21st Century Ambitions Should be Multi-Dimensional and Collectively Empowered

It was recently brought to my attention that Deborah Spar, Barnard’s president, wrote a response to Anne-Marie Slaughter’s article, “Why Women Can’t Have It All”.  Spar brought up the point that women should continue to let their ambitions breathe instead of stepping away too soon from the table, as has coined it Sheryl Sandberg, or give up their ambitions before even entering the game out of dread for being unable to have it all and for the anticipated guilt linked to juggling so much.  Spar argues that women deserve to be boosted in their ambitions rather than focus on the perils along the way.

I agree heartily that every individual should have his or her ambitions and be able to pursue them as an individual, his or her own “way”. 

However, I can’t help but notice that, once again, the heavy lot of pursuing one’s ambitions in a somewhat hostile environment is conceptualized as an individual’s plight only:  to make it there where few arrive, at the highest rung, no matter the personal sacrifice, and to make it there alone.

It has often been remarked that the woman’s movement allowed for women to enter the workforce… but only according to men’s conditions and rules; that somehow “she” had to be “a man plus some” to make inroads at all.  And while some women are changing the rules and gaining in clout (remember recent laments of “if only it had been Lehman sisters”), much of this world remains a man’s world.  Within it, individuals’ quest for selfhood and self-fulfillment has obeyed, and continues to obey, the andocentric “hero myth” in which the individual strikes out against all peril (albeit with many helping, expendable hands), kills/seduces the evil woman, all in order to achieve the ultimate prize or goal.  In this hero myth, the individual plays a linear, solitary, all-or-nothing game of singular purpose.  Modern women have taken on this myth for themselves, relieved to finely be free to pursue this hero myth from which they were entirely excluded for so long. 

The problem with this worldview is twofold.  First of all, such a singular purpose is not pertinent to many women (or men).  Second, much must be improved collectively, instead of condemning individual ambitions to being such a solitary struggle. 

1.        A singular purpose is incomplete for many

The hero-myth requires the hero-to-be to reduce his/her life to a single dimensional outlook. 

Yet, human reality and potential are far richer than that.  We are similar to quarks and could gain much by accepting that we are highly sophisticated, multi-dimensional, beings capable of embodying simultaneously multiple purposes and needs.  The tacit societal agreement to limit ourselves to linear paths (with a positive slope) and to singularity of being is neither necessary nor preferable. 

Yet, in the meantime, this worldview has led us down the slippery slope of exclusion.  How can it be that we are actually letting ourselves be convinced collectively that only 2 models exist:  having children or having a career… and that any alternative is symptomatic of inadequacy or symbol of infidelity (not engaged enough as a mother or not engaged enough as an employee).  How can it be that learned, insightful, thoughtful thinkers can follow a track that makes total abstraction of having children, a kind of Brave New World in which some will carry babies and others will think and act, dissociating entirely the stuff of life and some nebulous imperative of “ambitions”?

I’ve mentioned it in a past blog but I think the idea has not received the attention it deserves:  Kathryn Ann Rabuzzi wrote, back in the 1980s, about the need for a new myth:  the Motherself.  For men and for women.  It doesn’t mean having children nor does it mean giving oneself entirely to children.  It means erecting a model that is less solitary, less linear, less individualistic, and less uni-dimensional than our current hero-myth.  It means embodying more than one ambition (personal and professional); it means having a purpose that leaves room for others with us instead of making it a solo zero-sum game in which the winner takes all.  But, above all, it means society deciding to accept that quality of life nourishes quality of work; that productivity and performance will increase if and only if we allow each individual’s multi-dimensionality to bloom.

However, this is unlikely to happen as long as we shackle individuals’ challenges exclusively to individuals’ gains, which leads me to my second objection to nurturing the hero-myth perspective:

2.       Much can be improved collectively allowing individual ambitions to be less of a solitary struggle. 

In the midst of our performance society that so values domination, power and wealth (of an individual or dynasty), we are afraid of building with others lest it puts us at a disadvantage or doesn’t milk our own individual/familial achievements fully enough.  There are plenty of stories of parents writing their kids’ school papers or cheating to help their kids get ahead.  There are the voucher schools that weed the best&ambitious into one school, leaving the under-financed and under-privileged in another.  And so on and so forth.  This isn’t to point fingers.  This is to illustrate that we are all falling into the game of “I, against the world”.  And that, in our fall, we are losing hold of the sense of community a society requires and in which it’s a game of “I, empowered with the world”.

