dance floor offers to buy you a drink, you could counter with a more neutral suggestion instead: “Thanks, but I’ve already got my own. How about a dance, instead?” Better yet, you could even walk up to that man of interest and start the conversation. That way, he’ll realize that you’re worth more than any dollar amount, let alone a paltry cocktail at the bar.

You see, I work three jobs. As a novice New Yorker, or even an experienced one, this is not uncommon. Which means that to make ends meet, I must dash from one job to the next. It means I leave my box of an apartment at 8 am every morning with my ginormous purse—not because it’s the season for Balenciaga, (well, partly) but because I must carry an extra set of work clothes, food, shoes, and everything I need for the day—and not return until midnight. It means that I am often sleep deprived.

However, it also means that I am finally doing what I want and love to do, that I find my life exhilarating and full, and that means, in the words of my sister, that I am New York Woman.

Power Woman and all, the fact is that the time I have to go out with friends or even, dare I say, dating, has been downright rare. And in a city filled with TK men, there just isn’t the time to sashay bars looking for guys to date. So there must be a way to take the reigns of dating into my own hands. Which is why, based on a friend’s suggestion, I bribed Li with the promise of free drinks to sign up with me on this nontraditional, “real quik, real easy, match guaranteed or your next event half off” speed-dating event. I’m not sure what was causing Li’s anxiousness: the event itself, that they couldn’t properly spell “quick”, or the fact that if we didn’t match with any guy, our next event would be equivalent to bargain shopping.

But, no matter. I was here, and a flurry of activities enveloped me, cocktails were being drunk, bells were ringing, and yes, I introduced myself, you guessed it, 20 times. It must be admitted that some three minutes were longer than others. No offense to the dear sweet gay man or the wild-eyed actor who referred to himself in the third person, but I digress. There was one boy however, who I’ll call Matt, whose three minutes felt unexpectedly rushed to me. In short, I thought it would be nice to spend an entire half hour having a drink with him.

I had a lovely time, and when I thought about it, felt giddy with having a new crush. He called me the day after our drink (usually unheard of). “So when are you free again?” he asked easily. I paused, my mind racing. When was I free again? Genuinely baffled by the question, my worn out day planner had to be pulled out. Flipping rapidly through the pages, I found a tiny blank spot. “Oh here we go,” I said, relieved. “I get off work early Tuesday night at ten, not next Tuesday, but the one after that…” I trailed off when I could actually hear him frown.

“Go ahead and pencil me in,” he told me. “But maybe before that, say, tomorrow? I can pop into your work and bring you lunch…”
I smiled at him over the phone. I really did like this boy, who I met in a situation as funny as speed dating. Who would’ve thought? “You know what? I’ll just take a long lunch tomorrow.”

Because busy as I am, I know I can do all that I need to do, and then, I’ll make time for him. I am, after all, a New York City Woman.

It’s not so unusual to hear from the mouths of men, childish about and possessive of their privileges as they are, to whine about feminism. Since the movement of feminism began they have tried to write it off as a phase, to suggest that really just women were unsatisfied in their sex lives. Which, yeah, I’m sure they were. But that wasn’t the problem, and it still ISN’T the problem. It works for men to turn the feminist movement into a ‘man-hating’ or ‘reverse oppression’ (oppression my ass) because it makes them feel better about themselves, about the privilege they enjoy and the rape culture that’s propagated through the patriarcy. It’s easier to look at bra-burnings and the extreme ends that feminists resorted to in the 70s when they were desperate not to be written off and to tell women ‘Don’t actually fight for your own autonomy, your own freedom, your own rights. You can vote! You’re allowed to have a job! Look, if you stick with feminism you’re clearly just an unfeminine lesbian who wants to burn her bra. Join the ranks again and be content.’

CONTENT ? ? ? ? ?

There’s nothing to be content about. Feminism isn’t won. Feminism hasn’t even gotten more than half-way to the ultimate goal! And yet more and more I hear or see women, in person, on TV, over the internet, and that is exactly the shit that’s coming out of their mouths.

Yes, things are different than they were in the 10s, 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s. Yes, we’ve gotten to a point where women aren’t going to be burned for speaking out of turn or having ideas. We’ve managed to get to a point where women are expected to be able to read and write as a basic component of education, and that’s awesome. Many many things are better, and pretty much anyone born after 1980 takes this ‘better’ for granted, because hey – we don’t live under the thumb of religion, right? At least we’ve got it a fuck of a lot better than the Arab world, or something, right?

What is wrong with you?

How the hell can you think that this ‘better’ is good enough, and how do you DARE think that we don’t still have all of these problems? Having the vote isn’t close to being an indication that feminism’s work is done. Sure, a male boss probably isn’t going to tell you that he’s so happy to be getting ‘the same brains for less money’, but if feminism had done it’s job we wouldn’t still be making 70 cents to a man’s dollar for the same damned job. If feminism had finished it’s work day care and job schedule flexibility would be available for all mothers in all sectors and women wouldn’t be pressured to choose family or career. It would be a given that men could get off their assess to do some fucking laundry every now and then, because they’re not LITTLE children. “Boys will be boys” would be banished from our vocabulary because there is NO reason that boys should get away with shit based solely on their private parts that girls aren’t given the same leeway with. Toys wouldn’t be colored blue and pink and girls wouldn’t be under pressure to be princesses all the damned time. A boy would be able to wear pink without being called “girly”, and people would appreciate that a girl can play sports, or punch you in the face.

Don’t forget that even as we speak one of the most fundamental rights a woman can have in regards to her health is under attack from men on all sides of the country! Because obviously old white men know better than a woman and her doctor what is best for her body. Obviously old white men are better at making choices about shit that they will never experience, and that’s why their laws about women’s bodies should be accepted. Because obviously women are still just here to be incubators and milk cows – even if they don’t want to be.

All because things are “better”. “Good enough”. So good enough that now, apparently, we need a new counter-movement! They call themselves Male Rights Activists and I have nothing but a couple middle fingers for them. It’s not just men; now there are even women who are joining in. Because men have done such a good job of making feminism into a dirty word that even women are getting swept up in images of lesbians with sledge hammers taking swings at poor, innocent men who only want to keep the women suppressed and in their place oh it’s so fucking sad!

GOOD ENOUGH ? ? ? ?

Good enough is NEVER good enough. If good enough was good enough than we wouldn’t still be so goddamned hypocritical in our attitudes towards femininity and female sexuality. Girls are supposed to be beautiful, they’re supposed to try and attract boys so they can propagate the human race, BUT NOT TOO MUCH. Don’t wear a skirt too short! Or a shirt cut too low! If you do that than you’re naughty! You don’t take enough precautions, and you let yourself have the same kind of fun that men have, so you probably deserved it if they try to take advantage of you. After all a girl is being too sexy.

And let’s not forget how women have to have special literature. Because how could men enjoy ‘chick lit’? It’s all about… you know, relationships! Love! Not killing things but maybe communicating them! Or dealing with emotions and figuring out how to go about expressing them! Because that’s GIRLY. Not for MEN. If that’s not a direct piece of bullshit from the Patriarchy, I don’t know what is. But girls are accepting of it. We’re accepting of it because that’s how we’re raised, and it’s so fucking pervasive that we don’t even consider it might not be normal.

If you’re going to sit there and tell me that feminism is over !! That its work is done ?? Then I don’t even know how hard to hit you over the head with a frying pan. I’m letting you in on this secret for your own good, children: Feminism isn’t over. You may want to be a housewife, and that’s absolutely fine. But don’t you dare stop fighting for your sisters for whom that life isn’t fulfilling. Complacency will cost you just as much as it will them.

The specific scene in question above stuck with me because I find so many men—so many city men—in this situation, working, striving, making it work, content. I also know men that are super-successful and some that are barely making ends meet. The situation in which Gosling and Williams’ characters find themselves raises a question on the societal pressures that men endure. It also put my life into perspective, being in a marriage where money and security are topics that seem to crash land on the dinner table. In a world that strives for a flat line of sameness across the board, we men are still subject to expectations to reach for the stars while being defined by money and careers and the support we provide. We’re the ones in the relationship that, no matter what, have to have the successes that make a relationship’s blood flow. I’m not whining and I’m not repudiating my duties as an active member of this great country or passing the baton to others because I’d given up. I am just saying that in the year 2011, it still feels to me that men are set against a higher standard, and that they must meet or surpass a ceiling of potential that may or may not necessarily attainable. Why are men subject to such scrutiny nowadays? Where does the term “satisfied” fit in the relationship equation? I don’t think it does, and that’s a shame.

I think that we as human beings are slaves to Capitalism, to the “dream” branded red hot with monetary symbols, to goals predestined and set forth long before we were born. We live to work, then buy, obtain, collect, a status, in all forms. That status is seared into our collective minds and it creeps and manifests itself within every relationship. It is unavoidable. Significant-other-potential is often metered by money and in this day and age, who can “afford” to ignore that? You are judged by what you can bring to the table, your ID attached to a yearly figure. People’s lives get clogged with information, monthly utility bills, mouths to feed, car payments. A good percentage of the day is spent worrying about money, so much so that we don’t appreciate what we have, what we’ve been given, what’s in front of us. We need to get back to life with new values; recognizing what is important and celebrating one another instead of what we can offer one another.

I was at a Downtown bar the other night, out for a friend’s birthday, when I bumped into an old friend, a day trader. We started chatting about the economy and how the divorce rate in America is high because couples today are so stressed about money issues that it drives them to the fault line. This isn’t new stuff; everyone knows money is one of the main reasons that couples go Splitsville. But I think it’s worth noting that having a good job and lots of money for security has its drawbacks, too. Those come in the form of Recessions, rising inflation, a crashing economy, fewer and fewer jobs, a psyche at wit’s end. In other words, we’re trying our hardest so please be patient. It is time to reevaluate our needs and wants and learn to get back to what makes a couple special.

The answer for me is simple, but I don’t think it will ever be universally settled upon. The way we live today will only change if the system changes, but that won’t be easy. At some point in the film, Gosling says “… But it seems like girls get to a place where they just kinda pick the best option… ‘Oh he’s got a good job.’ I mean they spend their whole life looking for Prince Charming and then they marry the guy who’s got a good job and is gonna stick around.” I want to believe that this isn’t true, but I find in so many instances where it is. Please be the one that changes my mind.

Call within the next ten minutes and you will not only receive this battery operated self activating kitchen knife for yourself, but for each member of your family as well! Call within the next five minutes and you will get TWENTY knives, for half the price of ONE with a FULL money back guarantee! Call within the next TWO minutes and get 75% off the entire purchase, plus an extra twenty bucks back and sixteen handmade Indian Silk knife satchels!!!! Act now, supplies are limited!!!

Ahhhhhhhh. Must. Buy. Now.

Exaggeration, maybe. But seriously, these direct response marketing tricks actually work! And a lot of the time, for merchandise almost as ridiculous, if not more. Why do we feed into this?! I mean, I’ve had my eye on the magic bullet for a good 2 years now, watched the entire segment more times than I can count on both hands….and I don’t cook. The urgency and repetition behind the air time of these silly segments is easy to interpret, yet, knowing that, I still continue to feel the need to get my hands on that clever little blender. Why? Well, because in case I get the urge to take up cooking, no blender of mine will be below par! It will be the finest chopper in town, with unlimited peeling and dicing capacities. Oh yes.

Kicking off in the 80’s along with a plethora of other wacko fads, info-mercials might have started out as a trend, but about four decades later I think it’s safe to say they’re not going away any time soon. I’ve spent many a sleepless night flipping through bad late night TV hoping to find something to ease my minor insomnia. Enter: the info-mercial. “Paid Programming” glued to the information bar of just about every available channel usually makes me a distinctive blend of irritated and semi-intrigued. After a hopeless search for a syndicated talk show or at least an old sitcom, I usually find myself being yelled at by perky people of a variety of looks and professions to the point of anxiety. Ok, ok! I’ll buy it!

Alright, so I realize the air fryer oven isn’t the perfect example of the infomercial in all it’s ridiculous glory. Because it does actually serve a purpose, and I happen to have a couple friends who have it and say it works great. (I’m not justifying my desires I swear.) Of course, the people with those freakish smiles plastered on their faces shouting about how it will change your life forever might be a bit much, but at least it’s functional. But what about the ones that are ….just….abso- lutely…. insane. Enter: the Tiddy Bear.

The Tiddy Bear was one of my personal favorites. It’s was designed to increase comfort in the, um, tiddy, area, by providing some cushion between said tiddies and that troublesome seatbelt. Hmmm. I could see the situation getting a little uncomfortable, once in a while, and I’ve had to readjust my seatbelt now and again so it didn’t cut into me, surely. And maybe large chested women (aka not me) might run into even further discomfort. But come on, that name. I mean…how was the woman in that ad not laughing? (If you haven’t seen it, it is imperative that you do, very very soon. It’s on Youtube))

I think it’s got to be the fact that these low-budget-commercials-on-steroids know just how to play on our emotions and get into our heads. Of course, the typical half hour deadline before every last one on earth is sold helps out a bit too. It is my personal belief that the sweatshops in Southeast Asia characteristically necessitate the sale of more than 25 items sold to break even, but that’s just me. But the marketing brains behind the whole operation have a significant advantage. The manufacturers of these products have the capacity to figure out how their methods of advertisement are working, since the orders are directly called in. Calculating how people are perceiving the product can be done by the marketing or advertising companies in a matter of hours. They don’t have to wait to get their stuff in stores, so they can rearrange and redirect their approach as they see fit. And as it happens, evidently, the more ludicrous the better.

The way an info-mercial goes about getting right under our skin directly correlates with the style in which it is presented. This style could be seen almost as some variety of groundbreaking news report – that if you know what’s good for you, you will not miss out on this once in a lifetime chance. That type of pressure is how the marketing works. Is this really fair? To the public? To the consumer? Personal control and rationale allow most people I know to forego all the silliness and see what the programming is really good for – a hearty laugh. But that doesn’t change the fact that millions and millions of Snuggies (remember them) were sold across the nation.

Capitalism is defined as an economic system based on private ownership, and depending on means of production, distribution and exchange of wealth, maintained by private individuals or corporations. Insert the word info-mercial as the preliminary word in the previous statement and it would still make sense. A whole hell of a lotta sense, in fact. The face of capitalism depends on the exploitation of a community and the ability to influence this community to the point of commitment. Unfortunately, the word capitalism is like the word communism in this country, a big elusive group of storm clouds just above the American public, fumbling around, knocking into each other. Yelling out for attention. Very clearly present, very clearly crucial, yet easy to write off as if it’s all not really there. It just couldn’t be! Better off to ignore the entire notion, otherwise we might feel slightly uncomfortable.

When you take something like an info-mercial, whether it be for Handerpants! ‘The underpants for your hands!’ (note: these are fingerless gloves) or PajamaJeans (note: self explanatory stupidity) it’s hard to see beneath the preposterous surface. But if you take a look, you’ll see that there’s something distinctly damaging about incessantly slapping Americans in the face with false promises, outlandish declarations and stress heavy artificiality. Sigh. Mom, if you’re reading this, I still want a Air Fryer Oven. My birthday’s right around the corner.

Tyler Durden may be the coolest guy that’s (cinematically) walked the earth. A true Renaissance man, the (anti)hero of Fight Club provided an outlet for troubled young men to re-invest their lives with meaning, stood up to make political and social change where he felt change was necessary, and created a sense of true community among a group of misfits who felt disconnected, all from humble beginnings as a soap entrepreneur. Sure, a lot of the “change” he made came as the result of blowing up buildings and getting guys to punch each other senseless (not to mention pouring lye on Ed Nor-ton’s hand, arguably one of the most painful scenes I’ve ever seen in a movie). But when push comes to shove, I want to be Tyler Durden at the end of the film, or at least as close to him as I could be.

When the visions of Brad Pitt’s abs on my body withered away and the realization that chemical explosives are, in fact, a bad thing became clear again, I put my dreams of being Tyler Durden’s next protégé on hold. But for some, this dreamworld never dissipates, which leads to some really fucked up things. Take for instance the Queens elementary school teacher who was charged with “acting in a manner injurious to a child under 17,” after it came forward that he had started his own fight club comprised of his fourth grade students. The playground turned into a boyhood bloodbath every time the 10:45 morning bell would ring.

This is an extreme. Sometimes all we want to do is have a little fun. And hell, I’ve never been one to say no to that. And because this is the way Hollywood has programmed us, who’s to say it’s wrong? The law, that’s who.

As soon as families started looking a little less like Norman Rockwell paintings and a little more like Modern Family, child-rearing took up an approach that I’ll coin as the “box method.” Since the 60’s, we’ve all been raised by various means of delivering the message: televisions, VCRs, movie screens, DVDs, downloads, streaming. Hence, it would only make sense that as a people, we’ve developed a system of values and desires based on what we’ve seen onscreen. We’ve learned to assign demigod status to heroes, of both the regular and anti-variety, who have graced the screen in our lifetimes, and we’ve subconsciously created a Rolodex in the back of our minds that tells us what’s right and wrong based on their behaviors. We’ve developed our hopes, dreams, and aspirations from Daniel Craigs and Matt Damons of the world, and we’ve spent the majority of our childhoods living out these fantasies on the playground and in the backyard. As kids, we became so close to these movies and so far removed from real life that we never dreamed of the lives we ended up living, or the careers we ended up occupying. I remember countless hours spent on the hot California blacktop imagining I was a crooked cop, a robber, or a highway bandit, but I can’t recall a single recess spent playing a financial analyst or corporate lawyer.

