Saturday, January 7, 2012

Stephen Hawking Does't Understand

In a recent article in the British magazine Guardian, author Jean Edelstein reported on a conversation with Stephen Hawking (who many claim to be the smartest human alive) where the esteemed physicist claimed to be baffled by women. However he offered up a few analogies for dealing with women from his understanding of the universe.

In essence, Hawking says that just because we don't understand something that should not prevent us from exploring and trying to learn more. Black holes, once thought to destroy anything that came within its gravitational pull, may not be totally destructive. Women, Hawking said, are much like black holes. (Now I can really relate to that having been sucked into the vortex of many a woman's gravitational pull!) But, like black holes, they are not all dangerous and destructive! (Tell me more, Dr Hawking!)

One piece of advice I found particularly amusing was that Hawking said that watching porn on the internet to understand female sexuality is about as useful as reading an arctic geography textbook in order to understand multivariate calculus! Exactly! But the message here is that there is a way to study and understand calculus just as there is a way to study and understand your wife.

And that is the point I would listen to from this brilliant scientist. I really don't care what his experience with women is or isn't (as you may know Stephen Hawking suffers from ALS, and has been severely handicapped most of his life) but what this man has done is that he, almost single handedly, has pushed the outer limits of our understanding of the physical universe far beyond what we had ever known. He has dedicated his mind and his life to understanding the mysteries of science and the physical world. And in that maybe we can take a lesson.

Here is the challenge Hawking gives us as ones who don't quite understand the mystery of women: study your wife, engage her in dialogue, listen to her from a position of not-knowing and of wanting to understand - and dedicate your life and your mind to the discipline of learning what this magnificent and perfect person is with whom you have chosen to live your life.

Women and Diversity

It may come as news to some but diversity is not about equal opportunity among blacks and whites or women and men or whatever. The essence of diversity is that each person is unique and different and because of those differences every other person is called to embrace and accept them as one more piece of the puzzle of what it means to be human. For example, if I want to solve a particularly gnarly puzzle, it would not serve me very well to assemble a team of like-minded people to help me - we would just increase the probability that whatever error I currently suffer from will prevent the group of me's from solving it.

On the other hand if I assemble a group that has radically differing backgrounds, experiences, educational backgrounds, who have struggled with their own unique problems, our combined perspectives would far more likely contain the solution set required by the problem. An individual who is bound to a wheelchair has to exercise a level of creative planning on a daily basis (lest they hit a crack in the sidewalk and topple over and have to figure out how to get back up) that would exhaust you or me. A shorter person may go through life concerned for safety unlike one who is 6'3" and athletic. Anyone in any minority grouping (name it - it doesn't matter) must continually deal with rules enacted by those in power (i.e., the majority) and is not so much concerned about being treated the "same" but rather being recognized and praised for their difference. And diversity consciousness is all about enjoying the differences.

So what does this have to do with women and men in relationship? Everything! When we say that women are a mystery to us, neither of us are claiming ignorance. Rather we are recognizing that we are both males and have never had to deal with the issues of growing up female and what differences that might produce in our thinking. But we do not reject those differences. Like understanding diversity, we want those differences in our lives. We rejoice in those differences (I would not want to marry me!) and welcome them into our world.

Women and men are different, way different. Get over it! I am all for equality in pay or status of careers and so on, but I am not at all concerned about men acting like women (becoming feminized) or women acting like men. When and where we have our common human traits, of course we are the same and we should view that the same. But where women are not like men and where we men are not like women, let's stop trying to force equality.

Different is good. Much research (we quote a lot of it in the Guide) has shown what those differences are. What we are saying when we claim not to understand women is simply that we should never lay claim to fully understanding what it feels like to be a woman. Life is experienced differently by women, sex is experienced differently by women and men, and marriage itself is experienced differently. As a caucasian male born in the US it would be ludicrous to claim that I know and understand the plight of African women, or that I understand oneness as an Asian monk does. That is as chauvinistic as claiming to "understand" our wives. However like with diversity, that awareness is a mandate to seek out our women's perspective, to listen to their point of view, to embrace it as valid and truthful and to challenge the validity of our own thinking as "different."
Vive la difference!