And now for something completely different:

Generally, the adage is true: good girls like bad boys, but always go home with good guys. But why is the one about good guys always finishing last also true?

A co-worker and I began this discussion while elbow-deep in dishwater, and it intrigued me so deeply that I went home and did some research, both on the Internet and within my own psyche. Some observations I found rang true to me; others didn’t.

But before I delve too deeply into theory, I’m going to explain this from my gut. I realize I am not, by a long shot, anywhere close to a typical American woman (blame my psychologist parents for that), but I am a female, raised with the American gender identity “woman”, with which I identify most of the time. Speaking of gender identity and the huge grey area existing therein, for the purposes of this conversation, I am speaking from a strictly heterosexual viewpoint here. Anyone who has insight into the dozens of other facets of the gender/sex debate in regards to this issue, feel free to speak up.

Keep in mind that these are my personal reflections, both from experience and from observing others. I’ll let you know when we get down to the science.

Bad boys are attractive to good girls because they set off that alarm voice that says “Honey, this is not a good idea.” But of course, what do most of us do when someone tells us not to do a thing? All of us, women and men, have a destructive impulse buried (or not so buried) somewhere in our psychology. The technical term for this is thanatos, but like I said, I’m not concerning myself with technical right now. This destructive impulse can be turned inward or outward depending on an individual’s psychological build. When the thanatos is turned outward, you get murderers, arsonists, rapists, wife-beaters, etc. When it’s turned toward the self, however, you get suicides, self-abuse, depression, learned helplessness, the “glutton-for-punishment type, addiction, and the general impulse to do what is Not Good For You ©. Which includes risking a solid relationship you may have already built with a good man (or woman) for a temporary, meaningless sexual fling with an anonymous douchebag. Add to that the risk of pregnancy and a cornucopia of delightfully gross diseases, and you have yourself a prime example of the thanatos temporarily running your life.

Bad boys are also attractive because they are often, superficially, much more confident and devil-may-care than their goodly counterparts. They know what they want (sex, and lots of it), they know exactly how to get it, and they’re good at getting it (read: good at manipulating women). This combination often gives women the (mistaken) impression that these men have got it down. They know who they are; they are confident in themselves, and because of that they are able to disregard all the “petty little societal rules” that say “this is the way to court a lady.” Remember this point; I’ll be returning to it later.

Now ladies, I don’t know about you, but the sexiest thing a man can ever do in my presence is to completely know himself. If I were single and off my guard, say, with five or so beers in me, a man who gives the appearance of knowing himself could be (and would be) powerfully attractive to me. What’s also attractive to me (and a lot of women) is deviation. Anything different attracts our attention. A man who gives me an origami penguin on our first date is far more likely to win my attention (and affection) than a man who gives me a rose. Not only does the origami bespeak creativity, but it tells me that this man does not play by the book. He says to himself, “She may not like penguins, but what the hell. I’ll try anyway.” The man with the rose would think “She may not like origami or penguins, so I better just give her a flower. I know she’ll like that.” Not only is Man #2 plain wrong, he plays it too safe. Man #2 may be a bucket of charm once I get to know him, but he may not get that far. Man #1 with the origami bird is guaranteed that, even if I don’t like penguins. I’m going to ask him how he knows origami, what his other interests are, and things will follow from there.

Most of the time, women who are taken in by the false confidence of bad boys aren’t stupid. Drunk, maybe, but not stupid. They may know or guess the man in question has been with several (dozen) women before them. They may know exactly what he is and what he wants. And after they give him what he wants, they wake up in the morning and drown in regret, moaning some variation of “What the hell was I thinking?” They may or may not already be in a committed relationship, but that fact is irrelevant. What matters here is that they did it in the first place. But why, exactly, did they do it?

Women, on some deep level, respond to men who have this simple, almost primal desire for sex. That’s why bad boys are so good at getting what they want. To be blunt, isn’t it our genetic imperative to procreate? Isn’t it the primary reason we are here on this earth? These men are doing nothing but fulfilling their genetic imperative to pork as many women as they can possibly pork. When you strip away the rules and mores modern culture has imposed on human interaction, there is absolutely nothing wrong with what these men are doing. So why should women shun their advances? Bad boys are taking advantage of a pattern of sexual behavior that has been around since the first mammals crawled out from a crack in the ground. Males spread their genes among as many females as they can, so their issue, not their neighbor’s, will populate the earth. Females respond to this activation of ancient biological impulses. Having as many sexual encounters as we can is in women’s biology too, but to a different end. And now, thanks to the recent cultural revolution (including the invention and acceptance of contraception), modern women can indulge their genetic imperative without the risk of ruining the encounter (and a chunk of their lives) with the risk of pregnancy.

