Muddling Toward Maturity Blog

SOCIOLOGIST: GARDENING SPREADS RACISM, FACISM

This will have to be placed on my "hard to believe" pile.   Whacky whacky whacky.  Read on:

Katherine Timpf of National Review Online reports: 

A sociology lecturer at the University of Westminster is claiming that panelists on a BBC radio show are covertly spreading racist and fascist messages when they talk about gardening.

Dr. Ben Pitcher claimed that people on Gardeners’ Question Time are really just using gardening as a covert way to talk about white identity without seeming racist.

“Gardeners’ Question Time is not the most controversial show on Radio 4, and yet it is layered with, saturated with, racial meanings,” he said on another Radio 4 show, according to an article in the Daily Mail.

“The context here is the rise of nationalism,” he continued.

The topics discussed on the show include different plant species and soil purity, which Pitcher identified as code language for racial purity. The Caucasian sociologist said radio personalities use discussions of “invasive” and non-native plant species to express opposition to foreigners. Another guest on Radio 4 — a baroness and former professor of cultural studies — agreed with Pitcher, comparing British concerns about rhododendrons to anti-Pakistani sentiments in the 1980s.

A frequent panelist on Gardeners’ Question Time, the aptly named Bob Flowerdew, called Pitcher’s claims “ridiculous.”

“Does he want us to stop using words altogether? Perhaps we shouldn’t use Latin names to avoid offending the Romans,” Flowerdew said.

MEANING IN LIFE

In Shantung Compound: The Story of Men and Women Under Pressure, Langdon Gilkey wrote the following (pp. 193-94),:

Let us take it [meaning in life] to refer simply to a sense of worthful purpose in what we do and the life we lead.  A man possesses a sense of "meaning" when he feels there is a vital connection between the goals he values and the activities and relationships in which he is involved.

Then what he does each day becomes a coherent means to ends he really prizes, his life and work accomplish something of value to him and so "make sense."  Consequently his energies and powers are called forth in creative effort; he is vigorous, hardworking, and, in the good sense of that word, ambitious.  In this sense, meaning in life is the spiritual fuel that drives the human machine.  Without it we are indifferent and bored; there is no ambition to work, we are inspired by no concern or sense of significance, and our powers are unstirred and so lie idle.  Without "meaning" we are undirected and a vulnerable prey to all manner of despair and anxiety, unable to stand firm against any new winds of adversity.  

Me:  Shantung Compound remains one of the top 10 most insightful books I have ever read.  I first read it years ago.  It's the true story of men and women from all walks of life interned in a Japanese prison camp durng World War II.   One won't find a better exposition of "lived" psychology, sociology, philosophy, anthropology and morality anywhere-- better than textbooks!

IS INFORMATION OVERLOAD AFFECTING OUR ABILITY TO THINK AND FOCUS?

Most definitely.  L. Gordon Crovitz published an article today in the Wall Street Journal and mentioned a new book called "Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age" by Maggie Jackson.   The book sounds fascinating.  Crovitz says author Jackson "warns that the cumulative effect of new technologies is that we may be losing our ability to maintain attention more generally.  Attention requires focus, awareness and what she calls executive attention."

Relying on multitasking as a way of life, we chop up our opportunities and abilities to make big-picture sense of the world and pursue our long-term goals," she writes.  "The way we live is eroding our capacity for deep, sustained, perceptive attention--the building block of intimacy, wisdom, and cultural progress.  Ms. Jackson concludes that "as we plunge into a new world of infinitely connectible and accessible information, we risk losing our means and ability to go beneath the surface, to think deeply."

Check out this Amazon review.

On the same subject, do read "Is Google Making Us Stupid?: What the Internet is doing to our brains" in the current (July/August, 2008) Atlantic Monthly.

