Month: March 2012

I think my goal in life is failure. Not giving up, just failure. In some small way I feel like my failure is a form of protest to everyone who believes succeeding is the only path to success. I relish in failure. Does it get me down? Sure. Does it rack my nerves and breed incessant stress? Sometimes. But in my mind, failure is the pinnacle. It is the zenith of boldness. No one likes being wrong. No one likes losing. And that’s a good thing when you’re trying to survive. But to thrive? That is reserved for dismal failure. Everytime I fail, I know myself better than before. I know my weakness. I get to know my strengths. I blanket my ignorance as I expand my vision. I want to say fuck it all to the world and their ideas about what a moral and good life should look like. What is individuality and uniqueness anyway? Doesn’t someone have some balls to fail and continue doing it anyway? Conventional wisdom tells us to stop doing what isn’t working. Then you’d never figure it out, never come up with some shining gem of clarity. Does anyone figure it out? Is there a right way? Is there a right way to live? To feel? To think? Where is the god damn originality? You don’t find it in lock step formation, won’t find it in cadent conformity. I want to disagree. I want to revolt. I want to do it my own way, on my own path, and have my own goals, my goals, no one elses. No one is going to tell me what is good for me. That’s for me to figure out. The kind words are heard and I appreciate the attempts to normalize me, but I want to live wildly. Not pander to the consensus. Life. God damn life. Sometimes it wears me out. Sometimes I wear me out. I always wear me out. Is that good? I dunno. I like to think it toughens me up. Stretches me. Forces me to grow into wide open places, forces me to contort into cramped little spaces. Our miniature lives. Out little skulls, our plush petty homes, adorned with everybody else’s thoughts, accessorized with everybody else’s needs. But my will is a razor. No. More cutting edge: a laser. Pure energy, a beam of protons that illuminates and cuts through everything simultaneously, that generates warmth and pierces into the open sky, across the universe. Until it lands on some object, some obstacle just waiting to be decimated by my energy. How to be original? I’ve abandoned society, their illusory ideals and dreams. They’re intimidating. Foreboding. Oppressive. The victim. The victim. The victim. Struggle generates strength. You struggle under the domination, or you struggle to dominate. Both mentalities yield some good. I bullshit. I bull shit and I bite and write. Do what you love? Well I love expressing myself. I may not have a Phd. I may not have awards. Accolades extolling my achievements. Pretty gold stars or pins and ribbons to wear around, to flaunt my success, to affirm my worth, to communicate my value. I could care less about that approval. I don’t need dirty little hands fixing material merit to my work. I can do that. Feeling is the most original thing we possess. Not thoughts. Feelings. Those wormy squirmy gushes of life. God knows none of my thoughts are original. But my feelings? You’re god damn right they’re my own. And I don’t need anyone telling me my feelings are wrong. I want to figure out why they’re wrong, for myself. I know I’m blind. I know I’m deaf. I don’t need crutches. I can walk and move around just fine. Let me grope around until I’ve felt what’s around me with my own two hands, until I’ve found the light and can see with my own two eyes. I appreciate the pain of bumping into obstacles. Scraping my knees. It’s apart of the play, part of the adventure. And life is one big jungle gym. A massive forest for me to hang and swing and climb on, to carve my own home from, a place where I can spin my own cocoon, with my own web of words, and dig my own burrows deep into the earth to crawl about and explore. I like the dark damp places. That’s where all the secrets lie. In the mud. The dirt. Under the verdure, beneath the variegated vegetation carpeting the surface, deep inside the womb, mother earth, where all things lose their unique form and become one. Pretty things never stay pretty for long. They all get beaten and pulverized into bits, they dessicate and decay and die. Then they return to the earth. With the dirt. With the mud. With all those creatures that make it their home. I’m one of those creatures. The sun draws forth life from the mud, creates dazzling distinctions from the nutrient soil; yet unsavory organisms misplace their roots and foible their footing, lose sense of where they came, from the unity under it all; then the sun becomes the enemy and its rays rot and ruin the beauty. The earth preserves, it retains the essence of all things; it is the heart that springs forth the beating life. Let me bring the light into the world, not vice versa. Let me extend into the earth, not into the sky. Let me beat onward. From dust to dust.

If there were ever a greater vocation as the critique of the soul, embodied by reason, I should not have found it. The great lattices in which experience hangs need ever to be trimmed through thoughtful reflection.

