How I Met Your Mother and Philosophy (12 page)

       
•
  
A laser tag enthusiast

       
•
  
A magician

       
•
  
A loyal friend who would fly all the way to California just to help get Lily and Marshall back together

       
•
  
Someone who desperately wants a true friend, to the point that he despairs when Ted says he has outgrown Barney

       
•
  
In love with Robin, to the point where he cannot convince himself otherwise, no matter how hard he tries

At times, Barney is so compelled that he throws caution to the winds and makes a choice in spite of himself. In this way, he exercises his freedom and chooses an action among all of his possible actions. He's not doing it because he feels he needs to. He's doing it because he wants to.

When he realizes that he loves Robin, it shakes him to his core. It doesn't fit with his image of himself. He's not the kind of guy who falls in love and commits to one woman. He's the kind of guy who sleeps around. Loving Robin is not a choice that's usually available to him in his magically constructed world.

When he actually chooses to pursue that love, he is acting freely. He is doing what he wants to do, despite the damage it does to the consistency of his persona.

The same goes for when he tries to reunite Marshall and Lily. In his normal view of himself, he would never support a lasting, monogamous relationship—especially one that is about to be bound by marriage. However, when his friends were in trouble, he acted outside of his magical world of limited choices. He helped bring them back together and didn't even take credit for his actions. Barney may be the most predictable character in the group, but when he chose these actions, I admit that I assumed wrong.

Wait for It . . .

It's true that Barney is, more often than not, living in bad faith. He defines himself in a very specific way and he play-acts in ways that reinforce that definition. This makes him very predictable
because we expect him to act in the same way that he expects himself to act. He could always act differently, but that would be difficult. He has emotional connections to the world that make it easy for him to be the way he is.

He's happy to wear suits, womanize, and uphold the Bro Code. That's the way he wants to be. The way that his emotions have structured the world is only helping him be that way. Yet there's always hope for Barney.

He has broken out of bad faith before and he can do it again. As time goes on, he's becoming more and more unhappy with his created persona. Most importantly, it is getting harder for him to be happy with one-night stands, when he knows that he is in love with Robin. More and more often, he is realizing other options that are available to him. It's getting more difficult to predict what he will do next. As his emotions change, his magical world will start to break apart, and it will become progressively easier for him to act freely. All we can do is . . . wait for it.

II

True Story!

6

The Bro Code as a Relational Starter

F
RANK
G. K
ARIORIS

K
ids, in the nineteenth century famous bro Mark Twain remarked “To get the full value of joy you must have someone to divide it with.” And here is Friedrich Nietzsche: “Shared joys, not shared sufferings, make a friend.”

Bros have existed for millennia and have remained a constant necessity. It is high time that Barney is given a place amongst history's great bros and is recognized for his brilliant contribution to relationships, embodied with the publication of
The Bro Code
. But Barney's contributions may not be all positive and one should question whether this is negated by the harm done with
The Playbook
and its fixation on conning women into bed.

Throughout the years, Barney has told countless stories, and elaborated on more than his fair share of rules (“I only have one rule . . .”) and theories, from the Lemon Law to the Platinum Rule to the Mermaid Theory (necessarily covering all the bases of legal, regulatory, and theoretical rules). Amongst these countless theories and laws that Barney has put forth, there is a particular set of rules which form the basis for men's relationships with each other. These rules, together, form the Bro Code.

The Bro Code is a series of rules and laws governing the behavior between two or more bros. It is, in essence, the Bible for relations between men. And, much like the Bible, it's full of many useful pieces of wisdom as well as some not so helpful ones. And also like the Bible, there are inconsistencies, errors, omissions, and some items which are just plain stupid. As almost an exact biblical reference, Article 60 states that one
should honor thy mother and father—of course giving a vastly different reasoning for such a rule (“A Bro shall honor thy father and mother, for they were once Bro and Chick”).

While first set down in writing in 1776 by Barnabus Stinson on the back of the Constitution (“The Goat”), the Bro Code has a long history stretching back to biblical times. Pulled together from various fragmentary sets of rules, the Bro Code aims to strengthen the bonds of brotherhood between men, and to assist men in getting laid—the most important challenge society faces according to the Bro Code.

The most important contribution of the Bro Code has nothing to do with getting laid. The true importance of the Bro Code is the realization and strengthening of the bonds of ‘brotherhood'—between men, and between men and women.

Much like one contextualizes earlier authors for racism, political beliefs, or other opinions which we in the twenty-first century have moved beyond, it is with a similar notion that we should approach the Bro Code. For there is certainly sexism in various parts of the Bro Code (let's just admit it). Just as we can look past the fact that George Washington had slaves, I hope you will look beyond the sexism as I show how the Bro Code can be used as a starting place for improving men's relations with other men, and, surprisingly, women.

