On Manhood and a Podcast Review
I listened to podcast on masculinity from a couple philosophers, Spencer Klavan and Michael Millerman on the Jack Murphy podcast. I don’t know Klavan, don’t care for Murphy, but I do like Millerman’s philosophy videos.
Masculinity is a subject close to my heart. It’s been slandered to hell and fought against since before any of us were born. Most boys are not learning about true masculinity anymore. They’re not learning from their fathers or state educators. This is to a massive detriment in the mental well-being of these boys and society as a whole.
Most of the teaching of manliness that’s acceptable in this culture amounts to how to be a “good man.” But it’s phrased in the way of how you be a good man in this gay culture. How can you be a better ally to the people that hate you?
I was excited to listen to this podcast to see what they had to say, but it ended up being far more philosophical than necessary to the discussion. The discussion watered down to the same idea of the “good man.” Granted, their ideas of the good man are a lot closer to what the ancients intended compared to a normie’s idea.
When teaching young men and boys about manhood, it should be how they can be good at being a man — not how to be a good man.
Jack Donovan correctly recognized, it ain’t about being a good man. It’s about how you can be good at being a man. This is an important distinction and the answer isn’t immediately recognizable.
The podcast opened up going straight to the idea of virtue — manly excellence — as the ancients understood the term. Their own understanding of virtue however, was geared more towards ideas like courage and integrity. Now courage is absolutely a part of the manly equation, but philosophers tend to convolute the subject into a complicated mess and those interested in masculinity are left confused as fuck.
Virtue as a concept is a subjective value that’s different from one culture and time, to the next. Virtue as the moderns understand it is better described as “goodness.” Whereas more ancient men understood the idea of virtue as manliness.
Virtue and good man are concepts that have been taken over by the enemies of men looking to demonize and destroy manhood. Their reason for this is malevolence masked as justice. Any real conversation about what it means to be a man must forego these concepts in the spirit of leading young men down the right path.
Manhood is an eternal concept and you can find it in every powerful culture from the beginning.
To really understand what it means to be a man, you have to strip away all the complexities of modern life. What did a male in a primitive tribe have to be to be considered good at being a man? What did he have to do in order to help the group survive?
Every culture today originated from these first men who were small tribes, gangs, brotherhoods, and mannerbunds. A man today who is looking to be good at being a man will require the same values. Perhaps, the intensities will be lessened as we live in a different time, but the values are eternal.
I think almost every serious thinker in masculinity would put strength and courage as two of those values the first men needed. There also must be value these men brought to each other. The first men depended on each other to survive and this dependance is where we get the concepts of honor and shame as well as friendship(or the brotherhood).
In ancient times the importance of friendship can’t be understated either. I think the mother of Andrew Jackson phrased in best in a letter she left to her son before her death, “Andrew, if I should not see you again, I wish you to remember and treasure up some things I have already said to you; in this world, you will have to make your own way. To do that you must have friends.”
Another important value is the idea of excellence. The goal is to be the best at what you do, to be a net positive to your mannerbund or tribe. The weak in ancient cultures were conquered and their bloodlines scraped from existence. There had to be this drive to be good at what you do. The Greeks called this arete while the Romans called it virtus.
The last value is something that’s been described in many different ways.
It’s the driving force of mankind. It’s what men were made to do. Men are the R&D arm of mankind. They’re meant to venture out into the threshold and test their ideas against nature. This driving force is what Nietzsche called the Will to Power.
I’ve also seen it described as the Primordial Will, the Will to Fight and even just the Will to Life. Another way I like to describe it is Barbaric Vitalism. It’s a zest for life, for power and glory. It’s something that’s developed as a man tests himself against nature.
Barbaric Vitalism is the Romans refusing to surrender after the massacre at Cannae or before that, Hannibal doing the impossible by crossing the alps. It’s Conan the Barbarian strangling the Aquilonian King at the foot of his throne. It’s the will to win. To find victory from the brink of defeat.
It’s a feeling few modern men have felt because society does everything in its power to stifle it. Modern education pummels manly intuition. It strives to make men hate their very nature.
Their masculinity talk wasn’t all I hoped for, but there is value I took from the podcast.
There was too much dwelling on what was considered men then and now, as well as too much emphasis on the concept of virtue. I think it was Millerman who talked about how Socrates made the argument that justice did no harm that I didn’t agree with.
That’s another subject which I think relates more to nature than being a man. Nature is unfair and violence itself is a part of nature. Men in nature who want to be good at being men must become dangerous and brutal.
There was one part of the podcast I thought was valuable. They were talking about how modern society is actively trying to feminize boys and it was Klavan who gave a great example of how this same strategy had been done before in Ancient Greeks by a tyrant named Aristodemus.
Aristodemus tried to stop future uprisings against him by teaching the youth of his city to be more like girls. This attempt eventually failed, but Klavan said this is likely where our elite got the idea on how to feminize the men of the west, only this time the elite believe it will work because they have all the advances of science on their side.
I believe the answers to our problems today are in the past. Anything being done today has already been done before. This tidbit just more confirmation of this.
Even our elites look to the past for the answers to their problems. They want you to focus on the optimism and possibilities of science. To make it the new religion for the new age. The answers to combatting this is returning to nature, to what the ancients already faced and conquered.
The wisdom has always been in the past.