The spoon of time laps up our lives much in the same way love laps up our desires.

Hunger empties the vessel.

And we find ourselves carbonated by the wellspring of life; bloated by gulp; satisfied by taste.

Open windows breath steady songs into my room; the canopy of imagination jettisons dark ruminations, lifting my chest and my chin; I inhale the oxygen of spring; its cool streams cleanse these porous portals of nature, igniting the beacon that stretches into her world; and the veil dissolves.

There is a world that lives behind your eye.

This post is in reference to what I perceive as the failings of the modern education system to produce a future generation of free thinking problem solvers. 

I need to find a location— a city or neighborhood or institution or some central hub— where I can devote my time exclusively to reading, reflecting, and writing my thoughts— full time, every day. In sum, I want to dedicate myself to exploring my curiosities and passions and cultivating my understanding. I just can’t get enough. Attending the University is great but I’m thoroughly disenchanted with its cold methods of inculcation. My attitude may not be too charitable towards what it does offer, which you could argue is quite a bit, such as a free “top-notch” education, plenty of free time, a spectrum of diverse courses, access to libraries and research databases, and even close contact with great minds like the professors and peers I interact with daily. And many would be quick to point out how fortunate I am, and I would agree. But these seem to be superficial attributes of the advertised variety you’d find at just about any academic institution, not just the best, so what makes my academic institution better than all the rest? Why is it considered one of the best Universities? And why does that mean so little to me? Allow me to digress momentarily and explain.

First, the best universities are ranked incredibly high. Why are they ranked so high? Looking at a few of the major aspects contributing to ranking methodology, say for US News and World Report, we find seven seven broad categories:

“peer assessment; graduation and retention rates; faculty resources (for example, class size); student selectivity (for example, average admissions test scores of incoming students); financial resources; alumni giving; and, only for national universities and national liberal arts colleges, graduation rate performance and high school counselor undergraduate academic reputation ratings.” [USNWR]

Essentially these criteria “reflect the quality of students, faculty, and other resources used in education, and outcome measures.”

Without going into all the details, let me tell you what this all boils down to: location, perceived prestige and/or authority, and money. Most important, I posit, is money. Location is typically dictated by proximity to a city which provides access to agglomeration economies and human capital, both factors of wealth production, rather than any specific geographic concern (Silicon Valley?). In sum, they’re located in information hubs.

The latter two features—prestige and money— maintain a reciprocal relationship. Why? Because the more money an institution has, the better resources and funding, and this means better faculty and students. Faculty are attracted to the pay, research funding, expensive technology, and nice facilities. A higher concentration of quality faculty with access to quality resources  means a higher quantity and/or quality of research output. This, of course, translates into more federal and private research grants for the academic institution, adding to research output, which in turn improves rankings, i.e. prestige and authority. This in turn attracts more talented faculty and so on and so forth.

In any society, cultural capital is the currency of opportunity, and institutions are the manufacturers of that currency. The scarcity and quality of that cultural capital determines the perceived prestige and authority of the institution and ergo the cultural capital it produces.

Students, particularly the highest achievers, are attracted to the institution’s prestige for obvious career and academic reasons. They are fully aware of the benefits of going to a top ranked school: good for the resume, top notch professors, and high achieving peers. They’re also drawn for more base reasons, such as a pretty campus, nice facilities, and convenient comfortable amenities.

The result of this reciprocal relationship is an emergent complexity that produces increasing returns, and it’s a product of self-reinforcing feedback mechanisms. The genesis of these mechanisms? Wealth. More precisely, the scarcity of a perceived value. And the very best universities possess the very best rankings in proportion to their wealth, first and foremost, followed by their prestige and authority (The Cost of Excellence).

So, without going off on a tangent and getting into too many of the details, my complaint is this: nowadays, at its heart, the university isn’t what it’s all cracked up to be. The students of these universities are considered the best, but only because, in the vast majority of cases, they excelled at standardized testing. And standardized testing breeds conformity, undermines creativity, and deters independent thinking. (See Contradictions in School Reform). Furthermore, standardized testing is directly correlated with family income (College Board 2009; NYT for summary). It would seem that, rather than an indicator of a students intrinsic zeal for problem solving and enthusiasm for understanding, standardized testing is merely a reflection of the opportunities provided ad hoc by a students socioeconomic class. This immediately raises the issue of utility granted to education as a great equalizer, showing itself instead as a mechanism that functionally breeds inequality.

