Reaction: Chivalry, Women, Excuse Me?

Late last week, I saw a shared link on the magical and mystical Facebook.  It's always interesting to see what people post or share--partially to get an insight into what others read and partially to see what's out there.  As we all know, the Internet is a vast and seemingly unlimited resource; so, sometimes you need other people to help you find worthy sites.  Before I digress too much,  I'll like to react to the shared link.

The article, an opinion piece, is posted on a side called Elite Daily.  The article is called, "Why Chivalry is Dead, From a Man's Perspective." I strongly encourage you to read the article as it will give you a better perspective of where I'm coming from.  It's a relatively short piece but I don't intend of summarizing it line by line. Instead, I'll summarize a few notions thrown out and go from there.  

First, I find it telling that the third comment posted about the article reads:

Article in a nutshell: "Man, I'm just trying to be a nice guy, but women these days are too busy being whores to appreciate me. Chivalry is dead!" Wait, wut?

A comment like that is disconcerting for an article; just an observation.  Summary of general main points: we live in a hookup culture and thus dating is done, people would be surprised what you could learn from others by going on actual dates and not just looking to bang, men aren't treating women the way they are supposed to be treated, we don't know how to communicate, girls only get with jerks, women are complacent, eventually women will wise up and ask for what they deserve, the author still enjoys meaningless sex but comes back to his core values.

I deep down think the author's intentions are innately good. I do, in fact, think he means well and is trying to grasp the day and age we live in while sticking to traditional values.  The problem is, though, he's just too off base for me.

I agree that communication is lacking in our world and we live in a hook up culture.  It is really hard to deny these points when they are staring us in the face on a daily basis--especially as a single individual. While dating isn't totally done, it seems more and more people are looking for a hookup as a means to facilitate a relationship rather than courting (besides internet "dating").  Also, communication is totally messed up with the droves of technology communicating for us today.  That's all fine and dandy.

He begins to lose me when he talks about women's complacency and how they merely get with jerks. Admittedly, I used to think that women just got with jerks; I guess part of me still does to some extent.  I think, rationally speaking, that's a really ignorant and naive stance, though.  For one, you can't justify grouping all women generically.  Secondly, I'd like to think that not all guys dating women are jerks.  Third, it feels like a copout to make such a claim.  I once heard an explanation that really stuck out to me about this "issue" from a woman's perspective.  Jerks are more confident in who they are and display that confidence; confidence is sexy.  Ergo, jerks are sexy.  Moreover, "good guys" often carry the stigma that they can't get with women because they aren't jerks and thus are lacking in confidence from the get go.  Many flaws exist within women only date jerks, but that's a subject for a different time.  The complacency is an issue that I'll couple with my biggest issue below.

He really loses me, and I think he loses sight of today's world, when he says that he believes women will wise up.  It seems to me that the complacency and the predicted "wising up" go hand in hand.  Again, I think this guy has good intentions at heart; I just don't think he thought this article through.  By calling women complacent and suggesting they need to wise up, the author is clearly ignoring feminism. DONE DONE DONE! Some people out there may not be overly familiar with feminism while others may not be for it in general.  I don't want to sit here and lecture anyone about the movement or debate it. The fact that this author and others need to realize is this: we aren't living in the same age as our mothers and grandmothers.  While we still have work to do, real progress towards equality is being made.  We don't live in an age where women are strictly housewives; we don't live in an age where women are strictly under educated; we don't live in an age where women are strictly powerless. I question if the author has ever thought that maybe women don't necessarily want what they "deserve." As a "man," I'd question if he considers it complacency for a man to let a woman pay for his dinner.

