SUPER-ACHIEVERS – by Gary Smolker

Super-Achievers

Phiona Mutesi (the star of “Queen of Katwe”), Aisholpan Nurgaiv (the star of “The Eagle Huntress”) and Maria Toorpakai Wazir (the star of “Girl Unbound”) are super-achievers.

Each achieved something which was inconceivable in their country, something completely against what is or was expected of girls and women in their country before they did it.

• Phiona Mutesi became the first female national chess champion in Uganda;
• Aisholpan Nurgaiv became the first girl in Mongolia to hunt and train an eagle; and
• Maria Toorpakai Wazir became the first woman to play squash in her family’s region of Waziristan in Pakistan.  In her family’s region of Waziristan, women are forbidden by the Taliban from playing sports.  Squash is the national sport in Pakistan. At age 25, Maria is an internationally competitive squash player.

Phiona Mutesi went from the humble beginnings to national and international stardom.  She was born and lived most of her life in a shanty town in rural Uganda.  She was unable to read or write. She went from living a life of destitution in a shanty town to become a national chess champion in Uganda and then became an international chess champion.

Aisholpan Nurgaiv broke an almost 2,000 year patriarchal tradition of her people.  For generations the sacred practice of capturing and training wild eagles has been passed exclusively from fathers to sons.

As a 13 year-old-girl, Aisholpan broke the sacred tradition of only men capturing and training wild eagles in the Altai region in western Mongolia and went on to win the Eagle Hunter/Trainer championship in her country.

Defying fundamentalists threats on her life and on the life of her family, Maria Toorpakai Wazir played squash, became part of Pakistan’s national squash team and an internationally competitive squash player.

Growing up with an athletic physique, Maria dressed as a boy in order to compete in sports and weightlifting.

I did not know anything about any of these three women until I saw a movie about each of them at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival, in Toronto, Canada in September, 2016.

Manly Men

Manly men know there are things worth fighting for.

Phiona Mutesi, Aisholpan Nurgaiv, and Maria Toorpakai Wazir were able to accomplish what they accomplished because of a  “father” who respected their intellect, respected their ambition, respected their abilities, respected their character and did what it took to enable Phiona Mutesi, Aisholpan Nurgaiv and Maria Toorpakai Wazir to realize their dreams.

Men, real men, manly men helped/enabled these women prove they could do things their society said a woman couldn’t do and shouldn’t do.

These men were tough and rugged but also the epitome of love and compassion.

These men took responsibility for protecting their children.

These men took responsibility for enabling [female] children to live up their child’s potential.

Many people today are asking these days, “Where are all the real men.”

My recommendation to those people is:  “See “Queen of Katwe”, “The Eagle Huntress”, and “Girl Unbound.”

Their actions in their lives, and the actions of many other men like them, demonstrate the core of real manhood.

Real men lift people up.

The Basis of My Personal Interest in the Status of Women, Roles Imposed on Women, and Societal Limitations on the Rights and Freedom of Women

My sense of justice and fairness is repelled when I see women being denied the credit and full recognition they deserve.

I am disgusted and repelled when I see degradation of women.

Women have always been indispensable.

RESPECT due women is coming due to the spread of educational opportunity, due to society allowing women greater independence and freedom, and due to the growing responsibilities of women in society.

Because of all of the above, women are becoming more indispensable than ever.

In their minds, the women I know have jobs that are never about sitting at a desk from nine to five.  Instead, their jobs are about getting the work done.

Personal Facts

I have three daughters and a granddaughter.

I am a fashion blogger (on Dudes Guide to Women’s Shoes at http://www.dudesguidetowomensshoes.com), and a social commentator and movie reviewer (on The Gary S. Smolker Idea Exchange Blog at http://www.garysmolker.wordpress.com.

I am interested in anthropology, art, beauty, creativity, consciousness, morality, the history of civilizations, evolutionary biology, psychology, and in evolutionary psychology.

I am also interested in economics and politics.

I am very interested in what it means to be human:

• in the mating game in societies,
• in the many types of interactions between men and women.

 

The status and expectations of being married, the rules for raising children, and the power of parental affection on the development of a child are very important to me.

 

I am very concerned about society’s view of the status of women and women’s rights.

I am very concerned about forces that want to dictate what a woman’s role should be.

 

I am very concerned about society’s view of the treatment of women in society.

 

I am profoundly interested in the status of women because I believe the hand that rocks the cradle determines the future of the world.

 

By the way, according to a recent United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Vital Statistics Report, the percentage of births to unmarried women has sky-rocketed from 5% in 1960 to 23% in 1988 to 41% in 2012.

 

People Need Be Sustainers Society

 

In view of the latest media uproar and in view of the simultaneous politician of all stripes uproar resulting from some things Donald Trump said eleven years, people in the United States need to prevent their thinking from being trampled by the volume and intensity of those two simultaneous uproar.

