Easy Times Make Weak Men

Easy Times Make Weak Men

From time to time, I forget why I do a thing a certain way. I know it as a habit, but I cannot recall why I made it a habit. When walking behind my truck, I give it a wide berth.  It’s not something I think about, I just do it.  Anyone who has a trailer hitch knows exactly why this is.   Painfully, I must periodically re-learn why I’ve made certain habits in my life.  Society is this way as well.

During the late 1970s, our country went through what I’ll call a great re-learning. The generation of people who fought in WWII and survived The Great Depression were just generally badass. Those men knew how to fight, struggle and win. As a result, their children grew up in an era of unprecedented good times economically and socially. This was because of the hard work and sacrifice of their parents in the greatest generation. The hard times of the 30’s and 40’s made strong men. Those strong men made the easy times of the 50’s and 60’s.  Those easy times made the flower children of the 60’s and 70’s.

During the 60’s and into the 70’s, these young people had many luxuries.  Their parents paid for them to go to college. They enjoyed drugs, becoming liberal and joining left wing causes. They had the spare time to dig in on the political policies of the United States and find fault with them. These young people had the money (from their parents’ hard work) to join in on various protests and riots against the government, social policies and America in general. They burned the flag, called for a tearing down of many social norms and attempted to delete many people.

During the time of the baby boomers, hippies eschewed the fabric of society. They lived in communes, and specifically in the Haight Ashbury area of San Francisco. In these new societies, the people within them thumbed their nose at many of the societal norms of the day. Law, order and even hygiene were cast aside as being a vestige of a world they chose not to belong to.  Doctors in the San Francisco area began treating diseases that were so long ago extinct in humans, they didn’t even have Latin names. The Itch. The Mange. The Rot.  These were skin and body ailments that were a result of lack of hygiene. Our society learned hundreds of years prior that these are all eliminated quite easily with regular bathing. And so, the hippies had to re-learn why the habit of cleaning yourself was necessary. As these folks cast aside social norms, they eventually learned that those norms existed for very good reasons. In the end, thankfully, the hippies of the baby boomer generation got their shit together.

I hope I’ll be able to say the same thing for those who choose to cast aside our societal structure today. The riots of 2020 are an excellent mirror to the hippies. If you’re at a riot or protest, you’re not at work. If you have the time to hate the government, the generation before you probably paid for that time. Easy times are creating jaded, spoiled young people. Those spoiled young people have the time and energy to try to tear away at the world that allows their existence by furthering futile causes like socialism.

My point is this. When you don’t have to worry about war, famine, making money, or death, that’s luxury. And since men in particular are built for adversity, during great times, we try to manufacture adversity. Good men create difficulty with workouts and other constructive, productive, healthy challenges. Weak-minded men choose to tear things down.   Be the former, not the latter.

Excerpt from Ideal Man REVIVING MASCULINITY. https://www.amazon.com/Ideal-Man-REVIVING-MASCULINITY-Masculinity/dp/1685155898