4-24 Homework #13 due: Read Richard Florida’s “Immigrants Boost Wages for Everyone” and write a 3-paragraph essay that analyzes the validity of Florida’s claim. See Vice Video “Home Sweet Alabama.” Also see PBS myths about immigrants; see US News; see CNBC video.
See video “3 Arguments Why Marijuana Should Stay Illegal” and support, refute, or complicate the argument that legalizing weed is a bad idea. We will also address the anti-vaxxers so we can develop an argumentative thesis that analyzes the phenomenon of privileged parents embracing the anti-vaxxer lifestyle. Consult the following: John Oliver video on vaccinations. Also see "Why Vaccination Refusal Is a White Privilege Problem"
4-29 Homework #14 due: Read “America’s Invisible Pot Addicts” and in 3 paragraphs explain the dangers of legalized pot. See Netflix Explained episode about history of marijuana.
5-1 Peer Edit
5-6 Essay # 4 due
Essay #4 Due Date: 5-6-18
You need a minimum of 3 sources for your Works Cited page.
Option One: Read Tristan Harris’ “Our Minds Have Been Hijacked by Our Phones,” “How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds,” and his Ted Talk video. Then develop a thesis that evaluates the validity of his claim that technology, especially smartphones, are not empowering us but “hijacking” our freedom and autonomy and working against our best interests. You may refer to Sherry Turkle’s Ted Talk “Connected, But Alone?”
Option Two: Read Jean Twenge’s “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?” and write an essay that argues for or against Twenge’s claim that smartphones combined with helicopter parenting are resulting in delayed development of Millennials and Generation Z (born after mid 90s). You may refer to CNN Special Report: Being Thirteen.
Option Three. Develop an argumentative thesis that compares the spiritual evisceration and mental dissolution in Andrew Sullivan’s essay “I Used to be a Human Being” with Netflix Black Mirror episode “Nosedive.” You may consult Sherry Turkle’s YouTube Ted Talk “Connected But Alone.”
Option Four: Read Adam Gopnik’s “The Caging of America” and write a thesis that supports, refutes, or complicates the claim that mass incarceration is “The New Jim Crow.” Refer to the Netflix documentary 13th.
Option Five: Read Richard Florida’s “Immigrants Boost Wages for Everyone” and write an argumentative essay that analyzes the validity of Florida’s claim. See Vice Video “Home Sweet Alabama.”
Option Six: Develop an argumentative thesis that analyzes the phenomenon of privileged parents embracing the anti-vaxxer lifestyle. Consult the following: John Oliver video on vaccinations. Also see "Why Vaccination Refusal Is a White Privilege Problem."
Option Seven: See video “3 Arguments Why Marijuana Should Stay Illegal” and read Annie Lowry’s essay “America’s Invisible Pot Addicts” and support, refute, or complicate the argument that legalizing weed is a bad idea. See Netflix documentary and Netflix Explained.
Option Eight:
Watch Hasan Minhaj video (on both Netflix under Patriot Act and YouTube) and support, refute, or complicate the assertion that the presidential administration is undermining civil rights to the detriment of American democracy and freedom. Be sure to have a counterargument section. For example, defenders of the administration would argue that their policies strengthen America against terrorism.
Default Setting Essay Template for 1,200-word essay
9 Paragraphs, 135 words per paragraph, approx. 1,200 words (1,215 to be exact)
Paragraph 1: Attention-getting introduction
Paragraph 2: Transition from introduction to argumentative claim (thesis)
Paragraphs 3-6: Body paragraphs that give reasons for supporting your claim.
Paragraphs 7 & 8: Counterarguments in which you anticipate how your opponents will disagree with you, and you then provide rebuttals to those counterarguments.
Paragraph 9: Conclusion, an emotionally powerful re-statement of your thesis.
Essay Option Three.
Develop an argumentative thesis that compares the spiritual evisceration and mental dissolution in Andrew Sullivan’s essay “I Used to be a Human Being” with Netflix Black Mirror episode “Nosedive.” You may consult Sherry Turkle’s YouTube Ted Talk “Connected But Alone.”
