This rule discuss the patriarchy, the psycholgical differences between men and women and their roles in society, the effects of stultifying and softening the edges of our envrionment and the effect it’s had on children and adults alike.
“We know children and people are generally safer when they use protective equipment. But, this can ruin a lot of the fun, excitement and risk involved in learning a new skill. When children go off and play and do a lot of these risky activities, they aren’t trying to be safe. In fact, they’re trying to be competent, and it’s competence, that makes people truly safe.”
This is an interesting metophore to begin with as it represents the effects of trying to soften the world around us, reflecting in many ways how it’s becoming harder to fail, fall and hurt yourself. In fact, involuntary pain and suffering appears to never have been less prevelent in the modern world.
Because we have so much protective equipment mentally, emotionally, and physically, we do not form the calluses of the mind and body – that armoring that can protect us from the involuntary future trials and tribulations of our life. And that’s represented through when societies and cultures, communities and councils come together and they take away playgrounds and they put a bunch of protective equipment to protect.
“But in fact, this in the long run has quite the opposite effect. Kids need playgrounds dangerous enough to remain challenging people, including children who don’t seek to minimize risk and instead work to optimize it. Thus, if things are made too safe, people, including children, start to figure out ways to make them dangerous again.”
“When untrammeled and encouraged, we prefer to live on the edge. There, we can still be confident in our experience in confronting the chaos that helps us develop. Otherwise we lumber around, sloth-like, unconscious, unformed, and careless. Over protected, we will fail when something dangerous, unexpected, and full of opportunity suddenly makes its appearance — as it inevitably will.”
And to me, this represents, as I said, what is happening to our modern world. And I begged the question, “Could this be why people speed, drive erratically and put themselves in danger. Could it be an explanation that because our environment is so stultified and softened, that we find ways (or people with a certain proclivity towards danger and risk), find ways to put themselves in a bit more risk to challenge their competency, to bring a bit more excitement and to live a bit more on the edge. Could there be something there?
The next part of this rule talks about trying to understand murderers, understand the psychology of someone like an Eric Harris, who was one of the Columbine high school shooters. Peterson talks about how these people, these murderers, these terrorists, they appoint themselves the judge of the human race. And for Eric Harris (who was one of the two killers), he had a diary that he published online, well, a blog, and I’ve read it and it’s truly a representation of what evil and malevolence sounds like, and you get an inside look into his mind. He was of the opinion that human beings are a failed and corrupt species. Once a presupposition such as that is accepted, it’s inner logic will inevitably manifest itself.
“If something is a plague, as David Edinburgh has it, or a cancer, the person who eradicates it is deemed as a hero of a ratable planetary savior. In this case, a real Messiah might follow through with this rigorous moral logic and eliminate himself as well. This is the drive for mass murder; near-infinite resentment. Typically even their own being does not justify the existence of humanity.”
In fact, they ended up killing themselves precisely to demonstrate the purity of their commitment to annihilation. This is what is so staggering and confronting, that terrorists and individuals who may not have any political agendas. Regardless, they are willing to die on their own sword, literally willing to die for their own beliefs as Eric Harris did… which is quite confronting. That someone could believe something so vehemently that they’re willing to die for it over and over again. We see this over and over again through history and no one in the modern world may without objection, express the opinion that existence would be abetted by the absence of Jews, Blacks, Muslims, or Englishman.
You have to have a lot of objection if you say something like that. So why then is it virtuous to propose that the planet might be better off if there were fewer people on it? Because there’s a lot of people out there who think we’re overpopulated, and that a lot of us should just be eradicated from the planet.
Why does it so often seem to be the very people standing so visibly against prejudice, against those minorities: Blacks, Jews, et cetera, these very same people who are against prejudice, denounce humanity itself. They’re the same ones denouncing humanity, saying that humans are the worst and that we have very nihilistic tendencies.
