“The challenge of absorbing this new technology into the values and practices of the existing culture has no precedent. The most comparable event was the transition from the medieval to the modern period. In the medieval period, people interpreted the universe as a creation of the divine and all its manifestations as emanations of divine will. When the unity of the Christian Church was broken, the question of what unifying concept could replace it arose. The answer finally emerged in what we now call the Age of Enlightenment; great philosophers replaced divine inspiration with reason, experimentation, and a pragmatic approach. “
The Metamorphosis is a very interesting article in The Atlantic. Co-written by three very influential people it muses over the impacts of artificial intelligence which is all the rage now. Some of the three writers end with forecasts that are optimistic. Others are more skeptical. It is easy to figure out who wrote what in the article. The quote above is surely Henry Kissinger reminding the kids of some of the fundamentals of history in the West. It is rather peculiar that Kissinger jumps from the medieval period to the modern in one fell swoop but so be it. I highly doubt that most kids graduate from college these days with even the faintest understanding of the Age of Enlightenment or any notion of this concept of history and humanity.
The other unifying concept was of course the creation and notion of the “self” but that is far too complex for most people to comprehend in our current age of narcissism and selfies. You can get a better understanding how this is relevant in the field of psychology by reading The Invention of the Self: The Hinge of Consciousness in the Eighteenth Century by John O. Lyons, my dear old dad who’s ashes are floating around somewhere in lake Michigan. Rest his soul.
It took until I went to college in the early 1980’s that I learned that geography was not only about maps, states, countries and continents. I took a class by Yi Fu Tuan where I learned about spaces and places. That besides physical geography there was also the whole world of human geography. Inside of human geography there were many sub types, cultural and political to name but two.
Political geography is defined as:
“Political geography is concerned with the study of both the spatially uneven outcomes of political processes and the ways in which political processes are themselves affected by spatial structures. Conventionally, for the purposes of analysis, political geography adopts a three-scale structure with the study of the state at the centre, the study of international relations (or geopolitics) above it, and the study of localities below it. The primary concerns of the subdiscipline can be summarized as the inter-relationships between people, state, and territory.” – Wikipedia
I find it interesting that I have been unable to find any writings on how technology has affected human geography over time. Imagine with every technological change how our understanding of the earth, other spaces, places and cultures have been influenced. For instance, starting with the invention of the wheel the world has become a smaller place. People are always devising new ways to get around more efficiently, faster or easier. Fast-forward to 1450, in the West, the printing press made it so descriptions of faraway places were mass-produced and then could be consumed by many people. Notions of that world were given a perspective always from the cultural point of view of the observer. The telegraph made it so people continents apart could send messages instantly. Later the telephone, radio and then television perpetuated this phenomenon of space taking on new meaning. As time goes on, these technological advances have had profound effects on human psychology and geography. The world is no longer your family and farm, local community or village. It is seven continents and you can visit any one digitally and by pushing a few buttons. In our current world, this notion of space and presence has been invaded by the internet, but more significantly the cellphone and specifically, the “smartphone.”
From a human experience perspective, all of the modern communications technologies of the last 150 years have to do with changing this sense of space. A telegraph over the wire was like an arm reaching across an ocean. Radio had the effect of making it so someone hundreds of miles away was seemingly sitting in your living room. Television. simply added a visual component. At the beginnings of each of these technological advancement was a time of readjustment and decentralization of society and political power. Eventually, overtime, the power became monopolized by few powerful players. In television, in the United States it was the three major broadcasting networks. Now on the internet it is Google, Facebook and Amazon.
In 2019 the cellphone makes it so many people for most of the day are mentally not even in the physical location that they preside. I noticed this phenomenon when at the beach. It was a hot day and people went out to the ocean to cool off. I noticed a woman wading in the water while at the same time having a video chat with someone on her cellphone. Was the woman at the beach or was she with the person on the cellphone? Where was the woman? Is human geography simply where we occupy the planet or where we preside in our minds? The digital era makes it so geography no longer is a place at all but spaces that are digital and psychological.
