Masculinity at The Edge

I'm at the edge of masculinity.

I mean that quite literally. The kind of man I am is epitomized by The Edge, the guitarist of rock band U2. I realized this about two years ago, while watching a U2 concert DVD with some friends. I realized my buddy was U2's lead singer Bono--a front man, often the center of attention, someone who thrives in the spotlight. And that I was The Edge--off to the side, happy to harmonize, the man behind the music.

Not being an alpha male hasn't always felt great. But I'm increasingly Ok with an Edgelike masculinity. My society and I are gradually realizing that guyhood at the edges is more than Ok. In many ways, it's central.

***

Categories like alpha vs. non-alpha males are messy and in many ways fluid. My friend Dana points out that in any group of nerdy guys playing Dungeons & Dragons, someone typically will try to assume the role of dominant male. Still, I think we can define alphas as men who generally seek out and seize leadership status. These guys exist--often winding up as CEOs, politicians and sports stars.

And in my 42 years as an American man, I've noticed various kinds of non-alpha males. There are geeks, who are typically peripheral growing up because of their social awkwardness or others' jealously of their smarts. There are men who consciously opt out of the social rat race as much as possible, solitudinal types that might be artists or curmudgeons. Then there are the emotionally sensitive males. The fellows who used to be called "nice guys" and lately have been dubbed "emo" men. However you want to name the category, I'm in there.

We emo-men aren't totally excluded as geeks or loners might be, but neither do we live at the center of attention. At times we may tangle with alphas to lead. But we often fall short, lacking charisma or athletic prowess or confidence. We may pull punches in social jousting because we emphathise with the other parties. We're supporter types. Less competitive than cooperative. Lovers more than fighters.

Some signs of my emo/edge-hood: I've rooted for the underdog as long as I can remember. In elementary school, I irked our visiting Congressman, the former Jack Kemp, by saying communism's philosophy of sharing sounded pretty good. Amid concerns about date-rape in college, I became a sexual harassment peer-educator. Although I've had opportunities to be the top dog at organizations like my college newspaper and a labor union at the Oakland Tribune chain of newspapers, I chose lieutenent-like roles.

To be sure, I've been plenty insensitive over the years. A jerk to girlfriends. Indifferent to a high school pal lower on the social pecking order. Unsympathetic at times to my young son and daughter.

But the callousness has had a lot to do with self-dissatisfaction. With frustration that I wasn't an alpha male. After all, I've grown up in a culture that has lionized the head lion, the solitary hero-winner. As a result, even to this day, I feel some regret and shame that I've been such a behind-the-scenes guy--that I didn't seize the chance to be editor in chief of my college student newspaper, to be president of the newspaper union, to be outright captain of a work softball team I resurrected with a colleague.

It also has gnawed at me that I have never won a championship as an athlete. Compounding the pain is the fact that the times I came closest to such a victory, I was among the leaders or the clear leader in terms of skills. In each case, team sports all, there were plenty of factors beyond my control that helped determine the outcome. But I have tended to view those losses through the frame of the potential hero--me--who chokes in the clutch. The alpha also-ran.

These experiences have intensified, if not caused, an inclination to doubt myself. And at times they have fed a vicious circle, of self-consciousness sabotaging performance, leading to additional doubts. The other night, my wife, Rowena, son, Julius, and daughter, Skyla, came to watch me play basketball for the first time. I wanted to make them proud. Instead, I immediately flopped, missing my first five shots.

So deeply have I identified as as a failed alpha that my devotion to underdogs has a subcategory: underdog alphas. They're people like former basketball player Patrick Ewing. Figures who are outstanding but never quite live up to expectations, never win the big one. New York Yankees baseball player Alex Rodriguez fit this category until this year's World Series. Despite years of cheering against the Yankees and the unfair way they buy talent, I rooted for them and reveled in Rodriguez' redemption as they won.

I also have faulted myself for not feeling comfortable with the competitive bantering you often find amid guys. The trash talk that runs across socio-economic and racial lines, that I've encountered in professional circles, on the basketball court and with some close friends.

One night recently, Rowena and I were talking about alpha vs. emo-male issues. "You're more comfortable in groups of women," she observed.

It's true. I have repeatedly surrounded myself with gaggles of females through work and through social circles. My current writing group, for example, is composed of me and four women I worked with at the Oakland Tribune chain of papers.

Rowena meant no harm with the comment, but it stung. A sexist and dated but nonetheless strong presumption in our culture is that being held in high regard by women is of little worth. That it is men's views that matter.

I hate this idea. But it has some power over me. What's more, when Rowena spoke those words, I immediately pictured myself as one of the "groomer" bonobo monkeys I'd learned about years ago. The groomer are males who tend to hang out with the females of the group, combing their fur. They get their share of sex with females, but it is on the sly, while alpha-male monkeys are duking it out.

I told Rowena about my bonobo association. "That's embarrassing," I said. "Groomers are cowardly. They're deceptive."

"But you're not doing things out of sight," Rowena responded. "Other guys can see you."

***

That helped me reframe the issue. Right. I am comfortable with women. Some alpha guys with few communication skills or little emotional intelligence might actually be jealous of that. I remembered that at my latest writer's group meeting, one of the women had joked that the group amounted to my "harem." It's not a bad place to be, really, in the middle of your own harem.

That epiphany is part of a broader way I've come to make peace with my emo-male personality in recent years. I've come to love "teamy" teams that I play on or watch. At my weekly basketball game a few Sundays ago, I was part of a squad that won a game despite playing a team with the top three scorers in our group of regulars. The key to our success was unselfish play: togetherness on defense and lots of passing to open players for easy baskets. Our opponents were done in by selfish play: not enough ball movement or collective efforts on defense.

