| Powerful Ideas, Practical Actions |
November 2012 |
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 The Hazards of Manhood
by Michael Schwalbe
Most American men know perfectly well the qualities they must display to be considered fully creditable as men: power, competitiveness, and toughness. This turns out to be enormously useful for generating profit. Just give men opportunities to display manhood in these ways and they’ll do things that add to the bottom line, even if it’s to their own detriment.
But this kind of manhood striving is driven by a contradiction: To be a real man in U.S. society, one must have or display power—the capacity to exert control over one’s self and the surrounding world—but the fact is that most men in a capitalist society have little or no power. For most men, striving for manhood status is an attempt to evade this contradiction, to escape the psychic pain it causes.
Teaching males to seek feelings of worth through displays of power, toughness, and competitiveness turns male bodies into readily exploitable generators of profit. Every year, thousands of men quietly work themselves to exhaustion, bad health, and premature death. Or they take risks and suffer fatal workplace injuries.
If we want to stop paying these costs, we will need to take at least two kinds of action.
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| More from the Fall issue of YES! Magazine …
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 Traditional Foods Help Remind Us Who We Are
by Kim Eckart
Valerie Segrest was berry picking on Mount Rainier—a part of maintaining the meadows—with her fellow Muckleshoot tribal members, sampling in search of the sweetest patch. She stared at the mountain, experiencing an it-looks-so-good-I-could-eat-it moment: She realized, “I was tasting the mountain, in a way.”
That epiphany helped inspire her to work with Northwest tribes to promote the importance of local foods and cultural practices. That means encouraging people to eat seasonally—nettles in spring, for instance, and berries in summer—and to make the effort to gather food in the wild.
Segrest’s classes on finding, preparing, and storing Native foods fill up fast. But it’s the connection to the past, and the sense of community in the present, that she is most proud of.
READ MORE :: PLUS A RECIPE FOR NETTLE LEMONADE, A MUCKLESHOOT FAVORITE
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VIDEO
The Power of Introverts
Does society favor extroverts over introverts? Social psychologist Susan Cain takes us into an introvert’s world and shares why being quiet and contemplative should be celebrated.
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