Eew and the Objects of Desire

Oliver Roberts' column in the Sunday Times Lifestyle recently brought back another conversation I had last week with an attractive blonde mom. Unexpectedly, as I sipped on a whiskey, the lady started to confide in me that the pressures on women are enormous: they must be perfectly beautiful, and sweet, and sexy, and good mothers etc. I can't verbalise it quite as well as she did, but I ended up blushing inwardly and my shadow gulped guiltily. This is a fun, lighthearted, attractive, bubbly person, so she wasn't moaning and whinging because she had been passed over. She was merely commenting on the strain of the constant objectification going on. And I believed her.

This is why Oliver Roberts' column rang a bell. Perhaps when I was a 20-something I was no different, in fact I know I wasn't. It didn't help that my first three girlfriends were gorgeous and all models. I wanted them all to be. You know you're in trouble when instead of seeing someone for who they are, you're already saying: "You're like the spitting image of Uma." You have to see people for who they are, not whom they resemble. And a lot of men are programmed into 'Pornstar' mode when it comes to rating the attractiveness of women. Essentially they're looking for a pornstar who will be a good mom, at least a loyal partner.

I was surprised that in his column Roberts' mentions all his presummably male friends being grossed out by the fact that he'd seen his girlfriend on the loo. Perhaps having lived with the opposite sex, as the Comfortable Factor increases, the Eeew Factor becomes irrelevant, particularly since, in the scheme of tidiness, the girls (at least those I've been close to) tend to pick up after themselves and run a tigher, neater, cleaner ship than us guys do. It's also a bit rich, given the typical male's sexual requirements (some would say demands), that we expect girls not to go Eeew when we ask them to...well, you know what. It's really a compliment and a luxury when two people can feel entirely comfortable and content with one another, without any Eews. What irks is a persistent requirement to change, or a checklist of things to avoid to avoid conflict or disappointment.

It's also unnecessarily awkward to have to leave the room and close the door in one's own space to change clothes, burp or any of the rest. But personal preferences aside, what is wrong with a man or a woman being a human being around another person of the opposite sex? After all, gasp, we ARE human beings. And guess what, even if we do objectify the opposite sex, we know WE aren't perfect. Right? The converse of Roberts' analogy, and I admit it's not quite the same, is a bald guy like me always wearing a hat, in order to render a more youthful (non-bald) image. Younger people probably won't be able to empathise, but the point is, if you can't accept the imperfections of others, how can you be real with yourself. If you're not real with others you're probably not very real with yourself, are you?

The objectification of women is really quite serious, especially in this country, where we see chronic levels of violence against women, even in wealthier sections of the community. It's easier to hurt, ignore or be generally insensitive to a thing, and objectifying turns someONE effectively into someTHING. A girl or a woman isn't a decoration, or an asset to boost one's ego (like a car). You can't possess or control another person, or you can try, and see what a fuck up that is.

It is supposed to be a relationship with a woman, not ownership, or controllership, or a public exhibition. A relationship is based on the person you are with listening to you, sharing, sacrificing, and you doing the same. It's nice. It's how we feel valued as human beings and how we value others. Objectifiying someone is a brittle, shallow, devaluing form of affection. When you objectify someone, and they do something that breaks through your touchy feely fantasy, affection quickly turns nasty. Objectifying is not love; it's not even lust. It's that weak, pathetic eye-candy aspect of our baser selves that likes chocolate, paging idly through magazines and stomping on ants.

We're capable of being better than that, although it seems many couldn't be bothered to try. That's unfortunate, because by objectifying another, we ourselves become worth less, emptier shells, instead of human beings, emptier structures like shelves and cupboards, meant for the storage and safekeeping of objects. It's a meaningless mindset - this lack of relationship with others - with little personal value.

To graduate out of this shallow swamp, embrace your own humanity, and when next you're with someone you're drawn towards, try to embrace theirs - feel them with your entire being. Breathlessly anticipate what they may say or do, feel the life of the moment, the unrepeatability of one person's feelings mixing with yours in an instant of time, the taste of the air, the colors - and putting aside your own 'act', put yourself in their universe. Feel - be - what life must be to them. This is a much richer, more rewarding life than just taking and glimpsing the juicy tidbits that work for you.

Antony Altbeker on Decency (BOOK EXCERPT)

"[Our] social climate..aggravates rather than ameliorates the tendency to violence." P 156, IT'S ABOUT VALUES, STUPID!

"Banal as it sounds, the key question is one of values." P157

"Goverment has long recognised that some of the values held by South Africans are among the many causes of crime."

People are to be made good through education. - Aristotle

"Primary school teachers who need reminding that they ought to be teaching children to read, are not, I would submit, full equipped to teach morality." P158
NVDL: This quote after Altbeker discusses a letter sent from deputy director-general of the Department of Education, dated August 14, 2006, reminding primary school teachers to teach reading to their students.

"Nor is our business community - recently rated as the mosty likely to pay bribes in African countries - akways offering object lessons in good behaviour." P159
NVDL: PicknPay seems to me to be (one of the few) exception(s) in this context; a very community, and integrity based company.

