part0006

“At the commencement, the noble caste was always the barbarian caste: their superiority did not consist first of all in their physical, but in their psychical power—they were more complete men (which at every point also implies the same as ‘more complete beasts’)…”

Absolute masculinity is a lodestar in the human mind—an untouchable navigational point indicating the farthest imaginable distance along a particular longitude mapping the way that men, as beasts, conceptualize their world. It represents a perfect form—the “most masculine”—a cluster of physical, behavioral and spiritual qualities that, in their most extreme expression, differentiate human males from human females.

The Way of Men leads toward this flickering and elusive point of absolute masculinity. This path of conflict, this never-ending challenge to demonstrate strength, courage and mastery, to win and defend honor, is a product of human evolution. Human masculinity is a hypertrophic development of the body and psyche in response to external pressure—to the looming threats of predation, intergroup conflict, environmental stress, and resource scarcity. In the absence of external pressure, masculinity either fails to develop in the first place, or slowly atrophies.

When people wonder if the men of their age are less manly — farther from the “most-masculine” — than the men who preceded them, this absence of development is generally explained by a corresponding absence of pressure.

The primary role of a man has always been to fight to defend or expand the perimeter of his group’s control, to build and maintain an ordered world within that perimeter, to venture beyond the warmth and safety of its nuclear fires to secure necessary resources — and to hunt and kill animals to feed his people.

Today, hunting is a luxury, not a necessity. It’s an expensive hobby. No man needs to hunt game for a living. He can purchase farmed meat, killed by strangers, far more easily and in most cases in exchange for fewer assets.

A good citizen of the Empire need not venture far to secure the resources necessary for his own survival or the survival of his dependents. There is no dangerous unknown he must travel through. He travels public transit or drives a car down well-travelled roads and highways to work in offices and factories and stores, in most cases performing tasks that could be done better by a machine if it were more cost effective. The only dangers he faces are social dangers — the threat of being accused of some trending moral infraction by ambitious nihilists, self-aggrandizing shrews or their shrinking cuckold yes-ma’ams.

Even this job-hunting is in many cases only necessary as a matter of tenuous custom. To those unconcerned by the withering social disgrace associated with collecting government assistance, a pauper’s leisure can be ensured for a lifetime by submitting the proper forms. This appealing grift need only be interrupted by provisional periods of symbolic employment.

The role of men has always been to deal with violence, but the majority of men living well outside of “failed state” no-go zones will never experience the threat of real violence from anyone but the police — to whom they have outsourced their roles unwittingly, helplessly and without consent. The bodies of citizens are continuously scanned by an unknowable number of surveillance cameras designed to deter or prosecute acts of interpersonal civilian violence. A Byzantine and equally unknowable system of laws regulate every aspect of human existence. The streets and highways are swarming with law enforcement officers who restlessly issue petty citations as they wait for opportunities to cuff up any real or perceived threat to public safety and shuffle offenders through corrupt courts into concrete memory holes.

The state isn’t a threat that you can “fight off” in the way a man would fight off a raiding clan. Few of the same principles or tactics apply to protecting yourself against it. All of the strength, courage, mastery and honor in the world are irrelevant in this conflict. When the red eye in the sky locks in on a target, it will just keep sending more drones until even the best men are overwhelmed and subdued. This sense of utter futility helps many men rationalize their undeveloped virility as a way of making peace with powerlessness. Why bother?

The argument made most frequently by those who have something to gain by encouraging men to allow themselves to become weaker, more passive and more sedentary — state agencies, entertainment and luxury marketers, and of course feminists — is that the tactical virtues associated with male tribal strength culture are no longer necessary. That, in fact, masculinity is no longer necessary. And…they are correct.

Masculinity is now optional. If you are an adult male living and working within the boundaries of this globalized commercial police state, no one is forcing you to test yourself against other men. No one is forcing you to become stronger than you already are, effortlessly, as a random product of genetics and circumstance. In most cases people would prefer that you simply relax. Your irritating obsession with self-realization will just make everyone else uncomfortable.

While it is possible that you may find yourself in a situation where you will have to step up and be a man, it is more likely that you won’t — and entirely possible that if you do, you may well be penalized for it.

Men who spend no time training the metaphorical muscle of masculinity like to believe that they would be able to step in and be a hero if some extreme scenario demanded it, but this is for the most part a fantasy sold to them by the entertainment industry. Men who work in call centers and spend all of their free time watching television or playing video games are not going to fight off any man who has experience with violence. They’re not going to save the world, or their girlfriends, or even themselves.

Many advocates of masculinity, especially self-defense instructors, recognize this reality and ask, “why would you want to be that guy who is helpless and utterly dependent in an emergency?” No man is truly comfortable thinking of himself this way. However, while it is always better to be prepared than it is to be unprepared, most men who do nothing will be fine. Nothing is going to happen to them. The statistics favor the lazy. Men today are free to be weak and afraid and inept in all of the ways that their ancestors were not.