Of course, that's the potential trouble with being an alphadog. You can slide into arrogance. Vanity. To being a boor--and being ineffective as a result. That was part of my problem the other night at basketball. I tried to do too much in front of my family. While my strengths are defending well and hustling for rebounds and loose balls, I tried to be "The Man" on offense. Only when I stopped worrying about impressing my wife and kids did I settle into a flow with teammates and start making baskets.

Even though we can try too hard to be alpha-ish, emo-edgers like me also have to fight the temptation to be timid. I have been afraid of the responsibilities and potential failure of being an outright leader. Timidity in my case also includes fear of physical violence. I've always been rather scrawny, and my legacy as a brawler is abysmal.

A skinny frame helps explain why the superhero I found fascinating growing up was Green Lantern. Green Lantern's power came not from his body but from a tool--a ring that allowed him to do things such as fly, create a force field and blast plasma bolts at enemies. Utterly buff Superman was too far a stretch for me to identify with, despite his mild-mannered alias Clark Kent. And Batman, though brainy, relied too much on his fists when battling baddies.

I think I also dug Green Lantern because he had a non-alpha-ness to him. He was part of a group of equals. Earth's Green Lantern was one of a number of Green Lanterns that made up an inter-galactic police force. There's always been an undercurrent of competition between those alpha-heros Superman and Batman, even when they joined forces against evil-doers. But Green Lantern never seemed to care about having to be top-dog.

***

Neither does The Edge. I didn't realize how true this was until I saw the movie It Might Get Loud earlier this year. The film revolves around a gathering of three famous rock guitarists: U2's Edge, Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin and Jack White, formerly of The White Stripes. Differences between emo- and alpha-malehood are on vivid display. Jack White is classic alpha. Everything to him is a fight. As the camera follows him prior to the actual encounter, he reveals he wants to trick the other two into giving up their secrets. Page and The Edge, though, are all about the experience. They come in with an openness to learn from the others, with a cooperative spirit.

In the broader profile of The Edge that emerges in the movie, it's clear this attitude is fundamental to him and has been for years. He recounts that at one of U2's first concerts held at their old school, he took up a spot on the side of the stage. "I've been there ever since," he says.

You can imagine such a statement tinged with regret or shame. Not in his case. He seems entirely at peace with his edgeness.

By one definition, at the edge you are not central. But looked at differently, you may be profoundly so. An edge is always a border to something else. And intersections are often where the most interesting stuff happens. In their book See New Now, authors Jerry de Jaager and Jim Ericson cite a study finding that of the top 50 transformative innovations over a hundred-year period, nearly 80 percent were sparked by someone whose primary expertise was outside the field of the breakthrough.

Edges lead into new territory. U2's Edge has done that with the band's music--riffing off punk and playing with digital effects to establish a distinctive, ringing sound. And he's been instrumental beyond his instrument. Enraged by political violence in Ireland, a songwriting effort of his resulted in Sunday, Bloody Sunday--one of the most energetic refutations of violence in pop music and one of songs that launched the band into stardom.

Being on the cutting edge is probably what The Edge (really David Howell Evans) had in mind when he chose that moniker. The fact that he opted for a brash stage name is a reminder that we emo men have egos--we may not be alphas but we like attention too.

And the world, increasingly, is giving it to us. The release of It Might Get Loud itself is a sign that Americans and others across the globe are recognizing the value of more emotionally attuned, more collaborative maleness. Facebook and other popular social networking tools emphasize the power of communication and connectedness. Hyper competitiveness is under fire in the wake of a recession caused largely by an unregulated free market and to some extent by fraudulent alpha financiers like Bernie Madoff. The you're-on-your-own years of the Bush administration, as well as increased awareness of the perils of climate change have given rise to a more collective sensibility. Barak Obama is ambitious and a competitor, but he's got a heavy dose of emo in him as seen by his penchant for diplomacy and bipartisanship.

In business, it's widely accepted that a command-and-control leadership style--the overly alpha CEO--is less effective than a persuasive, inclusive approach. In sports, researchers in recent years have highlighted how crucial contributions can be from non-superstars. Houston Rockets basketball player Shane Battier, for example, isn't first in any league statistics like scoring or rebounding. But it turns out his presence on the court dramatically improves the performance of his team, because he does things like keeping the other team's best rebounder from grabbing the ball.

There's even a Green Lantern movie planned for 2011.

For sure, there are counter-trends to the all the love shown to emo, edge guys. Look at the popularity of the raw--some would say savage--contests of Ultimate Fighting. Or complaints that American men are being emasculated by an increasingly metrosexual culture.

But you might say we're recognizing an edge-is-central truth. Edge-like, Green Lantern-like, me-like guys are important. We don't always seek the spotlight. But we deserve our share of it.

Michael Jackson, manhood and me

Like most of the world, I spent much of Thursday night thinking about--and, yes, mourning--Michael Jackson.

It started off cerebral. Marveling at the guy's weirdness and influence. Thinking about how not having a normal childhood may have made him obsessed in a warped way with children.

My setting was my San Francisco Mission neighborhood, on the eve of gay pride weekend. Hip hop kids of color, hipsters, heterosexual families, gays and lesbians all shared the streets. It struck me that Michael Jackson had a little bit of everyone in him, and yet remained apart. He was "gay" in his effeminateness and flamboyance, and his body transformations and fashion made him look female. But he never explicitly came out as a homosexual or transvestite. He was "black," but whether out of medical necessity or not bleached away from that race. And though he became "white" he remained rooted in African American musical traditions.

