Resolve to make yourself a better man somehow,
with good hope of success,
or don’t bother
(c) 2018, Davd
Why not resolve something really brave? Why resolve anything at all? Both of those are fair questions.
How far off the truth, is the stereotypical image of a man waking up around noon, maybe somewhat later, with a painful hangover, and resolving to eat, or drink, much, much, much less than he did last night?1. (When the stereotypical image is always of a man, that’s one error: Don’t women have bad mornings-after?2) How far off it is, differs from one man to another, of course; if it applies to you, my first advice is to sober up and have a good breakfast before you make any resolution more elaborate than — to sober up and have a good breakfast.
If you wake up New Year’s Day at least half sober, and have a good breakfast — that’s a good start.
This is not the first December I’ve written a blog on this topic, because late every December, many men who tend to keep their lives in order, start thinking about New Year’s Resolutions; and on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day, many other men (who may not to keep their lives in order), scramble to make one or more New Year’s Resolutions either because they’ve somehow been taught they ought to, or because somebody is pressuring them to.
Many other men deliberately don’t make New Year’s Resolutions; and many other men, don’t bother. Both choices are OK. It’s also OK to make New Year’s Resolutions—if making them seems to you, to be a good way to make changes you want to make.
This is important, so i’ll repeat it “in other words”: If you do choose to make one or more New Year’s Resolutions, make them yours. Making them is voluntary, and optional: You don’t need to make New Year’s Resolutions. And if a “resolution” is not expressing your personal philosophy of life, it is really not yours—it is somebody else’s resolution imposed on you.
Before i write about some resolutions worth making, let me offer some encouragement to men who might, quite rightly, decide not to make any New Year’s Resolutions this winter. When in doubt, don’t is good advice for many situations calling for choice… including making New Year’s Resolutions. It’s especially good advice against standard “resolutions” that are usually not kept.
A common, stereotypical experience, if you are overweight, is people pressuring you to resolve to decrease that weight. If you “go along”, that’s not a resolution, it’s a resignation. If the person putting on the weight loss pressure is your Mother, or your wife, or anyone who cooks your food—then rather than resolve to lose weight, you can negotiate about what they cook for you, instead3—and there are better ways to lose weight than “dieting,” as we shall see.
That stereotypical post-holiday resolution, “to lose weight”, is worthwhile:
‣ if you want to weigh less badly enough, to plan how you will lose that weight; and
‣ if you can then make or locate a plan that you believe you can keep and will indeed lower your weight.
Those done, it’s a real resolution. (I “want to lose some weight” in 2019, but I’m not making that a resolution. I don’t have a plan standing by, that i believe i can both comfortably and safely keep, and rely on4.)
Resolving to lose weight is especially likely to be futile, recent research seems to show, and so it’s a resolution i suggest you don’t make. Rather, i suggest you resolve to keep an active lifestyle. That might lead to a lower weight; and if not, it is almost certain to make you a healthier fat man.
That example can set a tone of sorts for this year’s New Year’s Resolutions blog: Make a resolution you want to keep, if you make one at all; and plan how to keep it. If anyone, of any age and any gender, nags you to make a resolution you don’t want to keep, or don’t have a good plan for keeping, I suggest you ask that person[s] to cite the laws and regulations they are demanding you obey. That’s a polite way to say “I might indeed obey the law, if the law requires … otherwise, shut up.”
What sorts of resolutions might be worth keeping? Why, resolutions that make a better man of you. Weighing less might qualify — if you are fat now, and can get your weight down comfortably (or at least, with little or no suffering) and keep it down. Most civilized people, men and women, who tried this century have failed. So if a healthier life is a goal of yours, plan carefully and bias your efforts toward outdoor exercise5.
Doing push-ups, or other upper body strength exercises, seems to have good effects on your brain as well as on your arms and shoulders. (Gardening with hand tools qualifies in season… but in Alberta’s climate, New Year’s is not part of that season. Maybe hand snow shoveling will help; but to be sure, i do push-ups in the morning.) For other health enhancing efforts, take a look at the medical advice you’ve received this decade; because different men have different health profiles.
You might aspire to become a morally better man, as well as a healthier one. Three moral resolutions that ought to be normal, but are anomalies in this wicked world, are [in alphabetic order]: Chastity, Frugality, and Truth.
