@MMMark: I think Carolla, in the “complains about women” clip, isn’t even talking about what women should be like. Rather, I think he’s making a point that women have a propensity toward dissatisfaction with their status quo, whereas men tend to be happy with the status quo. This is actually one of the most common plot tensions in movies, sitcoms and fiction so I don’t see how it’s controversial.
As for the point about the textbook, I think he’s saying that rather than doing things that enhance dissatisfaction with the status quo, such as looking at glossy magazines of all the places you could be instead of where you are right now, perhaps they should study history and put their current situation into perspective. We’re not being bombed. We’re not fleeing the Nazis. What, really, is so bad about our day-to-day life that we need to fly to Bermuda or we need to remodel the entire downstairs or whatever in order to be happy.
Of course, men are materialistic bastards, too. But there’s a crucial difference in motivation that’s worth noting (neither form of materialism is “better” than the other). Men are materialistic as a matter of competition with other males, that is, in order to show off to the ladies. Women are materialistic as a matter of cashing in on child-bearing (yes, I said it). And this is the root conflict in the marital relationship. There is no contractual agreement stating how much of the man’s wealth will be saved, invested, passed on in inheritance versus spent on expensive clothes, expensive food, expensive travel, etc. for the gratification of the woman’s material appetites. In the traditional “man is provider, woman stays home” relationship, this is a major source of tension. In more modern relationships where the woman also works, new and even bigger tensions arise as a result of the fact that the man no longer actually supports the woman. Regardless of how the housework is divided (50/50, 90/10 he does it all, etc.), she is still the one who must get pregnant and give birth to the children so her net contribution to the relationship (full-time work + child-bearing) massively outweighs his contribution (full-time work only).
And thanks for the catch on segue. Noted.
Clayton -