He may have been the ultimate misfit, and the world mocked him plenty. But last night, with hindsight, everyone claimed him as their own. "We love Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson," said a sign outside a bar that caters to the cool cycling crowd. (It somehow didn't seem fair that Farrah got upstaged in death.) The college-aged kids in an apartment down the block put up a sign commemorating Jackson and blared "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" out their window. That Jackson belonged to all of us was confirmed by graffiti I saw on the side of a stove left out on the street: "RIP Michael Jackson my nigga."

That told me that even hip hop culture--often macho--appreciated Jackson. And the tag changed the tenor of my reflections. I started to see the King of Pop through the prism of masculinity, a topic I've been exploring on this blog. And as I returned home and watched some of Jackson's videos on YouTube, I was moved by the way he tried on multiple versions of manhood.

"Don't Stop" shows him as an innocent lover. In what looks to be a pre-MTV video, with crystals and balls floating in the background and Jackson wearing a tuxedo with giant bow tie, he seems lost in the music and mood. The lyrics--"Keep on with the Force...this is love power"--mix the mystical and the romantic (and probably Star Wars, which made a splash two years earlier). The roughly 20-year-old Jackson dances awkwardly at times, putting his hand in his pocket. But his little hops and big smile convey a barely contained joy.

Three years later in "Beat It," Jackson moves on to embody an intriguing male peace-maker. "You want to be tough...No one likes to be defeated" he sings, looking frustrated while two street gangs prepare to battle. But he eventually defies the "beat it" warning to stay away. His character intervenes in a knife fight, transforming it into a dance joined by each combatant. The conflict is defused, but the movement remains primally male, with undulations and stacato moves of speed and strength.

This identity, though, gives way to hyper-masculinity in "Bad" several years later. In that video, Jackson leads a group of gang-bangerish guys through a subway station with a relentless refrain of macho-ness. He looks like nothing so much as the same pathetic toughs that he helped to reconcile in "Beat It."

It's dangerous to judge a person by their art. But the trajectory of those songs and videos suggest Jackson began to doubt his masculinity, and responded by going overboard in a show of testosterone. Perhaps that imbalance foreshadowed the way he later swung wildly between extreme images of male virility--witness his crotch-centric costumes--and femininity--such as the girlish hair.

***

By the time "Bad" hit, I was in college and past Michael Jackson. But he played a key role for me as I grew up--and I suspect he did so for many other men who came of age in the 1980s. He helped us dance. Made us want to, with Off the Wall and Thriller. We Amherst Junior High School guys got sweaty in Lisa Dux's living room to "Working Day and Night." And "Beat It" and the rest of "Thriller" served as soundtrack to hours playing basketball in my Buffalo-area driveway. Basketball was a way I funneled adolescent boy aggressiveness. There was something right about being physical and competitive on the basketball court, and "Beat It" confirmed that.

A few months ago, I found myself thinking about Jackson's song "Man in the Mirror." I was taking stock of life at 40, and it struck me Jackson was right on. Yes, the song has a cheesiness to it. But he hits on that timeless call to brotherhood with some clever lyrics. "I've been a victim of a selfish kind of love," he sings. And then there's that stirring key change and the rich harmony: "make that change."

Jackson's many changes amounted, at least in part, to an attempt to sort through what it means to be a man. The results were mixed, odd and apparently tragic. But I give him credit for trying, and for hitting some high notes along the way.

There's a moment in "Don't Stop" that broke my heart a little when I watched the video Thursday night. Jackson opens his arms widely. Not in the posturing way he later does in "Bad," but in an expression of pure vulnerability. Ready to embrace everything around him. I aspire to that sort of openness--it's a key to the big rewards in life of wisdom and love. But maybe Michael Jackson was too vulnerable, made to be too vulnerable, tortured somehow as a result.

In any event, much of the world is now embracing you back, Michael. As the tagger said, may you rest in peace.

Tagged

On a recent evening stroll, something caught my eye.

What I noticed as I turned a corner shattered my pleasant mood. But the incident also proved to be a satisfying gift, one that deepened my resolve to be a certain sort of man.

What I saw was a tagger in action. A graffiti kid scrawling something on a newspaper box in my San Francisco neighborhood.

He had a friend with him.

Suddenly, I had a lump in my throat. But I had to speak.

"Please don't tag up our neighborhood," I said to them.

"Shut up, dude," said the friend.

The lump was now a bodywide heaviness, a nausea. Would the two of them attack me? It was a still-light 8 p.m., the corner of Valencia Street and 18th Street had cars and other pedestrians, and the Mission Police station was just a block away. But might these two feel they'd need to stop me from running to get the cops?

"I live on this block," I said.

"So do I," said the actual tagger, though I'd never seen him before. A biggish youth in a black hooded sweatshirt.

"Shut up," his pal said to me again. A smaller young man with a baseball cap.

The two weren't who I feared most in a street encounter. They didn't seem like members of the violent Latino street gangs of the Mission--these guys looked white, and appeared more punk or arty. Their sweatshirts were normal-fitting. The smaller one's baseball cap was stiff; I believe it said "New York" in glitter. He also had a bright yellow box that seemed like an arts supply case. The tagger carried what looked to be a small artist's portfolio.

Even if they weren't gang-bangers, there was hostility, and my adrenaline was pumping.

"I've got two kids, and I don't want them to have to see this," I said.

"It's exposing them to some art," the shorter guy said.

"I love art," I said, sensing an opening. "I really do. But this isn't the right venue."

"Shut up, dude," the short one said again.

The tall one had finished or at least stepped away from the newspaper box. "Alright," he said. "We won't tag any more boxes here."

A concession. A resolution to our conflict. "Thanks, guys," I said, and headed up the block.

This encounter, though, left me feeling anything but grateful. I remained angry at them as I walked home. And somewhat fearful that they might come after me. But mostly I was disappointed in myself. Ashamed at having expressed thanks for such a small promise. For not challenging the "shut up." Why didn't I say, "No, you shut up." Or "Make me shut up, punk."