Since I’m veering into the territory of biology here, I may as well make the theoretical leap and cease speaking solely from my own experience. I’d like to revisit the point I made earlier about “petty societal rules”. Blend that with the point of the previous paragraph and you get my next point: the concepts of “good guy” and “bad boy” are extremely modern constructs. I’d go so far as to say the “bad boy” is a vilification of our ancestors’ natural behavior, and the “good guy” is a feminization of man. Let me clarify.

Males did not begin their evolutionary journey as monogamous, self-sacrificing creatures. As humans developed the capacity for abstract thought, self-awareness, culture and society, rules developed in those societies that changed the roles males and females played. With our transition to non-nomadic agricultural societies, there also arose a focus on monogamous relationships, which went hand-in-hand with the increased focus on possessions. A woman needed a man to be there at all times to manage the farmstead, the possessions, and the children they had created, and a man needed a woman for the same reasons; to produce children (not just for the continuation of the species now; it was to help maintain the farm and to take ownership of it when the father died). Imagine how difficult life would be in an agricultural society if men were constantly wandering from one household to the next, impregnating as many women as they could, and then wandering off, leaving the women to raise their dozens of children alone (and manage the farmstead as well). So, monogamous relationships were a necessary by-product and result of the transition from a nomadic to an agricultural society. But that does not remove the males’ biological imperative to spread their genes as far as possible. Unfortunately, it suppresses it. Anything suppressed for long enough returns to the surface with more force than can contain it. So men continue to pursue their biological impulses, but they can no longer merely approach a woman and take what they want from her. Now there are possessions, cultural boundaries and rules to complicate his quest for sex. So he adapts. He uses possessions to his advantage. He finds a way to circumvent societal rules. He breaks boundaries. He manipulates every obstacle thrown in his way, and come hell or high water, he gets what he wants. Because he is not doing what modern society tells him he should do, his behavior is frowned upon, discouraged, and his character attacked. Instead of praising his adaptability and creativity, society, obsessed with maintaining homogeneity, calls his behavior “anti-social” and marks him as a “bad boy”.

But not all males act as freely on their impulses as some. Bad boys tend to have certain personality traits like impulsiveness, callousness, and narcissism. The combination of these qualities, plus a healthy dose of testosterone, makes a man very likely to be a bad boy. A. Grayson of the ABC News Medical Unit states that, in an article called “Why Nice Guys Finish Last”, bad boys possessing these “dark triad” personality traits hold the same appeal as James Bond, who has a penchant for fast cars, faster women and little empathy for others. Grayson quotes psychological researcher P. Jonason and makes the point that “dark triad traits are useful in pursuing our agendas at any given time. If you like someone and want to meet them and date them, people who have the dark triad traits appear to be more successful at facilitating short-term mating.” And that’s what bad boys are after, right?

Let’s not forget the role of testosterone, as I touched on before. Everybody knows that it’s liquid manliness, but what some may not realize is that the more testosterone a person has, the more likely that person will be to possess dominant personality traits like extroversion and impulsiveness. According to Grayson and the study he conducted, men with higher levels of testosterone were rated as “more outgoing and charming than others.”

I think I’ve pretty much beat that horse dead. The corollary to the bad boy horse is this horse, which is so far still alive: why do nice guys seem to finish last? The answer is simple but unfortunate: because they are set up to.

Good guys do what bad boys don’t: they maintain the homogeneity society so strictly enforces. They adhere to the set of morals and edicts that modern civilization tells them they should. They are the ones good at building a solid foundation (trust, respect, loyalty) for a long-term relationship. They, instead of being impulsive, callous and self-centered, are generous, self-sacrificing and empathic. Sounds great, right? What woman would not want a man who listens to her, understands her viewpoints, trusts her with his whole soul and would not even dream of leaving her? Well, most women want a man like that. But so often good men are cuckolded when their women, failing to hold themselves to the same standards their men do, let themselves be taken by bad boys who promise them everything their safe, predictable, comfortable good man does not give them (the thrill of doing something forbidden, primarily). This is why so many “good guys” are stereotyped as timid, milquetoast, whipped by their women, overly romantic or otherwise emasculated. Most of them aren’t, but they possess some traits (like empathy, compassion, patience, etc.) that are stereotypically feminine, and so are portrayed as more feminine (therefore weaker) than their bad-boy counterparts by the very same society that urged them into that paradigm in the first place. Funny how that works.

