Below is from an email exchange I had regarding an opinion piece by Rod Dreher titled What child-men need is some tradition. You can read it in its entirety here though the main points have all been included below. Rod Dreher's "Crunchy Con" blog is here.

I have a number of thoughts about Dreher's op-ed on "child-men".  I can't recall where, but I had read this a few days ago, so I've had some time for his thoughts to fester.  As I'm wont to do, I'm going to Dreher's points by quoting them piecemeal.

The student asked a question - What is an artist? - for which his culture no longer provided an authoritative answer. But if you ask a far more important question - What is a man? - the culture comes up equally short, and for the same reason.

To be sure, the definition of manhood is culture-bound and has been talked about since time immemorial. The first-century Roman teacher Quintillian warned against spoiling boys. "If the child crawls on purple," the tutor wrote, referencing the imperial color, "what will he not desire when he comes to manhood?"

Dreher repeatedly speaks of "culture", "community", "tradition" and "authority" throughout his article.  What I find curious is Dreher's appeal to culture and authority as sources for answers to fundamental questions.  Of course, culture is an incredibly ambiguous word -- what is culture but the sum total of paradigms from some defined group of people?  And which culture are we to look to for answers?  Is it the culture of Americans in total?  The culture of moderate southern Baptists?  What about the culture of black muslims?  Or liberal northerners?  It's a tough problem to appeal to culture for answers because culture is as varying as there are individuals. 

Faced with such a dilemma of picking any one culture (To say nothing of defining one), Dreher is forced to revert to "authority" for answers.  And though I'll harp on this later, Dreher's entire article is an appeal to the authority of tradition or conservatism.

Here, Dreher cites an important question, "What is a man?"  He then indicts the current culture (Which I'll assume is some majority-American culture though I can only guess) as having no "authoritative answer".  Only then does he note, "the definition of manhood is culture-bound and has been talked about since time immemorial".  To Dreher: what is the "authoritative answer" to a question that has been asked for centuries?

Today's child-men have been formed by a culture that has lost - or, rather, thrown away – a relatively fixed standard of manhood. It used to be that virtue was the measure of a man. Was a man just? Was he brave (and not necessarily in terms of physical courage)? Was he honorable in his dealings with those weaker than he? Did he respect women? Did he believe in something higher than himself? Did he submit to the concepts of duty and respect?

It's not that all men, or even most, lived by this general code. It's that they recognized that they would be judged by it, and judged themselves by it.

Dreher appeals to virtue, as defined by some pre-Boomer generation (I think).  He cites as virtuous: justice, bravery, honor, respect, and of course, submission to authority.  He says that even those who didn't live by this code knew that they would be judged by it.

And it sounds lovely.  I've heard similar appeals to times-past made many times and I always get a little misty-eyed with their innate romanticism.  I've been guilty of making the similar appeals. It's easy to romanticize the past -- we all do it whether the past means a year or decades (Even when we weren't alive to experience those times). 

So I question how Dreher's knowledge of concepts regarding manhood as they were 70 years ago.  I think Dreher's depiction of man is probably more an extension of his own beliefs regarding manhood. To supporting these beliefs, the entire piece works:

[Man defined by his virtues, as defined by others is] mostly gone, replaced by a therapeutic model in which the autonomous self is its own judge, and personal satisfaction is the measure of a life well lived. For 40 years now, we have been living through a cultural and psychological revolution that has rendered young men (indeed, most people) incapable of recognizing and submitting to authority. As social critic Philip Rieff foresaw at the dawn of this revolution, the loosening of traditional constraints would make man free, but it would be a liberty fraught with anxiety, even psychological paralysis.

Our email dialogue is diverse in that we each bring different perspectives to the table regarding how we should be judged.  I take exception to Dreher's indictment of the "autonomous self".  For one, I cannot fathom how anyone could be a better judge of my life than me.  According to Dreher, I should recognize and submit to authority; rejecting authority's chains is wrong, foolish, or wicked. 