Just because the blacktop has turned into happy hour in Hell’s Kitchen doesn’t mean we’ve “grown up” by any measure. We may be sitting in chairs in cubicles in tall office buildings playing financial analysts and corporate lawyers everyday, but that’s not to say that much has changed in the ways of our idolatry. We still yearn for what we’ve seen in the movies, what we still see. We pepper our day-to-day with fantasies of the “caper criminals,” those fearless men who live out their lives onscreen, breaking the law in every which way, who we can’t help but adore. We go to the movies expecting the thrills we can’t achieve in our own realities, and when we see it all acted out in front of us, it sparks that basic human instinct to cause a little trouble, to stick it to the man who decided to switch the office toilet paper from Charmin Ultra Soft to generic one-ply. The next day, we wake up ready and eager to perform what we studied in that Scorsese flick, only to stare in the closet and realize our wardrobes are full of sensible cashmere socks instead of black ski masks. Sadly, the fantasy is quickly dissolved. Call it a case of criminal blue balls: it’ll sting for a bit, but when it gets down to it, you probably made the right decision not to go any further.

But what about that guy who doesn’t stop there? Is he a badass or an idiot? A misinterpreted hero or a plain criminal? While a lot of this area is clearly defined by the law, I think it gets a little sticky when you start to unpack it a little. I will be the first to admit that I don’t think stealing is an OK thing to do. In recent years, a lot of young Americans have started this bizarre trend of “thrill theft,” where rich kids from Connecticut are caught stealing from stores simply because it was the only thing that could put a spike in the charts of their prep school lives. I guess it beats intravenous drug use, but that’s no justification for taking something that isn’t yours. Stealing wallets on the street or purses on the train? Forget about it. I hope we can all agree that there’s no justifiable reason for this. Don’t even try the Robin Hood, “stealing from the rich and giving to the poor” excuse either, because I’m sure the victim of this crime would be happier to buy someone a sandwich or donate a few dollars than he would be canceling all his credit cards and standing in the DMV line waiting for yet another embarrassing driver’s license picture (take it from experience, this whole debacle sucks). This stuff is illegal for a reason: it’s immoral and you wouldn’t want it done to you.

However even with all the provisions of the law that make this kind of behavior punishable in our country, there exists a whole style of “stealing” that’s almost institutionalized in the states. It is a sort of “capitalist crime” that nobody would ever argue as unlawful, and that exists on every street corner in America. OK, that’s a lot of words, but what does it mean, and how are we all a part of it? Like this: when a store or an individual sells an inferior product at a price that somebody would consider exorbitant if they knew the real quality, should we consider that a theft of sorts? New Yorkers, let’s take an example that is near and dear to many of our hearts and examine the sale of umbrellas on the streets. How many of us have been caught in a disgusting January surprise rainstorm and have been forced to succumb to the closest vendor under scaffolding shelling out shitty umbrellas for $15? He knows that the umbrella will undoubtedly break before you even make it to your train, and with this knowledge, he takes your money and gives you what is essentially a piece of garbage in return. While this “crime” isn’t something that will earn him criminal charges, is it not still a morally criminal act? Is it right for somebody to use their intellect and the benefit of capitalism to take your money from you like this, knowing that they are the sole benefactors of the transaction? As long as we keep purchasing umbrellas on those awful days, we are complying with this kind of “crime”, and while it seems victimless, your pockets will still miss that $15.

It seems that a kind of double standard exists when it comes to dealing with crime in the United States, favoring the intellectually adept over those with physical might. While I’m sure almost all Americans would be outraged by a linebacker of a man taking Little Orphan Annie to the floor and stealing her purse, we rarely hear of people taking a stand greater than living room grumbles over business big wigs collecting their twice-yearly bonuses as our economy crumbles even further to the ground. If you want to commit the perfect crime, don’t act on physical impulse. Rather, take your time, get out the drafting paper, and be ready to use your words. I can’t tell if Americans are really smart or really stupid to let this kind of “crime” pervade in our country, but either way it seems to be the way of the land, so why not take advantage of it? At the end of the day, if you’ve got some thoughts in your head and the mysterious charm of Tyler Durden (the six pack is a bonus), America may be your treasure chest. Let the plundering begin.

How much more significant would words be if we were certain that there was genuine meaning behind them? How much better if we knew when somebody asked, they really were interested and meant it? And how improved would our society be if we started thinking more about what we actually feel and do, instead of relying on society’s robotic guidelines for behavior? Is it better to say nothing and people think of you as impolite, or utter the platitudes… and they still don’t know if you’re being impolite

How are you? your co-worker asks, as she breezes past before you can respond.

Have a great day, the girl at the shop counter drones, as she hands you your bags and turns back to her iPhone.

…please, your boss adds, after assigning you a project that you have no choice but to do. A request you probably respond to with a thank you, although there’s no doubt you are not thankful for the extra work.

It happens every day: people saying things they don’t really feel, all in the name of “being polite.” It happens so frequently that most of us have ceased to even think about it – except, of course, when another person fails to follow society’s set rules of etiquette – those same rules that have a deadening effect on human interaction. Our daily interactions have become entrenched with these automatic turns of phrase, and more often than not they are totally meaningless. So why even bother?

Blah blah blah ? your co-worker asks… blah blah blah! the girl at the counter drones… Blah blah blah! your boss adds. Better to say nothing ?

People are continuously lamenting the slow disappearance of politeness in modern society. The headlines abound. “Are More People Forgetting Their Manners?” “In America, Good Manners Just Keep On Disappearing.” Where have our manners gone? everyone seems to be asking, in a panicked and stricken tone. Yet, amidst the alarm that the nation is going to hell in a handbasket because many of us have written off rote acts of etiquette, I wonder if we’re not all better off this way. It is arguable that our day-to-day politesse is actually a farce of universal proportions, and that we would all do well to drop the act.

There is no question that insincerity is intrinsic to our manners. From the earliest age, children are trained to automatically ask for everything with a “please,” always followed by a “thank-you,” whether or not the sentiments are genuine. If you don’t say the “magic words,” you don’t get what you want, kids! It’s a simple enough pattern, and it seems we never grow out of our reliance on it. As adults, the world tells us to do the same thing. So we follow unquestioning, like little children, clothing even the most minor of exchanges in flourishes of etiquette, regardless of what our actual feelings might be.

At the very least you might claim that the exchanges are pleasant and non-threatening. But are they really? You often can’t tell and that’s the problem. Is the co-worker being sarcastic? Facetious? The shopworker passive-aggressive? The boss just plain mean?

Therefore, one must ask: what is the point of politeness when it is completely devoid of meaning? In his Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote, “[n]owadays… a vile and misleading uniformity governs our customs, and all minds seem to have been cast in the same mould: incessantly politeness makes demands, propriety issues orders, and incessantly people follow customary usage, never their own inclinations. One does not dare to appear as what one is.” This particular observation still holds true 300 years later. Our standards of etiquette in no way reflect our true natures; rather, the rules that govern our lesser interactions may actually numb our senses of self and promote a vice worse than impoliteness – dishonesty.

On top of these implications is the dangerous tendency for us to so often confuse manners with morality. In no way are good manners representative of good character. A serial killer is just as likely to behave politely as the average non-homicidal person. How often have we heard a convicted murderer’s friends and family say, “We had no idea this could ever happen. He was such a kind, polite boy!” But what do his manners have to do with anything? we should ask. What about that tendency to torture small animals, or the obsession with Satanic death metal music? No, we continue to be shocked that someone who exhibits good manners could also be capable of going on a killing spree.

Oscar Wilde comments on this element of society in his famous short story, The Picture of Dorian Gray. Through perfect manners and careful social maneuvering, Wilde’s hideously two-faced main character is able to lull everyone else into revering him as an upstanding member of society, all the while committing atrociously evil deeds behind their backs. At one point, he delightedly muses, “[f]orm is absolutely essential to society. It should have the dignity of a ceremony, as well as its unreality… Is insincerity such a terrible thing? I think not. It is merely a method by which we can multiply our personalities.” Keep in mind that this guy was inspired by the Devil himself. That’s not exactly positive commentary on the state of our culture.

It is true, as our parents taught us when we were young, that politeness can help you get what you want. In our world as it is, you are probably more likely to end up with that shiny new toy, or that million-dollar business deal if you bookend your request with a “please” and a “thank you.” Of course, when dealing with someone you know well or have something invested in, your sentiments are likely be genuine – you would be truly grateful for that gift or business contract. But such is not usually the case with strangers on the street, when there is rarely true emotion behind those words. What does it mean for us as a society if we promote such standardized dishonesty as an easy means to “oil the wheels” of our human interactions? At what point does that oil poison our souls?

To clarify, I would never suggest that we rashly throw off all the rules of civilized behavior and start being rude to everyone we meet on the street. Just as respect is earned, disrespect must also be earned, and it is not right to treat someone who you don’t know with outright rudeness. And, yes, some of modern society’s mandates are in place for a good reason – to keep in check our more barbaric and harmful human tendencies. But I would argue that this specific expectation for generalized, meaningless politeness is unnecessary, not to mention a real restriction on our emotions and a universal promotion of dishonesty. I think we need to question why we accept such ridiculous rules concerning our petty exchanges, and I imagine that doing away with them would only help, not harm. We should be able to find a balance between rudeness and robotization, one that allows for civil human interaction without costing us our right to independent thought and behavior.

So what would actually happen if we did away with meaningless manners? I cannot say for sure, but I have a feeling that mankind would survive, and society would not collapse in on itself in a barrage of rudeness and civil war. Once we all got used to the idea, I believe that we would ultimately be much happier and better off. For one, we’d waste a lot less time bending over backwards to make sure we were behaving “properly” with people about whom we could care less. Perhaps, as a result, we would have more energy to be kinder to those we actually do value, instead of expending it all on strangers. If we could just adjust our expectations for how an individual “should” act in society, we could benefit from the newfound freedom of behavior that would come with erasing this universal demand for insincerity and artifice.

I propose that it’s time to relieve ourselves of this obligatory, meaningless politeness. Our acceptance of it might be deeply engrained, going all the way back to our first words. But that does not mean we can’t question whether it is right, and what costs it bears on our humanity… nor is it too late for us to change our expectations.

Oh, and by the way – thank you for reading. I really mean it this time. by Bianca Male

You know how it feels to have an annoying song stuck in your head? Or even worse, an irritating commercial – you know, the one about the new Timothée Chalamet movie that makes you want to gouge your eyes out and go buy a copy at the same time? It seems that more often than not, those insidious bits of marketing propaganda have one target and one target only: young people. Unfortunately, the rest of us are caught in the crossfire.

Most people want to have kids; I accept this fact but don’t truly understand it. Think about the pressure: it’s ultimately up to you whether your child becomes the next President of the United States (great) the next Dylann Roof (not so great) or the next Tik Tok star (even worse). Anyway, because we live in this proud, free country, you can exercise your right to procreate, just like I can exercise the right to smoke, get really fat, or tie up my consensual partner in a closet dungeon on long weekends (just sayin’).

The difference is, most of the personal decisions we make in our lives have no bearing on anyone else; you don’t have to hear about my eccentric sexcapades or watch me eat an entire bucket of KFC in one sitting. So why then must I be subjected to endless commercials about the wonders of potty time? Why must I endure your whining children in a five star restaurant? Why must I accept those “what’s wrong with you” looks when I tell someone that the idea of having children is about as exciting as the idea of a daily, 18-year long colonic regimen?

Our society places a disproportionate emphasis on our youth. Sure, they are the decision makers of tomorrow and sure, their impressionable minds need to be nurtured and filled with love and knowledge. But what about the decision makers of today? What about the vast majority of adults who still have potential, lives to live, goals to fulfill? It seems that as soon as we are old enough to accomplish something in our lives, we’re told to have kids and sacrifice that precious time to the next generation – who turn around and do the exact same thing. So who’s actually getting stuff done around here? If I added up the time I spend each year forced to listen to Jonas Brothers’ songs and watching Marvel trailers, I could have finished writing my first best-selling novel by now!

The amount of time I spend every day being bombarded by “kid stuff” is mindboggling: commercials, ads, loud little urchins running into my kneecaps on the street – the list goes on. I absorb so much kid-related information a day, sometimes I feel like I have one of my own, and that, my friends, does not make me happy. Why are fashion trends determined by 17-year old celebrities? Why do I have to sift through 50 different sugary cereals to get to my Cheerios? (Ok, I’ll admit Froot Loops are pretty awesome, but still) Why are there interactive video games for toddlers, and why, oh why am I even aware of it? Stop the madness!

Parents, out of sheer stupidity, have become part of the problem; they don’t realize that this is just another way companies rope us in, make us suckers and slaves to our culture of overconsumption. They don’t even have to market intelligently; they just hit you where it hurts most – the ovaries. With bright colors, cartoon animals and sparkly music, they convince you that you’re a bad parent if you don’t buy, buy, buy, and buy some more. And you buy it, alright. Wise old grandparents will tell you there’s no manual for being a parent – but you will still spend $50 at Barnes and Noble on just such a thing.

I’m not saying that kids shouldn’t get attention and toys and movies just for them – I’m just saying we should take a long hard look at what all of this stuff really is and what its use is, if it has one. I’d say 90% of children’s products today are superfluous and unnecessary. Remember when we were kids and we played outside in the sunshine and mud? We didn’t have Calming Vibes Hedgehog and we got along just fine. I’m pretty sure (and I know this from experience) that the only adult sanctuary left is the strip club. I guess it could be worse.

Let’s get back to basics: animals exist to procreate. At one time, as primitive animals ourselves, we did too. But with the wonderful gift of bigger brains, we have come up with other reasons to exist: to create beautiful art, to help others, to make the world a better place to live in. We don’t need to create copies of ourselves to feel like we were useful on this earth; unfortunately, that’s not what most of society – not to mention your in-laws – want you to believe.

I’m sure there are a lot of “breeders” reading this right now who are positively fuming at my callous and selfish commentary – as proud parents, you probably think it’s justified that the world revolves around children. Having a child is a joy like no other, you say. It’s the most important thing you can do with your life. There’s something wrong with you if you don’t want kids!

How about this: let’s you and I call a truce. I won’t call you crazy for buying your eight-year-old an iPhone, and you won’t call me evil for kindly suggesting you keep your spawn on a leash. You and I and all the kiddies of the world can live together in harmony – just keep your snotty noses, Never Have I Ever episodes, and Baby Bjorn’s to yourself.

In reality, men are just as vain, ladies, if not more. The evidence only grows clearer with time. Men just don’t vocalize their neurosis in quite the same fashion. Smart move, guys, but guess what? Repeated flexing in front of the wall- to-wall mirrors at the gym? It kinda gives you away. There’s something entirely obsessive about the way guys approach weight loss, and it directly reflects the way they go about, well, just about everything.

Men tend to rationalize significantly less than women, so it’s no wonder they can often forego the snacks and treats that classically get in the way of a woman’s diet regime. There has always been the argument that women are comforted by food, and that certain emotional aspects of our personalities are soothed by this type of indulgence, whereas men go about the issue with a more logical attitude. Or so it was. Nowadays, it seems like calorie counting may not be an activity solely designated to the fairer sex. The numbers of men dieting, working out, and concerning themselves with weight loss altogether are dramatically rising. Men who barely know each other will take notice of respective weight loss or gain in an instant. Sure, peer assessment is natural, but why is this the one issue that makes guys’ eyebrows raise, becoming a conversation starter even among distant acquaintances? I don’t think the visual aspect alone is enough to explain this phenomenon. After all, a fresh haircut or a brand new suit won’t inspire quite the same degree of interest. Co-workers who don’t even bother to comment on one another’s recent nuptials will speak up right away if the numbers on the scale have shifted downward. “Wow, you’ve lost some weight!” almost seems a bit… girly? Yet it’s a tendency more and more prominent among men. And manly men, at that.

Any fitness facility you walk into in the tri-state area is bound to be spilling over with men trying to reach peak physical form and ultimately personal perfection. Fitness has gradually become less a necessity and more a hobby. Men have begun to add a special one- to three-hour workout time slot to their daily schedule. Gyms that used to be filled with serious athletes are now teeming with strictly-treadmill- runners and weightlifters lifting weights… for what purpose exactly? Daily muscle admiration? Are men perhaps tending to the issue of weight even more than women? The awareness of belt size is suddenly ever-present. Not only in the gym, either. Steak only eaten on special occasions. French fries foregone. And even, God forbid, the life-altering drastic switch to light beer. Going to the gym becomes an everyday ritual with only the occasional weekend day taken off to nurse light-beer-induced hangovers. These trends, most of which were more or less non-existent ten years ago, are all becoming more and more common among men. Countless diet books are now written for – and even by – men, and pages of advice and techniques for men to shed some extra pounds are commonplace easy-reading for the typical bachelor.

Now, let’s review. Are men slimmer and more healthy than ever because of these newly instituted habits? Doubtful. Seems to me there hasn’t been much of a shift. Instead, like women, men have merely entered the mysterious realm of weight obsession. As with many obsessions, this particular brand is not one that necessarily leads to results. It’s more of a confusing gray area, a back and forth yo-yo-ing that creeps into your daily schedule and your psyche and stays there. So, why? Why are men partaking in such a level of self-awareness now? Of course, the immediate reasons for this to hit you in the head might be the obvious ones: impressing women, impressing friends, feeling healthy, feeling attractive and of course the ‘Covid 20’. Ummm… have these not been issues for, like, ever? We could cast blame on advertising of course, but come on, that’s hardly a new concept. Is it just that guys want that mental pat on the back while walking down the street? Want to one-up friends and acquaintances? Possible. Or should we chalk it up to processed foods and other such signs of the times? Even more possible. But even that excuse wears thin. Because maybe, just maybe, men are simply just now discovering the alluring ap- peal, the endless yet all-consuming tug of war world that is weight obsession. Just now sizing up the personal gains (or losses) of joining this elite culture of mirror-mania and personal fascination.

Whatever the influences may be, the general consensus is that while it may seem like a healthy set of habits, it’s not always quite what it seems. The elusive race for perfection, which women have been consistently losing, may be coming to a close… at least for us. All the side effects of self-destruction and negativity may have simply caught up with women. And, if this is the case, that’s fine with me. It’s been a good run, but I will happily pass along the baton.