Those who say that masculinity is no longer necessary are correct.

Those who say that circumstances no longer require the average man to be stronger than the average woman are correct.

Those who say that average men don’t need to be any more courageous than average women are correct.

There is no particular set of skills that average men need to acquire more than average women in order to survive.

Honor, the fourth tactical virtue, is dead in any broad cultural sense, so maintaining a commitment to some antiquated honor code that most people don’t recognize or value — let alone adhere to — is perceived as being quaintly eccentric, if not “problematic” or threatening in some abstract way.

While it is true that masculinity is not necessary — that it is not needed or required of most men by society and they don’t need it to survive — to say that the pursuit of masculinity should be abandoned because it is not necessary is merely an argument from utility. The utilitarian argument against masculinity presupposes that the only legitimate reasons for living, behaving and acting in a particular way are either that one is forced to do so by external circumstances, or coerced to do so by a group. If you accept this argument, you accept that you believe it is most important to you to be useful.

But, useful to whom? To humankind? To “society,” whatever that means? And if so, what are the goals of this society that demands your usefulness? Do you you even know? What are its boundaries and defining beliefs? What is its telos ? Where is it going? Why are you helping? Are you merely a useful…idiot?

To merely want to be useful — this is highest value of a man who has resigned himself to the life of a slave.

“How may I be of service, master?”

This is, of course, the human norm. Keep your head down and at least make yourself useful, so that no one will bother you. Shut up and do what you’re told and you’ll get your promised pittance and pussy.

In the Empire of Nothing, defined by its cosmopolitan commercialism and its institutionalized hatred of exclusive identities, to be a good citizen and a good man is to extend what might have been your reciprocal commitment to family, tribe or nation to every living, breathing human being on the planet. To place yourself in the service of everyone, everywhere. Billions of total strangers. And if we are to owe everyone everything, we really don’t owe anyone a damn thing.

We no longer live in traditional societies or caste societies. Most of us have no “people” beyond our immediate families. Our purpose is not predetermined. We are free to choose our purpose, and if we so chose, to offer our service freely.

Tools are useful. I am a man. I am not alive to be useful. I’m alive to live and to thrive.

I am not a slave. If you want me to do what you believe is necessary — convince me that it is also in my best interest, or bargain with me, or make me an offer I can’t refuse. I’m not going to change who I am or invert my own values because someone, somewhere — some stranger theorizing about what is “necessary” for society — tells me to, while offering me absolutely nothing of value to me in return.

Great men are not remembered for being prudent or for doing what they were told was necessary. They are remembered for going above and beyond what is merely necessary for survival. Great men are remembered for decisive vision and daring action. They are remembered for founding new orders, building new worlds around themselves, and creating great beauty.

Utility is a god for desiccated souls. It’s a baseline. A bare minimum standard. It’s what you settle for. It’s “good enough.”

Great men are not motivated by what is necessary, satisfactory or practical. Great men are motivated by what is…great. That which is necessary merely facilitates beauty and greatness.

Masculinity is no longer necessary. Today, masculinity is a hammer seeking a nail in a house that’s already been built.

But art isn’t necessary, either. Music isn’t necessary. No one needs art or music to survive. Fine food isn’t necessary. None of the castles, cathedrals, pyramids or exultant wonders of the world that men cross oceans to behold were, strictly speaking, necessary. Humans can survive in prisons and cardboard shanties, eating flavorless gruel, while they perform repetitive, meaningless tasks in joyless silence.

Arguments from mere utility reduce human life to its lowest and most basic form, excluding the aspects of humanity that reach beyond what is merely necessary to create the extraordinary lives, achievements, monuments, works and legacies that inspire us and spark our imaginations. They reduce us to rats in cages, monkeys, slaves.

When someone argues that masculinity is no longer necessary, what they are saying is that your masculinity is not necessary to them, and that it inconveniences or threatens them in some way, so you should consciously limit your potential to allow them to realize their potential or find joy and fulfillment in whatever way pleases them. If you confine yourself to this spiritual reservation willingly and of your own free will, you deserve the tiny, wasted life of subservience and dishonor that your owners have assigned to you.

For generations, feminists have been repeating their platitude that “masculinity is a mask.” Masculine men have been accused of being inauthentic, and masculinity has been called “fragile,’ precisely because, in order for it to actualize, masculinity must be aroused, instigated and fostered. It is argued that because masculinity must be forced, and men must force themselves to be masculine, masculinity is somehow fake and all masculine men are just desperate, troubled phonies.