Why?  And of course I have to ask that -- Why?!?  At the base of an autonomous paradigm is the question, "why?"  Am I wrong to ask always the question, why?  If so, then how could other men, authorities, ever be righteous?  After all, they've asked and answered the question, "Why?"  That's what makes them authorities!

Therein lies the nonsense of Dreher's argument: he believes it right for men to submit to other men, some super-men, the authorities, but wrong for men to act as authorities over their own lives.  This is nefarious poppycock.  Why? Because "it's turtles all the way down", to paraphrase Hawking.  How can you have authority over others but no authority over yourself?

You can't. 

And if nothing smacks more of absurdity its the implicit statement that free men are anxious, psychologically paralyzed beings.  I'll circle back to this shortly.

Dreher goes on, hammering the point home:

Quintillian and his successors through the ages knew that the process of becoming a man requires a juvenile male to subordinate his own desires to an objective
code of conduct – which is to say, some sort of higher authority.

Though he starts off suggesting men submit to some "objective code of conduct", which at least implies that men came together to make a determination of right and wrong, he soon replaces that idea with submitting to "some sort of higher authority".  I'm not sure the two are all that different: both require man to put aside his own ability to reason and apply logic and replace it with the decisions of other men.

In this sense, the self could only be understood and realized in relation to one's community and its values.

I can only imagine what Dreher means here, but in the context of his write-up, it comes across as more replacing the self with the hive, the collective, the authority of other men (Indeed, any man but me).

Here is where it gets really interesting.  Dreher starts talking about culture keeping men "in a permanent state of adolescence" -- a "dependency tailor-made for a consumerist economy built on creating and exploiting wants".  Perhaps shockingly, I agree with Dreher here.  However, it seems as though he is actually indicting a highly authoritative culture.  After all, the authorities are the ones who have crammed the consumerist culture down our throats.  We're told to buy, buy, buy!  Indeed, the current economic stimulus plan is an unequivocal directive by authorities to "buy!" 

And what is adolescence but wanting to be free while having no choice but to do as you're told, submit to your parents, teachers and other adults?  Look at our education system.  Teachers speak out of both sides of their mouths.  They tell students they are unique and special snowflakes destined for great things while simultaneously cramming the same subjects down our throats for twelve years.  The choices students are allowed to make are silly choices: weight lifting or spanish 2; physics or biology.  We're shuffled from classroom to classroom taking the same poorly taught subjects year after year (English, Social studies). 

What happens when we finally complete the relay race?  We're told that we're still not ready for assimilation into the world!  No, we need to go to college so we can get jobs.  Yet college is tragically just more of the same authoritative, hoop-jumping hogwash.  Yes, we finally get to pick some of the classes we take for the first time in our lives.  But after four years, we get a degree spits us into some corporate job where the authorities tell us once more that we have no say in our lives, that we should submit graciously to others who have "paid their dues".  Convinced that we just haven't adjusted yet to "the real world" we march on with hopes that it will get better in time.  Only our time to figure life out is running short -- at least, if we want to have famlies of our own.

Then, we wake up one day miserable with our work but driven on by familial responsibilities, completely out of time, having been denied the very essence of existence: the freedom to make our own way.

Dreher is right that something seems wrong with my generation.  And though I think he rightly points the finger at the boomers, his root determination as to the cause of mess couldn't be any more wrong.  It's not a lack of tradition or authority, it's a lack of freedom.  We have been told we know nothing.  We've been told to submit to authorities and to pay our dues.  We've not been told how to reason, philosophize and try to answer the fundamental questions about life -- like "Why am I here? What is my purpose? What is right or wrong?"

The failure of prior generations and generations to come is in binding man.

What is a man? A man is free. A man questions and reasons. From there comes all else.

Authority? It's the anti-man, which is why I reject it and anyone who wishes to exert it over me without hesitation or apology.

During the month of December, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, coworkers in my small corproate office could sign up to bring in breakfast foods. Like vultures, my colleagues would descend on the food and devour it. It's a gruesome spectacle - one in which I've often participated.

The spectacle has always bothered me, and I'm still trying to nail down why. Anyway, below is an excerpt from an email I sent this morning to a co-worker on the matter and on Corporate Life in general:

If you're struggling to find an X-mas gift to give your friends and relatives, I've got an idea for you: silver or gold coins.

