How Modern Life Transforms Men Into Wussies

[nousdefions]

How Modern Life Transforms Men Into Wussies

Manly Activity

Ever watched a classic action flick? Of course, you have. Movies like Die Hard, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Lethal Weapon, First Blood, and 300 have become fixtures in the American psyche. All these movies feature either a lone man or a small group fighting in a desperate, violent struggle and yet, somehow, someway coming out on top. Throughout most of America’s history, the average man could more easily relate to the experiences in those movies the way someone who shoots hoops at the park could relate to watching a NBA game. Sure, they might not be able to do what they were seeing on the screen, but they were well acquainted with violence. Either they had inflicted it, suffered it or seen it up close and personal. We’re a nation that was birthed in a bloody revolution, where feuds and dueling were frequent occurrences, where intermittent battles with Indians occurred until the twenties, where roughly twenty percent of the male population served in WWII, and fist fights and brawling were relatively common.

Today?

The average man may have seen hundreds of thousands of murders on his TV screen and committed tens of thousands more playing video games, but he has also probably never struck another human being in anger in his entire adult lifetime. In other words, he may be captivated by the imagery he sees at the movies, but he goes home knowing that he will never even live out a pale imitation of what he’s just seen.

This same experience is repeated in a myriad of different ways in modern life.

To many men, examples of “manly” activities might include shooting a bow, repairing a car, skinning a fish, climbing a mountain, surviving alone in the woods, building a cabin from scratch, or hunting, killing, and skinning an animal. However, most men didn’t take up these activities to be “manly;” they did them because they were necessities and those who were good at them thrived and were admired by other men. What are those same “manly” universal activities today? In large part, they’ve never been replaced.

Read it all

[blacksmoke]

Getting into a fistfight would earn you an assault charge and cost you your future. Being a educated and landing a good job will get you the hottest chicks out there. Read the whole article and agree. Automation in general is weakening society.

[cat in the hat]

the author must have read (and NOT comprehended) "Fight Club"

[BKKMAN]

I thought that this article by Scott Locklin was a good take on modern man...

A few highlights (among many):

I think there is a certain worldview that comes from violent experience. It’s something like…manhood. You don’t have to be the world’s greatest badass to be a man, but you have to be willing to throw down when the time is right.

A man who has been in a fight or played violent sports has experienced more of life and manhood than a man who hasn’t. Fisticuffs, wrestling matches, knife fights, violent sport, duels with baseball bats, facing down guns, or getting crushed in the football field—men who have had these experiences are different from men who have not. Men who have trained for or experienced such encounters know about bravery and mental fortitude from firsthand experience. Men who have been tested physically know that inequality is a physical fact. Men who know how to deal out violence know that radical feminism’s tenets—that women and men are equal—are a lie. We know that women are not the same as men: not physically, mentally, or in terms of moral character.

...When I first meet a man, I don’t care what kind of sheepskins or awards he has on his walls. I don’t care if he is liberal or conservative. I want to know if they have my back in a fight. That’s really the only thing that matters.

Punch Me...

ETA: Also discussed in this thread at PS.com Getting Punched

[Sohei]

I was reading through various quotes recently and came across this quote by Black Elk. He spoke this many moons ago.....

"The boys of my people began very young to learn the ways of men, and no one taught us; we just learned by doing what we saw, and we were warriors at a time when boys now are like girls." -- Black Elk

[HOLLiS]

Part of my problem, I have heard stuff like this all my life.

35 years ago, when I married I was 29 and 7 mos, my wife was 26. I guess according to that article there is something wrong.

1970, when I came home from Viet-Nam a lot of WWII vets considered us loosers, drug addicts, etc. So I read many years later that the average Viet-Nam soldier saw a lot more combat than his WWII counterpart. But we were losers and they were winners. (sarcasm here)

My biggest shock in the 1960s was finding out that those (bad word) kids in middle school, never became what I was told is a man. A person of character and integrity. They were still the same liars and jerks but were more secretive about it.

I think my biggest problem coming home was realizing, the only brothers I will have are those I was in Viet-Nam with. 40 some years later, that is almost completely true, except for a few others.

So are the men any more a wussy today than back then? Maybe it is just the product of a comfortable society, where liars, cheats, back stabbers, wannabes and bullies can operate without getting challenged to a duel, choked, or..............

[MtnGoat]

I say it is all about good parenting. If you have a kid that loves his X-Box. Well you still have to get him into something else.

How about chores for kids. I know many people that their kids maybe do one or two chores. Take out the trash and clean your rooms.

I don't see many men today play catch with their kids in neighborhoods as I did when I was a kid. Heck Hope Mills has a town ban on basketball hoops in the road. No playing street ball, parents will be fine.

