Post Paradigm

The digital revolution has decimated print media and network television and changed the way we receive information. These days a wise man would be foolish to limit his input to one editor's opinion, to squeeze his information-gathering and entertainment into a time slot dictated by a television executive. The ten o'clock news has fallen by the side of the road along with tree-gobbling newspapers and the dial telephone.  Citizens can record the day's events on mobile phones and post them on the net faster than media empires can move their monstrous behinds. Though the traditional news media have deep archives for context and experts to offer sophisticated analysis, they don't broadcast the news itself, but an ongoing aftermath of opinion, a sort of journalistic masturbation.  Meanwhile the tom-tom drum of worldwide events is available on the screen of a small device that a Saharan camel herder or a Tajikistani nomad has access to.   An African migrant on a rubber dinghy in the Mediterranean has a cellphone.

Visual entertainment media is a sector that has grown steadily since the invention of moving pictures.  In a sense, it has been around since men painted on the walls of caves to tell hunting stories.  And thanks to our hunting and survival skills, the moving image has a visceral effect on our attention.  It draws us in like a cobra.  There is a place to contemplate the image of a man on a cross, but big media tempts us with a compelling and lazier way to get the message, by telling the story with heroic characters blazing across a screen.  Media conglomerates have the resources to raise production values far beyond the capabilities of an individual with a mobile phone, so it is more satisfying to watch the big boys.  Unfortunately, the nuances of the lessons are scrubbed away in the process.  Entertainment spectacles encourage us to sit back and take it in, no effort required.  All the work has been done.  Watch, don't think. While we're watching we're offered a special deal on reclining chairs that will allow us to lose the excess weight caused by our sugar addiction and inactivity. Moving visual media fascinates us, whether it is the latest streaming blockbuster, a collection of funny videos, black and white wartime footage, a classic movie, or shakey mobile clips from the streets when revolutions take place.  

More information is available to more people more of the time than ever before, which has caused a leap forward in our understanding of each other. We can see a person in the Siberian countryside preparing vegetable stew, or another in Tokyo making rice cakes.  This low-level information exchange helps us realize that we are not so different from each other no matter what our governments and its media would like us to believe.  

These days, if an alien landed in Africa, the event would be on social media within minutes. When the traditional news outlets pick up the story they will speculate about what it means, but the news of aliens without the analysis would be enough to turn many of our neat scientific theories on their heads.  We know things within minutes of them taking place, and everyone can know them.  Governments may block internet sites but that is as futile as trying to stop the tides.  Information and images leak through barriers in spite of efforts to destroy the evidence.  People have eyes and memories. 

Although the technological revolution has changed the way we see the world, there is also a risk of being plunged back into a new dark age as I described in a previous essay called Book Burning.  We hope that this doomsday scenario never happens as we give thanks to digital mobility and the strides it helps us make in knowing each other on an individual level.  Travel broadens the mind, but when we are not allowed or able to move, we can instantly connect to see how each other live and die in our simple profound universes.  We still need businesses to provide the infrastructure for communication, the smart-phone manufacturers and satellite launchers, but the platform providers who host content should have no political axes to grind.  Currying favour has always been the lifeblood of traditional news peddlers. The freedom of information that the world wide net offers, has ripped the shabby cloak away from the man who would be king, and shown him to be a money-grubbing petty dictator who will sell out to the highest bidder. Give me a phone and a walk through a favourite city, or sit down in a Greek mountain taverna, listen to an interview with a rebel from a previous generation, see a cartoon to make me laugh and remind me how human I am, or watch a refresher on how to fix a bicycle tire, and I can dial the roar of media hysteria back to its proper level. 

Apart from the phone's original function as a connective device that has upended perception, it has also wormed its way into so many aspects of our lives it has become another appendage. Phone books don't exist anymore.  There was once an industry of data collection, printing, delivering, and recycling that has come to a halt.  I no longer have an address book - everything is on a phone and backed up online. I don't need a timer to know when the laundry is finished or an alarm to wake me up.  If I want to make a note of anything my phone is always at hand.  I don't need reference books like encyclopedias, or any books for that matter.  I read my news from a variety of sources without consuming a single tree.   I don't need a bus schedule, plane, or train times as I can follow transport on a digital tracker.  I can take photos and show them to my friends or to the whole world. I can monitor my heartbeat or the intake and burning of calories.  I do my banking online and purchase goods that are delivered to my door. I can translate from Korean to French, check medical results, identify pieces of music, and so much more. The magic in a pocket that digital media offers is a science fiction dream, but for those who cling to the traditional, the beeps, alarms, and ringtones of personal devices are an electronic death knell. The old guard can't accept what history teaches, that once the genie is out of the lamp, he can't be stuffed back in.