Sure, you can't put them in your DVD player, play them or eat them, but they're awful shiny, not to mention that they are fun to toss in the air or spin on your desk. You can even pretend you are some kinda Pirate and the coin is your "booty". The fun is limited only by your imagination.

Now, I know what you're thinking (And no, I'm not crazy). You give someone a wrapped up Silver Eagle for Christmas and you are going to get some seriously strange looks. It's okay. In fact, that's exactly the reason these coins make such a great gifts!

If you give a friend a silver coin, they won't know what to do with it (Make sure you tell them that the "ONE DOLLAR" stamped on the coin is a joke: spending it anywhere would be like giving away fourteen bucks)! Therefore, it'll likely end up in a sock drawer for years upon years not unlike many other gifts received from older relatives. However, there's one big difference: the coin you give will slowly appreciate in value by both its intrinsic scarcity and as a hedge against the ceaselessly inflating dollar. As a bonus, by giving them a modern relic of what money once was, you're making your friends and family more informed and aware.

So this year, pass on giving your friend a pair of socks or a CD and grab them some silver (or Gold if you're feeling frisky and have a very, very high budget for your gifts). It's no xbox 360, but in about twenty or thirty years, they'll come around. Silver and gold coins are the Christmas gifts that keep on giving.

John Taylor Gatto taught English in New York City schools for 30 years. During that time, he learned how absolutely busted the public education system is in the United States. Upon his retirement, he wrote a seditious book titled, The Underground History of American Education. Rather than a desire to understand why public schools are so flawed, Gatto's ideas have struck me by opening my eyes to how my own experience in public education has impacted who I am and how I approach life.

Facing the the force of the farce that is our democracy, I find myself pondering life as an Expatriate: is getting out of the United States a viable method to secure more freedom, both civil and fiscal? Or are there other ways to circumvent the state while retaining a secured life in a land I love?

I'm a bit behind the times: I only recently heard of Second Life (SL), a growing virtual world created to mimic the metaverse idea written by Neal Stephenson in his book, Snow Crash (Note that Snow Crash was written in 1992).

In this virtual world, you have property (i.e. land and money) and can transact virtually with other SL inhabitants. Virtual money exist and economic transactions that happen in SL can (and do) have an impact on real world transactions. For example, you could speculate on SL real estate and sell it for a profit to other SL inhabitants. The profits, as denominated in the SL currency of "Linden Dollars", could be exchanged for U.S. dollars outside of SL.

Is this bizarre enough for you?

I am confident that many readers (Many bloggers) have succumbed to the siren song of video and computer games. Gaming is entertaining and challenging. It's a great distraction, justifiably better than just watching TV because you're actually doing something that can stimulate your brain. Gaming requires interaction. With online gaming booming, you can even argue (Quite successfully) that gaming is a community activity. Perhaps it is these characteristics that create such fertile soil for gaming addiction.

An article from the UK's The Independent titled, Britain becomes 'never, never land' as personal debt runs out of control, included the following anecdote by Alice Douglas. One can't help but imagine any number of Americans telling the same story about the past ten, twenty or thirty years here in the U.S. It's a story of what happens when money isn't real:

Public schools are destined for mediocrity simply by existing as institutional extensions of the state. The abominable marriage of education and government fails because it disconnects cost and benefit, thereby severing learning from the powerful forces of scarcity, freedom and competition.

In light of the five year anniversary of September 11^th, many are asking the question, "Are we safer?" President Bush gave a speech on that subject in Atlanta this past Thursday, September 7, 2006. He said:

Many Americans look at these events and ask the same question: Five years after 9/11, are we safer?

The answer is yes, America is safer.

(APPLAUSE)

We are safer because we've taken action to protect the homeland. We are safer because we are on the offense against our enemies overseas. We're safer because of the skill and sacrifice of the brave Americans who defend our people.

Six months after September 11, 2001, the White House announced the creation of the Homeland Security Advisory System. Per the press release on the matter:

We, too, must take new measures to protect our cities, our resources and people from the threat we face today, the threat of terrorism. That is why today we announce the Homeland Security Advisory System.

