AOM: The Thousandth Man

The Thousandth Man
By Rudyard Kipling

One man in a thousand, Solomon says,
Will stick more close than a brother.
And it’s worth while seeking him half your days
If you find him before the other.
Nine hundred and ninety-nine depend
On what the world sees in you,
But the Thousandth Man will stand your friend
With the whole round world agin you.

‘Tis neither promise nor prayer nor show
Will settle the finding for ‘ee.
Nine hundred and ninety-nine of ‘em go
By your looks or your acts or your glory.
But if he finds you and you find him,
The rest of the world don’t matter;
For the Thousandth Man will sink or swim
With you in any water.

You can use his purse with no more talk
Than he uses yours for his spendings,
And laugh and meet in your daily walk
As though there had been no lendings.
Nine hundred and ninety-nine of ‘em call
For silver and gold in their dealings;
But the Thousandth Man he’s worth ‘em all,
Because you can show him your feelings.

His wrong’s your wrong, and his right’s your right,
In season or out of season.
Stand up and back it in all men’s sight—
With that for your only reason!
Nine hundred and ninety-nine can’t bide
The shame or mocking or laughter,
But the Thousandth Man will stand by your side
To the gallows-foot—and after!

Hat tip to Gilberto C. for this Manvotional

http://artofmanliness.com/2012/01/07/manvotional-the-thousandth-man/?utm_source=Daily+Subscribers&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=f38d118bec-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN/

Art of Manliness: Gentlemen at the Office

The rules of business etiquette are very similar to the rules of social etiquette.

But there is a difference between the two sets of manners.

In the social sphere, the assumption is that you and your associates are equals, with some allowances made for age and sex.

The business world, on the other hand, is a hierarchy. Whether you work at a traditional, highly-stratified corporation, or a modern and casual upstart, whether the hierarchy is spelled out, or entirely unspoken, one exists. Just step on some toes and see what happens. Business etiquette dictates that employees defer to employers, sellers defer to buyers, and seekers defer to sought-afters.

This difference in the dynamic of social and business relations accounts for things like the fact that when you make introductions outside of work, you always introduce the man to the woman, while in the business world, you make introductions based on rank and importance, regardless of gender. So if you’re introducing a male CEO and a female employee, you would say, “Mr. Robert BigCheese, I would like to introduce Mrs. Samantha Underling from accounting,” rather than the other way around. (Note: if Mr. Graham was meeting a client (of either sex) as opposed to an underling, the client’s name would go first; remember, the seller defers to the buyer.)

This is also why your boss can call you by your first name, but you shouldn’t reciprocate, unless he or she has specifically invited you to drop the Mr. or Mrs.

Another difference between the rules that dictate etiquette in the social and business worlds is that in the social sphere, etiquette doesn’t necessarily have to be efficient or practical; in fact, this can be part of its charm. But in the workplace, tradition matters less and getting the job done matters more.

So for example, while in a social situation you would want to stand when a woman entered the room, at work you should rise from your desk when receiving visitors of either sex, and you shouldn’t stand up every time a female secretary or assistant walks in and out of your office.

Those caveats aside, the rules of business etiquette and social etiquette are not so different; it’s all about acting with integrity, knowing the appropriate behavior for a particular situation, behaving in ways that show respect, and treating others as you’d like to be treated.

While certain areas of business etiquette deserve their own posts, today we will outline some general dos and don’ts for being a gentleman at the office.

The Dos

Dress with respect. Be clean and presentable each and every day. Follow the office dress code at a minimum—and don’t be the guy who constantly toes the line. Of course it’s fine to dress a cut above everyone else, but just a cut. Dressing up far beyond the standard sported by everyone else will come off as putting on airs.

On another style note, while you might take off your jacket and roll up your sleeves during the day, when there are visitors present in the office or you’re receiving callers, put your jacket back on and present a professional appearance that reflects well on your company.

Come to work with teeth brushed and body washed. Your co-workers are stuck with you in a small space for eight or more hours a day. Don’t make them avoid your cubicle like the plague as they gather to discuss whether presenting you with a gift basket of soap and chewing gum would send too overt a message.

Keep things pleasant with your co-workers. Unlike friends, if things get awkward with your co-workers, you cannot choose to stop seeing them. No, cause an uncomfortable rift with a co-worker, and you’ll have to look at their contemptible face each and every day for months, and maybe years. So keep your relations with them pleasant. This means not delving too much into your private life, avoiding discussion of topics like religion and politics, and typically choosing to ignore annoying habits, rather than calling attention to them (although every man has his breaking point).

When it comes to dating at work, don’t risk it unless she’s someone you truly connect with. And if you do pursue something with a co-worker, review your company’s policy on such relationships and let HR know what’s going on.

Keep company secrets, secret. Our Wiki-leaks-loving generation tends to scoff at the notion of keeping anything secret. And yes, your company’s secrets may seem so boring or unimportant as to not even be worth the effort of keeping them under wraps. But no matter—they’re still nobody’s business. Even if the spilling of secrets doesn’t cause actual harm to your company, doing so will still make you look careless.

So keep your files tucked away when receiving visitors, guard your end of the phone conversation when a visitor is standing nearby, and if outsiders ask you questions that might reveal company secrets, simply give intentionally vague answers–never volunteer any information they could not have otherwise been gleaned from the news. If information is truly confidential, don’t send it over email. There’s no such thing as a “private” email; they can be monitored by your company, and sometimes retrieved long after they’ve been “deleted.”

Finally, don’t volunteer more information than necessary: “Dan is not in today,” not “Dan’s not here. He’s meeting with the head of mergers at Dyna Corp.”

Work with your boss—not against him. Keep him informed. Let him know when you’ve made a mistake so he doesn’t paint himself into a corner out of ignorance. Back him up–if you have concerns about something, let him know in private instead of airing your grievances at an open meeting.

When you use the last of something, replace it. Whether it’s the last paper in the copy machine or the last cup of joe in the coffee maker, don’t just walk away—replace the paper and make another pot. Ditto for copy machine paper jams—don’t whistle as you slowly slink off. Fix it.

Treat your underlings with kindness and respect. They keep the office running. And you never know if that lowly clerk will one day be your boss.

