The reason I get so worked up about male
competitiveness is that it's what ruined my century. Men around a table in London playing the Great Game in
Africa, bristling when men around a table in Berlin tried to horn in. Men so touchy about their honor and
prestige that they send warships when one of their flags is insulted (China),
or when one citizen's house, just one, is invaded during a riot (Greece). Let no one think the British are lesser
men than the Romans, who, by God, protected their
citizens. And the other Great
Powers were just as bad, or, if they had the power and balls, would have been
just as bad.
And where did it all end? With them going at each other in The Great War, which,
causing so many deaths (20 million), pumped the winners with such a desire for
revenge that they lost their heads and made such a stupid, vindictive peace
that they couldn't (hell, wouldn't; when they got their senses back they knew
it) enforce it and guaranteed a renewal of the war that would break all records
for deaths (60 million) and horrors.
And when people look at my tombstone they will say, "Gee, this guy
lived through the century that damn near ruined the human race. Poor guy."
"And you would rather have them say, 'Gee, this
guy lived through that century where God shut off the male hormone. Merciful God. Lucky guy.' ? You're talking about testosterone, my friend,
and let me tell you something.
Even God, by now, this late in his creation, is not going to be able to
shut it off. There's too
much of it, it's too hot, it comes from down too deep."
Alas.
"No.
No alas. Alas shows that
you don't understand testosterone, or whatever you want to call it. It surges into many channels, and if
you could shut it off at the source you'd have a lot of dried up ground, all
around you. Literature, art,
architecture. Why is it that
conquering, warlike people, winners in a Great Game, produce, as ancient Athens
produced, so much in so many fields?
Just contenders in the Game do, as in Europe when Britain and France
were leading the competition, and had been leading it through all the period of
European ascendancy (1750-1914), sciences and the arts advancing in so many
European countries at such breakneck speed, taking over the world, taking over
the calendar, the navigation, the mapping, the measurement of time (from Jesus'
birth) and place (from a spot outside London), as they took over
territory. Territory from which, I
might mention, now stream thousands of the once oppressed, or less endowed, to
gain the benefits — wealth, medical treatment, science, technology — of their overflowing
testosterone, their competition."
So the World Wars were just the climactic result of
a burst of male energy that gave us all these good things. And male energy is just what I saw so
much of in Robert Gates' memoirs, all those Cold Warriors searching for the
right grip on the balls. Only
thing, the brains at the other end had developed weapons that could blow up the
whole arena. Squeeze too hard and
there we are.
"It's the old problem of testosterone
management, the one you saw Elizabeth I solving so well (Post 157). But I think Plato was way ahead of
you. According to Mark Edmundson
(NYT 8-15) his word for the 'fundamental aspect of the human
psyche' we are dealing with here was 'thymos,' and that takes us a lot deeper,
to something we don't have a word for in English. Edmundson thinks we come closest with 'spiritedness,' as in
'a spirited competitor.' Anyway
it, according to Plato, 'is a marvelous quality that needs to be developed and
strengthened, especially in those who represent the community as soldiers.'
"But
here's something that Plato also knew: that thymos can be dangerous.
The spirited part of the soul can take control and turn what would have been an
admirable man or woman into a beast. At one point in The Republic Plato imagines a state in which the ruling value is
spiritedness. He calls it a timocracy, and he is fully alert to its dangers:
constant battles for first place and ongoing war.
Edmundson believes that 'in paying
close attention to both the promise and the peril of thymos, Plato learned
something that we apparently have forgotten.'"
Well, when we
think about what it is to be human now,I;d say that we too rarely take thymos
into account. I know of no influential mode of modern psychology that takes up
the Greek wisdom and treats spiritedness and the education of the spirited part
of the soul as central aspects of human development."
"No, no book of psychology now, maybe no book
at all now. But once there was a
book by an Italian, Baldassare Castiglione, Il
Cortegiano, that taught Renaissance males how to be spirited, with humanity
and learning and, above all, grace, grace which (while it attracted females)
eased the relationship between males.
Il Cortegiano was translated
into nearly every European language, coming out in England (where it produced
Sir Philip Sidney) as The Book of the
Courtier. There ought to be
enough copies around now for it to give us a start."
