{"id":6546,"date":"2012-09-11T11:38:42","date_gmt":"2012-09-11T15:38:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=6546"},"modified":"2012-09-11T11:40:29","modified_gmt":"2012-09-11T15:40:29","slug":"men-and-the-matrix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2012\/09\/11\/men-and-the-matrix\/","title":{"rendered":"Men and the Matrix"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The latest issue of the New Yorker<\/a> has a rich, complex interview with the Wachowski siblings, science fiction storytellers who created the Matrix franchise.<\/p>\n

If you don’t know it, the Matrix series imagines a world where the reality around us is virtual, fluid, imaginary.<\/p>\n

They have a new film, “Cloud Atlas,” that traces the paths of a network of human souls that migrate through different bodies, points of history, stories.<\/p>\n

One additional texture here is that Larry Wachowski has re-emerged publicly as Lana Wachowski.\u00a0 She has undergone that suitably science-fictiony process known as “trans-gendering.”<\/p>\n

That cluster of data points merged weirdly in my head this week as I was reading a series of high profile articles about the cultural and economic struggles of men in our society.\u00a0 In his review of Hanna Rosin’s new book, “The Failure of Men<\/a>,” David Brooks writes this<\/a>:<\/p>\n

It [the uncertain position of men in modern society] has to do with adaptability. Women, Rosin argues, are like immigrants who have moved to a new country. They see a new social context, and they flexibly adapt to new circumstances.<\/p>\n

Men are like immigrants who have physically moved to a new country but who have kept their minds in the old one. They speak the old language. They follow the old mores. Men are more likely to be rigid; women are more fluid.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is, on one level, pop psychology.\u00a0 But I think there’s a lot of truth here as well.\u00a0 We live in a frenetic, evolving, complex culture, one where all concepts — but particularly masculinity, femininity, sexuality and gender roles — are being re-negotiated in real time.<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

It is, in other words, a matrix.\u00a0 It’s a shifting and complicated pattern.\u00a0 This is incredibly challenging stuff and for some men in particular, it’s absolutely terrifying.<\/p>\n

While thinking about this stuff, I came across this conversation on the Christian Bible Network<\/a>, where evangelist Pat Robertson is trying to offer advice to a man whose wife clearly doesn’t love him anymore.<\/p>\n

The guy is on the front lines of this cultural moment, begging for advice and guidance.<\/p>\n

Robertson laments the fact that physical violence is no longer an option to resolve their domestic crisis.\u00a0 “I don\u2019t think we condone wife-beating these days,” he says, “but something has got to be done to make her [more obedient and respectful].”<\/p>\n

He goes on to describe the wife as “a rebellious child” who won’t “submit to authority.”\u00a0 (Watching his female co-host field these comments is worth a click-through.)<\/p>\n

I know that sounds Medieval — on one level, it’s sort of a conversation-ender.\u00a0 But I think it’s also an important reminder of just how profound this shift is.<\/p>\n

Having a black man in the White House is revolutionary.\u00a0 Having women out-earn and (in many situations) out-confidence their husbands, that’s intimate and for many people viscerally gut-wrenching.<\/p>\n

One of my favorite writers, Iain M. Banks, has penned a series of science fiction novels — The Culture sequence — where he envisions a future where we have moved past all this, where identity is in a constant and comfortable state of “trans” that is no longer defined by gender or race.<\/p>\n

His exploration of what that might feel like is riveting, one of those rare “speculative” fiction experiments that really might be giving us a sense of what our future will look like. But we’re not there yet.<\/p>\n

Still, I think Rosin and Brooks and Wachowski and Banks are all right about one thing:\u00a0 It’s an adaptation moment for men.<\/p>\n

Not “let’s behave better because it’s the right thing and enlightened men will do it” — that was the inflection point of the 1970s.\u00a0 This is more of a “we have to change or get left behind” situation.<\/p>\n

Does that mean matriarchy, as Rosin suggests.\u00a0 I don’t think so.\u00a0 In fact, the idea that there is a clean, zero-sum-gain continuum between partiarchy and matriarchy is, well, weirdly masuciline.<\/p>\n

Instead it means men being more fluid, more flexible, and learning to accept that every day will bring situations and relationships that can’t be controlled — or, to borrow Robertson’s phrase, can’t be disciplined.<\/p>\n

But maybe, in the end, it’s Neo who says it best.\u00a0 “I know that you’re afraid,” he says.\u00a0 “You’re afraid of change. I don’t know the future. I didn’t come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it’s going to begin.”<\/p>\n

What Neo promises is, fundamentally, a world of constant uncertainty, negotiation and (yes) opportunity, a “world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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