Lesson #1: “I Used to be a Human Being” by Andrew Sullivan
Study Questions
One. Why does Andrew Sullivan give up his smartphone and enter Internet Addiction Rehab?
His life as a curator of web news had taken over his life, had hijacked his brain, and had attacked his immune system. It didn’t happen overnight. It happened gradually. More and more, he became immersed in Internet activity, and his body and mind could not keep up with it.
He was losing his life. He was dying.
A spark of metacognition (self-awareness) kicked him in the pants and told him to go to rehab before it was too late.
His blogging was killing him while making him rich and famous:
We read:
“If the internet killed you, I used to joke, then I would be the first to find out. Years later, the joke was running thin. In the last year of my blogging life, my health began to give out. Four bronchial infections in 12 months had become progressively harder to kick. Vacations, such as they were, had become mere opportunities for sleep. My dreams were filled with the snippets of code I used each day to update the site. My friendships had atrophied as my time away from the web dwindled. My doctor, dispensing one more course of antibiotics, finally laid it on the line: “Did you really survive HIV to die of the web?”
But the rewards were many: an audience of up to 100,000 people a day; a new-media business that was actually profitable; a constant stream of things to annoy, enlighten, or infuriate me; a niche in the nerve center of the exploding global conversation; and a way to measure success — in big and beautiful data — that was a constant dopamine bath for the writerly ego. If you had to reinvent yourself as a writer in the internet age, I reassured myself, then I was ahead of the curve. The problem was that I hadn’t been able to reinvent myself as a human being.”
Sullivan described a certain anxiety I’ve read about in other Internet addicts, and I’ve seen it in myself during my worst times:
I tried reading books, but that skill now began to elude me. After a couple of pages, my fingers twitched for a keyboard. I tried meditation, but my mind bucked and bridled as I tried to still it. I got a steady workout routine, and it gave me the only relief I could measure for an hour or so a day. But over time in this pervasive virtual world, the online clamor grew louder and louder. Although I spent hours each day, alone and silent, attached to a laptop, it felt as if I were in a constant cacophonous crowd of words and images, sounds and ideas, emotions and tirades — a wind tunnel of deafening, deadening noise. So much of it was irresistible, as I fully understood. So much of the technology was irreversible, as I also knew. But I’d begun to fear that this new way of living was actually becoming a way of not-living.
Two. How does Sullivan suggest that the new technology is different from technologies of the past?
The new technology is infinite in its data, and it can penetrate our brains, hijack our brains, and manipulate our behavior through algorithms.
As he writes:
“We absorb this “content” (as writing or video or photography is now called) no longer primarily by buying a magazine or paper, by bookmarking our favorite website, or by actively choosing to read or watch. We are instead guided to these info-nuggets by myriad little interruptions on social media, all cascading at us with individually tailored relevance and accuracy. Do not flatter yourself in thinking that you have much control over which temptations you click on. Silicon Valley’s technologists and their ever-perfecting algorithms have discovered the form of bait that will have you jumping like a witless minnow. No information technology ever had this depth of knowledge of its consumers — or greater capacity to tweak their synapses to keep them engaged.
And the engagement never ends. Not long ago, surfing the web, however addictive, was a stationary activity. At your desk at work, or at home on your laptop, you disappeared down a rabbit hole of links and resurfaced minutes (or hours) later to reencounter the world. But the smartphone then went and made the rabbit hole portable, inviting us to get lost in it anywhere, at any time, whatever else we might be doing. Information soon penetrated every waking moment of our lives.”
Three. What is so scary for an Internet Addict who enters rehab?
In a word, silence. In silence, our demons that we’ve been tamping down with distractions come out of the woodwork, and we have to face them.
Another fear is boredom, or the boredom of the abyss. We’re conditioned to be repelled by boredom, as if it were a bad thing when boredom can be very productive and helpful.
