I Want To Be The Last Male Dinosaur

Today’s man wears designer suits, visits the massage parlour to relieve muscle aches and softens his delicate skin with an array of exquisite products. Yesterday’s man had leather skin on his neck, brawled, belched, and wore his workday blues every day.  Today’s man cries at tender movie scenes, attends his support group and cooks gourmet meals for his children.  Yesterday’s man knew nothing of healthy and boring diets, drank beer with his buddies after work every day and punched his friend on the shoulder to show he was there for him.  Yesterday’s man is a dinosaur, almost as extinct as the woolly mammoth.  I want to be the last male dinosaur.

When I awake before dawn, I want to hear the scratch of callouses on the wood floor when I walk in bare feet. I want to count the nicks and cuts on my hands and arms after a long day of labour (just so I will know that I have worked hard), and feel the ache in my back, without having to tell a masseuse about it.

This dinosaur wants to enjoy the wrinkles that age brings, without worrying which colour of manscara hides my age. As the last dinosaur, I will shave every other week, even if I feel like I don’t need it.

I want to put my tools to good use: to use my pliers to pull my own rotted tooth (or at least the one that is most rotted), to trim my toenails with side cutters, to use my tool chest as a footstool and my engine stand as a coffee table. To be sure that I get the most out of those tools, I need to fix my own car and my own house, instead of calling a specialist tradesman.

For fun, and to develop my own unique talents, I want to learn to burp the national anthem (using popcorn farts is baby work!). Every evening, I will watch Country Fried Home Videos and wish I had thought of doing that.  On nights when the CFHV show is not airing, I will watch, for the fortieth or fiftieth time, the Blue Collar Comedy Tour DVD.  I promise to laugh at every joke that Larry the Cable Guy tells.

Aging is for sissies.  Even though my brittle bones break easily now, I need to feel the hurt of a hockey body check, the pain of a torn knee in a football game. While waiting at the batter’s plate for the agonizingly slow arc of a softball pitch I long for the sting of a hardball smacking into my bare hands.

The old ways are the best. A real man feels the bite of a cold winter day, in an ice-fishing shack, while wearing his old work coveralls instead of a $600 snowsuit. 

The old clothes are the best, too.  Every five years, I need to remind myself to take my one suit out of the closet, just to reassure myself that it is still in style and still fits, sort of.

But even where it doesn’t fit, an old-style man knows that bigger is better, particularly when it applies to bellies, houses, trucks and tools. Loud is the only volume for voices, truck mufflers and parties. More is macho and “green” is the same as pink for real men.

A real man – a dinosaur man – does have feelings, though.  As the last male dinosaur, I feel that God wanted us to be Christian, and it is my duty to set anyone straight who thinks, wrongly, or who thinks that any other religion is acceptable.  I understand that the only definition of “gay’ is to be donned in that type of Christmas apparel, or to be happy.

I feel that it is unkind to talk with someone about her feelings, since that will only make her feel those feelings more.  A dinosaur should never talk about his or his partner’s feelings.

If a dinosaur man should never discuss his feelings (unless he feels that politicians are asses or feels that his football team is the best in the world), then he should, most certainly, never use Twitter to tell everyone that “OMG, I just did (this, or did that). Because everyone really shouldn’t care!  And, if Twitter is taboo, then Face Book is, too.  Unless it is used to show hilarious and embarrassing photos of friends. 

Although I want to be the last male dinosaur, modern living has forced me to make some concessions.  I still want to do another Dukes of Hazard car jump (but, this time, not in my Prius). I still can pull a fish out of the lake (so long as I do not have to bait the hook or kill a worm to do it).  Today, though, I put it back in the water, because it has the right to live. This autumn, I want to go deer hunting with my old best friend from my teenage years, but I will bring a camera instead of a gun. That way, I will not have to look into the brown, pained eyes of the dying buck as it kicks its last kick. To celebrate my spectacular shooting, I intend to eat a huge steak, but I hope that I never actually have to kill the steer that provided a slab of its flesh for me to gnaw on.

I do want to be the last male dinosaur, but I want to be a more modern fossil.  I want to improve me, and to teach my children and my grandchildren that a real dinosaur can be contemporary.

I will always stand up to the bully that is harassing someone weaker than he, and teach him the lesson that a real man doesn’t abuse someone else.