The Homeland Security Advisory System is designed to measure and evaluate terrorist threats and communicate them to the public in a timely manner. It is a national framework; yet it is flexible to apply to threats made against a city, a state, a sector, or an industry. It provides a common vocabulary, so officials from all levels of government can communicate easily with one another and to the public. It provides clear, easy to understand factors which help measure threat.
...
Here's how it works. The advisory system is based on five threat conditions or five different alerts: low, guarded, elevated, high and severe. They're going to be represented by five colors: green, blue, yellow, orange and red ...

The Homeland Security Advisory System is now administered via the Department of Homeland Security. It has been in place now for roughly 4½ years since the system has been in place. As such, examination of the historical terror levels according to the advisory system should show a notable improvement via a shift away from "Elevated" and "High" towards the "Guarded" or even "Low" terror threat levels. In order to test this hypothesis, per data from the DHS website, I graphed out the terror levels over the past 1,650 days:

As you can see, we have never, not once, dropped below the "Elevated" yellow level of terror threat. We have only once made use of the "Severe" terror threat level, and that was back in August after the liquid terrorist plot was exposed. That said, if we are so much safer than we were five years ago, why are we still living with an "Elevated" terror threat, meaning that there is a "significant risk of terrorist attacks"?

Plenty of others are examining the question of American safety in a post-9/11 world elsewhere. However, if the Homeland Security Advisory System is any indicator, I'd say things are clearly worse.

Extrapolating the size of the earth relative to other planets, our sun and other stars leaves us flummoxed.

But should we go the other direction, we'd soon realize we are composed of nothing but so much empty space:

A hydrogen atom is only about a ten millionth of a millimeter in diameter, but the proton in the middle is a hundred thousand times smaller, and the electron whizzing around the outside is a thousand times smaller than THAT. The rest of the atom is empty. I tried to picture it, and I couldn't. So I put together this page - and I still can't picture it.

The page is scaled so that the smallest thing on it, the electron, is one pixel. That makes the proton, this big ball right next to us, a thousand pixels across, and the distance between them is... yep, fifty million pixels (not a hundred million, because we're only showing the radius of the atom. ie: from the middle to the edge). If your monitor displays 72 pixels to the inch, then that works out to eleven miles - making this possibly the biggest page you've ever seen.

Stephan Kinsella makes an exhaustively comprehensive case for self-ownership, which is the fundamental prerequisite of all human freedom.

I recommend reading Kinsella's piece in its entirety, but below I summarize what I found to be his key arguments.

Kinsella first describes ownership as coming from the principle of "first use". First use is the idea that unowned scarce resources come to be owned when they are first used. First use is easily applied to unowned land and other such scarce resources. But what about living beings? Though the concept of first use is useful, how does it explain initial ownership? Does a human being de facto own his own body at conception? Birth? Is ownership merely arbitrary? Kinsella points out:

But for bodies, things are not the same. As noted above, one is not really the "first user" of one's body in the same sense as one is the first user of a previously unowned thing that one appropriates. It's not as if the body was just lying, unoccupied and unused, in the wild, waiting for an occupant to homestead it. And moreover, as noted above, the occupant is not exactly the first user of his body, with respect to his parents.

Additionally, to homestead an unowned resource presupposes one already has a body, which one uses to act in the world and to homestead unowned things. But this is not the case for "homesteading" one's body. One has no body before one gains rights to it.

Why do I have a right to my own body that is superior to any other individual's right? What is the source of this right?

So, who owns a child's body? Initially, the parents own it as a sort of temporary trustee. The parents, as the producers of the child, have an objective link to the child's body that defeats any claims of outsiders (unless the parents sever this link by abusing their position). That is, parents have a better claim to the child than any outsiders, because of their natural link to the child. However, when the child "homesteads" or "appropriates" his own body by establishing the requisite objective link sufficient to establish self-ownership, the child becomes an adult, so to speak, and now has a better claim to his body than his parents.