As a consequence, women’s ascension to meeting their ambitions are beholden to a solitary, zero-sum game (like the hero-myth but with even more demons to be beheaded than for a man).  It is often mentioned that women do not display the kind of solidarity that the “old boy’s network” has, and that oftentimes women are competitive with each other rather than helpful (or even simply empathetic)!  But it doesn’t need to be that way.

In each of my posts since last November, I have made the same plea:  in this 21^st century, it is time we, collectively, revalued family, intergenerationalism, interdependence.    We must revalue the collective, the constructive.  Pull away from the individualistic nuclear family and build our society, community.  Not like in a religion that dulls each voice to create unison but a community with humanist values that orchestrates a symphony or jazz session. 

Let’s face it:  it’s for false and contrived reasons that children be exclusively considered of negative value for a woman executive.  And there’s no reason every single woman must reinvent the wheel or take on singlehandedly every battle in tow in order to pursue her ambitions.  It is time that we foster a more spherical, holistic life scheme.  We must stop valuing only individualistic short-term performance and pursue sustainable development for people and communities. 

What does it mean “sustainable development for people and communities” and what are the steps to get there? 

And what does it mean concretely to shift from the hero-myth to the motherself-myth? 

Now that performance seems to have trumped living, making us lose touch with much of the richness inherent in our humanity, we are increasingly losing our liberty and our control over our own lives. 

How can we, as a community, reclaim our many forgotten strengths to positively shape this new century into a beacon of light and a springboard for progress for all of us, not just the elite? 

These are the issues I will be exploring over this new academic year.  Join the debate with me and let’s make this world the way we want it to be.

Talk to you next week,

Eve

Our 21st Century Should Pursue Collective Progress, Not Individualism!

An article in Forbes last week was brought to my attention; “Why Millennial Women Do Not Want To Lead” by Julie Zeilinger, founder and editor of FBomb.org.  In it, she concludes that despite “impossibly high” standards of achievement for women vs. “upsettingly low” standards for men, women should not shy away from leadership for “their intelligence and integrity are more than enough”. 

OK, but part of women’s trouble is that they are pigeonholed for their intelligence and their integrity:  perfect for constituting the dossier, and then have others take all the credit.  Or being outcast for being overly ambitious. 

There’s no doubt that women are given a harder time (as Ginger Roger summed it up, “I did everything Fred Astaire did but backwards and in heels”).  But the problem goes much deeper, for it touches on a societal trait that transgresses questions of gender and sex:  it’s our societal love affair with shows of power, of domination. 

It’s suggested that women lead with intelligence and integrity.  But are we socially prepared for such a switch? 

Do we collectively value integrity?  Not so often; or at least we waive it when it’s a figure we like – why else do mafia sitcoms and movies make blockbuster ratings?  A couple of years ago, there was the joke what if Lehman Brothers had been “Lehman Sisters”?  But safe bets and risk-taming measures and regulations do not have rock star kind of value and are systematically refused by half of the American population. 

Do we value intelligence?  Street smarts, maybe; business acumen that can make someone rich and powerful, sure.    But nuanced thinking?  It’s often seen as “weakness” – just consider the last couple of presidential debates and elections.  Critical thinking?  It’s slowly disappearing from educational curricula increasingly focused on skills and trivia rather than a solid, well-rounded education rooted in knowledge and critical thinking. 

And what about some of the other values Americans learn in kindergarten:  kindness?  Sharing?  No, we still trump with whatever will stoke the dream of making it rich, fast, with cold razor-sharp calculations or with no effort at all.  No, in our current mores, fame and fortune are exciting; kindness and sharing are for the suckers. 

For some of us, it’s a no brainer.  Cooperation is a key asset for performance and for survival.  It’s a key part of Darwinism – survival of the fittest is not only about competition but knowing how and when to cooperate.  But explain that to a conservative American who accuses any positive collective measures put forth by Obama of being “socialism” (as if it were a great evil!).  The truth is we are societally in awe of the powerful and aim to get there ourselves, at whatever our level. 

