WHAT IS A MAN? (5 min read)
Men get confused about this issue. Some even get pissed off.
“What right do you have to tell me what a man is, they’ll say.
I get it.
I struggled with this for decades myself when I studied behavioural sciences in college and university decades ago…
Lucky for me, my old man once told me I wasn’t supposed to understand women, which made me study the literature even more over the last 35 years to arrive at the conclusions I present to you here.
Tell you what. Don’t let institutions of supposed higher learning do your defining because for the most part, they will fail you.
As I often say, you might lose your virginity attending college, you might not. But you will definitely lose your sense of humour.
Fuck’em if they can’t take a joke. 😉
I’m going to try to give you a working definition of what it means to be a man and I’m going to use the shield you see in front of you to do it.
Here’s some mythology to preface my remarks:
– Ancient Chinese tell of a chaotic world into which Pan Gu the Giant was born, who then pushes the heavens and earth apart to create order.
– Yin and Yang were born of chaos and reside at the center of the earth. They represent the intertwined nature of order and chaos.
– Yang is masculine action while Yin the feminine force of observation, the two expansive and contractive forces of nature.
– In the Yin and Yang symbol, order is white with a black dot, while Chaos is black with a white dot, each seeded with the other’s possibility. Order can become chaotic, and chaos can be ordered.
– The Greeks had a similar view of chaos as the natural state of the world in which the Gods were created to bring order. Chaos is first mentioned by the Greek Hesiod in “Theogony” some three thousand years ago.
The above gives us two Life Forces, Feminine Chaos and Masculine Order, both of which exist in us all. Though women will hold more chaos and men more order, at least, that’s the theory or the ideal.
I suggest that what is happening in our times is that in a great worldwide vacuum of male weakness, order is being supplanted by chaos.
Read the essay Men at Work to find out what brought us here:
Let’s contrast men and women’s lived experience.
She is the burdened female because she holds more negative emotion (which lets her see sickness in children and danger in the environment), menstruates, grows life inside her, and risks her own death in childbirth.
Think that counts as a burden? No male can ever know this.
She is precious because she has scant twenty good years of fertility while men can usually father children into old age. Men also use beauty to motivate themselves and her beauty is fleeting.
He has his own cross to bear as the expendable male. Nature usually makes more boys, 51 to 49%. More boys are born than females because more boys die in childbirth or are born with problems.
Most prisoners are male. More men commit suicide. Men die earlier.
All the riskiest jobs are predominantly male. Roofers, loggers, plumbers, mechanics, carpenters, miners, firefighters, iron workers, truck drivers, cement masons, power lineman, crane operators, highway workers and garbage collectors are more than 80% male.
But it is as a powerful defender that the expendable male earns his keep.
Work place deaths? 95% male. War casualties? 85% male. More than 80% of cops are male. It is men who defend families, and who teach brothers to defend sisters from predatory males.
Of course, there is some overlap between men and women. Missus doesn’t trust me to get the garbage out on time so has put the garbage out for the last 17 years. Bless her heart. Both sexes are relatively adaptable.
Men and women have always banded together to take advantage of each other’s strengths and to shore up each other’s weaknesses. Together, they are Team Human.
With all that said, what defines a man is his ability to defend.
He is a powerful defender, or he is NOT a man.
I can hear the guffaws from here.
Let me give you an irrefutable argument as to why this is:
If you refuse to defend, someone else, one of the other MEN, has to step into the breech and defend for you.
Someone else has to risk their life to do your defending.
That’s OK if you are sick, injured, or a child.
And I’m not talking about conscientious objectors to something like the war in Vietnam. I’m talking about being under attack, culturally or otherwise.
It’s NOT OK if you are a grown male who refuses to be a man.
It is not manly to weakly abdicate your defender responsibility.
And leave it to some other brother to take up your slack.
To be a man you must defend life. Period.
This is how nature sets things up.
She creates life.
You defend life.
Together, we survive the suffering of our existence together.
One last thing. About 10% of people are dark triad types, meaning psychopathology, narcissism, Machiavellianism, or just plain cruel.
These personality disordered mother fuckers are most dangerous as males and often easily hide their disorder among us.
When men are weak and stop defending, who do you think rises to the fore and starts running things?
Exactly. Look around you.
Let that be your challenge my brothers.
I am calling upon you to stand shoulder to shoulder with me and other MEN in defense of meaning and freedom.
Join a men’s group near you or join me online in the 10MM men’s groups.
Just make sure you bring the defender ethos to your tribe.
Start by defending your body, the universal address of your existence.
Defend your spirit, which speaks for your soul.
Defend belonging, your family, friends, community and culture.
Defend your work, your business, your money.
And follow your masculine destiny as a man.
The world desperately needs powerful men.
Questions? Comments?
true and free
cw
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