Only in silence does our deepest psychic and soulful pain emerge, and we are overtaken by it, a terrifying but necessary event.
In Sullivan’s words:
“And then, unexpectedly, on the third day, as I was walking through the forest, I became overwhelmed. I’m still not sure what triggered it, but my best guess is that the shady, quiet woodlands, with brooks trickling their way down hillsides and birds flitting through the moist air, summoned memories of my childhood. I was a lonely boy who spent many hours outside in the copses and woodlands of my native Sussex, in England. I had explored this landscape with friends, but also alone — playing imaginary scenarios in my head, creating little nooks where I could hang and sometimes read, learning every little pathway through the woods and marking each flower or weed or fungus that I stumbled on. But I was also escaping a home where my mother had collapsed with bipolar disorder after the birth of my younger brother and had never really recovered. She was in and out of hospitals for much of my youth and adolescence, and her condition made it hard for her to hide her pain and suffering from her sensitive oldest son.
I absorbed a lot of her agony, I came to realize later, hearing her screams of frustration and misery in constant, terrifying fights with my father, and never knowing how to stop it or to help. I remember watching her dissolve in tears in the car picking me up from elementary school at the thought of returning to a home she clearly dreaded, or holding her as she poured her heart out to me, through sobs and whispers, about her dead-end life in a small town where she was utterly dependent on a spouse. She was taken away from me several times in my childhood, starting when I was 4, and even now I can recall the corridors and rooms of the institutions she was treated in when we went to visit.
I knew the scar tissue from this formative trauma was still in my soul. I had spent two decades in therapy, untangling and exploring it, learning how it had made intimacy with others so frightening, how it had made my own spasms of adolescent depression even more acute, how living with that kind of pain from the most powerful source of love in my life had made me the profoundly broken vessel I am. But I had never felt it so vividly since the very years it had first engulfed and defined me. It was as if, having slowly and progressively removed every distraction from my life, I was suddenly faced with what I had been distracting myself from. Resting for a moment against the trunk of a tree, I stopped, and suddenly found myself bent over, convulsed with the newly present pain, sobbing.”
Four. What are some of the dehumanizing effects of always being online?
We suffer the aforementioned nervous energy.
We find that being online has become, without us being aware of it, a full-time job that becomes more important than real relationships.
We don’t share space with loved ones because our attention becomes fragmented. Likewise, our personalities become just as fragmented.
In Sullivan’s words:
“But of course, as I had discovered in my blogging years, the family that is eating together while simultaneously on their phones is not actually together. They are, in Turkle’s formulation, “alone together.” You are where your attention is. If you’re watching a football game with your son while also texting a friend, you’re not fully with your child — and he knows it. Truly being with another person means being experientially with them, picking up countless tiny signals from the eyes and voice and body language and context, and reacting, often unconsciously, to every nuance. These are our deepest social skills, which have been honed through the aeons. They are what make us distinctively human.
By rapidly substituting virtual reality for reality, we are diminishing the scope of this interaction even as we multiply the number of people with whom we interact. We remove or drastically filter all the information we might get by being with another person. We reduce them to some outlines — a Facebook “friend,” an Instagram photo, a text message — in a controlled and sequestered world that exists largely free of the sudden eruptions or encumbrances of actual human interaction. We become each other’s “contacts,” efficient shadows of ourselves.”
Another type of dehumanization: losing satisfaction of doing focused work. As Sullivan writes:
“Yes, online and automated life is more efficient, it makes more economic sense, it ends monotony and “wasted” time in the achievement of practical goals. But it denies us the deep satisfaction and pride of workmanship that comes with accomplishing daily tasks well, a denial perhaps felt most acutely by those for whom such tasks are also a livelihood — and an identity.”
