will the real men please stand up?

so here is one of my first rants of the year. I enjoy watching the show Man vs. Wild on The Discovery Channel. If you have not seen it, this guy with a nice accent goes to locations all over the earth that have extreme climates and circumstances and shows you how to survive. By "extreme" I mean there is no civilization in the locations he chooses and he usually has nothing but the clothes on his back and water. Ive seen episodes where he was somewhere in Antarctica, the swamps of the bayous of Louisiana, the desserts of Kenya...you get the point, but the things he does is ridiculous!! For instance, he was in the dessert and he ran out of water, so he killed a snake with his bare hands and peeled the skin off. He urinated in the skin and kept it around his neck until he was almost dehydrated then drank it. He makes shelter, keeps warm or cool and stays out of danger. Then i started to think about how many people I knew that would be able to survive outside of civilization and with nature. Not many. I know I wouldn't! So then I started thinking about how beneficial it would be to have a man that does. God forbid that anything happens, I would like to be with someone who can survive!

This is where I got upset. I know we have evolved into a modern civilization and much of the skills that Bear (yes, that's his name) uses to survive can't be of use to us, but I feel like they would bring us so much closer to the Earth and essentially close to being one with ourselves which is definitely what we need as humans at this point in history. And even if a man is not able to follow the pattern of a mountain or outsmart a lion etc, at least have the skills that can help me survive in the habitat we do live in! I began to think about all of my male counterparts ( african american men aged 18-25) that do not hold essential life skills ie: fishing, hunting, changing a tire, carpentry etc, or at least the wits to figure it out when neccesary. I do not know that number exactly, but I do know that there are more guys that know about the lastest gucci sneaker vs the first thing about plumbing.

What am I going to do?! I was blessed to have a father who learned from his father how to do everything; and I mean everything! Yardwork, plumbing, electric, mechanics, you name it. Besides the fact that our society places these occupations on the lower end of the totem pole, young men usually do not have a male in their life to teach them these things among others. I am sorry gentlemen, after 18 this is no longer an excuse. There are plenty of other men (and women) who are not your mother or father that will teach you a thing or two about life. Bear is an ex-marine I believe, so thats where he conjured up most of his expertise, but a mentor, a teacher or someone who knows these things.

To me it really boils down to survival of the fittest. What happens when you don't have a shelter, food, protection? and i mean aside from the superficial and superfluous things most Americans call "essential". What if there is all of a sudden no America, no computer, no car, no grocery store, just you, other people and nature....What would you do? So I arrived at the notion that these are things I should be looking for in a man above all else. As lovely as your shoes, clothes, and watches may be, what good are they to me? Can you at least change my tire? Something? lol. I had this conversation with two of my friends and I put it just like this: If everything were to all of a sudden fall aprat, what would there be? Itd be you, the man, and nature. You all would need to work together to eat, stay warm or cool, and keep each other company and you all would be naked and naturally attracted to each other so you would have sex which would result in offspring so you would now how have to take care of them too. LOL. My friends agreed, so this is the theory I am going with about what life is REALLY all about. It's just funny because every time I meet a guy I think about him in a "adam-ish" kind of way... It's good though because I think people define themselves nowadays based on too many material things, all of which could dissapear as we are now witnessing... well with that said, watch the show sometime (Mondays @ 10pm on Discovery Channel), and think about it...