The Missing Fanfare

I

Tuesday Night proved the slightest of reprieves. With our team down two people headed into the month-end, my days would soon become surging whirlpools, each hour passing with another torrential downpour of paperwork and journal entries and discrepancy analysis.

Tuesday night was Book Club night, the last hurrah before this storm began. This would be the intellectual smorgasbords to tide me over until April 5^th, when our “month-end” fast finally reached denouement.  

I loved it. We dove into duality, the nature of applying rational systems to an irrational reality, Greek myth, book-ends, and the use of visual design to create concepts as deep as Tolstoy in reading lighter than Ironman. Several of the young men there, I had met before: this night was the first chance to see them in their intellectual prime, free to explore concepts without limits, all accompanied by a (healthy) amount of 10% porters.

Imagine my surprise when my friend nudged me and said she would have to leave soon, and she would “explain later.”

???

II

“Jenna” drives me up a wall sometimes. Once she got pissed at my Best Man because he was “too helpful”: he kept trying to help her carry heavy bags and beers when we set up camp. She whines about not “clicking” with any guys. Last month, she whined that she wanted me to unfriend her ex-boyfriend, because she felt like he was “winning” their break-up.

She’s a screwball, twisted enough to make Marilyn Monroe proud.

What could possibly piss her off now?

Was it my mistake to ask?

Jenna shot me a Dickens-esque text message. I swear reading through that drama took longer than reading the actual book for the damn book club. This could, of course, have been summarized much more adroitly.  

The young man next to me dated Jenna briefly. Now she felt awkward, since she rejected him, and humiliated, because his girlfriend was sitting next to him, quiet but attentive, and she was still single.

So, her life sucked, the Book Club felt like hell, and she clamored for a hasty retreat. Netflix would shelter her from the consequences of poor life decisions.

III

What’s wrong with the young man next to me?

You can’t help but try to find fault, after someone tells you they are rejecting something. Perhaps that’s just my INTJ-mind. Rejection implies flaw, or at least superior option (according to taste). Given that my friend is still single, and has been for months, she has found no “superior options,” so this man must bear some serious, fatal flaw.

Right?

It couldn’t have been his job: he worked at the same company as me, a Fortune 50, only he worked in IT and had more job stability, career prospects, and compensation than me.  His teeth were clean, he dressed well enough. He spoke clearly and confidently, and offered a number of great comments on the parallels to Greek philosophy: he was smart and cultured.

They were both at the same book club. So they must have had the same interests.

Was he too picky? Possibly, but his girlfriend next to him packed a few extra pounds. She was by no  means ugly, and she dolled herself up  in cardigan, earrings, and makeup for the night out, but she will never win a beauty contest.

So he shared a lot of common interests, was moderately good looking, had a good job, behaved well, showed great intellectual curiosity, wanted to settle down, and had no exceptionally high standards.

What the hell gives? Why is being single so much better than dating this guy?

Then the automatic braincrawl operating on my deepest memories returns a lot of “similar results.” This isn’t the first time Jenna has rejected a perfectly good guy. This isn’t the first time this month that any of the girls in my social circle whined about the dearth of good guys despite rejecting them by the dozen. 

IV

If the Feminists figured one thing right, it’s that Gender is a Social Construct. What a “Man” is has evolved over the millennium. These men I describe above, these men rejected by women, these particular “Good Guys” that might prove quite alien to our forefathers. They cook and clean, they let their wives work and do not expect to be sole breadwinners. They think it their responsibility to help raise children, they have not fought in foreign wars, and they have not spent much time in the wilderness or on the farms.

It’s a modern concept of masculinity, that remains somewhat cleaner, less strong than our forefathers.

Yet these men still embody some of the highest ideals ever envisioned for a man. They are educated, and use their minds to raise the national well-being. At leisure, they explore the classics, and delve into deep philosophical questions as our ancient philosophers might demand. They participate in modern civic life and remain in good standing with the Law. For the Feminists, they respect women and embrace a co-equal role, rather than a Superior role.

Yet…

“No more!” It’s an almost universal cry, echoing forth from the streets of Manhattan, the halls of Congress, the hills of Applachia, the plains of Kansas, the bayou of Louisiana, the valleys of California.

Why? Why does Jenna demand even more? Why does my sister-in-law state she is “sick of boring nice guys”?

This really deserves more insight. The Western World’s greatest achievement is the advancement of the Common Man. At the dawn of Enlightenment, the common man knew little and owned less. Greater than 90% of the population remained tied to the land, willing to kill over minor differences in religious belief, ignorant of the secrets of the atom or the passage of time or even the teachings of Aristotle.

