Paji eh Wong

Joined: 03 Jun 2003
|
Posted: Fri Sep 23, 2005 6:09 pm Post subject: Attack of the listless lads |
|
|
Normally I don't read Salon, but I was directed to this article from a blog. And as I sat there and read it, I kept picturing episodes from my life and all of these friends of mine.
Here's a quote that I think has a lot to say about why people come to Korea. It's an interview BTW.
Quote: |
Why would the difficulty of finding meaning afflict men more than women?
I suppose because the fact that nearly the whole universe of jobs is open to women is a tremendous gain in possibility for them. For men, there's been no corresponding gain. In fact, we live in this world that for reasons that are kind of hard to explain, [though] I think Hannah Arendt has gone some distance in explaining them, it seems that meaningful action is harder to take than it has been in previous historical times. I think this is the sense even of people who have no historical sense. It's something that they feel.
Are you saying that the role that men have historically been expected to play has been muddied by the fact that women are now able and often expected to play the same role?
I don't think this has anything to do with women.
No?
No. I think it's something that men sense more acutely than women because men have been actors in the world, as a whole, for more generations than women have been. I think there's got to be a reason that the slacker -- the person who feels that nothing he could do could really be all that meaningful, so why really do anything -- is a more common male figure than a female figure. It must be because the person expected to act meaningfully in the public world, man or woman, has been a man forever. And men then are in a better position to sense some sort of decline in the ability to feel that you can do something meaningful in your life.
|
http://salon.com/books/int/2005/09/20/kunkel/index_np.html
I don't agree with everything the authour says but it is a great read. God to the bottom and click on the "day pass" banner. It only takes a minute. |
|