***

The answers to those questions have deep roots. I have a life-long fear of fighting. Apart from some scuffles with pals as a preschooler, I really only have had one fight in my life. A sixth-grade battle on the baseball diamond with Rob Muzzio.

I don’t remember the details of that tussle with “Muzz”—I think I had been teasing him about something and he got mad. He may have used that ultimate guy put-down, “pussy.” In any event, about all that I remember was that he was the aggressor. And that he won. It wasn’t the sort of fight that left me physically hurt, but my pride as a popular boy in a jock-y crowd was wounded. Friends tried to console me by saying Muzz unfairly tied me up in a boxer’s embrace. But I knew I’d been licked.

The incident essentially confirmed a pre-existing anxiety about fist-fighting, which about a year earlier led to a humiliating snow-ball pelting on the way home from school. (You can read about it here: http://frauentimes.blogspot.com/2009/02/copy-of-reparenting-bullied-trombonist.html.)

I carried that aversion to mano-a-mano violence into adulthood. It hasn't paralyzed me altogether: I've chosen to live in some tough urban neighborhoods, and I worked as a high school teacher with troubled, tough New York City teens. But my fear of getting into a conflict with someone that could escalate into fisticuffs or worse has bordered at times on paranoia.

Several years ago, before my wife Rowena and I had kids, I tried to address this problem head on by taking Aikido classes. Aikido is perhaps the most non-violent of the martial arts, with a focus on defense and redirecting an aggressor's force. I only took a few months of classes at a local dojo, but it was powerful stuff. The concept of keeping your enemy so close that they can't strike you struck me as profound.

Practically speaking, this helped me more with feline aggressors than those of the human variety. Instead of banning Rowena’s sometimes-vicious cat Gunter from the room when I went to sleep, I took to taking naps with him cuddled beside me. Our relationship improved immensely.

But I could sense Aikido’s benefits beyond Gunter. By repeatedly repelling attacks in class--even though they were choreographed punches--I gained confidence that I could protect myself.

I have been planning to send my six-year-old son Julius to Aikido to help him develop such skills and confidence. And I intend to return to the classes with him, to reinforce and deepen in myself that attitude of serene self-assurance.

***

I felt neither serene nor self-assured walking from the taggers to my apartment at the other end of 18th Street. Just as I reached my door, I saw them headed my direction about halfway down the block. I was sure they'd continue their graffiti-ing somewhere else in the neighborhood. I thought about calling the cops. But I didn't want the hassle of giving a police report, and I was afraid about potential retaliation should I become a witness against the pair. The fact that I failed to call the police added to the feeling that I'd flunked this test of masculinity.

I got upstairs and told Rowena of the exchange, my anger and--though it was painful to admit--my shame.

"You did the right thing," she said without hesitation.

"What do you mean?" I said. "I didn't even contest the way that guy told me to shut up."

"You spoke up," she said. "You stood your ground."

Suddenly, I began to see the incident in a new, nicer light.

Ok, so I hadn't told the short tagger to try to make me shut up. But I HADN'T shut up. I defied him just by continuing to talk with them.

I thought of something I'd heard about courage: it is not the absence of fear, but rather doing the right thing despite being scared.

Call it emo-guy masculinity. Dignity in different clothes from those of a street fighter. Maybe the robes of Buddha, or Jesus or Mohandas Gandhi.

It is ridiculous on one level to compare my brief exchange with a couple of grafitti kids with the epic trials of those religious figures or the bravery of Gandhi in the face of the British empire. And I was far from perfect in just that limited encounter. I think it would have been better to have called the cops and helped them catch the taggers—to have held those guys accountable.

Still, I feel some pride in having peacefully acted according to my principles. Over the past few years, I've become increasingly annoyed with graffiti. Seen it as a kind of anonymous bullying--especially the common nick-names as opposed to political or social messages. These tags rarely are aesthetically interesting and amount to a rude intrusion on everyone's environment--getting in your face through public defacement.

In the last several months, I've started to take responsibility for my building and the neighboring building, painting over tags on our walls and a flower box on the sidewalk. Now I'm more determined than ever to resist. The day after my exchange with the two taggers, I alerted my landlord, city officials and my neighborhood corner grocery store about graffiti. Since my landlord didn’t immediately fix the tags on our building, I covered over an ugly gold blob of graffiti today.

I later checked out what the tagger wrote that night--"Germs." Enclosed in quotation marks. In my experience with high school taggers in New York City, that’s a sign of the name of a tagger or tagging group, rather than an accusation like "Yuppie scum." Did he and his buddy see themselves as lowlife bugs? Or perhaps, more politically, as a dangerous scourge threatening society?

My friend Colette, in commenting on a draft of this blog entry, helped me recognize that these taggers may be stuck with their own limited vision of maleness. One that feels a desperate need to make a mark in the world. To be heard through vandalism, perhaps clothed in a pseudo-subversive sensibility.

Did my comments to them crack a door on reframing that gaze? Did I prompt them to think about joining the ranks of San Francisco's brilliant, creative artists who make murals—often provocative ones--rather than just litter the public landscape with name "tags"? I'm not sure if I had any impact on them. But I am reminded of the work needed, not just to clean up graffiti, but to guide such would-be artists toward a more-responsible, more-mature masculinity.

The tagger's mark may get painted over at some point. Even if it doesn't, the letters written on that box already fail to make much of an impression. But my protest that night made an indelible mark. If not on the taggers, at least on me.

