***Update Below***
I’m republishing my comment on Bookworm’s post today titled, “Fighting back“.
Bookworm,
I think there are many, many reasons why we live in an emasculated society. For starters, for two decades we have been indoctrinated with the ideology of victimhood. In virtually all circumstances, we have taught our kids and each other that it would be more profitable for a person to be the victims rather than the man standing in the path of the juggernaut… and get stomped.
There is always a price for standing in the path of evil, and usually that price is paid in blood, either yours or the evildoer. It is much easier to turn and run and give into emotive hysteria, to take some anti-depressants and to receive the sympathy of all your compadres for going through such an ordeal. Hell, you might even get monetary compensation for suffering such “emotional trauma”.
Secondly, feminists have ingrained two whole generations through our education system that manhood is a joke. You see it in commercials where the wife is always the virtuous, savvy one and the husband is this bumbling buffoon. Honor— who really sees honor in today’s world? We are taught that such silly grand narratives are really the tool of dead white men to oppress women and minorities to an evil powerful patriarchal society. I know for a fact this is what is taught in school because this is exactly what was indoctrinated in me until reality slapped it out of me.
Thirdly, we live in a highly concentrated urban society, and we’re all lawsuit happy. We refrain from acting decisively to protect others because decisive actions will land us in jail or leave us bankrupt. Living like sardines in a concrete can is much different than living out in the country. People living in concrete cans (cities) settle things through litigations, not proactive protective measures.
“What, threaten me? I’ll sue!”
“Your tree is coming over my little yard. I’ll sue you if you don’t cut it!”
“Don’t look at me that way. I’ll accuse you of sexual harassment and sue you!”
The dangers in a city is ubiquitous and manifold, and cities can’t really afford men to “take the law into your own hands.” Society is putting manhood into a Catch 22. Case after case, men were slapped down for acting to protect someone because they acted outside the law. We are supposed to call the police.
Then there are also other cases where men are denigrated and belittled because they did call the police and didn’t act. Many even held the man there as morally culpable because he didn’t act.
The bottom line is that our society has lost a virile code of honor and loyalty that relies upon individual responsibility. What we have in its place are legal protocols to follow.
Why are we surprised when we suddenly look around and find many of our would-be protectors standing out in the hallway… and doing nothing to stop the evil next door? Society has seen to it that if you are a masculine bull of man, a protector, it would be best if you just kept your head down where no one can see you.
Update:
In the Virginia Tech Massacre this past Monday, there were a few who did stand up to the gunmen, and they paid the price for it in blood. Liviu Librescu’s heroic act that day, giving his own life to save the lives of his students, speaks for itself. I cannot think of a better exit from this life and a better entry into the next.
My comment above is perhaps premature after the this tragedy, but I also think it accurate. I don’t know if I would’ve been one of the ones to run and hide, or been one of the ones to stand in the pathway of this madman. I just don’t know.
I don’t think we will find anyone who will admit this, but what probably tipped this madman into action was that the system did catch the “Warning Signs”. They shoved him into counciling and therapy, and they tried to force him to take drugs, antidepressants. That’s probably what set him off down the road of this massacre. He wrote that they painted him into the corner and that they’re forcing his hand in this and that he’s not going to just sit and take it.
Would this man have gone haywire had a virile code of honor been imbued in our society, in every interaction of civil discourse? Or would he have gone there anyway?
Update II:
Orson Scott Card wrote an article earlier this month about honor. I think it ties in very nicely with what I’ve been writing here. Here’s an excerpt:
Honor
Duty. Honor. Country.
Once these words could inspire the hearts of patriots. Now, in our benighted era, the elite in our nation sneer at the words and at those who still believe in them.
But there is such a thing as honor, and whether we name it by its right name or not, we depend on it.
Honor is akin to the word “honest.” We say a person is honest if he tells the truth about what he has done and seen in the past.
But when he gives his word about what he will do in the future, and then keeps it, we say that he has honor.
These days, we are judged by the mathematical formulae of credit ratings. We are given points according to how regular and timely our repayments are; it is an attempt to assess honor by keeping a history of how we have performed before.
