All Alone

I was reading an article on Slate that noted something that's been kicking around for about the past decade: That because of a general stigma against men being emotionally open, they tend to have few, if any, friends that they can really talk to about their feelings. The Slate article is effectively a follow-up to an article in Harper's Bazaar that says that many men have effectively become "emotional gold diggers," their investment in a toxic form of masculinity cutting them off from emotional supportive relationships other than their romantic partners, who eventually burn out from the emotion work that they're asked to do.

Stories on how modern (American) ideas of masculinity cut people off from emotionally supportive relationships with people in general and other men in particular are rife. And stories about the dire consequences are common. One story from Medium is pretty blunt about it:

Boys feel fierce love for their best friends → Add homophobia, the Man Box, etc. → Boys disassociate from loving best friends → Boys and men become emotionally isolated → Men enter the epidemic of loneliness → Men die.

And one thing that I noticed about the stories that I've read is that they tend to mention "research." But they tend to link to books on the topic, written by this or that author, rather than any scholarly research papers. Perhaps this is because itr's more or less assumed that the narrative is correct. I'd always presumed that there were just certain things that you didn't tell anyone other than a committed partner or spouse, and the idea that many heterosexual men are afraid to appear weak and/or homosexual is pretty much assumed in the culture.

But when I decided to perform a few Google searches looking for formal, peer-reviewed research on the topic, I didn't find anything. Now, this isn't to say that it's not out there. I'm not a particularly good web researcher, and it's entirely possible that the information I'm after is basically buried out there somewhere. But I was kind of surprised that there didn't seem to be anything that pointed to any formal studies on the topic, especially given the public health implications that many people have noted. Anecdotal evidence is all fine and good, but given that this topic has been around for several years, I'd expected more, especially given that the scientific community hasn't exactly shied away from studies that have effectively simply confirmed that water is wet.

It could be that this is a hard thing to study. I don't know, off the top of my head, how you'd structure something to demonstrate the destruction of love between male friends over time, and the lasting effects on their lives. Had I gone into Psychology as a profession, this would be the perfect time to invoke "If I want something done right, I should do it myself." I suspect that it would be fascinating.

The ASPEN Principle

I recently remembered that I have a Reddit account, and so I spent some time surfing the site over a few evenings. There are some interesting subreddits; I wasn't expecting to find so many interesting niche communities. But the two subreddits I enjoy reading the most are Personal Finance and Scams. Mainly because they remind me of when I was just starting out in the adult world, and clueless as to much of how it worked.

It's helpful, as I've gotten older, to remember that At Some Point, Everybody's New. There's always the first time that someone encounters something. It's an exercise in compassion that I want to make sure that I continue with.

Where'd They Go?

Facebook, according to the BBC, is banning several people that it has labelled as "dangerous individuals." Ho hum. The names on the list to be banned belong to people that those outside of their follower communities tend to have little respect or use for. In this, Facebook is simply kicking out of the service a number of people that most Facebook users don't appear to want to be bothered with anyway.

But I did find this statement in the piece to be interesting:

However, Facebook has been criticized for giving forewarning of the bans, giving those affected a chance to redirect their followers to other services.

Part of this is a nod to the perceived power and reach of Facebook; an assumption that if the banned individuals were to simply go dark without warning, their audiences would have difficulty tracking them down. And hopefully, at least some of them would grow discouraged and give up the search, perhaps to return to the rest of the world. For my part, I'm dubious that abruptly banning people would do anything but cement the idea that Facebook is capricious in people's minds. After all, it's not like people don't know how to search for any of these people online. And it seems that it would be difficult to police all of the blog postings, internet memes and chat-room discussions that could point someone to their idols' new homes.

Also lurking in that criticism of Facebook, however, is the idea that the company has some role to play in making it difficult for people to find the content that they wish to partake of, if that content is deemed harmful. And one can presume that there is a strain of thought that says that other companies have a similar responsibility. Again this seems to be a nod to the idea that these companies effectively control what people see, and therefore what information they can have legitimate access to.

Which is, of course, a double-edged sword. Because someone who can disappear information that one doesn't want others to have can disappear the information that one does want them to...

I Wouldn't Do That...

I have decided that the War on Terror is an abject failure, and has been for some time now; especially on the home front. A friend of mine and I were on our way to the theater to see a movie. We were walking past the drugstore, and there, next to a wooden parkbench-style seat, was a box. The kind of box that you'd get from an office supply store. Fellows makes them, I believe. They're lockable with a key, and designed to keep your swag intact after your house or office burns down - you wade into the wreckage and retrieve your box, unlock it, and voila! your precious loot is undamaged. This particular box was mostly tan, but colorfully decorated with flowers and big bright letters - it fairly shouted that it was the secret swag box of some adolescent girl - the place were she kept all the stuff that she didn't want her oh-so-uncool parents and/or siblings to find out about. The diary, the pictures of boys, condoms, the small stash of pot, Ecstacy and/or meth - you get the idea.