The ramifications of this effect are many. We see it in the way the political systems around the world are in upheaval. No longer do you simply build walls and moats to keep away intruders as in the end the digital landscape has no borders. We see it in how political systems have become more reactionary and full of jingoism.
Furthermore, while people have this notion that they are in control, nothing could be further from the truth. The large internet companies are tracking everyone’s digital landscape and using techniques from behavioral psychology to reward or punish certain behaviors with the motivation of both political and economic influence. This has been dubbed the “surveillance economy.” George Orwell is surely snickering in his grave but probably not, as humour was not his strong suit. He is probably screaming – “I told you so!”
Where this will end up is unknown but for those who think that the digital era is a time of liberation and some sort of political and economic equalization are wrong. The same centralization of power that happened in previous technological eras has happened again. Monopolies have emerged as the powerful players. There are dangerous silos of digital communities that are like echo chambers reaffirming racist and cult-like manifestos based on ignorance and flawed science. This is happening in all spaces, both on the political right and left
What is the one constant is that the undesirable qualities of humans that have existed over centuries are unchanged – greed, vengeance, vanity, violence to name a few are still prevalent. In some ways, with the internet they simply are amplified.
Recently the American Psychological Association (A.P.A.) published their new guidelines entitled the American Psychological Association’s guidelines for practice with men and boys . Writing and publishing something like the guidelines for practice with men and boys is a strange and ill-advised project. Creating guidelines for protologists on the use of the FOS-425 for colonoscopies on men over fifty seems like a good idea, but men are far too varied and complex to create generalizations and guidelines.
Before you read further, I highly recommend that you read the actual paper. It is rather odd that like Moses’ 10 Commandments there are 10 A.P.A. guidelines for practice with boys and men. But perhaps it is more like an A.P.A. awards document as I am sure that of all the researchers and contributors who’s studies are cited celebrated this career triumph with a lot of wine and champagne to fortify their narcissistic egos. I believe the guidelines will be viewed as a curious historic document, similar to writings and guidelines for women during the late 19th and early 20th centuries when doctors and the medical scientists viewed woman as having the “woman problem.” This is clearly outlined in For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Experts Advice to Women by Barbara Ehrenreich.
Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Experts Advice to Women by Barbara Ehrenreich.
Now that Western medicine has terrorized woman for over 200 years, for some reason they now have moved on to men. In fifty years, the American Psychological Association’s guidelines for practice with men and boys will be embarrassing evidence on just how absolutely naive, cult-like, dangerous and ignorant the A.P.A. is to history, philosophy, language and actual science.
Indeed, after the American Psychological Association’s guidelines for practice with men and boys were released it created a bit of a firestorm. People on the conservative right and academics of all walks often criticized the paper as either being an attack on men and traditional morals or simply inaccurate and absolute intellectual self-deception. The New York Times ran an opinion piece that basically side-stepped the issue and did a report of how various people and authorities on the subject responded to the “guidelines.” However, the critique I found most perceptive was by Jacob Falkovich and his essay Curing the World of Men
This is, after all, the same organization that classified homosexuality as a mental disorder until the seventies, and whose members were not discouraged from recommending conversion therapy until 2009. You’d think being wrong about gays for a century may teach the APA some humility. –Jacob Falkovich
What I find alarming about the A.P.A. is the fabric of the organization. To me it has characteristics more in keeping with a cult or a religious organization than a scientific organization. If you simply start with the “definitions” at the beginning (gender, cisgender, gender bias, gender role strain, etc.) you can see right away they are laying the ground work for current fashionable cultural assumptions and not science. For example, the term “gender non-conforming,” which is so in fashion in psychology these days, rarely gets scrutinized. “Gender non-conforming” – based on what? Is the A.P.A. now determining the “style” of a certain gender. Is a gender “style” for some reason now an important part of psychotherapy and also a subject of science? From the very introduction, the paper begins with some pretty shallow assumptions.
Boys and men are diverse with respect to their race, ethnicity, culture, migration status, age, socioeconomic status, ability status, sexual orientation, gender identity, and religious affiliation.