I love to see my sons hold the door open for a woman, not because she can’t do it herself, but because he wants to show consideration and deference to her. 

It is important to show my grandkids that we old dinosaurs were wrong when they looked after our greed, at the expense of others’ need.

I will learn from my son that any decent man always considers others’ feelings to be important, not his own.

Even though this modern dinosaur is an atheist, I want you to know that I believe that God may or may not exist, but who am I to judge those who believe differently than I do?

As the last dinosaur, I am surprised to learn that “gay” really is a great word for homosexual behaviour, if that really is what makes that person happy.  I also am amazed to I know that I accept that he or she is just as good a person or friend, whether he is gay or straight.

It brings a warm feeling to my heart to know that all of my children will help someone in need, even when it is inconvenient for them.  It is astonishing to know that this small dinosaur brain can absorb these new concepts.

In accepting that new concepts are not bad concepts, I will use Twitter to learn about a wonderful new idea or way of doing things, and to share my thoughts with others, who may enlighten me further. Then, I will sign on to my FaceBook account to communicate by hearing, not talking. 

Enlightened thinking allows this male fossil to understand my partner’s feelings better, and to get in touch with my own, so that I can be a better person.

I feel, for example, that responsible, considerate consumption is every man’s duty.

I am learning that we should treat everyone with the respect they deserve, and appreciate even the little things that this world offers – the pleasant and the unpleasant, too. 

And it brings me to tears to see prejudice, injustice, unfairness and inconsideration in any form, against any person.

I am, truly, the last male dinosaur.  Just colour me purple and call me Barney.

Hold the Phone! Is It Always Unethical To Break The Law?

Does being ethical require obedience and adherence to the law?  Does being moral mean that you never infringe on the rights and safety of others? Does compliance with the law make you an honest person? And if any or all of these questions are to be answered in the affirmative, does that mean that each of us should never break the law, for fear of being immoral, dishonest or unethical?

It is estimated that ten percent of the population never will knowingly break the law, 10% will often attempt to circumnavigate those same rules, and the remaining 80% will, under the right circumstances, bend or deviate from the law. Three decades ago, a survey in Ontario, Canada found that nearly 82% of citizens would cheat on their taxes, if it were risk-free, and 38% admitted that they had already done so. That is an enormous amount of deviance!

But does compliance with the rules make one honest?  One individual that I know pushes the envelope regarding the interpretation of the law routinely, justifying his mistreatment of others and his habit of maximizing his personal gain at the expense of others by saying, “If the government thought it was wrong, they would create a law against it.”  Yet, he knows that his actions cause others to suffer.

One foreign student at the University of Manitoba approached another student and asked her to write his ethics paper for him.  It is difficult to refrain from laughing at this too-obvious paradox!  Yet, in his culture, the political regime tacitly encourages such subterfuge, by intruding so aggressively into one’s life that, in order to maintain a semblance of personal power, people look for creative ways to hide their behaviours from the government.  In his view, the act of cheating on an ethics course merely was a way to express power.  He did not see it as a moral issue.

Then there is the question of whether there are circumstances where to not break the rules is immoral or unethical.

Last week, my wife needed to be rushed to emergency care at a nearby hospital.  Her condition, as I viewed it, was desperate, as she tenuously clung to consciousness, her breathing was shallow, she was perspiring profusely, was pale, and had numbness down her entire right side.  As I sped along the back roads, exceeding the speed limit, I called 911 on my cell phone.  I continued to use the cell phone even after I had intercepted the ambulance.  I needed to notify her immediate family.

Using a cell phone while driving is against the law in our jurisdiction.  So is speeding.  I potentially placed others at risk with my aggressive driving, even if I was inside the letter of the law.  Yet, if I had not reacted with such speed, my wife may well have died.  If she had succumbed, and I had not given the family an opportunity to learn of and react to her emergency, I would have caused them undue suffering.

I determined that, although I was choosing to break the law, the law needed to be broken in this situation.  I viewed my actions neither as immoral nor unethical.  How do you interpret supposedly necessary breaches of the law?  Now, give us an honest answer, please!

Blame The Dieter, Not The Diet

Lifestyle changes are difficult, without doubt.  However, failure to implement desired lifestyle changes is doubly difficult on the initiator of the change.  We all intend well.  We all believe ourselves to be ethically sound, well-meaning persons. Yet, we look to blame others, or other circumstances for our own failures.