Chivalry isn't dead, it's adapting (or at least it should be).  As the time shifts so too must our definition.  I'll be honest, I'm someone who looks to pay for dinner, wants to buy flowers, hold doors, etc.  I'm not someone, though, who wants to force it down someone's throat to so they get what they deserve.  It boggles my mind to think that people still believe you HAVE to pay for dinner as a man--I'd venture to say some of these complacent women may carry the same confusion.  Dude, it's okay for a girl to take you out; it's okay for a girl to hold the door for you; it's okay to have her send you a gift (maybe not flowers!).  It's okay for there to be a certain give and take--an equality--between the partnership.

I couldn't help but laugh when the author's second to last paragraph concluded by mentioning (not long after saying booty calls were cool with him):

I’m not looking for a girlfriend, nor am I looking for a wife. If I take you out to a nice dinner, it’s because I’m a nice guy, and I am looking forward to spending time with you somewhere other than the bedroom.

He talks about the loss of chivalry and this trueness of relationships, but doesn't even want a relationship himself.  It's a little sketchy to me and seems to poke holes in his article's logical flow.  Do guys take their friends out to nice dinners just to spend time with them?

I know my arguments and rebuttals aren't as drawn out and matured as they could be, but I hope my message is simple.  It's cool to want to treat women nicely, but I think we need to understand, truly understand, where we stand today. I just feel like there is a better way to rejuvenate chivalry without having women wise up.

 

Best Practices: Acknowledging Failure

Of the various tasks I accomplish at work, one is sending a daily email that briefly sums up some positive, useful news that's easily consumable to the majority of folks in my building and some others around the country.  One item we encourage others to share is best practices--these practices could be useable for sales, meetings, projects, etc.  The point being: if you have something that works, share it.

When I joined my current team, they had been sending out a tri-weekly newsletter passing on somewhat similar information to the same people.  The problem was that they found nobody really read it.  Consistent with our fast paced, short attention span society, people simply didn't want to take the time to read the newsletter.  Initially, it my task was to carry on this newsletter's production; however, before my first week ended that task was nixed.  This decision to discontinue the struggling newsletter brought forth two very important results.  First, the birth of our email, which has been cherished and read by nearly all of the recipients (we constantly get very positive feedback).  Second, and arguably more important, the best practice of acknowledging failure and moving on materialized as well.  We decided it should be a mantra of our team: Don't be afraid to acknowledge that something isn't working.  As my boss has said, sometimes stopping something is just as important as starting something.

I propose that this "best practice" should be utilized both in work and in life.  Too many times, we lost sight of what's not working.  We might be always look for ways to improve ourselves--mainly through additions.  We want to learn a language, take a class, exercise more, etc.  Problematically, we too often neglect the dead weight we're carrying around.  If we could learn to rid ourselves of this dead weight, think of the possibilities!

I think the most obvious reason we choose to be oblivious when recognizing our failures is pride.  We are so caught up with maintaining as certain sense of pride, we can lose sight of what's right in front of us.  Problematically, we tend to carry a heavily negative connotation with failure.  Obviously, we shouldn't be striving for failure, but it'd be foolish to think failure can be evaded.  Thus, it'd be advantageous for us, rather, to pick out our own failure and move on.  If we can pick out failures then we can improve as people.  It's not a matter of simply saying, "Okay, I've failed," and moving on.  No, that leads to nothing positive (instead you'll keep repeating the same mistakes).  To truly allow a positive manifestation to arise out of our failures we must learn and move on.  Then, instead of constantly failing we improve on mistakes and get better.

Dealing with failure can be tricky.  If you ignore it, it will continue to drag you down knowingly or unknowingly; on the other hand, if you do admit it and use it as an excuse, or blindly move on, it will equally drag you down.  The type of adaptation and attention needed to utilize failure in our favor is what has kept progress going.  I truly believe successful people have mastered (mostly) this concept.

At the end of the day, life isn't going to work out the way we hope.  Our decisions aren't always going to strike gold.  We aren't going to be the best we can be.  It's the volatility of life.  In our relationships, our work ethic, our education, our careers, etc we are bound to fail.  Will you allow that to weigh you down to incorrigible depths or will you cut it off to ensure perpetual buoyancy? It's a best practice worth sharing.

