The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing, while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied.
A man must work or despair. He who does not work, does not have a mission, will find himself empty and hollow. He will be consumed by desire without meaning. Anything he is given without earning will taste as ashes to him. A lack of struggle will destroy his soul.
Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.
Man was created by God to work. He is meant to work and in this work, by devoting himself to it, he finds meaning.
A man finds meaning in his work, but is always presented with the futility of his actions. Ashes will return to ashes, moth and rust will destroy, and the grave takes us all in the end. Yet, however futile his work, man must persevere or despair will overtake him.
Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward.
The man of God knows his earthly works are futile, yet he works for a higher purpose, one beyond this world. Though his steel rust, his gold be stolen, and his tower lay in ruins, he knows the kingdom his work on earth is building will remain eternal. The treasures of heaven he stores up through his diligence to the Lord will be his and His Lord’s forever.
The man of God works not for himself, but for the One who made him.
And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible. I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air: But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway. (1 Corinthian 9:25-27, KJV)
Yet, working alone even for Christ is not enough.
Will a man dare to rob God?
Dare he present God with an inferior gift?
Dare he present an unacceptable sacrifice unto the Lord?
Dare he present a blemished, deformed, and stunted free will offering?
If He dare, his sacrifice will be rejected. His works will be revealed and he will suffer loss.
No, a man’s work must be without blemish, it must be superior. A man must become a master of his craft so his works will pass the test of fire, lest all he has built turn to ashes before the Almighty.
Do you see a man skillful in his work?
He will stand before kings;
he will not stand before obscure men. (Proverbs 22:29, ESV)
A man of God must become skillful, so he can stand not just before kings, but before the King of Kings.
The Lord deserves only the best; the man of God must put his whole being into his works for the Lord’s kingdom.
The godly man’s work must be worthy of honouring God, else God may not honour him.
Yet, no man’s work can be worthy. His greatest works are but filthy rags.
The Lord said to Moses, “See, I have called by name Bezalel the son of Uri, son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship, to devise artistic designs, to work in gold, silver, and bronze, in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood, to work in every craft. And behold, I have appointed with him Oholiab, the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan. And I have given to all able men ability, that they may make all that I have commanded you. (Exodus 31:1-6, ESV)
A man’s work may be unworthy, but should he devote himself to mastering his craft, the Lord will honour him. He will fill the godly man with the Spirit of God, to give him ability, the mastery, to build a holy eternal temple that will pass through the flames unscathed. The Lord will give him te ability to craft a worthy work.
With this God-ordained mastery a godly man will fulfill his purpose, he will be fruitful in his labour, multiply his works, and have dominion over the earth.
Man must master himself in spirit and in body so he can master his work, and through his work the earth.
The man who does not master himself will not master the earth and will present an inferior sacrifice to the Lord that will turn to ashes in the final test of fire.
Ashes to ashes or glory to glory.
The choice is yours to make.
Make the right choice be a master of your craft.
So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building.
According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire. (1 Corinthians 3:7-15, ESV)
I came across these twodiscussions of the lack of friendship among males, particularly white, heterosexual males. The dearth of male friendship is a serious problem in our modern world. The average American has only 2 close friends. While, as per the Salon article above, white, heterosexual males have the fewest friends.
This lack of friendship comes from a variety of factors, but there are three specific to men. The first is the confluence of both philia and eros under the word love, and the resultant conquering of love by eros. Due to this, in our present language “manly love” might as well mean queer. Related to this is the rise of the homosexual lifestyle in popular culture.
The Slate article almost gets this:
Chalk this heart-squeezing shift up to our limiting ideals of masculinity, which define themselves in opposition to all things feminine. Friends are empathetic, affectionate, not afraid to leave their tower of self-reliance for occasional support. You know who else is like that? Women. “Being a good friend…as well as needing a good friend, is the equivalent of being girly,” Wade writes, so the boys end up opting out.
Wade doesn’t mention the rainbow elephant in the room, but I wonder whether men are less afraid of girliness here than homosexuality. In many ways, it’s a distinction without a difference, since homophobes tend to imagine gay men as effete. But if a man ever is allowed to relax his stone face, it’s around his romantic partner. Being open, communicative, vulnerable—all of these behaviors evoke love relationships. It makes a sad kind of sense that boys trying to assert their masculinity would steer clear of playing the “boyfriend” around other guys.
But as usual, they miss the mark, and make a demonstration of the third reason:
Friends are empathetic, affectionate, not afraid to leave their tower of self-reliance for occasional support. You know who else is like that? Women. “Being a good friend…as well as needing a good friend, is the equivalent of being girly,
Affectionate and empathetic? It just sounds queer.
The reason this sounds queer is these are not masculine friendships, these are feminine friendships. (Not that the feminine mode of friendship is wrong; it’s good, but for women).
The third reason for the decline is male friendship is the colonization of the language of friendship by the feminine. The words used to describe friendships in the above articles are good examples of this: empathy, affection, intimacy, emotional support, etc. are all womanly or would be reserved for your lover; to apply these to a masculine relationship sounds gay.
