Tuesday 19 August 2008

Does Society Favor Men?

Well, the only way to answer this question is to ask: Is the Pope Catholic?

Of course society favours men. Men have always been in charge and in command of their world. They built it, they dictate behaviour in it and they control it. The biggest and most noticeable area is in jobs and careers. Only today I was reading the latest fascinating surveys on the best and highest paid jobs for women, and even in careers where women are represented at least 75% (like nursing, paralegal, human resources etc), somehow that 25% of men manage to earn at least $5000 annually MORE than the women! How does that happen? How can the majority earn less than the minority in those fields? And that trend is repeated across society. Worse still, even in fields like IT where men dominate, they still earn far more. So, right across the board, society favours men much more than women, which is why they earn an average of 20% more in pay than their female colleagues. But we have to look at the root of the favouritism to appreciate how it is maintained.

Women, of course, began with a disadvantage. Up to a few years ago, society was run by men, for men and to reflect men and their values and ideals. Women were invisible, as their 'natural' place was regarded as being in the home. A lot has happened in the past 50 years to change those perceptions, and we do have some women forging ahead in isolated instances. Many young women are also achieving much more academically to give them that brighter start in life, and a few are reaching the boardrooms. But they still represent only about 2% of what is possible. Men still have a strong grip on the economic, political, educational, media and technology structures of our society, the important bases of power, continuously recruiting and nurturing in their own image and likeness, especially where men are regarded as 'natural' authority figures. In this way they maintain their iron hold on opportunities and access for all.

Some might argue that women are getting more access to male domains and so society is beginning to favour them above men. But access is not influence or power, which men have retained in abundance. Access gets you on the ladder, to survey enviously those already in place. Without the men in power opening that door wider to let women through, women will always have that glass ceiling obstructing their progress to greater heights. It means that the good intentions might be there to improve the balance of opportunities and contributions between men and women, but vested male interest and a firm hold on power ensures the actual action remains tiny and the status quo continues to favour men for a long time to come.

Why Do People Stereotype?

Stereotypes reflect flat, one dimensional caricatures of people which bear little resemblance to the variety and diversity inherent in any group or race, but they surface all the time in any culture for easy categorisation and comprehension of cultural behaviour. We hear a lot about stereotypes and why we should not use them, but there is nothing wrong with stereotypes, per se. We tend to judge each other by generalisations in order to understand every aspect of life, especially when faced with difference, a kind of shorthand way of addressing new groups without having to note every minute detail every moment of the day.

The brain, like any computer, works from the macro to the micro when absorbing information, seeking coherence and order by using the information it already has to sort items and people in the fastest, most stereotyped and efficient way until more data becomes available. At the first, or macro, stage, the only effective way to view people of all ilk is to focus on their similarities, what they are perceived to have in common from our state of ignorance, especially what links them together, whether positive or negative, in order to appreciate their culture/behaviour/perspectives.

When more information becomes available, sorting switches to the micro, or individual level, to focus on the differences that set the person or group apart in their own right, and to establish the level of familiarity and comfort in dealing with the strangers or new situations. This automatic second stage process by the brain sorts out interactions on a micro level, assigning individual characteristics to a host of originally 'sameness' features. Once we appreciate the uniqueness of that individual, we begin to feel more comfortable with them and there is no further need for stereotypes. We tend to accept them as they are.

So, while it may be wrong to assign something negative across a whole group of people, it becomes offensive as a stereotype ONLY if we know better, yet still persist in classifying those people in stereotypic ways. It is also the negative nature of stereotypes which makes them offensive because we really cannot accept a positive stereotype like, "Many African Americans are great athletes" (which appreciates and applauds their prowess), or that "Asians are good academic performers who end up in high status professions" (something which enhances that ethnic group by increasing its social and economic appeal) then react in an aggrieved manner when negative stereotypes are used as well.

We cannot know every human being individually, so we have to start with certain assumptions about them, based upon our limited knowledge of their background and origin. This would include the primary differences relating to gender, race, ethnicity, age, ability, religion and nationality - the more readily observable characteristics. For those who wish to be prejudiced or discriminatory, or who lack confidence in themselves, this is where the process stops. A quick analysis usually catalogues the group or person into a 'rigid box of acceptance or rejection', dominated by stereotypes and feelings of fear.

If the original perception remains unchanged, despite added knowledge to the contrary, that's where negative stereotypes become damaging and prejudicial. Any further assumptions would be deliberate and used for a particular purpose which is rarely ever meant to be complimentary to that person or group, and particularly to feel superior.