Respect the chain of command. Both up and down. Don’t step on anybody’s toes. Don’t go over your boss’s head without permission.

Hold the door for people approaching the elevator. Don’t hide in the corner while secretly wishing for the doors to close as quickly as possible.

If you’re using speaker phone, let the person(s) you’re speaking with know who else is on the call with you before you begin the conversation. That way, they will not be confused when another person’s voice suddenly pops in later on.

Bring donuts or bagels to a meeting every once in a blue moon. This is not expected of you. But if you do it, you’ll be a hero.

The Don’ts

Pass the buck. Generally, making excuses reflects more poorly on your character than admitting the mistake would have on your competence. If you blame an underling, you reveal yourself to be a mediocre leader, for you should have seen to it that the job got done correctly. If you blame an equal, you simply look like a whiner and run the risk of souring your relationship with someone with whom you’ll likely have to continue to work. And if you blame a higher-up…well common sense dictates that it’s not a good idea to anger the people who hold your job in their hands.

Come late to meetings. Your late arrival is disruptive and may prolong the meeting if they have to wait to get started until you get there or if they have to catch you up on what has already been discussed.

Linger at someone’s desk. Nothing wrong with stopping by to say hello to your cubicle buddy. But, if after some brief chit-chat, your co-worker shows signs of trying to get back to work, move on!

Eat other people’s food. The crime that launched a thousand passive-aggressive notes.

Eavesdrop on co-workers’ private phone calls. Now obviously if someone is having a conversation a cubicle over, it’s impossible not to hear what they’re saying. But you can certainly pretend like you don’t hear. In other words, if Bob just got off the phone from having an argument with his teenage son, don’t saunter over and ask, “What’s the problem with young Johnny, Bob?” If your co-worker wants to bring up the topic with you, then let him initiate that conversation. Otherwise, consider what you heard to be off-limits.

Listen to radio/music/Youtube videos without headphones. Not everyone shares your affinity for Enya.

Let your personal life get in the way of your business life. Always maintain a business-like attitude. This doesn’t mean being cold or aloof from others. What it means is that your personal life should very rarely interfere with getting work done. Not that you can’t leave early because your kid got sick, but that you don’t come in late because you got plastered the night before, you don’t ask the boss for a raise because you just had a baby, and you don’t spend half your time at work arguing with your ex-wife about alimony payments.

Come back and visit your old office. And now we return to the point made at the beginning of the article: the business world is different from the social world. In the social sphere, when you make close relationships, the expectation is that those relationships will last no matter where life takes you. At the office, you might develop relationships that feel very close with your co-workers, but once you move on, those relationships typically do too. When you leave a company to take another job elsewhere, don’t come back to your old workplace expecting to be heralded as a long lost friend. People will find the situation a little awkward and you a good deal lame.

The 5 Switches of Manliness: Provide - The Art of Manliness

“A man should be a good provider.”

We’ve all heard this phrase before; it remains common even in our modern society. When someone says that a man should be a good provider, what they invariably mean is that he should have a good job that earns a steady income, one which enables him to provide food, shelter, and the nice things in life to his family.

This definition of being a provider is well-ingrained in our society and in the male psyche. In fact, when men lose a job, and thus their identity as a provider, they tend to get very anxious and depressed.

So earning a good income–is that what’s involved in this Switch of Manliness? And if so, is the switch still a viable one in a time where both partners in a marriage are often breadwinners? And what about stay-at-home dads? Are they not providers?

In fact, bringing home the bacon has little to do with the true Provider Switch at all.

Providing in Primitive Times

In the Switches of Manliness series, we’ve been traveling back in time, way back in time, to uncover the original male drives that are still embedded in the modern man’s psyche.

Last time, we mentioned the fact that in very primitive societies, men and women provided about equal resources to their tribes; women gathered nuts and seeds, and men hunted big game. In fact, for much of human history, men and women contributed fairly equally to the family economy. The idea of the stay-at-home wife who lounged around the house while her husband toiled all day outside the home is a relatively modern conception of family life. It wasn’t until the 19th century that we saw this idea take hold in the West and even then, the working husband and stay-at-home wife dynamic was typically only available to the wealthy and middle-class. In most families, both men and women had to work in some capacity in order to keep the family afloat financially.

So is there a broader definition of providing, one that better fits the historical record?

To answer that question, I think it’s helpful to look at the etymology of the word “provide.” The Online Etymology Dictionary tells us:

early 15c., from L. providere “look ahead, prepare, supply,” from pro- “ahead” + videre “to see” (see vision)

To which the Etymological Dictionary of the English Language adds:

“Lat. to act with foresight, lit. to foresee”

I like that idea of providing. Instead of making a man’s identity and worth based on his paycheck, his ability to provide hinges on whether he has a vision for his life, leads his family with that vision, and is able to look ahead and prepare for the storms of life.

Man as Scout

In primitive times, looking ahead took the form of scouting for the tribe. Men were the lookouts. As scouts, they navigated the terrain and traveled ahead (and behind) the women and children, scanning the horizon for dangers to avoid.

This male role continues in modern primitive tribes, and has even been observed in chimps:

“When Bushmen travel, they walk in a single file, with a man in the lead who watches out for fresh predator tracks, snakes, and other dangers. Women and children occupy safer positions. This, too, is reminiscent of chimpanzees, who at dangerous moments–such as when they cross a human dirt road–have adult males in the lead and rear, with females and juveniles in-between. Sometimes the alpha male stands guard at the road until everyone has crossed it.” -Frans De Waal, The Age of Empathy

I think we all intuitively understand this behavior. Males tend to be physically stronger than females, so it makes sense that males were the ones doing the protecting. But it wasn’t a man’s brute strength alone that qualified him for this role. The male brain is actually uniquely suited for this scouting (or vision providing) task in several ways.

The Scouting Brain

When we were hanging out in our mothers’ wombs, our bodies were flooded with a bunch of different hormones. According to The Male Brain, two of these substances–specifically anti-Mullerian hormones and testosterone–primed the circuits of our tiny male brains for certain functions like “exploratory behavior, muscular and motor control, spatial skills, and rough play.”

