While driving to work, I kept thinking about the
statement made the Judge (from the previous blog entry) who was
caught watching porn on the job. He said: “It
[porn addiction] had absolutely no effect on the hundreds of
decisions I made as a judge.” This got me thinking about a problem
I just started to delve into, many years ago, when I left my doctoral
studies: the fragmentation of masculinity in modern society. What do
I mean by fragmentation? Here, I am referring to the self
dismemberment of men's lives into isolated cubicles: family, career,
intimacy, sexuality, emotions. This is particularly evident in the
concept that the Judge maintains: that a man's private life is
completely separate from the other aspects of his being. For example,
a man can have an extramarital affair while sustaining a healthy
“other” life with a wife and children at home. Of course, this
never works. Now, men have sequestered themselves with the Internet
and the fantasy of pornography. They try to keep the two worlds
apart. Until their wives find out. Women can not play this game. I
was always amazed, overhearing my female friends talking among
themselves, at how detailed and intimate women's conversations
become. Women are self-contained. They can bring forth life; they
never need to seek. Men are restless. When they are with other men,
they tend stick to the surface: sports, politics, work. This is
partially the way the sexes are wired; and nothing to do with the
pop-psych theories of social conditioning. But it is my contention
that modern stresses have caused men to pull themselves into
different pieces. I find this evident in two famous works of Art: The
Vitruvian Man
by da Vinci and The
Briar Wood by Burne-Jones. For da Vinci, and his time, there is no conflict
between man and the Universe. Man is a whole being. By the time
Burne-Jones is working, the modern industrialized world it just
beginning to take it's toll on males. In The
Briar Wood,
the once immortal knights, representing the past of masculinity, are
languid and blasted into bits; their once mighty armor strewn about
the thorn bushes. Their obsession with the supremely narcissistic and
immobile eroticism of Sleeping Beauty stifles their manliness and
tears them into distinct competing entities. But there is always
hope: for few have gotten masculinity as right as Blessed Pope John
Paul II. From his early childhood, he was forced to dig deep into the
divine male bonding of man with God; this was also reflected in the
intensely close relationship he had with his father. John Paul
became a whole man; he knew that it all flowed from the Father. It
was not out there, but right inside.