Robert 

Nature, Nurture, and a Third Party

I continually try to be provocative with my posts as I continue to cover a variety of different topics.  I want people to think, question, ask, etc.  It must be the Jesuit education I've received for eight years though I seemed to have always been one to question.  I'm going to continue to ask for your opinion as I write these posts.  I know people are reading these (I see the views).  This blog is a sounding board with the intent of inspiring.  As I've repeatedly said, I have many thoughts that inhabit my mind.  Some of these thoughts are right (depending how you define right) while others aren't so right.  Anywho...

I'd like to bring up something that has been bugging me for quite some time.  To be honest,  I originally planned on writing about this topic for my second or third post way back when. I've finally decided to throw it out there.  Following the trend of my recent posts, I'm going to try and keep this thought relatively brief and concise.  I will try to avoid verbosity as I want to make the point, offer some insight, and then ask you to think.

Nature vs. Nature

I'm not sure about you, but I know especially since high school the nature/nurture debate has been brought up a ton, especially in classes.  For a long time, it seems, people have been debating whether one plays a larger role in the growth of an individual than the other.  Many arguments have been made, many theories have percolated, and much progress has been made.  I think it's relatively safe to say that generally speaking people today mostly agree that it's a pretty even contribution.  As with many things, we don't have a quantifiable test to determine the true value, but through observations it seems pretty evident both nature and nurture play a role in shaping an individual.  It's hard to argue one really plays a  more pertinent role than the other; however, I think on individual bases one could argue for nature over nurture or vice versa.

That's all fine and dandy, and I'm glad we can generally agree especially since we can't seem to agree on much these days.  I'd like to offer a third player in the shaping of a person.  Maybe not so much the shaping, but the trajectory of an individual's life.  What compiles their being, if you will.  When considering an individual and what happens in his or her life, I posit free will must be taken into consideration.  Free will might not be the best diction--maybe I'm think more about will, determination, etc.  I'm going to stick with free will, though, until I can think of something better or you can give me something better (see what I just did there?). 

So...

This addition to the equation is somewhat tricky.  Free will/will/determination sounds like something that would fall into the category of nature as it is stems from (presumable) our biological makeup rather than our surroundings.  True, very true.  I'd like you to keep an open mind though and view it as a separate entity.  

Two examples:

My brother, sister, and myself have the same parents and grew up facing similar circumstances.  Yet, our paths are all different.  We are all driven by different things; we all have our own ambitions.  Some things my siblings do make me scratch my head as I'm sure they feel the same way about me.  We have (basically) the same genetic makeup and nurture.  You could argue that our difference in drive/personality (I supposed) comes from slight alterations in genetics.  That could very well be true, but I just don't buy it.  We each exhibit personality traits similar to our parents and at the same time we exhibit non-similar traits as well.

I also can't help but consider this free will when considering really successful people who came from nothing or those who come from everything and end up with nothing.  It's hard to argue against the power of will when consider someone who is born into a family with a history of poverty and comes out on top. Numerous examples exist but look at someone like Jay Z.  I don't care what you think of the guy's art, he made himself into something purely by willing it and now he runs so much.  It's incredible.  Conversely, there are innumerable celebrity or even non-celebrity kids who come are born into great situations yet fail to do anything with their lives.  Yes, just because you have a crappy home life or rich parents won't dictate your childhood to be one way or another.  I'm just saying it's hard to deny these scenarios and their outcomes when there are equally as many that follow the suit you'd suspect.

To wrap this post up shortly, I guess I'm just saying we are all faced with multiple forks in the roads in our lives.  I feel like our nature/nurture gives us the tools but it's up to us to choose the road.  If you are determined to undermine your circumstances, I really think you can (positively or negatively).  I just feel at some point we ought to take more responsibility of our actions and our beings, and make more conscious decisions or accept them at face value.  Will you find the determination to make your life how you want?