When Christ took that shot to the face and opened up his other cheek for more of the same, we read that as meekness and a complete lack of desire to fight. What that act really was, is defiance. (Read This: Why You Need to Fight)
Your homeland is controlled by a foreign and brutal power, and one of its soldiers punches you in the face. Both fighting back or running away and cowering would be natural and immediate responses that take little thought or discipline. To turn the other cheek comes from a place of strength, but also disrespect. He’s essentially saying…
You hit like a little bitch. Here’s my other cheek; have at it.
As kids we’re told to turn the other cheek as a way of keeping us docile and calm and to avoid fighting. What young boys really need are more battles. We need to know that we can fight, that we can hit back and beat someone up or take a beating ourselves, to then be able to avoid fighting all together.
You cannot turn the other cheek from the place of victimhood. By refusing to fight for the sake of refusing to fight you’re practicing being a victim, a coward, and you’re using scripture as your excuse for being a pussy.
The same goes for manliness.
Yes, it’s good to like masculine things. It’s good to want to be overtly masculine, to be rough and tough and gritty. In fact, you have to get to this place of brutish masculinity before you can become refined. Practicing non-violence as someone who doesn’t have the strength to be violent isn’t courageous. It requires no discipline. It’s done out of fear, not strength. Practicing non-violence as someone who has the capacity to dish out harm, however, is practicing discipline. It does take self-control.
To try and soften the already soft is useless. First you must become hard, rough, and gritty.
At times Teddy Roosevelt was the bull in the china shop. He was like a Tasmanian Devil when he had something on his mind, something that he wanted to accomplish. He developed into a fighter, a warrior, a rancher, and a real, masculine male. And he did it on purpose. His model was his father, but he also felt as though he were a part of something greater, a tribe of sorts, a race of warriors and it’s the virtues of said warriors, the “barbaric virtues” that won the West and conquered most of the world. He saw that in being of Anglo Saxon decent, he was a part of a tribe that created the first free and democratic society on the planet. He saw America as dependent on the brutality of conquering as well as the kindness and goodness we’ve grown to praise one hundred times more.
Unless we keep the barbarian virtues, gaining the civilized ones will be of little avail.
Through the books and papers I’ve read on Mr. Roosevelt, he does not appear to be a man born rugged and rough, but a rich, soft and curious boy who grew to understand the value of raw masculinity, the necessity of it not just for his own life, but for the betterment of his great nation. Without the fighting and getting into trouble and roughhousing, boys cannot become useful men, or at least not as useful as they could be otherwise.
Practice Manliness
Being brutish is something that you should practice. Of course the refinement must come as well. You cannot thrive in a society as a Neanderthal. You must have that recipe, the nerd, the man who’s thirst for knowledge is unmatched, the curiosity that allows you to ask questions, and combine it with the toughness and the ruggedness and the grit that will allow your innate kindness and curiosity to be put to use. We’ve lost the aggression and instead have taught pacifism, neglecting or ignorant to the fact that it was aggression and intelligence that won the West, that gave the poor hope and gave everyone a voice. It’s also aggression that cannot and will not be removed from the world, only from the society or the culture that actively pursues its destruction.
Just as we are.
As we temper and tame our boys, ourselves, we remove the barbarian qualities that must be present for the civilized ones to thrive.
We’ve gone so far as to label rambunctiousness as a disorder, medicating those who’ve been caught under its spell so they can sit quietly and learn like good children should be able to do. We’re scientifically attacking all that is masculine by imposing the good and calm and caring qualities that are feminine. We need both. You need both. (Read This: Are We Raising a Bunch of Pussies?)
As the rest of the world tells you to calm down and to temper yourself, I say do the opposite. Embark on adventures. Fight. Be physical and live a physical life. Do things that others would deem archaic and even brutish. You’re not going to lose the intelligence, the civilized part of persona in this quest to be a man, because what’s civilized is all around you. By pursuing toughness and grit and brashness and boldness, you’re only going to make the civilized self more powerful and more useful.
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.
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