"[Morality is] learnt through the experience of the behaviour of people and institutions around us. One reason the if-you-teach-them-they'll-be-good school of behaviour modification has come to dominate policy [is thanks to SA's Marxist tendency and subservience to giving moral prescripts]...This is not [a] helpful [premise...]" P160

"Institutions that act rationally, that treat people fairly, that do what they say they'll do, and engage the world honestly, generate different social effects than those whose actions are arbitrary, whose officials are manifestly self-interested or dishonest, and which consistently fail to do their duty." P161

"...public institutions [must] express and reflect sound values."

"Creating a society based on the dignity of every individual is not just about building more houses, cleaning the streets more often or maing the Springbok rugby team more representative. It is also about behaving in a way that takes seriously the behavioural niceties [see Revisiting Manners], the courtesies [like manners] and conventions, that are sometimes assumed the way the Constitution frames public administration but which are often trampled on in practice.
Tautological it may be, but if we want people to behave more decently, we need to become a more decent society." P162

All quotes from A COUNTRY AT WAR WITH ITSELF, South Africa's Crisis of Crime, Chapter 9, It's About Values, Stupid!, P156-161, Jonathan Ball Publisher's, available at Pick'nPay for R100.

Revisiting Manners (DECENCY)

True story. Last night after a short run [212 KCal] I headed towards the internet station at Virgin Active. This was just a few minutes before the whole place was supposed to close. And once again, before I headed into the change-rooms perhaps one terminal was being used. Once out, they were all full.

This time I waited on the balcony section overlooking the pool. I noticed a mother standing over her little boy -perhaps 6 or 7 years old - at one of the terminals, presumably telling him to wrap it up. I waited a little longer, then feeling a bit awkward, approached the little guy: "Mind if I have a few minutes on the computer?"
He was half sitting on his chair, and now he turned: "What?"
I repeated the question. He still didn't seem to understand, but slid off his chair and went away.

I started making my way to Facebook . I'd last checked my messages about 2 weeks ago because exactly the same schpiel as now had repeated itself each time: the stations suddenly, unexpectedly filling up just before the final bell. So as I'm getting down, the boy's mother leans over the stations guard rail, eyes blazing:
"DON'T PUSH CHILDREN AROUND OKAY!" she hisses.
It's stern enough to elicit a reponse from people on either side of me. All three of us point to the sign that says:
Adults have preference at Internet Stations...

She skulked away, while I commented to the young lady on my left: "Jeepers, it's banned at work, it's like impossible just to check your Facebook, because there's a rush to do it at gym too. And..er... thanks for backing me up..."
But I still felt aggravated. Why do we need signs to remind us of our manners? I felt aggravated, hurt, annoyed, insulted, burned - and all because this woman didn't know her manners.

If it's already not clear, let me explain. If you're visiting friends, and it's time to serve up the braai, adults generally get preference. They get preference in terms of where they sit, and in terms of the food they drink. They often get preference in terms of cutlery and crockery (plastic plates and cups) too. You don't serve small children wine, or the choice cuts of meat, and they don't sit at the head of a table. Not because children are unimportant, and not because we don't love them. The reason is in part practical home-based functionality, but also, importantly, to show our respect for adults.

In the same way if you're visiting your pals, or colleagues, and the kids want to watch Cow and Chicken, Transformers or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the adults will ask the kids to go and watch in another living room, or ask their children to go and play somewhere else; anyway, it boils down to the fact that adults don't get to play all day, and when they get together to watch something like say, the Rugby World Cup match, or Survivor, it's a special occasion. And special occasions require a bit of personal sacrifice. You might dress up, you might try to behave, and you might want to think about your manners (at least until the beer

In a public space like a gymnasium, where adults will try to get some exercise at the end of a long day before they go to sleep, yes they should be allowed to use the equipment and facilities that they pay membership fees to. This particularly includes access at 9:30pm (when small children ought to be in bed), or at any other time.

What concerns me is that some people need signs to remind them of their manners. I know we forget about our manners because advertising encourages an I WANT, ME-ME-ME mindset. As it happens, there is also a sign in the station area that goes something like this: Sis Man, we don't want you guys watching Porn on these computers. Once again, cursory reminders like these remind me that as a society, we have lost our way, and need signboards to remind us to think about other people.

Reminder: Stop Thinking of Yourself

As it happens, the gym also asks people to guard their belongings, because some people, when they do think of others, it's to take what they don't have for themselves. And then there are also reminders not to urinate in the pool. All these are done slightly tongue in cheek, because it's a top end gym, and naturally, somewhat embarassing that one has to stoop to these common sensical measures. But I don't doubt they are necessary. I'm just pointing out that it points to how disgusting, rather than how decent, society is becoming. Even at the 'top end'.

That's not really a debate, it's obvious. In South Africa, divorce rates, domestic violence, crime and corruption and all the rest are the order of the day. We top quite a few disgusting lists, and we're at the bottom of other lists rating things like quality of life and transparency.