The male brain is particularly adept at visual-spatial skills. Men tend to be better than women at rotating objects in their minds to gain a 3-D view and are better able to track moving objects, gauge how fast they’re going, and determine the objects’ proportions and location. Men also have keener long range vision than women, are more sensitive to objects entering their field of vision, and are better at noticing the small movements of those objects. In fact, there is a correlation between higher testosterone levels and visual-processing speeds.

Men’s visual and spatial abilities give them a leg up when it comes to geography, orientation, and navigation–skills that come in handy when out on the hunt or engaging in battle.

The male brain is also built with a larger dorsal premammillary nucleus, also called the “defend-your-turf” part of the brain. The circuity of this part of the brain is designed to detect territorial challenges by other males. Men’s brains also include a larger amygdala than women, which can be thought of as an alarm system for possible danger. Thus men are especially alert to potential threats to themselves and their loved ones.

The Tracking Brain

These inborn proclivities not only helped men in their roles as searchers and scouts, they may have been used in ways that then strengthened their ability to envision the future. In Born to Run, author Christopher McDougall recounts an insight a modern-day man, Louis Lisenberg, received when he spent time learning how to track and hunt in the primitive style with the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert:

“Even after you learn to read dirt, you ain’t learned nothing; the next level is tracking without tracks, a higher state of reasoning known in the lit as ‘speculative hunting.’ The only way you can pull it off, Louis discovered, was by projecting yourself out of the present and into the future, transporting yourself into the mind of the animal you’re tracking…’When tracking an animal, one attempts to think like an animal in order to predict where it is going,’ Louis says. ‘Looking at its tracks one visualizes the motion of the animal and feels that motion in one’s own body. You go into a trancelike state, the concentration is so intense. It’s actually quite dangerous, because you become numb to your own body and can keep pushing yourself until you collapse.’

Visualization…empathy…abstract thinking and forward projection: aside from the keeling-over part, isn’t that exactly the mental engineering we now use for science, medicine, the creative arts? ‘When you track, you’ve created causal connections in your mind, because you didn’t actually see what the animal did,’ Louis realized.”

The Systemizing Brain

As we’ve discussed in previous posts, the disparity in the reproductive odds for men and women in primitive times (women had double the chance of passing on their genes than men did), led men to take on big challenges in order to gain alpha male status and up their odds of reproducing. For this and other reasons, men took part in big game hunts, battles, and adventures and expeditions of other sorts. These types of endeavors often happened in large groups, and created a social system for men very different than the one for women. Women, who stayed close to home and nurtured their families, had fewer but closer and more intimate relationships. Men had a greater number of relationships, but they were shallower and more impersonal in nature.

Men thus thought and worked in large systems, and their brains developed accordingly. There are a bunch of interesting implications of this—again I recommend onto you Dr. Baumeister’s Is There Anything Good About Men?—but for the purposes of this post, the most important thing is that men’s brains developed to be motivated towards systemizing, women’s brains for empathizing.

Psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen (not the Borat guy), who proposed the “systematizing-empathizing theory” after studying autism (which he believes is simply the manifestation of the extreme male brain—all systemizing, little empathizing)—believes this spectrum constitutes the fundamental difference between the sexes.

Dr. Baron-Cohen defines a system as anything in which certain input translates into certain output, according to a rule. It’s all about if-then logical reasoning—if I do this, I’ll get this. According to Baron-Cohen, systemizing helped our caveman ancestors to understand natural systems like weather, astrological movement, and animal migration–skills valuable in feeding and protecting the tribe. Systemizing would also come in handy in battles of social rank in the hierarchy of a tribe. Remember, in our distant past, if a man wanted to increase his chances of passing on his genes, he needed to stand out from the crowd. The systemizing male brain may have helped our ancestors strategize how to make it to the top of the pecking order.

The Provider Switch

The scouting brain. The tracking brain. The systemizing brain. What do they all add up to? The Provider Switch, of course. Men have an innate need to look ahead, to plan, to prepare, to strategize. Or in other words, men have an innate need for vision, for providing.

While we’re no longer hunting antelopes, our brains are still primed to engage in searching, scanning, recognition, and long-term planning. These activities are carried out in the left side of the brain and are fueled by dopamine, the neurotransmitter which neuroscientists have shown motivates the male brain to a greater extent than the female brain.

While the Switches of Manliness we’ve talked about so far–legacy, challenge, physicality–aren’t activated very often in our modern world, this isn’t the case with this switch. It is often activated, just not in a very productive way. And how is it activated? By things like technology and video games.

Studies have shown that video games activate reward regions of the brain more in men than in women, giving us nice hits of dopamine, which probably explains why more men play, and report feeling addicted to, video games than women. Video games activate all the unique attributes of the male brain. Success at video games requires high visual processing speeds, the ability to navigate and create large mental maps in your head, recognition skills, and the ability to systematize and strategize. Of course it’s not just video games that light up these parts of the male brain–analog games like Risk and chess, role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons, and fantasy sports leagues all require systematizing to succeed and draw the interest of more men than women.

Now whenever I say anything about video games, people get the idea that I’m totally against them. Not so. I’ve played them since I was a wee lad, and after a long time away, I just bought a used Xbox so I could play LA Noire (what a cool game!). But I’ve played the game less than an hour a week since I’ve gotten it because I have too many other, more important, things to do. So that’s how I feel about video games–there’s nothing wrong with them per se, they should just be low on a man’s priorities list. They’re dessert–to be enjoyed in moderation. And that’s why they cannot turn on this Switch of Manliness. It’s like eating a Twinkie when you’re really hungry; you’re satiated for a minute, but then ravenous soon again. Instead, you need something that’s really going to satisfy that hunger and build your body.

Turning the Provider Switch means using the abilities of the male brain towards bettering yourself, fulfilling your life’s potential, and leading those you’re responsible for.

The Importance of Vision

Native American tribes would send young men off on vision quests, so that for the rest of their lives they would know exactly what direction they were supposed to take.

There was great wisdom in this. Having a vision for one’s life is essential. Without one, you end up drifting along in life instead of being driven by purpose towards the fulfillment of your goals. Men without vision feel as if unfortunate events absolutely blindside them–Why did I get fired? Why is my wife leaving? Why am I 30 and still living at home? How did I get in so much debt? How did this happen to me!?! Men without vision live only in the present, much like the grasshopper in the old Aesop’s fable. When winter comes, they are caught unawares and left dazed and shivering in the cold.