We also suffer the breakdown of community. As Sullivan observes:
So are the bonds we used to form in our everyday interactions — the nods and pleasantries of neighbors, the daily facial recognition in the mall or the street. Here too the allure of virtual interaction has helped decimate the space for actual community. When we enter a coffee shop in which everyone is engrossed in their private online worlds, we respond by creating one of our own. When someone next to you answers the phone and starts talking loudly as if you didn’t exist, you realize that, in her private zone, you don’t. And slowly, the whole concept of a public space — where we meet and engage and learn from our fellow citizens — evaporates. Turkle describes one of the many small consequences in an American city: “Kara, in her 50s, feels that life in her hometown of Portland, Maine, has emptied out: ‘Sometimes I walk down the street, and I’m the only person not plugged in … No one is where they are. They’re talking to someone miles away. I miss them.’ ”
Another form of dehumanization is dopamine addiction. Sullivan writes:
Has our enslavement to dopamine — to the instant hits of validation that come with a well-crafted tweet or Snapchat streak — made us happier? I suspect it has simply made us less unhappy, or rather less aware of our unhappiness, and that our phones are merely new and powerful antidepressants of a non-pharmaceutical variety.
In addition to dopamine addiction, your brain enters a zombie limbo state, where you don’t feel full emotions:
“He recalled a moment driving his car when a Bruce Springsteen song came on the radio. It triggered a sudden, unexpected surge of sadness. He instinctively went to pick up his phone and text as many friends as possible. Then he changed his mind, left his phone where it was, and pulled over to the side of the road to weep. He allowed himself for once to be alone with his feelings, to be overwhelmed by them, to experience them with no instant distraction, no digital assist. And then he was able to discover, in a manner now remote from most of us, the relief of crawling out of the hole of misery by himself. For if there is no dark night of the soul anymore that isn’t lit with the flicker of the screen, then there is no morning of hopefulness either. As he said of the distracted modern world we now live in: “You never feel completely sad or completely happy, you just feel … kinda satisfied with your products. And then you die. So that’s why I don’t want to get a phone for my kids.”
Yet another form of dehumanization in Sullivan’s view is the elevation of consumerism into a religion, which has replaced legitimate faith. Sullivan writes:
In his survey of how the modern West lost widespread religious practice, A Secular Age, the philosopher Charles Taylor used a term to describe the way we think of our societies. He called it a “social imaginary” — a set of interlocking beliefs and practices that can undermine or subtly marginalize other kinds of belief. We didn’t go from faith to secularism in one fell swoop, he argues. Certain ideas and practices made others not so much false as less vibrant or relevant. And so modernity slowly weakened spirituality, by design and accident, in favor of commerce; it downplayed silence and mere being in favor of noise and constant action. The reason we live in a culture increasingly without faith is not because science has somehow disproved the unprovable, but because the white noise of secularism has removed the very stillness in which it might endure or be reborn.
Five. Why are we hostile toward silence and embrace the noise and chatter of the internet?
For one, as social creatures we are hardwired to love gossip. Gossip is part of the moral glue that keeps societies together.
For two, noise is confused with the sound of being busy, which makes us feel like we’re adhering to a work ethic. But in fact we’re not. We’re merely scatterbrained.
As Sullivan explains:
“Silence in modernity became, over the centuries, an anachronism, even a symbol of the useless superstitions we had left behind. The smartphone revolution of the past decade can be seen in some ways simply as the final twist of this ratchet, in which those few remaining redoubts of quiet — the tiny cracks of inactivity in our lives — are being methodically filled with more stimulus and noise.
And yet our need for quiet has never fully gone away, because our practical achievements, however spectacular, never quite fulfill us. They are always giving way to new wants and needs, always requiring updating or repairing, always falling short. The mania of our online lives reveals this: We keep swiping and swiping because we are never fully satisfied. The late British philosopher Michael Oakeshott starkly called this truth “the deadliness of doing.” There seems no end to this paradox of practical life, and no way out, just an infinite succession of efforts, all doomed ultimately to fail.
Essay Option Three.
Develop an argumentative thesis that compares the spiritual evisceration and mental dissolution in Andrew Sullivan’s essay “I Used to be a Human Being” with Netflix Black Mirror episode “Nosedive.” You may consult Sherry Turkle’s YouTube Ted Talk “Connected But Alone.”