From Weakenomics to We-can-omics: Toward a prosperity that’s shared, sustainable, secure yet full of surprises

One good thing about this recession: it’s pulled back the curtain to reveal that we Americans for years have accepted an economy that’s fundamentally insecure, unsustainable and skewed to the wealthy. About the only redeeming feature of our runaway capitalism is the way it creates excitement in the form of new things to buy and consume, like iPhones, Twitter and Snuggies—those goofy, cozy blankets with sleeves.

But overall, we’ve been living for the last decade with a debilitating economy. Call it Weakenomics—it’s led to financially fragile families and firms, a fraying social fabric, and a dangerously damaged environment.

We can do much better. We can forge an economy that strengthens us yet stays full of surprises. Call it We-can-omics.

This name takes its cue from Barack Obama’s “Yes we can” slogan. And We-can-omics looks a lot like what Obama has proposed and done so far in office—but goes further and has some twists.

We-can-omics means:

* A stronger, springier safety net for those falling off the tightrope that American jobs have become. Improvements to the safety net would go beyond those included in the recent stimulus bill to provide for more generous, longer-lasting unemployment benefits.
* Universal health care.
* A major tax shift that eliminates payroll taxes—thereby promoting the creation of jobs—in favor of taxes on things we want to avoid, such as foreign oil, pollution and heavy use of natural resources.
* “Green economy” investments and policies, ranging from spending on lower-tech building weatherization to promoting what New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman dubs “E.T.”—energy technology.
* Steps to improve innovation, ranging from a national system of entrepreneurial grants to greater investment in basic scientific research and a push to make teaching careers more attractive through higher salaries and merit pay.

The place that comes closest to putting We-can-omics into practice is Denmark. The Nordic country’s “flexicurity” system give businesses flexibility to fire workers, in contrast to the job protections found elsewhere in Europe. But Danish workers get security in the form of generous unemployment benefits –averaging about 70 percent of their previous wages in 2006—for several years if need be. And to prevent people from wallowing on the dole, Denmark provides substantial aid in landing new jobs and has strict rules to make sure the unemployed are available for new work.

In recent years, Denmark’s “flexicurity” system helped fuel strong growth even as it underpinned an egalitarian society. The Danish economy grew faster than the economies of both the United States and Europe as a whole during the three-year period 2005 to 2007. Denmark’s system also has the backing of a major industry association, the Confederation of Danish Industry, and its unemployment rate in February was 4.8 percent compared to 8.1 percent in United States, 7.4 percent in Germany and 8.6 percent in France.

The rub in Denmark is higher taxes, especially on high earners. But as Denmark shows, it’s quite possible for a healthy economy to combine market forces, relatively high taxes and a substantial social safety net. In fact, Denmark suggests those things go best together.

So does my own story. I am partly the product of capitalists. My great-great-great grandfather, also named Edward Frauenheim, founded Iron City Brewing Company in Pittsburgh. Later, my grandfather and great-uncle owned a malting company in Buffalo, and my father has started up businesses in fields ranging from video security to financial services to clothing design software. At the same time, my great-grandmother and great aunt were staunch New Dealers, and most of my mother’s family has been in “helping” fields such as psychology and education.

As a journalist, I’ve documented the way low-wage Americans put up with considerable hardships, exposed the myth of a level playing field for “little guy” start-ups in Silicon Valley, and called attention to holes in the U.S. safety net. And I personally experienced the way America leaves something to be desired when it comes to promoting entrepreneurship. Several years ago, I decided against devoting myself to a freelance writing business because the apparent dangers –like losing health insurance for my pregnant wife—were too high.

That choice came after losing a magazine job in the dot-com bust. My brush with unemployment fits into a broader pattern of what author Jacob Hacker calls “The Great Risk Shift” from businesses and government to individual families over a generation. And now it is apparent that America’s economy isn’t just rife with insecurity for average families, but overly unstable for companies whose revenues are cratering in the recession.

We need to move away from our legacy of market-worshipping Weakenomics. But to do so, we must strike a better balance on three fundamental issues:

* The individual vs. the collective. The Horatio Alger sensibility that that individual can pull himself up by his bootstraps runs deep in the American psyche. We all think we can get rich on our own. But we’re largely deluded. Sociological research shows America to be less than stellar when it comes to upward mobility, while the psychological evidence indicates people are much more social creatures than we care to admit. The Ayn Rand-ers are right that we all die alone. But we live together. And unless your idea of earning a living is complete self sufficiency on a farm, modern economic existence fundamentally involves other people.

* Competition vs. cooperation. America has been competitive to a fault. Despite--or perhaps because of--our largely Christian culture, we are fanatics about beating others. There’s a place for competition in bringing out something of the best in us, in creating moments of intensity and childlike euphoria. But we take things to an extreme, leading to childish petulance in our athletics, cheating in our schools and sub-optimal performance on the job. We are missing opportunities to be better sports and more creative collaborators.

* Consumption vs. conservation. The United States and most of the world’s nations have acted as if a rising standard of living—measured by consumption of stuff and services—trumps the environmental impact of our economy. Just as Americans have lived beyond their means financially in recent years, so too has our society overdrawn our ecological resources to the point of potential climate catastrophe. We need to reexamine our notions of progress to account for both the way conventional economic growth imperils the planet and the way human happiness ought to be measured by more than money alone.

These are not new questions. And for decades people have sought a middle ground between the stultifying central planning of socialism, the excesses of capitalism and the limits of strict conservationism. But there’s a now-ness about the principles of We-can-onomics.

They correspond with a shift in attitude that has accompanied the economic crisis. What might be called a “Three Musketeers moment” is at hand—a sense of all-for-one and one-for-all. Signs of it include both Obama’s election in November and a December survey of employees by consulting firm Towers Perrin that found 76 percent of workers were personally motivated to help their company succeed, up from 69 percent four months earlier.