There’s an inconsistency with logic there and it consistently needs to be brought up, revealed, and addressed. Nicholas Christakis — a sociologist and physician, talked about this, that there’s a kind of flawed beauty to human beings and it’s wrong to be seduced to the dark side of thinking that portrays humans as predominantly evil and malevolent creatures.
It’s also a moral and philosophical laziness if we allow ourselves to think that people are awful as it almost relieves us of any duty to be good and to work to make the world better. Consider that.
Now we’re going to talk about the highly contentious subject of girls and boys, men and women, and the differences among us. So statistically speaking, it appears that boys are less susceptible to anxiety, depression, at least after both sexes has hit puberty. Boys interests tilt towards things, a girl’s interests tilt towards people — generally speaking. Boys like competition. They don’t like obey particularly when they’re adolescents.
During that time, they are driven to escape their families and establish their own independent existence. There are preferences in rhis book if you want to search for yourself and find the evidence behind this. Other factors play a role in the decline of boys, girls rules for example, play boy games, but boys are much more reluctant to play girl games.
And this is in part because it is admirable for a girl to win when competing with a boy. It is also okay for her to lose to a boy , but for a boy to beat a girl however, it is often not okay. And just as often, it is even less okay for him to lose. Imagine that a boy and girl get into a fight just for engaging the boys highly suspect. If he wins he is pathetic, if he loses, well his life might as well be over, because he got beat up by a girl. He’s soft, he’s weak, he’s whatever , whatever kids will call him.
Girls can win by winning in their own hierarchy, by being good at what girls do, and what they value. They can add to this victory by winning in the boys hierarchy. Boys however, can only win by winning in the male hierarchy. They will lose status among girls and boys by being good at what girls value. It costs them in reputation among the boys and in attractiveness among the girls.
Upon surface level, people are gonna feel friction against this idea, they might feel emotional and might feel “No, that’s not the case.” I can only speak from my experience and what I’ve learned, and what I experienced through high school and primary school, elementary school for those in the U.S.
I grew up in a time where we barely had mobile phones. And in fact, in primary school, elementary school, we had none. In high school, you had the flip phones that didn’t really do much. And so we were disconnected from a lot of the chaos of the world around us. And so we just operated within these bubbles.
We got to see very clearly the honest experience that boys and girls had as they grew up through adolescence. For me, this is what it represented through elementary, primary, and high school. Now I feel like people will have a different experience. My children will have a different experience because of how these ideas are communicated in the world, how readily they are accessed, and the social and cultural norms and the social and cultural repercussions for believing and acting on these things.
It no longer stays at the playground, it no longer stays just at school, it now travels everywhere around the world. And that is different. So I can say from my experience has been one that Peteraon is discussing. Yours may not have been, but I think it’s important we dig past our emotion and our quick spark of friction that we feel, and explore patriarchy — help or hindrance. Consider this: in regard to oppression, any hierarchy creates winners and losers. The winners are of course, more likely to justify the hierarchy and losers, to criticize.
“This makes sense because the winners win and want to keep winning, loses lose and don’t want to keep losing. But one: the collective pursuit of any valued goal produces a hierarchy as some will be better and some will be worse in that pursuit, no matter what it is. So the very act of pursuing something in a collective way with a group of people produces a hierarchy naturally because there becomes a rank order of competence, and perhaps power as well.”
It is the pursuit of goals that in large part lends itself to sustain the meaning. We experience almost all of the emotion that makes life deep and engaging as a consequence of moving successfully towards something deeply desired in value. This is what gives us a fulfillment and meaning, this is why aiming upwards, having and defining an aim, having a goal, however, small or large, is so critically important because it gives meaning and it engages us with life. And the price we pay for that involvement is the inevitable creation of hierarchies of success, while the inevitable consequence is difference in outcome. Absolute quality would therefore require the sacrifice of value itself, and then there would be nothing worth living for, and that this is a reference to equality of outcome.
