If I'm being totally honest, one of the things that annoys me the most is when people try to attack other people's masculinity as a way to bully them into doing something. How many women have tried to use this tactic? Postmodern women telling men that if they don't get their way it means that those men are less a man?
Still, I don't think that we should make the mistake of refusing to define masculinity just because a definition can be used against us. So I think one of the definitions of how a man should be is the risk taker -- biologically, compared to women there's a much lower chance of men passing on their genetics, and so if you want to be part of the future you have to fight. You don't get a spot in the future for free. That's why men are the soldiers, why they're there entrepreneurs, why they are the ones who hop on rickety ships to new continents to make their fortunes. That's why when the Hun is at the gates, you hide the women and children, and send the men to fight.
And by taking those chances, some men end up having devastating poor outcomes, but other men have devastatingly good outcomes. We take the risks, we reap the rewards for success, and we faced the punishments for failure. That is the lot in life for a man. Take risks, strive for greatness, and many of us fail, but a few of us succeed and take all the spoils.
Now some people might think that this isn't correct, but you have twice as many female ancestors as male ancestors. It's the reality of the world.
So Western society has feminized men, and I think that one of the best ways of showing that is the fact that men don't want to take risks anymore. Men are just as risk-averse as women typically are. That's not a good thing. For one thing, when men aren't taking the risks and building the skyscrapers and discovering the new discoveries that make them and the world rich, women having innate instinct to take risks because somebody has to. Throughout most of history, women have been particularly conservative, but in these areas where men become feminized and don't take risks anymore and society stops growing, that's when they start becoming risk takers. Ideology aside, it is typically a sign that a society is in critical condition and is on the verge of either collapse or revolution.
And if there was anything that represents the loss of the masculine risk-taking, I would say it's actually marriage. When you ask many men why they don't want to get married they'll tell you a story about how risky it is. Maybe it is, but most men will write themselves out of History if they aren't taking risks, and marriage is one of those risks. Not that everyone needs to get married, but if the reason that you're not getting married is because you're scared to take a risk I think that you've lost the plot -- taking risks is your nature.
Another thing that I've come to believe is that fatherhood is also our nature. People like the red pillars and the pickup artists often end up looking at the society from over 250,000 years ago, when we were still mostly apes. At that time, the most effective reproductive strategy was to as a man impregnate as many women as possible, because the pregnant woman would be able to go off and raise the child after giving birth just fine without you. What happened about 200,000 years ago is the brain of humans got too big. That has a few consequences. For one, it means that pregnant women are more vulnerable than most pregnant females of other species. For another, the infants of modern humans spend more time more defenseless than any other creature on earth. If you have a dog that's a couple years old, usually that dogs almost fully sized. If you have a baby that's a couple years old, many of them still can't walk or talk. Because of this the ideal breeding strategy changed, and instead of men doing the old pump and dump, the men who stayed with their women and provided for them, protected them, and provided for their woman and their child end up having the most successful offspring.
Of course there's some wiggle room in there, genes are selfish as the book famously posited, and so there is a prosocial way of doing this and an antisocial way where the women get impregnated by Chad and have Pat raise the child (not Patrick, just pat). In this way, the woman can have Chad's baby, Chad has more offspring, and the only one who really comes out of it poorly is poor Pat.
But again, that's one of the risks in life. You have to try not to be naive, you have to try to learn as much as you can about the world and understand things well enough that you don't end up in these weird situations, but you have to take the risks because otherwise the meaning of your life is to consume resources, to rack up debts, to pay them back, and to die.
This new style of fatherhood does have some real benefits though. Unlike the approach of 250,000 years ago, the man suddenly have a say in the culture their children inherit. Instead of inseminating the women and then dying, they get to pass on something equally important than genetics, they get to pass on culture and in the process they get to build culture.
Statistically speaking we know the power of fathers. We know that kids without fathers are absurdly overrepresented in prisons, we know that they end up running away from home more often, we know that the girls end up more promiscuous, and we know that the boys end up taking the girls without permission a lot more often. And that's just the latent and statistical power of a father. It's the average power of the average father.
