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Russia tests the world's most powerful vacuum bomb, whose effect is comparable to a nuclear charge. It is more powerful than the U.S. Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB), colloquially known as the Mother of All Bombs, a large-yield satellite-guided, air delivered bomb described as the most powerful non-nuclear weapon in history.
David Hockney RA has just completed his biggest ever painting, a vast open-air landscape. Martin Gayford visits him in Yorkshire to ask how he did it, and why he thinks art should engulf us
On Good Friday this year, in the company of a small group of travellers, I went to visit a warehouse on an industrial estate in Bridlington, East Yorkshire. The object of our pilgrimage was not this nondescript structure but the painting that it briefly sheltered. There, on the far wall, hung the largest picture that David Hockney RA has ever created – perhaps the most sizeable ever to be painted in the open air. This was a first for the artist, who had never before seen his entire work assembled together.
David Hockney RA at work on ‘Bigger Trees near Warter’ © David Hockney 2007/Photo Jean-Pierre Goncalves
The painting is massive. It is made of 50 small canvases, adding up to an area measuring 40-foot wide by 15-foot high. The subject is what you might call the ordinary English countryside: a small copse of trees, with another in the background, and one large sycamore in front, spreading its network of branches above your head. To the right is a house, to the left a road curves away. In the foreground, a few daffodils bloom. The work is the solution to a problem that perplexed and defeated many of the great painters of the nineteenth century: how do you paint a mighty canvas outside, en plein air? To make the work, Hockney has employed the most up-todate digital technology, in addition to the most old-fashioned – the human hand, arm and eye.
Hockney looking at part of the completed work for the first time in a warehouse in Bridlington © David Hockney 2007/Photo Jean-Pierre Goncalves
This invited address was given at a meeting the American Psychological Association in San Francisco on August 24, 2007. The thinking it represents is part of a long-range project to understand human action and the relation of culture to behavior. Further information about Prof. Baumeister and his research can be found at the foot of this page. — D.D.
You’re probably thinking that a talk called “Is there anything good about men” will be a short talk! Recent writings have not had much good to say about men. Titles like Men Are Not Cost Effective speak for themselves. Maureen Dowd’s book was called Are Men Necessary? and although she never gave an explicit answer, anyone reading the book knows her answer was no. Louann Brizendine’s book, The Female Brain, introduces itself by saying, “Men, get ready to experience brain envy.” Imagine a book advertising itself by saying that women will soon be envying the superior male brain!
Nor are these isolated examples. Alice Eagly’s research has compiled mountains of data on the stereotypes people have about men and women, which the researchers summarized as “The WAW effect.” WAW stands for “Women Are Wonderful.” Both men and women hold much more favorable views of women than of men. Almost everybody likes women better than men. I certainly do.
My purpose in this talk is not to try to balance this out by praising men, though along the way I will have various positive things to say about both genders. The question of whether there’s anything good about men is only my point of departure. The tentative title of the book I’m writing is “How culture exploits men,” but even that for me is the lead-in to grand questions about how culture shapes action. In that context, what’s good about men means what men are good for, from the perspective of the system.
Hence this is not about the “battle of the sexes,” and in fact I think one unfortunate legacy of feminism has been the idea that men and women are basically enemies. I shall suggest, instead, that most often men and women have been partners, supporting each other rather than exploiting or manipulating each other.
Nor is this about trying to argue that men should be regarded as victims. I detest the whole idea of competing to be victims. And I’m certainly not denying that culture has exploited women. But rather than seeing culture as patriarchy, which is to say a conspiracy by men to exploit women, I think it’s more accurate to understand culture (e.g., a country, a religion) as an abstract system that competes against rival systems — and that uses both men and women, often in different ways, to advance its cause.
Also I think it’s best to avoid value judgments as much as possible. They have made discussion of gender politics very difficult and sensitive, thereby warping the play of ideas. I have no conclusions to present about what’s good or bad or how the world should change. In fact my own theory is built around tradeoffs, so that whenever there is something good it is tied to something else that is bad, and they balance out.
I don’t want to be on anybody’s side. Gender warriors please go home.
When I say I am researching how culture exploits men, the first reaction is usually “How can you say culture exploits men, when men are in charge of everything?” This is a fair objection and needs to be taken seriously. It invokes the feminist critique of society. This critique started when some women systematically looked up at the top of society and saw men everywhere: most world rulers, presidents, prime ministers, most members of Congress and parliaments, most CEOs of major corporations, and so forth — these are mostly men.
Seeing all this, the feminists thought, wow, men dominate everything, so society is set up to favor men. It must be great to be a man.
The mistake in that way of thinking is to look only at the top. If one were to look downward to the bottom of society instead, one finds mostly men there too. Who’s in prison, all over the world, as criminals or political prisoners? The population on Death Row has never approached 51% female. Who’s homeless? Again, mostly men. Whom does society use for bad or dangerous jobs? |
| Roy F. Baumeister |
Roy F. Baumeister is Francis Eppes Professor of Social Psychology at Florida State University, in Tallahassee. His email address is baumeister [at] psy.fsu.edu. Further information on his research interests can be found here. The speech that got Larry Summers out of a job as President of Harvard can be read here. Steven Pinker has written a critique of the Summers kerfuffle. It can be read here.
On a sunny day in Washington, DC, my imaginary American scholar, Hannah Esfandiari, was sitting in her Kalorama-located house, opening a letter she had just received from Tehran, Iran.
It was a job offer from a prominent think tank at the heart of the Islamic Republic's policy-making machine. Her main job was going to be establishing contacts with Americans dissidents, scholars and activists and inviting them to Tehran to speak to high-ranking Iranian policy-makers, top officers of the Revolutionary Guards and the intelligence ministry.
But she could not take the job offer. Not because she was afraid of being charged with assisting a "state sponsor of terrorism" and perhaps being sent to Guantanamo Bay, but simply because, based on the Iranian Transactions Regulations, it would be illegal for her or any other American to sign any contract with, accept any funds from, or give any service to an Iranian citizen or organisation, wherever in the world. Violating that law could cost her up to 20 years of jail and a $250,000 fine.
Now, let's come back to the real world and consider a similar case about an Iranian citizen who was directing a prominent American think tank.
Haleh Esfandiari's job, as director of the Middle East programme at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (established by the US Congress in 1981 and co-funded directly by the US government), was to invite Iranian dissidents, scholars and activists to Washington to speak for and interact with high-ranking American policymakers, top military and intelligence officers. (Absent from all media reports is that she has served among the first group of fellows at the controversial National Endowment for Democracy.)
But when she last visited Tehran using her Iranian passport, she was detained, charged with acting against Iran's national security and released on bail after a long investigation.
