Category Archives: culture

Introducing the ‘Modern Urban Gentleman’

“A gentleman is one who puts more into the world than he takes out.”

These words of George Bernard Shaw, the Irish playwright, give voice to the purpose of my life.

That is not the sort of statement a person makes without serious reflection. It has taken me 30 years of introspection to reach the point where I can make such a declaration. In those 30 years, I’ve learned a lot about myself and about what really matters.

I’ve learned that sorting out our lives is a process. We spend our teen years answering the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” by talking about our imagined future careers. In our 20s, we meet the hard realities of those careers and have existential breakdowns about “where I should be by now.”

As I enter my 30s, I’ve realized the question we’ve wrestled with all along — what do you want to be? — isn’t about a career at all. Careers don’t define us. We are defined by something more. We are defined by the impression we leave on the people and places we encounter.

I know now that I want to improve the lives of those I meet. I want to better the world, not just occupy it. I want to leave a legacy. I want to put more in than I take out. I want to be a gentleman.

Of course, the status of “gentleman” was once only attainable by noble birth. That would certainly disqualify me from the moniker right at the start. Fortunately, the word has come to represent something more, something achievable, something honorable.

Today, a gentleman is, by the book, a man who treats other people in a proper and polite way. The definition also touches on the notions of chivalry and courtesy. But for me, “gentleman” in the modern context encompasses a broader concept.

I would like to explore that concept in this space. To that end, this is the first entry in a new column on Curiata.com about what it means to be a gentleman in the modern-day, global city we all inhabit.

Today, I introduce to you the “Modern Urban Gentleman.”

The Modern Urban Gentleman is a men’s lifestyle column that celebrates the qualities of 21st-century manliness. The modern urban gentleman understands that being a man takes more than anatomy: it takes cultivation. A gentleman of today is rooted in tradition, embraces the here and now, and leads the way boldly into the future. He is a complete man, inside and out, always striving to better himself in every way.

The modern urban gentleman makes and leaves an impression on everyone he meets. His fashion is classic with a contemporary twist. He is impeccably groomed and tastefully accessorized. He understands that the way he presents himself reflects the respect he has for himself and for those he entertains.

His aura of confidence is backed up when he opens his mouth to speak because he is well-read, engaged in the community and the world, and true to his word. He develops an interest in as many diverse areas as he can in order to provide stimulating conversation to each person he encounters. He learns and practices useful skills that improve the world around him, connect him with other people, and perpetuate our rich cultural history. He respects the earth and understands his instinctual connection to and dependence upon it. He is self-assured but always humble.

The modern urban gentleman is not restricted by location or by antiquated expectations of what it is to be a “man.” Instead, he is the one who defines his own identity. The modern urban gentleman is, at heart, a man on a journey of self-improvement.

Self-improvement is, by its nature, always aspirational, never attainable. It is littered with many failures and much perseverance. I fail in meeting the standards of the modern urban gentleman every day. But that’s the whole point of “improvement” — we can always be better.

I want to invite you to join me on my journey. I hope I can motivate you, and I expect writing to you will motivate me. My wish is that the Modern Urban Gentleman will provide a spark and prove a resource to create and support my fellow gentlemen.

Being a gentleman is a lost art. Maybe it is one that never really existed at all; nostalgia can be a tricky thing. But that’s no reason not to strive to be one today and every day.

From bloaty to sparkly: Tracing monster origins

Monsters, some say, are a means by which society can separate out the most abhorrent and depraved aspects within itself. If a man can walk into an elementary school and murder 20 children, it’s much easier for people to call him a monster — an “other” — than to admit he is a part of our own in-group.

There is much of the monster in us, and much of us in him. Perhaps this “othering” is a healthy process, enabling us to deal harshly with law breakers by removing our empathetic mercy and species-preservation instincts. White blood cells don’t attack cancer, after all, because they think the diseased cells are a part of the body.

Anyway, I suggest watching Joss Whedon’s Cabin in the Woods for a more thorough (and bloody brilliant) examination of those themes. I’m here to talk to you about words and stuff. So let’s take a look at three of the most popular monsters in media lately — vampires, werewolves, and zombies — where they come from, and what makes them tick.

Vampires

Nobody really knows where the word “vampire” came from. Best guess is the Slovak vrepit’ sa, which means “to thrust into or stick to.” I guess, because vampires … ah … thrust … their teeth into your flesh? I dunno. Anyway, the term came from Eastern Europe in the early 17th century, but similar figures appear all over the world long beforehand, from the Mayan camazotz, which was a head-snatching bat god, to the Japanese kappa, who were river-dwelling blood drinkers (and rapists to boot).

