Month: September 2021

I was taken aback by a Wall Street Journal article that popped up on my Facebook feed recently. First, because the article said that men make up only 40.5% of current college students, with trends suggesting that the percentage will get even lower. And, second, because something noteworthy actually showed up on my Facebook feed. (Must click on 20 Celebrities Who Were Bad People in Real Life).   

According to the Journal (which I never read), women made up 59.5% of college students at the close of the last academic year. Six years after enrolling, 65% of those women earned their degrees, as opposed to 59% of men. Overall, US colleges lost 1.5M students over the last 5 years, with men accounting for 71% of that decline. A pretty dismal picture for those with the Y.  

I am struggling to understand what is behind this trend. I can appreciate why the number of women getting degrees has increased. It wasn’t that long ago when career opportunities for women were limited, and while the glass ceiling still exists, at least now the doors to the atrium are open, and the ceiling itself has significant cracks. It makes sense that women are taking advantage of those opportunities. 

We as a society have also encouraged women to fulfill their potential. Over the last 20 or so years there has been a push to let girls know that they can achieve and succeed in whatever field they choose. For example, the Journal cites the proliferation of support groups for women on campuses across the country, helping women thrive in college once they are there. 

All of that was needed to rectify historic inequalities. But how does that explain boys’ failure to continue to take advantage of the opportunities they have? It isn’t as if increasing access for women means that men are now cut off from academia, or are being shut out of the job market once they graduate. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 89% of men 25 – 34 graduating from college are employed, as opposed to 83% of women, and the long-term earning potential of those with degrees continues to be significantly higher for those with a college degree. So, it isn’t as if college has become a waste of time for men.  

Are boys put off by the increased competition? Are they so used to having the upper hand in the battle of the sexes (God, I hate that phrase) that they are not willing to even try now that the playing field is leveling? That seems too facile an explanation. I don’t see a generation throwing up its hands because others around them have the same ability to achieve their goals as well. If that’s the case, it would be pathetic. 

Maybe the whole idea of setting goals at 18 is the problem. It is axiomatic that girls mature faster than boys (certainly seemed that way to me growing up). Perhaps boys are just not responding as well to a world where college is so expensive that going in with only a vague notion of where you want to be four years later is riskier, and girls are better equipped to handle that pressure. But that seems too simple. How many 18-year kids, either boy or girl, know what that want out of life, and when has that ever been an excuse for not pushing ahead anyway?  

The Journal suggests that boys have more distractions now, with the prevalence of video games and on-line porn, and that may be having an impact. Statistics do show that boys are more likely than girls to be gamers, and the same is undoubtedly true for on-line porn. However, there have always been distractions. Before the internet and gaming there was TV. I know there’s a difference, but I find it hard to believe that gamers are that much more obsessed, though I must admit that I am not willing to totally dismiss the internet as irrelevant.  

I do wonder whether we, as a society, are properly encouraging boys to succeed. We have focused on making sure that girls know that they have a wide field of achievement ahead of them, but are we doing the same for boys? The Journal article cites a counselor at the University of Vermont who proposed a men’s center for the campus similar to women’s centers, but he couldn’t get the funding because, he says, the boys were still considered the most privileged group on campus, and therefore not in need of such support. While that has been historically true, the numbers suggest that it still may not be the case. 

Let’s face it, every kid needs a boost. Especially now. We cannot forget how difficult the teen years are. How self-doubt is an inevitable part of the landscape. How the future can seem a void. How the idea of matching the things that our parents have provides little incentive. That sense of hopelessness seems to have gotten worse, and unless we counteract it by positive reinforcement, it can be infectious. Women have done that over the last 20 years, so it is possible. 

The other response to this trend may be, so what. After all, the balance was the other way, and much worse, for many years, and we didn’t seem to care. Why should we now? Is concern about women achieving academically more than men, just repressed misogyny?   

I don’t know the answer to that question. I just know that as a man who has always loved learning, and the father of boys, I am concerned. I don’t think that we can afford to leave potential on the table, whether it’s from boys or girls. I also think that we are better off with a society where everyone is incentivized to rise to their potential. Maybe those are silly, utopian, notions, but they are mine.  