This line of reasoning only appeals to those who feel inconvenienced or burdened by masculinity in some way. Men who worry that they will always be found lacking by other men no matter how hard they try can comfort themselves by saying that more masculine men are just “faking it” because they are “insecure.” Women who recognize that masculine hierarchical thinking is a threat to feminist egalitarian aims, or who feel dismissed or undervalued by masculine men, will naturally be inclined to emasculate and devalue them in turn by talking about how fragile, forced and “toxic” masculinity seems to be from their perspective. Bureaucracies that find themselves inconvenienced by the chaos and disruption created by masculine conflict, concerned about the possibility of violent revolt, or which simply prefer a more submissive and spinally pliable population — will also be motivated to repudiate masculinity as an artificial, outmoded and cancerous aberration.

While it is true that masculinity must be forced and fostered, this is also true of any human potentiality. One must be forced, or force oneself, to learn a language or play an instrument or solve mathematical equations. No one calls an accomplished dancer, painter, athlete or singer a phony because it took years of disciplined practice and some kind of nurturing environment for them to become what they are — for them to develop their talents to their full potential. On the contrary, to ignore these talents is considered a tragedy.

It is undeniable that, with disciplined practice, complementary nutrition, a satisfactory environment and the benefit of some knowledge gained from mentors or peers, most men can become substantially stronger and more physically capable than they would have been otherwise.

It is also true that when a man is challenged by other men on a regular basis, he will become more skilled in negotiating those challenges. When a man is continually dared to take small risks, and overcomes them, he will become more confident in his ability to take risks. When a man gets punched in the face and it isn’t as bad as he thought it would be, he can proceed in life less afraid of getting punched in the face.

When a man has learned that he can master a skill, he will become more confident that he can master other skills.

When a man has made a difficult decision — done something he didn’t want to do — to earn or maintain the respect, admiration and loyalty of his in-group peers, he will become more comfortable with his sense of belonging to the group, his own identity, his own principles and his ability to discipline himself according to those principles.

The tactical virtues of strength, courage, mastery and honor are “talents” — human aptitudes that are not exclusive to, but specific to masculinity and the holistic experience of being a man. To work to realize the potential of these aptitudes through disciplined practice, to seek an environment in which these potentials can be tested and fostered — this is no more artificial than working to develop any other aptitude or talent.

Determining whether developing these attributes in men is good or bad is a value judgement and that valuation depends entirely on one’s interests. In making the determination as to whether or not those talents should be developed, the fact that they must be developed to flourish is irrelevant. When asking, “should a man try to become stronger,” it makes no sense to say he shouldn’t become stronger if he has to try.

Because he has not been coerced by external forces to choose this path, the man who chooses the way of men today is doing so of his own volition. He is choosing masculinity as a value for himself because he wants to. He is making a noble choice — in the Nietzschean sense — not as a reaction to external influence, but guided by his own internal sense of worthiness and the confidence in his own ability to determine what is bad, what is good, what is better, and what is best.

Unsatisfied with simply being male and inhabiting a male body, he chooses the way of men — that rigorous path toward the impossibly far North of male — to invoke and manifest within himself a higher form and a more advanced, more perfect expression of his masculine potential.

To the man who is not forced to become more masculine, but who of his own free will forces himself to seek out that route of rigor, masculinity is not a necessity, but a philosophical virtue. The word virtue itself comes from the Latin virtus , which roughly meant “manliness” — specifically the strength and courage-oriented martial manliness of the early Romans.

As with “honor,” the conceptual volume contained within the verbal vessel of “virtue” has been expanded through a process of progressive dilution. To many, “honor” and “virtue” are synonymous with positive moral values, however they are defined by a given group in a particular context. In casual conversation, a “virtue” has come to mean almost anything any person has determined to be “good” behavior. In choosing virtus as a virtue, the meaning of the word “virtue” is distilled down and returned to its purest essence — virtue as virility.

The man who chooses virility as a virtue because he wants to has a different set of motivations than the man who is forced through the gauntlet of manliness by circumstance or as a matter of tradition.

The man who is forced to become stronger to survive merely did what he had to do.

The man of tradition had no choice other than to become a man — he didn’t have to think much about it. The need to define and understand masculinity and articulate its virtues would seem strange to him — like someone standing up in the middle of an advanced math class and awkwardly stating that two plus two equals four.

In the countryside, in small towns, in harsh environments and on farms, some men still inherit a visceral understanding of masculinity. However, it is impossible to remain completely sheltered from the androgynous drone ethos advanced throughout The Empire of Nothing. At some point, even those few remaining men to whom masculinity seems like a default setting will have to choose a path against the estrogenic tide for themselves, or for their sons.

To choose the way of men independently is an intentional act of self-initiation, a voluntary spiritual path free from the demands of utility and the obligation of service. Choosing the path of strength and pressure is the act of a self-maker and self-master, a creator of values, a restless barbarian seeking what can only be found beyond the boundaries of the bare minimum.

To call out virility as a virtue — for its own sake — is to say, “I am a man, and that is good, because I love myself and my life and my fate and I want to be more of what I am, for my own sake.”