On the extreme end of blame are the conspiracy theorists, marching, lock-step, with the racist element.

I have a former friend whom I feel falls into, if not both categories, the classification as a conspiracy buff.  His claim is that the Chinese are strategizing to take over the free world.  His basis in fact?   Actually, his basis in fact is fact only in his own thoughts.  The theory began to take hold of him when he lost his job to an Asian person.  Then he lost another.  And another.  Not once did he self-evaluate, and say, “Maybe there is something that I am doing wrong.”  Instead, the easy way was to blame the Asian community for stealing his job.

Next was his recognition that there were thousands of Chinese students in our universities, taking, according to him, spots away from Canadians.  He ignored the reality that no Canadian was turned down as a consequence of a foreign student buying his way into that spot.  Like my friend’s jobs, the seats were filled with students who had the dedication to advance their education.

My friend then chose to add to his arsenal of “proof” that the Chinese were sending only the brightest to “his” country, and that they were acting as an advance guard, who would use their higher learning to take over.  Again, he dismisses the idea that individual families were screened carefully by Canadian authorities, who decided which students obtained visas.  To assume that these were “spies” bordered on ridiculous, but conspiracy theorists tend to ignore realities in favour of biases.  It is easier to blame others than look at uncomfortable truths.

My old buddy goes on to claim that the tens of thousands of economic immigrants that arrive each year actually are sent by the Chinese government, as well, to take over our economy.  Perhaps, a small bit of truth.  The investment by foreign interests in our country is huge.  But we make the choice to accept the inputs, so it is difficult to blame the Chinese authorities for our decisions.  Still, hundreds of thousands do ignore fact, and blame the Chinese.

My brother, like my friend, lost his job to an Asian worker.  The fact that the Asian worker was a much better employee than my brother does not stop my kin from claiming that the Filipino community is plotting to take our jobs.  He trumps that claim by stating that his former employer, a Jewish person, is part of a global Jewish plot.  I suppose that the Filipinos are now a part of that sinister program?  What my brother ignores is that we are part Jewish!  Does that make him part of the conspiracy?  He rationalized that fact away, briefly, by denying his origins.  That is, until my research proved otherwise, and then he claimed that there might be some Jewish people who were not part of the universal plot.

These two anecdotes seem a far reach from discussions of lifestyle changes and blame, but they are not.

How many millions of us have tried, dozens of times, to implement a diet, but failed?  How many have made New Years resolutions, but lacked the commitment to see them through beyond January?  And, in turn, how many of us have said, “That diet doesn’t work.”

Diets neither work nor fail.  The work is in the hands of the dieter.  We simply choose to deflect the blame, and decline to accept personal responsibility.

This deflection occurs regularly.  “The government should do this,” or “that accident occurred because the city didn’t clear the roadway,” and so on.  The truth?  We are the government, so we make choices, and the government that we have is the one that we allowed to be put in place.  The accident occurs, always, because someone fails to exercise proper caution, given the conditions in which he or she was driving.

We cry about high crime rates, yet expect others to take measures to prevent crime.  We cry about high fuel prices, then drive up those prices by driving big vehicles, using excess amounts of petroleum-based products and invest in oil companies so that we can benefit from the soaring stock prices.  We blame the rich for getting rich, then aggressively seek to get rich ourselves. 

In an old (1960s) study, jurists in a British shoplifting case found a young man guilty of stealing a few pounds worth of goods, sentenced him to a hefty sentence, and then took the afternoon to discuss, among themselves, how to inflate their expense claims for the trial!  The Kitty Genovese incident of the 1960s is one of thousands where people have chosen to not come to the aid of someone in urgent need, opting to expect others to step forward instead.

Personal accountability is difficult.  Accepting responsibility for our actions takes effort, and often can cost us.  Yet, the failure to accept the personal onus for ethical action costs us much more, in internal esteem.

When we do the difficult, and make moral, ethical choices regardless of the cost, the ease with which we live with ourselves becomes greater, while the more frequently we choose the easy, less ethical response, the more anguish and angst we face inside. 

The best diet, the hardest to adhere to, is not one that involves actual food.  It is the one that weans us off attributing blame to others, and leads us into accepting responsibility for who we are, who we want to be, and how we want the world around us to evolve.  Stop blaming the diet!  Be the ethical dieter. It is not the diet that doesn’t work: it is that people fail to implement the diet.