Love is often leveled out to sex which is leveled out to domination

Work, which used to include loyalty toward a company-wide endeavor and allegiance to the workforce, is all too often leveled to outsourcing, productivity fragmented into individualized skill sets so that some few individuals can get ahead while the many more get ever lower

Profit, which used to be reinvested into a company to improve R&D (research & development) and boost its employees, is now often leveled to a few wealthy shareholders’ returns, widening the gap if the figures are good… and widening it further if the figures are bad as they will choose to cut heads before lowering dividends.

We are letting it happen because of our awe of the rich and powerful

And/or out of fear for our own personal survival, attempting to be part of the elite so as to not find ourselves entirely disenfranchised.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.  We can have a very productive and healthy society if we move away from such dogma (performance society, still-life identities, monotheistic beauty…).

One of the legs of the women’s movement was making the personal political.  But we’ve lost control of what makes up “personal”.  At the time, it meant using collectively each individual’s experience to help society progress.  But through the 1980s, then on through the 90’s and 2000’s, the “personal” because a very “personal” singular recipe for making it on one’s “own”.  Every person has been composing with his/her “own” to get ahead, make it big, make a break… or just make it through the day! 

And where has this left us?  “Every second’s a calculation”.  Each woman strives to live the archetype of each facet of a woman’s life, simultaneously… locked into her “own”.

And our current societal model is exacerbating that:  Nuclear family as opposed to community.  A walking portfolio of skills as opposed to a company of people.  A still-life, projected identity for others as opposed to a solid self concept with a sense of our individual and collective worth.  Personal/individualized intelligence and integrity as opposed to having higher expectations of our society for an environment conducive to collective progress.

It’s even got to to the extent that a single mother in the US is one of the most isolated members of our society as described in the NY Times.   And firing-up the debate as to whether women can “have it all”.  But how can we when we’re set up for every woman to take on the entire battle single-handedly and separately, individually?  Another article showed mothers proudly taking no breaks (no maternity leave), having babies for whom they’ll have no time and for whom they have no intention of making any space… because they’re going to try to do it all… individually.  And, with such models, how will those children cope?  Individually! 

The solutions we need now is to get back to the original call for the personal… A shift for making the “personal”… collective!

What does that mean? 

-          Continue protecting family planning and pushing for universal healthcare. 

-          It means reconsidering the nuclear family and how we can raise future generations more collectively (to at least give them a more collective mindset while freeing up more time for parents to balance career and family).  As says the Nigerian proverb, and taken up by Hilary Rodham Clinton, “It takes a whole village to raise a child”.  This is a great way of summing it up – we cannot do everything each on our “own” – economically and energetically, it isn’t sustainable.  Even these powerhouse, “superwomen” cannot sustain indefinitely doing it all on her own. 

-          It also means reconsidering work, collectively.  As says one mother who took very little maternity leave, “there is no way to have a ‘blissful maternity leave and also stay in the game’”.  Work is more cut-throat than ever and, she’s right, a short absence can be an irretrievable set-back.  But, is that necessary?  Must it be this way?  This is our society, our world, it’s up to us to demand change – but we must do it collectively.  There is enough scientific research to convince us that a company is most productive when its employees are in a trusting and empowering environment and feel a certain amount of security and motivation.  If a woman wants to have a baby and not miss a beat at the office, why can’t she do it from a distance? 

We must break out of this narrow-minded idea of individual gain and remember there’s little lasting individual gain without collective progress. 

Let me know what you think.

Talk to you soon for another bite from the apple,

Eve

Refining What 21st Century Progress Should Mean

I’ve recently come back from a trip to India.  As would be expected, they have totally different points of reference when it comes to societal codes. 

On the one hand, living of life that we keep behind closed doors or in back yards, they live out in the open, before anyone’s eyes to see: washing clothes, combing hair, feeding children, napping…   For a Westerner, it’s rare to glimpse what is usually private, intimate… and left me with a rather friendly invitation to focusing on our common humanity and daily lives. 

On the other hand, the sexual and the sensual so ostentatiously flaunted in the West are, in India, more latent and discreet. 