Grace isn't the problem. William J. Casey had plenty of grace. Grace and courtesy are just cover-ups
for balls. It's the balls you've
got to change.
"Like maybe the way Jesus tried to change them?
By holding out blessing? Be poor
in spirit, be meek. Get reborn.
All I can say is, lots of luck."
I can't
confirm any of your pessimism in books but in my own responses I certainly
can. There I am in the Gates book
admiring the clever competitor, the good grip on the balls. There I am in Katherine Graham's book
at one of her dinner parties with "Hear, hear" when a smart
Democratic-Party hawk speaks. "Good move." Me, an ardent admirer of Obama's patience. What am I going to do at such a dinner?
Raise my glass and say, "Here's to a program of watchful
waiting"? What do I
think the Soviet Union is, an enlarged prostate? No, I'm "Go, Rusk. Go Bundy."
"And if anybody wanted to know how to go, I, the resource person, would
refer them to Machiavelli. 'Put
down your Castiglione.' I'm afraid
I'm with you in the cheering section.
And I should have known I'd be, that all men would be. I've read Housman, haven't I? He knows where the lads are going, to
death on distant fields. But he
also knows that when he hears the fifes and the bugle calling he will be
helpless. 'Woman bore me, I will
rise.'"
OK. I
see we're not going to change it.
And I see the only course of action left: We've got to give testosterone something else to do.
"Like sports? I know what you're thinking. And my advice is: forget it. You're on another hunt for the moral equivalent of war, and
history says you're not going to find it.
Can you imagine Palmerston going back to his Harrow soccer field,
satisfied, even when he's booting game-winners? Can you picture our Casey, CIA Casey, tipping his hat to a
few thousand in Mudville, and going home content?"
I was thinking of something much bigger, something
never tried before: the whole world organized into different leagues, a pyramid
of leagues in every sport, where you knew where each nation stood, and inside
each nation where each town stood, and inside each team where (if the game were
like baseball) each player stood.
With today's technology you could set such a thing up, and with today's
communications you'd know instantly where each player, team, town, and nation
stood. A few morning minutes on
the net and you could run around with your notebook in the air: "We're
number 756! We're number 756!"
"What a laugh."
No, not a laugh. Not a laugh if the rival you hate is 761. Not a laugh if, having an average of
your position in all leagues, your nation has the best. You're cock of the walk! That's where you have to put
Palmerston's winning goal: it gains the point that puts England at the
top. Above Russia! You think, in similar circumstances,
Casey is going to underestimate his last of the ninth homer that sinks the
Soviet Union?
"Fine, but only if the world is all jocks. Some of us are nerds, you know. Intellectuals. And we design and use some pretty
destructive weapons. That's part
of your modern world."
Your imagination isn't keeping up. There will be a chess league. New Yorkers spreading homeland dirt for
Bobby Fischer to walk on as he approaches the payoff match in Reykjavík. For the middle brains there'll be
checkers, and cribbage. The
national colors on thousands of backs, at hundreds of tables, on scores of
fields, doing or dying for their country.
And, since markets depend on them. every morning on Bloomberg and in the
Wall Street Journal the most complete set of statistics and standings the world
has ever seen, with condensed versions everywhere else. And every year a great conference at
the UN assigning weights to each sport, giving debaters, politicians, and
diplomats their chance for
glory. "He got curling's
weight lifted to .068. What a
man!" It will be a super,
super, super Olympics.
"Will you be offended if I ask for a Plan
B?"
No, because I have a Hope B. It's that when men can't manage this,
women will take over. Women
haven't been in positions of power long enough for us to be confident of how it
will go, but I'm hoping that a change, by removing the testosterone factor,
will do something to remove that damn game board. The one on which men have made so many dumb mistakes.
"You think women rulers haven't made dumb
mistakes? You think removing the
male board will end game-playing?"
I don't know.
I just think that 'Don't do dumb things' is a great strategy, and just
the one for our time. And I think
a woman could be a great player, heading the CIA, or calling the shots from the
White House. Maybe I think
that for personal reasons.
Maybe it's because the women I have known have done fewer dumb things
than the men I have known. Maybe
it's because in history I read Elizabeth I as a genius at not doing dumb
things. And Angela Merkel as a
knockout. Anyway, that's my
fallback hope, labeled B.
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