The by and large result? A homogeneous group of wealthy students devoid of creative critical thinking skills who are proficient at spitting out answers to pre-formulated questions. This is a generalization, of course, but I maintain the conclusion speaks for itself, reflecting the research data as well as my personal experience. In many regards this is a good thing. After all, these students are the best at regurgitating valuable cultural capital, all the answers to all the questions already coined by society. It is the role of education institutions to disseminate this cultural capital, this social knowledge. I argue they do it very, very well.  Too well.

My discontents lie in the way the system is set up. There is no balance. Yes, you need to have excellent technical knowledge of existing subjects before you can begin discussing ways of solving the problems they produce. But I want to reference a powerful quote by the iconic Einstein: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

Upon reading this quote I can’t help but relate to the issues undertaken by the philosophy of science. Specifically those delineated by Thomas Kuhn in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions as well as the notable debates between Irme Lakatos and Paul Feyerabend. Similar to Kuhn’s theory of paradigms, Lakatos also considered the nature of prevailing thought encompassing a discipline, which he reffered to as research programs. He argued that the paradigms or research programs dominating a current discipline are established as a result of the novel contributions of genius, like Galileo and Newton and Einstein, which offer a revised framework for solving problems. Each research program possesses a unique set of puzzles, or problems and questions, that can only be solved with the premises established exclusively by the language context of that research program.

For example, Newton’s paradigmatic theory of physics is a research program that could solve puzzles dealing with macro-mechanical phenomenon, but it broke down and failed at explaining phenomenon on the quantum level. Solving these problems required the creative breakthrough of Einstein’s theory of relativity and mass-energy equivalence. Other examples include Ptolemy’s geocentric theory of the solar system  being replaced by Galileo’s heliocentric theory, or alchemy being replaced by chemistry, or spontaneous generated disease theory being replaced by germ theory, and the list goes on.

Because each research program exists as a self-contained framework with unique premises, there are seemingly endless combinations and re-combinations of these premises that literally create new problems or puzzles. Solving these problems fleshes out the theory’s soundness by establishing its scope and legitimizing its explanatory power.

In his book on the philosophy of science, Against Method, Paul Feyerabend, a professed radical of convention, an anarchist of sorts, stated that “The only principle that does not inhibit progress is: anything goes.” In this way novel contributions, totally creative thought that rocks the structural foundations of existing paradigms and prevailing thought, are the source of radical and revolutionary progress. His position was that science and discovery, namely all progress, should be open and interdisciplinary, facilitated by the synthesis of perspectives across disparate domains of knowledge.

From this summary we see two paths of education that provide utility, each in their own right. The first path, characterized by formal education, is closed, training students to solve problems delineated and created within the bounds of existing paradigms, by current research programs, by mainstream prevailing thought. The second path is open, experimental, interdisciplinary, imaginative, creative, and seeks novelty. The consequence of the second path is an exposure to tremendous risk and ridicule in the event of being wrong. But as we know, where there is no risk there is no reward.

This brings me back to my original discontent: the university. I should consider myself fortunate for playing the game right and having the privilege of attending such a prestigious institution, but there is a disconnect I have serious difficulties reconciling. Namely that there is no room for open dialog, creative problem solving, critical thinking, and diverse perspective. Any remnant of a free and open intellectual atmosphere fostering critical dialog that we tend to typify with higher learning institutions has by and large disappeared. Of course it still exists in isolated cases with those “liberal” professors in their “progressive” disciplines, but the culture itself is nonexistent on a broad scale. Instead we see fragmented departments partitioned across campus.  Students are dis-incentivized from introducing material from other domains of thought into classroom discussion, from experimenting with relevant perspectives and cross applying relationships. Very rarely do I observe or am aware of professors taking time to form real relationships with their students and gain a mutual understanding of their incoming context. Perhaps this is for economic reasons, reasons of utility, to retain efficiency. Perhaps it is too costly in time and faculty resources. But then I ask, what is education for? The efficient dissemination of knowledge? What of effectiveness? What of comprehensive understanding?

Maybe I’m being too Pollyanna. Remind me though, who are the greatest stakeholders in education? The board of trustees? The faculty? Or is it the future of our country? the next generation? the students?