I have to admit that my 20^th Century heroes are those you would expect from an aging, left-wing, pacifist. The exception to this predictable litany is J. Krishnamurti, someone most people have never heard of. But for me he has been, and is, a touchstone that I have looked to for the last 40 years. 

Krishnamurti had a very unique childhood, to say the least. In 1909, when he was in his early teens, Krishnamurti was “discovered” by Charles Webster Leadbeater (his real name), a leader of the Theosophical Society, as the likely conduit for “Lord Maitreya”, a spirit periodically appearing on Earth, as the “World Teacher” destined to guide the evolution of humankind. (I thought that about myself at age 14 too, but no one seemed to agree).  

The Theosophists were a quasi-religious group founded by Madame Blavatsky (such great names!!!) that combined eastern and western thought, with a good bit of occultism mixed in. They were new age, before there was new age. They also had a lot of money and, probably because of that, influence.  

Krishnamurti was raised by the Society, becoming the legal guardian of one its leaders. For the next 15 years he was groomed to emerge as the harbinger of spiritual unity and global wisdom. The Theosophists thought that they had found their guru. 

While all of this sounded great, Krishnamurti had other thoughts. When he was 29, he shocked the Theosophists by, in essence, denouncing the whole idea of a world teacher. He said instead that “Truth is a pathless land”, rejecting organized religion, including Theosophy, gurus, and the very idea of a teacher/follower relationship. Instead, he said that people had to look inside to free themselves of the conditioning we are subjected to by our upbringing and culture so as to view the world with unvarnished eyes (easier said than done). 

When I first read Krishnamurti I was drawn to his courage in rejecting a role that would have guaranteed him a comfortable and revered existence. I was also drawn to his call to unstintingly look inward to examine drives and behaviors, and to honestly confront what you find. Ironically, perhaps, I found much to learn from this reluctant teacher.   

One of the Krishnamurti’s mantras was his admonition to stop the internal dialogue, that voice that mediates what we see and interprets it for us. He used the example of a sunset. We go to the beach and see a magnificent sunset and are awed by its beauty, so much so that we want to return the next night to relive it. The problem is that we have built up this expectation and the next night cannot help but compare the sunset we are seeing at that moment with what we saw the night before. Our thoughts stand in the way of us seeing the second sunset in all its glory. Our built-up expectation skews our vision.  

I thought of Krishnamurti, and the vagaries of expectation this summer on a trip my family made to Indiana and Chicago, along with Julie’s sister Beth from Boise (has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?), and two of my nephews. Even though Indiana is not known for its hiking, and we hadn’t had much luck on previous trips, I wanted to get out and at least enjoy a decent walk while we were there. This led us to Turkey Run State Park, hardly a promising appellation, about an hour west of Lafayette where we were staying. 

Then we got to the park, and the hiking trail. We took a bridge across a broad stream and were transported into a world of small creeks, lush canyons, boulder fields and large rock formations. It was as beautiful a hideaway as you could find. Even better, since I had no expectations whatsoever, it was doubly delightful. Like opening a gift that you had no inkling you would receive.  

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A couple of days later we were in Naperville, outside of Chicago, and went to the Morton Arboretum, a beautiful expanse of forests, ponds, prairie lands and sculptures. As we wandered about, we saw numerous signs for the “Big Rock”, out on the edges of the grounds. We decided we could not leave without taking the short trail down to this “Big Rock”. 

After a 20-minute walk on an easy trail, we emerged into a clearing and collapsed into gales of laughter. The build-up was such that we expected to see something magnificent. What we got was a decent size boulder, that could not but fail to impress those of us used to traipsing the trails of Pennsylvania, let alone the mountains around Boise. It turns out that the “Big Rock” is apparently an anomaly for the region, and should not be there, but my expectations made that meaningless.  

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In both of these incidents, despite my readings of Krishnamurti, I could not let the world come to me, but let expectations dictate my reactions. At Turkey Run, it worked out fine. At Morton Arboretum, not so well. My inner dialogue was conditioning my response, for good or ill, rather than what I was encountering.  

