It’s crunch week for American men. Payback time for all that lounging on Super Bowl Sunday. Valentine’s Day is less than a week away.
Adrienne, bless her heart, does not expect me to take part in this bizarre mating ritual, but many men in America are expected to get out there and spend gobs of cash in a public and ostentatious way this week, to outdo the other guys in their social circle and give their wife bragging rights for a year, when the whole competition starts all over again.
I know this all sounds horribly sexist. Valentine’s should be a two-way holiday, but the reality for many Americans is that Super Bowl Sunday is his day and Valentine’s is hers. Really both days, like so many others, belong to Madison Avenue, whose advertisers try to make us feel there’s something wrong with us if we’re not buying lots of crap.
If you want to buy crap, buy crap; it’s a free country. What depresses me is that a) people feel blackmailed into spending way too much for way too little (a dozen long-stemmed red roses will set you back $100 this week) and b) like at Christmas and birthdays, so much of middle and upper class America has no need for anything, so we spend money on silly gestures.
One looking for a silly gesture need look no further than page three of the New York Times. If you buy the old-fashioned tree-killer version of the paper, you’ll see ads on page three for really stupid gewgaws. As we approach Christmas, Valentine’s, Mother’s or Father’s Day, graduation, etc. the gewgaws get stupider and more expensive.
On page three of Monday’s Times, Steuben Glass offered a stunningly ugly glass frog with a crown. (Kiss a frog, get a prince, get it?) No price is mentioned in the ad. If you have to ask you can’t afford it. A visit to Steuben’s web page informs the eager shopper that you can present this piece of trash (six inches tall!) to your honey for just $6,200 (although demand has sent the ugly amphibian into backorder status).
The rest of the Times’s content is usually not so frivolous or merry. An observant reader might learn that a billion people on the planet, that’s one in six, lack access to fresh water; two billion – one in three – lack sanitation. Another two billion – the same two billion, really – have no access to electricity and six thousand children die every day of water-borne disease.
I’m not trying to wilt anyone’s bouquet. By all means, go out Wednesday for a romantic dinner or take a weekend at a bed-and-breakfast. Rekindle the flame, you and your beloved deserve it.
On the other hand, if you feel you have to drop six large on a hunk of glass, because you need to get something, anything, extravagant for the holiday, consider these alternate options:
1) Modest Needs – Remember the Rosewater Foundation of Kurt Vonnegut’s “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater”? It’s like that, sort of. Modest Needs takes small donations from folks like you and me and gets them to folks like, well, you and me, but who have fallen on hard times and just need a little help to keep from falling into poverty. The car repair, the wintertime gas bill, the kind of money you’d give a friend in need, but it’s for folks you’ve never met. (http://www.modestneeds.org/)
2) Kiva – Kiva is similar to Modest Needs, except that it works with folks in developing nations and the money is a loan to a small entrepreneur to start a business to lift that person and her/his family out of poverty. It’s what the World Bank and International Monetary Fund should have been doing all along, instead of making dictators. (http://www.kiva.org/)
As Martin Luther King, Jr. used to frequently mention in his sermons, there are three kinds of love – eros, philia and agape. The first, eros, has come to mean the romantic kind of love commonly celebrated on Valentine’s Day. Philia is the kind of love we have for our family and friends; we love them because they love us. The third kind of love, agape, in Dr. King’s words “means understanding, redeeming goodwill for all men, an overflowing love that seeks nothing in return.”
So on this Valentine’s Day, get the flowers and candy, go out to dinner, but if you still have $6,000 you really want to spend, think about mixing a little agape with your eros.
Gifts of Love
It’s crunch week for American men. Payback time for all that lounging on Super Bowl Sunday. Valentine’s Day is less than a week away.
Adrienne, bless her heart, does not expect me to take part in this bizarre mating ritual, but many men in America are expected to get out there and spend gobs of cash in a public and ostentatious way this week, to outdo the other guys in their social circle and give their wife bragging rights for a year, when the whole competition starts all over again.
I know this all sounds horribly sexist. Valentine’s should be a two-way holiday, but the reality for many Americans is that Super Bowl Sunday is his day and Valentine’s is hers. Really both days, like so many others, belong to Madison Avenue, whose advertisers try to make us feel there’s something wrong with us if we’re not buying lots of crap.
If you want to buy crap, buy crap; it’s a free country. What depresses me is that a) people feel blackmailed into spending way too much for way too little (a dozen long-stemmed red roses will set you back $100 this week) and b) like at Christmas and birthdays, so much of middle and upper class America has no need for anything, so we spend money on silly gestures.
One looking for a silly gesture need look no further than page three of the New York Times. If you buy the old-fashioned tree-killer version of the paper, you’ll see ads on page three for really stupid gewgaws. As we approach Christmas, Valentine’s, Mother’s or Father’s Day, graduation, etc. the gewgaws get stupider and more expensive.
On page three of Monday’s Times, Steuben Glass offered a stunningly ugly glass frog with a crown. (Kiss a frog, get a prince, get it?) No price is mentioned in the ad. If you have to ask you can’t afford it. A visit to Steuben’s web page informs the eager shopper that you can present this piece of trash (six inches tall!) to your honey for just $6,200 (although demand has sent the ugly amphibian into backorder status).
The rest of the Times’s content is usually not so frivolous or merry. An observant reader might learn that a billion people on the planet, that’s one in six, lack access to fresh water; two billion – one in three – lack sanitation. Another two billion – the same two billion, really – have no access to electricity and six thousand children die every day of water-borne disease.
I’m not trying to wilt anyone’s bouquet. By all means, go out Wednesday for a romantic dinner or take a weekend at a bed-and-breakfast. Rekindle the flame, you and your beloved deserve it.
On the other hand, if you feel you have to drop six large on a hunk of glass, because you need to get something, anything, extravagant for the holiday, consider these alternate options:
1) Modest Needs – Remember the Rosewater Foundation of Kurt Vonnegut’s “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater”? It’s like that, sort of. Modest Needs takes small donations from folks like you and me and gets them to folks like, well, you and me, but who have fallen on hard times and just need a little help to keep from falling into poverty. The car repair, the wintertime gas bill, the kind of money you’d give a friend in need, but it’s for folks you’ve never met. (http://www.modestneeds.org/)
2) Kiva – Kiva is similar to Modest Needs, except that it works with folks in developing nations and the money is a loan to a small entrepreneur to start a business to lift that person and her/his family out of poverty. It’s what the World Bank and International Monetary Fund should have been doing all along, instead of making dictators. (http://www.kiva.org/)
As Martin Luther King, Jr. used to frequently mention in his sermons, there are three kinds of love – eros, philia and agape. The first, eros, has come to mean the romantic kind of love commonly celebrated on Valentine’s Day. Philia is the kind of love we have for our family and friends; we love them because they love us. The third kind of love, agape, in Dr. King’s words “means understanding, redeeming goodwill for all men, an overflowing love that seeks nothing in return.”
So on this Valentine’s Day, get the flowers and candy, go out to dinner, but if you still have $6,000 you really want to spend, think about mixing a little agape with your eros.
© Mark Floegel, 2007
See the “Frog Prince” for yourself:
http://steuben.com/acb/product2.cfm?group=4&product=534&searchtext=frog%20prince
Poverty stats:
http://www.state.gov/g/oes/rls/rm/2004/37613.htm