You might think a mother arguing with a man who has just bumped her kid off an internet station is juvenile and petty. Actually, it's not. Because the subtle message she conveys to the child who will be a man some day (one hopes), without knowing it, is that some people can be respected and others not. Strangers are unimportant, and some adults are only to be respected in special cases. Since the three of us set the kid's mom straight, the child is already experiencing a conflict, a confusion about what good manners really are.

In short, manners are about respecting people. Whether we know these people or not. And whether these people particularly deserve our respect or not, it's good and proper to be respectful. It's what we'd like from others, and it's up to the individual to integrate how deeply important these ordinary virtues become. In the end, our capacity to respect others begins with how much we decide to respect ourselves.

What Makes You Happiest? (POLL CLOSING)

In line with Anthony Altbeker's observations in A COUNTRY AT WAR WITH ITSELF, I've put up this poll. He discusses 'decency' as a necessary ingredient for a decent (relatively crime free), society. And decency is of course seated in our values, our motivations, our manners. It may be tautological, but it remains true. So this poll is not ostensibly to see what makes us happy, but to evaluate our value system.

Once this poll has closed we're going to look at the implications of our current value system.

Virtue: A Country At War With Itself (CRIME ANALYSIS)

In 'A Country Unhinged'* Anthony Altbeker writes authoritatively and insightfully on South Africa's crime conundrum. You realise, poring through the statistics, that in terms of crime, we South Africans live amongst some disgusting human beings. The term 'Proudly South African', once again in the context of our incredible capacity for not just criminality but exceedingly violent criminality, is hard to swallow without sticking painfully in one's throat.

There are a lot of conflicting views on what to do, and how to do it. I think one has to start off by being thoroughly informed of the forces at play. This is what makes Altbeker's book vital reading.
Go here to follow the debate on Thought Leader.

The recent killing of Lucky Dube illustrates the very worrying component implicit in South African crime. He was shot 3 times. Nothing was stolen. In the Sunday World a writer pondered whether Dube was assassinated. The SAP maintain that it was a botched hijacking. Three gunshot wounds, to make sure the person who got in their way would definitely die, and suffer the consequences for interfering with their 15 minutes of Power.

So the question has to be asked: WHY IS S.A. SUCH A VIOLENT SOCIETY? Altbeker posits the following:

• Fear of consequence is the reason most people don't commit crime. That fear is virtually absent in this country, along with a general sense of accountability, to anyone, for anything. This is what Altbeker describes as a 'culture' of criminality.
• The past is not dead. Apartheid's legacy, and the way this nation came into being (the Zulu Warsm the Boer War, and the technical ceasefires ever since) have never really been resolved. There's an underlying resentment that is easily stirred. There is an underlying sense of disenchantment, disempowerment, disenfranchisement that simmers. It is especially easy to bring to the boil in those who are poor, but it is also present in the average citizen.
• Disappointment: democracy and AIDS erode the 'Happy Picture' that South Africa might have otherwise been. Instead it becomes 'The Land That Happiness Forgot'
• Altbeker says that the 'apartheid-did-it' explanation does not completely satisfy - because South Africans aren't the only nation to suffer long periods of disempowerment. There are many others, like Korea, with low level or non-existent crime.
• Inequality in South Africa is amongst the highest in the world. Altbeker does not mention that Gauteng, where the the richest fraction of the country resides, is also the crime capital for the entire country, by a significant margin. Poverty is also entrenched, and wretchedness the lot of a substantial percentage of our countries population. Altbeker neverthless continues to ask the rational question: But why is crime in this country so VIOLENT?
• Guns and alcohol are very pervasive in South Africa. The percentage of crimes committed when the perpetrators are intoxicated is substantial. Shebeens, Altbeker confirms, are often implicated in the context of criminal behaviour.
• Policing comes under fire, but South Africa's proportion of cops to the generation populations meets the international average. Altbeker goes on to point out the case of Iraq. The population of Iraq is about half of South Africa. The number of law enforcers are far greater, with dismal results.
• Altbeker writes: "We have inherited a society with a particularly high potential for crime." He points out how high this ratio is for women and children. Altbeker reckons that the horrific rape statistics point to an almost subliminal New Struggle: a personal struggle for power, a quest to dominate. And so men take it out on those close to them, less powerful than them. Naturally, this is a disgusting transference of a country's people's deeply ingrained frustrations.
• A high level of criminal activity perpetuates the cycle.
• Demographic factors (a large amount of young, unemployed people, particularly males).
• Add all these together and you reach this incontrovertible result: Violent crime is South Africa is a cultural phenomenon, and it is driven by not one, but by a dearth of perpetuating forces.

I would add the following to Altbeker's assertions. It is a measure of our collective civility, our manners, the extent to which the average citizen seeks to take the law (or lawlessness) into their own hands. Road rage in this country demonstrates the extent to which someone not suffering socio-economic hardship is prone to violence. Particularly in Gauteng, I have experienced incredibly cheeky, antagonistic and provocative driving.

