"Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one." –Marcus Aurelius
I haven’t seen any of the old Disney movies – the pre-2000 movies I mean – in decades. But I had heard about them. Specifically I heard that these movies used to teach girls to be helpless princesses who need to be rescued by men, and that we needed more modern stories for our girls. …
Masculinity, and manliness, are two words that I hear thrown about by all sorts of people. Feminists, their opponents, and everyone in between use these words and use them differently. But there is a real meaning that is being forgotten and it’s an important distinction to make. Manliness and masculinity are not synonymous and we…
Recently, I was talking to a friend of mine. He’s getting married soon, and is getting a little tired of the process of planning the wedding. He told me that he’s not sure that it is worth it because he doesn’t know how much more he would enjoy the ceremony than simply eloping or doing…
I’d like to share some thoughts on the relationship a man has with rules throughout his life. How do we first encounter rules? What is the difference between a rule and a principal? What is the mark of a mature man in this context? Children start out without any rules or sense of boundaries, possibly…
I have no children, and my wife isn’t even pregnant yet. But we will start trying in 2020. And it’s interesting how this theoretical fatherhood is already having a big effect on my life. I don’t mean in terms of shopping for baby clothes. I mean in terms of my own identity and concerns. It’s…
Men are struggling in today’s world, with falling employment and education rates, and rising addiction and suicide rates. At the same time we’re being outspokenly cast as dangerous, predatory, and ‘oppressive’, which doesn’t help men find their place or confidence in their identity as men. So I fully support men’s groups that aim to help…
Let’s take a moment to talk about the state of men’s health, and who cares about it. Spoiler alert: the answer is that if we don’t care about ourselves, ‘society’ or the ‘government’ won’t care either. The state of men’s health today is showing some warning signs. Life expectancy is plateauing or declining, and is…
Some interesting studies have come out confirming that we are less male than our predecessors. The studies show that we have less testosterone than we did in the 1980s. A 20-, 40-, or 70-year-old person today has less testosterone than a person of the same age a generation ago. What happened and why should it…
What is left when honor is lost? — Publilius Syrus In this article I want to discuss a set of emotions we feel around our actions, and how they relate to what we do. We often misunderstand these powerful emotions both in terms of what they are and what causes them. This leads to emotional debate of…
Pacifism is the idea that violence is inherently wrong. Sometimes it is also expressed as the idea that ‘violence doesn’t solve anything’ or that violence creates more violence. This is sort of a perversion of the old ‘live by the sword, die by the sword’ wisdom. This is expressed individually by being afraid of conflict,…