Chastity, a traditional Christian virtue, includes abstinence from sexual display as well as from sexual actions outside marriage.6 If chastity were the norm governing public appearance and behaviour, I contend, sexual harassment would be very rare; and people would get more useful work done. As you have probably noticed, though, it’s not the norm. The very word chastity connotes needless, prudish self restraint to most secular citizens of “the West.”
Chastity conflicts with the sexual license and sexualized identity values of the past few decades. However, sex, like DDT and sloppy computer code, is cheap in the short term7 and expensive in the long run. There really is a need for, a great benefit to be enjoyed from, chastity.
Consider, for instance, the cost of treating HIV and AIDS. Then, since other sexually transmitted diseases exist, consider the costs they entail, and add those on. Consider and add further, the cost of abortions, the great majority of which kill fetuses conceived by intercourse outside marriage. You could even add on the cost of cosmetics…
There are costs not measured in money, and seldom expressed that way: Conflict is one, or perhaps more than one: Rivalry for attractive sexual partners can contaminate workplaces, including schools.
Distraction from work and learning is another cost, distinct from conflict. This ought to be obvious; but since so many schools and workplaces tolerate sexuality display, it might do to quote Lesbian columnist Norah Vincent quoting Jim, one of the men with whom she bowled,, about his office job:
I can work with an ugly chick. There’s an ugly chick
works in my office with me every day and I’m fine. But every now and
then there’s this hot, hot woman who comes into the office, and for
the whole time she’s there I’m completely f[….]d. Everything’s out
the window. I don’t get s[…] done. All I can do is stare at her
like this …
he made a dumbfounded expression”. [Vincent, 2006: 35]
(Readers are invited to write in with further examples of the non-monetary costs of “unchastity”… meanwhile, methinks the point be made and the blog be getting long.)
Frugality is the virtue of making the most and best one can, of limited means; or conversely, of achieving our needs and some of our wants as efficiently as we can. We associate frugality especially with the Scots. It tends to be praised by those who know our means are limited, and scorned by those who are rich or want to pretend they are.
Frugality is obviously a good thing, since waste is obviously a bad thing. Still, its connotation has often been negative recently, because the need for frugality has been shamed by “advocates of prosperity”. The prosperity is phony by now, for most of us, or at least exaggerated: Prices and especially subsistence prices have gone up more rapidly this century, than wages.8
Frugality conflicts with the materialistic identity ideals of the past century or longer. (You could make a case for materialism being an ideal at least since money became a common medium of trade.9) To most Canadians and “Americans” living today, materialism has been an identity value all their lives (meaning for the great majority, since the end of “World War II”.)
(Frivolity is a kind of waste: An excellent meal fully enjoyed is not frivolous [though a diet of nothing but gourmet food would become frivolous because the palate would cease to fully appreciate] while a handful of cheap chocolate when an apple would have satisfied as much and was available, is. 4-wheel-drive is frivolous tearing up the logging roads “for the Hell of it” and frugal pulling a trailer down those same roads [where 2-wheel drive would do more damage and perhaps get stuck].)
If frugality appeals to you, consider making it a foundation of your New Year’s Resolution[s]. If having more money left after paying bills and shopping, if having more for your money, appeal to you … frugality ought to appeal to you also.
Truth should need no definition. A distinction ought to be made, though, between mistakes and lies. Neither mistakes nor lies are good — but lies are worse, qualitatively worse. In the Christian “New Testament”, two liars are struck dead without mercy. Nothing I have noticed in Christian tradition condemns mistakes — they are to be repented and forgiven.
Science, as a crescive co-operative search for truth, expects and gradually, systematically, logically and factually searches out and corrects mistakes. Lies — deliberate presentation of falsehood as factually true — are poison to science, and science is one part even of modern [or you might call it post-modern] life where lying is shameful and liars are vigorously shamed. Truth is an essential foundation for science and engineering… which in turn are essential foundation for industry.
So who would be so mean as to subvert truth? Millions of people who are not scientists, nor engineers [architects, etc.] and benefit from falsehood in the short term.
Truth conflicts with Nice Manners, Political Correctness, and often with the Profit Motive. People lie, people distort their perceptions and their memories, to be Nice, to be Politically Correct, and as various sales and marketing scandals remind us from time to time, to “make money”.
Resolving to discipline your thinking to avoid mistakes, and your utterance to avoid lies, is arguably the most virtuous resolution you can make — because the practically valuable work of any society, any group, depends on accurate knowledge.
