Psychology Today

Two recent articles on men inspire reflection.

Stupidity is easy to experience but hard to measure.

Our beliefs are weird and wonderful, strange and funny. They may help us to make sense of life and of our own lives in particular, but they can also cause chaos and mayhem in the lives of others – and even our own.

“Relationships are weird,” a friend remarked at a party recently, and we all nodded sadly in agreement. But why are they weird? Presumably because people are so different and have such conflicting points of view on the trinity of R, L and S: Relationships, Love and Sex.

Tyler Clementi’s tragic suicide at Rutgers in 2010 received much publicity and opened up some discussion on the topic (New Yorker Feb 6, 2012). Subsequently, after a rash of suicides by young people, President Obama called a White House Conference on bullying and cyber-bullying in May 2011. So suicide is receiving more attention, but there is much more to be done.

How do we know how to know ourselves? From our parents and friends? But they are biased. So are our enemies, though they may be less tactful and more truthful. From our therapists? By introspection? Perhaps from personality tests?

Meanings are not given to most of us, though we are socialized into some by our parents or significant others, but still we tend to construct our own eventually. So here are my Top 12. Pick yours, or add it to the list if it is not there, or mix and match.

Scientists have created human sperm from embryonic stem cells. Toxic chemical food contamination is feminizing men. Male birth rates are declining. Are men becoming superfluous?

"All you need is love...love is all you need." The Beatles sang this interminably. "What the world needs now, is love, sweet love," sang Burt Bacharach in close harmony. "Love makes the world go round" is proverbial.