This got me to thinking about the society I would like to build, the one I would like to welcome my children; I got to thinking about what constitutes progress and how it comes about.

Oftentimes, countries that are emerging have the luxury of adopting the technological advances of the first world countries, then improving upon them thanks to a combination of their own vision and the benefit of others’ learning curves.   Instead of following the same slow curve of progress as the initiators, these countries can jump start at the heights where others’ progress has reached.  For example, despite widespread poverty, nearly 74% of India’s population (over 880 million), own mobile phones (http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/column_why-india-has-more-cell-phones-than-toilets_1655351) and enjoy stunningly low rates for communications compared to many first world countries. 

But does this same “progress curve” rule apply to social and societal advancement?

Looking around some parts of India, I witnessed this:

But what did I discover on the cover of the Indian publication of GQ?

This is practically racier and more extreme than Western standards, which are already in great need of revision.

What I find disturbing is for “progress” and, I suppose, “freedom” to have the face of images that are so deprecating for women.  Should modernity be represented by visuals that suggest a woman’s main value amounts to her surgically enhanced breasts?  Is this what we should be aiming for?  Should we allow a great international media machine to pull countries with much potential and richness to slip into anti-progressive attitudes for women as a sign of advancement compared to traditional attitudes?

Is it progress for one’s body to be a commodity?  Is it progress for the person to be reduced to a sexual object?  I don’t mean to imply that beautiful women can’t represent anything other than sex.  But I do mean to imply that every time we mainstream and focalize on pornography (which used to have a reserved time, place, and function), we sideline the other hard-won aspects of woman-become-subject (vs. the “object” Simone de Beauvoir so aptly identified at the beginning of the 20^th century).  This ostentation also raises the pressure on overly busy women trying to “have it all” to unreasonable standards of Monotheistic Beauty & body in the seduction game, as well as feeds unreasonable expectations in terms of our sexual performance (as opposed to sexual fulfillment)…

The more extreme this ostentation becomes, the harder becomes the backlash of who reject such extremes.  Take, for example, the resurgence of French women choosing to veil themselves.  For some, it is a means to reject this sex-centeredness.  For others, it’s a means of survival in their environment (the creation of the group called “ni putes ni soumises” in 2003 brought attention to the regressive choice for young French women living in the “cités” to dress in bulky sweat suits or veil themselves to avoid being cast as a hoar and become an easy target for slander or even rape / gang rape).  Another example is the adoption of “women’s only” space on public trains and subways in India to help protect women from unwanted staring, fondling, or worse. 

But, in a modernized and/or modernizing world, surely we needn’t resort to veils or segregation to shield ourselves from an unhealthy objectivizing gaze?

Artist Shreyas Karle collecting data for the “closed space fantasy meditation” and studying “camouflage to get around censorship”

I usually balk at these types of innovations because, for me, men should learn to control themselves and change their gaze rather than forcing women to cover themselves.  There is no reason for making the woman simultaneously the victim and the one to pay amends while the actual perpetrators are shielded from any responsibility.

After all, is progress about makeshift protection or about reevaluating the rights and obligations of each empowered member of a society?

But for this, we need to get collectively clearer on exactly what “empowered” entails in a progressive society.  I have already voiced my opinion on this subject, but India’s hesitation between the dynamic progress of human industry and superficial Western codes of sexual liberation has helped me realize other adjacent issues to be addressed and unintended consequences to measure:

·         Where is our frontier for intimacy?  There was an article a year or 2 ago about young women getting piercings in the vicinity of their pubis to reassure themselves there were still some parts of their bodies seen by a select few.  We exhibit more and more of ourselves, enabled by social media to spill out all of our private lives over the world wide web… creating a greater need for exhibitionism and approbation… and in turn leading us to build our sense of self and worth only through the other’s gaze.  Intimacy is a means for reclaiming our own prerogatives and preferences.  But when it is eroded, our defenses and confidence erode as well.  To give a concrete example, check out the youtube “am I pretty?” in which young women, even young girls, ask the internet to rate their beauty.  They are clearly tying up their self concept to others’ gazes while diminuing their intimacy and personal territory. 