A lot of corpses were exhumed during the 17th and 18th centuries all over Eastern Europe, from Romania to Austria, as rumors were circulating of unexplained killings of people and animals. (Mind you, this was happening at the same time the United States was being founded and rational philosophies were spreading through German intellectual circles.) The dug-up bodies looked purple and bloated, like ticks, with blood streaming from their mouths — almost as though they’d been drinking human blood! (Of course, many bodies swell with gas after death, causing fluids to seep out. Oops.) These bodies were then variously decapitated, dismembered, driven into the ground with spikes, staked through the heart, mouth, and stomach, and stuffed with garlic.

Belief in vampires never completely died out, but the periods of mass hysteria associated with the phenomenon were relatively short-lived. Our current conceptions about vampires largely come from Bram Stoker’s 1897 horror novel Dracula, in which the vampires’ various strengths and weaknesses are spelled out explicitly. Anne Rice popularized the idea of a sympathetic vampire in the late 20th century, and, most recently, Stephenie Meyer made them sparkle. If vampires do exist, these more recent portrayals must grate on their nerves terribly.

Werewolves

“Wer” means “man” in Old English. There, we’re done! Nah, just kidding.

The idea of transforming into animals is not any newer than of drinking blood to steal someone’s power. It happened all the time, from the Norse berserker (“bear shirt”) to the Grecian gods, who turned into all manner of things in order to see what having sex with different species was like. Zeus transformed a guy named Lycaon into a wolf for attempting to feed the Thunder God baby meat (for some reason). Typically, people turn into wolves either from a curse, a pact with a demon, lying out under a full moon, or even drinking a specific kind of beer (probably an Oktoberfest).

While werewolves became popular in Eastern Europe about a century before vampires, they share a lot of commonalities. In Serbia, a single term (vulkodlak) is used for both. Vampires are sometimes purported to be able to change form to that of a wolf or to use wolves as “familiars” (a sort of mentally controlled animal). The sign of pointed fangs from the werewolf condition indirectly led to the idea of vampire fangs. Both monsters are frequently considered cursed or possessed by evil spirits. Werewolves, however, are mostly not already dead and can even be cured! The best cure is to stab them in the head with a knife (though sometimes exorcism, or even just scolding, will do the trick). The silver bullet thing was totally tacked on later, in the 1941 film The Wolf Man.

Turning into a wolf doesn’t seem that impressive, next to coming back from the dead and enthralling people. But wolves are scary! Imagine videos you’ve seen of guard dogs taking down men in heavy padding, then picture that with an animal of twice the size and bulk, razor sharp claws and teeth, coming at you with six of his buddies. Obviously, knife to the head is the best option available here. Good luck.

Zombies

The word “zombie” doesn’t have a cut-and-dry meaning, though it may be partially related to the Congolese nzambi, which means “god.” I guess because zombies defy death and can’t be hurt? It’s also alike to the word “simbi,” which is a kind of Haitian water snake spirit. (More specifically, the simbi is a Loa, or Lwa, which is an intermediary between the creator and humanity that can possess human hosts and ride them around.)

The origins of these creatures come from West African vodou, where sorcerer-shamans called bokor trapped human soul-bits in their fetishes (magic objects) to enhance their power. In Haiti, bokor killed people (typically, bad news bears that the common folk didn’t much mind dying) and brought them back to life as slaves. One theory is that the bokor actually used pufferfish powder to send their victims into a state of near-death, as well as inflicting brain damage to make them more susceptible to mental control upon their waking up (those that survived the ordeal, anyway).

How did these undead Haitian man-servants turn into the apocalyptic plague-drones we now associate with the term? The 1932 Bela Lugosi film White Zombie introduced American culture to the word and the concept, still used at the time to describe a sorcerer’s voodoo slave. From there, George A. Romero mixed the general idea of zombies with Richard Matheson’s vampires (found in I Am Legend), and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein before it, to create his weird, shambling hybrids in the vastly influential 1968 Night of the Living Dead. Romero didn’t call them zombies in the film (or explain them at all, really) but used the term exclusively in its sequels. From there, the idea and the word became inextricably linked, and people have since mostly associated zombies with some scientific cause rather than vodoun magicks.

Yep, popular culture has come a long way from the original mythology that surrounds our various monsters. It’s almost hard to recognize them anymore. And once we do recognize them, it has certainly become more difficult to stab them in the head with knives. After all, they sure do look a lot like us, don’t they?

Choose your own biblical view of marriage

An article published in the Washington Post last week draws attention to the claim in Rep. Steve Pearce’s memoir that a wife is to “voluntarily submit” to her husband. While the fact that this statement issued from the mouth of a U.S. congressman attracted headlines, the idea itself is not news. There is already a best-selling book that posits this idea: the Bible.

Rather, there is an anthology of ancient literature, considered by many to be sacred, containing a couple of letters that posit this idea. It’s important to remember that the Bible as we have it today is not a book like Harry Potter. Instead, it is a compilation of 66 books, letters, collections of poetry, folktales, instructions, myths, and legal codes.

