Ok, I may have gotten a bit ahead of myself by ending the last post saying “the future looks feminine.” In the aftermath of reading that book I was in a partial state of reverie that heavily colored my language, but then again I don’t even think I asserted much of anything in the last blog. A friend of mine pointed out that after reading it, she still had no idea what feminine mystique even meant. Did I know what it meant? What the hell was I talking about?

I’ll start this blog off by clarifying a few things. I’ve had a week to settle myself down and bring that topic back to reality, and I think I can place it within an interesting context. First off, I didn’t mean that in striving for femininity, masculinity is going to die. I’m pretty damn sure this would not be the end of shooting competitions, all-terrain trucks, MMA, or whatever else is commonly associated with badass masculine activity.  In fact, I think positive male attributes will be greatly enhanced in the process, but that’s probably a topic for another day.

Secondly, the masculine order is a crucial balancing force in relation to the feminine mystique. While, at least in my conception, the feminine mystique is elusive and seductive, the masculine order is concrete and rational. It makes a lot more sense (in the traditional sense). Especially in Western society, rational methodologies and scientific possibilities are praised and raised up to God-like status. This way of approaching the world slices reality up into discrete, measurable quantities in the attempt to fully understand how things work and to control them. You can pick the framework to do this (I’d highly recommend Metric instead of Imperial… the US is stupid) and pick the method that is suitable for the application (Newtonian physics, quantum mechanics, statistics, chemistry, biology, etc). Associating these concepts and forces with the masculine order reinforces the idea that it is heavily (if not overly) represented in the prevailing view and structuring of Western society.

Finally, the masculine order as it exists now is not complete. It isn’t difficult to look around and see various structural issues that stem from solidified patterns of belief. They may have been useful at some point in history, but certain ideas we have definitely held onto longer than we probably should have. Our bipartisan political structure, campaign finance, gerrymandering, central banks, and education are just a few realities that could use some nice updates. We get freaking updates of the iPhone constantly; why not update structures that could benefit people in ways that matter?

For example, I was just talking to my aunt and grandma this morning about issues we are currently having with the IRS. Basically, somebody (or some automated computer software) messed up and determined that my grandma is dead. We called them yesterday to clear up this misunderstanding, but the government employee insisted that they verify the identity of my grandmother. That makes sense; identity theft prevention and other security protocols should be in place to keep the system working effectively. To prove her identity, my grandmother had to provide her social security number and verify other numbers from her previous income tax statements. Considering she hasn’t done her own income taxes her entire life, English is not her first language, and shes 87 years old, she needed some help from my aunt and uncle to figure out where these numbers were. The IRS dude wasn’t having any of that. His protocol insisted that she do this herself, and eventually we needed to go through an entirely different process to verify the help she needed, which later led to the confirmation that she is indeed alive. Both parties were not in a good mood after the call, and now we have to submit another income tax statement. Hooray… Don’t even get us started on the Social Security fiasco a couple years ago.

It’s obvious that various systems need updates, but how to go about doing that is much less clear. Instead, we’ve come up with several excuses for why we shouldn’t go too far down that path. One excuse is that we’ve been doing it this way for so long and it works more or less, so why fix it. Another excuse is that the system is too complex and large that we can’t fix it. Or, if we want to get into deeper matters, we can use the excuse that this is human nature and we couldn’t do anything even if we wanted to.

This is where the feminine mystique comes in. I didn’t elaborate on the idea too much because I genuinely don’t know what it would look like. It’s never been fully incorporated into Western society. In my estimation, it’s not even close to it’s full potential. Other civilizations have more pronounced feminine qualities like Latin America and Japan, but I can only imagine the profound synthesis that could occur if we mix those ideas with our Western productions in a balanced manner.

To bring this even closer to my own reality, I started fixing up my grandma’s backyard. The grass has patches of dead, dry dirt that look pretty ugly. I’ve pulled weeds, trimmed bushes, and mowed the lawn before, but I wanted to try something different. I vaguely knew that plants need sun, water, and soil to grow, but it was clear that something was not adding up. The soil was crap and wasn’t absorbing the water. To essentially turn the dirt into soil, I found a gardening tool in the shed, beat up the ground with it, and broke up the dirt clods/dead grass into smaller pieces with my hands. I watered it yesterday morning, and today the soil is still moist even though it has been hot and sunny. Scientific inquiry: will the grass grow?