Yet even though we are aware of this universal truth, no one wants to admit that they are not unique. That nothing distinguishes them from the man sitting next to them on the bus or the woman they pass on the street. Sigmund Freud was not mistaken. All humans have an ego, and it must be fed. Like a lioness who hasn’t eaten in days, we are savages. Polytheists who worship the same gods: pride, power, and sex. They all feed our ego. And that line, the one I use on men, on women, it succeeds in satisfying each of our gods.

I find someone; man, woman, it makes no difference. Men are easier to control, but women are better in bed. For heterosexual sake, let’s say I meet a man. We meet at a bar. He sees me from across the room. Our eyes meet, blah, blah, blah. The classic scenario carefully deployed by every romantic movie. Its cliché, but I’ll use it here because it fits into the scientific method. Now this man is handsome, meeting the symmetrical standards that are the foundation for visual attraction. I catch his eye. Target acquired. He strolls over to introduce himself. I don’t care what his name is, it is irrelevant. I am on a mission. He finds our conversation intriguing. I keep him interested with clever word play, with light touches, with my smile. But what really keeps him inching closer and closer to my strategically placed scandalously clothed body are my eyes. Windows of fire that seer into his very existence and make him feel like my eyes were made for his gaze alone. My eyes draw him in, a fishing line baited with dynamite; waiting for the perfect catch, the ideal opportunity so I can explode.

He suggests, “Do you want to get out of here?”

“Sure,” I casually respond.

And it must be “sure.” Not “Yes.” Not “Absolutely.” Sure. Sure is nonchalant. It isn’t too eager, it’s cool. It’s calm. It doesn’t retreat and throw away the upper hand. Sure sounds differently than yes. Yes is a preppy school girl who finally manages to sneak out of the house for the first time. “Okay” works the same way, but sure is aesthetically pleasing to the ears. It’s the s. Automatically triggers sex in his mind, not that it wasn’t already. But it lets him know that it’s on mine too.

We go back to his place. Drink a glass of wine on his fine leather sofa. He leans in to kiss me. I let him. Lightly, gently, not too much tongue. Then I lean back, I stare into his eyes, and then I attend to his neck; softly grazing my nose from the bottom of his trachea to the beginning of his earlobe. I investigate his skin. I inhale him.
Once I reach his ear, I whisper, “Has anyone ever told you that your scent is intoxicating?”

Instant explosion.

Pride. Each person wants to be proud of themselves, of who they are. And the only way to get that is through reinforcement. Constant reinforcement. They want to know, believe that the image they project into society is the same one reflected in the mirror. Scent is a projection. And I just told him that I cannot escape his.

Power. He believes he has a hold over me, that I have fallen for him. He has the control. He is the cat, I am the mouse. And I am trapped.

Sex. Enough said.

My work here is done. I have ensnared my prey. I have hit my target. Mission accomplished. Time to go home. Well, as soon as I get what I came there for: satisfaction.

My brother once called me a hunter. He said that I “go in for the kill.” Word for word he warned his friends about me. He told them to watch out for me. At first I was offended. What a terrible thing to for an older brother to say, to even think, about his baby sister. But that’s the rationale our patriarchal society wants me to have.

So I thought again.

I realized that I have a particular set of skills that make me dangerous, even deadly. I am a Venus fly trap. I am a siren, a temptress with an unprecedented skill for seduction.

It’s a game I play.

And I always win.

By Sophia Fox-Sowell

It’s biology, really; science. This whole ridiculous display is a mating call of sorts. It’s an evolutionary thing that humans will not let go of and there’s very little moral high-grounding can do to counter its force on the behavior of men and women, especially men and women who, in this Northeast corner of the country, have endured countless months of blizzards, freezing rain, barren trees, sludge, near frostbite, wind chills, malfunctioning heating systems, transit strikes in December, and the process of having to swaddle one’s self in not one, not two, but three and sometimes four layers of clothing to simply cross the street for coffee. When the weather gets warm, New Yorkers shed this burden with the zeal of pigs in shit and take to the streets to eagerly have all of their formerly hidden attributes ogled and given due attention. While every less-blue county across this great land may smite this display of sex and flesh, try to write it into law, amend it into the Constitution, or vote it into office, this behavior that seems so offensive very easily fits into our essence as animals, albeit animals with the potential for rational thought and discourse. And this is where our human nature gets tricky. While our capability for rational thought, amongst other things, differentiates us from other animals, is Mother Nature in some way laying the prohibitive smack-down by subjecting so many of us into a forced retreat? Is our sexual behavior not regulated to some degree by those damned frigid months, the cold forcing us to keep it in our pants?

Winter in our slice of America is really something like hibernation. Not even five months ago myself and a friend were contemplating moving to Africa to do relief work, charity work, any kind of work that would deviate from the monotony of looking at New York City in the throes of monochrome concrete. It’s no longer late February, and am I contemplating ditching this island any longer? Well, yes, but sure as hell not because it’s cold and gloomy. She’s not either, for the record.

In the face of the conscious quasi-hibernation induced by winter on humans, the flight reaction is the most common (at least among my friends). We all talk about getting out, going somewhere “nice.” While humans don’t literally shack-up for the season or slow our metabolisms drastically, we do retreat indoors, hide, and seek out light boxes and tanning beds to counter S.A.D. Maybe this hibernation is something of a human anomaly though among our close genetic relatives. There is only one primate that actually hibernates: the Madagascan fat-tailed dwarf lemur – and the bizarre thing about this animal is that it hibernates even though it exists in a tropical climate. So it seems that hibernation is something not necessarily reserved for the poor animal friends who, like us, enjoy the misfortune of dwelling in cooler climes. Animals that truly do hibernate do so out of necessity (food supplies, etc.) and should these animals’ stases be disrupted prematurely, they may very well perish (thank you, Wikipedia). Our fates are not nearly so dire, but it seems that the drudgery of winter does essentially gear us up for what is to be so briefly ours come May.

Wild animals that hibernate whittle away their stores of fat in the cold months, subsisting on the energy provided while maintaining an extended period of hypothermia; everything, in essence, is slowed down. Humans spend the winter and its accompanying holidays packing on the pounds. Springtime is thus a frenetic gym-going, and therefore endorphin boosting, season that prepares us for the public nudity of summer. Like the energizing rest of hibernation endured by certain of our animal brethren in preparation for their mating seasons, our sprees of post-winter fitness yield the desire to do it, or at least pursue doing it. It would be convenient to just write off any multitude of summer flings with this excuse: Nature made me do it – but this is not really accurate.
While the sex-crazed ritual of summer is certainly a temporary human reclamation of more primal natures, it is also something of a reversion of maturity. Winter: we cover up, we hide ourselves, we keep others from seeing, men and women who wear tank tops to clubs or bars this time of year are scoffed at as inappropriate fiends for attention. Summer: it’s like show and tell, playing doctor, sneaking to see if you can’t just see or expose the smallest bit more of flesh. There’s a certain playful and joyous element when the weather turns, like we’re all kids again running around in a candy shop of flesh. The dichotomy of the year broken up as such, cold then hot, might just serve to regulate our very natures, to both prohibit and grant release, perhaps keeping a balance between all of the things inherent within us.

Part of the horror of Huxley’s anti-utopian Brave New World is that childlike wish fulfillment is not a respite from life, but is life. The characters both central and peripheral are doin’ it well with whoever they fancy at any time and are, indeed, frowned upon if they are not promiscuous. The worrisome prospect here is that this system of wanton sex is completely regulated by the world’s governing body and is conditioned so that any remotely natural biorhythm has been subverted. There is nothing essentially human about these people at all. The novel also points to an interesting question: why is the random sexual encounter, the fling, so desirable that it must be propagated year round? Within the world Huxley creates, there appears to be nothing to rise up against. Due to chemical conditioning people are utterly unaware of unhappiness and are forced to continuously engage in casual sex because it makes them fucking brain-dead. Think about it like this: if you are constantly getting off, and have been programmed to think (like so many real people in our world seem to be) that getting off is the ultimate goal of life, you have very little to be distressed about; for there will always be a surplus of equally numbed and ridiculous people out there who wish to indulge in summer flings year-round. This is no joke. What makes the prospect of summer all the more enjoyable is its status as counterpoint to winter; it is the momentary opening of our reticent months, it gives us distance from the shackles of layering, and it will, eventually, make us yearn even to the smallest degree, for the change of the seasons. The pleasure of heat is in the very short time we have with it.

It has always struck me as odd that people can live in climates like Miami, San Diego, the desert Southwest. I can’t really speak of what it’s like to grow up and inhabit these places, but I’ve seen them; they’re beautiful, and there is always that nagging in my head “Damn, it would be nice.” The scenario confounds me. It seems natural to me that one should suffer through the gauntlet of late autumns, winters, and early springs in the nation’s northern tier (if that isn’t a childhood of Catholic schools talking…) – what I mean is that these changes in atmosphere and their effects on us seem naturally determined, if not evolutionarily installed. So the key to summer is really in the random ways in which nature has found to run its course, regulate itself, and put us arrogant humans in our places. Nature’s looking out for its own good, and to an extent for ours. Now if it could just give us a swift kick in the nuts with this whole global warming problem; oh wait, that’s not science. It’s just a theory, too. Kyle A. Valenta.
*The Winter”s Tale, William Shakespeare

I think most New Yorkers approach dating in a very unromantic and far from the serendipitous way. We treat it with the same craftsmanship as constructing our career paths or picking our next apartment. Perhaps the least romantic approach to dating, we create mental checklists, does it have rooftop access? Will he get along with my circle? Is the rent too high? Will he take up too much of my time? And just like how the perfect apartment doesn’t exist, neither does the perfect guy. This is why I like to say that everyone in New York has a touch of commitment issues.

At least this is my theory, take it with a grain of salt. I just know first hand that after a long week of school and work, I want to enjoy my weekends to the fullest extent. If I’m not convinced by a guy after date 2 or 3, I’ll probably ditch him and go catch the end of my friend’s set in the east village. Perhaps this is why my social life has flourished in the city while my dating life is more of a tangled mess of short- lived flings.

In March when quarantine hit, I think a lot of New Yorkers were struck over the head with a more depressing reality. Stuck inside their apartments all day alone, there was no bustling city or train to catch, no life altering decisions about where they should spend their Saturday night. Many of us single New Yorkers finally understood why people prioritize companionship so much.

After 5 months of this I was ready to take a hiatus from the city. Very randomly I chose Nashville as my destination, homes were spacious, they had backyards and gardens — and all for half the price of my current shoebox. I convinced my sister and friend to join and we planned to pack up the car in exactly four weeks.

I had no interest in dating during my last month in the city, I mean what was the point? But my habit of swiping through Hinge likes every evening didn’t cease altogether either and a bashful looking boy named Aaron who lived in my neighborhood instantly caught my eye. Since the last guy I dated was rather pretentious and quite a few years older, (although it was actually his living situation that didn’t check off on my list) it felt refreshing to see a boy my age. He seemed a little dorkier than my usual type and the fact that he was an aspiring musician worried me, (no more boys in bands was my most recent addition to the list) to be blunt he normally wouldn’t have made the cut. But hey he was cute and endearing and I was leaving in four weeks, what’s the harm?

And just like that the age-old myth that New York gives you someone right before you leave came true. We spent my last month strolling along the East River, listening to music in McCarren Park, drinking Frose at outdoor restaurants and watching reruns of That 70’s Show all night. It was sweet, really, and so vastly different than my usual dating habits. I didn’t over analyze his job, his 5 year plan, his friends, where he likes to hang out. I didn’t ponder how he would fit in with my life and if it was worth it to pursue. I threw the checklist away and vowed to live in the short moments we had before I left. Now I’m not saying he’s my soulmate, or even that we fell in love, but the point is that maybe this was how the rest of the world dated and why even in a city of 8 million people, New Yorkers were so overwhelmingly single.

This theory only grew as my sister Eve called me in a panic from the guy she was dating’s bathroom at 3am one night. “Angie I just told him I love him.” I burst into laughter. It really was comedic, I mean, my sister was the definition of commitment issues (sorry Eve) but not necessarily in a bad way. She was an intelligent, ambitious, charismatic 23 year old, and she never felt the need to have a boyfriend just for the sake of it or even fall in love. In fact, she had never experienced either. She kept her romantic interests separate from every other aspect of her life. Her career was excelling, her friendships thriving, her finances in line and a carefully mapped out 1 year, 5 year, and 10 year plan set in place. As a hopeless romantic myself, I always envied how little thought she put into the men in her life. For 10 months she dated George, never introducing him to any of her friends or coworkers. She’d see him once a week, have a nice time and then about every 2 months she would dump him out of the blue. “He takes up too much of my energy and my thoughts, I have more important things to worry about and honestly I don’t see myself ending up with some 32 year old Wall Street finance bro anyway, I need more of a River Phoenix type.” I felt bad for George, like all the men she had previously dated (again I’m sorry Eve, just being honest), he’d probably end up heartbroken for months while she just effortlessly strutted on.

I guess four weeks before leaving for Nashville, this all changed. She fell in love.

I asked Eve what had changed, “Nothing really. He has plenty of flaws, but I guess I’m realizing everyone comes with baggage and only now that I’m leaving have I realized that there’s no one without baggage awaiting me in Nashville or even here in New York City. I just want to be with him, simple as that.” My theory was getting stronger. Maybe New York doesn’t just give you love before you leave, maybe it gives you a taste of reality, or the world outside of a 30 block radius from Union Square. It reminded me of something Aaron said to me one night while watching Jackie and Kelso bicker in an episode of That 70’s Show, “everyone has flaws, it’s just whether or not you can get over those flaws.”

During my final week in New York I attended a 15 person socially distanced wedding on the East River. My friend Rachel married Amanda, who I can still remember as “cute girl from tinder” once upon a time. Rachel was one of the first friends I made in New York City. She was outgoing and adventurous and the biggest flirt I’d ever met. She’d take me out to gay bars in the West Village all night, dancing on stage as other queer women goggled at her contagious smile. I considered her to be a class act player, one thriving in New York’s booming gay scene. And then one day out of nowhere, she went on a tinder date with a girl in town for a week. When Amanda left, Rachel stopped playing the field and visited Amanda every chance she got. That was it, she was in love with a red haired girl from Florida and three years later they were married.

So when it comes to falling in love for New Yorkers, I guess it takes the threat of leaving the city to finally throw away the carefully crafted checklists and remove the possibility of bumping into the “right” person the next day on the street. In a city of 8 million people, it feels like there must always be a better option, but maybe that mentality is the greatest downfall of finding love in New York City. I think a small part of me — perhaps the part of me that constantly finds myself sitting at coffee shops typing away about dating in New York City — has more Carrie traits than I’d like to admit.

Marriage isn’t for all, but the female part of the population is brainwashed into believing that this is what happens when a man really loves you; if he doesn’t propose, it’s not real love; he can’t be the one. However, as in all interaction between the sexes, it’s complicated. Not everything is as black and white. In fact there is no black and white, only a seemingly infinite number of shades of grey. Men aren’t all the same, not all good, or bad. And women certainly aren’t all the same.

We are all individuals with different backgrounds, families, dreams, goals, personal traits. In a relationship, I feel that sometimes we forget that it is made up of two separate people, two separate entities that function independently of one another and that by being together, you essentially have to know how to be by yourself and be one whole person while sharing your life with another whole person.

It’s tricky however, expecting for your significant other to be your only source of happiness and fulfillment; it is just unfair and in a way, illogical. Expecting for your significant other to want the same things as you and have the same goals as you is selfish unrealistic and doomed to almost certain failure. Your significant other isn’t a shell of you, or your groupie; they’re your partner and expecting them to be what YOU want them to be isn’t a formula for a balanced, sharing and enduring partnership.

It can sometimes hurt when you realize that you’re dating someone who won’t agree with you all the time, laugh at all your jokes, or like the same music as you do, but in the end if you were the exact same person, you’d be dating yourself and how weird would that be, huh? So instead of expecting your partner to surprise you with roses every day after work, encourage them to be themselves and it’ll surprise you how rounded and successful that can be. I’m not saying to just settle for but I am saying that if the person you fell in love with is an honest, genuine person, has attributes you admire, and treats you well, I promise you will not have to manage your expectations. See where that love takes you. By Angela Cook

“…To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak…” William Congreve 1697

It appears that society’s culture vulture, that highbrow zenith of our civilized world, actually belongs at the other end of our timeline out of the primeval sludge. They now say it was arguably our lust for culture that calmed the savage breast and civilized us… not vice versa. So all of you knuckle-draggers out there who dismiss culture as elitist and exclusive better pick up your nearest fiddle and bang out some Mendelssohn. After all you wouldn’t want to get left behind now would you?

As I write, I am on a train whizzing through the English countryside watching scenes float past my window that could be straight from a Constable painting. I am on my way to a literary festival in the beautiful ‘Lake District’ region to talk about my book, Wired for Culture. My publishers have been good enough to plump for a first class rail ticket, and so it is quiet. I sit at a reasonably sized table, coffee is served, there is an electrical socket on the wall and the train even has WiFi. So, my laptop is plugged in, emails regularly ‘ping’ into my inbox, and texts ‘buzz’ into my cell phone.

I glance at a few of the slides I will use in my talk – just pretty pictures really, no daunting tables or figures – and my eyes fall on a pair of photos I use of chimpanzees. In one they are using sticks to ‘fish’ for termites, and in the other they are cracking open nuts with a rock. We are often told this ‘tool use’ is evidence of their great intelligence, and we are increasingly reminded that we are over 98% identical to the chimpanzees in the sequences of our genes – our two evolutionary lineages having separated from a common ancestor only around six million years ago, a mere blink of the eye when stacked against the 3.8 billion years there has been life on Earth.