The bad news is that we didn't know when we let the genie out of his bottle that he would have a flea in his ear.  Now that flea has grown a million-fold and become an infestation of individual users who believe that their ignorance has the same value as knowledge.  The algorithms that are programmed into hosting sites cater to individual users by suggesting content that is similar to the user's viewing choices, so will show only that to the viewer and leave aside the larger picture.  This has created a society of individual insects without the sophisticated organizational skills of a honeybee, who are more like wasps who will attack and dismember each other. They have no group-massage instinct toward the greater good, only their individual survival.  The Internet brings a unique and beneficial connectivity to our hive, but we must be on guard against the deadly wasps in their single poisonous nests.  

The Unreconstructed Man

"Good day folks.  I've been sent here to keep you entertained for as long as I can keep it up and you can stand it.  That might sound suggestive to you, but as we know, everything boils down to money and sex.  I've got no money so I'll stick to what I know. 

"You down in front, the guy with white hair and jeans.  Have you heard of sex?  Yes?  Nod twice for yes, otherwise I'll think you're falling asleep. 

"And you, the young lady with the toothpaste smile?  Yes?  Does your daddy know that you know? Oh, that's not him with you?  Sorry man.  Her uncle?  You're her uncle?  Well this is awkward.  Before we all end up in family court, I suppose I should tell you why I ask about sex.

"Sex is something everyone should have, but finding the right person to do it with is as easy as solving a Rubik's cube.  Of course there are rare Casanovas who can solve the thing in four seconds but what fun is that?

"Sex should be easier than a twisting plastic cube, but it seems the further along we get in time, the more complicated the puzzle gets.  Sex used to have only two sides but now there are at least as many as there are in a cube.  Until LGBTQ+ came along there was only MF, and I don't mean motherfucker.

"In the middle of the 20th century, feminists were loud in their insistence that women should have a voice, and I think you'd agree this is correct. As the women's movement gained traction, men stopped asking "What's a woman doing at the head of a successful company?" If a man had a brain cell that wasn't dominated by testosterone, he might see that would be as stupid as asking why a redheaded man made it to the top of the ladder.  As women gained status and power, role models popped up, women as heads of state, as astronauts, university chancellors, referees, jockeys, soccer and hockey players, and soldiers.  We're still waiting on the lady General who will lock up the boy's war toys until he learns how to use them responsibly. 

"Women have found their feet. With their emotional intelligence, multi-tasking skills, and sense of continuity and community, they have the ability to keep things in perspective, to see the bigger picture, unless someone has stolen their parking space, and then the verbal guns come out.

"In the 20th century, while the role of women changed from wife and homemaker to tax-paying member of society, a reconstruction of the male took place.  There was the Manchurian Candidate, a film about brainwashing, and a decade after that, The Six Million Dollar man, with its "We can rebuild him," tagline.  Women and men were both going through changes, but women seemed to know where they were going and men only heard that they should be 'bigger, stronger, and faster' as well as modifying their social behaviour to respect the opposite sex. For a lot of men this was like stepping on the gas and the brake at the same time.  Some men went shooting forward but others crept slowly forward making a lot of noise and smoke, but many men stayed where they were, spinning their wheels until their motors internally hemorrhaged. Those are the unreconstructed types.

"Enlightened women have taught their brothers, sons, and lovers to walk side by side with them or even a step behind, never in front. When a woman wants something, she expects her partner to be there to provide it, to protect her, to back her up when she needs support, and to carry at least half the weight of the household.  Men have been taught that they should hold doors open for women, that it is alright to push baby carriages, buy tampons, and tell her sweet lies about her body.  A man should also put the toilet seat back down when he has finished pissing all round the bowl.  Reconstructed men accept this role because if they want a balanced rapport with a woman in the 21st century, they have no choice.  Women have let men rule for millenia so it is high time men know how it feels to be at the other end of the stick.  You men out there, have you ever thought about how it feels to be asked if the reason you are cranky is because you are on your period?  You would probably snap back a hard NO, and marvel that anyone could ask you such a question. How would you feel if someone asked you if you were behaving like a bitch because you hadn't had sex in too long.  Reconstructed men have been taught not to even think it.  

"These recent changes in male behaviour have highlighted an existential dilemma for men. The modern man, the reconstructed man, with his happy wife, happy life submissiveness, has a counterpart who doesn't wish to be tamed.  This is the unreconstructed man.  This man has no restrictions on toilet seats, shopping trips, what he eats or drinks,  the people he hangs out with, or that he picks his nose.  Laugh.  I've seen you do it.