·         Where may we safeguard a harbor for desire?  For longing?  Love and lust are increasingly commoditized and beholden to our consumerist expectations of instant gratification whereas the bylaws of more lasting and fulfilling relationships seem to build according to a slower dance.  We should start giving the market of love a little more substance and a little less “eye candy”.  But as long as love is misused as a way of confirming our self-worth and societal acceptance (like in the “am I pretty?” videos) instead of self-discovery and growth, we will be demeaning one of the world’s most important renewable resources and sources of hope and welfare.

·         What is our responsibility for protecting our children and How far can we allow media to go with its soft to hard porn without it creating new social norms that cross a serious (albeit unintended) line of fostering children’s sexual exploitation (cf. The See Hear Speak Campaign)? 

These are the kinds of questions no one wants to consider for fear of taking away liberties.  But the other day, when I was walking in the street in a Parisian suburb with a dress whose skirt flowed just above the knee, I felt quite uncomfortable and isolated as young men made suggestive remarks and the other women nearby were veiled.   Could it be that if we toned down ever so slightly our race to sex-centeredness, we could preserve our right to dress lightly in full confidence?  It’s time for us to establish our own conditions on these questions before we find ourselves all locked-in a bind, far from the real liberty and progress we’re seeking to preserve.

Let me know what you think.

Talk to you next week for another bite from the apple,

Eve

In this 21st Century, We Must Honor our Experts in Care

This week, the New York Times published an article pertaining to the increase of men working in “pink collar jobs” in the US, “More Men Enter Fields Dominated by Women”, by Shaila Dewan and Robert Gebeloff.  

The article reports that, “while women continue to make inroads into prestigious, high-wage professions dominated by men, more men are reaching for the dream in female-dominated occupations that their fathers might never have considered” – pink collar jobs like nursing, school-teaching, linked to “care”.  With the shifting economy, job growth is in the care sector as these professions cannot be off-shored.  Furthermore, men’s priorities are shifting enough for them to want to benefit from job attributes such as less stress, more time at home, and personal gratification (challenge and emotional return) beyond salary.   This shift is even taking place among uneducated men, typically associated with a higher level of male chauvinism. 

What good news!  This is precisely what I was advocating in my March 8^th blog, convinced as I am that we must have men recognize the importance and value of care before we can hope for a better work-life balance in Western societies.   Thanks to this new trend, we can hope that care issues will escape the exclusive clutches of “woman’s work” and come to the fore of men’s and women’s minds while liberating each gender to also excel in other domains.

But the article also exposes an important marker in our fight for gender equality:  even in these fields where women’s expertise is recognized, and in such a short time frame,   there is a “glass escalator”.  Glass escalator is a term coined by sociologist Christine L. Williams expressing a phenomenon in which men move up more quickly to supervisory positions thanks to their gender.  Yes, while women’s career paths are truncated by the “glass ceiling” in male-dominated professions and, as I have named, working mothers are held back by a “glass cage”, men are empowered (or abetted) by the “glass escalator”.  

Is it because of their skills / qualities vs. those of women (for example, stereotypically more authoritative and therefore more likely to lead?)?  Or is it because administrators are largely male and tend to promote talents more similar to them?  Or is it because there are fewer men in these fields and therefore more visible, making administrators notice them more?  Or is it because socially we all still defer to the man? 

In 1977, Rosabeth Moss Kanter had pinpointed “Occupational Sex Segregation”, which discriminately segregated women into lower paying positions with little training, building a self-perpetuating mechanism with which the rare women promoted were lacking in experience and skills compared to the men and whose legitimacy and chances to succeed were largely diminished. 

But this is not the case here.  In pink collar jobs, it is the men, not the women, who are lacking the experience and skills (outside of skills acquired through parenting, as men become increasingly implicated in their family lives).  So, outside of gender discrimination, women should be high on the ladder, not the newly arriving men.

This is where it gets tricky.  According the studies pursued by the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, it is in part because the hands-on positions within the pink color sectors require a very high level of caring and relational skills, experience, and expertise.  Reportedly, when women have moved up and men have moved into some care positions (hospitals, for example), care recipients have complained, requesting that the women come back (whether the reason be comfort with traditional roles or a real difference in care remains to be clarified). 

So, women are thwarted when considered not skilled enough and thwarted when considered well skilled.

