The Need To Engage
© Copyright 1999 by John L. Waters.
All Rights Reserved
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February 22, 1999
Every boy is expected to engage other boys in contests of skill and strength. Boys engage
other boys to test each others strength and skill. The boy who can’t engage in rough
physical activity is expected to find some other engaging subject. He is expected to
become a good musician, or a good artist, or a good card player or a good speaker, etc.
A young man is expected to learn some profession and make this profession his career.
To do this he must find some group of men who find him engaging. The key idea is
engagement. The young man is expected to engage himself in the activities of some other
young men, and become adept in a skill which is valued by these young men. Exactly
which skill the young man engages in isn’t as important as is his finding some skill upon
which to devote his time and energy. This skill could be playing the trombone, becoming
a computer programmer, or being a championship golfer, chessmaster, or weight-lifter.
There are hundreds of special skills, and to become a professional, a young man must
focus upon one of these, and devote himself to becoming an engaging member of that
profession. The engaging professional is hired. The person who fails in one profession is
expected to be engaging in some other line of work. So he will go from employer to
employer, seeking to find an employer who finds him sufficiently engaging to hire.
The professional interview itself is a model for engagement. The person seeking to be
hired is expected to make himself physically attractive, and be an engaging personality at
the interview. The interview is a one-on-one conversation between two individuals who
are engaged in an exchange of talk and body language. And when an employer has a good
salary to offer, many job applicants will come to him seeking employment. He will hire
the most engaging job applicant.
What makes one boy engaging to other boys? If the boys all play football, the new boy
will be expected to join in the football game. If he can play football very well, the other
boys will be impressed, and they will want to be friends with him. If the new boy can’t
play football, the boys may not be friendly with him. And boys talk. If the new boy can’t
engage in easy conversation, the boys won’t pay attention to him. They may gang up
against him. And if the boy doesn’t wear long pants, this will be a problem, also.
Boys and men like someone who reflects their image. A man likes to associate with other
men who reflect his own beliefs, and who reflect his own habit of dress, and whose
language has the same ring to it. A man expects another man to be as competent in verbal
and nonverbal communication as he is. If a man can’t measure up to the expectations of
other men, he will fail to be an engaging person. He may never be able to find acceptance
within any profession.
The question arises as to whether men will ever be reformed.
If men are ever to be reformed, then boys will have to be educated to see the limitations of
their natural cliquishness and their narrowmindedness. Because boys grow up to become
men, and if boys are never reformed, then men will not be reformed. Men are at heart, still
boys.
Then the question is, should men be reformed, or why should men be reformed?
The old idea of manhood has been that a boy needs to fight his own battle, and beat other
boys to win respect. Many weaker boys learn to hate fiercely, and plot against the
stronger boys. Most of this plotting is all imaginary, and it isn’t carried out. But years of
such plotting and testing other males can make a man very cunning. And the underlying
hatred can make a man into a sociopath. Such a man can kill a world leader, either for
hire or out of spite. This is society shooting itself in the foot.
It might seem that boys cannot be reformed. But if this is true, why have any civilization
at all? Indeed , a civilization trains boys to be a certain way, and function as ideal boys, or
as ideal leaders. The best boys are given high grades, and scholarships and other awards.
It is just a matter of what the culture values. That is the bottom line.
When a boy reaches about age fourteen, the boy values more and more what the girls
think. The maturing boy seeks to be attractive to the young ladies. And if a young man
isn’t the way a civilization teaches its little girls about the way an ideal man is supposed to
be, then the young woman probably won’t find this young man to be engaging. He may
never take a wife.
In this way each civilization has performed a great breeding experiment over centuries of
time. And by selectively breeding for a certain ideal type of man, each civilization has
reduced the variability within its gene pool. This reduction of diversity has been offset by
miscegenation, as many ethnic groups have intermarried. In those cases where a
civilization has isolated itself from other ethnic groups, and prevented miscegenation, the
reduction of variability in personal traits has continued. This is like breeding a
monoculture in which all the individuals of a species are very much alike.
When a man can’t engage, he is kept outside of the society, as an onlooker. He is kept at
a distance, and not permitted to engage. For him this is a painful existence, and the man
who can’t engage may die. Certainly he will experience a lot of stress over the years.
This stress may produce a stress-induced disorder. Many chronic diseases are induced or
worsened by unrelenting stress.
From the preceding we can see that a socially isolated person is likely to suffer from some
stress related disorders, and he would be motivated to find a means of reducing the stress
he feels, and/or curing his disorders. For a man who has no employment is likely to have
no income. So he can’t afford expensive medical care. This lack of income adds to his
incentive to treat himself. But what methods of self-treatment are there?
And if an unusual man does find an unusual way of curing stress-induced and other
chronic disorders, unless he finds a way of engaging some people, his discovery will never
benefit civilization.
(contributor: John L. Waters)
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