But has the subversive thought ever entered your mind that if these chimpanzees really are intelligent, why do they use sticks to get termites and rocks to crack open nuts? Why don’t they dig the termites out with a shovel or just call in to the local store and buy a bag of nuts? After all, that’s what we do. If we really are just jumped-up chimpanzees, why this great technological divide between us and them? Why do we have trains with WiFi, cell phones, toasters, space-shuttles and nano-scale technology, and most of these things in the last few decades alone, while the chimpanzees remain largely unchanged?

For most people the answer is simple – we are smarter than them. Okay, but what do we mean by that? Can you, for example, start a fire without matches? Do you know which mushrooms you can eat from the forest? Could you make a shoe? Do you know what the best mortgage or life insurance policy is? And do you even have the faintest idea how your cell phone works or what is really going on at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva?

We are intelligent, but as these examples show, our intelligence doesn’t simply grant us the ability to think hard about things and get the right answer. Instead, it turns out that our intelligence arises from an ability in our species to pool our ideas – to acquire, as it were, a ‘collective intelligence’ or a vast shared brain. This collective intelligence represents a uniquely human ‘capacity for culture’.

Sometime around 160,000 to 200,000 years ago when our species first emerged on the African savannah, we created a new kind of evolution. Alone among all animals, humans can acquire knowledge, beliefs, and practices merely from watching others. This simple step opened up a vast cultural space because ideas could now jump directly from one mind to another, with good ideas being retained, others being improved, and yet others discarded. Minds sorted among ideas as natural selection sorts among genes.

Over time, and by a process of ideas accumulating one on top of another, humans have been able to build objects of great complexity and sophistication. First it was simple hand axes. These gave way to shaped clubs, blades, spears, bows and arrows, nets, and clothing. When someone had the idea to combine a shaped club with a hand axe the first hafted axe was born.

This human capacity for culture creates an unbridgeable gap in the evolutionary potential between us and all other animals. Where all other species are limited to the parts of the world their genes adapt them to, our ability to adapt at the cultural level – by acquiring local knowledge, by building shelters, or working out how to hunt the local animals – allowed our species to walk out of Africa sometime around 60,000 years ago and go on to occupy nearly every environment on Earth. By comparison, we could go away for a million years and the chimpanzees would still be fishing for termites with the same old sticks and cracking open nuts with the same old rocks.

Today you inherit a vast cultural knowledge in much the same way that you inherit your genes, it is just that your ‘cultural genome’ is handed down the generations from mind to mind. And, just as you probably have little or no understanding of how your genes build and operate your body, most of us have little or no understanding of where most things in our societies come from. You are almost certainly carrying around in your pockets or in your handbags and briefcases objects that have been produced by cumulative cultural adaptation which no single person on Earth could produce. Even something as simple as a pencil requires the knowledge and technology of many people.

So, human culture has been a development of revolutionary social and genetic effect, easily the most potent trait the world has ever known for converting new lands and resources into more humans, and their genes. This was an evolutionary bandwagon worth jumping on. It tells us to expect that the defining features of our nature will be found in a suite of social and psychological traits we have acquired for living in the prosperous social environments of human culture, and not in or shared history with the other animals.

What form might that uniquely human nature take? Our capacity to share ideas has meant that humans have reaped great benefits from pooling their knowledge, wisdom and skills. So those of us who had the social tendencies to cooperate would have been at an advantage, leaving more children than our more solitary minded or greedy contemporaries; children who would have inherited our social tendencies.

Added to this cooperative nature, as our species marched out of Africa to occupy the world, it did so in small tribal societies that would have been in competition with others like themselves. As a result, humans have developed a unique set of dispositions for defending their groups because it is that very group that has historically provided them with the protection, knowledge and cooperative society needed to survive and prosper.

We see these dispositions today in that we are oddly group-focused as a species, capable of great acts of coordination. We think nothing of wearing matching silly shirts to sporting events. We are altruistic to a fault, routinely holding doors for people, giving up seats on trains, contributing to charities and even risking our health and well-being for others – as when we jump into a river to save someone from drowning. We might even risk our lives fighting for our countries in a war. You will not see any of this in a chimpanzee.

At the same time, we are only too aware of our dual moral nature. Capable on the one hand of extreme kindness, we can abandon that kindness in an instant, treating other members of our species as sub-human in our tendencies to be wary of strangers, or in our xenophobia, bigotry or extreme acts of violence in war. Just compare your emotions at the news of one of your own country’s soldiers dying in battle, to those you feel when another country’s soldiers are killed.

Both these sides of our nature are dispositions and emotions we have acquired to make the cooperative ‘vehicles’ that were the tribal societies of our past, work for us. So, how will this tribal psychology play out in our modern, globalized and interconnected world, in which more than ever before, people of different backgrounds find themselves living side by side and in ever larger social groups?

Ironically, it is our evolved tribal nature that offers a glimmer of hope. The reason is this: if nothing in our evolutionary history specifically prepared us for the modern world we now inhabit, it turns out that everything about the way human culture works does. Cooperation in other animals is limited largely to helping relatives, but we have been positively selected to develop the rules that allow us to share ideas, thoughts and skills.

This unique ‘ultra-sociality’ borne of our capacity for culture is why we can live in large social groups, walking among millions of people who are effectively strangers, so long as we are convinced they are playing by the same social rules as us. If you take this for granted, imagine 100,000 hyenas in Times Square.

The next century is going to be a time of great uncertainty and upheaval as resources, money and space become ever more scarce. It is going to be a bumpy road with many setbacks and conflicts. But if there was ever a species that could tackle these challenges it is our own. It might be surprising, but our genes, in the form of our capacity for culture, have created in us a machine capable of greater cooperation, inventiveness and common good than any other on Earth.

By Mark Pagel from Wired For Culture, 2012 published by WW Norton

So, instead of being expected to buy clothes or makeup from Hollywood’s precious young starlets, we have Charlize Theron for Dior, Margot Robbie for Calvin Klein and Michelle Williams for Louis Vuitton. Today the women who actually have the money to spend on such products, are presented with women who have been places, done things and lived life. 

We have greater greatness to look forward to past the 40-year mark. Indeed, 30- somethings have all the experience and knowledge their younger followers are clamoring to achieve, and it shines through.  Ask any 30-something woman how she differs today from a decade ago and you’ll hear positive phrases such as “more confident,” “more comfortable and at peace,” and “with age comes wisdom.” 

“Worrying about what people think isn’t a priority as it was when I was in my 20s,” says Lisa, a medical device sales representative who is single and fine with it. “Insecurity ruled that decade. I’m comfortable in my skin now and I realize what’s truly important in life.”

What can be a little frustrating is the realization that certain people may have been trying to point you in the right direction all along.  “You realize what your parents told you as a kid is unfortunately true,” says Anna, a recently married finance manager and CPA currently finishing up her MBA. But there is greater goodness in the knowledge you gain for yourself. “You know the importance of family and a life partner. And you don’t date guys who are not good for you,” Anna adds, noting the further importance of knowing “who your real friends are and what your priorities are in life.”

Many women beyond their 20s point to solidifying relationships and the positive impact that a strong circle of friends can have on one’s life. Joy, a process engineer, while “good at being single”, highlights the importance of making as many friends as you can along the way.  “You cannot be successful without them!”

Women are also quick to note, however, that life as we know it at this age would not be all it is had we not first worked through the last decade.  Kim, who is also single and works in film production, suggests that women aren’t necessarily “better” in their 30s, just wiser. “We are more secure with ourselves and more sure of what we want out of life. Our need to go out every night and dress to impress is gone.” While a great outfit or pair of shoes might help you fake certitude, these women would rather make an entrance glowing with the real thing. “We are who we are and we’re proud of it!”

Jen, a research scientist currently pursuing a PhD in biochemistry, echoed those thoughts. “Women in their 30s are made to look at life differently than our younger counterparts due to more life experiences,” claims the mother of two. “Every stage in life serves a purpose, teaches us and sometimes scars us, but ultimately makes us who we are.”

That process of learning and growing shows in everything from a woman’s face to the way she enters a room. Joy, notes it’s often education and experience – once believed to be anti-feminine – that make a woman attractive and give her the confidence to let her more feminine side shine through. “Women age beautifully and are much better looking in their 30s.” 

“Live your own life happily, without making excuses to anyone, including yourself,” says Sarah, a stay-at-home mom, with a degree in corporate communications, who is currently expecting her second child. “If you don’t want kids and the white picket fence, don’t apologize. If you don’t choose the six-figure salary and designer clothes, don’t be embarrassed. And if you’re fortunate enough to have it all, enjoy!”

30-somethings are moving through their current decade excited about the realization that education, degreed or otherwise, never stops. And they believe firmly they are better equipped to deal with whatever the world throws their way with each passing day.  “Everything will still be there in the morning,” Lisa says, “and some things just don’t need to be on a time clock. That was a tough one [to learn, but] I finally realized that it’s a lot less stressful for me if I let things take their course. I can’t control everything. Wow, what a concept!” 

It started innocently enough. We were best friends, more or less inseparable. In retrospect, maybe being just friends was a recipe for disaster? After all, we pick our friends and boyfriends differently… right? Or maybe not. Maybe I just picked him because he had all the qualities I would want… in a friend. Which might not intrinsically seem like a bad thing. I mean, we do end up being so extremely close with our boy- friends or girlfriends that they actually do become our best friends. Don’t we? This is the type of rationalization that got me screwed. Because in reality, you don’t want to actually screw your best friend. Everyone knows that once you screw, everything else is screwed. And why would you want to screw up your friendship? It’s all very screwy. But when you meet someone who should be only your friend and nothing more, yet you ignore this instinct and spend all your time with them anyway… and you gradually develop a habit of strong cocktails and snuggling… well, you are going to screw. And get screwed. Trust me.

Once I got past the weirdness of translating my best friendship into the most functional form of a relationship I could manage, things were, well, different. Shocking, huh? Suddenly my new boyfriend was not my new boyfriend anymore. He was just my boyfriend. No more new. But what’s even weirder is the fact that the whole “friendship” we had spent a year building had vanished. No matter what you do, you can’t get a friendship back after taking such a big step away from it. This is less than desirable when the entire reason you started dating was because of your friendship. All that italicizing is necessary. It happens to be just about the most significant part of my story.

So when that blinding rush of NEW wasn’t quite there anymore, what happens? After a couple months, shock waves tend to fizzle. Reality hits, colors fade out. Moving from a realm of friendship and lightheartedness to a space of love and commitment is a mind- numbing web of confusion. There’s such finality to it. And there is definitely and most assuredly no turning back from it. I was certainly caught in that web for a while. And I was left with the reality of what it’s like to date your best friend. To make matters worse, sure enough, we shared all the exact same mutual friends. So things translated from friendship into romantic relationship life, like a fucking foreign language.

Well, guess what “funny” translated into? Sarcastic. Dry. Just plain mean. Never takes anything seriously. Never takes me seriously. Ever. EVER. One big bucket of laughs, huh? Guess what laid-back translated into? Zero personal effort, zero emotional effort, zero sanity for me. I think you get the picture but just for shits, guess what “a lot of fun” translated into? Oh, say, five, six nights a week spent heavily drinking? Sure. Plus a bi-weekly trip to the casino for good measure. Good times.

Now, for the record, I’m not actually angry with my ex-boyfriend and I don’t harbor negative or violent feelings for him. Because what did he do, really, other than be himself? He was exactly who I fell in love with. Exactly. He didn’t change a pinch. Did I even want him to change? Not really, that’s the thing. I loved him as a boyfriend for the same reasons I had loved him as a friend. Had I changed? To be honest, not really. I wanted the same things from start to finish. What had changed was the course of our friendship, our transi- tion to a relationship, our relationship itself. Of course, we grew older, we changed. But I tend to think it was less about us changing and more about our efforts to transform an impossibility into a possibility.

So why is it that when (post-ridiculously-dramatic- break-up) I met a guy who was sweet, sane, and perfectly suitable for me, I promptly rejected the entire idea of him? He would have been perfect for me, treated me like gold. He – probably, most likely – wouldn’t be ditching me on anniversary dinner plans at the last minute to go to a strip club. So why was there not one thing about him that excited me? Is it just the chase? I don’t think so, I tire quickly. Is it the need to be the girl who can change the guy? I don’t think so, I’m far too dreamy for such work. Or is it just that no matter what, women like myself are drawn to men who are just no good for them? No matter what, those initial attractions, the very same ones that often draw us to be friends with someone, snowball into the exact qualities that drive us into a frenzied fury of mutual despair – even hatred – come closing time. But ask me today what characteristics I look for in a man. I dare you. Answer: Cute! Funny! Fun! Laid-back! What is the issue here? Well, for now, I don’t want to think about it. I am currently much too busy sleeping with a fresh new brand of cocky, self-important prick. And he’s totally adorable.

Many health-food startups have gained popularity over the last decade. Perhaps the most famous in the US is plant-protein company Beyond Meat. Beyond creates faux meats, most popularly beef, but also sausages and chicken. These non-animal protein products are made from a variety of beans, peas, and sunflower seeds, as well as plant ingredients like cocoa butter and other plant oils. These ingredients are mixed and processed in combination with spices in an attempt to produce textures and tastes similar to their animal product originals. The result? Beef patties, sausage links, and meat crumbles about as close to the real thing as can be found on the market, at a lower cost to the environment.

Financially, the statistics make the startup’s success clear: in 2018, Beyond reported an annual revenue of almost 88 million, more than doubling the corporation’s income from the previous year alone. In 2019, the Los Angeles-based vegan meat substitute company became so large as to hold its initial public offering in early May. Many chains throughout the US have also begun to include Beyond Meats in their menus, such as Dunkin Donuts’ new breakfast sandwich, which uses Beyond sausage.
Impossible Foods Inc., another plant-based protein company which got its start in 2011, has posted similar earnings, growth, and popularity. Known mostly for their Impossible Burger, the company advertises availability for any restaurant to spice up their menu with their vegetarian meat-replacement products. Impossible boasts a “36% increase in same-store sales” for those food service providers which choose to sell their products. Impossible also recently partnered with Burger King to make the fast food chain’s Whopper using Impossible meats: the “Impossible Whopper.”

All of this, coming from a demand for products which have less of an impact on the environment than animal meat. Combined, the range of success in the plant protein market makes one thing clear. Consumers have spoken, and the support for plant-based proteins is here to stay.

But especially interesting is the question of what demographics of people are changing their eating habits. Although consumers in general have taken readily to these plant-based products, it is primarily young people who have caught on to this emerging trend in the food market.

A report by Impossible Foods showed that age was a significant factor in who is choosing to buy and eat plant-protein products. Specifically, millennials and Gen-Z consumers are choosingthese faux-meats in higher amounts than the generations above them. This statistic is likely exacerbated by the fact that many of these young people are millennial parents, raising their children on these meat replacement products. Impossible reports that during their humble beginnings, “concern for the environment wasn’t even in the top ten reasons why consumers cited as motivating their purchase… now it’s number three.”

Millennials are becoming more motivated to change their individual consumption habits based on the impact the products they consume have on the environment. This decision is doubly true for those millennial parents, who are understandably invested in environmental issues for the sake of the world they’re curating and leaving behind for their young ones.

But what exactly are the environmental impacts of these plant-based proteins? Both Impossible and Beyond post statistics on their website: that their products use less energy, less water, emit fewer greenhouse gases, and take up less land. For reasons already stated, both companies have monetary reasons to market themselves in this eco-friendly light. NBC news reports that, while meat alternatives are not lying about their sustainability, “it’s not the magic bullet,” citing Oxford researcher Marco Springmann. Springmann suggests that global diets would need to change entirely before the food market is not a major problem affecting climate change. However, most meat alternative companies do not advertise themselves as an end-all, be-all solution, but rather a step in the right direction that requires little change in one’s diet to be more eco-friendly.

The future holds many innovations waiting to be explored. Beyond meat has reported development of “fishless-fish,” and sustainability researchers and biologists are always on the hunt for ways to improve the food market.
The ultimate goal is to feed more people using less energy, taking care of the Earth.

We’re not yet at a point where we can point to any solution as a blanket answer to the problem of climate change. Shifts in the market show that people are willing to buy alternatives and support improvements to have less of a carbon footprint. And while these individual choices will not solve problems on their own, changes to the market can be a catalyst to greater reform. Millennials are showing that eating better is one choice they’re willing to make to have less of an impact on our planet.

Vertumnus – Emperor Rudolph 2, Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527 – 1593)

**Thomas Fuller, English clergyman (1608-1661)

Jawn could stand for a lot of things—a pair of shoes, a person—but Kevin knew exactly what Mason meant: there was a gun in that bag.

I know things are crazy for y’all here, Mason said, so I got this for you. 
The police were a frequent presence around the projects, so no one picked up the bag or asked to see the gun. Kevin said his goodbyes and started walking away in the alert and fluid way he had, shoulders back and arms swinging, tall and lean and young, his hair pulled back in a ponytail and his gray hoodie sweatshirt zipped, always aware of where he was but trying not to look over his shoulder. It was important not to look skittish, not around his friends and not if the police were watching, but Kevin also didn’t want to hang around with a weapon lying at his feet. He didn’t want the trouble a gun brought.

Kevin’s housing project, a cluster of brick buildings, was one of eighteen in Brownsville, making the neighborhood one of the densest concentrations of public housing in the country, with more than sixty thousand people packed into 1.2 square miles. The project could feel like a small town, in an old-fashioned way. It had its own recreation center and known personalities and raffish identity. Kevin got a laugh out of the nicknames for the loudmouths or tough guys: Koolaid and Lil Head and OgLoc. He’d lived there his whole life, with his older sister and her two-year-old daughter, his younger brother, and his mother, who’d raised her kids mostly on her own, working retail jobs and caring for the elderly and disabled. The average rent in the Brownsville projects was $430 a month. Families tended to stay for years once they got off the waiting list for an apartment. “We stick together,” Kevin said. “We went to school together. Your apartment might be on top of mine. Your mom might have babysat me.”