The price we pay for that involvement is the inevitable creation of hierarchy. So by the price you pay for having a collective pursuit of something good, of something valuable, right? Pursuing something of value, creates a natural hierarchy, power and competence.
And so this is inevitable because we desire certain outcomes. And if we want to create, if we were to live in a world, and this is a thought experiment, if there was a world to be created where there would be absolute equality of outcome, then it’s very likely that it would sacrifice the very value of value itself.
It would sacrifice value. It would sacrifice what it means to be great at something, because now everybody would be on a level playing field. And then this would in fact, sacrifice, meaning and fulfillment in itself because what would people live for and strive for if everything was equal. Where would you find your inner motivation, inspiration to strive for something better if there is an equal outcome in everything you do. Would we just be sitting like monks on a rock, just meditating and trying to elevate our consciousness every day. Would that be the only purpose to just live inwards? I think it’s a really important point and justification for against the quality of outcome.
Here’s an alternative theory: throughout history, men and women have both struggled terribly for freedom from the overwhelming horrors of probation and necessity. Women were often at a disadvantage during that struggle as they had all the vulnerabilities of men with the extra reproductive burden and less physical strength. In addition to the to the filth, misery, disease, starvation, cruelty, and ignorance that characterized the lives of both sexes back before the 20th century, when people even in the Western world typically existed on less than a dollar on a day on today’s money. Women also have to put up with a series of practical inconveniences: menstruation, the high probability of unwanted pregnancy, the chance of death, or serious damage during childbirth and the burden of too many young children.
Perhaps that is sufficient reason for the different legal and practical treatment of have men and women that characterized most societies prior to the recent technological revolutions, including the invention of the birth control pill.
At least such things might be taken into account before the assumption and that men tyrannized women is accepted as a truism. So let’s consider this first, because absolutely for women there is a whole host of biological, physiological, psychological differences between men and women that predispose women to just have more of a terrible time through history. Both sexes, human beings as a whole really didn’t have great time in history, right? We both suffered tremendously through time. People want to pit ourselves against each other. The reality is we’re all team Homo sapien and we forget that.
It looks to me like the so called oppression of the patriarchy was instead of imperfect collective attempts by men and women stretching over millennia to free each other from probation, disease and drudgery.
Peterson, and many men and women alike to him, believe that it’s quite dangerous to teach our young people that our incredible culture is the result of male oppression. When we have people like James Young Simpson in the mid 18 hundreds who used ether, later chloroform, to help women deliver birth with pelvic defects and deformities. And in fact, the first baby to deliver under its influence was called anesthesia because the chloroform would help women reduce the pain and to help them give birth.
And then another gentleman, Dr. Earl Cleveland Hass in the early 19 hundreds developed the tampon. Then another Indian man, his wife he noticed was using a lot of dirty rags for a menstrual period, and they didn’t have access to tampons then. And so what he did to rectify the problem he created and distributed low cost, locally made napkins to help women with their hygiene around their cycle.
So there’s many cases of men doing things that have been quite productive for society and women as a whole. And the question then becomes is these people, these men who have created these things, are they part of the patriarchy, you know, is there some conniving motivation behind their creations that have helped millions of women throughout history?
Or is it the fact that, you know, oppression exists. It has existed among a whole class of people, a whole spectrum of people, among both genders throughout history, and maybe that our culture isn’t the result of male oppression or women oppression. Maybe there’s validity in the argument that there has been oppression, there has been. But maybe the whole society and culture isn’t built on it, you know, maybe we can be friends. Maybe we can find common ground and be like “Hey, you know what? That’s pretty amazing that these three inventors, that they did something a pretty good.”
But you know what, let me be honest there’s probably another three examples that different people can give of men oppressing women. We’re pretty aware of that. I’m pretty aware of that and I think that Peterson is too, that there’s examples on both ends, but let’s acknowledge them both honestly and openly.
