In the second and third volume of his History of Sexuality trilogy, French philosopher Michel Foucault documents a change in the way marriage factored into (men’s) personal growth: From a minor role in the training for self-governance to the primary focus of self-care. In Ancient Greece, marriage was seen as a way to learn to govern ourselves so that we can govern others, though the boy-man friendship was more central in this training for self-mastery. Foucault also shows that the Greeks moved from the debate over whether to marry to making marriage a duty (154-5). Foucault traces the change of … Continue reading »
There have been quite a few posts on singles blogs recently about sex, in particular on how to deal with sexual energy when there’s no obvious outlet like an intimate partner (for example, the Onely post and Bella DePaulo’s writing). It seems fitting, then, to summarize Chapter 8 of Edwards and Hoover’s “The Challenge of Being Single” even though the topic of sex on a blog feels somewhat dicey… Again, I am struck how current this book still is – it was published in the early 1970s, yet so little has changed. For example, I think that this is still … Continue reading »
Apr 192009
I thought I’d write biased summaries of the book “The Challenge of Being Single” as I read it. Here are the first two chapters. The first chapter addresses the question “how come you’re not married?” Edwards suggests that society’s theme song toward singles is “there’s something wrong with you.” She goes further than identifying this, though: “This social contempt eventually brings about self-contempt. Like any group that has been constantly ignored or downgraded, singles come to believe what others say about them.” (18) She suggests that we are learning to create a need that is experienced so strongly that it … Continue reading »
There are two aspects I want to focus on in my summary of Jennifer Hecht’s Happiness Myths: Wisdom gathered from history about happiness and the influence of money on our society. The book is very well written and contains much more insights, gained through taking a historical perspective, than I will touch on here.
Timothy Wilson‘s book Strangers to Ourselves is a fascinating journey to our adaptive unconscious, which he defines as the “mental processes that are inaccessible to consciousness but that influence judgments, feelings, or behavior” and have adapted through evolution (23). Wilson contents that we cannot observe these processes because they are simply inaccessible to us: “a lot of the interesting stuff about the human mind – judgments, feelings, motives – occur outside of awareness for reasons of efficiency, and not because of repression” (8). He argues that this is similar to other processes, such as perceptual processes or even digestion, which … Continue reading »
Feb 282008
Chip Conley’s book “Peak: How great companies get their Mojo from Maslow” applies Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to the world of work. He summarizes Maslow’s famous pyramid: “Maslow believed that each of us has base needs for sleep, water, and food (physiological), and he suggested we focus in the direction of fulfilling our lowest unmet need at the time. As those needs are partially fulfilled, we move up the pyramid to higher needs for physical safety, affiliation or social connection, and esteem. At the top of the pyramid is self-actualization, a place where people have transient moments called ‘peak … Continue reading »
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