Having ventured through Europe and the Far East, I believe in essence what our country has lost is manners. The manners ordinary people display in Korea is astounding. Even in fast food restaurants, and banks, you;re greeted when you arrive and when you live. You;re greeted with the most polite nomenclature: Ahnyanghashmika.

Objects are always given with the right hand; in itself a gesture of respect. Bow when you say hello to someone. These gesture are powerful. Once back in SA I had to unlearn these gestures.

Manners is one of the mildest of virtues, but nevertheless essential to any society. This is obvious in so many aspects. In South Africa's conventional male-female dalliances the expurgated person quickly shapeshifts into a hatefilled psycho. People are self-indulgent, operating largely out of a selfish self-interested mindset. In internet forums people quickly fall into vitriolic fits. This is obviously by no means unique to South Africa, but I believe we - as a society undergoing rapid transformation - are especially susceptible to identity crisis, and it's side-effects: wearing masks, presenting an image and trying at all costs to hold onto The Happy & Glitzy image, even when it is a front and nothing else. We need to get real, put our feet on the ground and remember the small stuff, and the little downtrodden people all around us.

We are a bitterly schizophrenic country in the sense that we value, for example, our rugby champions. We're inspired. But we're also easily enraged. We have to look at personal circumstances, and all are different. I believe the noise level of stress that effects South Africans is higher than other countries. Unemployment is a factor that affects many. It has affected me, and it raises the stress level considerably. Then there is the constant strain, the eyesore, the yoke of poverty. There are other issues which our collective conscience struggles with, that we may not even acknowledge. AIDS, crime, education, insane car accident statistics - all these may not be acknowledged, or steered towards the government. Yet, the blame must be borne on all, and naturally, it is. One way or another, all of us are connected, and we're all in this together - rich, poor, educated, uneducated, the working class and unemployed - for good and ill.

For a background story on this topic, click here.
*Chapter Six of Anthony Altbeker's A COUNTRY AT WAR WITH ITSELF

Bushmen rugby advert under fire

Vodacom should rather fly across the Kalahari and ‘throw funds’ instead of a rugby ball to help the Khoisan

A civic movement has demanded that a "degrading and discriminating" rugby world cup advert featuring Khoisan people be pulled from the airwaves.

"It degrades our Khoisan indigenous, first people as illiterate [and shows them] throwing away their own natural food and resources in exchange for a rugby ball," said national secretary-general of the African Renaissance Civic Movement (ARCM) Richard Huber.

He said his movement had sent complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority, the Human Rights Commission, Vodacom, the SABC and the SA Rugby Union.

The rugby world cup advert shows three Springbok rugby players in a plane. They toss around a rugby ball which falls out of the plane and lands at the feet of two Khoisan men. The men pick up the ball, tossing away their ostrich egg which is used to store water, and return to their community to play rugby.

For the rest of this The Times story, click here.

NVDL: Someone wants a nice settlement of money.

Blacks Less Intelligent Than Whites – J. Watson

NVDL: I'm not sure if it is particularly helpful to rank races according to intelligence. I have a shortlist on this blog titled: How to be unhappy, and comparing yourself constantly (favorably or otherwise) to others features prominently in this respect.
But if you want to insist on being superior; wanting to stroke your own ego, BEWARE. 'They' say that the Indians and Asians are smarter than whites, and the Jews smarter still. Whether that's true or not is less important than this: what sets one individual apart from another, is his or her ability to conceive, to imagine - and to imagine not what our limits might be, but our common potential for excellence.

Imagine

When we imagine - for ourselves and our communities - a scenario that is affirming for one and for all, then that is a higher wisdom, perhaps the highest wisdom, no matter who it comes from. Mandela epitomises this. Intelligence without context is very narrow minded. Wisdom is inspired intelligence, illuminated by the concepts of context and community, and restrained by logic.

From Javno.com:
James Watson claims scientists could set apart the genes responsible for differences in intelligence in some ten years.

One of the most prominent scientists in the world caused public outrage with his claim that members of the black race are less intelligent than whites.

James Watson, who won the Nobel Prize for his discovery of the structure of DNA, was condemned by the public for his comments that preceded his arrival to Great Britain.

Dr. Watson heads one of the most advanced scientific institutes in the United States. He made the claims that stirred public outrage in an interview for The Sunday Times.

The 79-year-old geneticist expressed great concern and scepticism towards Africa’s progress.
All our social policy is based on the presumption that their intelligence is equal to ours and all the tests show that that is not the case – Watson said.

He said he had hoped that all people were equal, but was countered by employers who have black employees and who claim that this is simply not the case.

Watson claims that scientists could discover the genes responsible for the differences in intelligence in some ten years’ time.

There is no sound reason to believe that the intellectual capacity of people who evolved separately by geography was developed equally, Watson said in his new book published this week.

Our wishes for the equality of all people and the need for the creation of a universal human heritage will not be sufficient to prove this scientifically, he added.

The commission for equality and human rights is currently evaluating Watson’s claims.

