• Each second that we breathe in the air that surrounds the world in which we associate our lives everyday with, we suck up and contain, like a sponge, the universe that pieces itself together all around us. An understanding of our world and the living creatures and objects that play a part in communicating and exchanging this life throughout our bodies, gives us the tools needed to mold our identities into the existence that we discover within the reach of our arms length. Society is one of the thousands of chemicals in the air that we take into our minds everyday, and it in turn shapes our organs in a way to evolve and sever us from our own individual nature. Woman work to support and piece together the lives of men with their graceful, “down to earth” attitudes and strive to keep sanity within their circle of union, men turn their heads to the blur of faces within the crowds and try to shape their lives into a way that they see as plausible for individuals in today’s generation, with their chins raised up high and their ambitions at max to protect and support the people outside of their minds. Men and woman in today’s society generally succumb and decline within the boundaries of their expectations.
    As Scott Russell Sanders introduced with his short story, “The Men We Carry in Our Minds,” genders and people in general constantly separate themselves based on classes and general differences between each others pasts. Though the same concepts and values always appear to be there, it seems to me that men are almost always trying to protect or support something, Homers father from the movie/book “October Sky” (Rocket Boys) was a perfect example of this. Two times in viewing the film did I notice the male yearning for responsibility, the first is a scene in which Homer’s father interrupts a bullying session between two young boys, and threatens the bullier. Another time is when Homer’s father, who was a worker at a mine in town, risked his life to save his coworkers, and got seriously injured because of it. How does this relate? Well as Homers mother said “your father always has to be the hero.” Men and women stand in different places, as society tells us. I envision the world we know all resting upon a single, cold metal platform, thin but completely misshapen, all laying flat upon the raised muscular arms of man.
    This is man’s place in society, not just identified as a part of today’s generation, but a pattern that has been continuous throughout the course of history. The men support the weight of the world, as most men (with general traits), fall into this category, the platform can be classified with a range of something as simple as supporting a family member to supporting all of reality. The women sit neatly on top of the raised platform, their job is to keep the balance, travel to all different corners and make sure that reality doesn’t topple over despite man’s effort to keep it up. So women, as stated earlier, keep the sanity of the world, they make the lives for men easier, and keep the weight balanced so that the men don’t loose their grip on reality. In “The Men We Carry In Our Minds,” three different types of men are depicted, the “toilers,” who work everyday to feed their families, who tend machines and sacrifice their bodies. The “soldiers,” who fight for an vague cause and fight for entities that cannot be seen, but for the screams that can be heard, who work as pawns to make the world a “better place.” Then there are the men who “rule the world,” the rich men with spoiled families, that never have to worry about food and don’t have to sacrifice themselves, they sit at a table of individuals that play out the pawns on the board of life, but never take part in the battle, from these men start the problems of world war, rather than a neighborly battle of the toilers, but also from these men come peace and a structural world, and its true that the only way to stop someone like Hitler is to attack him with another person who falls into the same category of man. These three men all take their places under the earth; they hold the world on their shoulders. The toilers support the families, the soldiers take on the lives of the voices beyond the walls, and the men that rule the world hold reality in its grasps, and their decisions could affect the lives of the other men in the world. So where do woman stand in this life, what happens is that women manifest themselves into the infrastructure of men, and they handle the problems that men are too far sighted to see. Women keep the balance of the man’s step, as man stomps the world into place, this is a general societal expectation of women that drives some women insane with anger, and some women collapse from the pressure. In Marge Piercy’s “Barbie Doll,” a women is portrayed that was maimed and deformed by societies expectations, and in the end, her body was nothing but a lifeless addition to the billions of headstones that wander the realm of earth.
    These expectations follow men and women everywhere they go, responsibility is the bible of manhood, staying strong, not ever waver and never admit defeat, and if necessary, take in failure with honor by offering something of personal mean, such as the lives of samurai who would fail a mission, and offer their souls. This is contrary to the women’s vision of life, in which woman look at all the aspects of human ingenuity, and take into affect the moral aspects of situations. In my mind, I see men as straight forward, a life in the 1st dimension, because of this view, men can clearly see a goal in front of them, and can see farther. Whereas woman are baffled by the worlds beauty, too keen on the 3 dimensions to see one specific idea, but because of this, woman can go piece to piece, look at things from one thing to another, and as a result, get a better grasp of right and wrong. But woman are doomed to a life within the boundaries of man’s world, so that their expanding ideas are caged into the 1 dimensional world of men. Woman endlessly walk upon the metal platform, and forever support the ideas of man, they can never just jump away, one reason being that the height of the world in which the man holds is too far to survive a separation, and also because woman instinctively know their place just as men know theirs, they don’t want to see the world crumble, and they don’t want to see men’s defeat. Men on the other hand have an open world, to go and see anything they want, but sometimes men find themselves paralyzed under the weight in which they carry on their shoulders, this fact makes it so that men are also doomed to this 1 Dimensional life, as a basis of society. Women are trapped and men are crushed, both want to break free from what binds them to their lives, their expectations. Also stated in Scott Russell Sanders “The Men We Carry In our Minds,” is the fact that women seem to think that men “have the life,” while men silently believe that women’s lives are easier. Because of the fact that all men see in their way is the weight of the platform, men think that if they had a woman’s position, that they would be free, and woman only see the platform, and don’t know that the world underneath would be crushed if not for men holding it up, and its because of this fact that both men and woman admire each other, it’s the individualistic ignorance, but then the question is what if both genders were to walk away from their instincts, the balance that keeps the world afloat, would the world would collapse, and society crumple from the impact of the fall. It is known many of these “expectations” are more than just societal views, but instincts that we find within ourselves.
    What I’ve always envisioned for the future of the human race is a world that is balanced, a world that pushed aside from the current trend of environmental ignorance, and a world in which each and every person can look into themselves, and define who they are with a smile. Where each and every person receives the same opportunities and each and every person has a chance to be happy. In this world, your “politicians” are people you eat and drink with on a regular basis, they are people you pay to baby-sit your kids, or people you go to movies or plays with, people you can laugh with and share fond memories. Where power doesn’t come with disease, but with friendship, with this solution, men can be men and women can be women, it is unrealistic to say that a man will not be a man if he watches a baby rather than supports his family. The truth is that we are not defined by our gender alone, that we can define ourselves based on our own attributes of life. Everybody is a human being, a person of different race is no different than you, but they could define themselves in a different way. Its time we stop viewing ourselves as Americans, and Russians, and Japanese, and start seeing the world as one planetary phenomenon, supporting all of natures beauty, not torn into sections or nations, but as one ultimate idea.