One of my least favorite sentence-starters is, “The Bible says…” because the Bible says a lot — much of it contradictory. After all, these works were written by countless authors and revised by innumerable editors over the course of several thousand years. It’s essential, then, to understand the context in which “the Bible says” something. For example:

The Bible says that polygamy was taking place from the very beginning of the faith, and the practice is never condemned. Abraham, the patriarch of Judaism, had two wives and a slave, all of whom bore him children. His grandson, Jacob, married two sisters and had two concubines. Much later in the history of Israel, King David had at least seven wives, and his son Solomon is said to have had a harem including 700 princesses and 300 concubines. Each of these men was routinely criticized when he failed to do what God wanted of him, and yet polygamy was never something for which they were punished.

So let’s look at the context. At the beginning of a faith intended to spread to the whole world (Genesis 12:1-3), it’s critical for members of that faith to procreate and for their offspring to survive. Polygamy is a social structure that seems particularly suited to achieving these goals. We now live in a context in which very few places in the world — if any — are unaware of the Judeo-Christian faith; polygamy is no longer a necessity. This line of thinking is also pertinent to the conversation about same-sex relationships, which I will not address here.

The Bible says that, should a married man die with no male heir, his brother is to sleep with his widow until she gives birth to a son. This command — and it is a command — is known as levirate marriage, and it is the central conceit of the story of Judah and Tamar. In Genesis 38, Judah is punished for failing to provide one of his sons as a husband for Tamar. In the Book of Ruth, the character of Boaz is commended as a “man of valor” for taking Ruth as a wife after her husband dies.

The law of levirate marriage seems to have developed, in part, as a way for men to maintain control over the wealth within a family; however, it also arose in a context in which there was no social security, no unemployment pay, and no such thing as a homeless shelter. This practice was, in effect, a social safety net for widows and children who would otherwise have no way to care for themselves. In a culture that has systems in place (at least, in theory) to provide for the less fortunate, this practice is truly obsolete.

Before we return to Pearce’s perspective on marital relationships, let’s look at one more thing the Bible says: namely, that it’s better for single people never to marry at all. This idea comes to us most clearly from the Apostle Paul, the author of many of the letters that make up the New Testament. In 1 Corinthians 7:8-9, Paul recommends to the unmarried and the widowed that they “remain unmarried as I am.” Indeed, Jesus himself was never married.

Marriage clearly wasn’t the highest priority for these two men. The context here is that Jesus and Paul lived their lives believing that the final culmination of history was just over the horizon. Jesus proclaimed that “this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place” (Matthew 24:34 and verses following), and Paul wrote that “the Day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night” (1 Thessalonians 5:2). In light of such apocalyptic thinking, dedicating oneself to marriage took a back seat to dedicating oneself to the faith. Jesus made this explicit when he said, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26). Nearly 2,000 years later, we recognize that life on Earth is probably one of God’s long-term projects; perhaps marriage is back on the table.

The New Mexican congressman’s understanding of marriage, namely that “the wife is to voluntarily submit, just as the husband is to lovingly lead and sacrifice,” comes from the “household code” found in Paul’s letters to the Ephesians and the Colossians. Paul’s mission was to continue the expansion of the Church. The “code” sections of the letters are a set of directions for maintaining the hierarchical order of society: women obey men, children obey parents, slaves obey masters.

At the time these letters were written, Christianity was a developing faith. Some thought it was primarily subversive — after all, these people were talking about a King up in heaven, which some of the Powers-That-Were took as a threat to their own authority. Christianity does demand radical change, and so these passages may have been an attempt to say, “Yes, we’re different, but we’re not clueless! We know how the world works.” The way the world worked in the first century was that men were in charge. Perhaps the household code was meant to reflect, rather than to legislate, that reality.

In America today, that reality is no longer uniformly the case. Women have more discretion (though not absolute freedom, especially in oppressive or abusive situations) in the forms their relationships will take. Reading the passages from Ephesians and Colossians, we might choose to focus less on the gender of the person in charge and more on the idea of mutual care and respect: that husbands and wives, parents and children, even, er, “bosses and employees,” are to show concern for one another.

In each of these examples, there is a practice and a principle: the practice of polygamy served the principle of spreading a faith; the practice of levirate marriage served the principle of concern for the powerless in society; the practice of eschewing marriage served the principle of wholehearted dedication to one’s faith; the practice of the household code served the principle of maintaining social order. Far too often, we get bogged down in the practice, without going a step further to discern the principle it serves.

So choose your own biblical view of marriage, but do so recognizing that context is crucial and that the Bible isn’t a book of answers; it can’t live our lives for us. What we need is a faith that engages such a book, a faith that is alive, adaptable, and not afraid of change, a faith that is born and reborn each day. That’s the kind of faith that can show us how to live.

The author is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and serves as a chaplain in the Virginia Commonwealth University health system.

For further reading on these topics, check out Unprotected Texts: The Bible’s Surprising Contradictions about Sex and Desire by Jennifer Wright Knust (New York: HarperCollins, 2011).