If this is what friendship is painted as, of course men are going not going to have friendships. Who the hell wants to gather around in a sob circle with their male friends?
But by defining friendship as the feminine, the modern world is pushing out (has pushed out?) the ability to express male friendship through the English language.
To reestablish male friendship, we need to reestablish masculine relationships. We need to retake friendship, retake philia, retake manly love.
(Bro is a decent attempt at this, but bromance just sounds retarded and queer).
****
For the theoretical framework of masculine friendship we can go back to Jack Donovan’s Way of Man. Male social bonds were formed as a part of the gang. Men bonded through hunting and war parties. They bonded not through faggy emoting, but through shared action, shared virtue, shared goals, shared suffering, and shared victory. They built each other up to work together against the common foe.
Obviously, we can’t go back to the old warband model. There’s no opposing tribes to make war against anymore outside of the ghetto (at least not until the happening), and if you tried to do so, you’d go to jail. But men can attempt to rebuild the same pattern through the creation of a gang. Read the Way of Man for more on this.
We can rebuild the male friendship without the need to go murdering our neighbours. Aristotle outlined the virtuous male friendship many centuries ago:
Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in virtue; for these wish well alike to each other qua good, and they are good themselves. Now those who wish well to their friends for their sake are most truly friends; for they do this by reason of own nature and not incidentally; therefore their friendship lasts as long as they are good-and goodness is an enduring thing. And each is good without qualification and to his friend, for the good are both good without qualification and useful to each other. So too they are pleasant; for the good are pleasant both without qualification and to each other, since to each his own activities and others like them are pleasurable, and the actions of the good are the same or like. And such a friendship is as might be expected permanent, since there meet in it all the qualities that friends should have. For all friendship is for the sake of good or of pleasure-good or pleasure either in the abstract or such as will be enjoyed by him who has the friendly feeling-and is based on a certain resemblance; and to a friendship of good men all the qualities we have named belong in virtue of the nature of the friends themselves; for in the case of this kind of friendship the other qualities also are alike in both friends, and that which is good without qualification is also without qualification pleasant, and these are the most lovable qualities. Love and friendship therefore are found most and in their best form between such men.
But it is natural that such friendships should be infrequent; for such men are rare. Further, such friendship requires time and familiarity; as the proverb says, men cannot know each other till they have ‘eaten salt together’; nor can they admit each other to friendship or be friends till each has been found lovable and been trusted by each. Those who quickly show the marks of friendship to each other wish to be friends, but are not friends unless they both are lovable and know the fact; for a wish for friendship may arise quickly, but friendship does not.
…
The friendship of the good too and this alone is proof against slander; for it is not easy to trust any one talk about a man who has long been tested by oneself; and it is among good men that trust and the feeling that ‘he would never wrong me’ and all the other things that are demanded in true friendship are found. In the other kinds of friendship, however, there is nothing to prevent these evils arising. For men apply the name of friends even to those whose motive is utility, in which sense states are said to be friendly (for the alliances of states seem to aim at advantage), and to those who love each other for the sake of pleasure, in which sense children are called friends. Therefore we too ought perhaps to call such people friends, and say that there are several kinds of friendship-firstly and in the proper sense that of good men qua good, and by analogy the other kinds; for it is in virtue of something good and something akin to what is found in true friendship that they are friends, since even the pleasant is good for the lovers of pleasure. But these two kinds of friendship are not often united, nor do the same people become friends for the sake of utility and of pleasure; for things that are only incidentally connected are not often coupled together.
Barring the fact that love in this case indicates philia, but likely comes across sounding closer to eros due to our fallen language in this modern age, does this sound gay? Does it sounds womanly?
No. These are not friendships of men getting together to whine about their woes. These are friendships of men testing each other for shared virtue and working towards the mutual good.
This is manly friendship. This is what we men need to return to: a masculine view of friendship based around shared virtue and goals, rather than emotionalizing.
We need to start speaking of friendship in words that don’t sound faggy. We need to move the language of male friendship from that of a romance or an AA support-group to that of a warband. ‘Bonds of brotherhood’ and ‘shared virtue’ rather than ‘affection’ and ‘intimacy’ and ‘test’ and ‘shared suffering’ rather than ’emotional support’ and ’empathy’.
****
Now the question becomes, how do we retake male friendship?
We can’t on the cultural level, other than using masculine language for male friendship to reclaim manly love and friendship from homosexuals and women.
But you can do some things on a personal level. Start a gang.
First, you need to find some good men. If you’ve got some good, reliable friends already, that’s excellent. If you don’t, look through your church, your activities, your social groups, and find men of good character and virtue with whom to bond.
Try to avoid half-men, scalzified weiners, psychological eunuchs, pc nutjobs, those lacking virtue, emos,the easily offended, and the like.
Second, start some specifically manly activities together; exclude women from these activities. Some good ones are hunting, fishing, camping, shooting, poker, gaming, etc.
