White men in America also act entitled and fraternal. It isn't unique to one place or one culture. I have my own entitlement issues, to be honest, as well as tendencies to be defensive and overly sensitive in some group situations. The point is that I feel men have to change, myself included, if we are going to do this well in terms of achieving a greater degree of sustainability. The Nepali men are charming and personable but that is not the point. We also have to be more inclusive and more accessible and less guarded, less paranoid that some one will see who we really are under our defenses. Why is this important?

Warren Facey, a farmer in Massachusetts that I have worked with in groups, once suggested that after an important meeting that a student intern be provided for each participant in the meeting and immediately after the meeting each participant would be sequestered in a seperate room with intern who would write verbatim how the participant described everything that was said and what was decided at the meeting. Then, all the interns would return to the meeting room and, one by one, read the descriptions of what was said with the participants listening but not allowed to comment or correct anything. Warren's hypothesis is that the descriptions would be incredibly different and the results would show that communication, generally, at meetings is often terrible.

It's important that there is consensus, that we all try to communicate with each other well, making sure we are understood and that we understand the members. It may sound tedious, but the idea or practice of entitlement, any derivation of entitlement, is that one group has more power than any other by color, gender, race, education, class, money, job titles, color of the hair, beauty, body shape and size, in other words for myriad reasons. In the United States we have this Platonic idea that one man can have all the answers, the president, the coach, the professor. We have the hardest time saying we don't know something so entitlements are often our defenses to hide a sense of inadequacy and to create a sense of authority. As a social worker I am in schools often to deal with aggressive students. Most of the aggression I see in the classrooms, perpetrated by young men particularly, is really a defense against their sense of inadequacy at not being able to read. They're ashamed so they act tough.

The men at the Nepal conference enjoyed a sense of power and mastery based, for example, their vast knowledge of the political situation in Nepal. They referred endlessly to what was going on in the parliament and about strategies for gaining power, strategies for weakening the power of their opposition opposing political parties. They were an "in-group" and they used their level of knowledge to keep their group exclusive. They were collaborative with the other conference members to a degree, but found it difficult to collaborate with the membership as a whole. They saw them selves as "apart from" based on their social class and education. This is what's called covert uses of power. It goes on in every conference and every meeting. It goes on everywhere. I am not in any way condemning these men. I'm just observing that if we are truly going to try sustainability as a course of action then we have to be inclusive, flexible, and less defensive.

The men, like men everywhere, were in control of their emotions throughout the conference. They didn't get angry or cry. Ii never heard one of them speak from their hearts and I felt that to do so was considered a taboo. I couldn't tell if it was their upbringing, meaning their caste, or if it is because in Asia the role of men is so different. At any rate, even in this lack of openness and awkwardness at being true to their feelings they were also like western men. I am not saying they don't feel. I'm just saying they keep their feelings hidden.

When I sat with them and listened to their jokes and remarks about life in general, about sports or politics, I felt they were no different than western men. They had power. They had little to lose and little at stake. They were enjoying the conference and the connection among themselves and for them it was enough. The women, on the other hand, were passionate, clear, committed, and one got the sense that it was their lives and their livelihoods they were fighting for.