James Watson is on a tour of Great Britain promoting his latest book, Daily Mail reports.

Internet Porn: Worse Than Crack? (WIRED)

NVDL: Read my article: Do Pornstars Go to Heaven?

by Ryan Singel
Internet pornography is the new crack cocaine, leading to addiction, misogyny, pedophilia, boob jobs and erectile dysfunction, according to clinicians and researchers testifying before a Senate committee Thursday.

Witnesses before the Senate Commerce Committee's Science, Technology and Space Subcommittee spared no superlative in their description of the negative effects of pornography.

Mary Anne Layden, co-director of the Sexual Trauma and Psychopathology Program at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Cognitive Therapy, called porn the "most concerning thing to psychological health that I know of existing today."

"The internet is a perfect drug delivery system because you are anonymous, aroused and have role models for these behaviors," Layden said. "To have drug pumped into your house 24/7, free, and children know how to use it better than grown-ups know how to use it -- it's a perfect delivery system if we want to have a whole generation of young addicts who will never have the drug out of their mind."

Pornography addicts have a more difficult time recovering from their addiction than cocaine addicts, since coke users can get the drug out of their system, but pornographic images stay in the brain forever, Layden said.

Jeffrey Satinover, a psychiatrist and advisor to the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality echoed Layden's concern about the internet and the somatic effects of pornography.

"Pornography really does, unlike other addictions, biologically cause direct release of the most perfect addictive substance," Satinover said. "That is, it causes masturbation, which causes release of the naturally occurring opioids. It does what heroin can't do, in effect."

The internet is dangerous because it removes the inefficiency in the delivery of pornography, making porn much more ubiquitous than in the days when guys in trench coats would sell nudie postcards, Satinover said.

Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas), the subcommittee's chairman, called the hearing the most disturbing one he'd ever seen in the Senate. Brownback said porn was ubiquitous now, compared to when he was growing up and "some guy would sneak a magazine in somewhere and show some of us, but you had to find him at the right time."

The hearing came just days after a controversy over a sexually suggestive Monday Night Football ad that has many foreseeing a crackdown on indecency by the Federal Communications Commission.

It is unclear what the consequences of Thursday's hearing will be since it was not connected to any pending or proposed legislation.

Brownback, a conservative Christian, is also scheduled to be rotated off the sub-committee in the next session.

When Brownback asked the panelists for suggestions about what should be done, the responses were mild, considering their earlier indictment of pornography. Several suggested that federal money be allocated to fund brain-mapping studies into the physical effects of pornography.
Judith Reisman of the California Protective Parents Association suggested that more study of "erototoxins" could show how pornography is not speech-protected under the First Amendment.

The panelists all agreed that the government should fund health campaigns to educate the public about the dangers of pornography. The campaign should combat the messages of pornography by putting signs on buses saying sex with children is not OK, said Layden.

However, as the panelists themselves acknowledged, there is no consensus among mental health professionals about the dangers of porn or the use of the term "pornography addiction."

Many psychologists and most sexologists find the concepts of sex and pornography addiction problematic, said Carol Queen, staff sexologist for the San Francisco-based, woman-owned Good Vibrations.

Queen questioned the validity of the panel for not including anyone who thinks "pornography is not particularly problematic in most people's lives."

Queen acknowledges she can name people who have compulsive and destructive behavior centered on pornography, but argues that can happen with other activities, such as gambling and shopping.

Queen also criticized the methodology behind research showing that pornography stimulates the brain like drugs do, saying the research needs to take into account how sex itself stimulates the brain.

"There's no doubt the brain lights up when sexually aroused," Queen said.

Queen too would like to see more money devoted to research on sex, but thinks it is unlikely that researchers on either side of the divide are likely to receive large grants any time soon.

Studies intended to show the harmful effects of pornography must contend with ethical rules prohibiting harm to human subjects, while sex researchers have a hard time getting any funding, unless their study is specifically HIV-related, according to Queen.

Highway Accident (VIDEO)

Accident On Freeway. Always Watch First.... - Click here for more blooper videos
The one who really pays is the driver who leaves his lane without looking (or thinking). Notice the fast moving car maintains its trajectory and the driver probably survived. Don't let this happen to you. Be vigilant and alert on roads and highways.

Unclutter Your Life

Organising, simplifying and refreshing your life starts with a thorough spring clean

Clutter causes confusion. It causes lives and systems to become disorderly. And clutter is everywhere.

What is Clutter?

It’s the multitude of things that distract us, things we don’t want in our living and thinking space that keep getting in our way.
With spring having sprung, organize and simply your life by cutting out ALL the clutter. The more merciless you are, the more organized you’ll be.

PC, Phone and Office Space

Use today to focus on weeding out the clutter. If you don’t get done, finish up on what you start today tomorrow, but get it done.

Start where you are right now. Your computer. Get rid of those files and desktop icons you haven’t used for the past month or more. Spend 20 minutes cleaning out your machine, and while you’re at it, refresh your desktop. Those things you want to hang on, put them in a folder named ‘To do this week’.