But imagine if instead of trying to be an average father you try to be an exceptional father. That's a risk. There's absolutely no guarantee that doing so is going to result in anything positive. Kids with very good Fathers end up with bad endings early on in life, because sometimes the world just isn't fair. But again, as a man you have to take those risks because otherwise you're going to be written out of History. In this case not just genetically, but culturally. A lot of people think that Star wars is way more important than it really is. Or marvel. Or the latest election. Or most of the things in the news. For most people none of that stuff actually matters. For most people there's nothing you can do to affect it, it's just something that happens somewhere else or it's meaningless pictures on a screen. Your memory of watching that movie will die with you if it even lasts that long. On the other hand, the effect of being an exceptional father can lay the groundwork for generations. You teach your child from the moment that they're born what it means to be a man through your actions. Later on you get a chance to speak to them with stories, tell them things with words, and it's built into your children but you will have an impact on them if you try. A lot of people talk about intergenerational trauma, but not a lot of people talk about the opposite. Everyone focuses on the idea of a father beating their children, and then that passes down as a child beating their child and so on and so forth, but good parents who teach good lessons to Good children are likely to go on to have reasonably successful lives of their own, and then their children will be raised right, and a virtuous cycle will result. Maybe. There's no guarantees, that's not how life works. It's a risk.
But if you take my view of the world that you need to listen to the little voice inside of you, I know for me putting my all into everything that I'm doing, doing my best not to try to do the same or slightly better than the other fathers around me but to envision what great fatherhood might look like and strive for that ideal, even if you don't always hit the ideal and even if the outcomes aren't necessarily what you'd like them to be, you can look at yourself in the mirror and be proud of the person that you are living as. Deep satisfaction of doing a difficult job, doing it to the very best of your ability, and taking care of that ancient and sacred duty that's written into your blood. If you imagine yourself as the particular moment in Time where the spark of life has been passed, and behind you lies all of the humans who are your ancestors, and all of the hominids before them, and all of the mammals before them, going all the way back to the first single-celled organism, and you are taking that torch that has been handed to you for a short period of time and passing it on to the next life in the chain, making you insignificant and yet deeply significant, just one piece of a long line, but a line that ends with you if you fail. People are looking for meaning, I'm not sure there is a greater meaning than that. What greater purpose can there be in life then passing the torch of life and the torch of culture and adding your own kindling to the fire?
In the end, however you live your life, there are two paths. You either bet on the future or you don't. For some people, they are perfectly happy to get a job, rack up loans, pay back those loans, retire for a few years, then die without anyone particularly caring. But honestly, if you've read this far into one of my big essays, I bet you that you're the sort of person that I want to see there in the future with me, so why not take that bet? At the end of the day if you fail all you can do is die anyway.
Still, I don't think that we should make the mistake of refusing to define masculinity just because a definition can be used against us. So I think one of the definitions of how a man should be is the risk taker -- biologically, compared to women there's a much lower chance of men passing on their genetics, and so if you want to be part of the future you have to fight. You don't get a spot in the future for free. That's why men are the soldiers, why they're there entrepreneurs, why they are the ones who hop on rickety ships to new continents to make their fortunes. That's why when the Hun is at the gates, you hide the women and children, and send the men to fight.
And by taking those chances, some men end up having devastating poor outcomes, but other men have devastatingly good outcomes. We take the risks, we reap the rewards for success, and we faced the punishments for failure. That is the lot in life for a man. Take risks, strive for greatness, and many of us fail, but a few of us succeed and take all the spoils.
Now some people might think that this isn't correct, but you have twice as many female ancestors as male ancestors. It's the reality of the world.
So Western society has feminized men, and I think that one of the best ways of showing that is the fact that men don't want to take risks anymore. Men are just as risk-averse as women typically are. That's not a good thing. For one thing, when men aren't taking the risks and building the skyscrapers and discovering the new discoveries that make them and the world rich, women having innate instinct to take risks because somebody has to. Throughout most of history, women have been particularly conservative, but in these areas where men become feminized and don't take risks anymore and society stops growing, that's when they start becoming risk takers. Ideology aside, it is typically a sign that a society is in critical condition and is on the verge of either collapse or revolution.
And if there was anything that represents the loss of the masculine risk-taking, I would say it's actually marriage. When you ask many men why they don't want to get married they'll tell you a story about how risky it is. Maybe it is, but most men will write themselves out of History if they aren't taking risks, and marriage is one of those risks. Not that everyone needs to get married, but if the reason that you're not getting married is because you're scared to take a risk I think that you've lost the plot -- taking risks is your nature.
