Cope Magazine

copeTRADITION, MODERNIZED

SEPTEMBER 2012

SEPTEMB

ER 20

12

RIP telephone

CHIVALRY revival

CHILDREN play

BYPASSING mechanization

THE BEAUTY of awkward

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1. COPE // SEPTEMBER 2012

CONTENTS

Chivalry is not Dead..............................................3

Death of the Phone Call.........................................9

Generation Tech...................................................11

The Beauty of an Awkward Social Situation.........15

Homage.................................................................7

Old & New Technology..........................................8

Now & Then.........................................................17


copefeatures

the old & the new

Chivalryis [not] deadCaitlin Carroll Delves into the New Wave of “Hook-Up” Culture and how to Start Dating again

We might describe it as our spiritual integrity, that which provides our moral inspiration. It is the soul that tells us to flourish in our own desire, that complacency and greed do not define who we really are. We are much, much, more if we choose to be.

“I define hooking up as beyond kissing. Usually some nudity and general ‘handsy-ness’ is involved.” said Lisa Lenner, a 25-year-old, LA-based entertainment assistant.

But nowadays, within the dominant sexually casual culture of “Generation Me” is a group of C

Ask someone if they know anyone who started dating someone before hooking up and they’ll say, “What on earth do you mean?!”

As a generation of 20-somethings (some in their teens and 30’s), we’ve come to famously mark the start of a relationship, whether it moves beyond that or not—with a sexual act; a “hook-up.” Sometimes that means actual sex, but everyone’s definition is absolutely and completely different.

If Chivalry is dead, then an important part of our soul is dead too. Chivalry, in its many forms, is very much alive.


Chivalryis [not] dead


people who said, “Sure, me, I’ve given up on hooking up, and I’ll date again.”

They’re easier to find than you’d think and, not surprisingly, their reasons for saying “no” are far clearer than most people’s reasons for saying “yes.” They used to hook up—some of them chronically - but now they’ve decided they want out of the game. They forfeit, but in their opinion, they win.

Here are three of their stories.

“I feel a little weird saying this, but I was starting to get concerned about the number I was racking up.”

Kerry Bishop is a 26-year-old associate living and working in Chicago. After a serious, two-year relationship she was ready to re-enter the dating scene. “You know how some people with strict parents go crazy when they have the freedom of college? I followed a similar trend.”

Bishop felt she’d missed out on the college dating and hook-up scene. “I mostly looked at any hookups as fun experiences and a way to feel good and have close human contact without any commitment,” she said.

But after a year back in the ring, Bishop realized what she really wanted was another committed relationship. That’s when the discomfort over the number of partners she was “racking up” set in. She decided that if a relationship was her goal then she

strung along because it’s physical from the start, not necessarily emotional.”

Considering the risk of STDs, even with protected interactions, and the overall safety issues involved in going

home with someone who’s a stranger, Chase found herself saying, “what is it really, actually worth?”

Chase is looking at hooking up from an ends/means perspective. The means—that hook up—don’t justify her desired ends.

This of course requires that she have specific “ends” in mind—in that way she’s almost every person interviewed.

She is looking to be in a relationship. And in her opinion, hooking up too quickly is a divergence from that goal.

“Women are more interested in a guy that can control his hormones than hooking up every weekend.”

Brian Andrews is a straight, attractive, suave 28-year-old male working as a marketing executive at a mobile technology company in Manhattan. Does it take a lot of self-control and a working brain of how many is too

needed a better system for choosing whom she’d engage with physically.

“I now have instituted a 3-week rule. After meeting a guy, I wait 3 weeks before I will hookup with him. This way I have time to evaluate how many times I see him or how many times he calls me to figure out what his feelings toward me are. I can also judge my

own feelings so I don’t act extremely impulsively.” Since establishing this rule Bishop has hooked up with less guys. She says nothing has turned into a long-term relationship quite yet, but she reports that it has yielded far more second, third, and fourth dates than casually hooking up ever produced. Says Bishop; “I’d say I feel perfectly satisfied with my decision.”

“When I was casually hooking up I was also ‘satisfied.’ I think it is a matter of shifting interests, wants, and needs.” To Chase, the risk really is not worth the reward. In fact, she shared a lot of the same thoughts as Bishop. The risk is what makes the reward. For her, that is being in a meaningful relationship. “I think hooking up early adds weight to a potential relationship,” she said.

“You want it to be more and mean more just because you gave it up, and now that you’ve done it you might as well do it again so it’s easier to bestrung along because it’s physical from

Chivalry seems to be more alive today than ever. People are re-evaluating the things that are actually important in their lives.