Self-ownership is spawned from the act of appropriating one's body: acting, which implies will, to sustain one's existence establishs self-ownership. To the extent that one cannot act, it would follow that one cannot own.

Action, which is inseparable from will, is the fundamental precursor to ownership. Once an individual has acted to secure self-ownership, no one can make a superior claim of ownership over said individual without such individuals willful, non-coerced consent. This is why criminals, gangs, and governments are inherently abject bodies: they usurp the established property right to self-own.

And when they do (and will), we have a right to fight back.

If you've checked the news recently, you know that Steve Irwin, the 'Crocodile Hunter', was killed this past weekend after being stabbed by a stingray while filming in Australia.

Though not a regular watcher of Irwin's shows, I watched enough to feel a great sense of loss at his passing. Sad to see such a passionate, animated and likeable fellow arrive at such an untimely death. Despite his job putting him in dangerous positions all the time, Irwin seemed protected.

Go here to enjoy some of Steve's quotes: "Yeah, I'm a thrill seeker, but crikey, education's the most important thing." - Steve Irwin, 1962 - 2006.

Who said I was going to do this every week? It's hard to assimilate so many links! That said, here are a few random bits of news for your viewing (dis)pleasure.

The Good: From FreethePlant.com comes a story titled, Top 10 Pot Studies Government Wished it Had Never Funded. While you're there, check out another article on the Czech Republic, Czech It Out - Marijuana Isn’t The Problem, Drug Laws Are.

The Bad: Evangelist preacher drowns while trying to walk on water. You would think he might have given up after the water got to his chin . . . That said, perhaps after realizing that either a) his faith wasn't strong enough or b) God doesn't exist, the pastor decided to fall on his sword rather than face the shame of a faith repudiated.

The Fugly: In keeping with demand for more and more posts on the U.S. economic condition, read Barry Ritholtz's rant and analysis on the payroll data today. Here's an excerpt to pique your interest:

The Human capacity for self-delusion never ceases to amaze. If you ever hear me spouting the same sort of $%#* I heard on CNBC at 8:31am, grab me by the lapels, throw a glass of water in my face, slap me HARD across the face, and yell "WAKE UP MAN, YOU'RE DELIRIOUS!"

How this month's NFP was labelled "perfect" is simply beyond my ken. The only rational explanations I can think of are an unwitting influx of Psylociben or perhaps blunt head trauma. Steve Liesman was the notable exception, as he came away rather unimpressed with the data.

It's both depressing and fun to read at the same time! Aaron found this link, but I stole it: it just fit too well into my headings for this post.

The Uncalled For: Uranus Eclipsed by Moon! The Hubble telescope caught a the moon Ariel passing between Uranus and the Sun, which would have appeared as a solar eclipse to viewers on Uranus! Uranus! Moon! HA!

Yeah, call me childish. But for one, you probably laughed. And for two, it's the Friday before a three-day weekend and it has been a very, very long week.

Here's to a blissful break away from work.

On a daily basis, we allow ourselves to be institutionalized by social and government law.

Drivers wait for an automated, mindless machine to flash green: how often is the intersection they wait to cross utterly empty with no cars in sight? Why don't they simply drive through?

Are we so enslaved by "the law" that we obey it even when compliance flies in the face of doing what we plainly know is harmless and personally beneficial? Why?!?

We are not dogs. And we should not demean ourselves by sitting on command for no other reason than "because." Obediance in the face of reason is an affront to your humanity - a slap in the face to your intelligent mind. Don't sit back and take it. Do something.

This is a call to disobey - rationally and responsibly you should break laws. Note: I am not advocating action that will get you thrown in jail. That said, what better place to demonstrate your rational mind overcoming fears and latent social programming than at an empty intersection? The drivers around you will scoff at your blatant disregard for the law. They will shake their heads and call you crazy because your actions will have made them uncomfortable. Their discomfort will not easily subside. Like a thorn in their minds it can fester and spur change.

And what do you get out of this? You'll be that much closer to whereever you're going. Plus, you'll have that rare sensation of doing what you know is right in the face of opposition.

Running red lights by driving through empty intersections: a modern civil and social disobedience.

Digg it!