On the other hand, a man with vision looks ahead. He plans. He knows where he wants to be in 5, 10, 50 years. And he gathers and systemizes the “data” of his life to gain an understanding of what he must do and how he must act to get where he wants to go. He can analyze what’s working in his life and what’s not, and jettison the latter. He scans the horizon to see what is coming down the pike, and he knows just how he will react if X, Y, or Z happens. He cultivates a healthy self-awareness. He knows what flaws, temptations, and pitfalls are his personal Achilles’ heels, the “predators” that can derail his life and poison his relationships. When these threats approach, the alarms in his mind go off, and he walks away.

Flipping the Provider Switch

If you’re a single man, you need to have a vision for your own life. If you’re a married man, you need to have a vision for your own life and for your family. Women don’t want a man who’s a domineering oaf, but they also don’t want to feel like they’re always pulling, and dragging their husband along. They want a man who’s personally motivated, takes initiative, makes decisions, and has a discernible sense of direction and purpose. A man who is always scouting the way to take care of his family and lead them through the storms of life. I’ve sometimes had that conversation with my wife where I tell her that I feel unhappy, and she asks me what I want out of life and what would make me happy, and all I can answer is, “I don’t know.” That’s a failure of vision. And a failure in being a provider.

Having a vision involves growing in self-awareness and awareness of the world around you. The man of vision understands his own strengths and weaknesses, how the world works, and what makes people tick. He looks out from a high point in the landscape, takes in the lay of the land, fixes his sights on where he wants to go, and figures out how to get there. And then he leads and navigates, watching for and surmounting obstacles, until the destination is reached.

Here are some suggestions for harnessing your inner-Scout and flipping the Provider Switch:

Find your core values
Create a blueprint for your life.
Keep a journal.
Spend some time in solitude. Hike, camp overnight or even rent a hotel room.
Find your vocation.
Create a daily schedule.
Work on becoming fully present in your life.
Meditate or pray.
Write down your goals each night.
Unplug and take periodic technology “fasts” to recharge and clear your mind.
Read biographies–by taking in the sweep of another man’s life you can really gain perspective on your own life, what a man is capable of accomplishing, and insight on the paths other men took.
Create a morning routine that pumps you up for the coming day.
Turn off the radio on the way to work and think about what you want to accomplish that day.
Carry a pocket notebook so you can capture your ideas and make to-do lists to keep track of what needs to get done.
Practice memorization–memorize a poem or work on remembering names.
Keep track of data in your life–when you work out, record how much weight you’re lifting. Write down what you eat. Keep track of your goals or new habits with something like Joe’s Goals.
Read up on human psychology, relationships, body language, etc.
Educate yourself on things like health insurance and retirement plans (stay-tuned for a post on this).
Create a budget and understand exactly what’s going on with your finances.
Start an emergency fund.
Be prepared for disaster and learn survival skills–like how to handle a weapon, pack a bug-out bag, and forage for food.
If you have a family, hold a regular family council. We’ll do a post on this in the future.
Talk with your kids one on one to find out what is going on in their lives. Make it casual–like when you’re driving around together.
Stay up on politics, news, and current events.

http://artofmanliness.com/2011/06/20/the-5-switches-of-manliness-provide/

The Masks Men Wear (TAOM)

Anyone who has dressed up for Halloween knows the transforming effect donning a costume can have, and how exponentially stronger this effect is when it involves wearing a full mask. You feel mischievously free- free of self-consciousness, free to get in character and be someone or something else, free to get a little crazier than you normally would. There is a power in the donning of a mask and for thousands of years, tapping into this power was an essential part of the male experience. Putting on physical masks allowed men to drop the social, psychological “masks” they wore each day and express the more hidden sides of themselves. Now, with the tradition of physical masking having all but disappeared in civilized society, the false veneers of social masks have become permanently glued to the faces of many modern men.

Since prehistoric times and all across the world, making and wearing masks has been almost exclusively the domain of men. Men donned masks for many of the rituals and celebrations that marked a tribe’s most important celebrations and transitions. Men wore masks during rites-of-passage, to ensure a bountiful hunt and harvest, to escort recently deceased spirits into the afterlife, and to mark times of renewal like the new year.

Masks helped primitive tribes deal with change and danger. Transitions and crises could threaten the unity of the tribe. The unchanging face of the mask was a symbol of stability and continuity, and the masquerades were thus used to convey meaning, purpose, and structure during these shifts.

And of course, masks were and are not simply for symbolic use. They also serve as straightforward, functional headgear designed to protect the face. Ancient warriors like the samurai and medieval knights donned headgear and masks not only to protect their mugs, but to intimidate the enemy. Functional masks are the only type of mask to still enjoy widespread use today. From the helmets of football players and motorcycle riders to the masks of hockey goalies and doctors, these masks protect the face while also serving to get the wearer “in the zone.”