Seeing as men make up about half of the 7.5 billion humans on the planet, this statement seems accurate. However, how can boys and men be diverse with regards to gender identity? They are both male. Last time I bought airline tickets I had to choose between either male or female in the gender dropdown. If the A.P.A. has discovered additional genders they perhaps should inform United Airlines. I do hear of non-binary as being another gender and there is of course intersex or hermaphrodite people but this paper and guidelines are for men. Then the next sentence gets to the core of how the A.P.A. defines gender.
Each of these social identities contributes uniquely and in intersecting ways to shape how men experience and perform their masculinities – Introduction to A.P.A. guidelines
“… how men experience and perform their masculinities.” What a strange notion that a man simply performs “masculinities” as though a gender has no biological basis and is simply a “performance.” This notion perhaps comes from the psychologist Judith Butler and her notion that gender is defined by “gender performativity.” That the A.P.A. adopts this theory as being a scientific fact is rather odd. This is why the A.P.A. is more akin to say the Catholic Church. Indeed if you create a study that is peer reviewed and published that challenges another prominent researchers’ work, you immediately get called out for not towing the accepted line. This is exactly what happened to Lisa Littman when her paper Rapid-onset gender dysphoria in adolescents and young adults: A study of parental reports when data challenged the assumptions of other scientists currently in fashion. That people like Diane Ehrensaf, PhD from UCSF dismissed the study outright just shows how political and cult-like is the field of psychology and the APA. As a scientist, you would think Ehrensaf would be curious. “Interesting. You are taking a different angle than I did and found that kids with Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria seemed to be due to environmental factors and a common feature was an addiction to the internet.” Instead, Ehrensaf dismissed the findings outright even though her work is often based on studies that have yet to be replicated. This is but one example of how the APA is not really interested in science but ideological conformity. Often, in the end they become the unknowing henchmen of the pharmaceutical industry.
Not related to men specifically, Drug Dealer, MD is an insightful look how the medicine in the United States is the cause of the opiod crisis. That “pain” is now considered a vital sign has profound influence on the prescribing of narcotics and other prescription drugs.
While reading the comments from the New York Times article it was interesting to read that the guidelines use of the word “stoic” is actually inaccurate, shallow and lacking of historical perspective. It is almost as though the modern psychologist notions of the topic of men was informed only by time spent reading the latest studies, watching beer and truck commercials, John Wayne movies and never bothered to learn some of the fundamentals. Three times in the paper it discusses how stoicism in men is a bad thing, that “not showing vulnerability, self-reliance, and competitiveness might deter them from forming close relationships with male peers.” A rather odd statement for anyone who has ever participated in athletics and formed bonds with teammates and opponents. Online, in the comments, someone pointed out that “Stoicism” as a ancient philosophy of life is very different than what perhaps how the APA defines stoicism. Recommended reading was the book A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy Irvine, William B.
A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy Irvine, William B.
It is good read and what you learn is that Stoicism as an ancient philosophy of life has more in common with Zen Buddhism than emotional repression and asceticism. I am certain learning about Stoicism is much more worthwhile than reading the APA guidelines. For when after the APA psychologist, who is having therapy session with your anxiety-prone child, decides “maybe its time to start medication or hormones” and suggests Prozac or Ritalin, you will need to consult some of the practical advice from the ancient philosophy of Stoicism in order to come to terms with your life’s turn of events. But now I am going to stop writing, and as my father did before me, a very stoic creature,perform one of my many “masculinities” and do the dishes and clean the house.
Although there are differences in masculinity ideologies, there is a particular constellation of standards that have held sway over large segments of the population,
including: anti-femininity, achievement, eschewal of the appearance of weakness, and adventure, risk, and violence. These have been collectively referred to as traditional masculinity ideology
– From American Psychological Association’s guidelines for practice with men and boys.
What a strange definition of something the APA calls “traditional masculinities.” Of all the thousands upon thousands of men I have known, I have yet to know any who embrace that list. To stereotype people is a sign of a shallow intellect and for health care providers a dangerous path.