Of course, this happens pretty much every day, whether it’s while watching a sequel, or reading a second book from a favorite novelist, or just going to the store. When I can corral the internal dialogue (stopping it is more than I can ask for) and just accept what’s given I am more likely to see something I had previously overlooked. Sometimes it’s good, like Turkey Run, sometimes it’s disappointing, like the “Big Rock”, but at least I am confronting what is there rather than what I presuppose is there.  

There is no great insight here, or deep thought, just an on-going reminder that I can miss out on so much if I don’t look at the world as it is, rather than as I expect it to be. Not a bad lesson from an unwilling teacher.  

It is amazing how something can be both inevitable and shocking at the same time. Was there really any surprise that that the Taliban would retake Afghanistan after we Americans left? The speed with which it happened might have been stupefying, at least to those us 7,000 miles away, but the eventual return of the Taliban to power was not. And yet, it was gut wrenching to watch 20 years of futility played out in one week. 

The truth of the matter is that after 20 years there was no real Afghan government or Afghan army. There were shells in place that adopted those monikers, but there were no actual independent entities that embraced the obligations that go with governing or defending. They were stage props, fronting the US power barely hidden behind them.  

Nor was the Taliban ever really defeated. After the US invasion many of the Taliban fighters melted back into their home villages, safe from identification with the brutal regime that had terrorized opponents for the last five years. Others went to Pakistan, a US “ally” who had no interest in assisting in a rebuild of Afghanistan, and seemed happy instead to maintain the Islamic militants for as long as necessary. (Does anyone really believe that they didn’t know Bin Laden was living in Abbottabad?) 

The four administrations which oversaw this mess had to be aware of these realities. They had to know that once the US withdrew from Afghanistan the existing structures would collapse like the house of cards they were. They could not have been surprised by this outcome, any more than we were surprised by the takeover of South Vietnam by the Viet Cong in 1975. And yet, we were faced with images that eerily mirrored that those from Saigon almost 50 years ago. 

The Biden Administration bears the immediate blame for this inexplicable lack of foresight. The last six months should have used to identify everyone who had to be evacuated when the Taliban marched in, securing and/or destroying any weapons bound to fall into Taliban hands, and assuring the security of all US installations until the evacuation was complete. I cannot fathom why that was not done. 

But I don’t want to hear that the prior administration would have done any better. In fact, considering the Trump track record on advance planning, it would no doubt have been worse. Can anyone doubt that Trump would have simply denied any responsibility for the inevitable mess and tried and mask it with lie after lie? Does anyone believe that he would have authorized the evacuation of any Afghans to the United States?    

While we have to look to our own missteps, we should not avoid looking to the failures of the Afghans themselves. The news reports these days are full of stories about Afghans who took advantage of the US presence to try and change their society, but the truth of the matter is that those Afghans were few and far between. Most of the Afghan people clung to their traditional beliefs and mores, and never evinced any real interest in establishing an alternative to the Taliban.  

The American mission in Afghanistan (assuming we had one) was bound to fail unless the Afghan people embraced that mission as their own and ran with it. It was great to see Afghan women in the street protesting the return of the Taliban, but there should have been thousands of Afghans in the street over the past 20 years demanding an effective, corruption free regime answerable to the people. Unfortunately, that would have taken a popular will which was not there. 

So, was the entire an abject disaster? We initially went into Afghanistan to retaliate against Afghan support for the Al-Qaeda terrorists that masterminded the September 11 attacks. It’s a little late to debate whether that invasion was justified, but I must say that even a pacifist like me cannot dismiss this reasoning out of hand (unlike Iraq). There is no doubt that the Taliban provided Al-Qaeda with a training ground and safe haven to plan and carry out the 9/11 attacks. That initial invasion was successful in meeting this limited objective. 

The trouble was, and always is with violence “solutions”, that there was no clear path once the Taliban were thrust from power. Yes, we could militarily defeat the Taliban, but we should have realized 20 years ago that any effort to remake that country into a stable democracy was chimeric. We should have known that the only way to keep Afghanistan from lapsing into either an Islamic state or a haven for warlords was to commit to a permanent presence (our 51^st state?), which was not a real option. 

