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Notes -
The upthread discussion about male role models reminded me of a web essay that I can no longer find (damn it). The author was a male English professor for undergrads. His course satisfied a general requirement, so his male student population broadly represented the student body. In the essay, the author observed that when his male students were given an opportunity to select a text or topic to study, the most popular subject was always power.
I don’t recall the author proposing any reason for that preference. We can come up with a couple.
Broke: They know that power is the ultimate aphrodesiac.
Woke: They are already toxically masculine. The professor should focus exclusively on books by queer women of color, who hate power.
Bespoke: They are thinking about the Roman Empire.
I’ll have to expand on that last one.
Ages ago, I came across someone asking why 19th Century Britain seemed to be so obsessed with Rome. One responder said “Britain found itself with an empire unexpectedly. The 19th Century British culture was looking to ancient Rome to give it context. How should they act? What is it like to have an empire? What can they learn?”
That sprang to mind as I was reading the essay. Those teenage boys knew that they were on the cusp of having power, over themselves at least. They should, at least. What does that mean? How should they behave?
My question, then, is: What would you recommend for those boys, to help them understand the power that they will eventually wield?
Anna Karenina. One of the most important choices many of them will make in the next decade or two will be the choice of a mate and forming a family. Anna Karenina is, as it's opening sentance expresses so poetically, a deep dive through all the things that need to go right to make a happy family.
Proverbs (and Ecclesiastes for the GATE kids if they finish), followed by James (and Romans if I'm allowed to proselytize).
Kipling's If.
The Federalist Paper 39 and Brutus Essay 1. Examples of the power of persuasion and the importance of considering the future when exercising power today.
Second this. It's an amazing work of literature that every learned human should read at least once during their lifetime. The Pevear/Volohonsky translation is an absolute tour de force too.
I've tried multiple times to read Anna Karenina, but I just can't ever stick with it. I think the furthest I ever made it was 1/4 to 1/3 through. What inevitably winds up happening is that it becomes a chore I have to force myself to do, rather than something I'm reading because it's enjoyable. And then it's only a matter of time until I stop reading it, and it just sits on the table until my wife or I put it back on the shelf when we're cleaning up the house.
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