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Ultimately his answers to the question ‘why did you give up hooking up’ is quite another question -- “How interested would you be in a guy that you know hooks up every time he walks into the bar?” he asked, “How would that make you feel the day after you hooked up?” Male, female, gay, straight, single, or in a relation-ship—everyone wants to talk this very pertinent issue through.

If so many people feel the same way, there must be some sort of connection. Can one find true love in this hiatus?

Asking if Chivalry is dead completely misses the point. The important question is this: is Chivalry alive in you? Is there a place in your heart that burns for the passion of meaningful commitment?

Do you crave a “hunger and thirst for justice?” Does your strength long to be delicately dedicated to something greater than your daily needs?

Do you sense the hero who lives inside of you, who does not base his moral values on greed or pleasure or the complete avoidance of excrutiating pain? The answer is up to you. Think about your own core values and what you truly believe in.

Chivalry is not a thing, and it is not something that is outside us. It is the reclaiming of your soul, and bringing it to life. It lives as long as there are people who respond to its calling, according to their quest for truth. Chivalry was created during the Middle Ages to combat the attitudes of brutality, ignorance, and prejudice.

Far from being dead, chivalry today is embodied by people whose actions are always trustworthy and admirable; who understand that strength and gentleness are not opposites; and who know the importance of standing by one’s principles, no matter how tempting the compromise.

In fact, chivalry seems to be more alivetoday than ever. People everywhere are reevaluating the things that are important in their lives, and they’re rediscovering the virtues that the code of chivalry stands for hope, kindness, respect, integrity, and courage.

They are discovering that they can still be inspired by a hero, and, best of all, they’re realizing that when chivalry and equality combine, anybody can be a knight in shining armor. O


Men and women alike are attracted to individuals who lead interesting and independent lives. We assign higher value to people who are not constantly available to us, at our beck and call. [ ]

Heroes will eventually be forgotten. We must remind ourselves that there were many people that helped our society to be what it is today. If we remember how things began, we can go back and change the mistakes we have made along the way.

The Wright brothers, were two Americans who invented and built the world’s first successful airplane and made the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier than air flight, on 12/17/1903. In the two years after ward, the brothers developed their flying machine into the1st practical fixed-wing aircraft. Although not the first to build and fly experimental aircraft, the Wright brothers were the

first to invent it.


THE WRIGHT BROTHERS

HOMAGERemembering the Important people from our Past

Technology is in every crack of society. The thing is, we must learn how to cope with the fact that tech will forever be in our lives. It is our choice as to how we handle the new technologies with the old.

It is not a book: That may seem a little quaintfor me to say, but it is true electronics are not books. By turning reading into something done by electronic means only you are taking away some of the experience that most bibliophiles enjoy. The weight of a book, the feel of a book and the smell of a book. To someone who truly loves to read, to spend an afternoon curled up in a nook and happily sipping a drink while lost in a world of fiction.

TECHNOLOGYEmbracing Both Aspects of Material Objects


THE KINDLE


Clive Thompson on the Death of the Phone Call

calls we make is dropping every year, after hitting a peak in 2007. And our calls are getting shorter: In 2005 they averaged three minutes in length; now they are almost half that.

We’re moving, in other words, toward a fascinating cultural transition: the death of the telephone call. This shift is stark among the young. Some col-lege students I know go days without talking into their smartphones.

I was recently hanging out with a 20 something entrepreneur who fumbled around for 30 seconds trying to find the option that actually let him dial. What is it with society today that makes us so susceptible to such adaptations, in such a quick manner that we actually have to go to such C

This generation doesn’t make phone calls, because everyone is in constant contact in so many other ways, like texting, chatting, and social-network messaging. And we don’t just have more options than we used to.

Shwartzman Says: I honestly dislike ‘phone calls’ — random, out of the blue interruptions by someone who has my phone number. On the other hand, I have many long phone convos every week, which are increasingly on Skype or soon, I bet, on my iPhone (or iPad, once it is rigged with cameras), involving video communication.

Is it conceivable that one of our most prized inventions, the phone number, is about to go extinct? According to Nielsen, the average number of phone

bye : (


GENERATION TECH

“There is absolutely no hurry to rush kids into technology, either old or new. And the AAP recommends avoiding screen time for babies under the age of 2,” said Dr. Vic Strasburger, a member of the AAP’s council on communication and media and a professor of pediatrics at the New Mexico School of Medicine.

“In terms of computwwwwer use or tv and movies, I think parents need to be very cautious over the age of 2,” he said. “There’s every reason to believe that kids should be engaging in cre-ative active play, not passive viewing, when they’re very young.”

A recent Kaiser Family Foundation study found that children ages 8 to 18 spend an astounding C

By Elizabeth Shwartzman


GENERATION TECH


average of seven hours a day in front of a screen, but Strasburger said that number should be brought down to no more than 2 hours a day, and for toddlers under 2, it should be zero.