So, for 20 years we dickered around, wasting untold lives and tax dollars (because we always have money for war, even if we don’t for health care, etc.) chasing a phantom. Three administrations were reluctant to leave because they knew the probable outcome, and yet developed no tangible reason to stay. The fourth administration finally left, but in doing so planned the departure as if we were leaving something lasting behind, rather than just cutting our losses.  

I wish that I could say that Afghanistan will finally teach us that nation building is a losing proposition, especially in countries with no history of stable, democratic governance. But I am not optimistic. We have a way of talking ourselves into situations, and then refusing to admit our limitations. We did it in Vietnam. We did it in Afghanistan. We cannot afford to do it again.         

I am sure many of you have been asking yourself over the last month, “Where’s Tomser’s Blog?”. “Has he deserted us?” “Are we going to be left to grope through this crazy mixed-up world without his pithy insights and razor like wit?” Or, more likely, none of you even noticed that I had stopped posting and are somewhat surprised to see me reappear. Whichever way it is, like MacArthur, I am back.  

The truth of the matter is that I decided to take a summer break. I had trips planned for late July, and late August, so I was going to be out of pocket some anyway. Plus, as I thought about the time away, memories flooded back of that feeling when school let out for the year, and an expanse of free time appeared to stretch out indefinitely. I thought that I would try and recapture that a bit of feeling. 

To be honest, I am never sure whether that is a feeling I truly ever had. Let’s face it, memories of growing up are hazy at best, and memories of specific feelings at specific times even more suspect. Does it just seem like I must have had that feeling and did I thereby implant the “memory” of that euphoria into the nether reaches of my brain? 

Frankly, I don’t care. Whether it’s a real memory or a manufactured one, it is as visceral as anything from childhood. I can picture myself walking away from Asa Packer Elementary, or East Hills Junior High, or Freedom High and letting out a whoop of release from the daily grind of school. I can see myself looking forward to sleeping in, aimlessly rolling out of bed, turning on the TV to watch late morning cartoons and feeling as blissfully free as I ever would.  

The summers, of course, never played out that simply. There were things to be done, and even I got bored of the Flintstones after a while (unless it was the episode where Barney and Fred build a pool to share, and Fred ends up using a fake cop to try and scare his bosom buddy and lifelong pal). Yet, neighborhood friends were always around, as were above-ground, non-Flintstone, swimming pools to lounge in. Pretty idyllic. 

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The feeling lingered on through my working years, even though there was no summer break, per se. Our office closed at 3:00 before the Memorial Day weekend (corporate employers are soooo generous) and it felt like the beginning of summer. I was exhilarated leaving the building, even though I knew I would be back four days later.  

I also lived vicariously through my children (don’t we all). I could sense their excitement as the school year wound down. I knew they were anxious to put aside the perceived drudgery of school, even if they liked their teachers and classes. We always marked the passing of the school year and anticipation of the summer fun ahead by going out for dinner or ice cream. I enjoyed that as much as the kids did. 

So, did talking a month off from this blog match the intoxication of an endless summer? Yes and no. It was nice to get away from the self-imposed discipline of sitting down to write every morning. It was somewhat liberating to have no scheduled tasks, even if the schedule was my own and not one imposed by work or school. And it did seem a bit more like an endless summer having the open days of August stretching out ahead. 

On the other hand, the perception of unlimited possibility as the summer break started can’t be duplicated. The feeling that possibilities are endless is one of those things that dwindles over time. There is so much of life that is inevitable (apart from Thanos) and that becomes clearer as we get older. 

Part of the trick of retirement is getting back a taste of those wide horizons. It will never be the same, because obligations remain that just weren’t there growing up, not to mention the physical limitations. Yet, the horizons are wider than they have been for 40 years, and that is nothing to sneeze at. 

While it might have only been a pale reminder of the euphoria of youth, taking August to regroup was undoubtedly a plus. Even a glimmer of unbounded free days ahead is a good thing. Oddly enough, that’s true even though there is no imposed structure on my time. I can’t explain it, but that’s the way it is.