It is unmanly to blame another for your failure.

We must reject the idea that every time a law’s broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions. ~ Ronald Reagan

It’s unmanly to think that someone is responsible for your present, future, or past. Yet, it’s society that wants to save you from yourself and from the cold, harsh, world that it doesn’t feel you’re equipped to fight. (Read This: You Know You’re a Pussy If…)

Today we blame society’s structures for a man’s failings, yet give it credence for another man’s success.

The danger in this line of thought not only hurts society but also a man’s right to self-determination, his pursuit of happiness, and his right to fail.

Yes, we all have a right to fail. To not be allowed to fail is to not be allowed to learn, grow, evolve, and live. Failure is the great teacher. Failure shows us how to win, and its victory – however we define it in our lives – that each of us should aspire towards.

You must have the possibility of failure to scare you into working. There’s something called a productive paranoia. Jim Collins talks about it in, Good to Great. All of the highest performing CEOs and the companies they run have it. They’re not content in the good times, nor relaxed when it seems as if they’ve cracked the code.

Failure enables this. But when we reward and award mediocrity we remove the possibility for responsibility and self-reliance, doing more of a disservice to the average Joe than a service.

In the bleeding heart’s attempt to help, it sustains the state it’s trying to abolish.

There’s a growing culture of average and it’s men who will either lead the charge toward the average, or fight this growing tide. The reality is that average effort is unmanly. It’s an ignorance of opportunity that was bestowed by men and women who came before, fought and died, birthed and raised.

Deflecting responsibility is unmanly. It’s childish and ignorant. It’s weak.

The Death of The Self-Reliant Man

It starts in grade school…

This topic has been covered over and over again but it needs to be addressed if we’re going to understand how society is changing, altering, morphing into a new world kind of communism.

Communism is a system where merit is useless. It’s where one man’s work does not benefit him in any way. It’s where sacrifice and creativeness do nothing for a man’s happiness.

Where society aims to make everyone average they not only crush the work ethic of the masses, they also crush their imagination. We’re seeing it in our school systems more than anywhere because it’s so literal in how it’s showing its butt-ugly head.

I just finished a podcast with Zach Evan-Esh. Awesome guy. Former teacher. He told me about why he quit teaching: because of their – his school’s – distaste for excellence. They were more worried about what equipment they gave their kids than their wins or losses. He wasn’t allowed to praise the good nor ask more from the bad and the lazy even if that condemnation was on the effort of the individual. And so, generations of kids lost a great teacher because of the school board’s growing desire to avoid rewarding for merit.

The flaw is that kids know who wins. You may not keep score, but they always know who’s winning. And they play, yes for the joy of the game, but ultimately to win. After years of refusing to reward their victories they will simply no longer play.

“If you want a more timid, less passionate, and weaker group of young men, then don’t reward the winners.”

However, if you also don’t want innovators, CEOs, leaders in business and thought and men who will fight for and defend our freedoms from the bat-shit crazy mother fuckers running around blowing themselves and others up, then, don’t reward winners.

Where you don’t reward success you also see excuses for failure.

The fall of the self-reliant man isn’t coming from a single source, but from all angles. As we refuse to accept that success comes as the result of intelligence and talent and hard work, we also refuse to accept that a lack of those 3 things results in a lack of success. We feel bad for the loser so we don’t call him a loser, meanwhile any self-respecting young man would, deep down, benefit greatly from a sprinkle of truth. (Read This: 10 Steps to Becoming a Loser)

Call a winner a loser and he’ll prove you wrong. Call a loser a loser and he’ll prove you right. Call no one anything and no one will prove a thing.

We need challenges. It’s what forces the cream to rise and it’s the cream who will lift the rest of us up.

What Men Need Is Not More Excuses, But Greater Challenges

We challenged men to reach the moon.

We challenged men to defeat communism and evil and they did. We challenged men to defend us, to provide for us, to innovate for us, and they did.

We’re now seeing less challenges, lower expectations, and rather than rising, we’re sinking to what is now expected of us: mediocrity.

If you want men to be mediocre, men will be mediocre. It human nature to look for the easy way out. And mediocrity is always the path of least resistance, one that we must abolish rather than feed. (Check This Out: Fuck Mediocrity and Become a Legend)

The counter-argument to being tougher on our men and young men and boys is the idea that there are strong and weak and to make the playing field more even we must make everyone feel the same.

Here’s the thing: WE ARE NOT THE SAME.

When you make everyone feel the same, not only are you diminishing the usefulness of the talented, but you’re making sure they don’t work hard to improve said talents. For the less talented you’re ensuring that they don’t work hard to become more talented.

We don’t think we’re living in a communist society because we are technically rewarded for the work we do, but more and more we’re seeing – at least socially – the desire to apologize for your success and provide excuses for your failure. In giving credence or fault to the State, we take both the power and the responsibility away from the individual, and this is a very dangerous road to head down.

Where a man doesn’t feel as though he holds the power and the responsibility for his life and the life of his family, you see a disconnect. Attribute the rise in male suicide rates to a host of things, but a lack of responsibility and the removal of viable challenges must be at the top of the list.

