My Norwegian uncle was dying with bone cancer, this is the uncle that raised my father, Bootlegger, Brakeman on the railroad, had his sternum split on the job, rode to Ogden with his ribs and stomach bandaged, to keep his guts in. Tis a small thing, compared to the rest of my life, look at the whole picture, Bert [my father].
Sometimes I feel very unworthy of my ancestors, this is tradition to me.
His injury on the tracks happened in January or February, this was before antibiotics, he was lucky, or the cold helped him, this was one tough old Norseman.
My father told me this story, a few months before he died.
-Ishmael
“To suffer without complaining. Is that manly or a slave?”
-Manny
Brother, I am not morally qualified to answer that question.
So let me probe it historically.
In warrior societies as diverse as the Bantu Masi, the European Spartans, the Native American Mohawk warrior, the Japanese samurai, suffering without giving away your position, your weakness, your pain to the enemy has always been valued.
This is both a slave-making tactic and a means of resisting total enslavement of your mind.
A Mohawk, being burned and emasculated and eviscerated at the stake was still supposed to make fun of and joke with his tormentors in order to strike at their social confidence, as a way of convincing them that “you may have done me to death, but based on my behavior you now know that a spiritual defeat of my people is not attainable.”
When a gladiator died uncomplaining as he was finished off in a ritual pose by his opponent [who might have been his friend] he was acting as a slave, a warrior slave, having been spared by his conquerors so that he might instruct their sons in how to die facing the enemy and with dignity and was allowed to keep his own rather than being sold as a whore or a mule.
When a Spartan boy had stolen a fox and hidden it under his cloak, and resisted calling so as to keep his theft a secret [an important military consideration if a soldier as a messenger and is captured] and the fox killed him by biting his guts, he served as an example of how to act if captured as a messenger or forager.
When a samurai cut his own guts out in sepuka, he demonstrated that he did not commit suicide to escape pain, but rather to avoid the shame of dishonor.
When a Mohawk was tied to a Huron post and the women sliced off his penis he was supposed to tease them about how small the penises of their own warriors were.
When a Masi youth suffered his scarification rite and advanced to manhood he proved that he would not shrink from the claws of the lion but slay it.
Manny, in our own context, I would suggest that humor is the answer.
We live in a world where what we were raised to believe was obscene is now most clean. We are constantly told that as palefaces we are evil and deserve all of the woe directed at us. As a poor white man descended from men who were bought and sold, I am constantly told that my forefathers were the slave masters and that I should now suffer to provide for the newly elevated master race.
To suffer such indignities in silence is to deny the enemy his sadistic pleasure and to deny your replacement the chance to gloatingly take our worst measure.
On the other hand, to bitch and complain and whine and cry is to acknowledge defeat by acting like a woman.
There was some truth in the old slave songs from which modern American blues descend from Irish, Scottish and African strains alike, that turning sorrow into song and using it to get you through the day is preferable to suicide, which is the classic fate of the unproductive and aware slave. So, as we live in our slave days, keeping to the rhythm of our master’s rhyme, we can bide our time.
This is what the men with Spartacus did, played the masters’ game until it was time to strike.
In such a situation, to complain is either to bitch out as a worn ϲunt or to give warning that you will one day strike. This is why our schoolchildren—my grandchildren—are taught in class that a slave always complains and never feigns, so that they might be corrupted into their own undoing.
I think humor, in our non-physical age when wars are won and lost in the addled minds of the fools we are awash in, is the postmodern equivalent of ancients enduring physical pain stoically.
Under the God of Things
Masculine Axis: A Meditation on Manhood and Heroism
I can remember my father and the neighborhood men staying up late drinking but everyone getting up half dead and going to work early the next morning. On time without complaint. Which I always admired and still do. It has motivated me on bad days. But since someone has got me thinking about slaves, it does seem slave like too. I guess The ends probably make the difference. Feeding a family.
Humor and laughter are the best. Like a pressure relief valve. Thanks for responding James.
"...On the other hand, to bitch and complain and whine and cry is to acknowledge defeat by acting like a woman..."
"...In such a situation, to complain is either to bitch out as a worn ϲunt or to give warning that you will one day strike..."
I'm not so sure this is good advice. In my heart I feel the same way. I fully understand the mental thinking behind this. It seems the way to honorably go about things but the Jews don't do this and they run everything. They complain constantly and loudly, then attack silently. Are we too stupid to learn from them?
Suffer in silence when you know the suffering has value (or when your true, actual betters tell you that it does)
The Enemy always gets mockery and derision until your last dying breath.
It is said that Satan above all things cannot stand to be mocked