Next, pick up your phone. Erase all or most of your inbox, and then go through your contacts. Any person you have not called in the last three months should be deleted. Going through your phone will also remind you of those people you have lost touch with. Get in touch today.

After your computer and your phone, have a look at your office environment. Get rid of the paper on your desk, throw away all the junk. Put pens in the same place, and sort out those drawers. Those important things you don’t want to throw away – put them in a stack. If you haven’t looked at them by the end of the week, do it, file it or throw it away.

From Mobile Home to Car

Now, your car. Go through your car. Sort out your glove compartment, ashtrays and all the rest. Essentially your car should have nothing in it besides the essentials: the maintenance books, garage cards, perhaps your license. Get rid of the rest and take it for a good clean – inside and out.

A Decent Living Space

When you get home, focus on your private space. Hey, you live here every day, make it a livable space. Throw out the trash, go through cupboards and drawers and get rid of the clutter. Old socks, old worn out underwear – out! Broken or cracked glasses – get rid of it. Replace lightbulbs that don’t work with low energy light bulbs. While you’re at it, buy a new toothbrush.

Focus on You

Last, and certainly not least, let’s focus on you. Believe it or not, you are carrying a lot of clutter, in terms of excess weight. Get yourself some good gear, and then get into gear. Get yourself to the gym. Slim down, streamline your body from slug to toned, wiry speed machine.

There. Now doesn’t that feel better?

Galapogos HDTV

Finding information on specifically the Planet Earth Galapogos Islands 3 Part Documentary Series shot using High Definition cameras - what a mouthful - is almost as difficult as it must be to actually reach the superbly isolated location. Okay not really, but taking 10 minutes to google your way to the fact that Tilda Swinton - on the tip of my tongue - narrated this awesome jewel of photography, well, that's some kind of online excursion.

But she does, and her enunciation enhances the perfection behind the filmamakers craft, and the natural scenery they're focussed on. Sure, Galapogos has been done before. What makes this documentary special, is the high definition crystal clear photography. Is that Earth?! Wooooow! Interestingly, there are a number of still shots. There is very little panning, very little zooming in. The cameras are placed in position, and the animals just move in front of the lenses. That might be a boring scheme anywhere else, but not on the Galapogos Islands.

It is fascinating to understand the lifespan of this moving island archipelago. Since these islands are on a conveyor belt of techtonic plates (one has moved 20 miles and is dying), they go through a vivid volcanic lifespan. The creatures that must survive in these hostile and incredibly unique conditions are certainly worth our attention.

Last week was Born of Fire, episode one. Catch the second of 3 installments on Thursdays at 22:00, on SABC 2. For more info, click here.

The ‘Whose-your-daddy’ Girls

The heartache behind women looking for father figures

A lot of girls find older guys attractive. Yvonne Scott says so, but movie zeitgeist - of late at least - seems to support this view.

The Wackness and Meeting Venus are contemporary examples of this phenomenon. But while Ms Scott is advocating guys up to the age of 25 as ‘suitable’ dates for high school (teenage) girls, these movies go to the extreme.

Eew!

The Wackness is about a dagga smoking therapist who becomes smitten with a teenage patient (played by Ben Kingsley and Kate Ohlson respectively). Although the kissing scene lasts a few seconds, no one knows yet why or how the teenager ends up kissing a man 3 times her age. But apparently they never see each other again (in the movie), and the kiss serves as a catalyst for the grandfather (I'll bet) propelling him towards some sort of happily ever after.

Girls From Venus

In Meeting Venus we see a similar theme: a very old man becoming obsessed, even falling in love with a young woman more than half a century younger.

For me Meeting Venus was an important lesson, even a reality check. After all, everyone will get old and lose their attractiveness, but is anyone ever too old to be attracted to youth and beauty? This to me is the central theme behind the whole parody of young girls hanging out with much older men. It’s not necessarily a theme unique to the male sex either.


Eina

Obsessions with youth are part of the archetypal story of how we go into the good night; how we face death. Some might argue that we don’t need to die before we breathe our last breath. Others will say: Accept the inevitable eina, and move on.




Middle Ground

Moving away from ‘extreme age differences’, it’s interesting to look at this closer to home; from a more Southern African perspective. The Mswati Reed Dance in Swaziland is a useful example.
Virgins younger than 22 years of age dance topless, and while it originally wasn't ostensibly a ceremony for the king (the ceremony was conceived for the Queen Mother), the king attends and uses the venue to choose a wife. Sometimes he takes a few extra days to make up his mind (and who can blame him for that?)
In 1999 the then 33 year old king picked a 17 year old schoolgirl to be his eighth lawfully wedded wife. This year the 39 year old king – who makes Hugh Hefner look like a Georgian Monk by comparison – had around 100 000 young maidens dancing for his pleasure.


Making Eyes?

A British newspaper, the Telegraph, pointed out in its article ‘Swaziland King has eyes for 14th wife’ that “many of them [were] hoping to catch his eye.”

