Consuming Men
What is our rubber dog shit society doing to men and what can we do about it?
I propose that manhood isn’t about something defined that we become, but the journey from boyhood (being born male) to a healthy self-determined adulthood. With that comes six critical ideas on what the journey of manhood (as opposed to the journey to manhood) would entail:
growing beyond cultural expectations,
overcoming cultural obstacles, and
healing your psyche, to
discover your most authentic self, and
use your gifts to serve the world.
Over a number of weeks, I will unpack these. This is the third post on growing beyond cultural expectations. You can read parts one and two here.
What Makes Men Worthy?
There is an apparently broadly compelling argument out there that women have inherent value because of their ability to conceive, gestate, and birth children, while men have to work to prove their value.
I’m not totally sure what to make of this sentiment.
I haven’t heard of an outbreak of immaculate conceptions so, as far as I know, men are still required for procreation.
Yes, if the act is successful women are on the hook for the next nine months but, after that, both men and women are perfectly capable of raising a child.
And are we really suggesting that a woman’s value is based upon her childbearing ability?
Does this also imply that women who can’t have children have no value? I mean, even in the parts of the Bible that are most gruesome to our 21st-century sensibilities, a supposedly wrathful God looks upon barren women with compassion and care.
At the same time, I get a kind of psychological (to twist a Freudian phrase) womb envy, especially in a society where men are struggling to find their place. But that seems to speak more to the condition of the society we live in rather than the state of men.
So what does it mean to be valuable in contemporary American society?
What Do We Value?
In his failed 2020 presidential bid, Andrew Yang tried to push a few ideas to the forefront of American politics. One was Universal Basic Income. Another was the notion that what you measure is what gets accomplished.
According to Yang, when what matters most in American society is the GDP and the stock market we, both collectively and individually, focus on behaviors that will increase GDP and the Dow.
As individuals, there are two ways we can contribute.
Work as much as we possibly can.
Consume as much as we possibly can.
This forms the foundation of consumer culture, also known as the rubber dog shit society.
The Rubber Dog Shit Society
When we find ourselves in the work as much as we can so we can consume as much as we can vortex strange things start to happen.
What you produce, no longer matters. What matters is that you can produce a lot of it and that it can sell. If there is an unquenchable thirst for rubber dog shit, then the more rubber dog shit you can make the better.
But it can go deeper. If that rubber dog shit is toxic and gets people sick, that’s not a bad thing because now you’ve created a market for rubber dog shit medication that someone else can work tirelessly to create so the masses of rubber dog shit owners can buy it.
And while people are recovering from their initial wave of rubber dog shit-itis they’re going to need something to do, so you’ve also created a market for an entertainment industry to distract people from the fact that their rubber dog shit made them sick.
But it doesn’t stop there, because now we need a whole industry dedicated to creating content about how to safely use rubber dog shit in the future so you don’t have another case of rubber dog shit-itis.
And we have yet to toss on the possibility of variants. After all, there are so many different kinds of shit, and who doesn’t need rubber dog shit for every occasion.
The one question that never gets asked in this kind of society is whether rubber dog shit has any value in the first place. Not value in the sense of profitability, but does it contribute to human thriving?1
Human Thriving
Yang proposed that instead of measuring what makes money, we focus on the well-being of humans. Human thriving focuses on things like:
mental and physical well-being
meaningful relationships
creativity
a sense of purpose
While a rubber dog shit society has a vested interest in, at least at some level, providing for your basic needs (your survival) so you are capable of consuming more, it is fundamentally opposed to the things that enable human thriving because thriving people create and consume differently. For example:
People who are mentally and physically well are satisfied. Satisfied people aren’t always seeking something new to satisfy them.
Meaningful relationships are a delightful distraction from consumption.
Creativity takes time and is antithetical to mass production.
Purpose gives you something to do with your time other than consume.
To bring this back to where we started, when a woman carries a child she is contributing to that child’s thriving. When our lives don’t contribute to the thriving of others because we’re making and consuming rubber dog shit, is it any wonder we feel like our lives don’t have any inherent value?
Could this be the root of our womb envy?
Thriving in a Rubber Dog Shit World
So what do we do in a world where Yang’s values didn’t win? It can often feel like thriving isn’t an option when we’re trying to do anything we can to survive.
Here are some things I’m doing:
I do everything I can to work for companies I believe in. My full-time job is with Xero Shoes, where we sell highly durable footwear that, unlike most conventional shoes, is good for human feet.
As a side gig, I officiate funerals, which allows me to make money while serving people in a time of need. While it’s not for everyone, it lets me use some of my unique gifts.
Before spending money, I aim to ask, “Will this make my life better?” I invest in things like the gym, food, my organizer (affiliate), books, and time with loved ones.
I rarely watch TV and am selective about the media I consume (affiliate).
How about you? What moves are you making to thrive in a rubber dog shit society?
If you find any of this analysis of consumerism compelling, you should know it is based on the philosophy of Karl Marx.