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The post that made me (eventually) create an account.
Couldn't agree more. A conversation I've had over and over with my close male relatives always starts pretty much the same "The day you really start moving from boyhood to manhood is the day you understand you're going to be judged on your performance forever. There will be people who "love you for you" but you are going to be judged by society (and by those loving people!) based on what you do and can accomplish." A lot of guys sort of zoom forward from there to "get a good career." While that should be a goal, I think it's far more effective to start with something personal that you can commit to daily: physical exercise within a martial context. The results really do permeate every aspect of life; social capability, overall confidence, (controlled) risk taking, career performance. Not to mention basic health and energy levels (side note: the wealthiest guy I ever could call a friend ALWAYs would say "health over wealth. I'd trade it all to have my knees back"). However, I think that this impact is actually seriously under-realized by guys who workout only for cosmetic reasons (obviously) but even those who workout with legitimate fitness goals. In my mind, this is because even if you're trying to PR on your squat, or get your mile time below howevermany minutes, or climb a 5.14 route, you aren't competing with the other members of the species directly. So it all gets blunted. Maybe there's some grey area here if you're doing it in a directly competitive context (an organized footrace, a powerlifting meet) but I still think it's miles away from training with the idea of "I can use this to deliver violence when necessary." As a military-adjacent dude (never served, but did contracting for a long time) I really see this in the actual badasses (combat arms, SoF dudes) who leave the service and still really train hard on guns. It's partially habit and partially them keeping up a readily available social network, but the ones who keep themselves in shape, do a combat sport, and do meaningful range drills really do walk around with that cliche "cool confidence" that's impossible to fake. For folks into Gun YouTube - compare the general attitude of GarandThumb to BrandonHerrera. Ultimately, unless you are career military (and even then) you do have to craft capability beyond Being The Biggest Badass In The Room, and that is important to realize and a big downfall for a lot of the Joe Rogan types who might sort of dabble with BJJ but never develop something else. Even The KingOfTheBros mixed MMA with comedy before he was the biggest podcaster in the metaverse. Still, the highly-personal and immediate satisfaction of daily training within a martial context, to me, needs to underpin life for males without serious medical issues (i'm talking mostly chronic, birth-related things, not mild obesity or asthma).
This is effectively a statement of my overall mindset for my daily life.
I work and try to perform well because that's good, but I would never, ever sacrifice my health to keep my job.
Yup, and interestingly I don't think I would ever recommend a guy go the military route solely for the fitness and confidence boost, but one can't deny that it would provide those benefits if you commit to it.
Genuinely, males 'evolved' to have a Männerbund that provides them the structure and an outlet for aggression against an acceptable opponent.
But in a world as comfortable as the one we live in, there's really no room for such an organization outside the military... except in the martial arts context. And even that can lead to an unhealthy place (see Andrew Tate) and yet I think without that we end up with a specimen of male that is of minimal use to anyone, not even himself, and knows this.
I think an interesting approach could be making National Guard membership way easier with different cores of seriousness. You're an aimless 25 year old who smoked weed all through high school and is now semi-employed. Great, you're going to PT a lot and learn basic discipline. You're an IT dude in his 30s who's looking for something like a Mannerbund connection and also want to serve? Awesome, you're now part of a Cyber Protection Team. You're former active duty SF, but your knees are weird from too many jumps and you want to actually see your kids? Permanent Training cadre.
The problems here are that
The Military still makes Reserve/NG just as difficult to join as Active Duty. Endless paperwork, multi-month delays, weird waiver requirements for tattoos etc. Age limits are also weird. If you're 35+, in good shape (to where you can crush the PFT), and have no medical / criminal record it's still bizarrely had to join.
Goldwater-Nichols while overall extremely good for the professional force, did make the place of the Reserve/NG a bit of a head-scratcher. Combine this with that fact that doctrinally, the Army still goes to war with Reserve/NG.
Mostly for the better, imho, the military is now a professional bureaucracy. And the American way of war is a lot more overwhelming logistics and material advantage than "warrior spirit" (expect for tiny elite units). Again, this is a great thing for running a technologically advanced super military that needs to be always ready for nation-state conflict. Culturally, however, that means the military is a lot more distant for men who just want basic feelings of purposeful camaraderie.
I'm pretty sure I read it in another thread on here and I apologize for not citing ... but someone said "Traditional male roles have been torn down over the past 30+ years. Good or bad for society is up for debate, but what isn't is that no replacement have been provided."
You also have the issue that in the modern world, unlike the ancient, war is generally bad even for the victors. Instead of fertile agricultural land and slaves and loot, the winners get the smoking remains of factories and a bunch of bombed out buildings.
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https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/12/peoples-rights-far-right-extremist-civilian-militia/672493/
Reading this most of the guys involved sound like morons, but damn if the idea doesn't appeal to me. Just to hang out, train, prepare, and go when needed.
But I'd also suggest volunteer fire companies as a more productive equivalent day to day.
Yeah, that sounds pretty nice. Especially in wildfire-heavy areas in the West...it might be possible to do more intensive forest management and controlled fires if we had more personnel.
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Won't go into details (nice try, NSA!) but I went to a public citizens militia field day thing once with a buddy.
That shit was Call of Duty: Renaissance Fair. Dudes who had to bring lawn chairs with them to a makeshift range so they wouldn't pass out while reloading mags. Trading weird Confederate memorabilia the way I traded Magic Cards in the 8th grade. Dude's with sub-MOA $5000 ARs who couldn't hit minute-of-basketball.
There have to be enforced standards. Those are hard to rigidly enforce when your membership may also be the way you finance the organization. "Rick weighs 400 lbs!" "Yeah, but his toilet repair company paid for all the ammo and his wife makes great Frito pie!"
This is why my idea (sort of reluctantly) falls back to a Federal org i.e. the National Guard. The other alternative are the for-profit tactical training / security orgs. There are a million of them and, perversely, the ones that are largely bullshit have huge Social Media presence and the actual hitters have zero profile and names that are beyond forgettable. Cue Lil Wayne: "Real Gs move in silence like lasgana." Also, they're for profit and usually at the price points that only State/Federal agencies can afford (or maybe multinational Oil and Gas companies). It's not like me and my buddies can pool together an extra $150k for a weekend of training.
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Strong agree there.
The trend of undermining any and all possible healthy models of masculinity (as fathers, in particular) has been ongoing and while there's a lot of effort spent mocking the unhealthy models that arise, nobody seems particularly interested in converging on a healthy model, particularly one that might be appealing to a younger man.
In particular, there seems to be a glut of young men trying to strike it rich and famous as they (correctly) note that wealth and fame will actually get them positive attention (and girls, and personal freedom, and the ability to acquire neat toys). So they go all-in betting on stocks, or crypto, or some other kinda insane get-rich-quick scheme because hey, the worst that can happen is he goes broke and starts over again.
And your idea is pretty decent, since at a bare minimum it offers a life path with some fulfilling purpose and personal challenge and promise of growth and advancement alongside like-minded comrades.
I'm not a big fan of the 'national service' idea, but a culture that encourages men to develop their martial traits is likely to improve on what we have now. So give men viable paths forward that DON'T involve gambling their lives away hoping to strike it rich.
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