Yvonne Scott mentioned exactly what the attraction was in these circumstances.
"[Older men] are mature, over the trying-hard-to-impress-age; they have cars, and are allowed to grow their hair to a hot length."
She adds:
“Of course another very appealing aspect of dating an older guy is the prestige that goes with it.”


What is more prestigious than being chosen by a king? It must be something like a beauty contest for all these girls, with the rewards being crowned princess, and the title becomes a lifelong commitment.

Drawing The Line

Of course Scott astutely placed a cap for herself and her peers on how old the older man ought to be. She said 25 years for high school girls; Mswati is 39. I wonder what the proportion of the 100 000 under-22 maidens have mixed feelings about Mswati’s age. A poll would be interesting.

Sugar Daddy

While it is perfectly normal for teenage girls to prefer older boys, there is a dark side to the more extreme Sugar Daddy Syndrome. It has its roots in childhood, and is based on a desperate yearning of a young girl for a father figure.

Perhaps the father figure was entirely or partially absent, or perhaps the child was adored as the ‘apple of her father’s eye’. Then divorce or death caused a permanent separation, bringing the warm cocoon of safety and attention in the young girl's life to an abrupt end.
Girls seeking partners or husbands who are able to provide this ‘Daddy Safety’ do so without knowing it. Can absent fathers ever be replaced?

Impossible Task

It is easy for men to wrongly assume that their partner’s strong desire for personal security is a normal one, or that the extreme and insatiable fantasy of being ‘Daddy’s Little Princess’ again is a conventional one.

Men who lavish their girlfriends with gifts, taking them out constantly to restaurants and on luxurious weekend trips may unwittingly find themselves eventually adding the role of father to being a husband or boyfriend. This is often more responsibility and pressure than a man can bear.

Unhealthy


I’ve seen this scenario unfold, and it ends very unhappily ever after. A friend of mine who idolized his wife and lavished her with caring attention finally got divorced. His beautiful wife is now engaged to an almost 60-year old man (about twice her age). In retrospect my friend – who is my age – must realize that he had an impossible task in store for him when he got married. Did his wife even know she was looking for a husband who could heal and answer her painful need for a gentle and doting father-figure?
Martian Perspective


From the male perspective, there is always the incredible power and beauty of youth. With so much pedophilia doing the rounds, it is not appropriate or politically correct for older men to openly admit that they find teenage girls or twenty somethings attractive. But women at this stage are at their most attractive.
The power and beauty of youth has a bitter edge to it though. It is said that ‘youth’ is wasted on the young. At a certain age people may find themselves ‘over the hill’, and may wish they had enjoyed their lives more and hesitated less.

In Meeting Venus we see this heartbreaking reality poignantly represented when the old man waits desperately on the pier to meet his young friend. He waits even long after it is obvious that she is not going to arrive.

The beauty of youth abandons us all in the end. When we see beauty enfolding in others around us, we watch with awe and some sadness. Their time, and not ours, has come. Put the past away, and let them have their turn.

The Perfect Woman

Brains, brawn (including boobs) and a touch of spunk*.

*Noun
1.
spunk - material for starting a fire
kindling, tinder, touchwood, punk
igniter, ignitor, lighter - a substance used to ignite or kindle a fire
2.
spunk - the courage to carry on; "he kept fighting on pure spunk"; "you haven't got the heart for baseball"
mettle, nerve, heart
braveness, bravery, courage, courageousness - a quality of spirit that enables you to face danger or pain without showing fear

The Porn Myth

NVDL: Someone once said to me: "Life is a porn movie." Porn is about the feel-good-factor, it's the most INSTANT of instant gratifications out there, Porn is seeing-is-beliving (even though we should know it's a con), and at heart (although it really doesn't have one), porn is mean and shallow and dumb. The article below is thankfully written by a woman, and is incredibly astute. You've been warned.

In the end, porn doesn’t whet men’s appetites—it turns them off the real thing.
By Naomi Wolf

At a benefit the other night, I saw Andrea Dworkin, the anti-porn activist most famous in the eighties for her conviction that opening the floodgates of pornography would lead men to see real women in sexually debased ways. If we did not limit pornography, she argued—before Internet technology made that prospect a technical impossibility—most men would come to objectify women as they objectified porn stars, and treat them accordingly. In a kind of domino theory, she predicted, rape and other kinds of sexual mayhem would surely follow.

The feminist warrior looked gentle and almost frail. The world she had, Cassandra-like, warned us about so passionately was truly here: Porn is, as David Amsden says, the “wallpaper” of our lives now. So was she right or wrong?

