Recently I’ve been reading some books I jokingly bought to be part of my “Man Library” where I could point misguided boys and children who call themselves men when they realised the err of their ways. Well it turns out some of these books I picked were pretty good. Some just having good advise, some having a wealth of information.
One book I have enjoyed in particular is The Man Book: The Essential Guide for the Modern Man by Thomas Fink. Mr. Fink is by trade a Theoretical Physicist. Some how he has found a way to employee his knowledge into the long lost, but time honoured tradition of being Man. This creates both a mix of humour, and a sudden logical epiphany that you may be missing something. For example, the massive equation used to tell you what urinal is the best selection. Or the ratio of how man shirts to trousers a man should own.
Thus far it reads as sort of a Charm School for Men handbook. Much like Emily Post’s Etiquette filled will all sorts of rules for all situations.
I have yet to finish it so I’m not sure if it will ever dive into the more gritty part of being a man. Hunting, car maintence, fighting, and so forth. I’ll be most disappointed if it doesn’t.
It seems that the art of being a man was lost somewhere in the late 1950s. I think perhaps it was lost to the upper class for a much longer time, and the poor never had quite the need for it for perhaps the same amount of time. Something I think that had to do with the invention of the bourgeoise, that’s Middle Class to you Marxist Communist/Socialist Hippie lot (not the upper class as you all seem to think). As Malachy McCourt said, the only difference between being poor and being rich is poverty.
Anyway, off topic. The art of being a man I feel was lost perhaps in the late 50s perhaps even early 60s. Where somehow it devolved into a creature to beats his chest, smashes beer cans on his head, gets into brawls, so forth and so on. What some of us would call the “Frat Boy”. Then being a Gentleman was only something for the rich and homosexual. I’m not really sure when that came about. Or why.
I do have a theory though. Media. No, not any particular wing of media refering to liberal or conservative news stations. More like Hollywood, New York, and Book Publishers. There came a time where heroic characters we two dimensional and made for a single facet in the true archetype that is man. John Wayne, James Dean, Humphrey Bogart, Steve McQueen, Errol Flynn, Grace Kelly, Clark Gable… and so on. Think about the characters they played. The heroes. They created two dimensional archetypes for what a man should be. Not that it was their fault, this is just what sold.
So we shall see. I think that I may begin writing an artical on being a man. Not that I am 100% there myself, but of the people I know I’m probably one of the few that can actually qualify.
Then again I suppose it’s all simultaneously subjective and objective and I am a bit old fashioned.
