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Saturday, Nov 7, 2009
rayinkorea
Published Letters: 180 Editor's Choice: 6
Everyone seems to be going on and on about the separate spheres, making your Venn diagram and all that, but the point is the LW apparently is having trouble with what may be a new category of activities for her: Things I keep secret from my husband. That category is totally different from this one: Things my husband doesn't share my interest in. She seems to be worried about the line between secrecy and lying, which we should all recognize is dangerous ground for a relationship. Maybe her husband is a jerk. Maybe she needs assertiveness training. Maybe there's a big problem here. On the other hand, maybe she just needs to sit down with him and watch "Fried Green Tomatoes" and wait for the scene with the hand mirrors. Then the home-renovation scene. Don't know what I'm talking about? Fanny Flagg already covered all this, better than we ever will. And I don't say that just cause I'm from Alabama.
The most revealing thing to me here is that only the man involved expects you to keep this secret from your husband. Hey, let's conduct a little thought experiment. A woman is friends with a man who knows she is married. He is unhappy with his life, and wants out of his marriage. He asks her to keep secrets from her husband, while telling her that she is his best friend. What are his possible motives? It reminds me of advice my father gave me about quitting a job: have a new one lined up first. Good advice in one case, immoral at best in the other. You should be very cautious and reserved about this man. He may well hurt you and your family (perhaps due only to his inability to see beyond his own pain) if you are not aware of the coming danger. Do not keep secrets from your husband. Do not meet him alone. Do not talk on the phone with him at night. Do not be the shoulder he cries on. It may seem cruel to distance yourself from him, but your primary responsibility is to your family and your husband. Try to view his situation not as suffering that makes you want to comfort him, but as a personal failing that makes him less attractive and interesting. View his flirting, attentiveness and neediness as stress-coping mechanisms where he uses you, not as attempts to "reach out". Maybe this seems too pre-feminist, but the truth is that men are mostly capable of platonic friendship with women only when we don't want or need more.
Tell this guy that he stepped over the line when he asked you to keep secrets from your husband, and that you can not be his support system. Then ask your husband to help keep you out of it.
That separates science from belief. Other writers have said everything the LW needs to know; I'm mostly interested in understanding the background for CT's continuing flight into detachment from reality. (Hey, he can joke about it, so can I!) As a person working in the sciences, it constantly amazes me how even people capable of distinguishing between fact and conjecture, evidence and myth still apply the logic of post-modern moral relativism to problems best suited for the cold reason of empiricism. Someone's feelings about a particular scientific concept are of absolutely no relevance in the science classroom, unless the topic becomes the ethics of science. You want to talk about the morality of animal experiments? Fine. Otherwise, it's facts, hypotheses, experimental tests, rinse, repeat.
Living overseas overseas for several years has led me to believe that this inability to not view everything as being relativistic is mostly an American disease. We've been trained for so long to talk about our feelings that we can't realize that, sometimes, that's not the topic. This is a big part of why the US has lost much of its lead in science fields. We don't prepare students to do science; instead we prepare them to discuss their feelings about science. In conclusion, I think actually the debate in the US about evolution is not interesting. It's actually shameful. Nobody else in the post-industrial world is engaged in such stupidity. This reminds me of the lead citrate hypothesis about the fall of Rome. (You know: the Romans used lead to make goblets [fact], then the wealthy started drinking orange juice [fact], which reacted with lead in the goblets to produce lead citrate [logical supposition supported by experimental evidence], which is a highly soluble neurotoxin. While it generally doesn't kill you, it does seriously impair brain function. Thus, Rome fell because its leaders drank themselves stupid [unprovable]. My question is, what the hell are we drinking?)
If I say that Moby Dick is the greatest work of American fiction, you may disagree, put forward The Sound and the Fury and then we might calmly and logically discuss our difference of opinion. Because that's what they are, opinions. If however, I say that smoking cigarettes is bad for you, and someone else says that they're perfectly safe, I should not STFU and listen politely, because they're demonstratably wrong. That's what I mean when I say that post-modernist relativism is a disease affecting our society. Sometimes "opinions" are just stupidity, and it is sometimes necessary to fight against it. This is one such case.
Brilliant point. But is there anyway to make that insight help these people? Can we send her to some Top academy where she can learn to make him wash the dishes, clean the gutters and do her doggy-style before she'll give him his? What? That isn't a turn-on? Jeez, some people are sooo picky! I now feel better about my own, apparently modest, kinks. Hey, Honey, look at this! See, I'm not that bad! Thanks, Cary!!!!
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The Maine fight was supposed to be the dress rehearsal for repealing California's Prop. 8 -- but gay marriage lost
Once one obtains Seriousness credentials in the Washington media, they are irrevocable no matter one's conduct.
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