“There are now six studies showing that babies exposed to screens may suffer from language delays,” he said. “There has never been a study showing that it does any good.”

In a recent New York Times article on the topic, Dr. Gwenn Schurgin O’Keeffe, another AAP pediatrician, said the academy continually evaluates guidelines to help new media, but hasn’t altered its policy yet.

“We always try to throw in the latest tech, but the cellphone industry is becomingso complex that we alwys come back to the table and wonder should we have a specific guideline for cellphones,” she said. But, she added, “At the moment, we seem to feel it’s the same as TV.”

But, Warren Buckleitner, editor of the Children’s Technology Review and one of several advisors to the Na-

“I think touchscreen has brought new rules into the playroom,” he said. “Just because this is glass and pixels does not mean it’s somehow damaging. What I find frustrating is when people lump all of this into one category called ‘screens.’” Video games and computer activities require mouses, keyboards and other layers, he said. But touchscreen technology removes those barriers and opens up a whole world of possibilities.

If a child as young as 1-year-old responds to it, he said, there’s no reason to stop a child from playing with an age-appropriate, well-designed smartphone application.

Touchscreens, which are appropriate for sensory-motor learners, can let kids simulate everything from cooking to bubblewrap to finger painting.

“Would you take finger painting away from children? Well, only when it’s get-ting paint over the living room rug,” he said. “You can hand your child this powerful experience.” The technology may be too young to show educational benefits backed by research, but he


When children play a lotwith legos, or any other sort of building toys, it is scientifically proven that when they are older, their IQ goes up significantly. [ ]

Play is when kids ride bikes or play ghosts in the graveyard and move more than their thumbs to make things happen. that time spent on video and computer games increased from 43 minutes a day in 1999 to 2 hours and 42 minutes a day in 2009. Now, boys spend 16 to 18 hours a week playing video games.

But don’t computer games count as playing? They are called computer games, after all. Not really.

Most computer games just get kids to react to what’s on the screen and but-tons or move a stick so some computer image can chase a car or zap space aliens. Play is when kids, and not some microchip, make up the adventures. Play is when kids ride bikes or play ghosts in the graveyard and move more than their thumbs to make things happen. O

evidence that technology does in fact boost academic achievement or enhance overall quality of life. We need to teach children to think creatively, solve problems, and communicate in the real analog world before we aimlessly plunge them headlong into the digital abyss.

But even beyond all of that, I gotta question the rationale of a parent who hands his/her very young child a $400 iPhone containing

irreplaceable data with nary a thought of the consequences of said phone hitting the ground and shattering. My email, contacts, important reminders, notes, etc. are in there. I’m not brave enough to put all that at risk.

The sad truth is that kids do not play as much as they once did. A University of Michigan study in 2000 found that kids had 12 fewer hours of free time a week than kids in the 1980s. Those 12 hours included eight fewer hours of unstructured play and outdoor activities. That’s important because lots of doctors say kids need to play to be healthy and happy.

What are kids doing these days? Electronic media and lots of it. The average kid spends almost 45 hours a week with TV, the net, movies and other electronic media.The popularity of video games is a big factor. A recent study in the medical journal Pediatrics

The average kid spends 45 hours a week with TV, internet, movies, and other media.

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the beauty of the awkward social interaction

Austin Lettow explains the importance of face to face communication

I believe that technology has definitely depersonalized us. I’ll have a friend over, and we’ll sit side by side texting instead of talking. It’s almost as if we’ve forgotten how to use the spoken word! Facebook and MySpace are used to ask people out, resolve conflict and even break up. It’s sadly our

our advantage instead of as our down-fall, but for now, we are an unsocial, depersonalized generation. I like to be able to actually talk to someone — you can see their body language, hear their real voice, and have a more personal relationship with them. Texting doesn’t offer those luxuries, and C

I wish that I could say e-mail, texting and social networking have made my generation more social, but they have done the opposite. We forget that developing true relationships with real people is much more important than forwarding meaningless messages. I hope that we will learn to use tech to


In the 1920’s, congress experimented with the prohibition of alcohol. On February 20, 1933 Congress acknowledged the failure of alcohol prohibition.

Today Congress faces a similarly failed policy. Futile efforts to enforce prohibition have been pursued even morevigorously in the 80’s and 90’s then they were in only the 20’s.

Historical sense and poetic sense should not, in the end, be contradictory, for if poetry is the little myth we make, it is the big myth we live, that is repeated.


PROHIBITION VS. MARIJUANA LEGALIZATION

NOW & THENHistory is doomed to repeat itself


copeLive. Don’t just exist, like a lot do today.

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