Of Masks and Men

Masking’s masculine nature likely arose from its ancient connection to the hunt. Males also often dominated the spiritual life of the tribe, and donning a mask was believed to allow a man to transform himself into the spirit or deity the mask represented.
But masking served a deeper purpose for the male psyche as well. Men have always had to put on a psychological or social mask-a front to hide weakness from their rivals and adhere to a culture’s standard of flinty manliness.
Researchers who study primates, like baboons, have learned never to tranquilize a male in front of his rivals. Once the male goes down, his competitors see the opportunity to pounce on him and will viciously attack the helpless baboon. No such problem exists when researchers tranquilize female primates. One can see then why male primates that are sick or injured will put on displays of vitality and vigor when their rival is around, only to go back to licking their wounds when once again by themselves. Biologists theorize that perhaps our human ancestors dealt with same issue-they couldn’t appear vulnerable or their rivals would see an opening, an opportunity. So our male ancestors learned to hide weakness and act tough. But constantly putting up this front can be psychologically taxing.
By donning a physical mask, the men of old could drop the false facade and feel free to express the more hidden aspects of themselves. Masks were a way to connect with the wild man we’ve been talking about recently, to let loose without feeling fearful or self-conscious. Masks were avenues of transformation and self-discovery for men. They were empowering, allowing men to act out the drama of nature, spirit, and desire in a controlled environment.
The Social Masks of Modern Men
The male tradition of wearing physical masks has almost entirely disappeared in the developed world, with the exception of things like Halloween, Mardi Gras, and Carnival.
But the pressure for men to wear a social “mask” has not vanished. We are still generally expected to hide our weaknesses, on penalty of being labeled a sissy. We also sometimes wear masks of cynicism, coolness, aloofness, or of just generally being people we are not.
The tribal rituals of past times allowed men to drop these false social masks by donning a real mask. Without these reprieves, false social masks can become molded to our faces and become permanent parts of ourselves.
It is not that social masks do not have a healthy role to play in our lives. In Masks: Faces of Culture, the authors describe the transforming effect donning armor and a mask had on the warrior:
“fortified and impenetrable, he appeared ominous, daunting, and invincible, prepared to conquer the world. He exuded a look of rationality, domination, and control, totally disengaged from nature.”
Don’t we all want to feel and look like that from time to time?
Sometimes we need to be the rock of strength for those around us, even when we’re struggling ourselves. When you’re striding up to ask a girl out or sitting in a job interview, wearing a mask of self-assurance can help you come off better than your “normal” self. Putting on a social mask of certainty and strength gives confidence to those around you and makes you feel confident yourself. We see this when athletes put on their “game face,” or when a high-powered salesman takes on a different persona to make the hard sale.
The problem, however, is that some men keep wearing their mask even when the game is over.

The Temptation of the Social Mask


Ancient warriors wore masks as part of their defense-to protect themselves from the blows of their enemies as they defended their territory. Modern men wear the false social mask for a very similar reason-to shield themselves from being wounded by others, to protect their emotional territory from invasion and assault. They use the social mask to intimidate, mystify, and prevent others from getting too close. Their mask keeps others asking,“Who is this person? Does he mean me harm or good?”
But constantly donning a false mask is a cowardly way to deal with your fears. Instead of confronting them directly, you wall them off inside your true self, while allowing your alter ego to navigate the world. The mask acts as the buffer between you and others. This way people don’t insult or reject you, they don’t let you down, they simply deal with your false front while you’re hiding in the back. People can’t touch the real you. The mask puts distance between you and the world and allows you to spurn personal responsibility for your actions. Masks embolden people to do things they wouldn’t normally do-for good and ill. “It wasn’t me being a d-bag, that was The Situation!”

As discussed, the occasional use of a social mask can be healthy. But many men start to use it as a crutch and can’t take it off. Like Jim Carrey’s character in The Mask or the Green Goblin, the power of the mask becomes addicting. It’s easy to put on a mask to transform into someone else, but it’s harder to change who we really are. The mask becomes the source of our power and confidence instead of that power coming from within.

The problem with constantly putting on a false front is that the relationships we make while wearing it are inevitably inauthentic. People interact with your alter ego instead of the real you. Mad Men’s Don Draper is a perfect example of this. He tries to keep up a front of cool control and invulnerability in his relationships. His associate Harry Crane remarks, “Draper? Who knows anything about that guy? No one’s ever lifted that rock. He could be Batman for all we know.” The problem is not only that nobody knows Don, but that in pretending to be someone else (quite literally here) he doesn’t know himself either. He wants to change, but his real self and his false persona are so disconnected he doesn’t know how.

Taking Off the False Mask

Masks can both conceal and reveal. A mask can allow us to express a part of ourselves we would normally be too self-conscious to display. But they can also be a means of deceiving others and ourselves. The constant need to hide our true selves can be psychologically exhausting and takes its toll on our psyche and our relationships.
This is doesn’t mean we should be an entirely open book. Some men, spurning any kind of social mask, go in another extreme, what is often termed, “the overshare.” They spill their guts and emotions to anyone who shows them the least bit of attention. A man should always operate with a healthy sense of sprezzatura.
But we should be careful not to let the social mask so mold to our faces that we can’t take it off. We may no longer have the opportunity to drop our social masks by donning physical masks, but we can cultivate friendships and relationships that allow us to drop the pretense and be ourselves. These kinds of close relationships provide pockets of relief and sanity; they allow us to be open and vulnerable and are absolutely essential to our mental health and happiness. And we can work on cultivating our inner values; pride, confidence, and strength don’t come from a mask, they come from within.


Source: Masks: Faces of Culture

http://artofmanliness.com/2010/08/08/the-masks-men-wear/?utm_source=Daily+Subscribers&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=cab1571d4c-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN

Getting in Touch with your Wild Man:TAOM

I LOVE this article!!! Men, find the wildside! Matt read this to me and we laughed, half serious, when the writer talks about lawschool and that legal side of our mind that is always working out the what if's beforehand, strips you of your wild side. This has been an issue or discussed several times between Matt and I. Matt is such a risk taker and I'm always working out the details & risk evaluating! Do I want that for my son? No! I want him flying up in the air on his bike, taking on the hill on his skateboard (padded & helmeted thank you), snowboarding with the rest of them - not stuffed into the girl boundaries! Same for my daughter. Guess I'd better make that skydiving appointment for myself.... maybe next year.

See the article here - it has video from the movie which is a must see.

http://artofmanliness.com/2010/07/12/dance-like-zorba-the-greek-getting-in-touch-with-your-wild-man/#comment-108915

We talk a lot about gentlemanly behavior and comportment on The Art of Manliness. I think it’s a trait we can all use more of and our culture finds in short supply. Acting like gentlemen builds our self-respect, makes our interactions with others more pleasant, and brings civility back to society.

But I don’t think we should pursue manners and self-discipline to the detriment of our Wild Man. The idea of the Wild Man was popularized in recent times by John Bly’s book about men entitled Iron John. In the book, Bly analyzes the Grimm fairy tale of Iron John and how it relates to a man’s mental and emotional development. To Bly, Iron John is the archetypal Wild Man. He’s covered in hair, he’s big, and he’s earthy. Iron John lives in the forest where it’s dangerous and mysterious. He scares civilized society because he doesn’t always follow the rules.

