Penis History
There is nothing political in this post. It’s purely intellectual.
Cows have two stomachs. Dinosaurs had two brains, the second one a nest of ganglia mostly devoted to keeping the back feet from stepping on the tail.
Human males are also of two minds. The cranium houses one of them, and the penis has a mind of its own. One of these is much studied. The other has yet to be identified under the microscope, though its autonomy and capriciousness have been thoroughly documented down through the centuries. And now half of all such ruminations – the depressing, anxiety-ridden half – have been collected into a book called Impotence: A Cultural History, by Angus McLaren.
One writer. That’s how many chroniclers were needed to render the definitive history of what penises do on their day off and how people of one age and culture or another have reacted to this state of affairs. All the other writers are frantically busy accounting for what penises do the rest of the time, elegantly distilled in Robin Williams’ succinct summation: the penis has one eye and no conscience.
Those who wish to devote further study to the minds of man can read Stephen Pinker on the cranial mind and brain (he says the mind is what the brain does) or McLaren on the mutinous neurology of the lower lobes.
Our own report concludes with the newly minted Law of Single-Mindedness, which eerily echoes that of quantum entanglement. It is this:
When either mind starts working, the other one shuts down.
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I have for several years when performing a sports physical or school physical asked the parents whether their teenager’s brain is functioning in his cranium– sexist because I don’t ask the parents of girls. The usual answer is negative and my response is that hopefully it will begin to return by age 18 and that is when he should get his driver’s license. This approach is completely unsuccessful.
Comment by Dr. Steve — July 20, 2007 @ 5:23 pm