Third, when at these activities talk, but not just of girls, video games, and beer; talk of deeper things. Don’t get all emotional about it, but talk of philosophy, religion, metaphysics, goals, ambitions, virtue, politics,
Once you’ve gotten close to some men, you can talk of emotional things. Again, don’t get all sobby and faggy about it, but there’s nothing out of place with a matter-of-fact discussion of emotions that may be afflicting you once a close enough bond has been formed.
The goal is to build a solid group of men who have your back and whose back you have.
****
As for myself, some of us our in a book club; when my choice of book comes it will be the Way of Man, to help put the idea of forming a gang in explicit turns in my social circles. I already have a couple solid guys I’ve been friends with for over a decade and whom I’m close to. This will form the core of the gang and there’re others whom could be a part. Over the summer I tried to arrange days in the woods shooting to move some of my friends towards a more warband-esque grouping; it never turned out, but one of the core is planning to buy a gun and the other really wants to but hasn’t been able to on the planned days; others have expressed interest in shooting as well. So come spring, I should be able to get some days in the woods going, and maybe even convince a few to hunt with me next fall. But beside that, we’ve started fishing over summer, we go camping once a year, and we game regularly. So things look well in that respect.
****
So, go an do likewise. Read the Way of Man to develop an idea of masculine friendship, make some solid male friendships, and try to make those male friendships you do have into a stronger, deeper bond. Form your own gang, your own warband.
For friendship is important, and every man needs his comrades-in-arms.
The book is a theoretical discussion about manhood and what defines a masculinity. In terms of writing style, the book is written in an engaging and clear manner. It reads well and communicates effectively without slowing down as theoretical books are often wont to do. It is an enjoyable read.
The first couple chapters introduce the concept that “the way of men is the way of the gang”. Essentially, masculinity is defined through a man’s interactions within a small group of other men gathered together for resource acquisition and mutual security. Essentially, manliness was defined by man’s position in a small war band or hunting party.
From there he describes the four tactical virtues men that defines a man’s worthiness as a man within his gang: Strength, Courage, Mastery and Honour. He makes an excellent case for these virtues being the defining traits of masculinity and I would agree with him on his chosen traits. They represent what I’ve noticed masculinity is generally defined by.
After a discussion of the virtues, he writes of how “being good at being a man” differs from “being a good man”. The four tactical virtues are the virtues that define masculinity, on who demonstrates these virtues is good at being a man. Other virtues (piety, charity, temperance, righteousness, etc.) may make a man good, but do not necessarily make a man good at being a man. (I like the implicit acceptance of virtue ethics by this book).
This distinction is important and brings this book far above most other writings I’ve read on masculinity, which usually conflate being a man with the author’s own personal morality, often to results that don’t quite sit right. Christian writings on masculinity often conflate Christian morality for males with masculinity,excluding obviously masculine men who might not follow Christian morality from being a man. Game advocates often define masculinity through a male’s attractiveness to women making masculinity dependent on female approval and implicitly denying the masculinity of men who aren’t superficially psycho-socially dominant. Society as a whole usually either defines masculinity through anti-social thuggery, reducing masculinity to nothing more than the gratification of base urges and denying the masculinity of men dedicated to higher values, or the approved beta life path, making masculinity dependent on providing for women and denying the masculinity of those who don’t “man up”. It’s good to have someone define masculinity in a neutral way apart from the moral preconceptions of the author.
He then discusses the way of the gang in relation to civilization for a few chapters, with a chapter focusing on Rome in particular. As society becomes more civilized and peaceful the need for gangs decreases, so men redirect their gang activities into simulated (ex. playing sports or games), vicarious (ex. watching sports or war movies), or intellectual masculine (ex. economic or political competition). Men will be content in civilization as long he has sufficient redirection for gang activities, but increasingly our society is limiting men’s opportunities for participation in masculine activities.
He illustrates with a comparison of the Way of Women and the Way of Men through a comparison of Bonobo and Chimpanzee society, respectively. If men become too decadent and their opportunities for gang activities too few, civilization will become a “Bonobo Masturbation Society” where meaning and purpose are replaced by “fun”.
These chapters are excellent at explaining why men are in a crisis of meaning in our modern society despite being more prosperous than ever.
The last few chapters summarize the consequences of the previous discussions. Men have to choose whether to have civilization with access to a meaningless world of pleasure and fun, the Bonobo Masturbation Society, or a more meaningful society of the Way of Men. He discusses how reasserting the Way of Men is impossible in a democratic society and requires the collapse of prosperity, security, and globalism.
These chapters are rather bleak, as the only solution given to the modern malaise besetting men is collapse, but I can’t argue that it’s not true.
He then gives some advice on starting your own gang. This last chapter is the only part that may be practically applicable to your life, the rest of the book being a theoretical and philosophical discussion of masculinity.
Overall, this book is an excellent exploration of masculinity, and I think Donovan gets everything exactly right. This is simply the best book on masculinity I have read.
Recommendation:
If you are at all interested in men’s issues or masculinity (and you are reading a manosphere blog, so you probably are) or if you’ve ever wondered how to be man, read this book. In itself, it won’t really help you become a better man or improve your life, but it will give you the theory necessary to understand what you are missing, so you can begin to find solutions for yourself.