But according to Bly, the Wild Man isn’t some macho dude or savage man who takes pleasure in violence. The Wild Man is filled with masculine strength or what Bly calls Zeus Energy. The Ancient Greeks called this energy thumos or spiritedness. The Wild Man is the opposite of the pony-tailed New Age guy who only cultivates his nurturing or feminine side. The Wild Man has a fierceness that he’ll use to fight for what he thinks is right. The Wild Man isn’t afraid to shout what he wants and mean it. In short, the Wild Man isn’t afraid or ashamed of being a man.

In Iron John, the Wild Man takes a young boy out into the woods away from his parents and in the process teaches the boy about being a man. According to Bly, we all need to take that trip out into the wild and learn from the Wild Man in order to grow into a complete and mature masculinity. We need to be gentlemen and civilized, yes. But for a man to be truly happy and live a full life, he cannot neglect his Wild Man.

Zorba the Greek Dances His Heart Out
A film that perfectly captures man’s need to get in touch with his Wild Man is Zorba the Greek. Zorba is a man who lives life fully. He’s earthy. He’s filled with with that life giving Zeus Energy that Bly talks about. He’s the Wild Man.

Basil, on the other hand, is the complete opposite. He’s a buttoned-down British gentleman who always says and does what’s proper and what’s expected of him. He’s lifeless, boring, and predictable.

There’s this awesome scene in the film where the difference between Basil and Zorba is highlighted perfectly. Watch:

Zorba dances like a mad man and Basil watches in awe. I love the look that Zorba gets on his face when he hears the music start to play. It’s a look that says, “I’m about to get wild. Join me or get out of the way!” But Zorba’s masculine energy and thumos makes Basil uncomfortable, so he stops Zorba.

If you think about it, that’s how we often treat manliness in our modern world. We’re afraid of manliness, and we try to tame it. We want to throw the Wild Man in a cage. Just look at the way we treat boys in our public schools. Boys by nature love rough and tumble play and are full of energy. They wrestle with each other on the carpet during reading time. They shout out answers without raising their hands. They get restless during grammar lessons, but light up with excitement when they get their hands dirty with a science experiment.

But what do we tell these boys? Behave! Sit still! Quiet down! We basically ask boys to act like girls. If asking and shaming doesn’t work, we tame the Wild Boy with pharmaceuticals.

I’ve seen this in my own life. I remember as a boy my friends and I would build giant dirt ramps in the fields behind our houses. I’d race my bike with wild abandon towards the incline and then propel myself into the air. For a brief moment I took flight, and I relished the feeling of absolute freedom. Yeah, I got hurt. But that was part of the excitement- the risk of serious physical harm. My friends and I were mad for adventure, and we looked for it every day.

Fast forward to today, and that Wild Man I once had has been tamed. After years of being told to “behave” and do what’s safe, I’ve become hyper risk-averse. Law school only made my aversion to risk even worse. As a lawyer, you’re trained to see and avoid problems so you don’t end up in court. I know I’ve annoyed Kate more than once by endlessly detailing everything that could possibly go wrong when we’re trying to make a decision.

But back to Zorba and Basil.

At the end of the film, Zorba the Greek and Basil sit together on a beach after witnessing the destruction of a giant zip line contraption that Zorba created to ferry wood down from a mountain. They share some wine and lamb and while they eat Zorba imparts some advice to his dull friend:

The scene really resonates with me because I know exactly where Basil is coming from. I think a lot of us do. We’ve spent our whole lives “behaving” and trying to please those around us. We go to college because that’s what we’re “supposed” to do. We work in careers that give us prestige, but don’t excite us at all. We play it safe and hope we can just get by in life. In the process, we’ve tamed the Wild Man within us and lost our passion for life.

Zorba is right. If a man wants to be truly free and truly alive, he has to have a bit of madness. You have to, as Robert Bly would say, be in touch with your Wild Man. Just look at how happy the two men are as they dance like Wild Men. When was the last time you were that full of joy? In our modern vernacular, “madness” has a negative connotation. We think lunatics and straight jackets when we hear the word. But that has not always been the way madness was viewed. The Ancient Greeks acknowledged the kind of madness that made a man insensible, but also believed in an entirely positive type of madness. For them, positive madness was a gift from the gods, powerful divine inspiration that superseded reason. The Ancient Greeks believed four kinds of divine madness existed: 1) madness of prophecy, 2) madness of love, 3) madness of poetry, and 4) madness of ritual. In the Phaedrus, Plato said that these forms of madness were “the source of the chiefest blessings granted to men” and that the “greatest of good things come to us through madness.”

Madness inspires men to create beautiful pieces of art and to love passionately and deeply. Madness imparts flashes of wisdom and insight and spurs men to attempt amazing and inspiring feats that a more reasonable and “sane” man would never venture to try.

When I think of some of the great men from history that I admire, many of them have this madness that Zorba talks about. When the world told them to “behave” or do the “reasonable thing,” they told the world to go to hell and they danced like Zorba right in the world’s face.

How to Dance Like Zorba
Some of you might be reading this and thinking “I’m Basil! I’m the boring stiff who’s lost all passion for life. I’ve tamed my Wild Man. How can I be more like Zorba?” I’ll readily admit I’m still in the process of getting back in touch with my Wild Man, but here are a few things I’ve learned that might help some of you.

Ask for help. In Iron John, the young boy learned about his wild side directly from the Wild Man. Basil learned how to dance from the Wild Man, Zorba the Greek. I’m sure we all know men in our lives that are full of Zeus Energy. They’re like Zorba the Greek. Seek these men out and ask if you can just hang out with them every now and then. You don’t have to ask your Wild Man mentor questions about what it means to be a man. Just talk and do stuff with him. The thing about Wild Man energy is that it’s life giving and contagious. It rubs off on people and inspires fierceness in other men.

Do one uncomfortable thing every day. One thing that’s helped me to get in touch with my Wild Man is to get out of my comfort zone as much as possible. Do something you’ve been wanting to do for awhile now, but have been putting off because it made you uncomfortable. Ask your boss for a raise. Ask that attractive woman you’ve been saying “hi” to for the past few months on a date. Talk to a stranger. Yeah, they’re not very dangerous, but all these activities involve some risk. You could be rejected and you might have your ego bruised. The Tame Man wouldn’t even bother to try because he can’t face that sort of discomfort. The Wild Man lives for the uncertainty and doesn’t take it personally if someone tells him to take a hike.