And so we see my current dilemma. I yearn for a place to stretch my mind, to inquire, to challenge assumptions and engage in mutually vested dialog and debate. As someone totally disenchanted with the rigidity and apathy I experienced during my first twelve years of formal education, I expected this from the university. I was told that the university is where I would find the intellectual atmosphere filled with other inquisitive peers and engaging professors I was looking for, and I can honestly say that I’ve found a handful of both. But only a handful. The experience, however, is  more of the same.

I have to ask myself why this is the case. If we look throughout the annals of history for a clue to our current problems, for some trace of wisdom to tell of our prospects on the horizon, I can’t help but notice a glaring similarity in trends: the greatest civilizations fell at the peak of their opulence, the pinnacle of their immoderate greatness. (Gibbons; Lahiri) My mind immediately turns to Plato who said, “Necessity, who is the mother of invention” and everything becomes clear. We have shunned change, avoided struggle, distanced ourselves from challenge, and effectively rid ourselves of the need and, in effect, the capacity to confront real problems. Instead we hunker down in our theoretical delusions and preserve the status quo. It’s only natural that our institutions should reflect this reality.

It’s not a perfect world, I realize that. Perhaps my grandiose vision of higher learning should be restrained. Or should it? William James said “Genius, in truth, means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.” If that’s the case, then I want to retain my vision of a better world and embody this attitude of genius towards life. And if America should continue flourishing, I believe it should integrate James’ wisdom into the very fiber of its institutions, especially education.

People prefer to stay comfortable: they resist the tendency to change themselves. They would rather change the world then change themselves. Tantum Validus Superstes.

But the world only bends for so long, and if you have not learned how to make yourself flexible, learned the art of bending back, the world will break you.

Though my feelings are original, my words and thoughts are not: they are merely arranged to fit the structure of my experience.

I gauge how well I’m doing if no one understands me. I consider it a luxury to be misunderstood.

My aspiration is that my words invoke a resonating reaction in people that is repelling, like moths to light: the glow entices, but the flame licks bitterly. So they run. I know I’m doing a good job if people disagree with me. The status quo is too apathetic. If the majority shared my thoughts there’d be more love in the world, no novelty, more creativity.

It takes wisdom to know wisdom: we see people as we are, the world as we are. If we are to know wisdom, we should be wise. And wisdom is not knowledge. It is a humble pride in your ignorance. Anyone can be wise if he believes himself to be insufficient in understanding. If you have it all figured out, what hope is there for you? If you lead yourself to believe that it’s okay for the world to remain unknown so long as you believe you are known to yourself, you are the most hopeless of all. The void does not exist in the world: it exists in us. We know nothing. We should look into ourselves with the most introspective of all eyes. Not fearing failure, not fearing our ignorance, but embracing it as a permanent feature of progress. It is only then can we overcome ourselves, the ignorance inherent to us. If you know yourself to be a common man, you are the most uncommon of all.

I just read the article titled Israel, Iran and America: Masters of their fate? by the Economist magazine.

This article should be widely circulated, not because I think its content deserves worthy attention, but because people should know what blatantly subversive and malign agitprop looks like.

The original title was: “Auschwitz complex”. Why wasn’t the author’s name published along with the article?

The message is anti-semitic, reeking of smear propaganda and fear mongering. When I read it, I was astonished. Utterly wide eyed and slack jawed. I don’t care who they are referencing, whether you support the Israelites or the Palestinians, or what your position is on the whole conflict, the attitude towards the situation is pernicious, foul and adds nothing constructive to understanding the situation.

I’m curious, what was the intention of publishing this article? It was featured in a column Democracy in America: American Politics which describes its content as “thoughts and opinions on America’s kinetic brand of politics and the policy it produces.” Do tell me, where was the connection between Israel’s “ghetto mentality” [I quote] and American democracy in this article?

The closest theme I found related to the relationship between Israel and the US, and Netanyahu’s influence over Obama’s policy decisions to support Israel. How that exactly relates to American democracy I’m not exactly sure, but I could take a guess. Perhaps by supporting Netanyahu Obama’s foreign policy decisions will not be reflecting the democratic public opinion? Perhaps by supporting Israel, the US is siding with a war-mongering nation who is bent on picking fights with suicide bombers, Hamas, Hezbolla, and now that poor lil’ innocent country Iran? Ha. Or maybe I’m totally delusional. I get it, Israel was provided reparations after their genocide with their current location in the middle east; in the process they occupied some ethnic peoples in the area, whom we now call Palestinians. That’s unfortunate, but why can’t they get along and live together peacefully? Like I said, I may have all the facts messed up, and I know that human nature is never perfect, but who is antagonizing and who is advocating for peace? Maybe its far too historical and personal for me to understand, but it seems that the actions  speak clearly. Anyway. Not a topic I want to explore further at the moment.  I’ll think more later.