Beyond arguments that we have not yet attained gender equality and/or that Western culture is still largely patriarchal; beyond scientific arguments that corpulence, low voice, height, and testosterone play into the dynamics of chieftains and power politics, there’s another issue here.  For me, the crux of the matter is that there is no reason for managerial roles to be paid more or valued more than expertise roles. 

Of course management is important for an organization to run well.  Talent management and creative decision-making is key to an entity’s well-being and performance.  But the actual expertise and savoir-faire is just as key… and should be valued.  Every last ambitious business person gets their MBA (good news – the number of women enrolled in MBAs is growing) so that they can be a manager.  But a manager of what?  For what?  Shouldn’t that manager be skilled in the profession in order to optimize the quality of his or her decision making? 

Our performance society is guiding us to gut our professions of their life-force, of their specificity, in the name of process and organization… and management.  And maybe that’s necessary.  But is it necessary to the point of awarding the best salaries to the managers instead of the skilled experts?  I’m not talking about the number one creative director in an advertising agency or creative expert at an innovator like Apple, who, as few as they are, are paid handsomely (and discarded as quickly when no longer performing…). 

I’m talking about skilled workers like our pink collar workers.  Men or Women.

Yes, the good news here, despite my pushing for improvements, is that men are discovering and spreading the news that “care” jobs are challenging, rewarding, enriching, even exciting.  It’s time we started honoring the jobs which have a direct impact on our well-being rather than only the superfluous and material.  It’s time we honor our experts in care.  


Let me know what you think.
In the meantime, talk to you next week for another bite from the apple,
Eve 

Glass Ceiling? The 21st Century will be about fighting the Glass Cage

This year, Barnard College’s graduating class was addressed by Barack Obama at its commencement ceremony.  Obama made a great speech in the name of activism and collective implication, rallying the women before him to, “fight for a place at the table; to fight for a place at the head of the table.”

He’s right on!  And clearly, if he’s making a case for it, it’s because we aren’t there yet; there’s still much work to be done.

Well, I’d like to high-five him and bid even higher:  our fight must include working mothers at the table.

Currently, society is evolving towards a divide between women who devote their lives to their work vs. women who have children – whether or not they also work outside the home.  According to Rana Foroohar in Time magazine (May 21, 2012 edition), “in many wealthy, urban areas of the US and Europe, young, well-educated and (crucially) childless women now out-earn their male peers… whereas some married couples are deciding to live on one salary when the economic trade-off of lower-paying jobs, child-care costs, taxes and commuting doesn’t add up… [leaving] two extremes: those with demanding, well-paid jobs who can afford help to manage their lives, homes, and children – and those who provide that help.”

What we’re up against is a glass ceiling that’s curving into a glass cage for working mothers.

It’s to such an extent that many American women are forced into making the “choice” to stay home with their children.  But costly day-care and taxes are not the only culprits, for here in France, we have similar discrimination despite high-quality state-subsidized day care, some elderly care, and universal healthcare.  It all comes down to the fact that corporations expect absolute availability and that, as a woman, particularly suspect of disloyalty (she might have a baby or use sick days to take care of an aging parent), must do everything a man does but “backwards and in heels,” to quote Ginger Rogers referring to Fred Astair.  Sheryl Sandberg made it to the “table” but only after sleepless nights by Mark Zuckerberg’s side.  Total devotion.   Anything less, and you’re suspect of not being committed enough. 

Fine for Rogers and Sandberg, but this is unsustainable, it leaves out a lot of talent, and it leaves out the great skills acquired as a parent which could be transferred into an executive’s quality of work. 

I graduated from Barnard Columbia in 1998.  My commencement address was far more sobering.  Joyce Purnick gave us the low-down:  women, she said, you can’t Have It All!  I balked at the time… but I am still struggling to prove her wrong.   And, around me, I can see many, many women facing the same battle of “only” working 9 or 10 hours a day in order to see their children at night… only to find themselves marginalized at work, their career paths slowed because their priorities are resented. 

