{"id":1970,"date":"2007-09-25T23:32:47","date_gmt":"2007-09-26T06:32:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/?p=1970"},"modified":"2012-09-27T11:52:13","modified_gmt":"2012-09-27T18:52:13","slug":"the-purpose-of-civilization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1970\/the-purpose-of-civilization\/","title":{"rendered":"The purpose of civilization . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"

I make my living as a hard-headed, practical man, but I live in a very abstract world. Because of the Anglin children, I’ve been thinking about the idea of fatherlessness, a topic I’ve written about in the past<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I was doing that fatherstuff, to the extent I understand it, which amounts to teaching boys how to be men, and, in other circumstances, teaching girls how to relate to men. You can’t pick up a magazine without discovering what poor specimens of humanity men are. “Men make lousy women!” a woman’s magazine will reveal. “Husbands are not the best wives!” discloses a journal for married women. “Fathers are inadequate mothers!” a mother’s magazine proclaims. And the rejoinder to all those with a deathgrip on the obvious is: “Well, duh!”<\/p>\n

A father is the provider, his most important job. If he neglects it in order to preen as an ersatz mommy, the children suffer. A father is the moral leader, obliged to take it on the chin again and again; that’s how children learn how to take it on the chin. A father is the defender, the one who confronts the burglar when mom and the kids are hiding under the bed. Fathers are everything we claim to admire when we use the word “manly” and everything we affect to despise when we use the word “male”, but, at bottom, fathers are not mothers. We need mothers to do what mothers do, and we need fathers to do what fathers do, and when children are denied one or the other, they suffer. You won’t read this in a women’s magazine, and you won’t read it in a men’s magazine unless it’s tattooed into a well-tanned navel. But it’s the truth.<\/p>\n

But the main job of being a father is simply being around. I’m not congratulating myself for what I did with Xavier, because I knew it was temporary. He didn’t have a father all of a sudden, he just had a weak little prosthetic, and that only for a while. But I taught him what little I could of the manly art of manliness, what little Read more<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I make my living as a hard-headed, practical man, but I live in a very abstract world. Because of the Anglin children, I’ve been thinking about the idea of fatherlessness, a topic I’ve written about in the past: I was doing that fatherstuff, to the extent I understand it, which amounts to teaching boys how […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1970","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-egoism-in-action","8":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":592,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/592\/defending-zillowcom\/","url_meta":{"origin":1970,"position":0},"title":"Defending Zillow.com . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"November 2, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Picture yourself living in Boston, Massachusetts, where the climate is six months of drizzle and mud followed by six months of deep snow and permafrost. Let's say it comes to your mind to bid a final farewell to all things wintery and shuffle off to the endless, boundless, soul-enriching sunny\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Disintermediation"","block_context":{"text":"Disintermediation","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/disintermediation\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2986,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2986\/spring-fever-renders-me-unfit-to-tackle-big-issues-facing-web-20-and-the-real-estate-industry-so-we-get-to-play-in-the-mud-instead\/","url_meta":{"origin":1970,"position":1},"title":"Spring fever renders me unfit to tackle big issues facing Web 2.0 and the real estate industry, so we get to play in the mud instead!","author":"Teri Lussier","date":"April 18, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"There are always heavy duty posts on Bloodhound and I do my best to keep up. Lately, I've been percolating my own brand of seriousness. Here's what I've been thinking about: Web 2.0 is different for girls. I've been pondering this for quite awhile, and last week it dawned on\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Casual Friday"","block_context":{"text":"Casual Friday","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/casual-friday\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9119,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/9119\/sunday-morning-musings\/","url_meta":{"origin":1970,"position":2},"title":"Sunday Morning Musings","author":"Don Reedy, San Diego, CA","date":"July 12, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Try not to forget the simple - the majestic - the pure My wife and I recently learned, though we had very strong suspicions before, that Beth's dad has Alzheimer's. He's forgetting everything now. Not just things mundane, but things that I'm pretty sure he desperately would never want to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11091,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/11091\/ipad-observation-2-find-a-bigger-dead-pool-the-ipad-eats-everything\/","url_meta":{"origin":1970,"position":3},"title":"iPad observation #2: Find a bigger dead-pool: The iPad eats everything.","author":"Greg Swann","date":"January 29, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Kicking this back to the top. This is me, writing just after the introduction of the iPad -- two very short years ago. At the time I wrote these essays, every so-called \"expert\" on the nets was insisting that the iPad was an unforced error. I was right, they were\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Flourishing"","block_context":{"text":"Flourishing","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/flourishing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3068,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/3068\/a-celebration-of-western-civilization-and-the-scientific-revolution\/","url_meta":{"origin":1970,"position":4},"title":"A celebration of Western Civilization and the Scientific Revolution","author":"Greg Swann","date":"May 7, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"This is quoted from a John Derbyshire dismissal of a creationist documentary film. That much is good. This much is great:Western civilization has many glories. There are the legacies of the ancients, in literature and thought. There are the late-medieval cathedrals, those huge miracles of stone, statuary, and spiritual devotion.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Egoism in Action"","block_context":{"text":"Egoism in Action","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/egoism-in-action\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2754,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2754\/what-really-matters\/","url_meta":{"origin":1970,"position":5},"title":"What REALLY matters…","author":"Eric Blackwell","date":"March 12, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Today's posts have made me quite introspective... I have had a few health issues (nothing big, I'm fine now) that have slowed my efforts and posting. 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