His morality would guide him to enslave black Africans by the millions, to subjugate most of the world to European cannon, to waylay his own territory in the pursuit of purity, and in the end to launch industrial genocide. Treatment of both woman and child remained poor.

His material condition reflected his moral paucity. Following the Little Ice Age and High Middle Ages, the common man’s height slowly declined, a strong indication of poor living conditions and nutrition. Indeed, man’s average height was not to return to 12^th century norms until well into the 19^th century, at the dawn of the Industrial Age.

Our Common Cause has vastly improved the quality and quantity of young men for eligible bachelorettes. The modern Western man remains more tolerant, wealthier, more intelligent, more educated, more fit, kinder, more compassionate, and less violent than his predecessors in any century.  Harkening back to the 1600s isn’t even necessary: the general trendline is visible over just a matter of decades, in falling violent crime rates (especially towards women), or the increase participation of women and people of color in public life.

We have spent a great deal of time creating a new masculinity that serves both man and woman well. Yet our marriage rates are plunging, our out of wedlock of birth rates incredibly high, the complaints of women louder than ever over the tiniest of microaggressions.

There is no celebration over our moral advance, merely a cacophony of hissing. 

V

Of course, I knew what the problem with Beta Boy Programmer was at a glance, just as we all know the problem with Men at a glance: they aren’t hot enough. Much like Jonas from Lois Lawry’s “The Giver,” women are surrounded by men a uniform shade of boring gray. While these men certainly prove a sight better than any prior generation, they inspire no lust, no imagination, no shortness of the breath.

Men may eventually experience this, too. Certainly when life cosigns a poor masculine soul to cubicle farming amongst a sea of obese, divorced land whiles a part of the genuine masculine passion dies: I feel this myself daily. Women, given their Biological Curse, deal with this every day, with the vast majority of men.

Any other situation would have doomed their foremothers to a lifetime of bastard children.

Some men simply struggle mightily with finding a date, with generating interest, with keeping a woman interested. They lack the social skills, the raw physical appeal, the humor, and the wardrobe necessary to appeal to the Feminine “Mystique.” This is our Male Privilege, and, historically, Our Common Cause has not empowered men with the ability to seduce and woo women. Indeed, this has not even been a priority. Because of this, we have conceded rules of courtship to continual reformation under the behest of self-interested women folk, to the detriment of less attractive men folk.

Our Common Cause had other things to accomplish. When we began the Modern Era, we considered issues of representation and fairness and industry the matter of the day. We valued the prestige of the Noble Man and ultimately sought to bring his behavior to the reach of the Common Man: thus the Gentleman, once identified entirely by his stance in the English class system, can be to be identified with conduct, education, industry, and utility.

Our Common Cause will bestow the honor, prestige, and respect of a Gentleman even upon a half-black bastard child born of a Common Woman, provided he educates himself, proves useful to his People, and earns the respect of his Nation.

That is the evolution of the Male role today, and is why so many Young Men value, properly if I may add, Good Behavior, Good Work, and Good Education.

But this does not result in Good Mating.

To win a woman’s lust requires different skills than that championed by Our Common Cause. Not at odds with Our Common Cause, I may add, simply different. We must maintain an Amused Mastery, demonstrate our sense of worth, refuse to heed to senseless demands, and generally demonstrate that We, the Creators of this Civilization, are the prize.

None of this opposes Our Common Cause. None of this demands we shackle our Brothers in chains. None of this demands we suspend the franchise and roll out Charles II corpse. None of this demands that we appoint Local Lords to adjudicate our disputes. None of this demands we restrict the Press.

None of this is an opposition at all, it is merely a recognition of biological reality. To ignore biological reality is to embrace those failed offshoots of Our Common Cause embraced in Moscow, Beijing, or Pyongyang. 

VI

What is required is a recognition of what we already know: There is no Fanfare for the Common Man, not from the Womenfolk. Our failure, though, is the failure to acknowledge how far we really have come. Common discourse demands a roll-back in rights and an admission of failure over the last several decades.

While mistakes were made, this is not required. Neo-Masculinity does not require a return to the 1950s, and America’s future does not require a re visitation of all our successes.

Neo-Masculinity requires a new vision. It requires a remonstration of the toxic “Feminism” plaguing our culture, that demands our Colleges be cleansed of ideas, that our Workplaces become subject to quotas, that our Armed Services water down their standards and jeopardize our national defense. It further requires a demonstration, that of the pride and honor of manly virtue celebrated on a daily basis with no apology and no resignation.

Finally, we require an explanation, or a cogent belief system and explanation for our values. Again, with no apology, and no resignation.

Our civilization is great, our cause is just, and our honor untainted. The 21^st Century is not the End of Men, but the relighting of Our Common Cause.