That’s why I’m pleading that the “glass cage” be one of the major battles of the 21^st century.   Without it, women will be forced into reductionist views either expecting women to stay home with their children or, to be a good professional, have no children at all.  Honestly, attachment parenting that’s been getting so much press is not the point, nor are questions over perfect parenting (or, rather, perfect mothering);

these are decoys stealing attention away from the larger issue of incorporating family into our career-filled lives. 

Obama’s strategy of getting more women “at the table” should help catalyze collective progress… but only if the debate stops being strictly about gender.  The women at the table must include working mothers, in addition to the childless and to the women who have decided to have their children raised by someone else (I mention them because often I have heard the most pressure and/or discrimination against young mothers trying to do both comes from older women who had to sacrifice motherhood to stay in the game:  “if I had to do it, so should you”).

The guiding principle of our aim should center on quality of life for all our citizens – children needing care, aging parents needing care… and adults needing breathing room to improve their lives (as well as the quality of the work they supply).   Our society is an ecosystem that thrives on oxygen and circulation, as does a body.  As long as we nourish only a few individuals born within the elite, there can be no lasting progress, either individual or collective.  It is time to ignite a system which includes every age and every class, so that we may all move forward, together.

Please share your thoughts in the comment below.

In the meantime, talk to you next week, for another bite from the apple,

Eve

Entering a 21st Century Cult of Living: Building Youth with Age

21^st Century Call:  Move Beyond our Cult of Youth to a Cult of Living

I posited in my last entry that many of our strategies for living the Cult of Youth may actually be counter-productive due to the fact that our efforts to appear younger somewhat prevent us from being and living more youthfully.  After all, our goals should be about improving our quality of life; not simply about creating optical illusions for others!   

Here I would like to prolong that reflection by considering our current fears and goals in order to reframe them into a Cult of Living.

It’s time to reconstruct our fears of aging and our goals of youth.

There is societal significance in the obsession of effacing age.  Ostensibly, it is an attempt to defy mortality, in response to our great fear of death. 

But could it, in reality, represent a fear of being?

Indeed, wrinkles are often indicators of our past and the experiences which have built our personal character and have led us to make certain choices, good and bad.  They represent our gained perspective, right or wrong.  They are a visible mark of our growth and evolution, easy or belabored.  They are part of who we are.

And here we are trying to efface them.  Erase them.  Disown them.  Avoid ever acquiring them.  As if refusing our very being would allow us to relive our nostalgic idea of the easiness of youth, or start again with a clean slate; keep our options open.  Perhaps we are flirting with perpetual adolescence in order to flee the alleged constraints of being an adult:  the end of possibilities, the end of spontaneity, and the compromise of our dreams (as depicted by “emerging adults” (18-29 year olds in the Western world) recorded by socio-psychologist Jeffrey Jensen Arnett’s extensive research).

But, could it be that out of fear of this type of stagnation, we are avoiding filling in our actual lives as completely as we could or should?  That we don’t want to accept who we are, opting instead to play act and perform, as would an adolescent, simply in the name of a figurative possibility of re-creating our lives?  Could this be the key to why we are rejecting any visible manifestations of “growing up”? And, by consequence, any overly defining characteristics?

These reflexes reveal erroneous representations of youth and of adulthood.   

Youth and adolescence are not so much about freedom but about conformity, as they try on different masks to figure out who they are and who they want to be.  Far from freestyle living and spontaneity, adolescents are beholden to others’ approval and an exacerbated need for belonging and approbation.   Even their dreams are normative, “everyone will find a lifelong partner, and a great job, and live happily ever after”. 

In today’s performance society, the need to make the “right” choice is acute; it’s not surprising we all shy away from closing doors.  But the representation of adulthood and age as only rigid, static, conservative, and anti-dynamic is inaccurate and limiting.  In reality, adulthood represents the life-stage during which we acquire at last the wisdom and maturity required for actually free and deliberate living, positive control, etc.  For, adulthood can (and should) be a very dynamic stage in which the individual has at last accepted responsibility for one’s self, making one’s own decisions, and with financial independence.   It is the stage during which the individual has shed the urgent need for approval and during which, thanks to having closed certain doors, we can open new ones more befitting to whom we have become and want to actually be. 