The people of the Unites States need to ask themselves the following line of questions:

1. What kind of degenerate thinks it is okay to assault a woman?
2. Is there a meaningful difference between thought, talk and action?
3. Is former President Bill Clinton a degenerate? 
4. Does it matter whether President Bill Clinton is or was a degenerate? 
5. Does it matter if President Bill Clinton’s wife Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton aggressively protected her husband Bill Clinton while Bill Clinton was President of the United States of America while she was his first lady?
6. Is Mrs. Clinton a liar, a fraud, an abuser of power and/or a criminal?
7. Is Mr. Trump a liar, a fraud, an abuser of power and/or a criminal?
8. MY FELLOW AMERICANS: How important is it to your decision to who you will vote for to be the next president of the United States whether Mrs. Clinton or Mr. Trump or whether both of them are a liar, a fraud, an abuser of power and/or a criminal?  Will it matter to you when you decide who to vote for as President of the United States whether or not you believe Donald Trump is a sexual predator?
9. Who are you going to vote for in the General Election in the United States on November 6, 2016?

After release of the tape,

• Mr. Trump stated he has never kissed a woman without her consent nor has he ever groped a woman.
• In contrast, Mr. Trump claims that it is a well known fact that Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton’s husband has on multiple occasions sexually assaulted and abused a multitude of women.
• Mr. Trump claims that on the one hand: in thought, word and deed, he (Mr. Trump) has been perfect and pure and, on the other hand: his opponent (Mrs. Clinton) is not pure and was not honest or pure while the Secretary of State of the United States of America.

OCTOBER 12, 2016 UPDATE:  Three women have publicly, stated in newspaper interview articles that Donald Trump sexually assaulted them.

To say that animals evolved into man is like saying that Carrara marble evolved into Michelangelo’s David.

MY ADVICE:

Keep in mind:

1. When all things are dammed one feels at ease.
2. Lying releases tension, is a solace and an anodyne.
3. Heart moves brain and both move hand.
4. The instinctive theorizing, whence a fact looks to the eye as the eye likes the look.
5. Ulysses Grant, a man of considerable weakness (he was an alcoholic and a drunk), was the man who saved the UNION in war and peace.
6. Grant was an indifferent student at West Point, he failed utterly in civilian life.
7. But, in the Civil War, Grant was so brilliant and adept that President Lincoln named him head of the Union Army.
8. “He makes things git!  Where he is, things move.” President Lincoln said.
9. He never functioned better than when under fire.
10. President Lincoln said he would send all of his generals barrels of whisky if that would make them fight as successfully as General Grant.

In Politics

In politics the ignorant and the venal have as much right to their votes as the educated and upstanding.

In politics differences of opinion are rarely resolved and almost never definitively; in politics the best outcomes are typically compromises that leave all parties grumbling.

Super-Achievers (People with Exceptional and Unusable Abilities) Sometimes Have Mental Disorders

Siddhartha Mukherjee reports in his latest book “THE GENE”:

“In ‘Touched with Fire’, an authoritative study of the link between madness and creativity, the psychologist-writer Kay Redfield Jamison compiled a list of those ‘more or less touched’ that reads like the Who’s Who of cultural and artistic achievers: Bryon (of course), van Gogh, Virginia Wolf, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Robert Lowell, Jack Kerouac – and on and on.  That list can be extended to include scientists (Isaac Newton, John Nash), musicians (Mozart, Beethoven), and even an entertainer who built an entire genre out of mania before succumbing to depression and suicide (Robin Williams).”

I Relish Absurdity and I Dread Boredom.

Both presidential candidate Donald Trump and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton have a great opinion of their own good qualities.

They both have a great opinion of their personal and social conscience.

They both have a great opinion of all the accomplishments in their lives.

They are both proud of their versatility.

They are both proud of their acute sensitivity to political conditions in the world.

They are both proud of their understanding of the social and economic conditions in the United States, and how to fix what needs to be fixed.

Each of them mix up fancies with realities.

But, do not be led astray by mere appearances.

We might only be witnessing a form of hyper-functional creativity [creative effervescence] in action.

“We of the craft are all crazy,” Lord Byron, the high priest of crazies wrote.  “Some are affected by gaiety, others by melancholy, but all are more or less touched.”

Or, as Edvard Munch put it,

“[My troubles] are part of me and my art.  They are indistinguishable from me, and [treatment] would destroy my art.  I want to keep those sufferings.”

Donald Trump’s and Hillary Clinton’s  Speeches Are

Great, Spellbinding, and Educational

They penetrate beneath imposing sham to an ugly or common reality.

They mightily list highly visible disgusting states of affairs.

They passionately discuss abuses in the United States that they each claim they will fix.