Rarely do simple questions yield simple answers. More often it is the complex questions that yield simple answers.

“To write well, express yourself like the common people, but think like a wise man.” – Aristotle

This I need to learn. I like to think I express myself with precision, but while my seal of approval is fine when I’m expressing myself to myself, that is when I am reading and writing for the consumption of my eyes only, I can’t imagine it translates terribly well for others.

How do I write anyway? I haven’t really thought about this question in a while. For a time all I could think about was the poetics of proper expression. More recently I’ve temporarily given up my efforts to produce quality style in exchange for my attempts to simply flush out quality ideas envolume.

I’m sure this has worked to the detriment of communicating with clarity. I can’t very well go inside the head of others. How am I to know if my words are strung together in the syntax best suited for their eyes and ears? I can only hope they’d ask me to pause and elaborate on a point. All I know is that, when I reread what I write, it appears to retain the same glow with which it left my mind, most of the time anyway.

But I know this is wrong. I know this is wrong because when I take time to read what I wrote in the past, I cringe. My stomach tightens and my face contorts with disapproval as I pan through my hackneyed prose, my jumbled thoughts, my overly rococo verbal garnishes. See? I did it again.

How to write well. Hm. I bet it starts with a good idea. Right? Surely you must have something worth saying, no? From here, I bet how it is you say it matters most. You voice. They always talk about finding your voice in writing. I never understood what that meant until I tried acting, or adopting personalities in my head to do the talking. Then it seemed that the words, the manner and style in which I wrote, seemed to just flow through me. I’d reread it and give myself a half smug smile of assurance and astonishment. Of course I’d be quietly asking myself whether those were actually my words, did that really come out of me?

Sometimes I read my writing and I can’t remember ever thinking those thoughts before. It’s like I was temporarily possessed, or developed a phantom consciousness that took control of my figures and had at it with the key board.

To express plainly. For the common man. Is that right, Mr. Aristotle? Well, that probably means small, tiny words. And shrimpy lines of digestible text. All wrapped in the plainest punctuation and grammar. Blah.

What if the man most common in my circles just so happens to be an intellectual? Does that give me warrant to create torrents of tenacious prose that poetically pierces the present perceptions of men? I hope so. I want to use; weird grammar; write in: serries of sibylline sentences— touchstones of sententious song; and string slews of slack-jawed sightseers together as an inaudible audience.

Express myself like common people? Does he know how common people communicate today? Boi. Dat wud be a hard thing to do. Talkin like my home boyz and gurlz on facebook. Girlz be lookin so hot and sexy. I say dam gurl. Wut you say Airistottle? I can express myself. Wat you want to kno? I like the Titans and Miami heat. I love A n E realaty tv. My boyz an me are tite fo lyfe. ya hur?

I know that’s not how it generally goes, but the idea of adopting another voice that appears virtually void of any serious reflection before it speaks is a difficult task. Anyway. I’m tired fooling around. It’s late. More to think and do and write tomorrow.

A Critique of Traditional Interpretations of the Status of Women

Contemporary culture has seen a growing sentiment that women are equals to men. While I am apt to agree with this sentiment, I must ask: on what footing are they equal? Western civilization is a direct product of ancient Greek thought. Their ideologies influenced the development of every aspect inhabiting our culture, our moral code for conduct. From notions of individuality to politics and governance, from Christianity to learning and the arts and endless other cultural artifacts that occupy our historical traditions. In recent decades there has been a rise of feminism thanks to a surge in the value of individuality and humanity as a whole rather than discrepancies in social constructs like race and gender. In Greek culture the female was glorified and valued, as they were represented as prestigious gods like Athena who embodied virtues like justice, warfare, and wisdom, but their status in society remained noticeably unequal. Why is this? I would like to examine why the ideologies differed amongst writers, why some women were able to transcend the prevailing attitudes, and determine whether the ideological tradition of gender inequality in Greek society found permeating throughout the ages were originally justified.

