What Happened to Honor?
Under discussion: Honor: A History by James Bowman (Encounter Books, 2007)
What happened to honor in the West? And without honor -- or at least an honest understanding of it -- are we capable of facing the challenges of the 21st Century?
In Honor: A History, Bowman places these questions in a political context, as a clash between the old honor culture of the Islamic world and the anti-honor culture of the modern West. In this sense, his question is similar to the one Mark Steyn asks in America Alone. If Islam has all the attributes of what Osama Bin Laden famously called "a strong horse," will the pampered and polite social democracies of the West be able to survive its galloping onslaught?
This horse race bookends a rare and worthwhile exploration of the concept of honor itself, which is a confusing topic in the contemporary West where honorable ideals have been discredited as anti-modern, and the word "honor" has been reduced to a mere synonym for neutered, universal, non-hierarchical values like "goodness" or "honesty" or "integrity." The bumper sticker banality "honor diversity" renders the word honor a substitute for the verbs "value" or "esteem." While you can certainly follow the dilution of honor's meaning here, this is a world apart from a word once closely connected to glory won in battle.
MAN vs. “Person”
I recently took part in a "males only" workshop at a local private high school. It was an unlikely opportunity for an advocate of traditional masculine ideals, especially given the fact that the workshop was part of this fairly liberal school's yearly "Diversity Conference." I was thankful for the chance to get across some countering viewpoints. I shared the floor with a veteran leader of men's groups, and I knew we had different aims from the get-go, but I had the first hour.
To begin, I played the guys my favorite scene from The Outlaw Josey Wales -- the part where Wales rides up to the Comanche chief Ten Bears and bargains for peace.
There is iron in your words of death for all Comanche to see. And so, there is iron in your words of life. No signed paper can hold the iron. It must come from men.
There is iron in your words of death.
This is how civilization happened.
Agreements between men, backed by the threat of violence.
This is how men made this world.
Male Studies?
Wagner College on Staten Island will be hosting a conference on the subject of "Male Studies" this Wednesday, April 7. To learn more and find out how to participate, visit:
http://www.malestudies.org/
Some of the reactions to the conference I've seen so far have been bitchy and dismissive. Others have expressed anger, disgust and even confusion that anyone would even take an interest in the success or failure of males. Some find the idea that males -- who they've been taught to regard only as cruel oppressors -- may be suffering or struggling to be laughable no matter what evidence is presented.
Many strains of feminist thought regard men as if they were physically malformed women who are afflicted with a pathological superiority complex, and who are in need of immediate treatment and re-education so that they can function more or less in the same fashion and capacity as proper "healthy" women. (Though women may mercifully allow their "cured" males to open jars and take out the garbage once in a while).
Scapegoating American Boys to Excuse and Protect Jihadis
With shameless and shocking gall, Syrian-American author Alia Malek provided cover for domestic Jihadis by blaming American boys and American masculinity in her recent op-ed for The Christian Science Monitor.
Malek has admittedly made a career for herself as a left-wing apologist for Islam, exploiting Civil Rights Movement sentimentality to sweep anti-Islamicization sentiment under the rug and, one suspects, to prime America for the kind of "submission" to Mohammedans currently practiced by multiculturalist European governments. She begins with a brazen statement, based entirely on anti-male feminist propaganda:
American Jihadis are not a product of Islam. Their emergence is connected to issues of gender and a growing acceptance of violence in America.
The Hero Engine
On Sam Sheridan's The Fighter's Mind
If you want to study the engine of masculinity -- if you want to know what really drives men -- don't start at the junkyard. Yet, that's too often exactly where people who study men start. It's not that you can't learn anything from the rusted out, fragmented husk of a broken man, but it's always going to tell you a story about "what went wrong." You're not going to understand men if you only talk to the men who are failing, who are in therapy, who are angry at men, who aren't making it. And you aren't really getting the whole picture by crossing your legs, sliding your glasses down your nose and interviewing young men who are still figuring things out, all hopped up on testosterone, passionately reciting their manly mantras. You don't go to the student for enlightenment. You go to the teacher. You go to the man on the mountain. If you want to understand men, talk to the men who are good at being men. Talk to the men who other men worship. Talk to their heroes. Figure out how their engines run, and why they run so damn well.
Any honest, serious attempt to understand men should include a survey of sports writing and biographies of athletes -- the kind of men who men choose, organically and of their own free will, to put on pedestals. Sam Sheridan's The Fighter's Mind is as good a place as any to start, though to get your bearings I'd recommend reading his 2007 book A Fighter's Heart first. His running, informal bibliography found throughout the books should round out a solid reading list.