Monday 11 August 2008

Dealing with prejudice in today's society

Prejudice is a natural by-product of making choices in life. We are presented with a diversity of choice daily, from which we are required to select what matters to us most, what we like best, the things which keep us in our comfort zones and anything that enhances us the most, while resisting the rest. From choosing a partner to choosing a fashionable item, we are exercising the prejudice of accepting one thing while rejecting another. So we are all guilty of exercising prejudice in some form and we all have our prejudices relating to lifestyle and culture.

However, such prejudices become an issue where choices are mainly negative, made out of deliberate malice to show dislike, to stem personal fear, to demonstrate superiority, to exclude others and to denigrate or deny their presence and rights. In fact, prejudice becomes intolerable when it is applied to people who cannot change their colour, their disability, gender or sexuality. One always has the opportunity to lose weight, if one is too big, to stop smoking, if the smoke offends others, or to stop behaving badly, if it annoys one's peers. But prejudice against people who cannot change who they are, or their identities, hits below the belt and becomes unacceptable.

Dealing with such prejudice is often a traumatic process for those on the receiving end, especially if they are not supported by the system, by neighbours or the community. People affected by mindless prejudice often feel impotent to deal with it and many are left scarred by its effects. However, the room for those malicious types of prejudice is gradually contracting because of the global exposure to difference, the networking opportunities to deal with people of different cultures and communities, and the educational advantages available. In fact, the vast amount of information available on the Internet and elsewhere, the dramatic increase in travel over the years and the proliferation of social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, are doing more to break down such prejudices, and the barriers to the acceptance of diversity, than anything that has gone before them. They now make it difficult to exercise real prejudices, especially when one has been out of one's locality or is trying to make 'friends' on a global scale.

Dealing with prejudices have never been easy, and prejudices will always be there. But thanks to education, technology and greater exposure to one another, such prejudices can gradually be minimised instead of being allowed to cause real damage.

Growing up in a different world: How do we teach values?

Teaching solid values which help to build character is very important in families. Values are the legacy of a good home and provide the basis of acceptable behaviour. They also decide the moral standards of a family, they give confidence in dealing with specific issues and situations and provide the essential link from one generation to another.

However, the teaching of values in any age or any society is not an easy one because of the fluid and questionable nature of the values themselves, and the ever changing demands in behaviour of each new age. A few years ago, values were universally based on religious Christian teachings. The bible was the foundation for the values we adopted, with a fear of God as the decisive element to ensure we kept to those values. Most values related to the individual and keeping his/her place harmoniously within the wider community. Religion also affected expectations and behaviour relating to marriage.

For example, a grandmother who would have been brought up in a very restrictive Britain, as far as women are concerned, would have been taught the values of behaving like a 'lady', not having sex before marriage, not having children out of wedlock and not daring to think of divorce because of the vows made and the loyalty to the husband and home which was expected. Try teaching such values to young women of today! Yet those values would have made the grandmother the confident, accomplished (or even fearful) woman that she is now. They would have dictated her perspectives on life, and her perceptions of it, and would have been the cornerstone of her development in a male dominated society.

Today our values are more social in form, technological rather than religious in application, more pragmatic to suit the moment and entirely concensual. Youngsters tend to match their peers in behaviour so as not to feel left out, adopting values which are likely to be at odds with the outmoded values of their parents. Therefore values can never be passed down without some modification and acceptance of change due to the transient nature of society, the constantly changing morals and behaviour, the innovatory nature of life itself, and the natural social experiment of the young to forge their own values to deal with new situations.

It means that in a 20 year span, values would have been greatly modified or completely replaced altogether because of the changing times. For example, I grew up believing that to steal from anyone, especially shops and work, was wrong. Yet a recent survey in the UK showed that 38% of the nation engage in petty theft , especially at work,of one kind or another daily. Such theft is no longer regarded as morally wrong but a kind of retribution for fleecing the customers. Many people have the reasoning that the shops rip off the customers in high prices so they have no regret stealing from them through actions like keeping change they were not entitled to, or wearing clothes they bought and returning them to the shops as faulty.

Teaching values are important for the confident development of the young, and to keep the generations connected to each other, but that teaching has to be flexible enough to recognise that yesterday's value is likely to have less relevance and are more likely to be today's amusing folk tales.

Wednesday 6 August 2008

Sorry Barack, this pains me to say it, but I have to vote for Paris Hilton instead! :o)

I hate to do this to my presidential intended, especially one so deserving of the office and all that, and after all that campaigning too, but I have to switch my allegiance to Paris Hilton for president, and with her having chosen sweet little Rihanna for Vice President too. What a team they will be, particularly for galvanising the men to join them in governing effectively in the White House. The men would be so busy being goggle eyed at the ladies, they could both get some very tricky policies through without a murmur!