Then there’s the populist outrage at obscene bonuses going to the same bankers who helped land us in this mess. People are demanding a sense of decency.

This spirit isn’t entirely a short-term response to the housing market implosion and broader economic collapse. A change toward more collective thinking has been under way in America for some time. A 2007 study by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found signs of growing public concern about income inequality and a pattern of rising support since the mid-1990s for government action to help disadvantaged Americans.

Even culturally, trends suggest a pendulum swing to a more communal mentality. Popular TV programming isn’t just about celebrities but the reality of troubled parents and people struggling to lose weight. Social networking technologies like Facebook and Twitter highlight the importance of connections and communication. Many of the professional sports teams that have succeeded in recent years emphasize teamwork over the contributions of a star or two.

The reining National Basketball Association champion Boston Celtics embraced an African philosophy along these lines last year. Their motto, “Ubuntu,” translates roughly to: “I am because we are.”

Mounting evidence of a looming environmental disaster—seen in scientific reports and images of stranded polar bears—adds to the realization that our economic system has been out-of-whack and threatens our future.

But a newfound focus on solidarity and sustainability in the economic arena does not preclude surprises. In fact, we need them. Constant economic tumult results in a spirit-sapping anxiety, but too much stability leaves us restless.

This is old wisdom understood by parents. Ongoing chaos is not good for kids, nor is unbroken routine. You blend the two to delight and develop children.

Think of We-can-omics as the Snuggie of economic systems. The fleece blankets with built in sleeves—which have hit a cultural nerve and inspired scores of Facebook pages--keep people comfortable while allowing them to cut heating costs and do things like read more easily while covered up. We-can-omics also is about sustainable, sometimes-fascinating progress while people enjoy a measure of security.

Peace of mind and a piece of the market.

Too much of the free market has left us frail as a society and planet. But it’s not too late to shape up. To shape our economy in a way that strengthens us all. We-can-omics is that way.

Reparenting the bullied trombonist

I scared myself tonight with a flash of rage I felt toward my not-quite-six-year-old son. I gritted my teeth, gripped his arms and lifted him away from me.

"You just made me so mad," I hissed.

What had Julius done to trigger such a reaction? Not much, really. 

It was bed time, and his mother and I were trying to wrangle Julius and his three-year-old sister Skyla into pajamas after a bath. Julius wanted to play chase with Skyla. Not Ok, I said. And I moved to corral him, even though Rowena and I had agreed she'd be in charge of Julius while I'd focus on Skyla. As Rowena called for me to stick to our plan, Julius put his face close to mine, waggled it back and forth and told me in a sing-song voice, "that's what you're supposed to do. That's what you're supposed to do." 

I don't know if there was any malice in this bit of teasing from Julius. He was hoping, I'm sure, for me to stop trying to prevent him from playing. But he may have been coming at me with silliness more than any mean-spiritedness. 

Somehow, though, that little five-year-old head bobbing touched off an explosion of anger.

I stopped seeing him, and saw instead a kind of abstract pure mockery. 

And it hurt. So I lashed out, albeit in that controlled way. I didn't hurt Julius as I moved him away from me. But my lower jaw jutted out and I bared my teeth in a sort of primal expression of fury.

Rowena told me to leave the room, and I agreed I needed to cool off. 

I left the kids' bedroom, walked down the hallway and took a seat on our piano bench. Within a few moments, it dawned on me that I'd done some classic projecting onto Julius. That his probably playful teasing had become a kind of pint-size bullying. That somehow he'd scraped a sore spot in my psyche.

At 41, I've gained enough wisdom to know I should go to those painful places rather than avoid the emotion. So I tried to see what was there. And all of a sudden I was back with Jimmy Stevens, on my worst walk home from school.

It was probably the most shameful moment of my childhood. For on this walk home, I let Jimmy walk all over me. 

It's a winter day in the Buffalo suburb of Amherst. I am a fourth or fifth or sixth grader walking home in the late afternoon from Harlem Road Elementary School with my black trombone case. Did I have a lesson that afternoon? 

For some reason, Jimmy (whose name I've changed here) also is leaving school at that late hour. Had he been in detention?

Because Jimmy was a troublemaker. He'd recently transfered to our school--I think because of academic or discipline problems or both in his last one. Jimmy wasn't big. He was probably shorter than me. But he could be a bully.

On this day, he started pelting me with snowballs.

"Quit it," I might have said, but not with any real authority.

 

Jimmy kept up the snowball attacks along Bernhardt Drive and its modest houses and snow-blanketed lawns. At one point, I think, he shoved snow right in my face.

I never fought back. Why not? Partly, I think, because by age 10 I'd become today's equivalent of an "emo" male. 

I was a sports kid--playing hockey, football, basketball and baseball right along with the jocks--but a sensitive one. And my sense of personal power came from excelling in school, not from being tough on the schoolyard. I probably hadn't been in a fight since I was 4 or 5. 

I have since stood up for myself when confronted with would-be-bullies. I've done it on a basketball court. I've done it as a journalist. I even took an Aikido class a few years ago to bolster my confidence around self-defense. But somehow that awful late afternoon in the 1970s planted a serious seed of doubt in me. Branded me as a wimp. Despite my intellectual commitment to non-violence as an adult, the possibility that I am fundamentally a fraidy cat has plagued me. Has made me, I think, hyper-sensitive to teasing.

But I don't want that plague or that hyper-sensitivity to harm Julius. I don't want to let those things limit my ability to be a good father.