A fundamental fulcrum in which Ancient Greece society revolved around was the oikos, the household. It was the nucleus of organization and values that permeated into and reflected onto the structure of culture as a whole. The basic framework consisted of the male as the kurious— or lord, master, guardian– ruling over a plot of land occupied by the oikos which consisted of a single wife, children, and conquered slaves. In the city of Athens the function of the oikos was one of utility: self-preservation. Every household was a center for managing the production of resources drawn from the land for sustenance. Trade economy developed as households as they concentrated into the polis and households interacted as the role of division of labor increased.

Nomos in ancient Greek meant law or custom and referred to the structuring of daily experience. It was derived from the word nemō, meaning “I distribute, dispense”. The word oikonomikos, translated today as economics, referred to the law of the house hold. The male or kurios was responsible for leadership, protection and external affairs, internal management within the oikos was the responsibility of the wife. In this way each oikos possessed a nomos— laws or structure of daily activities– that was distributed or dictated by the kurios. In addition to managing the internal household affairs , the wife provided the household with children for labor and more importantly a way for the male to preserve and pass on his assets to future generations. This was not an inferior role but one of great responsibility and required that women had a good intellect and managing abilities.

It was well known and acknowledged that women were intellectually capable, possessing the same natural capacities as men, but because they were not formally educated they were not widely praised for their intellect. Socrates discusses this in Plato’s Republic (455d,e) when he debates whether women were fit to be guardians and therefore worthy of being educated. Though controversial to ideology at the time, Socrates insightfully concludes that because only their pursuits and bodily natures different, their abilities differ, but because they possess equal intellectual capacities they were capable of being educated and therefore could serve as guardians of the polis. In fact, many women did contribute to the polis, indirectly. Aspasia famed for her intellectual abilities and prowess and was considered a driving influence behind many of her husband Pericles policies.

As a result of the oikos organization the role of the woman was all important. Hesiod says that “there is no better possession for a man than his wife”(Word and Days, 695). Rather than a relationship of dominant rule, husband and wife was very much a companionship working together and relying on one another for the support and success of the oikos. However, it was considered vital that the male “trained” her appropriately and instilled his nomos so that the household could be managed well and efficiently. This was accomplished by marrying very young, around four years after puberty as Hesiod notes . The Greeks were very practical people from not on only a survival point of view but a social point of view. Hesiod says that men should marry a woman who lives near you and who is beautiful. I imagine that marrying a local woman may have played an important role in ensuring they shared similar values, perhaps a similar nomos that they would be familiar with and readily adapt to. In addition I speculate that this may have also made good business sense. By leveraging their marriage contract and keeping a good relationship with the wife’s father a husband would maintain social and perhaps political and economic ties.

Aristotle fell short of understanding the practical elements to his culture that led woman to possess their status. He viewed their virtues as inferior rather than acknowledging that, as Socrates and Plato did, because their roles differed they manifested and required a different set of morals, or values that presuppose and determine their actions. This is why he misconstrues the quote by Sophocles “Silence gives grace to women.” The reason this was important was due to the structure of the oikos that established men as the guardians, originally out of necessity because of their masculine strength and ability to protect and guard the household. Later the wife’s subordination became a matter of practicality in ensuring a single leadership in the home, a single nomos that unified the operations of the oikos through the will of the kurios or lord and any division was detrimental to its flourishing. With the male involved with external political and business affairs this was a practical solution to maintaining cohesion rather than any reflection of the female’s capabilities or lack thereof.

As a consequence of the organization of the oikos Greek society developed a culture that exploited this hierarchy as a result of some innately inferior qualities. They failed to see that the utility of maintaining a single oikonomikos is analogous to maintaining a single nomos or law within society, both of which ensure a structural framework for cohesive collaboration, a single vision for achieving eudemonia.

While there are no doubt physical differences among men and women that contributed to the gender prejudice within Greek culture, such as their hormonal propensities causing irrationality in periods of menstruation perhaps, I believe much of these differences were products of the cultural organization which was itself initially formed through practical purposes. It is likely that it was exactly these biases that were captured by Hesiod when he refers to them as a paradoxical necessary and baneful breed, and Semonides when he compared to them as various animals. However, more than likely such descriptions were indicative of the struggle for woman and man unify in agreement and consent to a single nomos, as well as the difficulty of possessing a physically and intellectually attractive wife that other men would desire after. Features like this would lead to the profusion of ideas that women were inferior or defective and contribute to their segregation.