Anyway, this colorful box was sitting forgotten next to this wooden bench outside of the drugstore as we're walking by. My first thought was "hmm... that's unexpected," then I the decorations sank in, and I realized that someone'd had an airhead moment, and forgotten the thing. On the off chance that the owner was in, or an employee of, the drugstore, I went in, and told the first checker I encountered about the box.

She came outside with me, and it was pretty clear that her first impression was: "Suspicious Box™." So, to see whether or not it was a bomb, she picked it up, and put her ear to it, as if she was listening for a timer. I would have laughed, but was too immediately surprised by so odd an action. (I am reminded of the time in college, when I was standing, dumbfounded, watching one of my classmates earnestly get within moments of shooting herself. In PE class. With a bow and arrow.) First off, the girly decorations aside, I was fairly convinced that there wasn't a bomb in the lockbox. After all, like I said, this was the sort of box that's designed to withstand a house fire, and it wasn't very large. You could injure someone fairly seriously by packing the thing with explosives, but anyone who could get their hands on enough C4 to make the thing really dangerous is going to have enough brains to pick something that won't itself dampen the blast. Secondly, you'd be hard pressed to get me to put something that I thought had a realistic chance of detonating up to my ear. Although I suppose that if I really didn't want to risk simply being maimed for life, it's a reasonable way to go. Lastly (of my immediate thoughts, anyway) was "Who still uses alarm clocks for bomb timers anymore?" The idea of some nutcase searching Value Village for a castoff 60's vintage clock to wire into his detonator crept into my head. Or maybe this woman just didn't realize that digital timers only make "tick-tock" noises as sound effects.

In the end, she decided that she'd take it back into the store with her, and call 911. (I had a twinge of sympathy for the poor dispatcher who was going to wind up taking this call, if this woman insisted on having the Bomb Squad called out.)

But the idea here isn't to have everyone laugh at the reactions of the drugstore clerk (even though I nearly did). I'm going to assume, and I'd guess that you have too, that if this were still the spring of 2001, the idea that the box could have possibly contained a bomb would have seemed like sheer lunacy to everyone involved. But now that we're engaged in a conflict between cultures that has seen some of the worst atrocities that most Americans will ever witness, we're all supposed to be on our guard. Fair enough. But shouldn't there have been some high-profile public education as to what you do if you DO think that you may have found something? If that box DID turn out to have had a bomb in it (although I'd have been less surprised to have been suddenly struck by a meteorite at just that moment), and it had been set to go off then the box was disturbed, the clerk, and likely my friend and me along with her would have been killed or seriously injured by the ensuing blast.

While I'm not old enough to have been around for the Cuban Missile Crisis, and other highlights of the Cold War, I've seen enough old-school (literally in some cases) film footage to realize that back in the day, they went crazy with telling the public things they could do to protect themselves. Now, we all know that all that Duck and Cover would really have done is left behind charcoal briquettes in some odd fetal position, but it was an attempt. When was the last time you saw a television spot from the Feds concerning public safety in the War on Terror? "In case of a possible bomb, call 911 from a safe distance; preferably another Area Code. -- This public service announcement brought to you by the Department of Homeland Security."

I don't doubt that there are legitimate fears of sparking a panic and, of course, such a message would have undermines successive administrations' characterization of Iraq as a sort of jihadist Roach Motel. But telling people simply to be on their guard just doesn't seem like it's going to do much good, if they don't have any idea of what they can do after that.

How Will You Know?

I was reading a story on exorcism the other day. Now as someone who doesn't believe in spirits of any sort, possession isn't real for me, but I understand the people do believe and that possession is real for them. Which one of us is right, in the grand scheme of things, is a somewhat interesting question, I suppose. But what I'd much rather know is: How could you tell?

This, of course, is the $64,000 question with any sort of supernatural phenomenon, from hauntings to magic. If it doesn't have some sort of obvious physical impact on the material world, how can one tell that it's genuine? Of course, given that I can't actually prove that I'm not a brain in a jar, there's the bigger problem of how does one prove that anything is genuine, but going deep on epistemology makes my brain hurt.

In the end, this is what faith is all about, but it does raise an interesting question: Is the phenomenon of possession agnostic? That is to say, does one need to have a preexisting belief in possessing demons in order to be possessed? As near as I can determine, possession is a culture-bound syndrome; that is to say, it only manifests itself in specific cultures. This creates the ironic circumstance that people in cultures that don't believe in the supernatural have, in effect, an absolute protection against possession. In Christianity, you can come up with something of a rationale for this; the possession of non-believers would be a for of proof of the supernatural, and obviate the need for faith. A bit wonky for my tastes, but semi-logical enough. But in Buddhism, is there the same understanding of the necessity of faith? If not, it seems strange that māra will or can only possess Buddhists, and not other random people.

I'm not sure that it actually matters what the answer is. People believe in both possession and exorcism, and pointing out that it seems odd that these would be limited to believers will not deter them from that. And, of course, proving anything one way or the other would be difficult. But it's an interesting question.