I was reading the comments over at Vox Day, which has the best comments section of any site I’ve yet read, and came across this:
If culture says “Men, you are responsible”, many will live up to it.
You’ve all read and mocked dozens of man-up screeds despairing at how young men are enjoying themselves rather than feeding themselves into the grinder.
As one recent example, at Sarah’s Daughter RLB has had an impressive streak of MGTOW shaming, catalogued by ar10308 here. To some degree I sympathize with RLB’s position, giving up and whining is not exactly a manly Christian response. On the other hand, deti’s response is rather on the nose, it is very hard for a young Christian man to find a virtuous wife.
Why do men act like children? Why do men not grow up? Why are men so adverse to taking responsibility? Where are all the good men? All these the so-cons and over-the-hill women ask.
I’ve already discussed the reason here, incentives. Essentially, there is increasingly less reason for the young man to try and increasingly more reason for him to be irresponsible.
While incentives is the primary driver it is not the only one. The lack of responsibility given young men is another.
Men need responsibility, they thrive on responsibility, and even if they don’t know it they crave responsibility.
Men are made, not born, and they are made through responsibility. There is nothing that makes a man, a man like responsibility.
You make a man by giving him his little area of life and telling him, ‘this is yours, you take care ot if, you are in charge of it, and you will reap the natural rewards and failures of your care of it.’
The man will rise to the challenge (or fail) and will be forged in the process.
This is man’s purpose, to have dominion.
You destroy a man and prevent him from being made by denying him this opportunity. He doesn’t even get the chance to fail, let alone succeed.
Guess which route today’s world takes with our young men-in-the-making?
Our young men are sent to school and university, where they are given no responsibility beyond handing in their work on time. For many men, even that is pushed on them by their helicopeter patents. The young men enter the workforce and are almost always put in low-level jobs where all their actions are dictated by corporate policy; there is no room for responsibility or personal judgment for the young man making his career. The average young man does not start a family until his late 20s, on average, and even then are no longer heads of their household, given responsibility over their family. Nowadays, a man can easily get into his 30s having borne no real responsibility for anything in his life.
How the hell are we as a society to expect young men to man-up and become men when there is almost no opportunity for a young to take responsibility.
We will not have men if we do not forge them.
Of course, once a man reaches his late-20s, the man-up rants come out. At this point, opinion leaders and women are more than happy to start demanding that men start taking responsibility (particularly by marrying that single-mother or aging ex-carousal rider).
But their definition of responsibility is a twisted and distorted one.
Under their perverted form of responsibility the man is given something, told to care for it, and told the penalties for failure will be levied against him should he not succeed. But, he is not given any power over the situation. He is cut off at the knees and his leadership is undermined, if not wholly denied. In addition, as my incentives post pointed out, he is not receiving the traditional, natural rewards of taking good care of his area of responsibility.
Society needs responsible men and men need responsibility. The obvious solution is for society to start giving young men responsibility, full responsibility. Give him his own part of life to have dominion over; give him a domain.
Demanding they man up is pointless. Demanding they feed themselves into the grinder is both sadistic and pointless. Making them accountable without giving them power is cruel and pointless, as is punishing failure, but not rewarding success.
Give men responsibility, then demand they be responsible, and let them know they will receive the natural rewards and/or penalties for their care of their area of responsibility, and you will get the men you want.
A man needs a domain of his own, any healthy society will ensure he has many opportunities to acquire one.
“Society needs responsible men and men need responsibility. The obvious solution is for society to start giving young men responsibility, full responsibility. Give him his own part of life to have dominion over; give him a domain.”
Exactly, give a man responsibility and power, and his own nature will lead him to stabilize the world around him. Give him power and no responsibility and he becomes a thug and a tyrant. Give him responsibility but no power and you make him into a pathetic excuse for a man or a rebellious cad.
Responsibility without authority is slavery.
Authority without responsibility is tyranny.
(donalgraeme beat me to it.)
Responsibility taken on non-willingly (i.e. by obligation) is slavery. Forget whether the authority or there is not. This is the chief problem, and it has always been this way for the last 1000 years. Men were beaten into submission and forced to undertake these obligations (where the phrase “white knight” comes from, these “white knights” literally did that) towards the beginning of that time period, but men are starting to rise up from their shackles and see themselves with a higher value than being the scum on the bottom of the shoes of women. Those who support this slavery are seeing the slaves running from the plantation (MGTOW) – hence the pejorative man-up screeds, and the abject bitterness and hatred of those who do (the MGTOW haters/shamers). The measures will increase, including violence, from these people to meet their ends. The freedom of men absolutely can not be tolerated.
The lack of the freedom to choose (i.e. “you MUST marry, and I don’t care if it’s a land whale, slut, womyn, boy claiming to be a woman or otherwise, you WILL man-up and marry it you piece of scum”) – and yes it’s Scriptural, is the essence of the definition of slavery.
The ultimate end of the issue is that men need to be freed to undertake what is good, beneficial and right before them and before God. However, this is unsupported by most simply because others fear what these choices might be, because they might not benefit and serve them. This is of special concern to women because for the first time in 1000 years, each one would actually have to provide proof of worth to both prospective husbands and to society-at-large. This scares them down to the core because they are not equipped to do it and never have been.
This video would say men need purpose, autonomy (freedom), and mastery
http://youtu.be/u6XAPnuFjJc
I agree with the connection between authority and responsibility. The way to get a man to take responsibility is to give him authority.
“5 For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to adorn themselves. They submitted themselves to their own husbands, 6 like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her lord. You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear.” 1 Peter 3:5-6
This is one of the least popular verses in our culture, and one the man-up ranters never seem to find their way to. Sarah was wise enough, or obedient enough (God’s word makes wise the simple) to give her husband authority which will always lead to responsibility in a man of character. The man-up ranters never lead women to the truth of their ability to encourage the behavior the tell us they are looking for (why won’t he marry me?).
There is also the principle of sowing and reaping to consider.
Shall we require the man to sow, and sow, and work, and toil, and labor, yet we allow others to reap and plunder his work?
Thanks for the linkage!
I’m totally in agreement that men are much more properly motivated by being given responsibility with a reward for carrying out the responsibility well.
Shame is not only a demotivator, but a destroyer. It is a tool of Satan that aims to keep us from going towards God like when Adam and Eve hid from Him in the garden.
This is why military service remains one of the few legit passages to manhood. I remember an embedded reporter once commenting after seeing twenty-year-old Marines repel an ambush that the newspaper he worked for wouldn’t let their twenty-year-old interns touch the Xerox machine for fear they would break it.
God already gave the authority and responsibility to men. This society is not that much different than past societies. Life sucks. Always has, always will. There will be no gift wrapped virgins for men that fail to behave as Christian men. The characteristics of high value marriageable men are Christian attributes. Leadership, confidence, provision, success, masculinity, bravery, and fitness which are all controllable attributes for a Christian man.
God already gave the authority and responsibility to men. This society is not that much different than past societies. Life sucks. Always has, always will. There will be no gift wrapped virgins for men that fail to behave as Christian men. The characteristics of high value marriageable men are Christian attributes. Leadership, confidence, provision, success, masculinity, bravery, and fitness which are all controllable attributes for a Christian man.
Blah blah…basically ‘man up and marry those sluts!’ and ‘man up, work your ass off, and let others plunder your work’
You are exactly the type deti and modernmathetes were talking about.
You can keep ranting, but us men are no longer listening.
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This is exactly why men in greater numbers are Going Galt on women, marriage, and society at large. There aren’t enough rewards for making investments in them. Women don’t provide enough invcentives, the legal system and pop cultulre certainly doesn’t.