Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.2006, Page 56

54
ONCE WERE MEN
because he doesn’t like it very much, and he
has “other things to do...”. His father is from a
village in the north and Petur likes to visit his
old relatives in the peaceful village. He takes
many pictures when he travels in the Faroe
Islands and abroad. Petur and his friends like to
drink coffee while discussing all kind of subjects
ranging from Eastern religion and electronic
music to the quality of food and new hairstyles.
Petur has painted his friends and hopes to have
his own exhibiton sometime in the future. He
wants to study economy to understand how
money rules the world. Not, he says, too become
wealthy.
The urban boys group is composed of young
men with very different styles and values,
their main common feature actually being
the opposition to the Atlantic cowboys mas-
culinities.
Lonestars
Lonestars are in this text young men with
very limited social contacts, spending most
oftheir time at home. Young men living iso-
lated in their media-rich rooms in apart-
ments or family-houses is a global phe-
nomenon, especially widespread in modern
urban Japan, that wealthy rnodern societies,
where lonestars are most common, have to
take seriously. The young men are alone, but
not necessarily, according to themselves,
lonely. It is a deliberate isolation. The quiet
and undisturbed life within the four walls is
consciously chosen, but it is hopefully not
planned as a permanent lifetime strategy.
Many lonestars feel uncomfortable when
they are in social gatherings and some are
even afraid of people. They are, with varied
severity, sociophobic and depressed. The
lonestars have complex problems and it is a
diffícult task to defíne this category com-
prehensibly.
Lonestars are not very numerous, prob-
ably a few hundred persons in the Faroe Is-
lands, and because of their lifestyle also very
invisible and peripheral, but they are inter-
esting to study as they follow a very differ-
ent path than the other masculinity cate-
gories in question. The Atlantic cowboys
and urban boys have complementary female
categories (some form of cowgirls and urban
girls), but the lonestars don’t have corre-
sponding girl-comrades. The isolated youth
phenomenon is predominantly a male issue.
Very few girls, except persons with sever
psychological illness, live alone in inten-
tional isolation. “Stop the world”, is the mute
message of some lonestars feeling that they
ride on another wave-length than the rest of
the world (Loe, 2004). Lonestars are not, as
often believed, lost cavemen without note-
worthy practical or intellectual skills, even
if their social capital and clevemess is rela-
tively weak. Lonestars are often introverted,
but not necessarily navel-gazing and unre-
flecting persons, as many of them use mod-
ern digital media to get detailed informa-
tion on important societal developments and
changes. They might even be experts in re-
stricted specialized fíelds of knowledge.
Lonestars are hence often potential masters
of arts, technology or science in absentia.
They know what the others do, but nobody
knows what they are doing.
Lonestars believe that they are as mas-
culine as anyone else; some even claim to
represent fíerce male resistance against a
disintegrating and alienating society’s ‘fem-
inisation’ process in progress. Others, con-