Imitatio project: Human nature

The other day I was reading a piece about recent research about women's sexual responses. The research, which is pretty well known stuff, showed that the level of sexual interest women in relationships have declines far more and far more quickly than is the case for men. The conclusion the a number of women journalists writing about it reached was that women just aren't made for monogamy.

Now that is interesting for all sorts of reasons but the thing I want to highlight is the assumption that our moral beliefs ought to coincide with human nature. These writers were saying that we should change our moral beliefs about marriage and monogamy because women aren't naturally inclined to be monogamous. That isn't crazy. Morality should have something to do with human nature.

That said, it isn't hard to think of long lists of things that we aren't naturally inclined to do. We aren't naturally inclined to consider the feelings of others. We aren't naturally inclined to work hard. We aren't naturally inclined to exercise. We aren't naturally inclined to do mathematics. And I could go on and on and on ...

The point being that while it is a positive step to start thinking that the only kind of morality that is worth having is one rooted in human nature, it is silly to make that connection by insisting that we should only be asked to do things that we are naturally inclined to do.

Okay, now let me tell you about something that happened to me this week. Before you read it, though, you have to turn your sneer off. You are no better than this woman and neither am I, so let's think about what her example tells us charitably.

Anyway, this woman tells me that she has broken up with her boyfriend. And I make sympathetic noises and ask her how she is dealing with it. And she tells me she is doing okay. And then she tells me that one of the things she has done to make herself feel better is to get a gym membership.

That's human nature. To suddenly start caring a whole lot about your appearance the moment you are out of a relationship. If you've been paying attention, you'll know that women do this all the time. Not every woman does it, and not every woman does it all the time, but it is something women are naturally inclined to do and you can collect examples of it if you are so inclined.

If you're the sort of man (or woman) who is inclined to smug superiority or bitter hatred towards women, then this sort of thing can fuel your nasty tendencies. But what if you're not? What lesson do we take then? Women are naturally inclined to work hard on their appearance in order to get into a relationship but not naturally inclined to keep it up once they are in a relationship. Some women, of course, do keep it up. What's more, my observations tell me that there is a staggeringly dependable correlation between how hard a woman works on her appearance after she is in a relationship and her socioeconomic status. Such women are generally admired, including by other women. But most women aren't willing to make the sort of effort such women do.

Which is why we all know their they're special.

Which is why I discourage sneering. It's too easy to sneer at the woman or man who messes up. To actually learn from the woman or man who succeeds. That is daunting. And they have the same natural tendencies you and I have.

Biblical scholarship and Mary Magdalene

I have been sort of half-following the Reza Aslan affair. Aslan has indeed misrepresented his credentials as reported at GetReligion and elsewhere. This would count for something if legitimate biblical scholarship was, well, legitimate. But the fact is that current biblical scholarship is often a sad joke. Not all of it. But my point is, even though his credentials are not legitimate, Aslan's work is not all that different from what legitimate biblical scholars produce.

Aslan is quite correct to point out that the new testament sources on Jesus are not a good historical account. Where he fails is that having wiped away false assumptions from the blackboard, he is far too eager to fill it with his own speculation.

But, you know, I have just finished a book called Peter, Paul and Mary Magdalene by Bart D, Ehrman, who is not only a biblical scholar of unimpeachable credentials but is also one of most admired scholars in his field and a lot of what he writes is just silly. I'll be discussing some of it in days to come.

Smooth baritones of summer: problems with Sinatra

As far as our era is concerned, Sinatra is the baritone if not the singer. Anyone who sets out to be a serious male singer of standards tends to take Sinatra as a role model. Actually, that understates the problem. As Mark Steyn said somewhere, we have a whole generation of crooners who more or less do karaoke versions of standards as sung by Sinatra.

That's a problem and not just because it's a sterile approach. It's a problem because there are aspects of Sinatra's style that are being absorbed uncritically.