On a good day, the project’s residents would come outside to play music and catch up. You knew it was spring when older people brought small towels to sit on and raised their faces to the sun.

“That kind of day, I’m going to be where everyone is, the girls, the mamas, the babies,” Kevin said, thinking on it. “That kind of day, it’s perfect.”

But Brownsville was also one of New York’s most disadvantaged communities, measured by health as well as economic insecurity, and one of its most dangerous. The year Kevin was twelve, more than a hundred people were shot in and around Brownsville and another thirty were killed, about half the number in all of Manhattan. Guns were a fact of life. “I could find someone with a gun before I could find someone with a diploma,” Kevin told me. Over the years, he’d lost people he knew, including close friends. The beefing wasn’t mainly between the gangs with well-known names, like the Bloods or the Crips. They existed, but their presence in the neighborhood was fading. More trouble came from menacing rivalries that pitted groups in the projects against their peers in other projects. The conflicts and alliances shifted, but there was one other project in particular that was the main foe of Kevin and his friends.

Kevin’s father lived in the rival development. He’d moved back in with Kevin’s grandmother when he and Kevin’s mother split up, back when their children were young. Kevin’s dad paid child sup- port regularly, and they talked once in a while, but Kevin hadn’t gone over to see him in years. One day, standing on the street out-side his building, he gestured toward the windows of his grand- mother’s apartment, visible a couple of blocks away, above the trees. “I can’t remember what the inside of my nana’s crib looks like,” he said.

The battle lines between the projects were drawn when Kevin’s father was growing up, when established gangs fought over territory so they could sell drugs. Kevin didn’t know why—and it didn’t really matter how the trouble started back in the day. Fresh insults piled on top of old grudges. The reason for a fight or even a shoot-ing could be minor—disrespecting someone on social media, or flirting with his girlfriend. Kevin found it disturbing. Most people he knew did. But that wasn’t the same as knowing how to end it. There was too much bad blood. He’d learned you could defend a place, and your people in it, yet at the same time wish you were anywhere else.

When Kevin was thirteen, he went to the store for his mother and got jumped. All he knew was that the people who beat him up and took his money were from another project, and that now he and his friends would have a problem with them. Months later, one of his eighth-grade classmates was killed in a shooting. Kevin didn’t know why that happened, either.

At fifteen, he got jumped again and was slashed in the face with a razor blade. Conflict built until trauma begot trauma in Brownsville. In a focus group of young men of color coming home from Rikers Island, nine out of ten said they’d been robbed, jumped, or “seriously hurt in a fight they didn’t start,” though none of them identified as victims of crime. Writing up the results, the Vera Institute of Justice pointed out that if they don’t sufficiently recover, people who are victimized, especially when they’re young, are more likely to gravitate toward peers they think can protect them and to commit retaliatory violence themselves. After Kevin was jumped, he couldn’t afford to look like an easy target. He and some of his friends found one of the boys who had assaulted him and beat him up.
Kevin got arrested for the first time just after he turned sixteen, when a friend who’d already graduated from his high school came to campus with a car. Kevin asked to drive it. “At the time, I didn’t think it was a serious thing to drive without a license. He hands me the keys, and I’m like, ‘Lemme put my book bag in your car.’ I snuck out at lunch, ran to the car quick, opened the door to the backseat, and put my book bag inside, and as soon as I closed the door, officers are swarming me, guns out.” The car was stolen. Kevin didn’t tell the police about his friend and he was charged with possession of stolen property. He got five hundred hours of community service, which he worked off by cleaning the piers near the Brooklyn Bridge.

Kevin’s father tried to step in after he was arrested. “He tried to come play the father figure. I told him, ‘These words don’t mean nothing.’ I made an example to him like this: ‘If something happens to me right now, who you think I’m gonna go get, you or my mans?’ Kevin meant an older friend who had his back in the beefing. “My pops is looking at me with a dumb face. I’m like, ‘It’s not supposed to be like that. You supposed to be protecting me.’ We had a fight. He swung at me and I swung at him. ‘Look, all you do is give my mom money. You weren’t here. You don’t know me. My mom takes care of me. She sees me every day. She has the right to put her hands on me but she don’t. You, I speak to you on the phone and you pop up once in a blue.’”

Kevin went to Rikers Island for the first time two years later, spending a couple of nights in the jail after another fight between the projects. He didn’t start it but he didn’t back away, either. He and his friend pummeled two boys, and they ran off, their iPhones falling to the ground in the melee. Kevin picked the phones up. He considered them trophies for a fight that had remained in-bounds, with no one seriously injured.

But the parents of one of the kids he’d fought went to the police, and Kevin and a couple of his friends were charged with robbery. In exchange for pleading guilty, Kevin got a break that benefits a lot of teenagers in the state of New York: he qualified for a one-time get-out-of-jail-free card called youthful offender eligibility. The judge sent him to a year-long program offered by CASES (the Center for Alternative Sentencing and Employment Services), with group sessions and volunteer assignments at his local recreation center. Kevin liked the work, which was a mix of playing with younger kids and cleaning up. He got to go on a trip to Ohio. He met a girl in the program who became his long-term, on-again/off-again girlfriend. Over the next few years, Kevin lived on the edge of trouble. He had friends at the center: “I sometimes chilled with people who did wild shit,” he said. When they got into fights, he tried to set limits without leaving anyone in the lurch or risking his status. He had a personal code: he fought with his fists, not with weapons. Kevin knew people who were doing twenty-five to life. He wanted no part of that.

Guns were for protection, which wasn’t the same as self-defense, as researchers have explored. In the early 2000s, when he was a twenty-five-year-old graduate student, Victor Rios did fieldwork in the streets of Oakland, where he’d once been in a gang himself. Shadowing forty teenage boys, Rios regularly came across knives and guns; they sent a signal about how you carried yourself on the street, about how you belonged, precisely because they were dangerous. And yet “although many of the boys had easy access to weapons, they rarely used them,” wrote Rios, who became a sociologist at the University of California at Santa Barbara. They didn’t want to risk retaliation or prison. They didn’t want to take a life.

But sometimes they did. The guns could no more be controlled, in the end, than the damage they did could be contained.

Mason, the friend who’d brought the gun to Kevin’s group, didn’t live in Brownsville anymore. His family had moved to a safer part of Brooklyn when he was in middle school, and his mother was focused on keeping him out of the projects. But he kept up with Kevin and the rest of their crew, texting and visiting. Through posts on Facebook and homemade videos on YouTube, often narrated by whoever was holding out his phone as a camera, Mason could track the sparring along with the rest of them.

When Mason brought the gun, a silver semiautomatic pistol with scratch marks where the serial number was supposed to be, he didn’t say how he’d gotten it and Kevin didn’t ask. Bringing it to the group showed Mason stood with them, and it was also a way to seem hard without much likelihood that he’d suffer violence, since he could go back to his safer neighborhood when he wanted. But the next day, the gun showed up in a flashy video that another friend, Chris, posted of himself on Facebook. There was Chris on-screen, the camera jumping around as he showed off the gun to a couple of girls he was with and whoever tuned in to his feed.

The video wasn’t online for long, and Kevin missed it. He spent that day inside his family’s apartment with his girlfriend, staying off the internet because his phone, which was old, was only half working. It was evening again when he walked her outside to catch the subway to her night job in Manhattan, wearing his gray hoodie and white sneakers, with a durag in the pocket of his sweatpants. After dropping off his girlfriend, he texted Chris, who lived on another floor of his building. Chris was home with Mason and another guy whom Kevin didn’t know well. He told Kevin to come on up. It was a few minutes before 11:00 p.m.
Kevin didn’t think about the gun until he saw it sitting on a side table near the door. This time, he didn’t walk away. Someone rolled him a blunt. He poured a little liquor into a glass and took a few sips. He was settling in when one of Chris’s friends decided to leave. As the one sitting closest to the door, Kevin got up to lock it behind him. When Chris’s friend turned the knob and opened the door to leave, Kevin was standing just behind, ready to close the door after him. Over the friend’s shoulder he saw two men standing at the threshold, as if they were about to knock. One was white and one was black. They weren’t in uniform, but Kevin recognized them from the neighborhood: they were in plainclothes, but he knew them as police officers. Chris had been arrested for assault and harassment five months earlier, and the police thought he was involved with a gang, so they’d been watching his social media accounts, it turned out. They’d seen the gun in the Facebook video and come looking for him.

Standing there behind Chris’s friend, with the cops in the doorway, Kevin felt a jolt of adrenaline. What would the cops do if they saw the gun? Chris, with his record, would definitely go to prison if the police pinned the gun on him, and he was the obvious suspect, since it was his apartment. Or what if Mason got arrested? He’d gotten jumped once and just handed over his phone to the attackers. He wasn’t a fighter. Later, describing what was going through his mind in this moment, Kevin brought up the story of Kalief Browder, a touchstone in his world; Jay-Z had called him a prophet and made a documentary about him. Kalief, who was from the Bronx, wasn’t a fighter, either. Accused of stealing a backpack, he spent three years at Rikers Island, enduring solitary confinement and beatings, and afterward, at the age of twenty-two, he killed himself.

Did Kevin remember Kalief in the moment? Probably not. “What were you thinking?” his mother would ask him later. He didn’t have a good answer. In that instant, he had some wild notion of getting rid of the pistol by dashing down the hallway and flushing the gun down the toilet. It was a crazy idea, he could see later, full of risk—of leaving the apartment in handcuffs or even getting shot by a nervous cop. But young people do rash and impulsive things, especially when they’re under pressure. They tend to believe nothing truly terrible will ever befall them, and even though Kevin had a rap sheet, he didn’t think of himself as someone who would get into serious trouble with the law. He thought he could draw a line and stay on the safe side of it.

Kevin also wanted to be the kind of person who would come through for his friends, the man in the room who could handle himself. At that moment, those feelings were paramount.

With the police at the door, he picked up the gun.

From Charged by Emily Bazelon. Published in 2019 by Random House, an imprint of Penguin Random House, New York, NY.

Michelle replies: “Calm down. It’s just helps me think better; it’s not cocaine. Don’t be hypocritical. You take a cognitive enhancement drug—and probably in dangerously high doses—namely, caffeine. You also smoke, though you say you’ve quit. Why do you think people drink coffee and smoke? To be more alert. So, if I’m cheating, so are you and a lot of other people. Besides, if you’re worried about unfair advantages, why pick on cognitive enhancement drugs? Just being at this university is a huge advantage. Education is a cognitive enhancement, isn’t it? Or what about the fact that you are really smart, and both your parents have PhDs?  That’s an advantage, too, and you certainly didn’t earn it.”

This little dialogue, which paraphrases an exchange between two of my students, captures the ambivalence and confusion that most of us exhibit when we consider the possibility of biomedical enhancements. Reactions tend to be polarized: breathless optimism on the part of “posthumanists,” versus fear and loathing on the part of biological conservatives. Neither response is correct. There are plenty of reasons to be concerned about biomedical enhancements, but just saying ‘no’ to them is not an option. Biomedical enhancements of normal human capacities are already with us, as the case of Ritalin demonstrates, and more are on the way. As with Ritalin, they will make their debut as spin-offs from medical research. Research on genetic disorders has already led to knowledge of how to insert genes in mouse embryos that result in improved memory and strength. Research to provide brain-computer interface technologies that enable paralyzed people to activate a robotic arm simply by thinking about grasping an object will inevitably lead to computerized ‘exoskeletons’ that extend the capacities of normal humans. Research on normal brain activity has already led to techniques for electrical stimulation of the brain that improves mood and cognition. So we don’t have to aim at enhancements to develop them. And once we develop the capacity to enhance, it will be hard—and in many cases—impossible to resist using it.

Enhancement isn’t new. Human beings have already developed impressive enhancements. In fact, the ability to enhance ourselves may be part of what makes humans different from other animals. Literacy and numeracy are dramatic cognitive enhancements, as are computers and the internet. Science is a kind of collective cognitive enhancement. Our remote ancestors enhanced their capacity to digest food by learning to cook it (cooking is a form of pre-digestion and also neutralizes natural toxins, greatly extending the menu of what we can safely eat). So why are people fearful of biomedical enhancements? The answer is that they think that biomedical enhancements are something entirely new, because they “interfere with nature” or threaten to change or destroy human nature.

As the philosopher John Stuart Mill pointed out long ago, the idea of interfering with nature is confused. In one sense, nature is simply all of reality along with the laws that govern it. In that sense of nature, you can’t interfere with it unless you are God. Alternatively, you might think of nature as the way things are, absent human action. There’s nothing wrong with interfering with nature in that sense; we have to do it to survive. We interfere with nature in this second definition every time we act so as to alter the course of events—for example, when we take insulin for our diabetes.

Why then are some people worried that using biomedical enhancements will destroy human nature, or that the particular kind of ‘interference’ with nature they involve is something we ought to avoid? After all, virtually all religious traditions (and commonsense as well) acknowledge that human nature contains serious flaws. The answer is that they think that human nature is uneditable—they think that if we try to improve on the flawed parts, we’ll destroy the good parts. They may also have a distorted view of evolution:  they may think that the human organism, as former President Bush’s Council on Bioethics put it, is a “finely-balanced” whole, the work of the “master-engineer” of evolution.

If you think that humans as they are now are the summit of a progressive biological process, and also think that our nature is a densely-interconnected, “finely-balanced” whole, then you’ll take a dim view of any effort to improve our nature.  You will think that anything we do will fall short of what the “master engineer” of evolution has produced and you will worry that if we try to modify one strand of the densely interwoven fabric of our being, the whole thing may unravel.

Seductive as it is, this way of thinking about human nature is completely wrong. It exhibits a rosy, pre-Darwinian, teleological view of nature that flies in the face of what we now know about evolution. Evolution is not a master engineer; contrary to Richard Dawkins; it is not even like a blind watchmaker. A blind watchmaker knows in advance what he is trying to make and he is making something for the purpose of serving human needs. Not so with evolution. Evolution is more like a morally blind tinkerer. Here’s what Charles Darwin says about nature, as the product of evolution.

“What a book a Devil’s chaplain could write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horridly cruel works of nature!” Humans, like all organisms, have lots of “design flaws.” Here are a just a few. Unlike almost all other mammals, humans can’t biosynthesize Vitamin C; this has produced scurvy in human populations for as long as there have been humans. Because of a rapid transition to walking upright at the same time the cranium was enlarging, humans have an exceptionally high incidence of death during the birthing process. Because it combines the ingestion of food with air-intake, the human pharynx is responsible for an exceptionally high rate of death by choking, far surpassing that in other mammals. Human sinuses would drain better if we spent most of our time standing on our heads, with the result that we are prone to sinus infections. The urethra in human males runs through the prostate, rather than around it, which results in infections and urinary dysfunction. (If these don’t impress you, think about your knees or your lower back).

Evolution isn’t progress. The latest version of a species isn’t superior to its predecessors. In evolutionary terms “better” only means better from the standpoint of inclusive fitness—how well organisms do in passing on their genes. But inclusive fitness is always relative to an environment. Traits that improve inclusive fitness in one environment can become lethal when the environment changes. Because there is no constant environment against which progress in terms of inclusive fitness can be gauged, we can’t say that later editions of a species are better. Besides, inclusive fitness is not what we rightly value. It has to do only with the quantity of genes that are passed on, not the quality of life.

The idea that we are seamless webs that may unravel if we touch one thread is also at odds with evolutionary biology. Natural selection changes species incrementally; organisms have to be able to change some characteristics without affecting others. An organism that was a seamless web would not be able adapt. In fact, organisms, including humans, exhibit a number of characteristics that serve to prevent them from unraveling when something changes as a result of random mutations. For instance, they exhibit modularity: there are subsystems that are relatively autonomous, so that a change here will not disrupt a function there.  

They also exhibit canalization: the same phenotype can develop from different sets of genes, so that a mutation in some genes doesn’t necessarily mean a change in phenotype. Finally, they exhibit redundancy of function and plasticity.  This means that damage to one system need not be disastrous: another system may be able to do the same job or a quite different system may be flexible enough to take care of the problem.   All of these features show that the seamless web metaphor is inaccurate.  If we were fragile, seamless webs in the way biological conservatives think we are, then we would be courting disaster to remain as we are. Any environmental change, including those down to human behavior could cause the whole thing to unravel. If the biological conservatives were right about our fragility, we ought to use biomedical enhancements to correct this dangerous situation! We should ramp up modularity, canalization, redundancy, and plasticity. We should enhance, not refrain from enhancing!

There is a grain of truth in the seamless web metaphor, however. Human beings have often failed to understand interconnections among biological phenomenon (think of how we have disrupted ecologies by the introduction of plants or animals that we thought would improve things). But the lesson to draw from these blunders is not that we should never try to improve ourselves; instead, it is that we should take care not to over-estimate our ability to foresee the consequences of what we do. As our knowledge of how we are put together increases, we will be in a better position to take appropriate steps to reduce the risk of unintended consequences. We already know how to make important, but discrete changes in mice.

Apart from the worry about unintended bad biological consequences, the main concern about biomedical enhancement is that could exacerbate existing unjust inequalities. I think that is a very serious matter. But I don’t think it is a conversation-stopper. It doesn’t mean we should try to forgo biomedical enhancements. That would make as much sense as prohibiting anybody from learning to read until the whole world could be literate.

Some enhancements won’t remain costly for long. This is true of enhancement drugs. Once they go off patent and can be produced as generics, the price will drop dramatically. (There are now over 100 generic prescription drugs that sell for $4 for a month’s supply at Walmart. Cognitive enhancement drugs may be cheaper than lattees). Enhancements that increase productivity may come to be viewed as basic education is now. They may be subsidized by society, and that will do something to limit inequalities. Some enhancements may actually reduce inequalities.  For example, there is evidence that cognitive enhancement drugs tend to produce the biggest boost for those who are at the lower end of the normal distribution of cognitive abilities. 