I do encourage you to resolve to be chaste, frugal, and truthful to the best of your ability — and to gradually work to improve “the best of your ability” upward. If you do, you’ll be a paragon relative to these sloppy self-indulgent times. If you don’t, you might shame yourself relative to your best ideals — but need not feel much shame relative to a wicked World.
Short of those three great virtuous resolutions-in-general, you might resolve modesty10 (as i recommended last New Year’s), to eat only local food, to do only work you enjoy, to improve a skill or your knowledge of a language… there are obviously many other possibilities. Choose a resolution, if you make one, that appeals to you …
… and makes you a better man.
References:
Nathanson, Paul, and Katherine K. Young, 2006. Legalizing Misandry: From Public Shame to Systemic Discrimination against Men Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Reviewed here
Vincent, Norah, 2006. Self Made Man : One Woman’s Year Disguised as a Man. New York: Viking Penguin. (Now there’s an incongruous beast!)
Wells, H. G. 1920: The Outline of History: The Whole Story of Man. New York: Macmillan. Cited in the Project Gutenberg Ebook edition, 2014.
Notes:
1. There are many such men and an equal or larger fraction of women, who ought to quit drinking alcoholic beverages, as soon as possible, most of them for life. They include people who cannot digest alcohol as most Euro-Canadians can, [not all of whom are native North Americans]; plus those we usually call alcoholics, who can digest alcohol but not discipline their intake.
2. I am sure women do; and after reading men’s websites for seven years plus, i am persuaded that many of those women will blame a man for their suffering — and often, quite unfairly. Misandry is far more common than misogyny as 2018 ends and 2019 begins, and important context for some possible resolutions, such as chastity.
3. I myself might offer to do most of the cooking, in exchange for her doing chores I enjoy a lot less. This only works if you like to cook.
4. Recent research seems to show that dieting is almost always a failure—the weight lost is gained back within a few years if not months.
5. Personally, I would not enjoy the workout machinery approach. My best health promoting influence is a Husky-Labrador dog named Fritz, who wants to get out and exercise for the joy of it — and takes me along. My second and third best influences are a love of gardening, and the food it grows.
6. There may be some ambiguity in usage, as to whether married [wo]men may be called “chaste”; many men and women monastics often take “vows of chastity” that entail complete abstinence from sexuality. In most usages, it seems, married people who are sexually active only with one another are called “chaste”; and some writers use “celibate” to refer to nearly anyone who is not cohabiting with a sexual partner.
7. “Sex itself”: Kissing, fondling, intercourse, (and i won’t try to name the esoteric variations that have filched the rainbow from Noah’s Ark and put it on BC Ferries) costs very little. “Sexy” clothing and cosmetics can become expensive; but most of the spending is either conformity to misguided popular usage, or an attempt to be sexually “hotter” than one naturally is. Chastity would make those expenses as needless as the treatment of the Sexually Transmitted Diseases, whose transmission chastity prevents.
As for sloppy computer code, an old programming maxim reads: “If carpenters built buildings the way programmers write software, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization as we know it.”
8. Consider the prices of belts, broccoli, haircuts, ramen noodles, shrimp, T-shirts, .. you get the idea. Consider “Dollarama” stores, which now sell very few goods for as little as a dollar. In 2006, when I discovered them on moving from a region where they had not yet located to a region where they were established, everything they sold cost a dollar or less. Today, my recent observations tell me, those same goods cost 2-5 times that much.
9. Comparing the Christian Gospels with the Hebrew Scriptures [which Christians call “the Old Testament], the Hebrew Scriptures are visibly more approving of earthly, material wealth. It is my impression that Islam adopted the Hebrew view (no great surprise, since Islam reveres the Hebrew but not the Christian Scriptures), while Buddhism, arising from different roots, values simplicity. Buddhism and Christianity being both ancient (Wells, 1920, Chronology) and the Hebrew Tradition and money being more ancient, “the issue seems to be” when materialism became a widespread identity ideal. One might name the Industrial Revolution as the beginning of materialism as a common ideal outside the Ruling Class; it seems obvious that it has been one ideal of a majority of Europeans and North Americans since World War II.
10. I would recommend modesty much more vehemently, except I realize that most men i know, are relatively modest already; and that resolving modesty is a demanding undertaking for a majority [at least, a very large minority] of women while for most men, it’s resolving to keep a virtue we have.