Good men: please do not take this as a thinly-veiled suggestion to suddenly become douchebags. If your lifelong ambition is to pork as many women as you can possibly pork, in that case, grow a pencil beard, wear vomitous amounts of Axe body spray and Ed Hardy clothing, and make sure to renew your membership to the tanning salon. But I doubt you want to spend your lives trotting from one strange bedroom to another. Good men, I have good news.

Bad boys may have more short-term sexual success, but the very qualities that help them get dozens of one-night stands actually ruin their chances at success with meaningful long-term partnerships. Hopefully y’all have been paying attention long enough to realize why this is so. Nobody can deal with a narcissistic asshole for very long. If all he is concerned about is his hair, what he’ll drink at the bar tonight and how many reps he’ll do at the gym today, he won’t make a very good listener when you’ve just found out your brother has pancreatic cancer or your sister’s dog died.

I suppose the lesson to heterosexual women out there is this: there will always be bad boys. Whether or not you succumb to their charms is under your control. The more you know about yourself and your desires (both sexual and emotional), the better equipped you are to see bad boys for what they are and decide if you want to enter the relationship (however brief). Keep in mind also that there is no blatantly obvious line dividing the good guys from the bad boys. Like everything else in life, there are shades of grey here. Bad boys can turn good once they meet the right woman; a bad breakup can turn a good guy bad in one hell of a hurry. Bad boys have good in them, and vice versa. This is why it’s so important for you to know yourself, your standards, your wants and your limits. The more self-aware you are, the more you will be aware of others.

Thoughts? Points? Arguments? Do you agree with every syllable I say or am I so achingly wrong about every single point that I should just stop speaking forever? Either way, I want to hear what you have to say. So feel free to share in the comments. I opened them to anonymous posters, so go nuts. But be nice to each other. I don’t care if you swear, but no defamation of character please.

On Work Ethic

Do you remember that time in your middle school history class (for those of us who were born before Clinton became President) when your teacher told you about the kind of people that founded this country?

It probably went along the lines of this: A guy named John Calvin espoused the idea that hard work and dedication to worldly good deeds would get you into heaven, instead of just praying really hard. The (Calvinist) Puritans, who defined this country’s early development, sowed that work ethic right into the soul of this new world as they sowed their wheat into the soil. That willingness to use lots of elbow grease is partly how this country grew up as fast and strong as it did.

I have gone through life assuming that this is still the case. To clarify, I was raised to do my best at whatever endeavor I undertake, and I naturally assumed that everybody else would do the same.

The Puritan work ethic, instead of being the rule, is evidently now the exception.

I’m pretty sure that this is just another big swing of the socio-temporal pendulum, but I can’t help but feel another blow to my already grievously wounded philanthropy. This is not the first time I’ve felt this particular sting, but it’s the first time I’ve felt the need to sit down and organize my thoughts.

Folks spend a lot of energy and words on the concept of brotherly love; we should all just love each other and all the world’s problems will fix themselves. As much as I want to believe that, it’s just not true. Not as an end in itself. Passive love is not what makes the world go round. We can’t all just sit around in a circle and sing and hug. It’s one thing to get along with those around you; it’s a completely different animal when you actively look after and support your people.

What really moves the world is when we help each other. That, I believe, goes hand in hand with the concept of a strong work ethic. We have to be willing to pull our own weight, sure, but we also have to be willing to pull others’ sometimes as well. My mother always used to say to me, “Kate, we all have to do things we don’t want to do. But we do them because it’s what we need to do.”

Her point was that we can’t be selfish. We can’t, as the song says, always get what we want. When the situation calls for it or when we are asked, we ought to do for other people, as long as it doesn’t put us in harm’s way. Because if we don’t, things won’t get done. Because if we do, then they will do for us when we ask. Reciprocity, I have learned, is the real lever that turns the gears of the world.

So I give of myself, expecting nothing more back than what I have given. Often I give more than is expected of me. Which is what I and a few others have been doing for the past week at my place of employment. Several of my fellow employees, their work ethic absent (or nonexistent), have repeatedly not shown up to their shifts. Our store is already understaffed, so this forces the same small group of employees (managers included) to work overlong and overhard. For the past two weeks I have been called in to work early, called in on my days off, called in to do the work of two people. Most of me does not mind, because I need the extra hours and the pay they bring. Also, I have the good fortune of working with a good bunch of folks (those who actually show up for their shifts, that is), and I know that they know the meaning of reciprocity. Plus, let’s be honest, I like being the one everybody knows they can depend on.

But there is a part of me that does mind. Not for myself, but for the rest of the staff that has a work ethic. It is not their responsibility to habitually pick up after those who can’t or won’t do their jobs. It is not fair to keep forcing them to work double shifts on busy weekends, especially when we are so understaffed that we basically have to stop serving people for as long as it takes someone to wash enough dishes, to cook enough food to get through the next twenty minutes (wash, rinse, repeat 20 minutes later).

