Octopodial Chrome

It’s hard to express the strength of my emotions on reading Tim Page’s account of his life. I feel like I’m reading my own autobiography, in broad strokes as well as in many particulars. Like him, I was marked as bright by the same people who gave me failing marks; like him, I read the World Book Encyclopædia for fun. He writes of assembling a personality, piece by piece, almost robotically, from models we admire; that’s almost an exact description of me. His words on the ease of empathy for the inanimate and the difficulty of connecting with people strike far too close to home. His many monomanias reflect my own; one that stands out in particular is his high school decision to wear a rabbit’s foot in each buttonhole of his shirt and button it at the neck, which reminds me rather painfully of my own sweater-vest and tweed-coat stage in college. I needn’t even go into his—and my—general cluelessness with girls, or the horrors of the grade school PE field (and yes, I heartily concur with his plans for PE teachers).

The quote which best describes it all is this:

My efforts have been only partly successful: after fifty-two years, I am left with the melancholy sensation that my life has been spent in a perpetual state of parallel play, alongside, but distinctly apart from, the rest of humanity.

That’s the matter in a nutshell.

This summer, Roy Baumeister gave a deeply insightful speech entitled Is There Anything Good About Men?. His essential points are these: that a culture—any culture—is a system which uses men and women in order to survive against other cultures; that most cultures use men and women differently; that while most winners are men, so too are most losers; that men tend towards the extremes (most genius and retards are men); that men are social too, but instead of being individually social, we are social in the great community; that we are as concerned with fairness as women, but rather than equality we seek equity. You need to read it now.

An interesting item is this: about 2/3 of your ancestors are women; only 1/3 are men. That means that a few men were very successful—and many more were utter failures. In fact, of all the men who ever existed perhaps 40% actually have descendants now living today; the majority of men have died without heirs. For women, the number is 80%. That single difference can explain a whole host of behaviours among men and women.

Another item: the survival rate on the Titanic was worse for upper-class men than for lower-class women. You won’t hear too many leftists mention that one…