It struck me tonight that parenting means having to "reparent" yourself. That I, at least, need to look back on shameful incidents and teach myself, correct myself. I should have told Jimmy to cut it out in a strong voice, in a dignified way. Or better yet, I should have thrown snowballs back at him. Been playful with him. Because I suspect he was probably looking for someone to pay attention to him more than anything else. Jimmy didn't shine in school, and he came from a big family. 

Years later in high school, he and I became pretty good pals. He remained a prankster. But I came to see he had a good heart.

Just as I can look back on Jimmy now with empathy, compassion and forgiveness also are part of reparenting myself. Just as I hold my kids when they feel slighted or wounded, I am trying to comfort that young me who was paralyzed with fear years ago. What a crappy thing to have happened! Don't beat yourself up!

Proper self-help can help more than one self. If I do this feeling, figuring out and forgiving, my kids are going to benefit. And if I don't, my parenting--and my kids--will suffer. The bullying I bury will burst out in fits like it did tonight. 

Thankfully, the night did not end on a frightening note. My anger faded away as I sat on that piano bench. Julius came into the room, and something like the opposite of that earlier encounter ensued. With my face soft, I gathered my son into my arms and pulled him to me.

"I'm sorry I lost my temper," I said.

I also I told him I loved him. He let himself melt into the hug.

Yes, I've got work to do as a parent. But I know I've got it in me to get better. Call it another flash--one more about light than heat. The rage was scary, but this insight--this faith, really--is reassuring.

Bedtime with Skyla

My daughter Skyla can be a little devil when it comes to going to sleep. While brother Julius tends to nod off quickly in his bed just above her, Skyla, who's almost 4, typically takes longer to lull into dreamland. She calls for her "night-night drink." Becomes alert and chatty. Demands songs.

Not long ago, though, all my irritation slipped away. At least for one "bedtime." If parenting is a marathon, as my friend Holly recently suggested, then I experienced to the equivalent of "the Runner's high." A moment of fatherly euphoria that I hope to hold onto.

It began with me in our "front room"--that is, the room that doubles in our one-bedroom apartment as the grown-ups' bedroom and the living room. Recently, I heard the theory that small homes breed intimacy among family members. And the events of this particular evening suggest there's something to that idea. I was in the midst of writing an email to friends praising Leonard Cohen's song "If It Be Your Will" when I heard Skyla singing from down the hallway--something I probably wouldn't have noticed if we lived in a 3,500-square foot home.

Perhaps I was inspired by Cohen's lyrics: "If it be your will/That a voice be true/From this broken hill/I will sing to you." In any event, Skyla's singing struck me not as annoying like--I'm embarrassed to admit--it often does at bedtime. It struck me as interesting.

***

I walked into her room and was surprised to find that she was singing to herself. I continued through the kids' room into the kitchen and saw Rowena washing dishes. Rowena said Skyla didn't seem to need her, and that was certainly true. I decided on the spot to record her, and went in search of my digital recorder. I found it, but it was full and I spent several minutes trying to figure out if I should download some audio files from work, or if I should erase one of them, or if I should abandon the recording project altogether.

During this futzing, Skyla shifted out of self-sufficiency and into song-request mode. Rowena agreed to comply. Skyla then said something about how losing her "snuggy" turtle "would make me sooo sad,"--her voice an adorable combination of melodrama and innocence. I decided to erase a non-critical audio file and get recording.

After a bit of singing from Rowena, I agreed to take over the lullabying. But in keeping with the user-generated-content era into which she was born, Skyla had a highly participatory vision.

Me: "Papa sing you some songs?"

Skyla: "Um-hmm. But I'll think about some songs, and you do them, Ok?"

I said I would try. Now, I'd assumed Skyla meant she would name some familiar tunes and I'd proceed to perform them. But this underestimated her. By "think about songs," she meant create new ones.

Her first request: "Wide and Deep and Wide and Deep. Keep doing like that."

Skyla loves a church song titled "Deep and Wide." So I started singing: "Deep and Wide, Deep and Wide, there's a fountain--"

Her: "No, Wide--Wide and Deep."

Me: "It's a new one?"

Her: "Yeah. Wide and Deep."

So I start singing "Wide and Deep...," but Skyla soon provided a new direction.

Her: "No, Deep and White."

Me: "Deep and Wide?"

Her: "No, Deep and White."

That elicited from me a spontaneous song that, while clumsy in its cadence, had --I think-- the spark of an intriguing notion: that life is a journey from a brightly lit outer fold of God's robe through the darker valley of that fold and back to the other bright side.

Me: "Deep and white, deep and white, my lord wears robes that are deep and white.
Deep and white, my lord's robes are full of endless light.
His robes are deep as you move through them
all your life as you try to go
from the light back to the light
after you pass through some darkness of the fold
and sometimes seeing light
Deep and white, deep and white..."

Skyla didn't applaud the song, but neither did she boo. She moved on to some variations. There was a call for a "Feet and Deep and Wide." I did my best to make up such a song.

Then she riffed about the artistic process.

Her: "I'm thinking of a song."

Me: "What is your song?"

Her: "I don't know yet. I'm thinking of it. It takes a long time."

After a few moments, she burst out with "Deep and Wide and Head"!

And here she added a bodily dimension to the song-creation.

"Here is deep," she said, pointing to her belly. "Here is wide," she said, pointing to her chest. "Here is...," and she trailed off, but I think she realized her head was signaled by the fact she was talking with it.

The official lyrics of "Deep and Wide" are "Deep and Wide, Deep and Wide, there's a fountain flowing deep and wide." Skyla decided to map more of the song to her body. "Here is the fountain," she said, pointing to her throat.

I thought that was brilliant, and told her so. And to my delight she took the physical-musical connection one step further. She made another "Deep and Wide" request, but I couldn't make out what the added term was. "Car?" I asked. No, that wasn't it.

She began punching her finger through the air, saying "This one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one."