But credit ratings only touch the surface of honor.
It is honor that causes a football player at the bottom of a heap of players to refrain from pushing the ball just those couple of inches that would make it seem that it had broken the plane of the goal line.
It is honor, in a game of pickup basketball, that makes a player say, “I traveled,” when no one noticed it but himself.
It is honor that keeps a married man from flirting with a woman who is not his wife. It is honor that holds parents to their responsibility to their children, sacrificing much so their children can thrive. It is honor that makes adult children care for their aging parents to the grave.
It is honor that makes a child assume the debts of his parents, or a brother to pay the debts of his sibling.
It is honor that makes it possible for us to trust the word of other people, for we know that they would rather keep their word than bear the shame of breaking it.
But … who acts that way anymore?
The Death of Individual Honor
We teach our athletes today that what the ref doesn’t see didn’t happen. Lie and win, we tell them.
As we also tell our businessmen: Cheat and win. If your company has so many lawyers that no one can afford to sue you, then you can violate your contracts and steal what you want, because no one has the power to make you stop. And when you’ve done it often enough, you’ll be so rich that Time calls you Man of the Year and people treat you as if you were somebody.
As we tell our politicians: It’s all right to accept a bribe that comes to you in the form of faked-up “trades” in cattle futures — the press is on your side; they’ll let it go. And what the press doesn’t speak about didn’t happen.
The shame of shattered honor is only enforced when we don’t like the person who fails to keep his word. “Read my lips: No new taxes,” he said, and then we pressed and pushed until he broke us word. Then we had him. For the people who voted for him actually cared about honor, and it cost him votes. While his opponent, who had no honor, was supported by people who did not care about it, and were in fact counting on him to break his word.
Honor means you can be trusted. Dishonor means you can’t.
The Honor of Parties
We had an election a few months ago. The Democratic Party achieved majorities in both houses of Congress, but it did not do so by promising to impose a deadline on a war that must be won no matter the length or cost. On the contrary, that majority was achieved only by running Democratic candidates who sounded as Republican as possible in districts that would never have voted for a Nancy Pelosi.
But now in the Congress, the Democrats are enforcing party discipline, so that even if any of those moderate-seeming Democrats were sincere before, they are required to vote against their promises. The Democrats can do this because the press likes the outcome of this breaking-of-word, and the Democrats believe they will pay no political price for being caught breaking promises.
They believe this because it has been true for fifteen years. Honor is something Republicans believe in, so it can be used to destroy them. But because the elitists who run the Democratic Party don’t care about honor, it costs the Democrats nothing to break their word.
As an embarrassed Democrat, I am ashamed of my party, because I know that at the grass roots level there are plenty of Democrats who care about honor and wish their party had any. But as long as the press remains silent about Democratic dishonor while harping on any trumped-up charge they can lay against Republicans, it’s hard for many people to believe that the dishonor really happened, or that anybody cares that it did.
That’s why Clinton could fire all the U.S. Attorneys, but Bush can’t fire eight of them. That’s why Clinton could scoff at Congressional subpoenas and pretend they had “lost” files they didn’t want to hand over, while Bush is pummeled for refusing to respect Congressional demands for things no Congress has ever claimed a right to have.
That’s why the politically correct are the main censors and suppressors of free speech in our country today, the deniers of diversity and the elitist enemies of democratic process — and yet are able to claim credit for their tolerance and love of freedom, and the media, which they control, does not expose their shame.
Because they have no shame.
That’s the sorry state of honor in America today. It is regarded as a relic that only matters to those dunderheads who still believe in God and morality and fairness and decency and all those other outmoded concepts. You know. Regular people. Not the cool, elite, smart people who all have identical — and completely unexamined — opinions.
So why is it any surprise that our nation is also on the verge of losing its honor?
You can read the rest of it here.
(“I plead allegiance to myself and the United Egos of Democrats and to this aristocracy for which it stands, one nation, under liberals, indivisible, for diversity and hired justices for all.”)