Comparing Andrew Sullivan and Lacie
One. Both Andrew Sullivan and Lacie disconnect from real world and become embedded in digital world where sense of self is based on an artificial, arbitrary ranking system, one that is becoming real in China.
Two. Both Sullivan and Lacie become "all in" in making sure their sense of self is validated by the around-the-clock image responsibilities. The constant self-curating is exhausting and takes a toll that they cannot recognize in part because it is gradual.
Three. As Sullivan and Lacie become distracted by their social media ranking quest, they fail to address their real demons, which continue to fester inside them.
Four. Both Sullivan and Lacie unshackle from their social media bondage in the same manner: They both have a physical and mental breakdown. Hitting rock bottom becomes the prelude for self-liberation.
Five. No longer trapped in the social media matrix, they must confront raw feelings of animal rage, which is the beginning of a slow rebuilding process.
Sample Thesis Statements
Mediocre Comparison Thesis
Famous blogger and public intellectual Andrew Sullivan and Lacie Pound from "Nosedive" embark upon a similar self-destruction journey propelled by their deep dive into social media.
Improved Argumentative Thesis
When we compare the similar journey of self-destruction in famous blogger and public intellectual Andrew Sullivan and "Nosedive" protagonist Lacie Pound, we are presented with compelling evidence to delete our social media accounts and balance our digital lives with an analog existence that insulates us from the excesses and pathologies of self-curation.
Argumentative Thesis That Disagrees with Above
Examining the similar road to self-destruction of Andrew Sullivan and Lacie Pound proves nothing. Addicts, narcissists, and the weak-minded are going to glom onto any vehicle to their own ruin. But for every Lacie Pound, there are thousands of social media users who live a digital life absent the pathologies chronicled by Andrew Sullivan and fictional character Lacie Pound.
4-24 Homework #13 due: Read Richard Florida’s “Immigrants Boost Wages for Everyone” and write a 3-paragraph essay that analyzes the validity of Florida’s claim. See Vice Video “Home Sweet Alabama.” Also see PBS myths about immigrants; see US News; see CNBC video.
"Yes, Immigration Hurts American Workers" by George Borjas
"There's no evidence that immigrants hurt any American workers" by Michael Clemens
"New Research Shows Immigrants May Boost Economy of Natives" by Stuart Anderson in conservative magazine Forbes.
Ways to Improve Your Critical Reading and Assess the Quality of Your Sources
- Do a background check of the author to see if he or she has a hidden agenda or any other kind of background information that speaks to the author’s credibility.
- Check the place of publication to see what kind of agenda, if any, the publishing house has. Know how esteemed the publishing house is among peers of the subject you’re reading about.
- Learn how to find the thesis. In other words, know what the author’s purpose, explicit or implicit, is.
- Annotate more than underline. Your memory will be better served, according to research, by annotating than underlining. You can scribble your own code in the margins as long as you can understand your writing when you come back to it later. Annotating is a way of starting a dialogue about the reading and writing process. It is a form of pre-writing. Forms of annotation that I use are “yes,” (great point) “no,” (wrong, illogical, BS) and “?” (confusing). When I find the thesis, I’ll also write that in the margins. Or I’ll write down an essay or book title that the passage reminds me of. Or maybe even an idea for a story or a novel.
- When faced with a difficult text, you will have to slow down and use the principles of summarizing and paraphrasing. With a summary, you concisely identify the main points in one or two sentences. With paraphrase, you re-word the text in your own words.
- When reading an argument, see if the writer addresses possible objections to his or her argument. Ask yourself, of all the objections, did the writer choose the most compelling ones? The more compelling the objections addressed the more rigorous and credible the author’s writing.
Lesson on Using Sources (adapted from The Arlington Reader, fourth edition)
We use sources to establish credibility and to provide evidence for our claim. Because we want to establish credibility, the sources have to be credible as well.
