With regard to women's perspectives, I sometimes think men need a safe space to talk about this stuff, where we can say the things that would legitimately scare women, without subjecting women to them.
We are this way, where "this way" includes some complicated and diverse mix of everything from "protective providers" to "having a deep need for genuine emotional connection" to "swept by storms of lust" and more. Different men will have different mixes, but the existence of "Young Man Syndrome" suggests there are commonalities, if not exactly universals. Talking about who we are with each other while constantly looking over our shoulders to make sure we don't scare people who may quite reasonably find such talk scary is not necessarily the best way to go about it.
I think maybe some of this used to go on in exclusive men's spaces, but we've given those up for good reason. Nurturing friendships in real life is one way of handling this. Beyond that, I dunno.
I hope your rough patch isn't too long lasting. That haiku is gorgeous.
Incidentally, I was just in a setting like that last night. I was in an all-male space, and the dudes started sharing things that would terrify onlookers: reckless behavior, struggles with self-control, anger, etc. These were ordinary guys sharing things that they didn't feel comfortable sharing anywhere else, and perhaps for good reason.
Thank you for this. I got the chills because right before my dear friend died suddenly in September he shared the wild geese poem and it has followed me. Since my friend died I'm become more nihilistic. Now I'm realizing I'm just becoming more myself. People keep telling me they don't like me and I keep telling them "I don't care. I am not here for your comfort and to fluff your pillows. To be liked by you would be an insult to my character."
Jan 19·edited Jan 19Liked by Stephen Bradford Long
I think you would really like the poem I wrote: The Fifth Horseman
The Fifth Horseman
She wore a dress made of blue screen of death.
She was the fifth horseman of the Apocalypse. She ensured no one would rest.
She was the baby sister to her four brothers but she was most Roman and will lead you to your ruin.
Her horse was a stuffed and dirty unicorn from Walmart, dirty and putrid.
She didn't know any better. She says "Wait up brothers! You’re going too fast. You’re completely untethered.”
The brothers pretended not to hear and did not look back. The brothers roll their eyes and all four immediately take note and unnoticeably tip their hat.
Pestilence, the oldest brother pretends not to hear but deep down
Inside he has a great respect and much fear.
She may be the smallest but she is also the most intense yet un-revered.
Jan 20·edited Jan 20Liked by Stephen Bradford Long
And yet, with whatever tempest you have been enduring within, you still come through with such a clear and even voice. It is an amazing gift, for all who read you.
Your heart is open, and your mind reflects well. In spite of whatever else, there is little more that a human needs, for these two things are the pillars of the inner world.
As a long side-note: I am suspicious and instinctively balking at the precepts that classify de-humanizing language. Intention and context matter, and it is too easy to fall into that very dangerous trap where, for safety reason, we police language per se -- and so silence thought. It is an easy way. It is a slippery way. And it is the way of dull obedient greyness.
It is far harder to clarify and examine further, if suspicions of danger arise. And yet it is advisable to keep to the harder practice even if the easier one makes one feel righteous.
Metaphors are dangerous, in that they point to symbols. And symbols are dangerous in that they "cast together" (it is what συμβάλλειν means as a verb) disparate parts into a whole that is more powerful than any part on its own -- much in a mirror act of that performed metaphorically by the Devil, διαβάλλειν, which means to "cast apart", and brings from the whole to its parts.
So a symbol is dangerous in that, differently than the rational Devil, it feeds directly on meanings that are in large part subconscious, and possess many sides. Therefore, they can inspire many different things.
Animals have been symbols, for the human soul, since the beginning of recorded history. Without the symbology of animals entwined to our own, we would have half the language, half the poetry, half the literature -- and half the words for passion, both positive and negative.
Humans, and human feelings and human actions, have been symbolised by animals forever. Indeed, men have been compared to animals to demean them... and if you allow me a pun, to lionise them as well. Are we going to forgo this richness of meaning and expression for the fear of the possible negative meanings mixed with them?
I do not think this is the right way.
Dehumanisation is a vastly more complex process than simply comparing a human behaviour to an animal behaviour, and I think that Livingstone Smith's analysis is all about that. So, I would like you to keep your werewolf metaphor/symbol. You dehumanise nobody and nothing. But you come from a background whose obsession is sin, and you may find it harder to resist the charge of sin when you meet its shadow. You have /personally committed never to dehumanize other people/, you say, and it seems that you are looking for every intimation of this sin in order to erase it in yourself. Do take care with that, it is a tricky path.
