Columnist Opeyemi Parham: Masculinity and the Global Heart

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Masculinity and the Global Heart .

On the cover of the September 20th issue of Newsweek is this photo of a hunk of a guy (and I do mean hunk, the muscles just ripple off of his naked back, as he faces away from the camera), holding a three year old boy in his arms.  The boy looks directly into the camera, and the look on his face is wise beyond his years.
I don’t know how they got that little boy to give such a probing stare, but the article’s title is what hooked me. “Man UP! The traditional male is an endangered species. It’s time to rethink masculinity.”
My reaction to the title?  Thank GOD someone has noticed! Let us now hope the article takes a sensible direction and not a sensational one.
I’ll let you read the article yourself, and decide what you think of it’s biases:
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/09/20/why-we-need-to-reimagine-masculinity.html
 All I can say is, finally someone is talking about what I have known for years. Men have been as trapped by the sterotypes of masculinity as women have been by those of femininity. The trouble is there has been no first, second or third wave of feminism to help the poor guys out of their own mess.
I am very excited to have recently read a book by Anodea Judith called “Awakening The Global Heart: Humanity’s Rite of Passage from the Love of Power to the Power of Love”. In this well researched and deeply spiritual treatise, she describes our historical evolution through various kinds of power. She points out positive and negative characteristics of dynamic and static eras of time, with masculine or feminine power at the helm. She describes our current evolutionary crisis as needing to move from a static masculine to a dynamic feminine model, and our emotional state as equivalent to an adolescent, moving into adulthood.
It is a facinating book and an exciting theory. In order for us to make this shift, men have to surrender (I use this word with caution) many of the trappings of power that have actually been hinderences to the heart. And in the power of that arresting photo that I saw the shadow that we still carry culturally
It is the emotions evoked deliberately by that Newsweek photo that led me to comment here. Something about the beefcake guy holding the child implied protection and “father”, but the lack of a face and the photo’s deliberate focus on the physical symbol of power (muscles) disturbed me. And that probing stare of the boy child seems to hold an accusation. Something about this boy not having a clear set of  scaffolding for himself, if the roles are changing. There is a bit of a feeling of If you take away my power, WHO AM I?" in the eyes of that child.
Then I remembered an Anne Geddes photo of these huge hands, holding this tiny sleeping child:
http://www.youjustmademylist.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/man_holding_baby_hands.jpg
and the Spencer Rowell photo of a blue-jeaned man and a baby
http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/07/magazine_enl_1169145934/img/1.jpg
 And I realized that we have truly done boys and injustice, with very little imagery to offer alternatives to static masculine, "power over" roles.
Google”man and boy” as a subject line and you won’t find many heart warming images. In fact you won’t find many images, at all. That is how foreign this concept of men moving outside their proscribed role of protector into other roles as nurturer, or caregiver, or healer (of the heart-- there is an image of a man later in the Newseek article that implies that he is a NURSE, not a doctor) truly is.
Opening to this conversation may be a dirty and painful process risking cheap shots and silly inuendoes, but finally someone is talking about how scary and threatening new roles for men can be.
Let us keep shifting that paradigm.

--
                        Opeyemi  413-336-1291

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Economists Are Economissed

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Published on Tuesday, June 15, 2010 by The Guardian/UK

Surprises in Store for Economists

Some analysts are shocked that US retail sales have declined. Have they lost their grasp of basic economic concepts?