The world is witness to a great debate on how the world ought to be run.

The world is also witness to a rich and varied discussion on how political campaigns ought to be run.

No One Can Interrupt the March of Donald Trump’s Mind

Nor Can Anyone Interrupt the March of Hillary Clinton’s Mind

Charismatic figures show only strength.

They refuse to buckle under.

They are ace self-regarders.

The usurious self-applause of both candidates while campaigning is entertaining.

Each candidate’s self-applause and each candidate throwing dirt at their opponent makes everybody else’s life less boring.

The Great Experiment Known As Democracy Is Succeeding

Neither Donald Trump nor Hillary Clinton has been deterred by outcries of complaint, or by being hated or by being detested.

Wrangled, brangled, jangled by material designed to engage the public’s intellectual curiosity, everyone in the world listens on and on to what Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have to say — a world-wide audience listens on with rap attention to what they say, never knowing what they will reveal or say next.

Brangle

Brangle is an archaic British word which means

• as a noun – a squabble
• as a verb – to dispute in a noisy or angry manner; squabble

Shedding Light on the Status of Women Today

My daily life, my daily thoughts and my daily actions and interactions bring me into direct contact with (a) the status of women in society, (b) how women dress, (c) social forces relating to the appearance and conduct of women, (d) how women are treated and also into direct contact with (e) the evolving nature of relationships between men and women and between women with men, between fathers and daughters, between daughters and fathers, between husbands and wives and between wives and husbands.

In that regard:

• I just returned to Los Angeles from seeing 18 films in 5 days (in the time period September 11 to September 15, 2016) at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival.
• Three of the excellent films I saw at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival (“Queen of Katwe”, “The Eagle Huntress”, and “Girl Unbound”) dealt with the the evolving status of women in developing parts of the world.  Those three movies deal with the impact of social circumstances and social-societal forces on women’s lives that restrain what women are allowed to do and how they are expected to act.
• Those three movies celebrate the lives of three girls/women who broke out of and freed themselves from societal restraints which determined what women are allowed to do and are/were expected to behave in their personal lives.
• A fourth film I saw at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival (“All I See Is You”) deals/dealt with the impact that a crazed, anxious, crazily husband’s INSECURITY had on his wife.
• I interpret that story presented in “All I See Is You” as being a metaphor for the status of women in chauvinistic societies in Developed Western Countries and in undeveloped countries.
• A highly emotionally charged e-mail I received from a female friend on September 23, 2016 dealt directly with the status of women in parts of the world dominated by misogynistic societies that imprison women.
• In misogynistic societies women are ” considered” to be lowly inferior beings who are expected to be dominated without restraint by [their] male masters.

Highly Charged E-mail

On September 23, 2016, I received an email titled “Disappearing Dresses” which contains pictures of  traditional female dress in Muslim societies in which at one time women were allowed to wear colorful clothes and where they are now forced to wear black tents that completely hide what they look like.

Below are the photographs of women in colorful clothing copied from that email and presented here in this blog post on the Gary S. Smolker Idea Exchange Blog.

The message to me of that email is that something is wrong in those societies.

I believe it is natural for women to want to be [and to appear to be] attractive to healthy male members of the opposite sex.

I believe it is our biological heritage to allow women to be attractive to men by wearing beautiful clothing.

I believe that mate choice, which favors traits simply because they prove attractive to the opposite sex, is as important a factor in [human] evolution as survival of the fittest.

According to the email I received the photographs below depict traditional dresses freely worn in public by women in Pakistan, Bangladesh,  Afghanistan, India, Iran, Malaysia, Iraq, Syria, Morocco, and Tunisia before women in those societies were forced to wear a burkas and/or a niqab, covering their entire bodies.

In response to seeing the email referred and the photographs contained therein (see below), one of my friends replied,

This is so powerful and true … but the fact of the matter is that there is a garment hidden under the burka, niqab, etc.

I love the traditional dresses —- beautiful.

Covered up women make me very sad.  It reminds me of the group from Bahrain that traveled on my airplane to the mountains of Turkey … this man had MULTIPLE wives on the plane and children with them – OH GOD – and he was freaking out because one of his wives was situated next to a man – not a family member.  I thought he was going to lose his mind over it …. We couldn’t take off until everyone moved around.  And he refused to listen to the flight attendant … SHE WAS IN FULL BURKA –

the insanity.

An Email Purporting to Show Traditional Dresses No Longer Being Worn for Public Display in Misogynistic Repressive Societies

According to the email I received on September 23, 2016:

This is a traditional Pakistani dress …

These are Bangladeshi dresses…

These are Afghani dresses…

This is an Indian dress…

These are Iranian dresses…

This is a Malaysian dress… (see next two photos below)

This is an Iraqi dress…

This is a Syrian dress…

This is a Moroccan dress…

This is a Tunisian dress…

Note the good cheer and happiness beaming [radiating] out from the women wearing the clothing depicted in the photographs above.