The State has taken every facet of our children’s education away. They feed them, cloth them, and teach them what and how to think on matters far beyond academics. Where, then, do the families play a roll?

The Pussification of Society

I keep saying it’s “unmanly” to do this or that…

This has to do with what my image of manliness is.

Sure he’s kind and good. His kindness often shows itself in his ability to bare other’s burden, to provide for his family, and to defend them.

Each of these characteristics require self-reliance.

The weak man is of no use for his family. The coward, the same. The lazy fella nor the complainer.

With society trying to even the playing field it’s up to the individual to become self-reliant on his own and to teach his sons the same thing. It’s no longer a must to become self-reliant as it was once. It’s something that must be sought out.

As the masses want you weakened, as the gender roles are blurred and being a strong man and being good at being a man is no longer “acceptable”, you have to be the minority. As you face a sea of metrosexual, somewhere-in-the-middle “males” calling you to side with their line of thinking, you must educate, and strengthen.

Though we turn our backs on the strong men that built this society bring by brick, today, we will once again need them in spades, and that day seems to be coming sooner than thought.

The Utopia

Part of this fall of self-reliance has to do with man’s quest for a utopia.

When we can rely on things to happen without our having to do them self-reliance becomes less of a necessity, which is what cities have created. They’ve weakened the man. They’ve weakened society.

What they haven’t done is lessen the dangers of the world nor the temper of nature.

There will always be times when you rely on your own brain and brawn and actively pursuing a self-reliant lifestyle is something that you must impose on yourself if you’re not only going to be ready when the shit hits the fan – because it always does – but improve day after day.

There has to be a desire deep within your soul, one of ambition, not for things but for improvement. There has to be an understanding that laziness has won no man a single thing and that toughness is something you acquire, it cannot be something bestowed.

It’s when you come to these realizations and you make a stand for becoming a badass and against becoming a pussy, that you make a stand to become a self-reliant man, and a man, period.

Liberalism That Isn’t Liberalism

The liberal, initially, was someone who believed in the freedoms of the individual.

That was at the forefront of their beliefs. They were against tyrants at first and then the growth of the state. They sought free markets simply because that enabled growth and produced a self-reliant culture.

Liberalism today isn’t liberalism. It opposes it. It wants more control. It wants mediocrity rather than excellence. It wants safety rather than freedom. And men have pushed its agenda.

Within liberalism that isn’t liberalism (we’ll call it modern liberalism), we also see feminism that isn’t feminism. As in, the desire to exist only in relation to men and to be given without having to earn while measuring against your opposite sex by morphing into your opposite sex.

Modern, radical feminists don’t want to praise women. Otherwise the housewife and the mother – likely the most important person within a society – would be their poster-child. Instead, you see hairy armpits and topless ladies simply existing in relation to men, not praising that which is innately feminine.

They want to do what men do. And they want to be able to do it with lesser standards. They want to fight fires, become elite operators in the military, and police our streets, all with standards that account for their typically smaller, weaker frames. There are strong women, don’t get me wrong, but to see your “success” as doing what a man does isn’t healthy. Nor does it keep our society safe.

They don’t want rights, actually, they already have them. They don’t want stats, because then they’d have to see how on a per job basis there is no gender wage gap. They don’t want excellence, they, like the modern liberal, want to bring others down to their level.

And men have gone along with this…

You cannot fault anyone but the modern man for this decline in self-reliance. You can, however, also look to no one but the modern man to bring it back even in the face of modern liberalism or modern feminism.

Where self-reliant, strong men exist, this fiasco that is the “modern” ideology cannot exist.

So, after this rant has seen its end, what can you do?

1. Get uncomfortable.

The problem with our utopias is that they’re too comfortable. We sleep and live in heated rooms with sheets and comforters. We eat that which is butchered rather than that which we pick or kill.

Every day bring things into your life that make you uncomfortable.

• Get up earlier.
• Take a cold shower to start the day.
• Do push ups to start the day.
• Train everyday.
• Set higher goals.
• Get out of your comfort zone daily and on a greater scale, monthly.

Live a life that is uncomfortable and you’ll be tougher. Toughness is necessary for self-reliance.

2. Learn the skills that will allow you to take care of yourself and your family.

• Survival skills.

3. Get stronger.

Strength, power, speed, and endurance are survival skills in and of themselves. You need to train your body as if you’re preparing for war.

The fact is that life is a war. And war may one day come to your soil in a very literal sense. You need to be ready for both the battles you face daily, the disasters that can occur in life, and the war that you may be engaged in, literally.

Get stronger. Fitter. Faster.

Become more self-reliant.

On that note, I’m off to shovel the driveway and make some muscles.

About The Author

Chad Howse: Chad’s mission is to get you in the arena, ‘marred by the dust and sweat and blood’, to help you set and achieve audacious goals in the face of fear, and not only build your ideal body, but the life you were meant to live. He’s a former 9-5er turned entrepreneur, a former scrawny amateur boxer turned muscular published fitness author. He’ll give you the kick in the ass needed to help you live a big, ambitious life.
You can contact him at –
http://www.ChadHowseFitness.com/
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