To be credible, the sources must be
Current or up to date: to verify that the material is still relevant and has all the latest and possibly revised research and statistical data.
Authoritative: to ensure that your sources represent experts in the field of study. Their studies are peer-reviewed and represent the gold standard, meaning they are the sources of record that will be referred to in academic debate and conversation.
Depth: The source should be detailed to give a comprehensive grasp of the subject.
Objectivity: The study is relatively free of agenda and bias or the writer is upfront about his or her agenda so that there are no hidden objectives. If you’re consulting a Web site that is larded with ads or a sponsor, then there may be commercial interests that compromise the objectivity.
Checklist for Evaluating Sources
You must assess six things to determine if a source is worthy of being used for your research paper.
The author’s objectivity or fairness (author is not biased)
The author’s credibility (peer-reviewed read by experts)
The source’s relevance
The source’s currency (source is up-to-date)
The source’s comprehensiveness (source has sufficient depth)
The author’s authority (author’s credentials and experience render him or her an expert in the field)
Warning Signs of a Poor Online Source
Site has advertising
Some company or other sponsors site
A political organization or special interest group sponsors the site.
The site has many links to other biased sites.
Recommended Online Sources
New York Times
Washington Post
Los Angeles Times
The Atlantic
The Hill
Liberal
The Nation
Mother Jones
Slate
The Daily Beast
The New Yorker
Axios
Politico
Vox
Conservative
National Review
The Weekly Standard
The American Spectator
The American Conservative
The Washington Times
The New American
FrontPage Magazine
The Christian Science Monitor
Cybercast News Service
Human Events
MLA Documentation Review
MLA documentation consists of two parts: parenthetical references in the text of your paper and your Works Cited page at the end of the paper.
A parenthetical citation consists of the author’s last name and a page number.
(Fielding 213)
When you use a signal phrase, which is the preferred way to introduce a reference, you include only the page number:
According to environmental activist Brian Fielding, the number of species affected is much higher (213).
When referring to a work by two authors, include both authors’ names.
(Strange and Hogarth 53)
When citing a work with no listed author, include a short version of the title.
(“Small Things”)
When citing a source that is quoted in another source, indicate this by including the abbreviation qtd.in.
According to Kevin Kelly, this narrow approach is typical of the “hive mind” (qtd. in Doctorow 168).
When you are referring to the entire source rather than a specific page or when the source does not include page numbers, you must cite the author’s name in the text of your paper rather than in a parenthetical reference.
In fact, if you are referring to an author for the first time in your essay, you should rely on an introductory signal phrase and not simply rely on the parenthetical reference.
You must document all information that is not common knowledge, whether you are summarizing, paraphrasing, or quoting. Common knowledge is factual information that is not limited to the domain of an elite circle of experts but can be found in so many sources that we say the information is ubiquitous or everywhere.
With direct quotations, include the parenthetical reference and a period after the closing quotation marks.
According to Doctorow, this is “authorship without editorship. Or authorship fused with editorship” (166).
When quoting a passage of more than four lines (which I discourage unless you think it’s absolutely necessary), introduce the passage with a complete sentence, followed by a colon. Indent the entire passage one inch (usually 10 spaces) from the left margin, and do no use quotation marks. Place the parenthetical reference after the final punctuation mark.
Show link to MLA essay featuring this example since spacing won’t translate on the blog page.
Preparing a Works Cited page
Always start your Works Cited page on a separate page, the last page of your essay.
Center the heading Works Cited at the top of the page.
List entries alphabetically by the author’s last name—or by the title’s first word if the author’s name is not given. However, when we alphabetize a title, we don’t include the article a or the.
Double-space your entries in the same way you double-space your entire essay.
Each entry begins at the left-hand margin and is not centered.
Italicize all book and periodical titles just like you do you in your essay.
Use a short version of the publisher’s name (Penguin rather than Penguin Books) and abbreviate University Press (as in Princeton UP or U of Chicago P).
Link to basic MLA Works Cited Rules
Integrating Sources and Avoiding Plagiarism
Summarizing Sources
“A summary restates the main idea of a passage in concise terms” (314).
