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.
Bookmarks