Nonetheless, we ought to be worried about inequality. If extremely powerful but expensive enhancements are available only to the wealthy, they may be in a position to dominate the political process or the economy even more than they do now. Instead of declaring all enhancements off-limits, we need to think hard about how to ensure the more rapid diffusion of those enhancements that have the potential to exacerbate injustice if they’re available only to the better off. Doing this might require modifying patent rights as well as subsidies.

We can’t just say ‘no’ to enhancements. They are already here, and more are on the way. The question is how to manage them. We’ll have a better chance of managing them well if we bring them into the light of day and acknowledge that the goal of improving human beings through the use of biotechnologies is a legitimate one. Instead of continuing an uncontrolled, unmonitored “experiment” in which thousands of people like Michelle take a drug that may be unsafe, we need well-designed longitudinal studies. We aren’t likely to get that if we throw up our hands and say that biomedical enhancement is illegitimate because it may destroy human nature.

“Human creativity is a sword that cuts both ways,” one of my professors of psychology liked to say. “We’ve created electricity and jets and space travel, but we can also create ideologies and myths that generate tremendous suffering.” He would then go on to list the ways our personalities cause us problems. At the top of his list was denial. At the same time, denial is essential to our emotional health. Without the ability to deny certain facts that threaten our survival, we’d be paralyzed with fear. Denial is so important that it even has its own category: ego defense mechanism. It’s a structural part of our personality in the same way that bones are a structural part of our anatomy. There’d be no walking without bones. Our personality couldn’t develop without mechanisms to defend it. 

Think of denial as a kind of thick metal mesh around your mind that protects you from falling objects that keep crashing into your life. For instance:
• Your forty-year old high school buddy just died of a brain tumor but you deny that it could happen to you. • A friend was just laid off and you need a heavy dose of denial to get through the work day. But again, denial is a two-edged sword that can also act to your detriment. It can prevent you from realizing that dating the still-married Bradley is a colossal mistake (despite his claim “I’m filing for a divorce”). Or that having that extra drink at the party might kill you (“I can drive just fine”). Or that taking that expensive exotic vacation isn’t actually a good deal (“I can easily pay it off later”). And there’s an important additional component at work: denial doesn’t operate alone. It’s linked to an assortment of other ego defense mechanisms. Principally fantasy and delusion, along with symbolization, sublimation and projection. The purpose of these mental processes is to soften up reality so it can fit into your mind. This softening allows you to keep on living without paralyzing levels of conflict. 

In my twenty-five years as a psychotherapist I’ve learned a great deal about how frequently people use these ego defense mechanisms in their daily lives, utterly unaware of how they’re inflicting great injury on their relationships and personal happiness. However, the incident that inspired me to write the book Emotional Bullshit (Tarcher/Penguin publishers) actually occurred in my family’s dining room. I was discussing college applications with my then teenage daughter, and becoming more and more frustrated as she denied both the urgency and complexity of the applications. She finally slipped into a delusional reality in which she’d complete them all within hours. Finally, frustrated with my demand for a more realistic assessment, she blamed me for hassling her. When she stalked out of the room I complained to my wife, “It’s such bullshit! Doesn’t she see what she’s doing?” 

I started making notes, putting those three behaviors into sequence. I labeled them the Toxic Trio: denial, delusion and blame. Denial ignores or minimizes an essential fact or responsibility. Delusion creates an alternate, distorted reality. Then, when things fall apart, blame shifts the responsibility onto some-one or something else. As I considered these three common dynamics, I realized how easily all of us become stuck in these closely linked cognitive processes. Denial, as mentioned, is inextricably linked with delusion (fantasy, sublimation) because when we deny an essential fact, it creates a factual vacuum. Since vacuums cannot exist in nature, something rushes in to fill the now-empty space. Delusion and fantasy creatively expand to fit any space. So when Bradley says he thinks you’re cute and sexy, and the neurochemicals dedicated to sex start gushing into your bloodstream, Bradley denies his ethical obligation to his wife and tells you that he is filing for divorce. In that moment, in his mind, he and his wife are already separated. Your delusion receptors fasten onto his denial and pump it up until it towers over you like a fire-breathing bomb. Now you are seeing Bradley as a single man, so having sex is now (delusionally) ethical. After all, both of you are ethical people who wouldn’t think of having an affair if one of you was actually married! 

The third part of the Toxic Trio, blame, shows up when the delusional reality falls apart, as delusions always do. When Bradley decides to stay with his wife, or further sneaking around becomes untenable, reality hits. Then blame takes over. Bradley is now a lying bastard. Or the blame turns inward and you blame yourself: I’m a stupid fool. Which can lead to severe depression. That’s the Toxic Trio at work:

• Denial masks an essential fact.
• Delusion fills in for whatever fact is ignored or minimized. 
• Blame shifts the responsibility for the resulting disaster onto someone else. 

Or something else. Such as destiny: It Was Meant To Be. This same scenario adapts to every possible human behavior. Look at the act of ordering French fries when your doctor has warned you about your high cholesterol and carrying twenty extra pounds. First you deny the essential fact that this helping of extra fat and calories really do count. Next, delusion kicks in: it’s Friday and you deserve a treat. Then, when your heart races while climbing a flight of stairs, blame comes to the rescue—it’s the fault of your parents and their poor eating habits. Or you were born with a weak metabolism. The power behind denial and delusion is fused into our creative hard-wiring. We’re all designed with a potent willingness to believe in magic. People everywhere find mystical explanations for ordinary phenomena. That’s why people can maintain a delusion for years, even decades, despite solid evidence to the contrary. Some people still believe that smoking isn’t really all that bad. Nations can maintain a delusion for centuries, fueled by past glory. 

A delusional belief system (national or personal) endures longest when economic or social benefits support it. Bigotry, for example, thrives because it provides emotional, economic or social benefits to those who sustain it. The same is true for the individual delusional system. For instance, David believes that working 70 hours a week is essential to success. When his family life falls apart because he’s never home, David simply denies the validity of his family’s needs, finding solace within the world of success. Then he blames his spouse and kids for not being grateful for his sacrifices. It’s a neat package that protects David from personal responsibility. 

That’s the ultimate payoff of the Toxic Trio: It allows us to avoid personal responsibility. What’s the antidote? It’s amazingly simple: a frontal assault on the denial of essential facts. Which is accomplished by focusing on your Core Needs, your long-term best interests. Let’s use a committed relationship as an example. You’ve been with J. for five years and really want the relationship to succeed. What’s the most essential fact about successful relationships? They require ongoing nurturing and care. This means spending time together doing fun things in an atmosphere of positive energy. So you make these activities a priority. You plan ahead, do research about interesting activities, and involve J. in the discussion. Now J. sees that you’re committed to nurturing the relationship. 

And when the inevitable tribulations show up, you don’t allow the Toxic Trio to sabotage your plans by denying the essential fact (that you need to nurture your relationship), or lapse into a delusional reality (I can spend time with J. later). Nor do you blame J. for not being proactive and appreciative. You focus on fulfilling your Core Need—having a good time together. This process requires emotional maturity because you don’t allow yourself to be side-tracked by petty emotional struggles. You don’t allow self-indulgence to sabotage your intention. The same template applies when your teenager son comes home way past curfew. Your Core Need is building your long-term relationship with him and not indulging yourself by yelling—or ignoring the infraction. So you calmly make an appointment to discuss the problem and come up with a reasonable consequence, which you enforce. All of life’s issues can be dealt with the same way. You fulfill your Core Need for financial security by not over-spending. You find time for family intimacy by not over-working. 

Conclusion: Fulfilling your Core Needs requires directly confronting the tendency to deny that a need exists, delusionally imagine it will get fulfilled by someone esle, and blaming everyone else for any difficulties involved. And that confrontation begins with facing the power of denial. Denial does make the world go round, but it doesn’t have to be the destructive energy driving your life. By Carla Alasko 

I had once been under the impression that not wearing a bra made one, at the very least, a free spirit. Suddenly, that was no longer the case. Enter: the tramp. 

This duality brought me to the epiphany that my bra was more than just another article of clothing. My bra, it seemed, had the power to define the type of person I was. Without one I was sexually loose, with one I was being chaste. 

Did the same apply to the type of bra I wore? I asked myself. If I wore a sports bra, did that make me a tomboy? If I wore a frilly little lace number, was I sexy? If I stuck with a plain white cotton Hanes-Her-Way, was I boring? 

What would the angels say — those leggy ones here on Earth — where strategically placed lingerie was the mandatory dress code? 

With this newfound perspective on the bra came the awareness that my decision to “free-boob” it, as my boyfriend termed it, was no longer a personal choice I could make at will. Not only did my bra-bereft chest have the potential to classify what type of person I was — it was also a social faux pas. 

Wasn’t that part of my life over? I asked, wondering if I would ever know what it would be like to keep the details of my bra — or lack thereof — to myself. Memories of adolescent angst growing up in a small, suburban town just outside Manhattan were suddenly brought to light in vivid detail: Coltish, pre-teen blondes snapping my A-cup bra straps. Their haughty laughter ringing in my ears as I longingly glanced at their own B- and C-cupped breasts, which filled each dainty bra to an eye-pleasing level. In those days, I had been the flat girl. No, worse: I had been the flat girl in a no-name bra.  

Perhaps, I thought, bras would be less complicated if they weren’t the pricey, glorified gauze they are today. Once called a mastodeton, the first bra made its debut in Greece nearly 7,000 years ago when it was used to cover or restrain during physical activity. Its main purpose: to support the chest. 

These days, however, bras aren’t just for support. In fact, the majority—  specially those overpriced shards of filmy material —  are barely suitable for such an endeavor. And this, I believe, is where the fear factor comes into play. Most women believe the bra will help to preserve the youthful shape of the breasts, which naturally sag as we age. And it is this very same idea, not surprisingly, that bra manufacturers manage to promote. 

And, like a cheating spouse, bras lead double lives. While some are made to hide and conceal, others — of much the same construct — are used to accentuate and allure. In fact, there are a variety of bras for a variety of situations. There are push-up bras for the protruding-impaired and minimizing bras for the heavy-chested. There are convertible bras for women who like to be properly concealed no matter what the shirt, and padded bras for those cold winter days. Then there are the flashy, often flimsy, demi and shelf bras that have no other purpose than to barely conceal, thus delivering a deliberate sexual message. There are even training bras for young girls, a crash course in what the rest of your life with boobs will feel like. 

But there is one thing most bras have in common as far as I’m concerned: they are all uncomfortable. Lace itches, underwires cut into my rib cage, tight straps leave marks on my shoulders and form unattractive rolls on my back, and those little metal hooks bend and break so easily. In short, although I am far from flat, the alternative is just far too alluring. The bouncing I can live with; the constricting and the pinching I can do without. 

For now, to appease my boyfriend and avoid unnecessary stereotyping, I will wear a bra when the situation calls for it. 

When I head to the gym and hit the treadmill, for example, the need is real. When I wear a tight T-shirt and it just so happens to be white, society demands it of me.  

But when there’s no one around to tell me otherwise, believe me, the bra stays in the drawer. 

I love a good romantic story, just give me John Cusack holding a stereo above his head or a couple of animated dogs sharing a plate of spaghetti, and you’ll find me balled up with Kleenex and a far away look, but the fantasy ends right there. When I see a man walk down the street with flowers, I don’t think to myself “Oh, how romantic;” I’m thinking, “oooooo, I wonder what he did.”

A century and a half ago, poets Robert and Elizabeth Browning exchanged love letters that still exist today. He wrote to her:
“You have given me the highest, completest proof of love that ever one human being gave another. I am all gratitude, and all pride (under the proper feeling which ascribes pride to the right source) all pride that my life has been so crowned by you.”

The sentiments of men and women today are a far cry from those of Mr. and Mrs. Browning. Today rather than exchanging love letters, we exchange text messages, and instead of being open and forthcoming with our feelings, we make it a goal to appear as emotionally aloof as possible.

Is romance a lost art? Was is simply a passing fad like shoulders pads or ratted hair? The ways of courting have changed drastically even over the last sixty years. When my mom describes her dating experience as a teenager, I can’t even picture the scenario in color. “The young man would show up to my house dressed in his full school uniform with all the medals. He would take a seat in the living room and chat with my father. Then my Dad would call me down stairs. I made my entrance, took my date’s arm, and we left for the party.”

When I was a teenager, my boyfriend would honk his horn from the driveway and I would dash to the front seat of his Isuzu Rodeo before any parental interrogation could ensue. When did dating go from formal and chivalrous to casual and uncouth? Sixty years ago, a man showing up for a first date wearing a coat and tie and holding a bouquet of flowers was common courtesy. Today, a man is off to a good start if he’s on time to the restaurant and silences his blackberry?

What happened from then to now?

Did the free loving mentality of the late 1960’s and early 70’s diminish romance by making monogamy undesirable? Why would a man spend time wooing one woman when a single individual could never satisfy him? Was it our parents who put good old-fashioned courting rituals to bed by bringing up a generation that doesn’t understand the value of working for things they want? Sixteen year olds today expect Range Rovers on their birthday; sixty years ago if you wanted some wheels, you had to work after school and on the weekends to earn them. Have we become too sexually free a society to even appreciate the need for romance? If I recall correctly, I never learned about the sacredness of “my flower” in sex education class but committed to memory the early signs of Chlamydia. Sexual education is important, but I can’t think of a more efficient way to suck romance out of the world than a coed tutorial on pubic lice.

Women were the key players in pushing old styles of courtship out of the picture. We fought for equality, and we have made significant progress. We still make eighty cents to the man’s dollar, but that’s a hell of a lot better than the sixty-four cents we earned in 1951. Women have emerged from their shells powerful and courageous. We aren’t afraid to be impolite or opinionated, and we’re not scared to be smart or funny either. Women today can talk about anything; comedian Sarah Silverman makes her living by being crass and witty and saying the word diarrhea as many times as possible in a half hour segment.

Years ago, we fussed over women like it seemed they might break. All of our protecting and escorting and chauffeuring told the world that women were the weaker sex. When women cut the reins that held them back, relationships are healthier for it. A new kind of romance exists today, one based on real love rather than societal norms and mores. Today two people come together as equals, and marriage is there as an option, not as a woman’s only option.

When flowers and candy make an appearance in a relationship today, they carry more meaning than they did years ago. Couples today live together before they get married, and if they live in New York City, they most likely share a one-bedroom apartment. You can’t hide your irritating habits, your frequent bouts with insanity, or your occasional passing of gas when you live with someone. The man standing on the stoop sixty years ago with flowers in his hand isn’t going to see his date’s apartment, let alone move in. When someone sees you at your ugliest and most neurotic, and that someone brings you flowers for no good reason: those flowers are romantic. It’s romantic when your boyfriend cleans your apartment because he knows you’ve had a long day at work, and it’s romance when a man wants you to succeed even if it means less time with him. It’s romantic when a man goes to the drug store to buy you medicine without even having to ask, and it’s romantic when a man takes an interest in the things that interest you. It’s romantic when a man thinks you are just as sexy in a dress as you are in a power suit.

I for one am glad the 1950’s dating style was put to rest; it was an impersonal routine set in place by a society that didn’t give women enough credit. I do however think it wise that we drop the cavalier exteriors we’ve put on and share our feelings like the poets of our past. But in the mean time I can smile about the romantic language of today, those thoughtful, unexpected expressions of a love that is real.

I ran through the possibilities. It could be the beginning of an amazing relationship. He sounded promising. As for the convoluted nature of the match, if anybody could make this work, I could. And hey, there’s no way this would end up being as bad as some of the other horrendous blind dates that I’ve been on. And there have been many.

Fast forward to Thursday night. We were meeting at a high-class but low-key pub that was a couple of blocks from his hotel and a few blocks from my apartment. As I walked up the sidewalk, I spotted him coming out of the Palomar. Tall? Yes. Handsome? Very all-American Prom King. Put together? Decidedly: suave sleeve roll, a confident gait, an amazing pair of jeans. I looked for the belt – check – and the shoes – check. Wow. Nice shoes. Things were looking up.

“Joe?” I said. He was surprised I had recognized him on the street, but really, how many tall handsome men are walking from the Palomar to the pub on the corner at exactly 9:28PM? We found a spot at the bar and I ordered a Hefeweizen to show that I could drink a beer and wasn’t one of those wine spritzer girls (whom I disdain). And then he ordered an Old Fashioned. I blinked twice, impressed, and thought, “I should have ordered my whiskey.”

That was the peak of the night.

It all went downhill from there, starting with an awkward, precipitous drop.

“So you were reading at the bar?” My opening gambit.

“Yes” he said, smiling. “It’s actually a great book. It’s all about how Aristotle Onassis orchestrated Kennedy’s assassination.”

I was stunned into silence for a hot second. Not that it was a huge loss that he wasn’t actually reading a philosophy book at a bar – that’s a bit much, even for me – but giving credence to the most ridiculous conspiracy theory I’d ever heard? Even Mel Gibson channeling Jerry Fletcher would have scoffed at this idea. But tall handsome belted man was totally convinced. So I told him he was crazy.

“No, it’s true. Turns out, Jackie Kennedy was screwing this Onassis dude while she was still in the White House.”

I really should have stood up and walked out. Never mind the ridiculous conspiracy theory. Never mind that, even despite the weak tenets of the Camelot myth, there’s no way on God’s green earth that Jacqueline Kennedy was cheating on Jack while she was First Lady. But he had used the words “screwing” and “Jackie Kennedy” in the same sentence. Nobody talks about Jackie that way. Nobody.

But no, I stuck around. I’m a glutton for punishment. And I figured the magical powers of the whiskey gods would somehow transform crass and dim to charming and bright. After all, whiskey is pretty powerful stuff.