More on this topic:

Not Tonight, Honey. I'm Logging On.: Internet porn is everywhere; even "nice" guys are hooked. So where does that leave their girlfriends? By David Amsden (October 20, 2003)
The New Position on Casual Sex: The rise of Internet dating has brought a sexual openness (not to mention one-night stands) to the younger generation not seen since the seventies heyday of Maxwell's Plum. But can there be too much of a good thing? By Vanessa Grigoriadis (January 13, 2003)

She was right about the warning, wrong about the outcome. As she foretold, pornography did breach the dike that separated a marginal, adult, private pursuit from the mainstream public arena. The whole world, post-Internet, did become pornographized. Young men and women are indeed being taught what sex is, how it looks, what its etiquette and expectations are, by pornographic training—and this is having a huge effect on how they interact.
But the effect is not making men into raving beasts. On the contrary: The onslaught of porn is responsible for deadening male libido in relation to real women, and leading men to see fewer and fewer women as “porn-worthy.” Far from having to fend off porn-crazed young men, young women are worrying that as mere flesh and blood, they can scarcely get, let alone hold, their attention.

Here is what young women tell me on college campuses when the subject comes up: They can’t compete, and they know it. For how can a real woman—with pores and her own breasts and even sexual needs of her own (let alone with speech that goes beyond “More, more, you big stud!”)—possibly compete with a cybervision of perfection, downloadable and extinguishable at will, who comes, so to speak, utterly submissive and tailored to the consumer’s least specification?

For most of human history, erotic images have been reflections of, or celebrations of, or substitutes for, real naked women. For the first time in human history, the images’ power and allure have supplanted that of real naked women. Today, real naked women are just bad porn.

For two decades, I have watched young women experience the continual “mission creep” of how pornography—and now Internet pornography—has lowered their sense of their own sexual value and their actual sexual value. When I came of age in the seventies, it was still pretty cool to be able to offer a young man the actual presence of a naked, willing young woman. There were more young men who wanted to be with naked women than there were naked women on the market.

No Show

If there was nothing actively alarming about you, you could get a pretty enthusiastic response by just showing up. Your boyfriend may have seen Playboy, but hey, you could move, you were warm, you were real. Thirty years ago, simple lovemaking was considered erotic in the pornography that entered mainstream consciousness: When Behind the Green Door first opened, clumsy, earnest, missionary-position intercourse was still considered to be a huge turn-on.

Well, I am 40, and mine is the last female generation to experience that sense of sexual confidence and security in what we had to offer. Our younger sisters had to compete with video porn in the eighties and nineties, when intercourse was not hot enough. Now you have to offer—or flirtatiously suggest—the lesbian scene, the ejaculate-in-the-face scene.

What's Enough?

Being naked is not enough; you have to be buff, be tan with no tan lines, have the surgically hoisted breasts and the Brazilian bikini wax—just like porn stars. (In my gym, the 40-year-old women have adult pubic hair; the twentysomethings have all been trimmed and styled.) Pornography is addictive; the baseline gets ratcheted up. By the new millennium, a vagina—which, by the way, used to have a pretty high “exchange value,” as Marxist economists would say—wasn’t enough; it barely registered on the thrill scale. All mainstream porn—and certainly the Internet—made routine use of all available female orifices.

For page 2 visit nymag.com

"I don't know if I know how to love someone..."

How do you love someone?

Well it's good if you're asking that question from time to time. It starts, I think, simply with a sense of chemistry. Doesn't it? So that's how it starts, and it probably needs to be running through - even if at an almost subliminal level - later.

Standards

As we age we become less sexy, but that can be a very slow process if we look after ourselves and each other; what we eat, how much we rest, how much we get up and go exercising. Alex was telling me that on the Sabie Tour there were 55 year olds keeping up with them. We climbed by a guy this morning who says he has been cycling for 20 years. So you need to maintain the same standards you had when you were young(er) and in love. That's for yourself as much as for your partner.

You love someone by staying attractive and being attractive in return. That's a work in progress. Yes, it requires effort! Nothing worthwhile comes without work.

And er...from there it becomes putting yourself entirely aside and having the need to give/love the other person without thinking of the cost/benefit to yourself. To the extent that you can constantly not think about yourself, that's how much you're actively loving someone else. And when we love and take care of others, we take care of ourselves.

Automatic Love?

If it's bothering you that your sense of 'love' or 'loving' isn't automated, remember, as you mature, that automatic engine of love (that creates so much energy out of the elixirs of love) starts to require more and more maintenance. So if you find yourself slipping out of 'falling in love' you're really facing Choice. Do I will this to happen now? Do I choose this? You're being asked to make a rational decision.

The Inner You

The 'in love' response, as good as it feels, is an illusion. Love is not automated. Some of it is, naturally, but the blood and guts of it is choice, and decisions. Is it for me or the other person? Do I sacrifice or not? Me or you first? The older you get the more it becomes a decision. But the extent to which you allow youthfulness into your life (impulse, spontaneity, enervated lifestyle, fun, innocence, silliness, friendliness) you can rediscover the inner you, the more beautiful and lovable person you are and want to be. And you can encourage all this in the people you care for.

For me the most basic wisdom to apply when it comes to choosing to love - to be with - someone is: does being with them make me a better person, and do I do the same for them? Respect is what drives this, and respect is essential for love. It is something like awe, except that it invites you to be part of it.

The last word I think is this: if you still feel you don't know how to love, imagine the object of your attention being you (and in a way it is). Love that person the way you would like to be loved: be attentive, listen, and give. Then see what happens.