shatto
05-17-2013, 05:42 PM
A swirl of thoughts descended upon my noggin so I'll share this batch with y'all.
Last year, I read more than fifty novels, most by Nora Roberts who has written in addition to stand-alone novels, a series of stories about families and a separate line of books under the pseudonym J.D.Robb about a Murder Cop solving crimes and the relationships between the good, bad and ugly. I also read Spy novels of Flynn, W.E.B. Griffin and others books about very rough men doing vicious things to bad men, and even; "Fighter Pilot" by Christina Olds about her father, the legend, triple Ace, General Robin Olds. And just finished; "Proof of Heaven" by Brain Surgeon Eban Alexander, MD., and I noticed the books I read share common threads. Then I got to pondering other areas of entertainment and found the treads there too.
The threads of commonality in good television, movies, novels, biographies, stories about people, is the male and female heroes assertiveness and strength and strong families growing out of those values.
I pondered and cogitated and thought about and wondered why women writers write about men who touch hair, chin, perhaps lips and tell a woman he wants her. Then they are always together forever-after. Not a bad plot line.
Could it be they write about what interests them, what they want, need and desire in their own lives? Could it be they are simply reflecting, gasp, reality?
Whatever moniker may be applied to whatever group pushing the agenda, what has happened in America and the rest of the "industrialized world" is a concerted effort to remove 'maleness' from boys; so dodge-ball and other 'rough' sports are banned and professional contact sports as well as masculine boy and man toys are under siege and it is only a matter of time before we will see them become extinct. We now have little boys expelled from school, even arrested by the police, for daring to draw pictures of guns!
I recall Rush Limbaugh saying he has yet to find the book: "Great Moderates in History" and it began taking form in my mind that our society is in trouble because of not only conflicting messages from the media; TV, magazines, news, movies, books but also the classroom, peer pressure and their own families good-intentions.
And we now have a group of men so emasculated they are known as Metro-Sexual, which would be the ultimate moderate. I imagine them with only a dominatrix which I presume precludes their reproducing, which would be a good thing.
The problem with removing masculinity is that it does not produce societal nirvana. Has not. Will not. Can not.
Masculinity and femininity are traits of human nature and our behavior is genetically programmed. Men are programmed to be physical and are supposed to desire women and the other way around, except that woman strength is pretty-much everywhere else. That programming is basic perpetuate the species stuff and when we stifle the drive, the need, with being civilized and mannerly, irritating problems occur but when we attempt to remove it we cause the erosion and maybe the collapse of society. Anarchy is fun in survival movies and watching news reports from the Middle East from the comfort of home but not in your real life.
Because after half a century it worked for me, I conclude that boys and girls ought to read Romance Novels to learn something about how to treat the opposite sex. Would children act on what they read? Doubt it. None of what I've read has children involved in that way, in fact the family values subtly taught in the story would lead them away and towards what adult life should be like.
Besides todays children are way to smart and savvy, like every generation throughout history, and because they are connected to the world in ways their parents cannot imagine, they know that they are being manipulated and lied to everywhere and by everyone and would appreciate overtness instead of society and parents trying to shield them from every possible harm and bad feeling.
Have parents gone from protecting them from harm to shielding them from life? Maybe better is to teach them to relentlessly pursue truth.
Last year, I read more than fifty novels, most by Nora Roberts who has written in addition to stand-alone novels, a series of stories about families and a separate line of books under the pseudonym J.D.Robb about a Murder Cop solving crimes and the relationships between the good, bad and ugly. I also read Spy novels of Flynn, W.E.B. Griffin and others books about very rough men doing vicious things to bad men, and even; "Fighter Pilot" by Christina Olds about her father, the legend, triple Ace, General Robin Olds. And just finished; "Proof of Heaven" by Brain Surgeon Eban Alexander, MD., and I noticed the books I read share common threads. Then I got to pondering other areas of entertainment and found the treads there too.
The threads of commonality in good television, movies, novels, biographies, stories about people, is the male and female heroes assertiveness and strength and strong families growing out of those values.
I pondered and cogitated and thought about and wondered why women writers write about men who touch hair, chin, perhaps lips and tell a woman he wants her. Then they are always together forever-after. Not a bad plot line.
Could it be they write about what interests them, what they want, need and desire in their own lives? Could it be they are simply reflecting, gasp, reality?
Whatever moniker may be applied to whatever group pushing the agenda, what has happened in America and the rest of the "industrialized world" is a concerted effort to remove 'maleness' from boys; so dodge-ball and other 'rough' sports are banned and professional contact sports as well as masculine boy and man toys are under siege and it is only a matter of time before we will see them become extinct. We now have little boys expelled from school, even arrested by the police, for daring to draw pictures of guns!
I recall Rush Limbaugh saying he has yet to find the book: "Great Moderates in History" and it began taking form in my mind that our society is in trouble because of not only conflicting messages from the media; TV, magazines, news, movies, books but also the classroom, peer pressure and their own families good-intentions.
And we now have a group of men so emasculated they are known as Metro-Sexual, which would be the ultimate moderate. I imagine them with only a dominatrix which I presume precludes their reproducing, which would be a good thing.
The problem with removing masculinity is that it does not produce societal nirvana. Has not. Will not. Can not.
Masculinity and femininity are traits of human nature and our behavior is genetically programmed. Men are programmed to be physical and are supposed to desire women and the other way around, except that woman strength is pretty-much everywhere else. That programming is basic perpetuate the species stuff and when we stifle the drive, the need, with being civilized and mannerly, irritating problems occur but when we attempt to remove it we cause the erosion and maybe the collapse of society. Anarchy is fun in survival movies and watching news reports from the Middle East from the comfort of home but not in your real life.
Because after half a century it worked for me, I conclude that boys and girls ought to read Romance Novels to learn something about how to treat the opposite sex. Would children act on what they read? Doubt it. None of what I've read has children involved in that way, in fact the family values subtly taught in the story would lead them away and towards what adult life should be like.
Besides todays children are way to smart and savvy, like every generation throughout history, and because they are connected to the world in ways their parents cannot imagine, they know that they are being manipulated and lied to everywhere and by everyone and would appreciate overtness instead of society and parents trying to shield them from every possible harm and bad feeling.
Have parents gone from protecting them from harm to shielding them from life? Maybe better is to teach them to relentlessly pursue truth.