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Notes -
The upthread discussion about male role models reminded me of a web essay that I can no longer find (damn it). The author was a male English professor for undergrads. His course satisfied a general requirement, so his male student population broadly represented the student body. In the essay, the author observed that when his male students were given an opportunity to select a text or topic to study, the most popular subject was always power.
I don’t recall the author proposing any reason for that preference. We can come up with a couple.
Broke: They know that power is the ultimate aphrodesiac.
Woke: They are already toxically masculine. The professor should focus exclusively on books by queer women of color, who hate power.
Bespoke: They are thinking about the Roman Empire.
I’ll have to expand on that last one.
Ages ago, I came across someone asking why 19th Century Britain seemed to be so obsessed with Rome. One responder said “Britain found itself with an empire unexpectedly. The 19th Century British culture was looking to ancient Rome to give it context. How should they act? What is it like to have an empire? What can they learn?”
That sprang to mind as I was reading the essay. Those teenage boys knew that they were on the cusp of having power, over themselves at least. They should, at least. What does that mean? How should they behave?
My question, then, is: What would you recommend for those boys, to help them understand the power that they will eventually wield?
Watership Down. Or, if they have a higher tolerance for reading, Dune. (Those who are already playing Warhammer 40k can read Starship Troopers.) If they're more of a nonfiction type Machieveli's The Prince is concise and relevant. Art of War and On War are good for leadership.
I would back On War if only to get it across to those seeking power that the point is to achieve a goal. it's to instantiate the world you desire. Too many find power, exercise that power, and then are befuddled when they didn't get what they want.
"But I won. I won the fight/beat the army/socially humiliated the opponent. Why don't they give up?"
well, if you didn't get what you want then you didn't actually win now did you? Art of War is great for impressing upon someone that they should maximize their chances of winning On War is great for impressing upon someone that they should know what winning looks like ahead of time and then pursue victory. Not the other way around.
Yep. Strong agree there.
I won't say that the methods of acquiring and wielding power are completely orthogonal to those of identifying and pursuing an actual goal in the real world, but focus too much on the former and you won't develop the latter. And that feeling of confusion when you have power but aren't actually happy can lead people to start doing very ill-advised things. Better to figure out where you want things to go before you go about getting power.
I think I have a strong negative reaction to observing someone who has acquiring substantial power but seems unable to do anything with it other than lord it over others or engage in vulgar displays of power purely for the sake of it. There's not much to respect about those persons who have climbed to the top of the hierarchy and then have no clue what they actually want to do once they get there.
This might be why I have an ongoing appreciation for Elon Musk. Whatever power he has, he's using it all towards bringing the world closer to the state he would like it to be in, and he VERY CLEARLY articulates what that looks like to him. Beats billionaires who seemingly have no clue what they actually want to achieve and thus start throwing money around at various causes seemingly at random.
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