Sinatra had three careers. He had a career in the 1940s when he sang mostly for women alone at home while their husbands and boyfriends fought the war. We think of performances like "I'll Never Smile Again" when we think of that period. He had a career in the 1950s when he sang mostly for men adjusting to the social changes that came after the war. We think of the great concept albums he did with Capitol records when we think of this career. Finally, he had a career as a swaggering, swinging very male man in his final decades. We think of an awful lot of tripe such as "My Way", "This Town" and "New York, New York" when we think of this career. *

One problem here is that that last phase of his career tended to establish his persona for the baby boomer generation. Sinatra reported hated the Doors song "Light my Fire" and that is all well and good but Jim Morrison learned to sing by imitating Sinatra and he learned well. With albums such as 1966's That's Life Sinatra started to get blustery and assertive where he had been subtle and unafraid to show vulnerability.

And then he did something worse. In 1967, the year that the Doors music became so painfully popular, Sinatra recorded this awful song. It's not just the awfulness of the song, it's the way he sings it. Jim Morrison developed his style by copying Sinatra and here we see Sinatra debasing his by copying Morrison.





* There was lots of good stuff as well in this period but most of it, think of the album September of My Years, succeeds because it is a throwback to what he was doing in the 1950s. The sole exception is the Jobim stuff he recorded. Sinatra's versions of the big bossa nova hits are the only ones that do anything more than simply copy the Brazilian originals. He was on the edge of developing a new style that could have been the beginning of something great. Sadly, Sinatra wasn't willing to work as hard at that point of his career as he did in the 1940s and 1950s. Then again, who can blame him. Why should he have?

Another image, what is it selling

This is a sad one.

That's from an ad that kept popping up everywhere I went for a while. The short answer is that it's selling software that, I think, manages online help services for corporate customers. The obvious question, then, is "What does a young woman in an orange tank top and no bra with a tattoo that she likes men over fifty years of age have to do with the product?"

Your guess is as good as mine.

Now, everyone knows that there is a company that uses blatant sexual ads to promote internet-domain-name sales so why can't these people do the same? Well, no reason, really. It's their advertising budget so they can waste it whatever way they want. That said, this is soooo stupid.

First point, if you are going to sell something this way, you have to be sure that the audience you attract will be bigger than the audience you are likely to alienate. A TV ad running during the Superbowl is going to reach an awful lot of men. More importantly, it's going to reach an audience of easy-going, beer-drinking men who aren't easily offended. The audience for help-desk software is a bunch of mid-level executives and, whether they are easily offended themselves or not, they can't risk offending anyone. A mid-level executives entire life is about not giving anyone a reason to fire him or her. If he is a him, the last think in the world he wants his colleagues to associate him with a company that advertises this way. If she is a her, well, I don't need to explain the problem do I.

Second point, "I love 50 plus"! Seriously?

I hope the people who engineer their software are smarter than the people who do their advertising.

Imitatio project: Don Draper's Guide to picking up women

It's a pretty safe bet that anytime someone tells you that a sketch on Saturday Night Live was hilarious the actual sketch will be lame. That's mostly because Saturday Night Live is usually lame. Here's a clue people: it's Saturday Night and you're sitting at home watching late-night television! That's what losers do. Late night Saturday, anyone who isn't a loser is either out on the town or in bed.

Anyway, Don Draper's Guide to Picking Up Women wasn't funny even though I kept reading people saying it's brilliant. You can watch it yourself at this link until the copyright enforcers find it.

I've transcribed the four easy steps:

1. When in doubt, remain absolutely silent.
2. When asked about your past, give vague, open-ended answers.
3. Have a great name.
4. Look fantastic in a suit, look fantastic in casual wear, look fantastic in anything. Look good, sound good, smell good, kiss good, strut around with supreme confidence, be uncannily successful at your job, blow people away anytime you say anything, take six hour lunches, disappear for weeks at a time, lie to everyone about everything, drink and smoke constantly, basically, be Don Draper.

It's the last one that does all the work trying to be funny and it is telling that they are trying too hard, which is why it isn't funny. And they are trying so hard because they are intimidated. I'll go at these one at a time.

But first, a question: Does Don Draper pick up women?  Obviously, he ends up with quite a few but he doesn't pick them up. That's the first thing to note about his approach: he doesn't have one. Okay, the script is on his side and that is why women approach him but there is a lot to be said for this. The last line of the joke is, "basically, be Don Draper". If you look at the way the role is played, however, you'll notice that is what he does.  He doesn't go after women so much as he goes after the role. He is always trying to be Don Draper and he is always trying to be Don Draper because he is not, in fact, Don Draper.

