杏吧原创

LET me start by revealing a prejudice: I don鈥檛 like book titles that end with a question mark. They make me worry that the author doesn鈥檛 know the answer, that he or she is looking to the reader for homework help.

And if the question posed is Is There Anything Good About Men?, I want some clear conclusions, a nice strong sense of what social psychologist Roy Baumeister thinks is 鈥済ood鈥� about the Y-chromosome community. A summary of key points might be handy in case there turns out to be a quiz.

Unfortunately, that is not what we get in this book. At times Baumeister seems dubious about men鈥檚 good points. 鈥淭o be blunt and undiplomatic, I like women better than men,鈥� he says. He cites studies showing that people who chat with women for 10 minutes a day are happier than people who don鈥檛 get that lucky chance. By contrast, conversations with men appear to be downers. 鈥淭his is not to say that talking to men is bad,鈥� Baumeister adds encouragingly.

Or at least I think he is trying to be encouraging. The message is so muddled here that it is a little difficult to tell. That is partly because 鈥� or so I deduce 鈥� the real story here, the subject that Baumeister is actually passionate about, is in the subtitle How cultures flourish by exploiting men, which, you will notice, doesn鈥檛 follow entirely logically from the question raised in the title.

When Baumeister is focused on that idea 鈥� that we have built our successful civilisation in part by treating men as expendable building blocks 鈥� then the argument gains some momentum. He notes not only that men perform the riskiest jobs in society today but that 鈥渘inety-two per cent of Americans who die in the line of work are men鈥�. And he reminds us how casually we accept that imbalance, without the outrage that might result if the statistic applied to women.

Unfortunately, even when arguing this important point, Baumeister continues to muddy the message. He proposes the not-so-revolutionary idea that men are culturally motivated to take risks 鈥� the dangerous jobs, the big gambles that allow them to become rulers of their domains. 鈥淭hese competitions produced immense progress in the men鈥檚 sphere,鈥� Baumeister writes. For instance, men bought ships and explored the world. Women, he continues, did not do such things. Why not? They lacked motivation. 鈥淲omen could have done it if they wanted to. But they did not want to.鈥�

I find it hard to believe that during the 15th and 16th centuries, when motivated males were accidentally discovering the Americas, women simply lacked the adventurous spark. Here is another possibility: could it be that not too many women in the days of Columbus and company had the opportunity to captain a ship or map a continent?

鈥淣ot too many women in the days of Columbus had the opportunity to captain a ship or map a continent鈥�

Baumeister repeats his heroic history argument 鈥� 鈥淭he fact is that America鈥檚 greatness was propelled by its men more than its women鈥� 鈥� so often that one starts wondering if the answer to the question in the book鈥檚 title is that there used to be something good about men, but their strengths are better suited to the past.

This very idea is gaining some currency in feminist circles. But I suspect that Baumeister actually is trying to lead us in another direction. Lurking in the book, obscured by the somewhat clumsy provocation, is a fair-minded message: we should value our differences. It is not a new thought, but surely one that could bear repeating. Because if we are still asking ourselves whether there is anything good about men (or, in other circles, women) we have yet to really grasp the point.

Take note of that. We may need a quiz after all.