Yes, we can absolutely talk about how men and women and different classes and colors of people have been oppressed over history. We can absolutely talk about that. It’s important to talk about history, but let’s not emit certain parts that support our agenda or bias. Let’s try and find the open, honest truth instead of trying to support an ideology or something that we’ve ingrained in our identity.
We’ve ingrained these opinions and ideas and ideologies into our identity that for someone to threaten that almost threatens our identity and who we are. Let’s just try and find truth and common ground and acknowledge both sides for in fact, the most strong argument and arguer is one who can argue the opposite side just as effectively as they can argue their own.
And can you do that? Can the people who are saying men are the most oppressive things, and that patriarchy is the worst thing to ever happen to our society and culture. Can they argue the other side. Often times I can’t, and we can’t. And that’s the flaw of the human being, not the man, not the woman, the human being. And to bring up arguably the even more contentious subject of whether gender is a social construct, there perhaps is an inconsistency in the ideology that he highlights that’s that I found quite thought provoking.
Let’s say gender is constructed. But an individual who designs gender reassignment surgery is to be unarguably considered a man trapped in a woman’s body or vice versa. The fact that both of these cannot logically be true simultaneously is just ignored, or rationalized away with another appalling postmodern claim that logic itself, along with the techniques of science, is mainly a part of the oppressive patriarchal system. So if we’re just going to dismiss science as a whole, then it’s going to be pretty challenging to have any conversation, but if we acknowledge science and that if we say gender is a social construct, let’s say we believe that, but let’s say that, well, this is a man trapped in a woman’s body, this is a woman trapped in a man’s body or whatever example. How can both be true? When one has physiological, biological mechanisms and roots, and the other has social roots. Maybe perhaps is there both, are both right. If you believe in science and believe in biology and physiology, which I do, it’s my vocation. Then if you believe in that, then you can make justifications for physiology, and biology and differences between men and women. And I can do that. I’m not going to do that right now, but we can do that.
But then on the other side, then we can also consider that perhaps due to our consciousness and our ability to think and communicate on a level unlike any other organism, we have constructed gender onto ourselves and onto other creatures.
And in fact, maybe other animals don’t perceive gender, but they act upon it. They mate with their opposite sex, the majority of the time. So maybe this is not a socially constructed thing, but it is a physiological, biologically acted on thing, it’s just not socially talked about in the animal kingdom, outside of Homo sapiens, because perhaps these animals don’t have the ability to consider, be conscious enough to think about these capabilities and maybe even have the capabilities to think.
Then there comes this argument where we’re talking about equality of outcome. Well, how do all outcomes be equalized? Is that even possible? Outcomes must be measured, comparing the salaries of people who occupied the same position is relatively straightforward, although complicated significantly by such things as date of hire, given the differences in demand for workers, for example, at different time periods, but there are other dimensions of comparison and social influence and the introduction of the equal pay for equal work argument immediately complicates even salary comparison beyond practicality. For one simple reason: who decides what work is equal? It’s not possible.
That’s why the marketplace exists, because the market determines what they’ll pay for your service or you’re good. “The market is the market is the market.” As Gary Vaynerchuk says. Worse is the problem of group comparison. “Women should make just as much as men.” Okay. “Black women should make as much as white women.” Okay. Should salary then be adjusted for all parameters of race? At what level of resolution, how deep do you do go to someone’s ethnicity? What racial categories are real and authentic? How deep do you go? ??? tribal members have a yearly average income of $30,000 a year while Tohono make $11,000 a year. Are they equally oppressed?
What about disabilities? “Disabled people should make just as much as not disabled people.” Okay. On the surface that’s noble, compassionate, maybe altruistic and fair claim, but who’s disabled? Is someone living with the patient with Alzheimer’s disabled, if not, why not? What about someone with a lower IQ, someone less attractive, someone overweight.
You see some people clearly move through life, markedly, overburdened with problems that are beyond their control, but it is a rare person indeed, who isn’t suffering from at least one serious catastrophe at any given time, particularly for you, if you include their family in the equation. Everyone’s suffering, everyone’s burdening something. So what are we going to do? We’re going to create this homogenous, massively collective impossible equation of equality?