On the other hand, if we don’t (or society doesn’t) allow us the freedom to make choices and move on, we will continue to prevent ourselves from building a strong sense of who we are.  In this case, we quickly find ourselves up against the “void” of existence which is at the root of our Cult of Youth.   As has said Susan Ertz in her novel Anger in the Sky, “millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.”  As a society, we seem to have opted for projections and appearances instead of actually building ourselves up to Be. 

Again, much of the confusion stems from our performance society in which there can only be one winner and in which we are each pitted against each other.  Part of the trouble is that as a person ages, that person, man or woman, as a social animal, needs to feel assured that he/she will not be ostracized, cut off from the community (especially as the person reaches an age that is less self-sufficient, depending more on society and social network for survival).  For that, he/she needs to feel desired, loved, included.

The trouble is, we’re all competing for the same places.  Cougars and Lolitas are aiming to charm the same men (who, clearly, still need to be liberated and realize that their manliness is not exclusively proven by their ability to seduce young women – they should move on to mature women!!!).  Just as are Snow White and the Evil Queen.  But attempting to retrieve the person we were at 20 is a chronic of a failure foretold… and can only lead to despair.  The Evil Queen is proof!  And putting all our worth in our looks is a second error that I’ll develop in next week’s blog.

The fact of the matter is that we owe it to ourselves, as individuals and as a species, to explore the full potential of each age and life-stage and, in this way, embrace the many dimensions of Being.

This is why, to make for a more durable societal scheme in the 21^st century, we need to clarify (and make, if so needed) roles for each, enabling older men and women to have a respectable and respected place in society.  In addition to the beauty of youth, maturity can and should have an appeal.   We must reshape our societal myth of beauty, charm, attraction, etc., to make it fuller and more extensive than simply an anti-age appearance.  It’s the only way to avoid having “being” reduced to being “young” (i.e. in one’s early 20s – which is also a problem for young girls and young teens). 

What is now needed is to foster conduits so that mature and aging adults’ contributions are recognized and valued… in order to induce a synergetic cycle that benefits each age and its valuable role.

We can begin by recalibrating our aims.  Currently, the way we are pursuing the Cult of Youth seems to be pushing us into incorporating mainly the negative aspects of youth:   

- effacing signs of wisdom, living, experience

- marginalizing memory and experience

- holding hostage our attention with nostalgia, however inaccurate it may be

- wasting our resources and energy on how many wrinkles we have (or could have one day) rather than living and thriving

- rigidifying ourselves to better resemble a 2-dimensional, taxidermic, still-life identity rather than embracing life as movement and evolution with ever more to discover

- giving into clannishness and identity appearance politics typical of adolescents who are copying instead of creating new paths thanks to the lives we have built… and the fruits of our experiences and travails

Instead, we should be trying to integrate the positive aspects of youth.  

After all, what actually constitutes “youthful” living?  Curiosity, liveliness, liberty, autonomy, eagerness, taking on new challenges, defying norms and trying out new playgrounds, being groundbreaking, audacity, excitement, innovativeness…  All characteristics that are potentially enhanced with age!

In reality, we need to age to be able to live young!  Instead of trying so desperately to reduce age to youth, we should be building youthfulness with age:

-     

- liberating our thoughts and wisdom, no longer beholden to adolescent conformity
- regenerating our brain acuity by continually learning new things, analyzed with due perspective
- confronting our ideas with others, including not like-minded people
- pursuing innovativeness which, as Regis Debray aptly put it, requires memory and experience
- being dynamic and constructive by activating our relativity & experience
- pioneering further as to how we want to live once our bodies are no longer as performing
- Expressing ourselves and living with passion now that we have shed the adolescent pitfalls of rejection, judgment, or alienation. “Living life out loud” as puts it Mike Robbins
- Revalue-ing as positive wisdom and experience, contemplation, analysis, etc. as a counterweight to today’s acceleration & superficiality

These shifts would enable us to move beyond performance society and embrace spherical rather than linear “then and than logic” so that we can actually build, at once, on our personal histories, desired future, current characteristics instead of trying desperately to efface them…  In short, we could actually benefit fully from “Being.”

In turn, this would enable us to actually welcome our human reality as growing beings who continually and renewably add and invest in their being through new experiences and perspectives… regardless of linearly quantitative “age”!

Let me know what you think, and stay tuned for another bite from the apple,

Eve