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.