Every person is unique and not just in a trvially manner, importantly, significantly meaningfully unique group, membership cannot capture that variability, period. None of thia complexity is ever discussed by the postmodern Marxist thinkers. Instead, the ideological approach fixes a point of truth, like the North Star, and forces everything to rotate around it.
That is someone who’s stuck. Your argument is the North Star and you force everyone to come around that you could be wrong. I could be wrong. I look back on previous videos and thinking; “I don’t agree with that.” “I would change that.” “I might tweak that.” My ideas, my thoughts, Peterson’s thoughts are not the North star. Just guide the framework.
Now we’re going to talk about the behavioral developmental differences between boys and girls on the spectrum of aggressiveness and non-aggressiveness or lack of aggressiveness. There’s a problem with young children who don’t manage to render their aggressive temperament, are sophisticated by the end of in infancy, Peterson says “[They]are doomed to unpopularity as their primordial antagonism no longer serves them socially at later stages (they’re primordial — they’re evolutionary ingrained antagonism like aggressiveness) and rejected by their peers. They lack further socialization opportunities and tend towards outcast status. So you ask what happened in their childhood; “How did you come to this person? How did you become this violent crime ridden, this ugly ugly person?”
While often the aggressiveness that is not tamed in childhood and corralled can manifest a mutate into these types of destructive habits. And “ these are the individuals who remain much more inclined towards antisocial common criminal behavior.” As I just said, as Peterson is saying now. But this does not all mean that the aggressive drive lacks either utility or value, because aggressiveness can be cultivated into a very meaningful way — it can have a lot of utility. At minimum it’s a necessary for self protection.
Now we’re gonna talk about the other side: females and their experience with aggression and compassion. And Peterson says many of his female clients, perhaps the majority have trouble in their jobs and family, not because they are too aggressive, but because they are not aggressive enough.You see, men typically have the problem of just over aggressive energy and an imbalance of fire, if you will.
And women can typically generally speaking, if you look statistically speaking, we look at the big five personality trait. Typically men are less agreeable typically when women more agreeable. And so this is how intertwined with it, agreeableness and disagreeableness intertwines with a proclivity towards aggressive behavior.
And so a problem Peterson has observed in his clinical practice, this is not an opinion, people get very emotional when you say these things. These are not opinions, these are based on anecdotal and clinical practice. So he observes that problems manifest because they’re not aggressive enough. And I can corroborate this with what I’ve seen, just in my interpersonal relationships.
Insufficiently aggressive women and men do too much for others. They tend to treat those around them as if they will do a stressed child. They tend to be naive, they assume that the cooperation should be the basis of all social transactions and they avoid conflict, which means they avoid confronting problems in their relationships and the world around them. They continually sacrifice for others and may sound virtuous and altruist, and it is definitely an attitude that has a certain social advantages, but it can often does catch productively one sided as too agreeable people bend over backwards for other people. They tend not to stand up properly for themselves.
Assuming that others think as they do, they expect instead of ensuring reciprocity for their thoughtful actions. So they expect things to come back to them instead of ensuring they do so that it’s more of a passive stepping back and just saying “Oh it’ll happen, it’ll happen. I trust the person, they’ll probably do it” when, in fact that’s not how the world works. You know, if you’ve made an agreement, you made a deal and you have an expectation of something you’d better follow through and action off that. Otherwise, you have to find a way to detach yourself from that expectation outcome.
When this does not happen, they don’t speak up. They do not, or cannot straightforwardly demand recognition. The darkside of their character emerges because of their subjugation and they become resentful.
So what do you do? Peterson teachers accessibly agreeable people to note the emergence of such resentment, which is a very important, although very toxic emotion. So acknowledge the resentment. Befriend it. There are only two major reasons for resentment: being taken advantage of, or allowing yourself to be taken advantage of (or you a whiny refusal to grow up and take responsibility for your life). Either one of that.