New Year’s Resolutions 2019:
Resolve to make yourself a better man somehow,
with good hope of success,
or don’t bother
(c) 2018, Davd
Why not resolve something really brave? Why resolve anything at all? Both of those are fair questions.
How far off the truth, is the stereotypical image of a man waking up around noon, maybe somewhat later, with a painful hangover, and resolving to eat, or drink, much, much, much less than he did last night?1. (When the stereotypical image is always of a man, that’s one error: Don’t women have bad mornings-after?2) How far off it is, differs from one man to another, of course; if it applies to you, my first advice is to sober up and have a good breakfast before you make any resolution more elaborate than — to sober up and have a good breakfast.
If you wake up New Year’s Day at least half sober, and have a good breakfast — that’s a good start.
This is not the first December I’ve written a blog on this topic, because late every December, many men who tend to keep their lives in order, start thinking about New Year’s Resolutions; and on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day, many other men (who may not to keep their lives in order), scramble to make one or more New Year’s Resolutions either because they’ve somehow been taught they ought to, or because somebody is pressuring them to.
Many other men deliberately don’t make New Year’s Resolutions; and many other men, don’t bother. Both choices are OK. It’s also OK to make New Year’s Resolutions—if making them seems to you, to be a good way to make changes you want to make.
This is important, so i’ll repeat it “in other words”: If you do choose to make one or more New Year’s Resolutions, make them yours. Making them is voluntary, and optional: You don’t need to make New Year’s Resolutions. And if a “resolution” is not expressing your personal philosophy of life, it is really not yours—it is somebody else’s resolution imposed on you.
Before i write about some resolutions worth making, let me offer some encouragement to men who might, quite rightly, decide not to make any New Year’s Resolutions this winter. When in doubt, don’t is good advice for many situations calling for choice… including making New Year’s Resolutions. It’s especially good advice against standard “resolutions” that are usually not kept.
A common, stereotypical experience, if you are overweight, is people pressuring you to resolve to decrease that weight. If you “go along”, that’s not a resolution, it’s a resignation. If the person putting on the weight loss pressure is your Mother, or your wife, or anyone who cooks your food—then rather than resolve to lose weight, you can negotiate about what they cook for you, instead3—and there are better ways to lose weight than “dieting,” as we shall see.
That stereotypical post-holiday resolution, “to lose weight”, is worthwhile:
‣ if you want to weigh less badly enough, to plan how you will lose that weight; and
‣ if you can then make or locate a plan that you believe you can keep and will indeed lower your weight.
Those done, it’s a real resolution. (I “want to lose some weight” in 2019, but I’m not making that a resolution. I don’t have a plan standing by, that i believe i can both comfortably and safely keep, and rely on4.)
Resolving to lose weight is especially likely to be futile, recent research seems to show, and so it’s a resolution i suggest you don’t make. Rather, i suggest you resolve to keep an active lifestyle. That might lead to a lower weight; and if not, it is almost certain to make you a healthier fat man.
That example can set a tone of sorts for this year’s New Year’s Resolutions blog: Make a resolution you want to keep, if you make one at all; and plan how to keep it. If anyone, of any age and any gender, nags you to make a resolution you don’t want to keep, or don’t have a good plan for keeping, I suggest you ask that person[s] to cite the laws and regulations they are demanding you obey. That’s a polite way to say “I might indeed obey the law, if the law requires … otherwise, shut up.”
What sorts of resolutions might be worth keeping? Why, resolutions that make a better man of you. Weighing less might qualify — if you are fat now, and can get your weight down comfortably (or at least, with little or no suffering) and keep it down. Most civilized people, men and women, who tried this century have failed. So if a healthier life is a goal of yours, plan carefully and bias your efforts toward outdoor exercise5.
Doing push-ups, or other upper body strength exercises, seems to have good effects on your brain as well as on your arms and shoulders. (Gardening with hand tools qualifies in season… but in Alberta’s climate, New Year’s is not part of that season. Maybe hand snow shoveling will help; but to be sure, i do push-ups in the morning.) For other health enhancing efforts, take a look at the medical advice you’ve received this decade; because different men have different health profiles.
You might aspire to become a morally better man, as well as a healthier one. Three moral resolutions that ought to be normal, but are anomalies in this wicked world, are [in alphabetic order]: Chastity, Frugality, and Truth.