We the few are pressed from one side by the omniscient corporate presence to keep up to the many (many many many) standards of a high-quality foodservice establishment. And we are pressed from the other side by customers, who expect us to deliver all of what the corporate machine promises them and more, with the ease and celerity of a magician’s sleight-of-hand.

Which is difficult already when we are fully staffed. But since we have lost several crew members to moves, school, etc. and several more to shifted priorities or just pure laziness, we the few are caught between one hell of a rock and a hard place. I won’t enumerate the effects of this constant and inescapably suffocating pressure, because I’m sure some of you know exactly what I’m talking about and what happens to people when they are in that situation and aren’t prepared for it.

But, you may say, the absent ones may have a good excuse to be absent. Yes, a couple of them did. I use the past tense intentionally. Severe illnesses and emergencies are legitimate reasons to miss work, and in that case I do not mind picking up their share of the work. That is part of reciprocity. That is part of what it means to be a productive member of any community. But to have to do it three and four days in a row is pushing it. We the few come to work when we’re sick even though we shouldn’t because if we don’t, things don’t get done and all of us get in trouble. I have even worked through hospitalizations of loved ones. Once I take a few hours or a day off to ensure they and everyone else close to me are taken care of and safe, I go right back to work. First because I have done all I can do, and the rest is up to someone with a medical degree. Second because not having something to occupy my mind and my hands would force me to dwell on my loved one’s ailment, and that is not good for my psychological health. Third because I have a job to do, and there are both written and unspoken promises there that I have to keep. I took a day off to settle my affairs, and my coworkers graciously covered for me. Now I return to work and soon it’ll be my turn to cover for someone else who needs my help. That’s the way any functional, productive community works.

We are social animals. We build social networks and we rely on those close to us for support; that is the only way we can thrive in a world that holds so many of us. To think that you can go on taking advantage of those who support you and never give of yourself is fundamentally stupid and bespeaks a near-complete lack of social intelligence. And this comes from a lifelong misanthropic introvert, so you better believe it.

Like any good debater, I understand that there are multiple facets to every situation. But I will not address the other ones here. I’d like to see other people’s thoughts on this matter. If anyone reading this has a good argument for another side of this issue or even their own take on my standpoint, please do post your own thoughts.

This isn't a political blog. Really.

Obama: Spend more, create jobs

I was just saying to Garrett and a few others that I'm changing my party affiliation.  Democrats have become as annoying and as clueless as Republicans (well, they always were), and I'm tired of hearing it.  I can't support the bipartisan system anymore, because it's so broken and corrupt and completely not what it was meant to be.  So I'm going independent.

That being said, I came across this article in which Obama tells us we need to vomit up another $150 billion or so to help ourselves climb out of the recession.  I'll let you read the article (and the comments) and judge for yourselves on the wisdom of this plan.

I for one think that Obama needs to be slapped upside the head.  So many of the things he said this new batch of money would pay for should have been fixed with the first stimulus.  Government jobs?  Those are not what we need right now.  Highways and bridges?  I still haven't seen any of the improvements from the last stimulus bill.  Retrofilling homes to make them greener?  That's still too expensive to be practical for an average middle class family right now (Google it-- depending on the method, it runs from $3,000 to $20,000). 

In many ways, I am an economic conservative.  I believe that we need to stop focusing on spending and start worrying about getting rid of our federal deficit, which is a number that should only be used to talk about distances in space.  However, I do not think cutting taxes right now is the best thing to do.  Not that I have any knowledge of how to run a government, but right now, if we stop dumping money into the black Obama-hole (puns intended, I guess) and keep taxes at this level, perhaps we can work our way out of debt sometime before the sun explodes.

Yes I know the economy is still in the shitter.  But clearly pouring money into [where exactly?] isn't helping.  So let's not make America the definition of stupidity (again) and keep doing the same thing over and over.

I am horrified.

Doctors in upscale practices build niche in Triangle

I read the headline and my jaw dropped.  I read the article itself and my mild discomfort grew into consternation and outrage.

Why are they doing this?  Why now, when roughly 1 in 4 Americans do not have health insurance?  Why now, when the aging baby boomers (read: the target market of MDVIPs) are beginning to drag the rest of us taxpayers down anyway?  Why now, when a friend of mine cannot get the care she needs to manage her (and her children's) health when she and her husband both lost their jobs and cannot get unemployment benefits because she is on a social security stipend that is too pitiful to live on?