As I've said before, this makes him like a Greek hero. Read the Iliad and you will see that Hector worries about being Hector. He has a role and he knows he has to live up to it and he worries about falling short of it. That's the opposite of what we are told today. We are told to be yourself and then we are advised to go out and pick up women, working with "a wingman" and a whole lot of other bullshit.

Okay, back to the four steps.

The first is actually really good advice. As a man, you should just shut up when in doubt and the world would be a better place if more of us did. Talking too much is asking for it. Don't do it.

The second isn't quite accurate. Don Draper does give vague, open-ended answers but that is because he doesn't talk about himself much. And that, again, is very good advice.

The third is kind of funny in a way that the writers at Saturday Night Live didn't intend. "Don Draper" is actually a very plain WASP name in an era when people have been trying very hard to have exotic names like Laetitia, Beyonce, Jay-Z and the like. There is a lesson here.

The final bit of advice is just lame but there are some telling mistakes in it. Don Draper would never say "kiss good" or use "basically" as an introductory clause. He usually speaks correctly, elegantly and simply. If he does something else for effect, it really has an effect because it is rare for him to do so. A related point, Don Draper not only wouldn't say "kiss good", he wouldn't say "kiss well" either because he is a man and not a fourteen year old girl.

Take away the inflation and deflation that fails to make this funny, and Don Draper is the strong, silent type and that is a good thing to be.

Social policing watch

People love to run other people's lives for them. The excuse for doing so is often that the policing is for the good of the person being policed but it never is. Notice the following example. It starts off as a mini-rant against high heels and then the writer promptly reveals that she not only has no evidence to back up her claim but that, rather, she has evidence that contradicts her claim.

Whenever I see a woman walking (or trying to) in stilettos — skinny heels over 3 inches high — my first thought is, “There’s a sprained ankle waiting to happen.”

An estimated 28,000 ankle injuries occur daily in the United States, most of them through sporting activities, including jogging on uneven surfaces. But while no one suggests remaining sedentary to protect your ankles, experts wisely warn against purposely putting them at risk by wearing hazardous shoes or getting back in the game before an injured ankle has healed.

The problem is not heels but athletic activities. It would have been a different article altogether if she had started off with, 'Whenever I see someone playing field hockey, my first thought is, "There is a sprained ankle waiting to happen." Field hockey is the activity most likely to lead to sprained ankles. The next three are volleyball, football and basketball. Nowhere in the article is there even a scrap of evidence that wearing high heels is bad for you.

That's not surprising as the evidence against high heels is surprisingly thin on the ground. I know, you remember reading somewhere that ... . Well, the thing is that if you wear high heels all day, every day, it's bad for you. If you ate nothing but broccoli that would also be bad for you. Wearing high heels for a few hours when you go out on Friday or Saturday night is not only not bad for you but is good for you.

But let's get back to Jane Brody. That's her work above. She doesn't approve of high heels. On others. She doesn't want you wearing them. That's why she drags high heels into a column that has nothing to do with high heels. For a woman like Brody, suppressing traits she doesn't like in others is a full-time job.

Why doesn't she want other women wearing heels? Well, that's an interesting question. She's lying when she says it's a health concern. Part of it may be an attempt to flatter her audience who are mostly seniors. I don't know but my suspicion is that women like Brody don't want other women to make efforts to be sexy because it puts competitive pressures on her. That's what makes what she does social policing.

One of the odd things about this sort of social policing, this is something I've noted before, is that it isn't intended to stop women from dressing attractively. No, the point is always to make sure that women dress attractively in the approved ways. Of course, these approved ways will favour certain body types and not others so it creates (or protects) a class system.

Anyway, keep an eye out for social policing; there's a lot of it about. It's done by men and women but more so by women.

Feast of Saint Mary Magdalene ...

... is today.

When our desires are not satisfied, they grow stronger, and becoming stronger they take hold of their object. Holy desires likewise grow with anticipation, and if they do not grow they are not really desires.

Gregory the Great