Note the “sexy” [sexually attractive] shoes worn by the woman wearing the traditional Pakistani dress and also the “sexy shoes” worn by the woman on the left in the photograph  women wearing traditional Bangladeshi dresses.

Note the bright lipstick worn by women in those photographs.

A WOMAN’S AND A MAN’S CLOTHS ARE A SYMBOL AND A UNIFORM OF A TRAIT OF PERSONALITY AND POWER AT ALL LEVELS IN ALL SOCIETIES

Look at how happy the women shown in the colorful dresses look.

Women dress to make themselves feel well.

“Looking good” – by wearing good looking clothing – makes a woman feel feel good about herself, which in turn makes her have self-confidence which in turn makes her happy; all of which has a giant impact on how a woman expresses herself, behaves and enjoys life.

A WOMAN’S CLOTHING IS IMPORTANT TO HER AND TO EVERYONE ELSE SHE COMES INTO CONTACT WITH.

According to Charles Darwin, as interpreted by Tom Wolf in his latest book “The Kingdom of Speech”: evolution turned Homo Sapiens [man] into a more sensitive animal, which in turn gave him something approaching aesthetic feelings.  The male began to admire females who had the least apelike hides because he could see more of their lovely skin, which excited him sexually.  The more skin he saw, the more he wanted to see.  Obviously valued by the males because their hides were much less hairy, the most sought after females began to look down their noses at the old-fashioned hairy males, one crude step away from the apes themselves.  Generation after generation went by, thousands of them, until, thanks to natural selection, males and females became as naked as they are today.

The human mind evolved like the peacock’s tail and the elk’s antlers, for courtship and mating.  That is the reason our ancestors became attracted not only to pretty faces and healthy bodies, but also to minds that were witty, articulate, generous and conscious.

Freedom of Expression

I feel very sad that women that women are repressed in so called strict Islamic society; that they are not “permitted” to wear colorful traditional dresses [such as those pictured above].

ASIDE: IN SOME SOCIETIES WOMEN ARE NOT ALLOWED TO LOOK MEN IN THE EYES

I have been told by one women that she was not allowed to look directly into a man’s eyes.

If she did so she was beaten.

Cultural Evolution

As a fashion blogger, I have interviewed many women in America about women’s shoes.

During my many interviews of women, I have repeatedly been told, with few exceptions, by the women I interviewed that they wouldn’t want a guy buying shoes for her.

Many women I interviewed told me they want to pick the shoes they wear for style and to try them on for fit and comfort.

I think that is very sad.

It is very sad that almost the entire male population in the United States, and perhaps almost the entire male population in the entire world, knows nothing about women’s shoes.

“Dudes Guide to Women’s Shoes” http://www.dudesguidetowomensshoes.com

The total lack of understanding and knowledge in the general male population about women’s shoes – the total lack of understanding of what a women’s shoes signifies – caused Lou Coronado and I to launch a blog  titled  Dudes Guide to Women’s Shoes in August, 2016.

Dudes Guide to Women’s Shoes  can be found at http://www.dudesguidetowomensshoes.com.

Evolutionary Biology

You can find out more about Charles Darwin’s theory of evolutionary biology in Charles Darwin’s book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, published in 1871.

You can also find out more about the theory of evolutionary biology in Geoffrey F. Miller’s book The Mating Mind, published in 2000.

Current Day Women Who Conquered Cultural Hierarchy Impediments in the World of Human Culture Today Who I Saw Celebrated in Three Films at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival

Today, every American male should contemplate what it means to be a manly man.

Think abut these four questions:

• How did our ancestors cross over from the pre-human world of natural history to the world of human culture?
• How did our ancestors transform themselves from apes to New Yorkers, and what will happen next?
• What kind of degenerate thinks it is okay to to assault a woman?
• What kind of degenerate thinks it is manly to beat a woman – that he is somehow superior to women and he affirms his superior status in the world through violence against women, or any woman.

Three of the films (“The Eagle Huntress”, “Girl Unbound” and “Queen of Katwe”) I saw at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival are about girls and women who faced and conquered the challenges faced by women in cultures and countries where women are considered inferior to men.

“Queen of Katwe”

 

“The Eagle Huntress”

 

“Girl Unbound”

 

Each of those three movies indicate a path for our unique human capacities for art, music, sports, religion, self-consciousness, and care for others to bring us to a better world.

Our minds are entertaining, intelligent, creative, and articulate far beyond the demands of surviving on the plans of Pleistocene Africa.

Those three movies show how our minds are evolving, not just as survival machines, but also as “make the world a better place machines.”

 

Copyright © 2016 by Gary S. Smolker, All Rights Reserved