Now, we may think of any frontier as a male domain. And, more generally we may think of the True Male as an outcast, whether outcast onto the frontier or outcast in other respects.
Suppose one were to say, "God must be male, because, if He were female, He�d be more talkative."
That statement would be expressing an idea about what it is to be God--and also about what it is to be either male or female. Similarly, in this article I�ve been trying to say something both about what it is to be a virus and also about what it is to be male. That is, I'm saying both that, "All viruses are male," and, "If you are wanting to know what male entities are like, a virus is one good example."
I've been trying to establish a connection in the mind of the reader between the words �virus� and �male.� I want the connection to be flexible and multi-purpose.
If I say,"The statement, 'All viruses are male,' is itself a virus and that it will multiply in the head of anyone who reads it, displacing all other information, so that the reader will respond to the question 'What is your name?' by saying that, 'All viruses are male,'" then I want the reader to understand that I'm making a joke based on my central premise and that there is actually nothing to fear from the statement that, "All viruses are male."
The learned reader, after all, knows many words and those words have associations with each other. In my effort to create a new association between �virus� and �male,� I�ve mobilized an army of many other words and tried to make effective use of existing associations those words have.
Frankly, I think my premise is exceedingly simple and logical and shouldn�t have required quite as much explanation as has been given.
And I think it was Einstein who said that insanity consists of repeating one�s actions while expecting a different result. In saying that. �All viruses are male,� I've at least avoided coming under that particular definition of insanity.
Now, while a certain number of knowledgeable people had found my central thesis reasonable, that thesis--by the end of 2007--was nevertheless still basically the expression of a single individual. It'd been almost completely ignored by popular media. And I was even being rejected by my dear alma mater, the University of Chicago. There were people there who wouldn�t talk to me on the phone.
It wasn�t all bad: many recent graduates of UChicago, not quite sure of what they wanted to do in life, might well have envied me for having something of my own to proclaim and promote.
And, while I may have been regarded by the general public as a lone advocate for a dubious cause, isn�t that often the male condition? Although Nazis were enthusiastic about their M�nnerbund , it seems to me that to be �alone� or even �outcast� is more often a defining aspect of the male situation.
A virus, after all, might be described as a sort of an �outcast.� That term might not be perfectly appropriate, however, because, speaking metaphorically, we might ask whether a virus is an cellular �outcast� or a �voluntary emigrant� from the cell? That is, is the virus ejected or does it leave in order to fufill its own essential nature?
I won�t try to answer that here.
Instead, it may be more useful to switch to a different subtopic and cite patriarchal societies as outcast societies. My paternal ancestors, the Huns might be said to have been tossed out of China�although the initial cultural choice of northern migration was their own. After the Huns were established north of China, they were regarded as obnoxious and the Great Wall was built to keep them from returning to China. But whether they were outcast by choice or by the actions of others, the Huns were certainly patriarchal.
Similarly, the Arabs were thrown out into the dessert as described in the Bible. --Or perhaps they preferred the desert and found certain features of desert life advantageous. But their outcast society was also patriarchal.
That was in contrast to matrilineal Jews.
Is the Jewish tradition more reasonable? Jews are almost always non-violent which is to their credit. Some Jewish men may find a matrilineal setup somewhat confining psychologically as is depicted in the story, �A Perfect Day for Bananafish,� by J.D. Salinger.
Muslum culture isn't typically violent, but it can be so at times. It also has some redeeming qualities. It's been found that circumcision helps to cut down on the risk of AIDS for people living in Africa. While medical explanations, which probably have some validity, have been offered for that finding, it's also true that most of those circumcised in Africa are Muslim. Being Muslim means that one is exposed to conservative teachings about sex and that one can get in trouble for sexual misconduct. That probably also has something to do with the affect of circumcision on one's chances of getting AIDS.
But the matrilineal/patriarchial difference between Jewish and Muslim, societies passed down through generations, provides a basis for today�s conflicts. Humans often enjoy quarreling, even though it may be disruptive, and one may suspect that politicians on both sides of the Muslim-Jewish conflict may find it in their own selfish interest to preserve the state of hostility that existed at the end of 2007.
Is that too cynical?
It would certainly be fair to say that the repeated process of deals brokered by the US or other third parties has failed repeatedly and thus might be criticized on the basis of the definition of insanity given above.
I myself would like nothing better than peace in their part of the world, if for no other reason than the bad effect that prolonged war is having on the US. So I�d like to offer a suggestion based on a German institution that was mentioned at the start of this section.
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Will their old alma mater then reveal itself to them in a cooperative role or as a cutthroat competitor?
Perhaps my own experiences may shed some light on that matter.
Here are hyperlinks to other references to UChicago in this article:
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