House of Eratosthenes

Just occasionally, in those not so far-off days, you will hear stories of families who have insisted on hanging on to their men.

It is only in remote, primitive parts of the country, of course, such as the Welsh mountains and the Outer Hebrides, that these pathetic specimens of humanity survive. Their old grey beards and gravelly voices would frighten the children in the bright new conurbations of the Midlands and the South, where male human beings have not been seen for two generations.

As all New Brits learn in their Herstory lessons (the term History is banned, of course, because of its male connotations), it was a very old President Cherie, after the tragic demise of her husband in the Middle East, who decided on the most humane method of reducing crime: lower the amount of testosterone.

Let’s ponder why, exactly, it is that when humans start voting to eradicate themselves from the planet, they will start with the tip of the masculine wing, and work from there to attack the rest of the body of humankind.

The bit about “reducing crime” hits the nail on the head. It has to do with the portrayal of a cosmetically causative agent of harm. Men are more threatening. It therefore logically follows that we’ll chisel away at ourselves starting with the testosterone. It further logically follows that, once we’ve gotten rid of that, we’ll set our sites on others when the world’s problems continue to go un-fixed.

The inescapable result is that the survivors will have to find creative new ways to be non-threatening. The cultural standards will evolve over time to accelerate this. For now, it’s somewhat fashionable (albeit a relic from the 1990’s) for women to be somewhat “butch” — to cut their hair short, to talk in a butch voice, to engage in sports activities that subtly suggest overtones of lesbianism. Some of the extreme adherents make a point of conducting themselves hour-to-hour in a caustic, bitter, never-silent always-complaining kind of way…and then bitch away about the bleakness of their social lives because “men are intimidated by a strong woman.”

In Mr. Wilson’s future world, I predict this all changes. We attempt to eradicate human-on-human assault and harm, by eradicating or neutralizing those among us best equipped to bring it on — men. It is the human race’s oldest failing…getting rid of an act, by getting rid of the tool most commonly used to implement it. It will fail. And when it does, we’ll look for the most masculine among the femininity that remains. And so to avoid “friendly fire,” those who still stumble on, will start to showcase their harmlessness. They’ll become more inventive in this endeavor, as society upholds an ever-ascending standard of said harmlessness. The question will be — what have you done to show off how harmless you are this year? And answering it, will be the key to continuing survival.

We’re already doing it, when you think about it. Send a pre-teenage boy to school, and should he act too much like a boy someone will want to put him on drugs to make him act like less of a boy. Whether this is necessary or not, will be left up to authorities who understand the harm that is done when too many boy-children act too boy-like — but have no appreciation whatsoever of the harm that is done when boy-hood is too thoroughly alienated from the educational enclave, and from society.

We’ll know it’s starting to happen when we’ve gone too long without inventing anything. Inventing, after all, is the triumph of the individual over group-think. And…uh…lessee, what’ve we done lately? Any revolutionary ideas we can place next to the products of genius from the 1980’s, like the personal computer, the retail software shop, the microwave oven, the flatbed document scanner, the space shuttle, the word-processor the spreadsheet the database…

Today, we have Vista. The iPhone. Artificial dog breeds, so small they can crap in expensive purses. Any revolutionary ways to look at data? Hmmm…not only no, but hell no. We don’t seem to be sending much thought energy in that direction at all. Not too much.

Iconic masculine resourcefulness is making just enough of an appearance to slake the thirst of the hoi polloi…wherever we can find it, it is bidding us Adios. Indiana Jones is singing his swan song. John McLean has already sung his.

Those who mold and shape our interests for the coming years, seem to be enamored with characters that weaken the gender divide — the super-butch women, and the uber-wimpy men. Us riff-raff, we happen to like James Bond; the few who are accustomed to dictating the tastes of the many, will give us James Bond movies as long as we pay to see them. Bond isn’t here because the powers-that-be think he’s a good thing — here’s here to make money. Thank goodness for small favors, he’ll probably be around for awhile. But don’t think for a minute there won’t be pressure, each and every year, to water that franchise down.

Thinking for yourself is discouraged, like never before. All who doubt this, approach one of your gurus who tells you to “question authority” and question his authority. See how he likes it. You’ll get a paradigm shift…I can practically guarantee it.

So the pattern is complete, or on the way to being nearly complete. Female concerns, up; male characteristics, down; group-think and village-think, up; coming up with your own ideas, down.

Over in America, the front-runner for this year’s presidential election is a guy who speaks articulately but says absolutely nothing. He’s got so many friends who despise and deplore the country over which he seeks to preside — that isn’t a figure of speech or idle speculation, they really do passionately hate it and they speak about it their hatred pretty much as often as they can — that it has long ago become troublesome trying to keep track of how many America-hating friends he has. He claims he didn’t know what he was doing when they became his friends, but this only means he’s either guilty of sharing America-bashing sympathies, or abysmally poor judgment. The evidence says both concerns solidly apply! The evidence further indicates our promising presidential candidate is a case study in exactly how skilled you can be with the spoken word, before a large audience, while still being a dimwit.

But he is the front-runner, and this says something further about the state of affairs in individual intellect in the United States. And in the world. And also…about manhood in the world.

Men are ceasing to exist. Their numbers will go down soon, but for now, they are becoming less educated compared to the women. They’ve been apologizing for existing for a very long time now, and to diminish one’s own existence is always the next step.

A doctor in Boston is performing sex changes on small children.

Dr. Norman Spack, a pediatric specialist at the hospital, has launched a clinic for transgendered kids — boys who feel like girls, girls who want to be boys — and he’s opening his doors to patients as young as 7.

The story does say “boys who feel like girls, girls who want to be boys” but I’m going to go way out on a limb here — his “patients” number heavily in the former and almost insignificantly in the latter. Either way, it’s another example of the gender line being erased, and the passion driving the erasure doesn’t have that much to do with the celebration of science, technology, and all it can do for us. Ripping out sex organs, installing some fishy, gelatinous substitute of other sex organs, and injecting hormones…these are all technologies that have been around awhile, and must have been predicted centuries before that.

No, this is not a celebration of ingenuity. It is the eradication of what makes us unique.

It’s the non-unique people among us, you see. The wishy-washy, the non-threatening. When you’re that way, it turns out you don’t want anyone else to be any other way.

So with all respect, Mr. Wilson, I don’t think we need to wait until 2058. We’re already headed down this road at a pretty good clip, and I’d say in 2018, if not sooner, we can begin scouring what’s left of the landscape for signs of your melancholy and dystopian vision.

Manhood has been in a steep decline, by culture rather than by nose count, for generations. Once the culture of manhood has diminished to some point of no return, the nose-count will enter a similar decline as well. At that point we’ll be on the final stretch toward your nightmare scenario, which is, for all intents and purposes, the same as reaching it.

Oh you are just a shining source of sweetness and light today!
- vanderleun | 05/25/2008 @ 20:06

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World Without MenSaturday, May 24th, 2008

World Without Men
Saturday, May 24th, 2008