"The unreconstructed man has not been tamed or feminized and if he finds a partner, the relationship is adversarial.  This man is number one in his world.  He doesn't take his shoes off in the house and doesn't iron clothes.  He doesn't change the toilet paper, clean the sink, or put the cap back on the toothpaste.  He pretends he hasn't heard of recycling and throws his beer cans in the trash along with pizza scraps and coffee grounds.  He whistles at women from the window of his truck, and sings out dulcet phrases to them like “Hey baby I want to f*** the lips off you.”  There are many ways for this man to send the message to women that they are there for his pleasure.  This man likes his women bountiful, not skinny, unless they have big tits and then he will forgive the rest of the body.  He sees his women as sex cushions, then baby makers, then mothers who will look after his every need.  He engages in slut shaming, not seeing that his own behaviour is worse than those he criticizes.  Hands up you men who have been guilty of this.  Nobody?  Well then you're all remarkable specimens, gentlemen.  If only we could believe you.

"Unreconstructed men are xenophobic and racist because they don’t trust anyone who isn't like them. They exhibit a tribal instinct that prevents them from trusting strangers, even if they are from the next village, no matter the colour of their skin. The stranger is different, unknown, and potentially dangerous.  They're like dogs circling around each other baring their teeth. It's not a coincidence that most unreconstructed men are straight white males who had submissive mothers.  Any of you out there who had mothers who said "No damn way," to being put in her place, are the lucky ones, and will probably find a chair at the table in the next century.  The throwbacks will be left peering through the bars, fighting over scraps, too stuck in the gumboots of their forefathers to understand what they are doing wrong.  They will put on the guilty and sorry look of a dog caught shredding rubbish all over the kitchen floor.  "Did you do that?"  "Yes mum."  "Why?"  "Something just came over me." "Bad dog!"

"Unreconstructed men make inappropriate jokes, while reconstructed men don't tell jokes because all humour is at the expense of someone.  Unreconstructed men use swearing as their first choice of self expression, while reconstructed men swear only in private and try not to use religious or sexist epithets.  Unreconstructed men don't know the difference between their inside voice and their outside voice while reconstructed men often have to be told to speak up. An unreconstructed man doesn’t read instructions or ask for help, not even when his Ikea table is upside down. He uses climate destroying aerosol in the bathroom and doesn't close the door when he is on the toilet. He prefers his women barefoot, pregnant, and indoors, carrying out their gender assigned duties.

"An unreconstructed man wants sex when and how he wants it, usually at 5am when every male gets a dream boner.  His preferred position is anything dominant.  He refuses to give up his addictions but prefers that women in his orbit don't have any.  When he is ill, he thinks he is dying and never takes a basin to bed because he is not the one who will clean up afterwards. He prefers to get into a made bed but he never makes it himself.  

"The unreconstructed man is a hunter by instinct.  If he has nowhere to indulge this urge, he will play video games, often ones where he is the first  person shooter.  Pow, pow, pow. The unreconstructed man laughs at his own jokes.  He has learned the basics of computers and smartphones, and feels compelled to make comments, but he is intimidated by critics who make fun of his spelling, so when he has something to say, he expresses it in phonetic form, like "aaiiyyaaah!" or "oooffaahh!"

"Some are threatened by this refashioning of social norms because they believe that gender roles are fixed.  Anthropologists, those professional people watchers, tell us that these apparently inborn traits are not permanent and have constantly evolved to help us survive in varying climates and societies.   But even with the advances women have made in the 20th century, we still live in a patriarchal society.  If an unreconstructed man denies this fact, he should turn the tables and ask himself what a matriarchal society would look like and what would his place be in it.  In short, he will not be at the top of the totem pole or at the bottom.  Matriarchies have existed in the past and may exist again, and their resurgence would send a host of unreconstructed patriarchal Neanderthals running for cover like vampires fleeing from sunlight. There will be holdouts in the new order, throwbacks who will be recorded in history as maladapted dinosaurs.  So men, get your nurturing papers in order, because when women realize they have to take up arms to root out the last obstacles to progress, to beat the patriarchs at their own game, there will be some serious homemaking skills to be learned.  But women should also be wary because as a threatened species, unreconstructed men may go to ground and claim they are fighting for their survival, which though true, is a lost cause.  Unreconstructed men will be consigned to that crowded place, the wrong side of history, in the illustrious company of Mussolini, Hitler, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Gaddafi, and Donald Trump.

"So to any men out there who have a strong strain of the caveman in them, it's time to reconstruct yourselves so we can create a more balanced society for the next generation to inherit.  Put down the PlayStation and be a man, a real man, a he-man, a man who shoulders his share of the sky.