But it’s not that powerful.

Because then I was regaled with a charming story about how it took him seven years to get out of a state school with what he admitted was “the easiest major I could get for the least amount of credits.” Alright, I’m a snob. I value my college degrees, perhaps a little over much. This isn’t to say I don’t respect and admire quality human beings who passed on the B.A. and skipped straight to meaningful contributions to the world. But if you’re going to college, try at college. Try at something while you’re there. And if you’re on a first encounter, do not ever tell a woman who (clearly) reveres the hierarchy of higher ed. with stories about how you lived in your parents’ discarded station wagon for your first three years on campus and couldn’t make it to class because you were too busy experimenting with drugs.

Me: “Your parents were paying your tuition and you were skipping class to do ecstasy? Seriously?”
Him: “My parents could afford it.”

Now, maybe he was just unlucky. Maybe he was trying to sound like a nonchalant bad boy who was well enough off in the world to not worry about little things like paying for a college degree. Maybe he never even considered that the girl knocking back the (now whiskey) sitting next to him had recently sent off her last loan payment with a kiss because she recognized the value in something she wanted, worked at it, earned high honors at it, and then continued to work for it for 8 more years. So he spews out some words and suddenly I’m mentally comparing two scenes: Me, discussing Kierkegaard’s perception of divinity with my favorite professor before scurrying off to sit in the library basement and file law school manuals as an assiduous work study student (admittedly, a glorified scene). And him, high in the back of a Buick somewhere in rural Pennsylvania, an unopened brand new copy of Calculus for Business Majors discarded on the floor as he pisses away his parents’ money and ignores their phone calls (admittedly, probably not his actual college experience). That’s what flashed through my brain.

Looking back, I’m embarrassed that I continued to sit there. Maybe it was boredom. Maybe it was laziness. Maybe part of me was entertaining the idea of actually going out a second time with this giant useless person, only so that internally, resolutely, emphatically, I could reassure myself: “Yes. Yes, I would rather be eternally single than subject myself to a repeat encounter like this one.” I’m pretty sure at one point I played a high-stakes game of mental either/or. “If you had to choose, either marry this belted moron or join the convent,” to which the very core of my being rang out with some out of context Shakespeare: “Get thee to a nunnery!”

In the countless debriefs I’ve had since then (the story gets better every time), I’ve decided a number of things. 1) Always give it a shot. You never know when your beer-emboldened roommate might set you up with a winner. 2) The story is always worth it. Whether he’s great or horrible, the experience will bear recounting. And 3) Though I try to be accepting (really, I do), I reserve the right to be pretentious and close-minded about a select few things. Things like respecting the value of the dollar, pursuing knowledge when you’re afforded the opportunity, not glorifying drug habits, and of course: Jackie’s uncompromising fidelity.

And that’s a true story.

New Yorkers are a particular species of predators in the animal kingdom. We have a primal instinct to succeed—to “kill it” in an interview or a presentation. Success is the key to our survival and to move up the social hierarchy so we can transition from prey to predator. Residents of the concrete jungle do not truly become citizens until they’ve lived in the city for 10 years, at least. Overtime, New Yorkers develop unique characteristics and defense mechanisms that double as survival techniques. Las Vegas may be the city of sin, but it has no comparative street credit to the daily debauchery that ensues in the office or late at night in the underground raves in the Big Apple. Strangely enough, these survival tools mimic the seven deadly sins.

Anyone who lives in New York first moved to the metropolis out of lust, an intense desire to be at the center of the world. There are over one million centers of the universe within the five boroughs overflowing with vanity, consumed by greed, and erupting with wrath—the city’s certainly not for the faint of heart.

Ambitious lust begins our pilgrimage into the jungle, a drove of lustful rodents anxious to spread the seeds of our talents. But the centers of our social complex which crave instant gratification evolve so rapidly that envy becomes our new motivator—well, more like our slave driver. Every few blocks, the city transforms into a different landscape – extravagant buildings, bustling businesses, and bodacious billboards—all highlighting the materials that could someday be at your disposal. A destination just around the corner for the person with the right attitude and the right income. If you work hard, you could be the next CEO sitting high on Park Avenue.

The moment you get a fresh kill of success – a new apartment, an unsuspected promotion, or even a stranger on the subway telling you that you’re beautiful (hey, you have to appreciate the small victories), it immediately goes to your head. You ego swells with the surge of accomplishment. “Vanity, is definitely my favorite sin.”

Sloths are the scavengers the concrete jungle, animals who fail to kill success on their own, so they scrounge for the scraps left by predators that have climbed up the food chain. So we traipse and trample over them, unconcerned with their growing population because we foresee their extinction. We blindly pass them by on the street dozens of times every day. The homeless, the mentally unstable, the unemployed— creatures undignified to be called adversaries and unworthy of adequate predatory attention. They were once potential predators; but then got eaten by powerful fish and couldn’t compete in the struggle for success.

But with power comes the poisonous attraction of greed. Monkeys who asks, “How high?” when our superiors say, “Jump!” We do what we have to in order to survive. We perform tasks beneath us, fetching coffee, photocopying the newsletters—bitch work to be precise. Each mundane assignment keeps you in the game, and you have to pay homage to the lions who lead their pride before you can create your own.

But you have to watch your back in the city because there are societal piranhas at every turn, envious cats patiently biding their time. Stalking their prey, waiting to gobble up your hard work and claim responsibility. Everyone has an agenda. You quickly learn to be cautious and suspect anyone of betrayal, even yourself.

Greed gradually becomes gluttony. We treat ourselves to 1 or 2 or 10 after work cocktails or test our inhibitions with illegal substances bought from a nest of rattlesnakes, a network of serpents with venom to inject into our veins. We are pigs, rolling around in our own filthy mess addicted to the excess of success. Our cups are full to the brim, indulgences satisfied, every desire satiated with material items or its monetary equivalent. And yet, we are empty shells.

Sloths often receive the wrath of rattlesnakes, predators whose cursed existence is plagued with slithering the underbelly of society in order to succeed. Like the Amazon rainforest, the big predators here are nocturnal. The city never sleeps. After the sun sets, the city becomes New York City is nocturnal. Rattlesnakes prey on those that need a little pick-me-up to stay on their feet. Drug dealers can always sell their poison after midnight after midnight.

New York City is alive with its own ubiquitous energy. The metropolis hums tunes of chaos. Those of us, who thrive instead of throttle in its grips, do so because the madness is music to our ears.

Going to a hyper-liberal, crunchy granola arts college, I guess I just got comfortable in flats. And clogs, though my more fashion-conscious friends finally held an intervention regarding my proclivity to wear clogs to a bar. It wasn’t really the kind of place that heels made any kind of appearance, ever. Just try to picture wearing a pair of “fuck-me” pumps at a bonfire in the woods, scavenging for kindling in the mud.

Since joining the professional world, I’ve had to give up a lot of my preferred personal style. In came the bras and blazers, out went the “I Survived the Trump Administration” t-shirt, pedicures, goodbye, nose piercing. I’ve had to learn the art of blowing out my hair and have even started wearing makeup on a regular basis. I guess getting over my aversion to heels is the last big step (no pun intended) in becoming a working woman. But I just can’t shake this feeling that I shouldn’t have to take the plunge.

People are always shocked to hear that I don’t wear heels. “But you’re so short! You must look like a child next to your coworkers.” “What about wedges? You can always get a cute pair of wedges.” “If you get the insoles, they’re really not that uncomfortable.” “But they make you feel so sexy! I love walking in heels, I feel like I’m walking down a runway.” I’ve heard it all.

But here’s the thing: I hate heels, both in theory and in practice. Allegedly, Marilyn Monroe once said, “I don’t know who invented high heels, but women owe him a lot.” (I say allegedly because I’ve seen at least one million girly quotes attributed to her and I have a hard time believing she just sat around spouting off these gems all day.) And Christian Louboutin has been quoted as calling heels “empowering for women in a way.” I’m sorry, but I’m just not buying it.

They’re just totally impractical. I’m a speed walker. One of those rare freaks of nature that enjoys being in a rush; it’s actually kind of my autopilot. And sometimes speed walking isn’t even an option, it’s a necessity. Gotta catch the last train? Time to book it. Slept in and running late? Pick up the pace. In flats, you’re golden. But in heels, forget it. You’re going down, Sandra Bullock in Miss Congeniality style. Not to mention the fact that heels were totally made for men’s aesthetic enjoyment. Slim the legs and lift the ass, give height to the woman who’s not model-tall. I’m sorry, but what does that really do for me?

That is apart from long term damage to to my calves, ankles and the delicate bone structure of my feet. And you wear high heels, why?

There are a lot of things I’ll change about my appearance for the sake of professionalism, but I just don’t see the correlation when it comes to heels. And for all my friends who act like my choice is some kind of radical movement: if that’s how you want to see it, cool. Just promise me at least once this week you’ll give kicking off the heels a try. Your feet will thank you.

There are lessons to be learned from the way humans justify their treatment of animals – not least of those evolutionarily closest to them – namely, the apes. Apes, especially gorillas, have long been demonized in film and literature. Their similarity to us is used not as proof of kindred, but as a means of symbolizing the supposed bestiality within us. Thus when Dr Jekyll drinks his potion he exposes a mythologized savage inheritance; his hands grow hairy, his brow beetles, his teeth enlarge: he becomes a horrifying gorilla-man.

If it is not violence it is stupidity which marks the ape, betokened by tree-swinging, armpit-scratching and gibbering. You insult a person if you call him an ape. Yet apes are intelligent, inquisitive, affectionate and sociable, with capacities for suffering and grief that match our own, and with a grave beauty and dignity which recalls Schopenhauer’s remark that ‘There is one respect in which brutes show real wisdom when compared to us – I mean their quiet, placid enjoyment of the present moment.’

There is a parallel between our excuses for maltreating apes and those for maltreating fellow humans. We locate a difference that we find threatening, or that we despise; we thereby make the other fully Other, so that we can close the door of the moral community against him, leaving him outside where our actions cannot be judged by the same standards as apply within. Racism and speciesism are thus the same thing – they are myths about who belongs and who is alien.

In their book The Great Ape Project published some years ago, Paola Cavalieri and Peter Singer entered a plea for humankind to ‘admit our fellow Great Apes – the chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans – to the same moral community as ourselves, thereby according them rights to life, to liberty, and to protection against torture – especially the kind of torture inflicted in the name of scientific research.’ In the face of the genetic and behavioural evidence, there is no good reason why the moral respect and consideration that applies between humans should not apply between humans and apes. But note: the moment that the boundaries of morality are extended in this way, there is no obvious place to stop. All animate nature comes within the purview of ethics; and that, arguably, is as it should be.

The world divides into vegetarians and those that eat them. Thoreau wrote, ‘I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other.’ There are plenty who argue that it is not immoral to eat a cow, especially if it has lived well beforehand. Lovers of cats and dogs would think it cruel to eat their pets, though, and once again the reason is the boundary: cats and dogs, horses and even hamsters, have become quasi-citizens of the human world, and our treatment of them is premised on the same kind of concern for their interests as we show to other humans. We would not crowd dogs into a closed lorry as we do sheep when they are sent on long export journeys; that is a happy fact. But it is an unhappy fact that we crowd sheep into lorries, for sheep can suffer thirst and panic just as dogs – and humans – do.

Humanity’s record with animals is poor. ‘We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation,’ wrote Dean Inge, ‘and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form.’ Some think that sentimental do-goodery over animals is a distraction from more significant moral matters. Perhaps; but a person’s integrity is never more fully tested than when he has power over a voiceless creature; and the route from pulling wings off flies to committing crimes against humanity is not a notably circuitous one.

Happiness. It is an extremely fuzzy concept. We all want it and those that were born in America believe that it is our right. I mean, the Declaration of Independence even states that it is a right. Other countries have something similar: mottos just like ours, except nowhere will you find the word ‘happiness’. They instead chose to use words like fraternity, freedom, prosperity, or security of person and we use ‘happiness’. Something that is so hard to define and can be an extremely objectionable concept. However so, we want it, we deserve it, and we’ll do anything to get it. We pursue it like ravenous animals because America says we deserve it and it would un-American not to pursue it right? Right? But what if Thomas Jefferson was wrong to say that the pursuit of happiness was an unalienable right? What if thinking we are entitled to happiness is actually making us unhappy? Just hear me out. 

We are told that happiness is our right. We deserve it and it should be ours to have and keep. However, if we look at Jefferson’s statement we may find that it is quite a dangerous and loaded sentence. It makes us think that pursuing happiness is American and is something we are actually granted by our almighty Declaration. So what do we do? Like following a commandment, we do exactly as we are ‘told’ by our founding fathers. We strive for this amazing state of bliss, this amazing high, where we might live in a constant state of happiness. But unfortunately happiness is not constant and is instead extremely fleeting and it could even be considered as a deviation from the norm. It is an abnormal feeling and an abnormal state of being that has symptoms, almost like a disease. Similar to an orgasm, happiness is a rush of fantastic feelings and like an orgasmic high, you always find yourself coming back down from this rush. But we find ourselves addicted to it and happiness has become our drug. A drug given to us by our own nation. We are consumed by this cycle and it dictates our lives

We spend so much of our lives in this constant, often futile, search for happiness. We are obsessed and it rules our lives. We look for it in things, consumption and people, and we use food, sex, alcohol, and even in some extremes, other drugs, to try to achieve it. It is a customized and different realization for everyone and like a drug addiction, elicits a different reaction from each individual, and we are obsessed. Like a hungry crack addict rocking back and forth, we itch for our next happiness fix. We are addicted to happiness. We are constantly engaged in this pursuit but what most of us do not realize is that the consciousness of the pursuit is what makes actually makes us unhappy.  The uneasy feeling of not being always happy disturbs us. We find ourselves feeling unsatisfied more than satisfied and we are constantly aware of the absence of good, rather than realizing and appreciating the good we already have. We as Americans are lacking appreciation. We have perverted Jefferson’s concept of happiness by equating it with instant gratification, consumption, and entitlement, which can never be fulfilled or sustained because we’re a nation looking for our next ‘fix’. We are a ‘happiness addicted’ nation. 

This pursuit that Jefferson stated was a given right those many years ago, set us Americans up for failure. The idea was a dangerous one, preceded by John Locke’s “Life, Liberty, and Property. In the land of the free, we are given the opportunities to reach out for what we want. We are taught that through hard work and determination we can achieve anything. We can pursue happiness but we have turned into a nation that bases happiness on what we have: property. We are obsessed with money, expensive things, big homes and fancy cars… this is what we think happiness is all about. But think about when you are actually most happy… it usually is not when you’ve just bought a new car. That feeling is fleeting and it usually is not when you have actively pursued it either, but instead when happiness has pursued you. Stumbling upon happiness makes us most happy, thinking about the already great things in our lives make us happy, things like family, friends, or even our unique place in this vast world. When we stop chasing and hunting for the things we don’t have, we start to realize the good things in our life that we do have. 

Happiness is like a disease we want. It is a deviation from the norm: it is an abnormal feeling and an abnormal state of being that has symptoms and can even be considered contagious. It controls our lives and we reach for it in everything we do. Happiness fuels our lives, it makes us want to get out of bed and go after what we want. We all want that high; it is what we live for and what keeps us going. Like an addict needing their next fix, we are addicted to happiness. We all crave it, we’ll do anything to get it, and yes, we do deserve it… we are just not guaranteed it.

Most of us, if we think about the good in our lives, are actually already happy. We Americans are extremely fortunate. We are a country of ‘haves’, not ‘have-nots’. So enjoy it. Jefferson may have been right in his initial thinking of the pursuit of happiness, but our current interpretation of ‘the pursuit of happiness’ may be the real problem. Happiness is what I want and what I’m sure you want too, it is why I do what I do and why I pursue my dreams, but understanding what actually makes us happy is what is most important. My family, friends, meeting new people and learning about new things make me most happy, it is not the car in the driveway, or the money in my wallet (although it does make life easier).

Our founding fathers were insightful by putting it in our Constitution. This is the land of the free and happiness addicted, and that may be quite fine, as long as we do not forget why Jefferson put it in our Declaration of Independence. There was a purpose for why he included ‘the pursuit of happiness’ instead of ‘property’. It is not about how much stuff you have or how much more stuff you have than the person sitting next to you. That may make you happy for a moment, but that moment is truly fleeting and will never last. This is America, the land of dreams, and the land of the free… the land of the free and happiness addicted. So pursue happiness but do not lose sight of what happiness really is and what Jefferson really meant. There may have been a reason Jefferson changed John Locke’s original phrase, allowing for happiness to be so much more than just property. We do have the right to be happy, and if we stop and take a moment to realize what we have and change own modern interpretation of this famous quote, we may realize we already have happiness. It is all about appreciation, so appreciate life and stay ‘addicted’ to the happiness you already have.

Without the ability to deny certain facts that threaten our survival, we’d be paralyzed with fear. Denial is so important that it even has its own category: ego defense mechanism. It’s a structural part of our personality in the same way that bones are a structural part of our anatomy. There’d be no walking without bones. Our personality couldn’t develop without mechanisms to defend it.

Think of denial as a kind of thick metal mesh around your mind that protects you from falling objects that keep crashing into your life. For instance:
• Your forty-year old high school buddy just died of a brain tumor but you deny that it could happen to you. • A friend was just laid off and you need a heavy dose of denial to get through the work day. But again, denial is a two-edged sword that can also act to your detriment. It can prevent you from realizing that dating the still-married Bradley is a colossal mistake (despite his claim “I’m filing for a divorce”). Or that having that extra drink at the party might kill you (“I can drive just fine”). Or that taking that expensive exotic vacation isn’t actually a good deal (“I can easily pay it off later”). And there’s an important additional component at work: denial doesn’t operate alone. It’s linked to an assortment of other ego defense mechanisms. Principally fantasy and delusion, along with symbolization, sublimation and projection. The purpose of these mental processes is to soften up reality so it can fit into your mind. This softening allows you to keep on living without paralyzing levels of conflict.