Men teaching their kids how to protect themsleves. This goes back to that statement of "Getting into a fistfight would earn you an assault charge and cost you your future." My forth point.. you need to teach your kids to stand up for themsleves. Yes of schools today will send both kids home, even if your kid never defends themself. Really!! Think about that one.

Teaching our kids our to shoot guns. NRA programs and all the different ones out there. Teach them.

I feel chivalrous is gone in America. Movies, music videos, etc have taught kids that man don't need to open doors anymore. All those PSA and ABC Saturday mornings school house rock videos are gone. Why.. You pick your reason for it. Society IMNSHO.

I took my daughter out on "a Date" so she knows who I feel a guy should be treating her. What I think and her mother thinks of a boy dating her. What is right and wrong, yes I know, in my (our) mind(s). But she got what the ground rules are for dating and what not to do. I'll say.. to tell her like the movie. "Act like a man think like a lady".

We are teaching our kids from a very young age that everyone is a winner. They though Charlie Sheen thought that saying up.. YOUR WRONG!!! Coaching youth sports, I battled this with many parents. Crazy thinking IMO!!

Our kids are shaped by a lifetime of experience into what we start and mode them into. But with the help or hindrance in the way we want them to think or become.

So for me it is in the parenting of our kids that make them good in school, how we start them off as toddlers, youths, pre-teens, teen to them becoming those young adults.

If you let MSM, teachers, youth pastors, coaches, etc take control of your partenting then you have nothing to say for yourself. You child will become what the "world" wants of them and not you.

When I get back from this trip. My son and I will be taking a trip down the Cape Fear river to teach him more about living off the land and taking care of yourself.

[HOLLiS]

Mtn Goat, I think you nailed the biggest aspect of it. Too many absentia parents.

Originally Posted by nousdefions

How Modern Life Transforms Men Into Wussies

Manly Activity

Ever watched a classic action flick? Of course, you have. Movies like Die Hard, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Lethal Weapon, First Blood, and 300 have become fixtures in the American psyche. All these movies feature either a lone man or a small group fighting in a desperate, violent struggle and yet, somehow, someway coming out on top. Throughout most of America’s history, the average man could more easily relate to the experiences in those movies the way someone who shoots hoops at the park could relate to watching a NBA game. Sure, they might not be able to do what they were seeing on the screen, but they were well acquainted with violence. Either they had inflicted it, suffered it or seen it up close and personal. We’re a nation that was birthed in a bloody revolution, where feuds and dueling were frequent occurrences, where intermittent battles with Indians occurred until the twenties, where roughly twenty percent of the male population served in WWII, and fist fights and brawling were relatively common.

Today?

The average man may have seen hundreds of thousands of murders on his TV screen and committed tens of thousands more playing video games, but he has also probably never struck another human being in anger in his entire adult lifetime. In other words, he may be captivated by the imagery he sees at the movies, but he goes home knowing that he will never even live out a pale imitation of what he’s just seen.

This same experience is repeated in a myriad of different ways in modern life.

To many men, examples of “manly” activities might include shooting a bow, repairing a car, skinning a fish, climbing a mountain, surviving alone in the woods, building a cabin from scratch, or hunting, killing, and skinning an animal. However, most men didn’t take up these activities to be “manly;” they did them because they were necessities and those who were good at them thrived and were admired by other men. What are those same “manly” universal activities today? In large part, they’ve never been replaced.

Read it all

How about just being a good, husband, and father...isn't that manly enough?

[Flagg]

Originally Posted by HOLLiS

Part of my problem, I have heard stuff like this all my life.

35 years ago, when I married I was 29 and 7 mos, my wife was 26. I guess according to that article there is something wrong.

1970, when I came home from Viet-Nam a lot of WWII vets considered us loosers, drug addicts, etc. So I read many years later that the average Viet-Nam soldier saw a lot more combat than his WWII counterpart. But we were losers and they were winners. (sarcasm here)

My biggest shock in the 1960s was finding out that those (bad word) kids in middle school, never became what I was told is a man. A person of character and integrity. They were still the same liars and jerks but were more secretive about it.

I think my biggest problem coming home was realizing, the only brothers I will have are those I was in Viet-Nam with. 40 some years later, that is almost completely true, except for a few others.

So are the men any more a wussy today than back then? Maybe it is just the product of a comfortable society, where liars, cheats, back stabbers, wannabes and bullies can operate without getting challenged to a duel, choked, or..............

Good post mate.......

To me it feels like a growing divide among males, but not between men.

[Flagg]

Great post Mtn Goat.

My wife and I are trying to trave a similar path with our two young ones.

A couple we know from Army have a small lifestyle farm where they run horses and bees.

Our two eat more than a hungry rifle platoon, so we buy most of their honey production each year.

