House of Eratosthenes

Phil says we’ve become a culture of wimps, and if you’ve been reading the pages around here for any length of time at all you know I agree. I don’t think there’s any way to argue against this, except by engaging in some weird rhetoric to try to change the subject (that’s all I’ve seen anyone do about this…like…ever). And Lord knows I’ve beaten that dead horse to death, so it doesn’t need much more discussion.

What does intrigue and titillate and demand debate — is why. Or to word it more precisely, how. How did we get here.

I think it started in the twentieth century, with gun control measures popping up all across the world’s stage. Why do I lay the blame at the feet of gun control? Why is gun control, in my mind, the great-granddaddy of all wimp-ness?

Well, what is gun control?

It is an attempt to rid a society of undesirable behavior, by ridding that society of the tools associated with that undesirable behavior.

As I said a few days ago,

We attempt to eradicate human-on-human assault and harm, by eradicating or neutralizing those among us best equipped to bring it on — men. It is the human race’s oldest failing…getting rid of an act, by getting rid of the tool most commonly used to implement it.

The social pressure we have brought down upon people who would otherwise behave with a little bit more machismo — and, it should be said, they are not all men — is a natural outgrowth. It is unavoidable. You de-claw a cat so that the cat can no longer scratch…the kitty can still bite you, and when it draws blood that way, you are naturally going to be asking your vet about tooth removal. It is such an inevitability, you might as well be making an appointment to take care of all of it at once.

We take away the guns.

We do this to get rid of gun violence.

When it still happens, we will reach for the kitty’s teeth. Which is manhood itself. And so the de-toothing has begun. We would never in a million years stoop to the level of telling our boys, “if you want to live in this society, and you want to be granted the renewable privilege of continuing to live…you had better demonstrate to us, on an ongoing basis, that your masculinity is reigned in, brought to heel, diluted to a concentration we find acceptable.” We’d never dream of saying such a thing. But that is the message that has been sent. And that is the message received.

It starts out as something reasonable: You can’t smack your classmate in the back of the head while the teacher is talking. It’s about disrupting the class, which means — you also can’t shove, you can’t yell, you can’t pass notes and you can’t whisper. And then…it is not about disrupting the class. You can’t play tag at recess. You can’t keep score during a soccer game. You can’t engage in any competitive sport.

From there, it is a cancer upon our culture. Male action heroes in movies can’t disarm bombs anymore; they stand around and mumble things about being supportive while the heroines make their “choices.” Accomplishing something — even stopping something really bad from happening, that would bring harm to the weak and defenseless — is far less desirable as an ideal, than showing off that harmlessness.

Because the harmlessness, now, is a license to being allowed to live in society on an ongoing basis. And it is renewable, because it expires. Frequently.

we’ll look for the most masculine among the femininity that remains. And so to avoid “friendly fire,” those who still stumble on, will start to showcase their harmlessness. They’ll become more inventive in this endeavor, as society upholds an ever-ascending standard of said harmlessness. The question will be — what have you done to show off how harmless you are this year? And answering it, will be the key to continuing survival.

I blame gun control, because gun control is based on the axiom that if you have the means to bring harm, it’s just a matter of time before you bring harm to me. Another component to this axiom is that somehow, it’s an impossibility for you to harm others who would do me harm, to bring me a vigorous defense you might think I deserve. In other words, your capacity to do harm is thought — somehow — to be damaging to me, and never beneficial to me.

There’s a kind of a Martin Niemoller aspect to this: They came for the guys who had guns and nobody spoke up. Then they came for the big guys who could hide pens and sandwiches in their beards, with big ol’ beer guts hanging over their belts and nobody spoke up…then they came for the younger guys with their foot-long eyebrows scrunched up at the ceiling, who spoke like relatively harmless-looking WB Network stars, being “supportive” of their girlfriends, and never talking in a pitch more than a few notes below Middle C…and nobody spoke up…then they came for the nerds with biceps the size of rake handles, who kept on getting beaten up anyway…and nobody spoke up.

Then after the men are all carted off, they look around and notice that now that everyone’s female, some females are more female than other females. If warfare and violent crime have not yet been eradicated — and those two will never be — we’ll have to keep on carving away at humanity, at the women, starting with the most butch, and working our way toward the other flavorings. Once masculinity and wherewithal is a crime, you can’t ever go back. Not even a step.

Now, we’re not sending people to camps or lopping off heads. We’re just defining attributes to human behavior and development…things we’d like watered down.

But isn’t that conceptually the same thing? It leaves us in the same position. People get the feeling they can’t continue to live in society unless they act more-like-this, less-like-that. And so they dutifully conform. Maybe it happens quickly, maybe it happens slowly; but the point is, it only proceeds in one direction, it never retreats, it never stands still.

We have to keep getting wimpier with each generation that comes along. It has to do with becoming “civilized”…and no matter what we’ve accomplished to date, it’s never enough.