Her: "Dad, what do you tink that shape is?"

Me: "What's that shape that you made with your finger?"

Her: "Yeah."

Me: "Was it a fountain?"

Her: "Nooo."

Me: "Was it a car?"

Her: "No."

Me: "What was it?

Her: "Guess--because I can't really say it very well."

Me: "A star?"

Her: "Yes."

So the song was "Deep and Wide and Star." And I took a shot at a song about stardust and stars twinkling and the universe's bigness.

***

That pretty much sapped the rest of my song-writing energies. I figured we were ready for some preexisting songs. So I launched into an old bedtime standard for me: Neil Young's "Four Strong Winds."

But before I could get to much singing, Skyla reminded me that her brother had lost a tooth. This was the big news of the day in our household: Julius, almost 6, had lost his first tooth. And with the tiny incisor under his pillow, the tooth fairly would be visiting this very evening.

Skyla did some extrapolating about her brother's tooth loss. And in doing so, she led us into a conversation by turns sweet, existential, poetic and Tarantino-esque.

Her: "Dadda, one day I'm going to lost all my tooth-es."

Me: "Yeah, you are, Sky."

Her: "This one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one."

Me: "Yep."

Her: "I'm going to lost that many tooths. And I'll grow bigger tooth-es."

Me: "You will grow bigger tooths...tooth-es."

Her: "But if I don't have any tooth-es, I can't eat anyting."

Me: "That's a problem, yeah. You know, when you're old, you also lose teeth, Sky. You get two sets of teeth, and when you get real old they start falling out, usually. And some older people put in, like, fake teeth, so they can eat things. You still would be able to eat things like smoothies and orange juice, which is good."

Her: "Without teeth?"

Me: "Without teeth, when you get really old. Grandma Richie had fake teeth. Grandma Richie lost her teeth. Great-grandma Richie."

Her: "And she got fake teeth."

Me: "Um-hmm. That's what she used before she died to eat."

Her: "And does she still have them?"

Me: "You know, she's not really...not really, no. Because her spirit has left her body and the world, I think."

Her: "And did she die?"

Me: "When she died. Yeah."

Her: "I know people die and they aren't at home anymore."

Me: "They're not in their home anymore?"

Her: "Yeah. And she's not in her home any....She died where the people die. So when people die, they're in the hiding place."

Me: "They are kind of in a hiding place from us, because we can't see them. But I think they're sort of --"

Her: "-- Maybe they're upstairs."

Me: "-- in a special world."

Her: "Maybe they're in a special room that we are next to. Or...or on the moon."

Me: "Maybe they are on the moon. Maybe they are in that special room you're talking about."

Her: "Or in a special elevator that takes...that takes people that died."

Me: "Um hmm. I think they get to go be with God and the Goddess. And with other spirits. Other people that lived before."

Her: "Or maybe they are going to be living in the special elevator."

Me: "Maybe. No one knows for sure what happens. That's one of the, kind of--that's a mystery of life."

Her: "Yeah, if someone goes in somewhere, they will kill you."

I burst out laughing here. Despite the horrific vision, something about the abrupt turn in the conversation and the way Skyla said "Keeel" cracked me up. Eventually, I managed to respond.

Me: "I don't want to go there, then."

Her: "Me either."

Me: "I don't think there's an elevator like that, though."

***

At this point, I figured it was about time for Skyla to go to sleep. But she protested. So I sang some more of our standards, starting with John Lennon's "Beautiful Boy"--which becomes "Beautiful Boy and Girl" in our family. Then Sinead O'Connor's "In this Heart."

I've long loved this tune for its gorgeous harmonies and bittersweet lyrics. But this evening, the words spoke directly to my relationship with Skyla.

"This is my grief for you. For only the loss of you, the hurting of you," I sang. It was about the pain of losing every stage of Skyla as she grows up.

"There are rays on the weather. Soon, these tears will have cried. All loneliness have died." I saw us reconnecting time and time again.

"I will have you with me. In my arms only. For you are only my love, my love, my love." I've quarreled with this last section. Doesn't saying you are "only my love" reduce the other person? But tonight, these lyrics sort of worked. I saw Skyla always being with me, always having a place in my heart. Perhaps there is a piece of her that belongs to no one but me. And the "only my love" phrase got at the way she is this pure expression of love to me.

***

As I finished singing "In This Heart," I moved onto humming. But I quickly decided I should sing another song with lyrics before Skyla complained about the lack of words--as she has in the past. So somehow I hit upon the middle of "Close to You." The Carpenters' classic is a fitting song for her, and was a fitting song for the evening. Fitting for Skyla partly because when she was in the womb, I would sing it to her. We had been concerned that Skyla was in a breech position, and we therefore would not be able to have the home birth we were planning. Singing from the end of the birth canal was supposed to encourage a breeched fetus to flip around.

But besides that history, "Close to You" fits Skyla because the lyrics capture her physicality and her spirit: "On the day that you were born, the angels got together, and decided to create a dream come true. So they sprinkled moondust in your hair, and golden starlight in your eyes of blue." Skyla's eyes are green-brown, but they sparkle. And her hair can have a silvery glint as she sprints down the block.

"Close to You" belonged this evening because it is about gratitude, about praise. And beginning with the way I heard Skyla singing from the other room, the night was about appreciating my little lady. On this night, I felt moondust and starlight were real in her. I recognized her miraculousness, her cosmic power and presence. Her divinity. I was awed to be Close to Her.

So much so that I came in late on my favorite section: the "Waahs" as in "Waaah, ah-ah-ah-ahhhhh, Close to You." What should have been a "Waahh" turned into an "Aaaah."

I finished the song. And what do you know? My little angel was asleep.