tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375512083268389933.post3950343065539665506..comments2023-09-30T10:36:23.154-05:00Comments on Accidental Historian: W@H: PerspectiveGedshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15047239425466517786noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375512083268389933.post-29988878958135011712009-01-27T23:51:00.000-06:002009-01-27T23:51:00.000-06:00It's something I've kind of talked around, but thi...It's something I've kind of talked around, but this is the first time it's been brought up specifically.<BR/><BR/>Either way, you're totally right. And it's probably going to be one of the things I try to hit when I reach the "damning them with their own words" portion of the broadcast, wherein they say something about the lack of father figures, then bring up non-Western cultures wherein there's way more of a "it takes a village" approach. The main problem from my end is that I'm a historian, not an anthropologist, so a lot of those distinctions just don't occur to me.<BR/><BR/>Either way, I mostly try to point out how their history is largely irrelevant or downright wrong. I appreciate useful comments on sociology and anthropology, since I do have those knowledge gaps. There's more than enough bizarre stuff in the masculinity movement to go around...Gedshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15047239425466517786noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375512083268389933.post-33128215903017257942009-01-27T23:03:00.000-06:002009-01-27T23:03:00.000-06:00Maybe you’ve mentioned this before, I can’t rememb...Maybe you’ve mentioned this before, I can’t remember, but this particular set of quotes from Bly/Eldredge really bore in on me just how ethnocentric they are. <BR/><BR/>“The traditional way of raising sons, which lasted for thousands and thousands of years, amounted to fathers and sons living in close … proximity, while the father taught the son a trade…”<BR/><BR/>But… that wasn’t true for “thousands and thousands of years”. It’s not even true today. The Na or Mosuo of China, the Maasai age sets, the Nair of Kerala- many of them manage to do just fine without biological fathers living in close proximity with their sons.<BR/><BR/>The entire concept of a “trade” is only even applicable to societies where resources and technology make it possible for people to specialize in particular activities. In societies where this isn’t true (and this has been most societies that have existed since human beings evolved), activities might be split up by age or sex, but everyone in those groups performs the same basic tasks.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375512083268389933.post-18123474933393677812009-01-26T11:52:00.000-06:002009-01-26T11:52:00.000-06:00Maybe we don't need better fathers.Maybe we need b...<I>Maybe we don't need better fathers.<BR/><BR/>Maybe we need better sons. </I><BR/><BR/>Jeez. <BR/><BR/>You just made me sniffle.<BR/><BR/>And I don't even have father (or mother) issues.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3375512083268389933.post-41078844494839552062009-01-26T02:04:00.000-06:002009-01-26T02:04:00.000-06:00This is the first post of your series W@H that I a...This is the first post of your series W@H that I agree with 100%. What you get is what you get, and you either make it enough, or you turn into someone like... well, someone like me.<BR/><BR/>I was always grateful to my old man for the fishing and baseball stuff, but once I decided I'd rather play Mortal Kombat II than go to the batting cages at Enchanted Castle, well, there went my baseball career. My call, not his, nobody was pissed and life went on.<BR/><BR/>I have a bigger point to make here... but I suck at words.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com