Yes, by all means, doctors, alienate your most needful patients.  Refuse to treat those who cannot pay $500 a visit.  Do what all the drug companies and insurance companies are doing, and make it more difficult for the average American citizen to access your corrupt but desperately needed services (what are we, Uganda?).  After all, it was their fault.  If they hadn't caused the economy to crack and fall with their crazy spending and lending, then they wouldn't be in this pickle anyway.  You go ahead.  Because as more and more of you convert to your very posh and profitable MDVIP practices, there will be fewer and fewer afforable doctors.  And there is no guarantee that those will all be skilled or honest doctors.

This reminds me of the situation in [insert impoverished Third World country here].  Not enough doctors, too many poor patients, and what skilled practitioners there are usually beat it out of whatever hellhole they're living in to seek profit elsewhere.  Maybe we should ask WHO to airlift some Indian doctors in.  It's becoming clear that we need them.

"Look at me while I am talking at you", or "Thanksgiving III"

Thanksgiving is the perfect holiday.  In no particular order the reasons for this are:
1) the food.  Okay, this one was in order.
2) it’s a chance to collect one’s family in one place and spend the day (or weekend) talking and catching up.
3) #2 could be done at Christmas, but the joyous thing about Thanksgiving is that it’s free of the stress of Christmas.  You don’t have to participate in Black Friday if you don’t want to, but everyone feels compelled to participate in the Christmas tradition of gift-giving.  Christmas has become, in Garrett’s words, Capitalistmas.  No matter how much individual people may emphasize family or joy or God in Christmas, the general theme of Christmas is “give/get presents.”  What is the first question anyone asks you after “How was your holiday?”  “What’d you get?”  Right?

Before you bark about the sordid history of Thanksgiving and all the Indians that the English slaughtered to make it that far, consider this.  All folk (not just us Americans, though we’re really good at it) alter or forget their history, especially related to holidays.  With each passing year, another coat of sugar gets slathered onto the memory until the event itself is a lump of shapeless goo.  To make an overly complicated example to prove my point, look up St. Valentine on Wikipedia.  Nobody knows who he was, or how many St. Valentines there were (yes, there were more than one).  Nobody knows why or how they were martyred, and not even the Romans were sure where the first St. Valentine was buried.  Then look at the stuff between then and now.  Nobody can agree on how we got from a gaggle of Roman saints to a holiday about chocolates, red hearts and obligatory sex.  To offer another example, think about Christmas.  We all know how it started out.  No, not the part about Jesus, the part further back than that.  The pagan part.  Between then and now dozens of date changes, rewrites, additions (hello Santa Claus) and alterations have changed Christmas so profoundly that when I tell you that for many years Protestants vehemently and violently opposed the celebration of Christmas, you will think it at the least a bit bizarre and run off to Wikipedia to see if I’m telling you the truth.

I am by no means advocating for abolishment of Christmas or Valentine’s Day or even a return to their roots; I’m merely making the point that it’s implausible and downright silly to think too hard about any holiday based on a historical event or a dead person.  If you try to include the entire span of a holiday’s history in your observation of it, you will inevitably do or say things that completely contradict one another.  That’s why some people celebrate Christmas as the birth of Jesus, some celebrate it as a day to get and give a whole bunch of stuff, some celebrate it not as a Christian holiday but as the winter solstice, or yet again as a pagan feast and party, but never as all those things at the same time.

But I digest.  I was talking about Thanksgiving in New Jersey.  I met Garrett’s very Jewish grandmother about whom I will only say this: the stereotypes are true.  I felt like speaking in a Southern drawl just to save my own ears from the increasingly twitch-inducing dialects Garrett’s family issued forth.  Don’t get me wrong; they’re wonderful people.  They just need to learn how to talk right.

Since New Brunswick was only an hour away, we decided to zip up to Rutgers on Saturday to spend a while with the Brothers of Pi Chapter of MBPsi.  We played football (which devolved into a silly string battle– only at Pi), had an official meeting, played the Jewish version of Apples to Apples (an automatic win if you can't pronounce the word you play), and were just about to take part in the most lavish and plentiful Thanksgiving bounty I have ever seen (there were about 30 people packed into a 4-person apartment), but Garrett needed to get home to get up early for work the next morning, and Oswego is a good 5 hours from north Jersey.

That was definitely the most memorable Thanksgiving I’ve had to date.  I love my family with all my heart, but there’s not much can compete with being captive audience to a 75-year-old Jew wife for eight hours, getting nearly run off the road three times on residential streets, playing Jewish Apples to Apples with two Jews until 5a.m., and running around an entire apartment complex with two cans of silly string participating in a mass regression to early childhood. 

This is why I’ve decided that holidays are worth it again.