The Obsolescence of Masculinity (Part II)

Every civilization is, among other things, an arrangement for domesticating the passions and setting them to do useful work. - Aldous Huxley

A long way back in the misty reaches of history, the world was a dark and dangerous place. Humanity was composed of primarily small social groups – tribes of hunter-gatherer societies, villages, and the occasional small city.

In that life, survival was fragile. A wolf in a flock of sheep could snatch away an entire family’s subsistence for a year; a flu could wipe out a village; a raid by a rival tribe could mean the end of a culture.

The lack of infrastructure in societies like that meant a man had to fend for himself. He had to kill his own food, grow his own crops, and build his own shelter. Even when the rudiments of commerce began to emerge, a man still had to be independent enough to produce goods for barter.

Life demanded more than that, though. A man also eventually had a family, and had to be able to provide for their needs as well as protect them from danger. In essence, every man had to prove himself capable of living in a dangerous world. A boy, becoming a man, had to undergo long periods of survival in the wilderness, painful rituals, or any number of other experiences that showed him capable of raising his own family.

Look at the needs every man experiences, as covered in our last article. A primitive society fills every one of those needs. Difficult conditions produced strong, independent, tough men, and simple culture meant nearly every man eventually raised a family who he had to protect and provide for. Simply living this life gave him respect in the eyes of his peers, and culture was small enough that his “pack” was the other men of his tribe and their families. Society itself worked to produce men who were satisfied being men; men who failed in those areas were oddities, and often shunned by their peers.

Now let’s go back to Harold and the plight of modern man.

The modern world is quite a different one from the raw forests and deserts ancient man scraped a living from. Today, we have enough infrastructure in place that Harold doesn’t actually need to be independent. He can live off of welfare, his parents, a working spouse, or even the comfortable routine of a dead-end job. To not be independent is the path of least resistance, and humanity as a whole is – like water in a bed of sand and rocks – prone to take that path.

Harold’s need to protect and provide is met with the modern ideals of individual self-provision. In a world where the spirit and intellect are keys to life rather than physical strength, women are at least as capable as men, and Harold’s need to provide no longer has a natural outlet.

Even power is not necessary. A good job rarely requires much physical strength, and the sort of emotional toughness once needed to be a leader in a difficult world is ignored—if not outright discouraged—by today’s culture.

Modern society’s natural tendency, is no longer to produce real men; where such men exist, they are an aberration. With the rise of civilization, culture’s production of manliness has inverted itself.

The only need that can be met in modern society is the need for respect. Nearly all men need respect, and for most men, the only way to gain respect is to give it to others; this has produced the “pack” phenomena we spoke about in the last article.

This combination of psychological need with a lack of societal fulfillment of those needs has created a new sort of man – the “average guy.”

For the moment, though, we’re out of time. We’ll discuss the Average Guy and his response to the obsolescence of masculinity in our next article. Until then.

The Obsolescence of Masculinity (Part I)

A real man.

Your first thought is something along the lines of “He can’t start an essay with a sentence fragment!” You may be right. However, that’s not the point. Your disgruntled protest was accompanied by something else: an image.

That image was of what your idea of a ‘real man’ is. The lone gunslinger riding into Dodge, the knight in shining armor, the mountain man dressed in buckskin, or maybe even a more subtle figure from literature, like Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird.

Whatever the image, it wasn’t of a man sitting in an office working eight hours a day, five days a week, with benefits and a 401k.

As much as we may hate to admit it, modern society has lost its need for ‘real men.’ If no gunslinger rolls in to clean up town, if no knight stands forth to defend a sacred Honor, if no mountain man guides our path, if no Atticus Finch stands up for what’s right in the face of unified opposition, society scarcely takes notice; traffic still courses through the freeways of L.A., politicians still write their laws in Washington, and the stock market tickers on Wall Street glide by unperturbed. Business as usual.

This is the first essay in a four-part series discussing the plight of the modern man, his response to that plight, and a suggestion for his consideration.