So it's "Let's go visit Daddy's Army friends to buy honey and see the horses!"

"Woohoo!"

Where they are immediately handed tools to muck out the stalls to "pay" for all the honey they eat.

Then they get a horse ride.

Target shooting is conducted on a rural farm with a templated range on a beach with a view to rival Pebble Beach(another mate from Army, family farm).

Everyone who steps foot on the farm is always welcome, and everyone who visits always pays for their 3 feeds and a cot thru hard work. For young boys that's filling a whole bunch of sandbags with pinecones for sale/use by the farm.

The family's son(my mate) is planning on finishing with Army in a few more years to take over farm management. By then my boys will be old enough to help out on the farm properly during their school holidays.

Everything we do is to make them more resilient and to prepare them as best we can if they choose the pursuit of excellence.

[Trapper John]

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

Nuff said! Thank you Mr. Kipling

[frostfire]

Originally Posted by WCH

How about just being a good, husband, and father...isn't that manly enough?

Absolutely 110 zillion% YES!

Originally Posted by MtnGoat

I say it is all about good parenting. If you have a kid that loves his X-Box. Well you still have to get him into something else.

How about chores for kids. I know many people that their kids maybe do one or two chores. Take out the trash and clean your rooms.

I don't see many men today play catch with their kids in neighborhoods as I did when I was a kid. Heck Hope Mills has a town ban on basketball hoops in the road. No playing street ball, parents will be fine.

Men teaching their kids how to protect themsleves. This goes back to that statement of "Getting into a fistfight would earn you an assault charge and cost you your future." My forth point.. you need to teach your kids to stand up for themsleves. Yes of schools today will send both kids home, even if your kid never defends themself. Really!! Think about that one.

Teaching our kids our to shoot guns. NRA programs and all the different ones out there. Teach them.

I feel chivalrous is gone in America. Movies, music videos, etc have taught kids that man don't need to open doors anymore. All those PSA and ABC Saturday mornings school house rock videos are gone. Why.. You pick your reason for it. Society IMNSHO.

I took my daughter out on "a Date" so she knows who I feel a guy should be treating her. What I think and her mother thinks of a boy dating her. What is right and wrong, yes I know, in my (our) mind(s). But she got what the ground rules are for dating and what not to do. I'll say.. to tell her like the movie. "Act like a man think like a lady".

We are teaching our kids from a very young age that everyone is a winner. They though Charlie Sheen thought that saying up.. YOUR WRONG!!! Coaching youth sports, I battled this with many parents. Crazy thinking IMO!!

Our kids are shaped by a lifetime of experience into what we start and mode them into. But with the help or hindrance in the way we want them to think or become.

So for me it is in the parenting of our kids that make them good in school, how we start them off as toddlers, youths, pre-teens, teen to them becoming those young adults.

If you let MSM, teachers, youth pastors, coaches, etc take control of your partenting then you have nothing to say for yourself. You child will become what the "world" wants of them and not you.

When I get back from this trip. My son and I will be taking a trip down the Cape Fear river to teach him more about living off the land and taking care of yourself.

WOW! Got goosebumps reading your post. Sounds like textbook case of how to do it right in the documentary I just saw. I've been studying about fatherhood for quite some time and came across this documentary:
http://www.absentmovie.com/
trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0346ct-_aF0
It's available on netflix too
I don't think it's a straw man argument, but the documentary traces most problems faced by men and women to father who is absent physically, emotionally, and so on. There's a profound segment that postulates in the absence of a father's influence/approval, the boy grew into men in perpetual state of adolescence ie. Peter Pan syndrome. The same impact on the girl's transition to womanhood is just tragic as I've been unfortunate enough to deal with it first hand in the ER way too many times. Metallica's James Hetfield is also interviewed in it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj1KEH8Mk8Q
Anyhow, enough focus on the problem...as for the solution, I am going to volunteer for afterschool programs on post for teens with absent parents.



MtnGoat, WCH, you gentlemen are TRUE men. Hats off to you both So long we have a growing number of chivalrious men like you, I sincerely believe America is not without reprieve

[MtnGoat]

Well I'm no "Father of the Year".. Just tell what I do while I'm home and what I feel is really missing in todays lifestyle. I never had a Dad that was there for me. He was around, but he was well into his 50's when I was in Middle schoolI

I want to pass off what I can to my kids.

Frostfire.. look at volunteering for a local youth football, baseball, soccer, etc. Which ever your good at. I say go for the last year group or second to last. There is never enough coach when I have volunteered.

[PedOncoDoc]

Originally Posted by MtnGoat

Frostfire.. look at volunteering for a local youth football, baseball, socer, etc. Whihc ever your god at.

And remember Ray...if someone asks you if you are a god, you say YES!