Not just because it reveals very clearly that you occasionally experience a strong temptation to dehumanise others (let me break this to you, we all do). But because what you commit to never doing, by eliminating every trace of the possibility of it, you are doomed to do again and again under a different form. Absolutes are treacherous. There are degrees, there are intentions, and there are circumstances. There is fair judgement to be used, over and over again, because the work is never done, and the work itself is the highest purpose of life.
Take this werewolf symbol that suddenly struck you as "problematic" -- and you may know, I think you certainly do, that there are vast communities of young and less young dreamers of the fantastic for whom werewolves are glorious symbols, fierce and liberating no less than the Luciferian symbol. It is an extremely apt metaphor for lust (both male and female, in my opinion, but that is a different conversation), and one that has poetry in it as well, and therefore can be worked on wonderfully to produce meaning and revelation.
The dehumanising concern does not hold. Indeed, "dehumanizing rhetoric involves a blurring of human and inhuman, evoking fear and disgust in a deep part of our brains", but first, it must be rhetoric: aimed against its object. Are you using rhetoric against lust? I don't think so, although some preacher you may have heard certainly did.
And fear and disgust, my sweet friend, is just what lust, in its raw leap, evokes in many. It is not the werewolf metaphor. It is LUST, itself: for centuries the source and symbol of disorder and excess. If some say that they are afraid of that wolf, it means that it is the nature of that lust that they are afraid of. Not of the animal. Of the lust that, like an alien force, seems able to take possession of the man. Striking through "werewolf" does not succour.
Humans can be dehumanised by being compared to animals only among those who despise and demean animals. We all are animals, which should be repeated -- and animals are innocent, even at their most savage, because they lack the evil premeditation of the human mind (this argument has been used numberless times to counter negative comparisons). But animal totems live in our psyche and will forever. The best answer is not to sanitise language or metaphors or symbols, but rather to explain and refine them, so that meaning is made richer.
Then maybe first or later I will also manage to let out my thoughts about lust, which you have so compellingly stirred.
Stephen, whatever is going on with you, move forward with care and endure. Keep looking at the moon.
Thank you, friend <3
Thanks for the shout-out!
With regard to women's perspectives, I sometimes think men need a safe space to talk about this stuff, where we can say the things that would legitimately scare women, without subjecting women to them.
We are this way, where "this way" includes some complicated and diverse mix of everything from "protective providers" to "having a deep need for genuine emotional connection" to "swept by storms of lust" and more. Different men will have different mixes, but the existence of "Young Man Syndrome" suggests there are commonalities, if not exactly universals. Talking about who we are with each other while constantly looking over our shoulders to make sure we don't scare people who may quite reasonably find such talk scary is not necessarily the best way to go about it.
I think maybe some of this used to go on in exclusive men's spaces, but we've given those up for good reason. Nurturing friendships in real life is one way of handling this. Beyond that, I dunno.
I hope your rough patch isn't too long lasting. That haiku is gorgeous.
Incidentally, I was just in a setting like that last night. I was in an all-male space, and the dudes started sharing things that would terrify onlookers: reckless behavior, struggles with self-control, anger, etc. These were ordinary guys sharing things that they didn't feel comfortable sharing anywhere else, and perhaps for good reason.
Thank you for this. I got the chills because right before my dear friend died suddenly in September he shared the wild geese poem and it has followed me. Since my friend died I'm become more nihilistic. Now I'm realizing I'm just becoming more myself. People keep telling me they don't like me and I keep telling them "I don't care. I am not here for your comfort and to fluff your pillows. To be liked by you would be an insult to my character."
Thank you for sharing, friend. And I'm so sorry to hear about your loss. The death of a close friend is brutal.
I think you would really like the poem I wrote: The Fifth Horseman
The Fifth Horseman
She wore a dress made of blue screen of death.
She was the fifth horseman of the Apocalypse. She ensured no one would rest.
She was the baby sister to her four brothers but she was most Roman and will lead you to your ruin.
Her horse was a stuffed and dirty unicorn from Walmart, dirty and putrid.
She didn't know any better. She says "Wait up brothers! You’re going too fast. You’re completely untethered.”
The brothers pretended not to hear and did not look back. The brothers roll their eyes and all four immediately take note and unnoticeably tip their hat.