Do dangerous stuff. Alright. You’ve made some baby steps by doing stuff that would normally make you uncomfortable. Now it’s time to kick it up a notch. Go out and do something dangerous. Now, let me be clear. I’m not saying to be stupid. If you’ve never skydived before, I don’t recommend base-jumping from the Grand Canyon right off the bat. But find an activity that you’ve avoided because you were told all your life that it wasn’t safe. Shoot a gun. Go white water rafting. Hitchhike. Play rugby. Ride a motorcycle. Just do something dangerous and watch how the Wild Man responds to it. He’ll love it.

Push yourself physically. I love what AoM contributor, Chris Hutcheson said about getting in touch with your Wild Man.

“I think using your body to full capacity goes a long way towards getting in touch with your wild man. For example, I get the wild man feeling right about the same time I feel like I’m going to puke when I’m on a long hike up a mountain, or in the final minutes of a tied up rugby match when I have to run and hit even harder than I have been the entire match just to seal the deal. Something about knowing that I’m pushing the limit physically is what does it for me.”

Spend some time in the wild. Makes sense doesn’t it? If you want to get in touch with your Wild Man, then you need to spend some time in his natural habitat-the wild. We go from our climate-controlled houses to our climate-controlled cars to our climate-controlled office to our climate controlled gym and then back into our hole. You need to seek an environment that isn’t controlled at all, that’s free, natural, wild. Head out into the forest and mountains. Breathe air that hasn’t been recycled. Touch things that haven’t been manufactured. Go a few days without showering and get some real dirt on your body.

Dance like a Zorba. Have you ever been to a concert or a wedding and noticed how most of the men behave? They usually have their arms folded as they self-consciously tap their foot to the beat of the music. But we modern men in the West have forgotten the power of dance. We think it’s below us, that it’s just not cool or manly. Zorba the Greek would object.

There’s always that One Guy at the party or concert who understands this and just gets into it. He’s jumping around and gyrating to the rhythm of the music, and he doesn’t care what the hell other people think. He’s Zorba.

There’s something primal and wild about dancing. Every primitive tribe had a dance that only the men participated in. It was a way for men to tell stories, worship, prepare for battle and express their emotions fully.

This week, I want you to try to do your best Wild Man, Zorba dance. You can even do it in a place where no one will see you. Put on a favorite song and just dance your heart out for that one song. Your mind will tell you to stop, that you’re crazy. But don’t listen. That’s just the wussy Basil-side of you telling you to be sane. To keep the Wild Man in his cage.

But if you want to be free, you have to be a little mad. Dance on, brother. Dance on.

Tips for training for an Ironman: Art of Manliness

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Jim Hodgson.

A quick delve into the history of Ironman is enough to inspire in anyone either awe or craven nerdy-ness. This is due to the fact that perhaps the manliest endurance contest in the world shares a name with a cartoon character. Please note that this guide will not help you become Ironman. That would be ridiculous.

What it intends to do instead is help you become an Ironman. This too is ridiculous, but also possible… if you have the sack for it.

I have left out anything that I was able to learn from training schedules and triathlon forums and included instead what I consider to be the most important and yet obscure things I learned in the process of completing my first full distance Ironman race. This is the stuff that I needed to know at the beginning, but was only able to discover when I was in the thick of it.

Mental Toughness

I was standing in line for the start of my first ever real triathlon, a sprint distance race in August of 2008. My triathlon skinsuit was making a garish and comical display of my gut and love handles as I listened to the other guys in my swim wave talk. They were all talking about Ironman, much in the way that a middle school student makes predictions about post-doctoral study.

“I never want to do it. It’s just too long, those people are crazy” one gentleman said, and there was general agreement.

I remember that I was thinking even then, still thirty minutes away from jumping into the water on my first tiny little sprint distance race, that I was going to go all the way to Ironman.

Seven months later, on the course at my first ever full marathon, I was pretty well cooked around the sixteen or seventeen mile mark, and a guy ran by screaming at the top of his lungs, urging everyone onward.

“Keep going! It’s all mental!” he was shouting. There were some doubtful groans from my fellow marathoners.

“Hmm,” I thought. “Is this buffoon correct? Is it all mental?”

I took a quick stock of my various howling ankle joints and leg muscles, and I considered it. Later, both legs cramping solid with ten miles to go on my Ironman run, in danger of being yanked off the course, I had time to reflect even more upon this question. I have spent a great deal of time considering it since then as well, and here is my opinion.

Is it all mental? No. You must train your body to withstand the distance, absolutely.

Having said that, people’s mental image of themselves becomes very apparent when you train with them. If you run with the same 20 people every Thursday, let’s say, soon you will notice that some people are faster than others. My experience was that the distribution of people is pretty much the same each week. Most people are content to stay at a certain level indefinitely.

Each runner is seemingly thinking to himself, “Well, I am faster than Craig, but that George guy is better than me.” At the end of the run each week they will almost always end up between Craig and George.

You must not fall into this mental trap because it will cause you to stagnate. George may very well be faster than you today, but he’d better be on the track all week if he wants to be faster next week, let alone the week after that.

You must think of yourself before you even begin as an Ironman finisher. This is, in my opinion, the most important thing you can do to help yourself.

So, yes — It is absolutely all mental.

A Word about Training

I advise everyone who is an Ironman hopeful to join a triathlon club. I joined the Peachtree Tri Club and met a lot of great people who are now friends. The club and its members provided invaluable advice and camaraderie as well as clinics and training schedules. It also provided a place for me to swim and some instruction on my swim stroke.

This was important to me because I had the approximate natural swimming ability of an adolescent male bison. Now, at least, I swim more like a trained aquatic bison.

If you live in an area without such a club and intend to train solely on your own, I highly recommend that you consider traveling regularly to be around other people with the same goals as you.

Getting All Triathletic About It… Should I Buy a Carbon Bike?

Triathletes love gadgets. There is a myriad of products designed specifically for triathlon, from bikes to skin lubricants to teardrop shaped helmets to shoes with only one wide velcro strap closure. My advice to you is to steer clear of anything you don’t know for a fact that you need. Otherwise you end up wasting brain energy and financial resources on superfluous knickknackery when the only thing that really matters is your engine.

