We live in a
terrible time when men don’t know what it is to be a man. Is it about scaring people? That is what
Putin and Trump seem to think. To be a man is to be intimidating, scary,
threatening, punishing, dangerous, cruel - Gunslinger cowboys like in John
Wayne or Clint Eastwood movies. Be
tough. Shoot people. Scare people.
Squint and look dangerous.
But that’s crap. Being scary and dominating is actually being a frightened, confused adolescent who hasn’t grown up yet – a frightened boy who can only think that he has to be scarier than those who scare him. And we see the terrible wounds that these twisted, frightened domineering destructive overgrown adolescents do to our world – from Caesar and Stalin and Hitler and Mao to Putin today. They are not men. They turn themselves into monsters trying to be men.
A wonderful illumination of the actual qualities of true manhood is found in the virtues of chivalry laid out in the Court of King Arthur and his mentor, Merlin, in “Merlin-Arthur Legacy, Legend, Myth, and Magic”.
Merlin the magician raised Arthur and infused in him these virtues of Chivalry: and Arthur collected the Knights of the Round Table, each of whom embodied one of the energies of chivalry, the True Masculine:
- Honor/honesty – honor yourself, what is honest in me, what is real
- Loyalty - vulnerability to yourself, know your weaknesses and strengths
- Nobility - higher purpose, something beyond, lofty dreams and visions
- Virtue - virility of character, call upon the virile strengths
- Grace, gracious Giving - that which comes naturally to your noble and virtuous nature
- Truth
- Courage - willingness to face the truth, to live the life of your choosing
- Courtesy - honoring the other, kindness, patience
- Gallantry - bravery in the face of adversity, acting despite fear
- Authority/empowered - be the author of your experience
- Service - give of who I am, get involved
- Humble -
let it be new
These are alive, rich, fertile growing qualities of manhood. They are open ended and always evolving. They are ideals of manhood that can be pursued. They are the very opposite of the twisted, toxic masculinity of masculine chauvinism – the twisted idea of manhood including intimidating and dominating, being cut off from feelings and compassion, being threatening and punishing, being cruel. We see this too often in our history and in autocratic rulers like Putin and Xi, and in that pathetic failure, the Former Guy, wanting so desperately to be a man rather than the frightened little adolescent that he has always been.