Paris is eminently qualified, according to her latest advertisement. Her brief but dramatic advert shows that:

a. She has an energy plan, which is more than John McCain has.
b. She is pretty articulate and sweet with it too.
c. She tells it like it is and does not mince her words with niceties (calling her rivals "bi*ches").
d. She can look beautiful (which is more than McCain ever can!)
e. She is quite ready to lead (Boy, I can see LOTS of men itching to follow her in her swimsuit all the way to Capitol Hill!)


In fact, I think Paris and Barack would make a wonderful pair in the White House as they are both supposed to be 'celebrities', they both have that and elusive X factor and we are obviously in the celebrity age. i could also campaign for them both at the same time. Saves lots of angst on my part having to choose! (This is getting more exciting by the minute!)

And why did I switch my strong allegiance so quickly, despite the hand wringing?

Because Paris is indeed very hot, as she says, and us hot ladies have to stick together when the chips are down!

Kudos to President Paris, I say!

(PS..Her advert has been seen over 2 million times in a few hours already!)

Monday 4 August 2008

Four Key Elements of the MySpace Age

The MySpace Age is indicative of the dramatic change in the world we have known, primarily in the way we now relate to one another. This age is characterised by the following: individual expression, technology, communication and connections.
1. The MySpace age is the age of the individual. An age where individual expression is paramount compared to the old age of collective information, suppressed information, information censored by authority and being denied access to it. Emphasis is now on personal profiles, extending one's reach globally to others, instead of just to our extended families, and sharing in a cultural enrichment of artistic, social and literary expressiveness. The blog is now king which gives everyone a voice. People have always wanted to be heard and now there is an instant personal comment and expression on every world event. The ubiquitous blog gauges world opinion through individual utterances, while giving the blogger authority, presence and significance.

2. Technology defines the MySpace age. Without it, we would still be back in old times, doing things in the limited traditional ways: being limited to our geographical, cultural and social boundaries and in both our imagination and creativity. Technology offers complete freedom of expression, in a new order and with new tools, which is sometimes frightening in its implications; one that is still feared by older people while being bewildering in its array of possibilities. Without technology the MySpace age would simply not be possible and its development carries with it the need for new mindsets, new ways of thinking and new ways of approaching the fascinating lives we now lead and accepting what is possible.

3. Communication is at the heart of the MySpace age: communicating with ourselves, with others and with our world, and with a new kind of urgency and voice. Everyone is encouraged to communicate through the use of technology, using all forms of the multimedia available, which is why sites like YouTube, Photobucket and Itunes dominate. There is the constant need to upload, download, make a video, blog and play music. These sites are witnesses to new and creative forms of expressiveness which bridge all social and cultural barriers.

4. Connections: friendships and connecting with others appear to be the raison d'etre of the MySpace age. We are all encouraged to make new friends across the globe, send out our pictures, our thoughts, fears and aspirations to share with everyone in our special circle of friendships, and to have them appreciated, validated and reinforced. If you are not connected to others you are not yet a part of the MySpace age; an age which leaves loneliness and isolation behind and offers a tantalising world of new experiences, new friendships and exciting new connections, well outside our own small and limiting localities and social and cultural boundaries.

FIVE KEYS TO GREATER HAPPINESS

We search for happiness each day, the elusive concept that takes a lifetime of exploring. We often think happiness comes through winning the lottery, through getting a big break, buying a house, a car, the latest fashionable item. But those provide only sporadic feelings of excitement. When the effects wear off, we are back to feeling gloomy, negative, downhearted or depressed. This is because happiness as a goal is not something we strive towards. It's not a tangible thing we can feel, nor is it something which comes to us when we work at it. That is why some of the poorest people are very happy because it is an indefinable quality we either have or we don't.

Happiness is a state of being. It is how we feel deep inside of us at any moment in time, not next year or tomorrow, but now, and each day after that. It does not depend on anything at all except the feeling about ourself to make us happy. Material things merely enhance it for a moment, but we give happiness life through 5 crucial things:
1. The love we feel for ourself.

2. The love we share with others

3. The gratitude we have for living and life itself. 

4. The contentment we feel in our abilities and achievement.

5. The self-belief we have that we can make things happen.


In a recent book, I feel Bad About My Neck, Nora Ephron, the writer, seems to regard the ageing neck with disgust. The gratitude for being alive with her unique neck, when many other people with 'beautiful' necks were very dead, was lost upon her. She still had LIFE. The majority of people in this world are unhappy simply because they do not like themselves. They spend their waking moments wishing they could be someone else, or they could change their nose, face, arms, body or hair. Many people loathe themselves. they hate to pass a mirror to see their reflection, dreading to hear themselves speak or to see themselves in a photo. They yearn for a perfect being to be represented in a perfect image, an unrealistic ideal which makes them feel continually inadequate. This means they can never be happy because two things emerge from their lack of self-love.


