¶ Amidst the developing, pending, and long-term stories that flood the pages of today’s Times, two columns stand out for offering something to think about. In his About New York space, Jim Dwyer questions the logic of reducing crime by arresting blacks and Latinos for possessing small amounts of marijuana (and then dismissing the charges), while affluent whites, among whom marijuana use is “rampant,” are spared the inconvenience. Dwyer assails, quite rightly in our view, the spurious notion that a correlation between pot and crime is any more meaningful than the correlation between pot and banking or academia that equal prosecution of white New Yorkers would undoubtedly reveal. ¶ Looking to history, Sara Lipton finds that, in at least one regard, the pop psychology of the Middle Ages was the opposite of our own: manly men “ruled themselves,” controlling their libidinous urges. Shameless sexual voracity was thought to be characteristic of women. Medieval men were expected to outgrow adolescence — reading about the hockey riot in Vancouver, by the way, lighted a light bulb in our little brain: sports is cosmetic surgery for men — and that was a good thing; the bad thing was that men ruled their households as well as themselves. The point isn’t that they understood things bettter in the so-called Age of Faith, but rather it’s a reminder that pop psychology is pop psychology: the reflection of shifting, unvoiced concerns about life.

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This entry was posted on Friday, June 17th, 2011 at 10:30 am.