A lot of men aren’t interested in being patriarchs anymore. They’re forever teenagers. Just want to have sex all the time and socialise with their friends. They’re not building anything. They’re not sacrificing anything. There’s no greater goal. It’s just perpetual adolescence.

Just pleasure seeking for its own sake – at the cost of everything else. Hedonistic materialism as the ultimate value. A spiralling path to nowhere that consumes many years, a journey full of exhilaration that leads to a destination comprised of emptiness.

A modern day malady.

So it strikes me there are different classes of men, who can be differentiated by their connection to the transcendent as marked by their willingness to sacrifice. Call this metric “heroism” – the desire to transcend one’s self by living for something greater than the self.

Heroes + extreme individualists thus inhabit opposite sides of a spectrum. The former are rooted in something greater than themselves, whilst the latter live only for themselves. One plants a tree to provide shade he won’t enjoy, the other logs forests so he can party in Cancun.

Extreme individualism, marked by irreligiosity + hedonism is the ultimate boomerism.

It is the sacrifice of everything else for the temporary indulgence of the self, rather than the sacrifice of the self for the long-term improvement of everything else

Boomers don’t plant trees.

In every great story that resonates deeply within the masculine psyche, is the archetype of the hero – a king of sorts, who combines the intellect of a magician with the ferocity of a warrior.

What does a king care for? His kingdom, his nation, his people. It’s never about him.

In the Christian tradition, Jesus is the symbolic representation of this archetypal meta hero. A man who lives for anything but himself, the ultimate symbol of sacrifice, glorified for what he achieved for living in spite of himself, rather than for himself – just as a king would

Not all men are destined for greatness, but all men can be a microcosm of greatness. Most men won’t become great statesmen, philosophers or scientists at the cutting edge of human management and development. Most men will not be a hero to the many, but they can be to a few.

They can be the heroes of their own families, the ultimate caretakers of their own people. The one people come to to manage affairs of the tribe. Small scale heroism is what it is to be a patriarch and it is through family most men will find their connection to the transcendent.

This is why a patriarch is objectively superior to low trust individualist mercenaries who live only for pleasure. He has more marks of heroic kingliness, because like all kings he is rooted in the transcendence of sacrifice.

He is the evolution of the boy

“We are not the same”

The greatest scam the decay of western civilization ever pulled on men, was convincing them it was foolish and pathetic to grow up by undermining if not out right removing their rights over women and children by penalising men who take up the mantle with easy + frivolous divorce.

Essentially, the architects of the system realigned incentives so that becoming a father and husband is “dumb” because years of sacrifice can be undone and ripped away on a whim, whilst making being a perpetual hedonistic teenager “smart” because that way you can’t be punished.

The rights of women are therefore an imposition on the sanctity of family when they become so great they disrupt the rights of men.

Men will not grow up and leave boyhood, if their sacrifice isn’t honoured. A king has a legacy. A hero has a legacy. A divorcee lives out of a car.

So whilst I shun the number of men in perpetual adolescence who avoid the mantle by shirking the burdens that would lead to their spiritual growth – I am not entirely without empathy for their decisions. I understand how systemic forces have manipulated them into eternal boyhood.

The truth is, you haven’t won.

Being an eternal pleasure seeking hedonist does not mean you win. It’s just how you protect yourself from a system that is hostile to anyone trying to build anything that lasts.

You have not won. You have simply regressed so you can’t be wounded.

And even then you’re still wounded. Only it is the sheer swirling vortex of emptiness derived from an absence of anything meaningful in your life that wounds you, rather than a punitively immoral unjust legal system.

Winning this game is making sacrifices that result in legacy.

You can distract yourself with pleasures, you can laugh with dishonourable men, and sleep with dishonourable women. You can chase your thrills as a mercenary with no kingdom, thinking fast, quick on his feet – but in your quiet moments alone, there it is, haunting you.

The void.

Article credit to: illimitablemen.com