A typical summary is one or two sentences.
A summary does not contain your opinions or analysis.
Paraphrasing Sources
A paraphrase, which is longer than a summary, contains more details and examples. Sometimes you need to be more specific than a summary to make sure your reader understands you.
A paraphrase does not include your opinions or analysis.
Quoting Sources
Quoting sources means you are quoting exactly what you are referring to in the text with no modifications, which might twist the author’s meaning.
You should avoid long quotations as much as possible.
Quote only when necessary. Rely on summary and paraphrase before resorting to direct quotes.
A good time to use a specific quote is when it’s an opposing point that you want to refute.
Using Signal Phrases or Identifying Tag to Introduce Summary, Paraphrase, and Quoted Material
According to Jeff McMahon, the grading rubric in English classes is used in such a way by instructors that soon there will be no such thing as an “easy” or “hard” professor. They’ll all be the same.
Jeff McMahon notes that the grading rubric in English classes is used in such a way by instructors that soon there will be no such thing as an “easy” or “hard” professor. They’ll all be the same.
The grading rubric in English classes is used in such a way by instructors, Jeff McMahon observes, that soon there will be no such thing as an “easy” or “hard” professor.
The grading rubric in English classes is used in such a way by instructors that soon there will be no such thing as an “easy” or “hard” professor, Jeff McMahon points out.
Common identifying tags (put link here)
Example of an Essay That Never Uses First, Second, Third, Fourth, Etc., for Transitions, But Relies on "Paragraph Links"
Stupid Reasons for Getting Married
People should get married because they are ready to do so, meaning they're mature and truly love one another, and most importantly are prepared to make the compromises and sacrifices a healthy marriage entails. However, most people get married for the wrong reasons, that is, for stupid, lame, and asinine reasons.
Alas, needy narcissists, hardly candidates for successful marriage, glom onto the most disastrous reasons for getting married and those reasons make it certain that their marriage will quickly terminate or waddle precariously along in an interminable domestic hell.
A common and compelling reason that fuels the needy into a misguided marriage is when these fragmented souls see that everyone their age has already married—their friends, brothers, sisters, and, yes, even their enemies. Overcome by what is known today as "FOMO," they feel compelled to “get with the program" so that they may not miss out on the lavish gifts bestowed upon bride and groom. Thus, the needy are rankled by envy and greed and allow their base impulses to be the driving motivation behind their marriage.
When greed is not impelling them to tie the knot, they are also chafed by a sense of being short-changed when they see their recently-married dunce of a co-worker promoted above them for presumably the added credibility that marriage afforded them. As singles, they know they will never be taken seriously at work.
If it's not a lame stab at credibility that's motivating them to get married, it's the fear that they as the years tick by they are becoming less and less attractive and their looks will no longer obscure their woeful character deficiencies as age scrunches them up into little pinch-faced, leathery imps.
A more egregious reason for marrying is to end the tormented, off-on again-off-on again relationship, which needs the official imprimatur of marriage, followed by divorce, to officially terminate the relationship. I spoke to a marriage counselor once who told me that some couples were so desperate to break-up for good that they actually got married, then divorced, for this purpose.
Other pathological reasons to marry are to find a loathsome spouse in order to spite one’s parents or to set a wedding date in order to hire a personal trainer and finally lose those thirty pounds one has been carrying for too long.
Envy, avarice, spite, and vanity fuel both needy men and women alike. However, there is a certain type of needy man, whom we'll call the Man-Child, who finds that it is easier to marry his girlfriend than it is to have to listen to her constant nagging about their need to get married. His girlfriend’s constant harping about the fact their relationship hasn’t taken the “next logical step” presents a burden so great that marriage in comparison seems benign. Even if the Man-Child has not developed the maturity to marry, even if he isn’t sure if he’s truly in love, even if he is still inextricably linked to some former girlfriend that his current girlfriend does not know about, even if he knows in his heart of hearts that he is not hard-wired for marriage, even if he harbors a secret defect that renders him a liability to any woman, he will dismiss all of these factors and rush into a marriage in order to alleviate his current source of anxiety and suffering, which is the incessant barrage of his girlfriend’s grievances about them not being married.
