I Goddamn Love Classic Masculinity
An ode to being a man
What you’ll get from this article: A perspective on how to achieve a sense of purpose while being classically masculine.
Note: No AI was used to write, edit, or otherwise modify this article.
Masculinity is creation of reality, the act of taking what is inside of you and bringing it outside of you. Femininity is the inverse, taking what the world is, and bringing it inside of you. The latter is affected, and the former affects.
While I don’t remember the original source of this construct, my belief in it has solidified over time.
Both are necessary to have a high quality human existence, because femininity is how we grow as humans, and masculinity is how we utilize that growth. Letting yourself be affected by things is adding marks to the blank canvas of our brains, taking pieces of the world all throughout your life and synthesizing them into the composite of your personality. Then you take all of those impressions, perspectives, and learnings, synthesize them, and turn them into action to affect the environment.
To sum it up, masculinity is imposing your will onto the world. Masculinity is the creation of physical reality. It is informed and nurtured by femininity. And it comes in two flavors: Oppressive masculinity and constructive masculinity.
Oppressive masculinity (OM) is narcissistic, viewing people and other entities as tools to conform to the oppressor’s bidding. This is the warmonger, the whip-cracker, the aggressive side of masculinity that aligns everything and everyone on the other side of a line, drawn right beneath his feet. “They are below me, and thus exist in order to serve my needs”, he thinks, so he has no trouble using up people and resources, leaving the world with less. OM is metabolic, and operates primarily to break things down.
Men who manifest oppressive masculinity run the gamut from ‘weakness wrapped in aggression’ to ‘actually just a bad, bad dude’, and we all have a seed of it within us, which may bloom in the right circumstances.
The balancing force is constructive masculinity (CM), which does the opposite of using up people and resources, by instead providing more in the world. More life in the people they encounter, more resources, more opportunity, an exponential effect that makes constructive masculinity a growing virtuous cycle. CM is anabolic, building things up from constituent parts.
Constructive masculinity changes reality around it by building bridges across rivers, by providing shelter and guidance for those in need, by learning more to educating others, and most importantly, by upholding a set of standards required for respect.
Respect is the currency of constructive masculinity. For any males, it’s the quick downward head nod. The acknowledgement that you are a force of will. The affirmation that other men see you as worthy of walking among the ranks.
Respect is what you gain when you provide value to others.
Feeling valuable is intoxicating. Being perceived as ‘having value’ is so enthralling to the heart of a man that it shines a light directly at the core of existential dread and hopeless drifting, dissolving the shadow and replacing it with Purpose. To have another human, especially one you care about, look at you exactly as you are and be grateful that you exist exactly as you do, is the height of existence.
Because deep down, we all know that our flame of life will eventually flicker out, but knowing that our flame helped to guide another means that our fire lives on, mingled with the flame of another, providing them light.
Service is the ultimate rebellion against dying.
A few caveats here- 1) Respect for a false version of yourself is never gratifying, you cannot fake value; and 2) service without gratitude will soon peter out, recognize that it is human to want to be acknowledged for your effort.
Being rich is an example of non-gratifying respect, because people do not see you. They see what you have, and that has very little to do with you. In fact, they may never even really see you at all! And how can they appreciate you without even acknowledging your intrinsic existence? For those of you who are trying to gain respect through external symbolism alone (money, clothes, etc), know this: nothing about the individual you is special here. You are just a vessel for the other thing, and the thing is getting the respect. If you want to be respected for your clothes, then design the clothes or the outfits and be respected for your insight and inspirations. Bring your inner self into the outer world and create the reality of your clothes. Manifest yourself into your garments, so that when people see your clothes, they see your creation.
Additionally, performing service without gratitude from others is people seeing the act you perform, but not seeing you. Public supporting careers (police, teachers, doctors, etc) can have especially high levels of demand without enough gratitude from people to balance it, and thus the service providers become jaded to the endless chasm of need to be filled, without ever being seen as the one doing the filling. If you are baking cookies to hand out every day, but no one looks you in the eye to thank you as they silently take them and rush off, you will never be seen or feel validated. The transaction stops at the cookie. Be honest with yourself as a human as to whether validation of your individual value is necessary, or if you can do with providing for the thankless forever. If you can, then you are a better man than I am, but I enjoy the connection of recognized service, at least to some extent. Admit it to yourself and be ok with it. I would rather have someone do good in the world and want attention for it than someone who doesn’t do good at all or gets burnt out from providing value.
To summarize and bring it into your own life:
Constructive Masculinity is the act of creation and influence over reality, in an additive and positive way.
Being recognized for your Constructive Masculinity is how ethical men feel Purpose.
So how do you find your version of Constructive Masculinity?
There are no right paths, but here are some benchmarks to serve as a loose guide:
Examine yourself over time to determine what you really care about. When you think about caring, monitor for consistency of caring, rather than intensity of caring. The things you care about every day for years on end. Think of how you affect the world and what part of it seems to satisfy you over and over again, even lightly. Is it a freshly mowed lawn? Is it connecting a friend to another friend? Is it solving a math equation? Whatever it may be, that consistent feeling of satisfaction for having affected the world to your criteria is a clue to possible purpose. Add several purposes together, find the overarching way they connect, and aim to use that link to provide value in someone’s life.
Choose a path very consciously, then stick with it. I said ‘possible purpose’ above, because you have the capacity for many lives within you. But if you focus too widely, you never get depth. You must have the courage to choose one and stick with it, at least for long enough to grow within your choice. Ambivalence will only cause you to half-ass it and waste your own time. You have no idea how much value you can add until you see what you are capable of when you focus. See what your maximum value is through dedication to your craft, see how people react to that, then assess. Does this path give you Purpose now that you know what you are capable of within it?
Share your value with the world, with no expectations. At the early stages, you are acting as a scientist, experimenting to see what value creation looks like. The first rule of building a new company is to get user feedback, and then build for the patterns that you discover. This is the same principle. Do not immediately put your ego into your work, and hinge your self-evaluation on your own biases. Remember, the goal is to provide value to others, which is contingent on solving their problems, in the real world. If it doesn’t, you tweak it until it does, and if you stay on the path long enough, you will undoubtedly figure it out.
This value also extends to every facet of your life.
Be in good shape, because a fit body serves the world better. The more you can lift, the more you can assist people you care about.
The more mentally healthy you are, the more you can shoulder the burden of others and set the tone of the environment around you.
The more socially confident you are, the more you put others at ease and improve their experience.
The more business skills you have, the more you can give tools and opportunity to those that you care about.
The better your relationship is, the higher quality of life for your partner, and the standard you set for others to also have fulfilling relationships remains high.
Etc, etc.
Masculinity is a tool for creation and progress, with a clear social benchmark, and becomes more fulfilling the more you work at it.
Being strong feels good. Providing value feels great. Respecting yourself and what you provide to the world is peak.
So go forth and be a man. A Constructively Masculine man.