Meaning, Men And Women?
Luky hit on one of my soft spots this morning. Perhaps I was expressing that modest discontent or lack of fulfillment that I sometimes do. I suppose I do that a lot when I'm talking to him. He doesn't stop me but he calls me on it.
He says my problem is all about capital "M" Meaning, but he also says it's a particularly human thing. In fact, he says it's even a human sexual thing - as in gender, not procreative. It's Luky's opinion that human males (yes, that's me so far) express inordinate need to create something lasting - to leave behind ("behind" is his word - I argue a preferred "during") a legacy that is greater than the sum of one's living and breathing.
Actually, he sounds pretty sexist because he keeps saying it will always be "a man's world." He doesn't mean it like that, I know, because, in the first place he loves human females. And I don't mean in a ridiculous and superficial way. I mean he respects human females more than he does human males. It's a whole philosophical thing, but even he admits that his feelings may be based in something rather personal. He has tended to respond to almost any human female ever since I can remember. Not only have all the women in MY life been adoring parents and partners to him (especially Kiki whom he calls "mommy" now) but he spent a good portion of his formative years at Canine Academy (www.canineacademy.net) where he was nurtured and loved on by lots of female teachers and guardians. (Jenny Baum, the owner, hires good people.) Anyway, all those girls loved him and he knows it.
Well, all those things add up to partial explanations for his position, but he goes much further. He argues that females, usually, (that is, with very few species exceptions - e.g., Seahorses - http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/seahorse/) have the ultimate creative drive exorcism. They actually give birth to other beings. According to him, this doesn't take on Meaning-scale importance until you get to humans. Less self-aware species act and react far more on instinct, which he also considers preferable. It's the human desire to understand our place that makes us want - need - to evaluate our impact and role in the overall. That's why we walk around in a funk every time we get a failing grade or lose a job, or worse (that is, dumber) someone says we're losing our hair, or we drive the wrong kind of car, or we serve the wrong type of wine. (Luky really hates that car comment. He has never cared about the wine thing, which I'll admit bugs me a lot more.) Indeed, Luky says we'd be a far more successful species if we more quickly accepted certain kinds of measures as hints for direction and focus and just moved on.
Malamutes don't really laugh out loud, but I can tell he's smiling when he says humans hate to admit failure in those personal set-backs and so we keep pursuing success in those same arenas which have already proven to be beyond our natural talents and capabilities. He would advise that we do life like wolves . . . look for food where we know the terrain and smell our own mark, and avoid territory that has no prey, or could harbor traps or threats. He amazes me with those kinds of theories. I have no idea where he thinks he gets his lupine wisdom. After all, his most frequent canine conversationalist is a little black and white Pug street gymnast named Zoey. But I listen as if I'm taking notes.
I suppose when you think about it he makes a good point about success and survival. Luky has a way of boiling complex things down to their basics.
Getting back to the Meaning thing, and females, it's Luky's contention that human males will always tend to be the best known architects, writers, composers, painters, and so on and so on, not because they are technically, much less genetically, better than females (you know, women), but rather because men are simply going to have numbers on their side.
I asked him about politics, bureaucracy, and that host of human cultural innovations that seem to reinforce our worst fears and prejudices. Luky says that those things do facilitate our chauvinism but that basically that's just a competitive expression of men trying to make sure they have the arena for their work. If culture operated based on the innate power dynamic (I'm paraphrasing because he hates the word "dynamic"), then according to him, women would never have to let men take the stage.
Oh well, by the time we got to that point in the conversation we were already back in the building and on the elevator. That's when he starts thinking of nothing else but the biscuit he gets when we return to the loft. I told him this whole discussion wasn't over and that I still felt a little dissatisfied and unfulfilled - at least today. He smiled and pranced into the kitchen and stood beside his biscuit bucket. He was done for the day.
He says my problem is all about capital "M" Meaning, but he also says it's a particularly human thing. In fact, he says it's even a human sexual thing - as in gender, not procreative. It's Luky's opinion that human males (yes, that's me so far) express inordinate need to create something lasting - to leave behind ("behind" is his word - I argue a preferred "during") a legacy that is greater than the sum of one's living and breathing.
Actually, he sounds pretty sexist because he keeps saying it will always be "a man's world." He doesn't mean it like that, I know, because, in the first place he loves human females. And I don't mean in a ridiculous and superficial way. I mean he respects human females more than he does human males. It's a whole philosophical thing, but even he admits that his feelings may be based in something rather personal. He has tended to respond to almost any human female ever since I can remember. Not only have all the women in MY life been adoring parents and partners to him (especially Kiki whom he calls "mommy" now) but he spent a good portion of his formative years at Canine Academy (www.canineacademy.net) where he was nurtured and loved on by lots of female teachers and guardians. (Jenny Baum, the owner, hires good people.) Anyway, all those girls loved him and he knows it.
Well, all those things add up to partial explanations for his position, but he goes much further. He argues that females, usually, (that is, with very few species exceptions - e.g., Seahorses - http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/seahorse/) have the ultimate creative drive exorcism. They actually give birth to other beings. According to him, this doesn't take on Meaning-scale importance until you get to humans. Less self-aware species act and react far more on instinct, which he also considers preferable. It's the human desire to understand our place that makes us want - need - to evaluate our impact and role in the overall. That's why we walk around in a funk every time we get a failing grade or lose a job, or worse (that is, dumber) someone says we're losing our hair, or we drive the wrong kind of car, or we serve the wrong type of wine. (Luky really hates that car comment. He has never cared about the wine thing, which I'll admit bugs me a lot more.) Indeed, Luky says we'd be a far more successful species if we more quickly accepted certain kinds of measures as hints for direction and focus and just moved on.
Malamutes don't really laugh out loud, but I can tell he's smiling when he says humans hate to admit failure in those personal set-backs and so we keep pursuing success in those same arenas which have already proven to be beyond our natural talents and capabilities. He would advise that we do life like wolves . . . look for food where we know the terrain and smell our own mark, and avoid territory that has no prey, or could harbor traps or threats. He amazes me with those kinds of theories. I have no idea where he thinks he gets his lupine wisdom. After all, his most frequent canine conversationalist is a little black and white Pug street gymnast named Zoey. But I listen as if I'm taking notes.
I suppose when you think about it he makes a good point about success and survival. Luky has a way of boiling complex things down to their basics.
Getting back to the Meaning thing, and females, it's Luky's contention that human males will always tend to be the best known architects, writers, composers, painters, and so on and so on, not because they are technically, much less genetically, better than females (you know, women), but rather because men are simply going to have numbers on their side.
I asked him about politics, bureaucracy, and that host of human cultural innovations that seem to reinforce our worst fears and prejudices. Luky says that those things do facilitate our chauvinism but that basically that's just a competitive expression of men trying to make sure they have the arena for their work. If culture operated based on the innate power dynamic (I'm paraphrasing because he hates the word "dynamic"), then according to him, women would never have to let men take the stage.
Oh well, by the time we got to that point in the conversation we were already back in the building and on the elevator. That's when he starts thinking of nothing else but the biscuit he gets when we return to the loft. I told him this whole discussion wasn't over and that I still felt a little dissatisfied and unfulfilled - at least today. He smiled and pranced into the kitchen and stood beside his biscuit bucket. He was done for the day.
posted by RAM at 3:41 PM
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