To Bro or Not to Bro

There's a distinct difference between a bro and a friend, though the exact nature of this difference might not always be clear. The Code says that a bro is someone who will “give you the shirt off his back . . . a lifelong companion you can trust will always be there for you.”
¹
It's with this that we start to see the difference, and it's here where it's important first to understand in some small way ideas of gender and masculinity.

Masculinity in America today is defined most often in relation to others. This creates not only a public identity but also a sense of competition. One need look no further than when Ted, Barney, and Jim argue over who can be with Maggie in “The Window” or the literal fight between Ted and Marshall in “The
Duel.” This overt competitive spirit is not just something that men do, but is part of their identity through which they interact with others.

The notion that men compete is, I'm sure, not something new to anyone reading this. The real question is: why do men compete? While there isn't one exact answer, it's due in part to the tentative nature of masculine structures which are bound up in the maintenance of hegemony. Hegemony is the idea of dominance over other groups which are subordinated and oppressed. In this case, hegemonic masculinity creates a situation where all other versions of masculinity are forced to compete socially with the dominant. Hegemony is the school bully who makes everyone else give them their lunch money. It is a similar situation, on a broader scale, of how hegemonic masculinity pushes other men around, as well as pushing women around.

Men's Relations Now

Competition creates a situation where men feel attacked at all times and need to be on guard for fear of loss or losing. The harsh reality is that in a competition between men, which in the spirit of masculine rivalry is the only true competition, there must almost always be a loser.

As Barney so eloquently puts it to Marshall in “The Scorpion and the Toad,” the world is “a lawless post-apocalyptic wasteland. I may be your best friend, but in this world it's every hombre for himself.” This is the mentality that men frequently approach situations, and relationships, with—not what one would call healthy.

This is the basis of many male relationships, overly competitive and unfriendly. It should not be shocking then to realize that this is how men see relationships, and how they continue treating relationships. Another ramification of this is that men's relationships with women frequently are treated as spaces of competition as well.

As male relations have been made to be competitive and combative sights of interaction, this discourages them from connecting emotionally with each other and with women around them, which in turn makes their relationships seem less personal and thereby more competitive.

These cyclical negative relationships are premised on societal ideas about how men should act, but there are situations where they can be overcome. Renowned philosopher and social scientist Michel Foucault talked about how the relationships and bonds in times of war and conflict connected and sustained men through the most destitute conditions, putting men in a situation which made it possible to move beyond the taboos stopping men's affections and emotionally healthy relationships. In an interview entitled ‘Friendship as a Way of Life' Foucault shows not only the conditions which allow for healthier male relationships, but also the effect they can have.
²

While this has, in some way, described men's relations with each other, we must come back, continually, to the fact that men don't exist outside of their relations with women, and it is therefore crucial to see that these relations between men point to men's relations with women as well.

A Bro Always . . .

While
The Bro Code
doesn't give one fixed definition of what a bro is, by looking at the various articles it becomes clear. There are more than a few articles to the Bro Code, and some of them are written in a fashion which disguises the true intent of the article, but we can extract from the Code the five top qualities of what it means to be a Bro.

The Five Top Qualities of a Bro

       
1.
 
Loyalty (Articles 1, 13, 147)

       
2.
 
Friendliness (Articles 17, 46)

       
3.
 
Equality (Articles 22, 37, 134)

       
4.
 
Strong bonds with friends (Articles 13, 127)

       
5.
 
Generosity in all things (Articles 65, 90, 114)

These qualities, I think we can all agree, are important and worthwhile values. While pointing out some of the better
aspects of the Bro Code, it is also important to realize that much of it is not as positive. Much of it is actually downright sexist. I've compiled the five most seemingly sexist things in the Bro Code.

The Most Sexist Things in The Bro Code (in No Particular Sexist Order)

       
1.
 
When a Bro meets a chick, he shall endeavor to find out where she fits on the Hot/Crazy Scale before pursuing her (Article 86).

       
2.
 
A Bro never cries (Article 41).

       
3.
 
A Bro keeps his booty calls at a safe distance (Article 92).

       
4.
 
A women's lust for gossip is matched only by her passion to have babies and accessorize (Article 101).

       
5.
 
When on the prowl, a Bro hits on the hottest chick first because you just never know (Article 31).

These sexist comments, while not the only ones, represent some of the sexist thought that infiltrates the Bro Code. Some of this stems from an attempt to distance men from close relations with each other, as well as close relations with women.

Women, or ‘getting laid,' is used as a way to allow men to have more affectionate relationships with other men. In this way, women become placeholders for the true purpose, or the true meaning, of relationships with other men. Distancing men from women creates a way that men can relate to each other more without seeming ‘affectionate,' or any other trait deemed effeminate.