Chastity, a traditional Christian virtue, includes abstinence from sexual display as well as from sexual actions outside marriage.6 If chastity were the norm governing public appearance and behaviour, I contend, sexual harassment would be very rare; and people would get more useful work done. As you have probably noticed, though, it’s not the norm. The very word chastity connotes needless, prudish self restraint to most secular citizens of “the West.”
Chastity conflicts with the sexual license and sexualized identity values of the past few decades. However, sex, like DDT and sloppy computer code, is cheap in the short term7 and expensive in the long run. There really is a need for, a great benefit to be enjoyed from, chastity.
Consider, for instance, the cost of treating HIV and AIDS. Then, since other sexually transmitted diseases exist, consider the costs they entail, and add those on. Consider and add further, the cost of abortions, the great majority of which kill fetuses conceived by intercourse outside marriage. You could even add on the cost of cosmetics…
There are costs not measured in money, and seldom expressed that way: Conflict is one, or perhaps more than one: Rivalry for attractive sexual partners can contaminate workplaces, including schools.
Distraction from work and learning is another cost, distinct from conflict. This ought to be obvious; but since so many schools and workplaces tolerate sexuality display, it might do to quote Lesbian columnist Norah Vincent quoting Jim, one of the men with whom she bowled,, about his office job:
he made a dumbfounded expression”. [Vincent, 2006: 35]
(Readers are invited to write in with further examples of the non-monetary costs of “unchastity”… meanwhile, methinks the point be made and the blog be getting long.)
Frugality is the virtue of making the most and best one can, of limited means; or conversely, of achieving our needs and some of our wants as efficiently as we can. We associate frugality especially with the Scots. It tends to be praised by those who know our means are limited, and scorned by those who are rich or want to pretend they are.
Frugality is obviously a good thing, since waste is obviously a bad thing. Still, its connotation has often been negative recently, because the need for frugality has been shamed by “advocates of prosperity”. The prosperity is phony by now, for most of us, or at least exaggerated: Prices and especially subsistence prices have gone up more rapidly this century, than wages.8
Frugality conflicts with the materialistic identity ideals of the past century or longer. (You could make a case for materialism being an ideal at least since money became a common medium of trade.9) To most Canadians and “Americans” living today, materialism has been an identity value all their lives (meaning for the great majority, since the end of “World War II”.)
(Frivolity is a kind of waste: An excellent meal fully enjoyed is not frivolous [though a diet of nothing but gourmet food would become frivolous because the palate would cease to fully appreciate] while a handful of cheap chocolate when an apple would have satisfied as much and was available, is. 4-wheel-drive is frivolous tearing up the logging roads “for the Hell of it” and frugal pulling a trailer down those same roads [where 2-wheel drive would do more damage and perhaps get stuck].)
If frugality appeals to you, consider making it a foundation of your New Year’s Resolution[s]. If having more money left after paying bills and shopping, if having more for your money, appeal to you … frugality ought to appeal to you also.
Truth should need no definition. A distinction ought to be made, though, between mistakes and lies. Neither mistakes nor lies are good — but lies are worse, qualitatively worse. In the Christian “New Testament”, two liars are struck dead without mercy. Nothing I have noticed in Christian tradition condemns mistakes — they are to be repented and forgiven.
Science, as a crescive co-operative search for truth, expects and gradually, systematically, logically and factually searches out and corrects mistakes. Lies — deliberate presentation of falsehood as factually true — are poison to science, and science is one part even of modern [or you might call it post-modern] life where lying is shameful and liars are vigorously shamed. Truth is an essential foundation for science and engineering… which in turn are essential foundation for industry.
So who would be so mean as to subvert truth? Millions of people who are not scientists, nor engineers [architects, etc.] and benefit from falsehood in the short term.
Truth conflicts with Nice Manners, Political Correctness, and often with the Profit Motive. People lie, people distort their perceptions and their memories, to be Nice, to be Politically Correct, and as various sales and marketing scandals remind us from time to time, to “make money”.
Resolving to discipline your thinking to avoid mistakes, and your utterance to avoid lies, is arguably the most virtuous resolution you can make — because the practically valuable work of any society, any group, depends on accurate knowledge.
I do encourage you to resolve to be chaste, frugal, and truthful to the best of your ability — and to gradually work to improve “the best of your ability” upward. If you do, you’ll be a paragon relative to these sloppy self-indulgent times. If you don’t, you might shame yourself relative to your best ideals — but need not feel much shame relative to a wicked World.