If you’re resentful, look for the reasons, perhaps discuss the issue with someone you trust. Are you feeling hard done by in an immature manner? If after some honest consideration you don’t think it’s that perhaps someone is taking advantage of you, this now means that you face a moral obligation to speak up for yourself. This is the challenge of the less aggressive, more agreeable person. This might mean confronting your boss or your husband, your wife, your child. It might mean gathering some evidence strategically so that when you confront the person, you can give them several examples of their misbehavior.
So they can’t easily weasel out of you act as accusations. So come in prepared, take some time for yourself because often the more agreeable person, less aggressive person, when they confront issues and they haven’t thought about it, they haven’t brought the evidence, they’re usually the ones to back off and they usually say “Oh, Maybe you’re right. Oh, I was wrong. I’m sorry.” They’re usually that type. No you come with the evidence, you think about it, and you don’t back off because you need to be assertive and aggressive in this situation and show that you can stand on your own.
It’s important to stand on your own because if you don’t stand on your own, you get stood on. The person oppressing you is likely no wiser than you, tell them directly what would be preferable instead of after you have sorted it out. Make your request as small and reasonable as possible, but ensure that it’s fulfillment would satisfy you. In that matter, you come to the discussion with a solution instead of a problem, because coming in, everyone’s very good at listing problems, very easy, this problem, or this problem, this problem, this problem. Great. What are you going to do about it? No one cares about your problems. Well, maybe the other loser friends you have that are enabling you care or pretend to care. Maybe a real loved one cares, but at the end of the day, no one’s coming to save you, but you, so what’s your solution?
“Toughen up you weasel.” There was a famous advertisement in the form of a comic strip issued a few decades ago by a bodybuilder Charles Atlas. It was titled the insult that made a man out of Mac and could be found in almost every comic book, most of which were read by boys. Mac the protagonist is sitting on a beach blanket with an attractive young woman. A bully runs by and kicks sand in both theie faces. Mac objects. The much larger man grabs him by the arm and says, “Listen here, I’d smash your face… only you’re so skinny you might dry up and blow away.” The bully departs. Mac says to the girl, “The big bully! I’ll get even some day. She drops a provocative pose and says “Oh don’t let it bother you little boy.” Mac goes home, considers his pathetic physique and buys the Atlas program. Soon, he has a new body and the next time he goes to the beach, he punches the bullying in the nose. The now admiring girl clings to his arm; “Oh, Mac. You’re real man afterall.”
This ad is famous for a reason. It summarizes human sexual psychology in seven straightforward panels. “The too weak young man is embarrassed and self-conscious as he should be. What good is he? He gets put down by other men and worse by desirable women. Instead of drowning in resentment and sulking off to his basement to play video games in his underwear, covered by Cheetos dust, he presents himself with what Alfred Adler, Freud’s most practical colleague called ‘compensatory fantasy’. The goal of such a fancy is not so much wish fulfillment as illumination of a genuine path forward. Mack takes serious note of his scarecrow-like build and decides that he should develop a stronger body. More importantly, he puts his plan into action. He identifies with the part of himself that could transcend his current state and becomes the hero of his own adventure. He goes back to the beach, punch the bully in the nose, Mac wins. So does his eventual girlfriend. So does everyone else.”
And not because of the act of violence, it’a because he stood up for himself. He didn’t let his mother or father coddle him. “Oh it’s okay, darling. You’ll be okay. Just don’t go to that beach next time.” “Go somewhere else. Call the police.” You know, “Make sure you maybe bring some friends with you next time.” Blah, blah, blah… running away from the problem as I have done in my life.
I’m that kid, in many ways I’m that kid. I’m Mac, right? And so I’m trying to weed the softness out of my soul, mind and body. I’m very aware of how I grew up and I’m very aware that I wasn’t. And I say this with all due respect, but I wasn’t fortunate enough to grow up in truly tumultuous, difficult times.
