Modern young men, rightfully so, feel totally and utterly left behind, as they watch their culture fragment in front of them. They look behind them just a few decades ago, and see their culture at its best, in many ways. The young intelligent men keen of this identity crisis are well-read, and have with them a library of infinite knowledge, and a solid amount of time to analyze it, and yet their lives are incomplete.
Look around yourself, and you can see luxury and riches becoming tattered rags. What it means to be rich really died with the commercial uniformity of all art, of all culture; the globalization and algorithmization of culture, where the classical and spiritual are not given the time of day. This leaves the boy no room to develop. Where he should be hunting rabbits or doing laborious chores or wrestling his friends, he is doing school assignments, playing video games, and being scorned if he ever exhibits one bit of his toxic masculinity and spiritual drive to be a heroic man.
So when he looks to the thousands of years of great men before him, he aspires, in some way, to understand their greatness, if to somehow model it in whatever way possible, even if just vicarious through his imagination. However, he is trapped, because what he experiences is but a surface-level understanding. Rather than natural growth, scarring, and emboldening, he becomes just a biological man, but within himself is an betrayed young boy trying, in some way, to give off the impression that he is a fully-grown, callused man ready to be a hero in his own way.
That is where the modern man has no growth, nor worthiness of heroism, and rather than being given any opportunity to become whole, he is simply shunned and criticized for his attempts. The ways he seeks manliness is through vain hobbies, and climbing the meaningless career ladder at his job. Accepted expressions of his masculinity are in his unhealthy obsessions of Star Trek and Star Wars, of the new Tesla car, and other such fandoms.
And this brings us to an issue in the modern right, there is another level of insecurity not yet understood. Not really just an issue of insecurity about masculinity, but about self-conceptualization. Where they seek to change the world, and create something better in place of the ashes, they are still ungrown, and therefore bound to the same effeminate bickering and division of their enemies. That is where the search for power must be analyzed further.
Because power is given; bestowed. One does not fight for it, one does not deserve it, one does not have any entitlement to it. In a nation of men, the mighty responsibility of representing all that is right and just, God in a sense, is given to a man who has proven, time and time again, his innate power. He isn’t just one who talks, but walks. He has stood in the firing line and proven the extents of his fearlessness, and made his visions a reality for all to see. He embodies the King, the Warrior, the Magician, and the Lover.
But I see no men worthy of this title. Not one bit. Because they all seek it. They seek to acquire power, but their only personal understanding of it is their own acquiescent contribution to the pitiful rat race. No work in modern times can give a sense of manliness that the hardness of life used to provide for a man in superfluity. A man who has seen death, who has experienced the tragedies of life, gone on his pilgrimage or spiritual journey, and experienced himself, is at least at the starting point on his way to being able to do the job of a king or general. A man who knows himself, then can know his enemy, and then can offer a guiding hand to his brothers and sisters. A man who seeks power for the sake of power has not yet experienced the trials that build a healthy and wise perspective on power. All he understands is what fantasies exist in his own mind. Not that he cannot become great, as weakness is but the potential for strength, but it still does not discount he is indeed weak.
Modern men’s experience with power is a joke, and their inherent entitlement to feeling like they know the answers, that they know what is right, that sleight of hand is all that matters, and that Machiavellian power struggle is all that exists, will doom them to failure from the start. They do not experience their foe from his own point of view, nor do they see the spiritual positions that make power a very dangerous thing to even look upon. They think simply because they see a problem, that they can conquer evil. That is where the journey to gain power for one’s own group really only ends up being a selfish, unconscious excursion to try and prove to oneself that they are strong and able, because they never experienced in their youth the callusing progression of growing self-confidence.
That is why any man you meet who is unstable, angry, has vitriolic disdain for his enemies, and wants to annihilate all in his path, while not particularly evil himself, is just as much of a ticking time bomb as his nihilistic and materialistic opponents. He thinks he wants something better, when really, he is trying to prove something that doesn’t need to be proven. This is why the search for power, revolution, rebellion, are really just the negative equivalents of the Hero’s Journey. It is the errand of an unmastered man who does not know himself. Therefore, when a man has no idea who he is, nor why he is unhappy, he thrashes and destroys anything he perceives to be evil. He could be entirely correct about the thorn in others’ eyes, but does not see the log in his own. He could have mastered all sorts of soft skills, and have a library of knowledge, but without knowing himself, he is doomed to repeat the same careless, stupid mistakes of those he has replaced.
What the modern young men, who didn’t experience growth like their ancestors did have been given the short end of the stick due to a dying culture and economy need to understand is many of them are not grown. They do not know themselves because they have not experienced themselves at their worst, rectified that, and proven themselves to be worthwhile leaders and organizers. They are broken apart, utterly. They have many faces. They have many contradictions. They have many vices. Yet, in the face of all that, they still criticize. They know full and well that they have the opportunity to be more worthy than any other, and the lack of battle or a good economy has not given them much of an easy wagon to hop on, so rather in the face of a destructive dying nation, they have an opportunity to grow seeds of oak trees in a burned forest (fertile ground).
The young man of modernity must be honing himself, knowing himself, rather than trying to establish himself as better than others, more powerful than others, and more useful than others in rote, useless “skills.” Right now is the time to learn the worst of who you are, and establish a moral foundation that you abide by. Self-mastery is the only way you will be ready for the deadly trials that await many of us in the fall of this world order. Being an entitled, overweight, resentful high-chair tyrant toddler who looks to manipulate for some “greater good” is what will set you on a path of distrust and demoralization.
The man who is at peace with himself is a man who has no disadvantageous shortcummings, no crippling vices, no insecurity, no disdain, and no resentment. He knows how to defeat his foe because he understands his foe, and sees his foe as himself. Those who think like a barbarian, who think in narrow, Machiavellian, secular terms, are doomed to repeat the same mistakes of our current Leviathan regime.
If you wish to have your successor state, or conquer the old regime, you will not do it by being wholly two-faced (maybe at times in strategic instances, but definitely not with your allies. Only inevitable losers do that.), you will not have petty arguments, you will not have rejoinder with those you somewhat disagree with. You will be quiet, honed, respectful, and perceptive. Without this, you are doomed to be a German Mustache Man. Simply look at everything he did, and don’t do exactly that, and you are on your way to creating a grand new future. No one likes to associate with freaks who don’t know how to chill out, who don’t know how to not perpetually insult others, and who can’t simply be at ease. This is why I made it very clear in How To Start A Commune, a functional community does not allow people who are unpredictable, who sew seeds of dismay, who constantly start shit, who make people uneasy, who make everyone stressed to the point of breaking or to giving in so he will no longer torment them. AKA a bully. Bullies inevitably get what’s coming to them, but they waste so much precious time that could be dedicated to sewing seeds of trust and peace. Like Luke (AKA Lambda) mentioned in a recent Cigar Stream, it really isn’t a utopian idea to simply believe that a society built on a cornerstone of strict Christian ideals can bring about leaders who are not only strong, but transparent and pious.
In short - don’t be a resentful twerp, instead, understand your faults before you go looking for disputes with others. Hone who you are, or you will be rebuked utterly, and if you somehow grab hold the reins of power with still the childish spirit of entitlement and perpetual unprovoked dispute, you will find yourself in an unmarked grave and painted as the enemy of history.
Do not seek power. Simply accept it if it is gifted to you by men of worth, men of prudence, men of modesty, men of wisdom, men of good relation. The choleric fools of history are seldom remembered for anything other than their failures and impatience. Those who seek power only wish to misuse it in a restless misadventure to find the raw, unrealized potential that has rotten from within their heart.
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
Sun Tzu