FEMINISM AND THE PROBLEM OF THE "CHILD-MAN" -THE MAN WHO DOESN'T GROW UP

In response to Kathryn Jean Lopez's article on the movie Juno, a reader responded with this intriguing analysis of feminism's effect on manhood:

. . . Feminism’s second wave has had many, many unintended consequences, one of which is that men, not just women have been liberated from their traditional roles. Many men simply don’t feel the need to grow up because women have quite plainly said they don’t need or value men. “You say you can take care of yourselves? Fantastic! I’m gonna go invent computer games and play them for as long as I want.”

So, women indulged in a gigantic fit of self-indulgence and selfishness, which they are still very much involved in, and along comes not just one woman (you), but many of them, calling upon men to engage in the self-sacrifice of yesteryear, while at the same time, retaining all of their newfound privilege, comfort, self-determination, and

SINGLE YOUNG MEN (SYM) IN THEIR 20's -- STILL ADOLESCENTS

Update 2/2/08 - Kathryn Jean Lopez reviews the movie Juno and thereby underscores Hymowitz's insights below.  See also a reader comment on Lopez's review posted above.  It deals with the unintended consequences of feminism's effect on men.

**
This is an eye-opening "investigation" (is that the right word?) of single American men, 18-34 years old. Kay S. Hymowitz titles her latest City Journal article, "Child-Man in the Promised Land."  The article makes discouraging reading, and to my mind registers another signal of a culture in slow-motion collapse.

For whatever reason, adolescence appears to be the young man’s default state, proving what anthropologists have discovered in cultures everywhere: it is marriage and children that turn boys into men. Now that the SYM can put off family into the hazily distant future, he can—and will—try to stay a child-man.

Read the article to discover the ins and outs of a child-man.

P.S. Note Hymowitz's earlier article, "The New Girl Order: Single Young Females (SYF)," on which I blogged here, which is also worth reading. I concluded that post saying, "This is one of those articles that alters the way you view the world."

Kay S Hymowitz - The New Girl Order: SYF (Single Young Females)

This article reveals a worldwide trend with significant repercussions for generations.  Consider these mind-blowing statistics:

. . .  in 1960, 70 percent of American 25-year-old women were married with children; in 2000, only 25 percent of them were. In 1970, just 7.4 percent of all American 30- to 34-year-olds were unmarried; today, the number is 22 percent. That change took about a generation to unfold, but in Asia and Eastern Europe the transformation has been much more abrupt. In today’s Hungary, for instance, 30 percent of women in their early thirties are single, compared with 6 percent of their mothers’ generation at the same age. In South Korea, 40 percent of 30-year-olds are single, compared with 14 percent only 20 years ago.

That's only the beginning.  Read on for a whole lot more. This is one of those articles that alters the way you view the world. 

Jungle Tribe Apologizes to Missionaries for Past Acts of Cannibalism

As Mark Tooley says:

Apologizing for the sins, real and contrived, of Western Civilization, is suffocatingly trendy among the West’s cultural elites. It fits their ideological assumption that the West and its religion have ceaselessly victimized benign indigenous cultures around the world.

But this fad was tossed topsy turvey, recently, when Papua New Guinea tribesmen apologized for their ancestors having cannibalized Methodist missionaries 129 years ago. Thousands of villagers attended the apology ceremony in East New Britain province and listened to words of praise for the English missionary who had brought the Gospel to their region.    - Read the whole article

WHY RELIGION MATTERS: RELIGIOUS PRACTICE AND THE WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY

This comprehensive Heritage Foundation article examines the social contributions of religion in America.  As such, it is primarily a study of the social impact of Christianity in the United States.  At least that's my take on it.  I think a quite different paper would be written concerning the impact of religion in Muslim or Hindu or Buddhist societies.  Be that as it may, it looks to me like a definitive study, highly useful, and sure to please academics out there who like long, comprehensive, well-written papers laced with footnotes.   (The paper has 136 footnotes). 

Topics covered include the following:  Religion and Marriage (divorce; marital harmony and satisfaction; cohabitation); Religion and Family Relations (mother-child relationships, father-child relationships;

MARRIED COUPLES ARE NOW A MINORITY IN AMERICA

Here's a short article exploring the implications for churches.  The original news article is here.  (HT: Andrew Jackson)