In my twenty-five years as a psychotherapist I’ve learned a great deal about how frequently people use these ego defense mechanisms in their daily lives, utterly unaware of how they’re inflicting great injury on their relationships and personal happiness. However, the incident that inspired me to write the book Emotional Bullshit (Tarcher/Penguin publishers) actually occurred in my family’s dining room. I was discussing college applications with my then-teenage daughter, and becoming more and more frustrated as she denied both the urgency and complexity of the applications. She finally slipped into a delusional reality in which she’d complete them all within hours. Finally, frustrated with my demand for a more realistic assessment, she blamed me for hassling her. When she stalked out of the room I complained to my wife, “It’s such bullshit! Doesn’t she see what she’s doing?”

I started making notes, putting those three behaviors into sequence. I labeled them the Toxic Trio: denial, delusion and blame. Denial ignores or minimizes an essential fact or responsibility. Delusion creates an alternate, distorted reality. Then, when things fall apart, blame shifts the responsibility onto someone or something else. As I considered these three common dynamics, I realized how easily all of us become stuck in these closely linked cognitive processes. Denial, as mentioned, is inextricably linked with delusion (fantasy, sublimation) because when we deny an essential fact, it creates a factual vacuum. Since vacuums cannot exist in nature, something rushes in to fill the now-empty space. Delusion and fantasy creatively expand to fit any space. So when Bradley says he thinks you’re cute and sexy, and the neurochemicals dedicated to sex start gushing into your bloodstream, Bradley denies his ethical obligation to his wife and tells you that he is filing for divorce. In that moment, in his mind, he and his wife are already separated. Your delusion receptors fasten onto his denial and pump it up until it towers over you like a fire-breathing bomb. Now you are seeing Bradley as a single man, so having sex is now (delusionally) ethical. After all, both of you are ethical people who wouldn’t think of having an affair if one of you was actually married!

The third part of the Toxic Trio, blame, shows up when the delusional reality falls apart, as delusions always do. When Bradley decides to stay with his wife, or further sneaking around becomes untenable, reality hits. Then blame takes over. Bradley is now a lying bastard. Or the blame turns inward and you blame yourself: I’m a stupid fool. Which can lead to severe depression. That’s the Toxic Trio at work:
• Denial masks an essential fact.
• Delusion fills in for whatever fact is ignored or minimized.
• Blame shifts the responsibility for the resulting disaster onto someone else.

Or something else. Such as destiny: It Was Meant To Be. This same scenario adapts to every possible human behavior. Look at the act of ordering French fries when your doctor has warned you about your high cholesterol and carrying twenty extra pounds. First you deny the essential fact that this helping of extra fat and calories really do count. Next, delusion kicks in: it’s Friday and you deserve a treat. Then, when your heart races while climbing a flight of stairs, blame comes to the rescue—it’s the fault of your parents and their poor eating habits. Or you were born with a weak metabolism. The power behind denial and delusion is fused into our creative hard-wiring. We’re all designed with a potent willingness to believe in magic. People everywhere find mystical explanations for ordinary phenomena. That’s why people can maintain a delusion for years, even decades, despite solid evidence to the contrary. Some people still believe that smoking isn’t really all that bad. Nations can maintain a delusion for centuries, fueled by past glory.

A delusional belief system (national or personal) endures longest when economic or social benefits support it. Bigotry, for example, thrives because it provides emotional, economic or social benefits to those who sustain it. The same is true for the individual delusional system. For instance, David believes that working 70 hours a week is essential to success. When his family life falls apart because he’s never home, David simply denies the validity of his family’s needs, finding solace within the world of success. Then he blames his spouse and kids for not being grateful for his sacrifices. It’s a neat package that protects David from personal responsibility.

That’s the ultimate payoff of the Toxic Trio: It allows us to avoid personal responsibility. What’s the antidote? It’s amazingly simple: a frontal assault on the denial of essential facts. Which is accomplished by focusing on your Core Needs, your long-term best interests. Let’s use a committed relationship as an example. You’ve been with J. for five years and really want the relationship to succeed. What’s the most essential fact about successful relationships? They require ongoing nurturing and care. This means spending time together doing fun things in an atmosphere of positive energy. So you make these activities a priority. You plan ahead, do research about interesting activities, and involve J. in the discussion. Now J. sees that you’re committed to nurturing the relationship.

And when the inevitable tribulations show up, you don’t allow the Toxic Trio to sabotage your plans by denying the essential fact (that you need to nurture your relationship), or lapse into a delusional reality (I can spend time with J. later). Nor do you blame J. for not being proactive and appreciative. You focus on fulfilling your Core Need—having a good time together. This process requires emotional maturity because you don’t allow yourself to be side-tracked by petty emotional struggles. You don’t allow self-indulgence to sabotage your intention. The same template applies when your teenager son comes home way past curfew. Your Core Need is building your long-term relationship with him and not indulging yourself by yelling—or ignoring the infraction. So you calmly make an appointment to discuss the problem and come up with a reasonable consequence, which you enforce. All of life’s issues can be dealt with the same way. You fulfill your Core Need for financial security by not over-spending. You find time for family intimacy by not over-working.

Conclusion: Fulfilling uour Core Needs requires directly confronting the tendency to deny that a need exists, delusionally imagine it will get fulfilled by someone esle, and blaming everyone else for any difficulties involved. And that confrontation begins with facing the power of denial. Denial does make the world go round, but it doesn’t have to be the destructive energy driving your life.

It started innocently enough. We were best friends, more or less inseparable. In retrospect, maybe being just friends was a recipe for disaster? After all, we pick our friends and boyfriends differently… right? Or maybe not. Maybe I just picked him because he had all the qualities I would want… in a friend. Which might not intrinsically seem like a bad thing. I mean, we do end up being so extremely close with our boyfriends or girlfriends that they actually do become our best friends. Don’t we? This is the type of rationalization that got me screwed. Because in reality, you don’t want to actually screw your best friend. Everyone knows that once you screw, everything else is screwed. And why would you want to screw up your friendship? It’s all very screwy. But when you meet someone who should be only your friend and nothing more, yet you ignore this instinct and spend all your time with them anyway… and you gradually develop a habit of strong cocktails and snuggling… well, you are going to screw. And get screwed. Trust me.

Once I got past the weirdness of translating my best friendship into the most functional form of a relationship I could manage, things were, well, different. Shocking, huh? Suddenly my new boyfriend was not my new boyfriend anymore. He was just my boyfriend. No more new. But what’s even weirder is the fact that the whole “friendship” we had spent a year building had vanished. No matter what you do, you can’t get a friendship back after taking such a big step away from it. This is less than desirable when the entire reason you started dating was because of your friendship. All that italicizing is necessary. It happens to be just about the most significant part of my story. 

So when that blinding rush of NEW wasn’t quite there anymore, what happens? After a couple months, shock waves tend to fizzle. Reality hits, colors fade out. Moving from a realm of friendship and lightheartedness to a space of love and commitment is a mind-numbing web of confusion. There’s such finality to it. And there is definitely and most assuredly no turning back from it. I was certainly caught in that web for a while. And I was left with the reality of what it’s like to date your best friend. To make matters worse, sure enough, we shared all the exact same mutual friends. So things translated from friendship into romantic relationship life, like a fucking foreign language.

Well, guess what “funny” translated into? Sarcastic. Dry. Just plain mean. Never takes anything seriously. Never takes me seriously. Ever. EVER. One big bucket of laughs, huh? Guess what laid-back translated into? Zero personal effort, zero emotional effort, zero sanity for me. I think you get the picture but just for shits, guess what “a lot of fun” translated into? Oh, say, five, six nights a week spent heavily drinking? Sure. Plus a bi-weekly trip to the casino for good measure. Good times. 

Now, for the record, I’m not actually angry with my ex-boyfriend and I don’t harbor negative or violent feelings for him. Because what did he do, really, other than be himself? He was exactly who I fell in love with. Exactly. He didn’t change a pinch. Did I even want him to change? Not really, that’s the thing. I loved him as a boyfriend for the same reasons I had loved him as a friend. Had I changed? To be honest, not really. I wanted the same things from start to finish. What had changed was the course of our friendship, our transition to a relationship, our relationship itself. Of course, we grew older, we changed. But I tend to think it was less about us changing and more about our efforts to transform an impossibility into a possibility.   

So why is it that when (post-ridiculously-dramatic-break-up) I met a guy who was sweet, sane, and perfectly suitable for me, I promptly rejected the entire idea of him? He would have been perfect for me, treated me like gold. He – probably, most likely – wouldn’t be ditching me on anniversary dinner plans at the last minute to go to a strip club. So why was there not one thing about him that excited me? Is it just the chase? I don’t think so, I tire quickly. Is it the need to be the girl who can change the guy? I don’t think so, I’m far too dreamy for such work. Or is it just that no matter what, women like myself are drawn to men who are just no good for them? No matter what, those initial attractions, the very same ones that often draw us to be friends with someone, snowball into the exact qualities that drive us into a frenzied fury of mutual despair – even hatred – come closing time. But ask me today what characteristics I look for in a man. I dare you. Answer: Cute! Funny! Fun! Laid-back! What is the issue here? Well, for now, I don’t want to think about it. I am currently much too busy sleeping with a fresh new brand of cocky, self-important prick.  And he’s totally adorable.

Oh yes, there is no end to the shit we will endure at the hands of our lovers. And despite all that Hallmark movie junk about the strength of women’s friendships, we will turn on a bitch quick if our friend dares to call out our boyfriend. Suddenly, the woman who knew you inside and out and was like a sister to you, well, who does she think she is? Your sister? She can’t talk about your man like that! What does she know? Admit it: we are fiercely loyal and territorial, and when a guy moves in with us, he becomes a part of our personal property. It’s an unforgivable affront if someone talks smack about our prop – I mean, boyfriend.

Now, we don’t just overlook a man’s faults because we are the kinder, more forgiving sex; we have an ulterior motive, of course. We think we can change them. Time and time again, we end up with dudes that are a “work in progress” because we see a “fixer-upper” that with a bit of fine-tuning and table manner lessons will become the polished, perfect man that we desire. (Men, take note: we are trying to change you. Always. If we say we love you just the way you are, we’re lying. What we mean is: we love you almost just the way you are, but you’d be even better if you would iron your shirts, change your taste in movies, pick up after yourself, and spend more time with our mothers).

We don’t sweat the small stuff, like the football posters he insisted on putting up in the TV room and the ragged sweatpants he actually wears out of the house, because we can, over time, cure him of these habits. Or so we think. What we inevitably learn after the first few attempts is that it’s surprisingly hard to rid an adult of a lifetime of personality traits and behaviors, and that if we do succeed in changing someone, it usually doesn’t turn out the way we want. People don’t like change at the best of times, and especially not when it’s against their will. Despite the fact that most men could use a bit of an overhaul, it’s not a nice feeling to be told you aren’t okay just the way you are. And you know it’s true, ladies. Deep down, we don’t really want a man so unsure of himself that he is willing to change who he is, anyway.

I’ll admit it; we are guiltier of this than men. When have you ever heard a guy say to his friend, “Lucy is a great chick, but she needs to learn how to dress. And the way she chews her food? I could kill her.” The key is, when you find someone who is truly right for you, the way they chew with their mouth open or insist on watching – fill in the blank – every Tuesday night won’t bother you, because you just love the person that they are, quirks and all. At least, that’s what we tell ourselves. Because unfortunately, there just isn’t enough of Harry Styles (or Brad Pitt) to go around.

The take-out, of course, comes from one of three possible menus, and you order pretty much the same dishes every time. If you’re lucky (maybe once a week), the evening will be capped off by sex (one of three possible menus, and you order pretty much the same dishes . . .). It seems like only weeks ago that you used to have small dinner parties and go to the movies on Friday. (“What happened to that couple we used to hang out with on weekends? Maybe we should call them.” “Don’t bother . . . they broke up.”)

Any suggestion of something different is met with defensiveness, hurt feelings, and extreme resistance. “But don’t you love our Chicken Chow Fun Thursdays, sweetie? Don’t you love me anymore?” Arguments and tears dissolve into ordering Chinese food and watching TV with renewed vigor and commitment. The Chow Fun tastes better than ever, and Seth Myers’s wit is almost too sparkling to bear. By the light of day, you curse yourself for being a coward, and resolve, once again, to break out of the box one day soon. Any day now.

Most of us have been there. Breaking out of those lazy routines always feels life-threatening, but nobody ever actually died from busting out of a slump. You can do it. Ruts like these are natural and human. Sooner or later, of course, they must be overcome — whether they’re caused by a stagnant relationship or by a season.

That’s right. A season. A season like winter. Or a pandemic like Covid 19

Setting aside for a moment all our reason and intelligence and opposable thumbs and whatnot (AND OF COURSE COVID 19) we’re animals. And no animal in his or her right mind would consider a visit to the Guggenheim and a walk through Central Park when it’s 18 degrees out and windy and sleeting sideways. It’s just not normal. Like our animal friends, we’re no idiots. By the time we get through with work and errands, get home and chip the ice off and warm our blood, the last thing we want to do is go out again. The difference is, when the bears hang the sign out that says “Hibernating — come back in May,” they don’t feel guilty about it. We do.

“I live in New York,” you cry, “and I never do anything!” Welcome to New York in March. And pandemic times. Nobody does anything. But I digress. Don’t feel guilty about staying inside. Shame is a notoriously bad motivator anyway, and it won’t get you out the door. It’s a complete waste of time. Just remember, the voice that tells you to stay inside is Dr Fauci’s and it’s not really a request.

It takes some effort and a bit of adjusting to get yourself out of the cave. I don’t even want to think about how shaggy and smelly those bears are when they emerge. In a sense, we’re no different — a few pounds heavier, possibly in need of a haircut, a little numb and dumb around the edges.

And indeed, you should check out that Guggenheim and take a walk in the park. Because yes, this is what being a New Yorker is all about. But when the weather gets bad again, don’t despair — surviving the high rents and the bad winters and the gridlock and the dirt and the noise is just as much a part of being a New Yorker . . . otherwise you’d just be a tourist.

But love is tricky, because it can stop being love before we notice. Lewis warned, “Love begins to be a demon the moment he begins to be a god.” And isn’t that the problem with today’s world? Most of the time, love is a commodity we feel is freely given, but eventually we come to find that it’s more costly than we ever knew. And so we become misers with our love, doling it out in piteous portions to only a few, to the ones who should love us back, in some feeble hope that we won’t deplete our stores. That’s hardly something to sing from the rooftops.

Exclusive Love, the love for one, or few, is an inborn necessity for survival. Daddy’s gotta love mama to carry on the family lineage. And mama’s gotta love her baby, or who would ever expect her to put up with the incessant wailing? But like with all things, too much of a good thing goes bad. There’s a fine line between exclusive love and selfishness or obsession, and it’s getting harder and harder to see. All too often, we love a person in expectation of the love we’ll get in return. Or we bypass that person altogether and commercialize love. Rock on hand, check. Two car garage, check. Hot hubby to bring home to high school reunion, check. Or perhaps worst of all, we surrender to the complete objectification of love, and we just love being in love, subject be damned. It’s all rather degrading, isn’t it? So when can we chuck our materialistic self-serving obsessive adoration of our own egos (love me, love me) and stop being so damn selfish?

You’d think that the more we look out at this great green earth and it’s magnitudes of beautiful, individual, special people, that we would be overwhelmed with some serious agape. The world and its people are amazing. Civilization and its accomplishments are inspiring. The great diversity commingled with the unification of desires for life, for health, for peace, for Love in all its forms has got to inspire us to open our hearts, our hands, and just – love. Right? It’s a small world, globalized and shrunk by exploration, by trade, by the cyber world. It’s easier to know our neighbors. But is it easier to love them? Ironic that our increased knowledge of the world incites so many people to be more insular, succumbing to xenophobia and avarice. Where is the love?

What’s so hard about Universal Love? Why can’t we extend a little agape to Hondurans who don’t have clean water to drink, to the Sudanese who are twisted in anger? Why can’t the world Free Tibet, and why does Philadelphia seem more and more like a misnomer? We have the capacity love. But it’s so easy to be misdirected. John Lennon, who wrote or collaborated on so many anthems of all types of love, was shot to death by a psychotic man with a selfish desire for fame. We won’t mention his name. This man skulked outside the Dakota clutching a copy of The Catcher in the Rye; he was obsessed with the classic work of fiction. What’s remarkable is that the story of Holden Caulfield’s coming of age illustrates a frightened teenager, unable to trust others, or open himself, to recognize the power of love. The child experiences the rigors of waning adolescence and impending adulthood without connecting with another human being.

How strange that modern society creates and sustains two very different impulses: Love for all and hope for peace vs. narcissistic isolation and homicidal acts. But one can’t exist without the other. In order for remarkable acts of selflessness and love to resound in this world, they have to be offset by acts of selfishness and hatred. And when you think about it, Mother Theresa, Hitler, Princess Di, Mao Zedong, JFK, George W, have all dedicated their lives to an ideal for the people they loved, but the manifestations of that love went in wildly different directions. There’s a delicate axis that tips in the wrong direction when love becomes selfish, when it loses site of humanity. At the same time, love that targets unity, open-mindedness, open-heartedness, and affirmation, agape, tends to outlast the test of time. Aspiration for this type of love by the few is inspiration for the many.

It’s not impossible. All you need is the right kind of love. The selfless vision of a pro-active, unconditional, Universal Love has been achieved in small but enduring measures. Humanity can set aside predispositions, fear, misguided beliefs, and greed, and realize a world of agape, a world that lives as one. Imagine. Think about it enough, and you’re bound to end up singing a John Lennon song.

by Isabella Bennet