To why the modern man – let’s call him Harold – is dissatisfied with his plot in life, we must first understand how he thinks. Easier said, you say, than done.

Harold – though he would ardently deny it if accused directly – is a very needy creature. Four of those needs form a significant portion of his problem with society.

The first thing Harold needs is to feel independent. In modern society, it’s very difficult to be truly independent; it’s too easy to rest on the supporting arms of welfare, parents, working spouses, or even the comfortable routine of a dead-end job. So, Harold resorts to displays. Look at any man living off of a successful wife, and you’re guaranteed to find someone “temporarily unemployed” or “trying to publish some writing” or “continuing an education.”

The second thing Harold needs is to provide for and protect someone else – preferably a female someone else. Sometimes the need for independence trumps this one, resulting in the sort of brash, uncaring modern man commonly referred to as “an asshole.”

Harold is not an asshole. Harold displays the need to protect by making displays of protection and provision towards any female he may be interested in. This may include giving her advice, “fathering” her by asking where she’s going and what she’ll be doing, fixing things for her, or any other number of gestures which may very well annoy the modern woman. If the woman rejects his protection – by fixing things herself, say, or ignoring his advice – Harold feels he has failed in his quest to be a ‘real man.’

The third thing Harold needs is power. Harold is an intellectual; he craves a powerful intellect. Other men may seek physical strength or political prestige, but it all boils down to the same basic desire.

Finally, and perhaps above all, Harold needs acceptance. This need is common to both men and women, but manifests itself in different ways. My crystal ball into the mind of women being temporarily misplaced, I asked Anna Joy for some insight into this distinction – one which she’ll be covering in more detail in a future essay.

For a woman, external appearances are an integral part of acceptance. Harold, on the other hand, may occasionally wish to be better looking, but on the whole doesn’t particularly care how he looks.

A woman often seeks acceptance by fulfilling the role she’s in. If she’s in a corporate position, her acceptance depends on how well she does at her job. If she’s caring for a household, her acceptance depends on her house.

Harold, on the other hand, just needs to be part of a ‘pack.’ He can fail miserably at work and feel fine with himself if he has a pack of other men to fit in with. In some packs, failing at work or school can even be reason for renown – look at the classic frat house mentality at many colleges. In short, Harold doesn’t so much need to be thought well of in general as to be thought well of by his pack. The more Harold fulfills the ideals of his pack, the more renown Harold has in their eyes, and the better he feels about himself in the end.

It’s these psychological needs that cause Harold’s dissatisfaction with the modern world. We’ll discuss the details of that dissatisfaction in our next essay.

Tune in, as they say, next time.

Prologue

Why is it that of all the billions and billions of strange
Objects in the Cosmos – novas, quasars, pulsars, black
holes – you are beyond doubt the strangest?
- Lost in the Cosmos, Walker Percy

The planet Earth can be an exciting, odd, and occasionally terrifying place to spend one’s life. We live our lives one minute to the next, constantly regretting those things we’ve done and fretting over those things we have yet to do. We are never rich enough, smart enough, strong enough, brave enough, capable enough to do the things we want to do; we are always too poor, too stupid, too weak, too cowardly, too incompetent to prevent ourselves from doing those things we do not.

We look at our fellow human beings and, in the occasional flash of clarity, think to ourselves: my God, what a ridiculous species.

It’s all a blur sometimes, a jumble of discordant notes in a symphony that seems to have been written by a lunatic composer too short on sleep, and, quite possibly, suffering from substance abuse. We are an audience caught in a moment of chaos penetrated only occasionally by a few instances of rhythm and harmony; occasional markers pointing a work of such genius that the fringes of our comprehension can only begin to grasp it.

We, the writers of this blog, are only notes. In the essays that will follow, we will address questions of philosophy, psychology, and the human experience; we do this with the full knowledge that, like most humans, we are probably wrong.

Perhaps we might be permitted to spark a thought or two. If nothing else, you might find yourself entertained.