Indeed, some of needy man’s worst decisions have been made in order to quell a discontented woman. The Man-Child's eagerness to quiet a woman’s discontent points to a larger defect, namely, his spinelessness, which, if left unchecked, turns him into the Go-With-the-Flow-Guy. As the name suggests, this type of man offers no resistance, even in large-scale decisions that affect his destiny. Put this man in a situation where his girlfriend, his friends, and his family are all telling him that “it’s time to get married,” and he will, as his name suggests, simply “go with the flow.” He will allow everyone else to make the wedding plans, he’ll let someone fit him for a wedding suit, he’ll allow his mother to pick out the ring, he’ll allow his fiancé to pick out the look and flavor of the wedding cake and then on the day of the wedding, he simply “shows up” with all the passion of a turnip.
The Man-Child's turnip-like passivity and his aversion to argument ensure marital longevity. However, there are drawbacks. Most notably, he will over time become so silent that his wife won’t even be able to get a word out of him. Over the course of their fifty-year marriage, he’ll go with her to restaurants with a newspaper and read it, ignoring her. His impassivity is so great that she could tell him about the “other man” she is seeing and he wouldn’t blink an eye. At home he is equally reticent, watching TV or reading with an inexpressive, dull-eyed demeanor suggestive of a half-dead lizard.
Whatever this reptilian man lacks as a social animal is made up by the fact that he is docile and is therefore non-threatening, a condition that everyone, including his wife, prefers to the passionate male beast whose strong, irreverent opinions will invariably rock the boat and deem that individual a troublemaker. The Go-With-the-Flow-Guy, on the other hand, is reliably safe and as such makes for controlling women a very good catch in spite of his tendency to be as charismatic and flavorful as a cardboard wafer.
A desperate marriage motivation exclusively owned by needy, immature men is the belief that since they have pissed off just about every other woman on the planet, they need to find refuge by marrying the only woman whom they haven’t yet thoroughly alienated—their current girlfriend. According to sportswriter Rick Reilly, baseball slugger Barry Bonds’ short-lived reality show was a disgrace in part because for Reilly the reality show is “the last bastion of the scoundrel.” Likewise, for many men who have offended over 99% of the female race with their pestilent existence, marriage is the last sanctuary for the despised male who has stepped on so many women’s toes that he is, understandably, a marked man.
Therefore, these men aren’t so much getting married as much as they are enlisting in a “witness protection program.” They are after all despised and targeted by their past female enemies for all their lies and betrayals and running out of allies they see that marriage makes a good cover as they try to blend in with mainstream society and take on a role that is antithetical to their single days as lying, predatory scoundrels.
The analogy between marriage and a witness protection program is further developed when we see that for many men marriage is their final stab at earning public respectability because they are, as married men, proclaiming to the world that they have voluntarily shackled themselves with the chains of domesticity in order that they may be spared greater punishments, the bulk of which will be exacted upon by the women whom they used and manipulated for so many years.
Because it is assumed that their wives will keep them in check, their wives become, in a way, equivalent to the ankle bracelet transmitters worn by parolees who are only allowed to travel within certain parameters. Marriage anchors man close to the home and, combined with the wife’s reliable issuing of house chores and other domestic duties, the shackled man is rendered safely tethered to his “home base” where his wife can observe him sharply to make sure he doesn’t backslide into the abhorrent behavior of his past single life.
Many men will see the above analysis of marriage as proof that their fear of marriage as a prison was right all along, but what they should learn from the analogy between marriage and prison is that they are more productive, more socialized, more softened around his hard edges, and more protected, both from the outside world and from themselves by being shackled to their domestic duties. With these improvements in their lives, they have actually, within limits, attained a freedom they could never find in single life.
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