Another thing that I've come to believe is that fatherhood is also our nature. People like the red pillars and the pickup artists often end up looking at the society from over 250,000 years ago, when we were still mostly apes. At that time, the most effective reproductive strategy was to as a man impregnate as many women as possible, because the pregnant woman would be able to go off and raise the child after giving birth just fine without you. What happened about 200,000 years ago is the brain of humans got too big. That has a few consequences. For one, it means that pregnant women are more vulnerable than most pregnant females of other species. For another, the infants of modern humans spend more time more defenseless than any other creature on earth. If you have a dog that's a couple years old, usually that dogs almost fully sized. If you have a baby that's a couple years old, many of them still can't walk or talk. Because of this the ideal breeding strategy changed, and instead of men doing the old pump and dump, the men who stayed with their women and provided for them, protected them, and provided for their woman and their child end up having the most successful offspring.
Of course there's some wiggle room in there, genes are selfish as the book famously posited, and so there is a prosocial way of doing this and an antisocial way where the women get impregnated by Chad and have Pat raise the child (not Patrick, just pat). In this way, the woman can have Chad's baby, Chad has more offspring, and the only one who really comes out of it poorly is poor Pat.
But again, that's one of the risks in life. You have to try not to be naive, you have to try to learn as much as you can about the world and understand things well enough that you don't end up in these weird situations, but you have to take the risks because otherwise the meaning of your life is to consume resources, to rack up debts, to pay them back, and to die.
This new style of fatherhood does have some real benefits though. Unlike the approach of 250,000 years ago, the man suddenly have a say in the culture their children inherit. Instead of inseminating the women and then dying, they get to pass on something equally important than genetics, they get to pass on culture and in the process they get to build culture.
Statistically speaking we know the power of fathers. We know that kids without fathers are absurdly overrepresented in prisons, we know that they end up running away from home more often, we know that the girls end up more promiscuous, and we know that the boys end up taking the girls without permission a lot more often. And that's just the latent and statistical power of a father. It's the average power of the average father.
But imagine if instead of trying to be an average father you try to be an exceptional father. That's a risk. There's absolutely no guarantee that doing so is going to result in anything positive. Kids with very good Fathers end up with bad endings early on in life, because sometimes the world just isn't fair. But again, as a man you have to take those risks because otherwise you're going to be written out of History. In this case not just genetically, but culturally. A lot of people think that Star wars is way more important than it really is. Or marvel. Or the latest election. Or most of the things in the news. For most people none of that stuff actually matters. For most people there's nothing you can do to affect it, it's just something that happens somewhere else or it's meaningless pictures on a screen. Your memory of watching that movie will die with you if it even lasts that long. On the other hand, the effect of being an exceptional father can lay the groundwork for generations. You teach your child from the moment that they're born what it means to be a man through your actions. Later on you get a chance to speak to them with stories, tell them things with words, and it's built into your children but you will have an impact on them if you try. A lot of people talk about intergenerational trauma, but not a lot of people talk about the opposite. Everyone focuses on the idea of a father beating their children, and then that passes down as a child beating their child and so on and so forth, but good parents who teach good lessons to Good children are likely to go on to have reasonably successful lives of their own, and then their children will be raised right, and a virtuous cycle will result. Maybe. There's no guarantees, that's not how life works. It's a risk.
But if you take my view of the world that you need to listen to the little voice inside of you, I know for me putting my all into everything that I'm doing, doing my best not to try to do the same or slightly better than the other fathers around me but to envision what great fatherhood might look like and strive for that ideal, even if you don't always hit the ideal and even if the outcomes aren't necessarily what you'd like them to be, you can look at yourself in the mirror and be proud of the person that you are living as. Deep satisfaction of doing a difficult job, doing it to the very best of your ability, and taking care of that ancient and sacred duty that's written into your blood. If you imagine yourself as the particular moment in Time where the spark of life has been passed, and behind you lies all of the humans who are your ancestors, and all of the hominids before them, and all of the mammals before them, going all the way back to the first single-celled organism, and you are taking that torch that has been handed to you for a short period of time and passing it on to the next life in the chain, making you insignificant and yet deeply significant, just one piece of a long line, but a line that ends with you if you fail. People are looking for meaning, I'm not sure there is a greater meaning than that. What greater purpose can there be in life then passing the torch of life and the torch of culture and adding your own kindling to the fire?
In the end, however you live your life, there are two paths. You either bet on the future or you don't. For some people, they are perfectly happy to get a job, rack up loans, pay back those loans, retire for a few years, then die without anyone particularly caring. But honestly, if you've read this far into one of my big essays, I bet you that you're the sort of person that I want to see there in the future with me, so why not take that bet? At the end of the day if you fail all you can do is die anyway.
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