I sorta disagree on the whole wimp thing, Morgan, and think you need to get out more. By “sorta” I mean, yeah…Blue-State America is wimpy, indeed. But Red-State America most certainly ISN’T. One can further slice and dice this by viewing the urban/rural divide. Same thing, in spades. But Red America is essentially rural America, so I’m being redundant. I agree on your gun-control theory, FWIW.

But, Hey! There’s damned few wimps in my part of the country, and I like it…no, LOVE it… that way. A small example: One of the sponsors/underwriters of my local PBS station is a small state college down Roswell way. The tag-line in their “support” PSA is “Such-and-such state college…Where RODEO is our ONLY sport.” There ain’t no wimps in rodeo, ya know. And damned few elsewhere in NM, for that matter… Frickin’Taos (all one word) aside.
- Buck | 05/28/2008 @ 14:41
New Mexico’s a red state? Next to the Golden State, I imagine just about anything is. We’re getting ready to lay a surcharge down on plastic grocery sacks here.

I’m going to have to go ahead & agree on the getting out more. You get hold of a dead animal to throw on the grill, and I’ll bring the cold suds.
- mkfreeberg | 05/28/2008 @ 16:10
Since I am raising two boys with my wife, I am concerned about this (though she is not).

Please consider that societal demand for college is another angle here. When you delay real life, you delay maturity and the positive aspects of being a male. When you demand college, you delay real life (whether intended or not). When you favor education over work experience, you discount the manly attributes of production, honor, pride and use of skills. College has so little use of skills; it is now set up for the scholar to listen and to absorb. That sort of passive learning can have a toll on someone who has a drive to do and to learn from doing. With schools removing recess and with the “sit still for a minimum of 6 hours” drilled into you until past the age of 21 (now that colleges effectively don’t let you graduate in four years), the manly attributes you’re born with are discouraged until they are extinct. Ayn Rand would have us retreat to some locale in Colorado, I suppose.
- wch | 05/28/2008 @ 16:13
Words are the most effective weapons in any warrior’s quiver, and yours are quite sharp and strike targets with deadly accuracy.

Today’s post displays superior marksmanship by hitting the almost un-seen at an enormous distance. Patience, passion, practice, the most manly of virtues, employed in good works.

Macho…Machismo…The Spanish are good at murder and plunder.

The “Art” of being manly…What!!! Lipstick and dresses are good for boys , only if girls are wearing them.

Metrosexual…Another girl-friendly vision of who is Mr. Right. Yeah…they decide, choice and all that.

Man’s Man…An out-dated symbol of white male opression that must never be refered to, but must be exterminated forthwith, for the common good, by any means, as necessary.

There it is, stamp out the individual. Girls are so much better at co-operating, don’t-cha-know, let’s do it their way…OK.

The magnificant differences between man/woman, endowed by our biology, necessary to our survival, and codified in the Laws of Nature, shall be struck down. Our conceit, like federal judges, says: “Yes We Can!”

You, me, your post, and all the normal, healthy, mansculine men that will never read it say: “No You Can’t.”

“pick up your hatchets, boys, it’s going to be a long night”
- Mr. Hatchetman | 05/28/2008 @ 16:54
Wonder what size town Buck lives in?

Looking at the county by county election maps from the last two elections, it’s very apparent that the higher the population density an area has, the more likely it is to be “blue”. Multiply that by the obvious coefficient (population itself) and this is why “reds” are barely hanging on right now. Areas with high population density lean blue and have a lot of voters to weight that leaning.

Note that even the Golden State has a lot of red outside the counties with the big cities in it. It’s the individualists vs the collectivists.

A long long time ago (yeah, before the music died) when you went to college you were just an idiot until they handed you the paper.

At some point in the past 50 years, liberals in the college establishment enlisted students into “activism” and fed their impressionable minds with things to think and things to say and patted their heads for saying them.

In general, it was a good thing to postpone “real life” when college was about learning stuff from people who knew more than you did.

But now it’s about learning doctrine from people who have a piece of paper that used to mean that you knew more than others. Now it just means you successfully parrotted what the Prof standing in front of the class told you to think.

Ah, to kick back with Morgan and Buck over some charred meat and fresh suds, on an outdoor deck out west. Maybe with a pistol for each belt, yeah.

It don’t get any better than that.

Don’t suppose either of you ever toke the occasional cigar? 😉
- philmon | 05/28/2008 @ 22:29
Wonder what size town Buck lives in?

According to our “Welcome to Portales” sign…12,000 friendly folks and three or four old grouches, of which I’m one. Clovis, about 25 miles away, has 30,000+ souls. And we’re VERY agricultural here, with the exception of Eastern NM U, which is littered with moonbats…but they maintain the lowest of low profiles. It’s a health and safety issue for them, I think.

I agree, Phil: some big steaks and a few beers before and after would be VERY cool! And I’d share one of my Spanish Rosados with ya, too.
- Buck | 05/29/2008 @ 17:33

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Culture of WimpsWednesday, May 28th, 2008

Culture of Wimps
Wednesday, May 28th, 2008