The death knell of the simple existence

By Steve Janoski


A man, however well educated, who has once sampled extreme simplicity of existence will seldom return to the artificial life of civilization. The burden of it is not realized until it has been laid aside.

-     English explorer Percy Fawcett

When I first wrote the initial draft of this column, it was by candlelight, on paper, in the earliest part of the night.

This wasn’t by choice, of course — it was during one of those rolling blackouts that struck every few days in the early fall when the wind would blow too hard and PSE&G’s infrastructure would shatter again.

These frustrating instances quickly exposed once again that society’s reliance on electricity is immeasurable at this point; it does indeed seem that we’ve forgotten how dark the night truly is when there’s no burning bulb to show us the way.

But as someone who divides his time between the gym and reading (neither of which require much light), I can honestly say that in small increments, power outages don’t bother me.

Yes, I was without an iPod or TV, but I am no great watcher of television in the first place; the cable could be out for six weeks and there isn’t a show I can say I’d actually miss.

I’d be lying if I said that I don’t spend an inordinate amount of time online, though, and my job would be drastically different.

Of course, I’m not sure how different, because I have only a vague awareness of how newspapers used to be printed in the days when phrases like “setting type” and “upper case” had real, tangible meanings.

But then really, isn’t that the problem?

Most of us don’t look at setting type as a necessary skill, but at one time, it was as prized as any other in the industry.

And the same thing has happened to other basic skills, like carving a piece of wood, using a forge, or even remembering a phone number — they have fallen by the wayside in the computer age.

Before electricity, candles were the “sine qua non” of life at night; now, they are for mere aesthetics.  People who have not yet traded in pocketknives for cell phones are looked on with amusement, as are those who cram a road map into their glove box instead of a GPS.

Call me a luddite (most do), but this worries me.

I cannot help but wonder if, in our zeal to make our survival easier, we are turning into one very fat, very lazy race that’s working so hard at improving the intelligence of our computers that we’re sacrificing our own.

Even the simplest of skills — navigation, fire-building, purifying water — are the culmination of thousands upon thousands of years of human experimentation, and their dismissal as quaint reminders of a time long past is a grave mistake.

The advancements made by computers are certainly a remarkable achievement, one that will bring great benefit to the human race…but with that comes a great danger.

We no longer “turn off.” We no longer “unwind.” Smart phones, Facebook, email, text messaging, they haunt us, swirling around us just inches away from our collective fingertips and inundating our minds with a constant swarm of useless information  that we’ll forget in the next instant.

The sun has set on the days of our self-educated forebears reading the classic works of literature by firelight in the cabins that they built themselves. No longer do we think that a man’s business is his own, or that anything can be solved by the labor of our hands or the power in our fists…the sun has set on “rugged individualism.”

When I was very young, my grandparents were close with a Mennonite family in Pennsylvania.  I don’t recall much about them, except that their children often ran barefoot through the hand-plowed fields and their wall clock had Roman numerals instead of Arabic ones.

But there was one man in that family, I remember, who made his own furniture — utterly beautiful works of art that would rival the best to be found in any store, and last decades longer.

There was no doubt, looking at every finished piece, every hand-carved loveseat or chair, that he’d let a piece of his soul soak into it.

At the end of my writing the draft of this column, I noticed that I had black ink on my right palm.

It’s been so long since I’ve had ink on my hands.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

Some pansies for your "man cave"

Thursday, March 10, 2011

BY STEVE JANOSKI

Once, before sheetrock and plywood and cement and mortar, men lived in caves. It was probably miserable, but it did the job of protecting us from rain and snow and saber-toothed tigers.

We're fortunate now that we've learned to build our own structures out in the light, and if we don't build it, we buy it.

For some reason though, there seems to be some kind of movement to return to this primordial idea of living in a cave, and it's catching on like a wildfire among the males of this generation.

Consequentially, much is being written about the ever-more popular "man cave" where supposedly, men can go back to being men.

This cave, I guess, is where you put all the things your wife says aren't allowed upstairs, like a pool table, or a bar, or your... nevermind.

Websites have even formed around the idea - mancavesite.org says that it's been going since April of 2008, and its mission statement says that the site is meant to provide a "centralized location to showcase your man cave and share ideas with others who have a similar passion."

Pictures abound of proud men standing in poorly decorated rooms with sports posters, bars made of plywood, and couches that look they've been pulled off the curb after the rain.

I think they should rename the site, or at the very least, change it to something that's more reflective of what they're about.

How about: "We're a group of men who are so spineless that we've let our wives cast us off to the basement, where we vainly hope for respite in what looks like a mix of a 14 year-old's bedroom and the inside of a dive bar in Clifton."

I've long held the opinion that for at least the past 50 years, this country has been moving far too much to the soft side when it comes to men.

Gone is the image of our fathers - men who wouldn't let you cry, men who told you to walk it off, men who looked at your gaping wounds and said with squinted eyes, "Ah, that probably doesn't need stitches."

Now we're supposed to be sensitive. Understanding. It's OK to cry, it's ok to quit, it's ok to sue someone when they punch you instead of hitting them back harder.

We've outlawed dodge ball, tackle football, and peanut butter in the schools, and many kids have even embraced that sort of androgynous style of clothing that I thought died when Bowie's Ziggy Stardust phase ended.

"Testosterone" may as well be a four-letter word, and frankly, we've become a nation of emasculated she-men, whimpering in the corners and afraid of doing things that were once the norm.

But this "man" cave is the final straw; women might as well just nail that basement door shut.

Maybe it's my youth or the fact that I'm not married talking, but how about actually enjoying the whole of the house you live in, instead of leaving it to the wife to decorate while you take refuge in a basement that looks like the inside of a dorm room?

I don't have my own basement to take over, per se, but I have kind of taken over the basement of my parent's house.

There's no couches or college posters in it though - there's a heavy bag, a speed bag, a weight bench, a barbell, and stacks of plates that rival what the best jail in the country has to offer.

The linoleum floor has been broken up by deadlifting too much and the smell is less than appealing.

I don't want to spend more time down there than I have to, really; it's a punishing place, more of a dungeon than a cave. But, should I ever make enough money to own my own house, my new basement will probably look strikingly similar to my old one.

All of this doesn't mean that a man should try to take over his whole house at the expense of his wife, though.

All I'm saying is that should some unfortunate women find me fit to marry, I'd plan on having some kind of say in what the house looked like so I could enjoy the thing myself - and I sure as hell wouldn't plan on being pushed into the damned basement either, like some kind of incontinent animal that can't be trusted to sleep in the nicer rooms.

And by the way - if you're going to put a bar in your basement, at least sell some liquor and make some cash that thing, or bust it up and throw it out.

E-mail: janoski@northjersey.com