by Dean Baker

The commerce department reported that retail sales in May were down by 1.2% from April. This surprised most economists who had expected a modest increase. The media were filled with accounts of economists trying to explain why consumers were still reluctant to open up their wallets and spend in a big way. It would have been much more interesting to hear accounts of why economists were surprised.There is always a large random element in month-to-month movements in retail sales or any other economic variable. Therefore no one is ever going to be able to explain these changes with any precision. (The data are also subject to large revisions, so it is entirely possible that revised data will look very different from the report released last week (pdf).)
Nonetheless, there is little basis for the surprise shown by so many economic analysts. With few exceptions these analysts failed to see the $8tn housing bubble, the collapse of which sank the economy. Remarkably, even now they apparently cannot understand its importance.
To put it as simply as possible (so even an economist can understand it), the housing bubble was driving the economy in the period prior to its collapse, beginning in 2007. It drove the economy in two ways. The run up in house prices led to a building boom. Residential construction, which is typically less than 4% of GDP, rose to more than 6%, creating more than $300bn in additional annual demand. A bubble in non-residential real estate added perhaps another $150bn to annual demand.
The bubble also drove the economy through the effect of housing wealth on consumption. Economists usually estimate that $1 of additional housing wealth increases annual consumption by between 5-7 cents. This implies that the $8tn of housing bubble wealth would lead increase consumption by $400bn to $560bn a year.
With most of the bubble wealth eliminated by the collapse of house prices over the last three years, we should expect a sharp drop in consumption. Furthermore, stock prices have lost a bit less than a third of their value (around $6tn), which we should expect to cause a further decline in consumption. With the stock wealth effect estimated at 3-4 cents on the dollar, the decline in stock prices should have reduced annual consumption by $180bn to $240bn. In total we should expect to see annual consumption have dropped by between $600bn and $900bn as a result of the loss of housing and stock wealth.
This is all very simple arithmetic and basic economics. Consumption had been driven by the housing bubble prior to the recession. Now that the bubble has collapsed and trillions of dollars of wealth has disappeared we should expect much lower levels of consumption. To flip this around, the savings rate, which had averaged more than 8% in the decades prior to the 90s, fell to near zero in the years leading up to the recession. Now that the bubble has collapsed, we should expect consumption to fall and saving to return back to its normal level. In fact, it might even go higher since the huge cohort of baby boomers is now mostly in their 50s and most have almost nothing saved for retirement. This might lead savings rates to go above their long-term average.
There seems very little room for argument in this story. The existence and housing and stock wealth effects are among the least questioned propositions in economics. Nor is there too much dispute about their size. How could any economist see the collapse of an $8tn housing bubble and the destruction of more than $6tn in stock wealth and not expect to see a substantial decline in consumption?
Yet, we have dozens of economists being cited in newspapers and broadcast news, all saying that they are surprised by weak consumption. If anything the surprise should be that consumption is still as strong as it is. The saving rate is still near 4%, far below its historic average. Why on earth would any economist expect it to go still lower?
The reason that consumers are not spending more money has nothing to do with attitudes. The reason that most consumers aren't spending is the same reason that homeless people don't spend much money: they don't have any.
Economists used to be able to understand basic economic concepts. Apparently, most have lost this ability. As a result we are likely to see many more surprised economists and much proposed in the way of very bad economic policy.

© Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research

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Joint Dismissal in Conservation Commission Case

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The neighbors of the Mackin French King parcel and the defendants,
Greenfield Investors, have signed a joint dismissal today of the appeal
in the Conservation Commission case in Franklin County Superior Court.
This appeal was filed before the amended Order of Conditions.

The neighbors believe that they essentially won one of their major
battles--which was to force the landowner to clean up his polluted
wetland, and to force the developer to move its massive store off
Wetland 4. The issue of size was not addressed, but will be in the next
phase. We are releasing the following statement:

"When we began this process 3 years ago, the Conservation Commission was
claiming that wetland 4 was not even a wetland, and the developer
presented plans to put its store and parking lot over that
wetland--destroying it completely.

Now, as a result of our intervention, the wetland must be restored---not
replicated elsewhere---and in fact it will be expanded. The Conservation
Commission review was so flawed, that the state Department of
Environmental Protection had to file its own appeal of the Commission's
decision---and now we have a wetland resource that will be protected and
enhanced.

The neighbors remain concerned that to build a store this size the 100
foot buffer zone around this project had to be destroyed and paved over
in many areas---but we do not feel that court action would resolve this
problem. While the Conservation Commission ignored our concerns about
the incompatible size of this building--two and a half times larger than
Stop & Shop--we believe this issue will have more traction before the
Planning Board.

Now we move onto Phase II of this review, which is the special permit,
Major Development Review and site plan review of the store itself. The
homeowners in the Canada Hill neighborhood, and the whole eastern part
of town, will continue to assert that this proposal is incompatible with
a residential neighborhood, and that in its present state is
unacceptable---without safeguards and limitations to protect the
neighbors homes and property.

This project is located in the French King overlay district, whose
purpose is to create an attractive entryway into town, and to 'minimize
strip development and traffic congestion.' This overlay district was set
aside as a special overlay to 'protect scenic and naturaal features.'
Placing a big box store in this gateway to our town defies all rational
land use planning.

The neighbors also feel that an enormous superstore is incompatible with
existing uses, and will detract from the character and scale of
neighboring properties. The project as proposed has no screening, no
buffering, and no open spaces---it is a wall of concrete surrounded by a
sea of asphalt.

But the enormity of this project should concern all residents in
Greenfield and surrounding towns. We believe that a careful review of
this proposal will show that it will have a significant adverse fiscal
impact on the town, and surrounding towns, that it will adversely impact
adjacent properties, the neighborhood, and the environment, and that it
will result in unsafe vehicular circulation, reducing the service level
of traffic for the full length of High Street and surrounding
intersections. This project will also detract from the downtown as a
commercial center, and undermine the revitalization focus of current
efforts in our central commercial area.

We will be asking the Planning Board to dramatically scale back the size
of this project---which they have the right to do---and to limit the
time of operation and extent of facilities to protect the public health
and welfare.

This big box store three times the size of a football field is the wrong
size and in the wrong place for Greenfield and area towns. We hope that
these arguments will not be lost on the members of the Planning and
Zoning Board."

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