No Reinforcement or Affirmation

First, they cease to be appealing to others because no one can likes what they too reject. They might attract some people who have low esteem too, but as neither one is capable of offering positive support to the other, the attraction soon wanes because one person will either take too much or both will simply take from each other without giving anything back. Such a relationship will be short on reinforcement and affirmation and long on regrets and impossible expectations. So there will not be much of a love to share, mainly blame and discontentment. Unable to love themselves, they are unlikely to share love either because they cannot give away what they haven't got.

The second thing which will happen is that there will be little gratitude for anything in their life, or little contentment in themselves and their capabilities, because the focus will always be on what is missing and not what they are blessed with. There will be a constant desire for something else because of the basic dissatisfaction with themselves. Such people can never be satisfied. Everything will be perceived to be 'wrong' or 'not right'. The fact that they have life, limb, and faculties all working will be lost upon those who are unhappy with themselves. Happiness is never possible in such situations because if they cannot appreciate themselves it is difficult to appreciate and value others too.

In fact, when we are unhappy we are likely to put ourself down and readily believe that we are not as good as others; not up to standard and not as clever, etc. Somehow, no matter how beautiful and blessed we are, we lose confidence regarding our potential, so happiness consistently eludes us. Lacking the self-belief to get whatever we want, and to be whomever we wish, we waste our talents in anxiety and frustration, in wishing and yearning and in self deprecation. Often it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, one which is guaranteed to deny us the happiness we seek for a very long time.

Happiness is elusive only if we do not accept each day as given; only if we continue to seek what isn't really there while ignoring what is; only if we expect the worst; if we reject ourself and we take our world and loved ones for granted. Once we have those five qualities of loving, sharing, gratitude, contentment and self-belief, we won't ever have to seek happiness again because it would have settled quite snugly within us.

The Impact of New Technology With Old Mindsets

Technology has dictated the current pace and perspective of our lives with a dominant and unavoidable impact. When I look back to just 30 years ago to see the difference in lifestyle, knowledge and behaviour over those years, it is somewhat alarming to comprehend. For example, when I had my son in 1971, the amenities seemed positively primitive compared to those for having a child now, which are much more inclusive too, being designed to involve the whole family with the birthing process, instead of just the mother. The changes in the home, particularly in furnishings and lifestyle, are just remarkable to an older person like me and would have been phenomenal to my grandmother who had so little: no fast foods, no television, no freezer, no washing machine, no dishwasher, no phone, no electric light or oven, no microwave; all items considered essential now in order to maintain the current standard of living.

Back then, the only gay person I heard about in the UK, or came in contact with, was Quentin Crisp, through the TV drama of The Naked Civil Servant. Yes, gays were around, but they were regarded as oddities, people who were living against the teachings of the Bible. Open prejudice against them meant they were closeted, only a few were brave enough to admit it. Worse still, far fewer people in Britain are religious now and so the only times they see a church are when they cannot avoid the necessary social rituals. Yet, we still pretend that Christians are in the majority in an increasingly diverse society and clothe social behaviour in singular Christian ethics.

While all this change is going on, we are still demanding certain kinds of outmoded behaviour of people, paying homage to the nuclear family instead of acknowledging the relentless rise of single households; ignoring the fact that fewer and fewer people are getting married, while we try hard not to notice the increasing number of extramarital relations (and divorces) occurring by the minute. The latest survey reveals that at least 62 per cent of both men and women are being intimate with people other than their official partners. Yet we continue to treat such people as though they are in a minority, as though they are home-wreckers; pretending that only a few 'misguided and selfish' people would behave in such a manner, while still denying the increasing diversity of a developing society which is in anxious cultural transition. You only have to go on the Internet to see how many married people of both sexes are openly seeking new relationships with no intention of leaving their partners. Disguised as seeking 'fun' the eternal search goes on to find that elusive happiness.

Thanks to new technology, which has liberated people from their home location, there is now a self-righteous orgy of diminishing trust, betrayal and deceit in operation; one which is far removed from the much-vaunted Victorian values of family loyalty, commitment and selflessness. The mobile phone has become an indispensable item for illicit lovers, confirmed by a survey conducted for famous divorce lawyers, Mishcon de Reya. Thanks to the growth in the number of mobile phone and Internet users, adultery is taking on new life in a dramatic way and conducting illicit affairs has never been easier.

Technology is now dominating our lives, but in such a rapid transition, many people find it difficult to cope, while some are stuck in old traditional mindsets which rob them of their capacity to appreciate just what is happening in their world or to benefit from it in ways which would be life enhancing., birth
Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket