Originally Posted by
DrSmellThis
This
culture is very, very confused about what it wants, and you can trace that to the fall of fatherhood and
impoverishment of masculinity which came along with the industrial revolution and the removal of men from their
homes.
In the bigger picture, it is also a radically changing world. The earth is getting smaller, and
animalistic cruelties are no longer very useful for men in their masculinity, relative to other qualities. The
stereotypic macho qualities are actually quite trivial and peripheral now, and will doubtless continue to become
even more so.
True understanding, emotional, and intellectual qualities become much more important than either
"physical alphaness", or those personal qualities that go along with physical alphaness, with the anachronistic,
outmoded pseudo-alphaness; that are related to it.
Welcome to the future!
Yet people still buy into cheap
macho displays as somehow marking leaders. This is truly nauseating. People should have woken up to this forty years
ago, when they instead assasinated King (the larger society all contributed to the event).
There is still much
societal confusion about what it means to be an alpha or "pansy". People who think John Wayne or Dirty Harry is the
ideal for being alpha have as much to learn as those who think a mild mannered, sensitive man with some effeminate
qualities is a pansy, or cannot be alpha.
What ends up happening is we somehow cycle between macho "jerks" and
"wimps" (who lack integrity, and the many subtle varieties of courage Belgareth and I mentioned) without ever
getting that these are both bullshit. They are both empty shells where a man should be.
Fortunately, I think you
can go back to the basic ideas of fatherhood, of being a steward of the planet and its inhabitants, and find that
there is a rich, well grounded source of untapped masculine ideals.
We need to turn the page on the "old" way
(really the twentieth century way, the confused outgrowth of the industrial revolution, overlaid with wars.
Masculinity, though still outmoded for today, was much richer previously.) of looking at masculinity, strength,
leadership, courage, and the like; and move into a new future.
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