Short of those three great virtuous resolutions-in-general, you might resolve modesty10 (as i recommended last New Year’s), to eat only local food, to do only work you enjoy, to improve a skill or your knowledge of a language… there are obviously many other possibilities. Choose a resolution, if you make one, that appeals to you …
… and makes you a better man.
References:
Nathanson, Paul, and Katherine K. Young, 2006. Legalizing Misandry: From Public Shame to Systemic Discrimination against Men Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Reviewed here
Vincent, Norah, 2006. Self Made Man : One Woman’s Year Disguised as a Man. New York: Viking Penguin. (Now there’s an incongruous beast!)
Wells, H. G. 1920: The Outline of History: The Whole Story of Man. New York: Macmillan. Cited in the Project Gutenberg Ebook edition, 2014.
Notes:
1. There are many such men and an equal or larger fraction of women, who ought to quit drinking alcoholic beverages, as soon as possible, most of them for life. They include people who cannot digest alcohol as most Euro-Canadians can, [not all of whom are native North Americans]; plus those we usually call alcoholics, who can digest alcohol but not discipline their intake.
2. I am sure women do; and after reading men’s websites for seven years plus, i am persuaded that many of those women will blame a man for their suffering — and often, quite unfairly. Misandry is far more common than misogyny as 2018 ends and 2019 begins, and important context for some possible resolutions, such as chastity.
3. I myself might offer to do most of the cooking, in exchange for her doing chores I enjoy a lot less. This only works if you like to cook.
4. Recent research seems to show that dieting is almost always a failure—the weight lost is gained back within a few years if not months.
5. Personally, I would not enjoy the workout machinery approach. My best health promoting influence is a Husky-Labrador dog named Fritz, who wants to get out and exercise for the joy of it — and takes me along. My second and third best influences are a love of gardening, and the food it grows.
6. There may be some ambiguity in usage, as to whether married [wo]men may be called “chaste”; many men and women monastics often take “vows of chastity” that entail complete abstinence from sexuality. In most usages, it seems, married people who are sexually active only with one another are called “chaste”; and some writers use “celibate” to refer to nearly anyone who is not cohabiting with a sexual partner.
7. “Sex itself”: Kissing, fondling, intercourse, (and i won’t try to name the esoteric variations that have filched the rainbow from Noah’s Ark and put it on BC Ferries) costs very little. “Sexy” clothing and cosmetics can become expensive; but most of the spending is either conformity to misguided popular usage, or an attempt to be sexually “hotter” than one naturally is. Chastity would make those expenses as needless as the treatment of the Sexually Transmitted Diseases, whose transmission chastity prevents.
As for sloppy computer code, an old programming maxim reads: “If carpenters built buildings the way programmers write software, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization as we know it.”
8. Consider the prices of belts, broccoli, haircuts, ramen noodles, shrimp, T-shirts, .. you get the idea. Consider “Dollarama” stores, which now sell very few goods for as little as a dollar. In 2006, when I discovered them on moving from a region where they had not yet located to a region where they were established, everything they sold cost a dollar or less. Today, my recent observations tell me, those same goods cost 2-5 times that much.
9. Comparing the Christian Gospels with the Hebrew Scriptures [which Christians call “the Old Testament], the Hebrew Scriptures are visibly more approving of earthly, material wealth. It is my impression that Islam adopted the Hebrew view (no great surprise, since Islam reveres the Hebrew but not the Christian Scriptures), while Buddhism, arising from different roots, values simplicity. Buddhism and Christianity being both ancient (Wells, 1920, Chronology) and the Hebrew Tradition and money being more ancient, “the issue seems to be” when materialism became a widespread identity ideal. One might name the Industrial Revolution as the beginning of materialism as a common ideal outside the Ruling Class; it seems obvious that it has been one ideal of a majority of Europeans and North Americans since World War II.
10. I would recommend modesty much more vehemently, except I realize that most men i know, are relatively modest already; and that resolving modesty is a demanding undertaking for a majority [at least, a very large minority] of women while for most men, it’s resolving to keep a virtue we have.
About Davd
Davd (PhD, 1966) has been a professor, a single father keeping a small commercial herb garden so as to have flexible time for his sons, and editor of _Ecoforestry_. He is a practicing Christian, and in particular an advocate of ecoforestry, self-sufficiency horticulture, and men of all faiths living together "in peace and brotherhood" for the fellowship, the efficiency, and the goodwill that sharing work so often brings.