Pestilence, the oldest brother pretends not to hear but deep down
Inside he has a great respect and much fear.
She may be the smallest but she is also the most intense yet un-revered.
And yet, with whatever tempest you have been enduring within, you still come through with such a clear and even voice. It is an amazing gift, for all who read you.
Your heart is open, and your mind reflects well. In spite of whatever else, there is little more that a human needs, for these two things are the pillars of the inner world.
As a long side-note: I am suspicious and instinctively balking at the precepts that classify de-humanizing language. Intention and context matter, and it is too easy to fall into that very dangerous trap where, for safety reason, we police language per se -- and so silence thought. It is an easy way. It is a slippery way. And it is the way of dull obedient greyness.
It is far harder to clarify and examine further, if suspicions of danger arise. And yet it is advisable to keep to the harder practice even if the easier one makes one feel righteous.
Metaphors are dangerous, in that they point to symbols. And symbols are dangerous in that they "cast together" (it is what συμβάλλειν means as a verb) disparate parts into a whole that is more powerful than any part on its own -- much in a mirror act of that performed metaphorically by the Devil, διαβάλλειν, which means to "cast apart", and brings from the whole to its parts.
So a symbol is dangerous in that, differently than the rational Devil, it feeds directly on meanings that are in large part subconscious, and possess many sides. Therefore, they can inspire many different things.
Animals have been symbols, for the human soul, since the beginning of recorded history. Without the symbology of animals entwined to our own, we would have half the language, half the poetry, half the literature -- and half the words for passion, both positive and negative.
Humans, and human feelings and human actions, have been symbolised by animals forever. Indeed, men have been compared to animals to demean them... and if you allow me a pun, to lionise them as well. Are we going to forgo this richness of meaning and expression for the fear of the possible negative meanings mixed with them?
I do not think this is the right way.
Dehumanisation is a vastly more complex process than simply comparing a human behaviour to an animal behaviour, and I think that Livingstone Smith's analysis is all about that. So, I would like you to keep your werewolf metaphor/symbol. You dehumanise nobody and nothing. But you come from a background whose obsession is sin, and you may find it harder to resist the charge of sin when you meet its shadow. You have /personally committed never to dehumanize other people/, you say, and it seems that you are looking for every intimation of this sin in order to erase it in yourself. Do take care with that, it is a tricky path.
Not just because it reveals very clearly that you occasionally experience a strong temptation to dehumanise others (let me break this to you, we all do). But because what you commit to never doing, by eliminating every trace of the possibility of it, you are doomed to do again and again under a different form. Absolutes are treacherous. There are degrees, there are intentions, and there are circumstances. There is fair judgement to be used, over and over again, because the work is never done, and the work itself is the highest purpose of life.
Take this werewolf symbol that suddenly struck you as "problematic" -- and you may know, I think you certainly do, that there are vast communities of young and less young dreamers of the fantastic for whom werewolves are glorious symbols, fierce and liberating no less than the Luciferian symbol. It is an extremely apt metaphor for lust (both male and female, in my opinion, but that is a different conversation), and one that has poetry in it as well, and therefore can be worked on wonderfully to produce meaning and revelation.
The dehumanising concern does not hold. Indeed, "dehumanizing rhetoric involves a blurring of human and inhuman, evoking fear and disgust in a deep part of our brains", but first, it must be rhetoric: aimed against its object. Are you using rhetoric against lust? I don't think so, although some preacher you may have heard certainly did.
And fear and disgust, my sweet friend, is just what lust, in its raw leap, evokes in many. It is not the werewolf metaphor. It is LUST, itself: for centuries the source and symbol of disorder and excess. If some say that they are afraid of that wolf, it means that it is the nature of that lust that they are afraid of. Not of the animal. Of the lust that, like an alien force, seems able to take possession of the man. Striking through "werewolf" does not succour.
Humans can be dehumanised by being compared to animals only among those who despise and demean animals. We all are animals, which should be repeated -- and animals are innocent, even at their most savage, because they lack the evil premeditation of the human mind (this argument has been used numberless times to counter negative comparisons). But animal totems live in our psyche and will forever. The best answer is not to sanitise language or metaphors or symbols, but rather to explain and refine them, so that meaning is made richer.
Then maybe first or later I will also manage to let out my thoughts about lust, which you have so compellingly stirred.
Thank you so much for sharing. Your points about animal symbols and dehumanization land for me.