I never bought a wetsuit, for instance. I rented one for the one race I did that was wetsuit legal. It cost $50 to rent. I wore it during my race and sent it back. Simple as that. There are similar services for bike wheels that are a bargain in my opinion.

Beginners ask me sometimes if I think it’s dorky to do their first triathlon on a mountain bike. I think it’s far dorkier to be slow on a super expensive carbon bike and carbon wheels. You will see a lot of people being slow on very expensive bikes. Laugh inwardly at them, because you know that this is a mental game, not a fashion show.

Having said that, I am a free market capitalist at heart. If you want to buy a nice bike, then by all means do something to help the economy and drop that coin. Just know going in that you are buying a thing because you want the thing. Don’t justify it as something you need to finish.

To quote Ronnie Coleman, arguably the greatest bodybuilder who ever lived, “Everybody wanna be a bodybuilder; don’t nobody wanna lift this heavy-ass weight.”

Wrap it up, B!

I used to weigh 320lbs. I used to smoke a pack of cigarettes a day. I have lost over 100lbs and given up smoking and regular drinking. I went from no triathlon experience whatsoever through all the popular distances there are in just over a year, from sprint to Ironman, and I am by no means a thin or svelte man even today. I am proud of myself, but my accomplishments are but a wisp of smoke compared to the sea of people who have overcome a dizzying array of illnesses, amputations and sensory deprivation to complete Ironman races.

When I’m trying to put in my mileage and its raining and I am wet and cold I think about how lucky I am to be alive. I think about my mother’s passing due to cancer and how I want her to be remembered by someone who is worth being remembered by. I think about my little niece and the example a man should set for a child. Sometimes I think about girls who have broken my heart.

Ultimately, the physical effort of endurance racing and the mental toughness it requires has embodied for me the single most elusive and important thing that a man needs, in my estimation — a challenge.

No matter how fast I am today, there are always more miles to ride. I can always go harder and be better. There are always people whose mental game I can learn from.

And that, as far as I know, is happiness.

For more adventures and gripping philosophy, you can find Jim practicing the manly art of writing every weekday on his own blog. Check out his story of completing his first Ironman and subscribe by RSS feed or email!

http://artofmanliness.com/2010/03/10/nice-skinsuit-buddy-tips-on-training-for-an-ironman/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheArtOfManliness+%28The+Art+of+Manliness%29

10 Useless Facts To Impress Your Mates With (The Art of Manliness)

This woman stands impressed. I am a Guiness lover (must be the pure Irish in my blood), I do NOT iron (probably haven't even made it to 1/2 mile), love the info on WD-40!, looking forward to my first trip to LV - windows or not; and could have done without the turtle info.

http://community.artofmanliness.com/profiles/blogs/10-useless-facts-to-impress

1. ''The Guiness brewery in Dublin, Ireland has a 6,000 year lease on the property, which should mean the gross but nice when your drunk stout will be safe for another few years.''

2. ''The average woman does 215 miles worth of ironing in her lifetime.''

3. ''20th century fox unsuccessfully sued Universal for copyright infringement, they claimed that Battle Star Galactica stole 34 ideas from Star Wars, childish or what, as if George Lucas needs the cash anyway!''

4. ''The 'WD' in WD-40 stands for 'Water Displacement' yeah I bet you really wanted to know that didn't you?''

5. ''The Titum Arum flower is the largest flower in the world, and it gives off an odour similar to rotting flesh when it blooms. Yeah definitely wouldn't give one to the wife.''

6. ''In Las Vegas, casinos don't have any windows or clocks, why? it's so you lose all sense of time and stay longer and spend more of you hard earned cash.''

7. ''A man named Charles Osbourne had the hiccups for an incredible 69 years, then died 1 year after he finally got rid of them, talk about unlucky!''

8. ''There are at least 6 fictional characters that have stars on hollywood's walk of fame, here are a few:''
Bugs Bunny
Kermit
Donald Duck
The Lone Ranger
Snow White
Rin Tin Tin
9. ''A turtle can breath through its anus, which is probably one of evolutions biggest pranks, and I'll never look at the ninja turtles in the same light again!''

10. ''The first ever product to be scanned with a barcode was a packet of Wrigley's gum on June 26th 1974.''

The Energetic Man - The Art of Manliness

We love upright, energetic men. Pull them this way, and then that way, and the other, and they only bend, but never break. Trip them down, and in a trice they are on their feet. Bury them in the mud, and in an hour they will be out and bright. They are not ever yawning away existence, or walking about the world as if they had come into it with only half their soul; you cannot keep them down; you cannot destroy them. But for these the world would soon degenerate. They are the salt of the earth. Who but they start any noble project? They build our cities and rear our manufactories; they whiten the ocean with their sails, and they blacken the heavens with the smoke of their steam-vessels and furnace fires; they draw treasures from the mine; they plow the earth. Blessings on them! Look to them, young men, and take courage; imitate their example; catch the spirit of their energy and enterprise, and you will deserve, and no doubt command, success.

The best guns for home defense

I am not a gun owner. I was raised with guns however. I have shot a few rifles. As a teen I did not particularly like the boom and the kick. It was not my #1 choice of how to spend my time. My sisters however, were hunters and loved guns. My daughter seems to have an accurate eye for shooting and enjoys it (with proper ear plugs).

As our country is changing, combined with my conspiracy theorist mind (I am well flocked by fellow conspirators), I have had many thoughts & voiced the opinion that it is important for our children to know how to defend themselves - and they don't. Unfortunately, our society takes any thought that may be contrary to their own, when in relation to conservative vs. liberal, and radicalizes it. So for me to express an opinion that my children should know how to use a firearm, well I am a radical! Guns are bad! No, they aren't. The softening of our following generations is bad because it allows them to be taken over & ruled by the incoming socialist government! Boys are told told to stop being aggressive, stop playing guns, stop being BOYS, soften up, lighten up - because the underlying movement is to be able to groom an entire generation or two to be controlled. Okay, radical.

Anywho, I love The Art of Manliness. And today's blog is on The Best Guns for Home Defense. Here it is. I'm on my way - uh, never mind.

http://artofmanliness.com/2009/07/23/the-best-guns-for-home-defense/