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The Forum > Article Comments > Man for man: how we can do more to help ourselves > Comments

Man for man: how we can do more to help ourselves : Comments

By Nicholas Goodwin, published 19/11/2014

It is the capacity for intimate relationships that predicted flourishing in all aspects of men's lives.

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Craig Mins,

Hi Craig, when you first mentioned tribalism I imagined I hope correctly, you were using it as Ayn Rand did.

While there is some truth in what you observe about tribalism among some posters here and some even use the exact same slabs of words years after year in parallel/tangential discussions, it is important I reckon that you don't join them and return to the helicopter view you had previously.

Is this what you meant in your earlier post, if so yes, there is a lot of good fodder there to get our teeth into,

file:///C:/Users/John/Downloads/104-362-1-PB%20(1).pdf
Excerpt below,

"Feminism has become a form of gender tribalism, a collectivism that denigrates individual agency
and accomplishment in favor of the group or sisterhood. Positing women as the victims of oppressive
forces beyond their control, feminism is today the leading voice in declaring women to be helpless and
incapable of accomplishment without significant government aid. A mentality of entitlement and dependency
has come to replace the more liberating idea of individual accomplishment; a “neo-hausfrau”
movement. Feminism has degraded men and women alike. The rhetoric of liberation obscures a movement
that replaces individual responsibility and achievement with a tribal mindset subservient to the
group."
Posted by onthebeach, Saturday, 22 November 2014 7:55:47 AM
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I tried to read Atlas Shrugged some years ago and found it relentlessly misanthropic. However, google tells me that your observation is perceptive and I've made a note to acquire a copy of 'Global Balkanisation', so that's a surprise! Since my usage is my own though, Rand isn't relevant to this.

I would like to maintain my "hot air balloon" (seems more apt than a helicopter, as any of my victi...friends would agree)perspective and so I will refrain from a comment on your quoted passage.

We have much bigger fish to fry.

Instead of the dead remnants of a socio-economic model that has its feet in the Industrial Revolution we should be seeking inspiration from the 2005 Nobel winning work of Aumann et al, who drew on John Nash's brilliantly simple formalisation of game theory to show that competitive cooperation is the only path to a long-term stable strategic equilibrium.

http://www.nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/index.php?id=624

This is so fundamental a thing to understand that it should be engraved on every flat surface everywhere.

It's also something we used to consider definitively Australian - the Fair Go for all.

How radical.
Posted by Craig Minns, Saturday, 22 November 2014 3:05:04 PM
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Onthebeach

Thanks for drawing my attention back to Rand. I have largely ignored her work over the years, probably because I first encountered it when I was quite young and didn't have a good framework to fit it into.

I was a little intrigued by the small reading I did as a result of your comment and it seems I may have to revisit her work. Thanks again.
Posted by Craig Minns, Monday, 24 November 2014 6:47:59 AM
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This discussion seems to have run its course. What a shame. I hoped there may have been some among the loyal tribalists able to see over the forest of spears and past the wall of shields.

Never mind, at least nobody can get hurt in this playground where the spears are pointless and the shields are gossamer thin tissue, designed for ease of display. The display, after all, is the thing.

Funnily enough, even in this it seems that Aumann was correct and a stable form of equilibrium has been established based on cooperative competition. If only the competition and the cooperation had a more useful purpose than mere display and a more noble motivation than simple tribalism.

Imagine what might be achieved!
Posted by Craig Minns, Tuesday, 25 November 2014 1:39:58 PM
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Thank you to all for the comments and the (mostly) useful discussion. The reason I wrote the article was to try to highlight what I see as a gap in the national and global discussion. That gap is that we need to do more to help men address men’s issues to benefit men. Not just because it will benefit families and women, which it will. But because we need to see men as more than a perpetrator, or even a partner. Men need to be front and centre as the primary beneficiaries and change agents. The evidence (imperfect as it often is) consistently allows us to see the health and social issues we face are completely unacceptable. This is not a rant against feminism nor a denial of other issues in society. It is a call for men to do more to help men address some real challenges. The best chance of success is when we see ourselves as the solution to our own problems.
Posted by Enderverse, Wednesday, 26 November 2014 9:34:28 AM
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Oh no, Mr Author, not more gender tribalism!

I am a man, you are a man, but we both only exist because a man and a woman got together to cooperate in the most fundamental way.

A real tribe is made up of men and women who rely on each other for the basic needs of survival and every human alive today is descended from people who lived in such tribes. They knew that there were differences between men and women and they had some things that were men's business and other things that were women's business, but both men's and women's business was needed for the tribe's success and everyone knew it. Women respected men who were good at men's business and men respected women who took their own business seriously.

We must not allow ourselves to become separate tribes of men and women, where women deride men for doing men's business and vice versa. We need women to respect and encourage men's business and men to do the same for women. This is the only fundamentally human way to be.

Competitive cooperation requires a deliberate decision to accept difference and working together to ensure that despite it, everyone gets enough of what they need to be satisfied well enough that they are prepared to keep up the cooperation. As soon as any one group puts their own needs ahead of that basic principle, we end up in a destructive cycle of spear rattling and shield beating and everyone ends up worse off because nobody is tending the garden or hunting the pigs or suckling the children or keeping the wolves at bay.

It's a no-brainer.
Posted by Craig Minns, Wednesday, 26 November 2014 11:22:42 AM
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