I say fortunate, very purposefully. I think the most unfortunate circumstances turn into the most fortunate people. Notice the funniest comedians, they come from the darkest backgrounds. Notice some of the most successful people in this world: athletes, entrepreneurs, businessmen and women, writers, authors, et cetera. It appears a large portion of them come from dark, terrible times where they got picked on and they had to make the decision to turn into a better person.
So if you have not gone through a dramatic amount of that, you have to create it within yourself. You have to crave voluntary suffering to create character. Otherwise the world’s just going to step all over you and the world is going to be fine for it, the world will enable you in fact. It has never been a time where people have enabled this soft, weak, pushy type of behavior. And it sickens me to no end. Why? Because it reflects a part of me. That’s why. Not because I want the world to be this picture-perfect ideal place. It’s not going to be. Because it reflects who I am and who I was, and who I’m trying to be. It’s personal. Maybe a bit too emotional, but I’m trying to use the emotion to propel me forward. Maybe you can too.
“Men have to toughen up ,men demand it and woman want it, even though they may not approve of the harsh and contemptuous attitude that is part and parcel of the socially demanding process that fosters and then enforces that toughness men toughen up by pushing themselves and by pushing each other.
When I was a teenager, the boys were much more likely to get into car accidents than girls and still are. And it’s because they were out spinning doughnuts and night in IC carpark lots. They would drag race and drive cars over roadless hills extending from nearby rivers up to level land hundreds of feet higher.
They were more likely to fight physically, skip class, tell the teachers off, and to rebel and to quit school because they were tired of raising their hands for permission to go to the bathroom when they were big and strong enough to work on oil rigs and go join the military. What type of world is that?”
It’s a world of where you… let me back up. Respect is very important. Yes, sir. No, sir. Please. Thank you. Respect is important. But on the other hand, it’s a weird dichotomy of raising your hand to go to the bathroom. “Excuse me sir, can I please go to the bathroom?” “No!” What? “I could work on an oil rig and make double what you make, tomorrow.”
When this process goes too far, boys and men drift into antisocial behavior, which is far more prevalent in males than females. That does not mean that every manifestation of daring and courage is criminal. When the boys were spinning doughnuts they were also testing the limits of their cars, their abilities as drivers, their capacity for control in and out of control situations, they were testing their competency.
And when they told off their teachers, they were pushing against authority or pushing the boundaries. And it’s very important to push the boundaries, to test the limits, to see if there’s any real authority there and that kind that could be relied upon in principle, in a crisis. When they quit school and went to work on a rig with roughnecks when it was 40 blood degrees below zero, it wasn’t a weakness that propelled so many out of the classroom where a better future arguably waited, it was strength.
If they’re healthy, women don’t want boys, they want men. They want someone to contend with, someone to grapple with. If they’re tough, they want someone tougher. If they’re smart, they want someone smarter. They desire someone who brings to the table something they can’t already provide. This often makes it tough for smart, attractive women to find mates, because there aren’t that many men who can outclass them enough to be considered desirable. So we settle. Men settle, women settle. Which is the danger of it.
In fact, it’s not just women who need a stronger man, a tougher man, the world desires it. The world needs it. I agree. I don’t have to say I agree. I think I’m part of the problem, but the world needs it. The world needs better men and women. The spirit that interferes when boys are trying to become men is there for no more friend to a woman than it is a man. It will object just as self-righteously. When little girls try to stand on their own two feet, it negates consciousness, it is anti-human, desirous of failure, jealous, resentful, and destructive. No one truly on the side of humanity would ally him or herself with such a thing. No one aiming at moving up would allow him or herself to become possessed by such a thing.
If you think tough men are dangerous, wait until you see what weak men are capable of. There’s a saying;
“Hard times make strong men.
Strong men create good times.
Good times create weak men.
Weak men create hard times.”
So leave children alone when they are skateboarding.
