"Fortunately, some look like they are already growing up and maturing, so hopefully in a few years, they will be doing useful work in fighting the system, rather than just looking at their dicks in the mirror of feminism."

-James

Our post-industrial post-everything oestrogen society is one where supreme value is consumption. It is one well suited for the success of women who are generally obedient workers and dutiful consumers. Thus it is no surprise that The Shriver Report concludes that women are the new breadwinners, with women now comprising half of the US workforce. [1] It is a time of the twilight of manhood, the “decline of men” or even “the end of men'' with feminists dancing on the supposedly grave of the “John Wayne man”. [2] Indeed, according to this gleeful narrative, the “John Wayne man” has well and truly ridden off into the sunset, with boys now addicted to computer games and internet porn, incapable of fighting their way out of a wet paper bag.

Jack Donovan writing in his book “The Way of Men” stitches together the rise of women and global capitalist consumer civilisation and the fall of manhood:

“Civilization comes at a cost of manliness. It comes at a cost of wildness, of risk of strife. It comes at a cost of strength, of courage, of mastery. It comes at a cost of honour. Increased civilization exacts a toll of virility, forcing manliness into further redoubts of vicariousness and abstraction. Civilization requires men to abandon their tribal gangs and submit to the will of one big institutionalised gang. Globalist civilization requires the abandonment of the gang narrative of us against them. It requires the abandonment of human scale integrity groups for “one world tribe”. The same kind of man who once saw their own worth in the eyes of peers who they depended upon for survival will have to be satisfied with the “social security number” and the cheerfully manipulative assurances of their fellow drones. Feminist civilization requires the abandonment of patriarchy and brotherhood as men have known it since the beginning of time. The future being dreamed for us doesn't require the reimagining of masculinity, it ultimately demands the end of manhood and the soft embrace of personhood that has long been a feminist prescription for this ancient crisis of masculinity”.

The emasculation of men [3] becomes complete with the metrosexual, an over-urbanised, over-consumerized shell of what was once a man, obsessing over body image, spending massive amounts of money on grooming and “looking hot”. [4] The decline of manhood is tragically seen in the degrading of the value of physical strength, in part a product of the elimination by machines (to increase capitalist efficiency) of hard manual labor and physical lifting. Even those who visit gyms tend to cultivate looking good by high repetition workouts with light weights. The old school strongmen trained differently with low repetitions with heavy weights in compound exercises (e.g. squats, deadlifts, bench press, military press and Olympic lifts.) However, most men do neither manual work or gym work, working in an office at the computer. Combine that with little exercise and the modern high carb/high fat and salt junk diet and it is any wonder that men's guts have that pregnant look and their bodies are the consistency of jelly, jiggling as they thump away at computer keyboards. An epidemic of obesity, the product of a weak, anti-Darwinist, decadent civilization, is to be expected.

What, if anything, is being done to oppose this genocide? Men's Rights activists, like feminists, want the dissolution of gender roles, along with economic, political and legal equality. They seek to abandon, with feminists, the age-old view of manhood associated with patriarchal societies of the past. [5] That, of course, is just the male version of feminism, and assumes that there is no conspiracy to destroy men, and that genuine men's rights will be granted by the globalist elites.

Pick Up Artists (PUAs), are primarily concerned with sexual conquests, of Second or Third World women. That approach of phallocentric obsession and narcissism, presents no solution to the problems that men face, only a temporary avoidance. Ignoring morality and honor, it assumes that one has the money to indulge in such a lifestyle (e.g. to travel and bang away) and that one has no other commitments, such as property, a business and a career, or for most of us, just a job. In any case all or most could not follow the “my brilliant cock” lifestyle, because the System still needs its male slaves and would move to quickly frustrate the attempts of those opting out. In general, too many of the Alt Right, “manosphere” sites and books are locked into a pro-consumerist, materialist me-generation narcissism characterized by weakness and fear. No need to name anyone because these guys don’t like criticism, and they are not our enemies, just young guys needing direction and manning-up. Fortunately, some look like they are already growing up and maturing, so hopefully in a few years, they will be doing useful work in fighting the system, rather than just looking at their dicks in the mirror of feminism. A few have already become strong political animals, fired up by the 2016 election, and have moved away from “how to get more snatch.” I wish them well.

An alternative approach for men is represented by Jack Donovan's The Way of Men (2012). [6] A scholarly book dealing with the same problem of “What is a man”, is Harvey C. Mansfield's Manliness published by Yale University Press. [7] Mansfield's book is for the intellectuals, those with an eye for literary detail. Donovan's book is addressed to ordinary men, and that is the source of its popularity.

Donovan begins with the basics. The way of men is the way of the gang or tribe. The core of masculinity is not seen as the hustler economics of capitalism, a recent historical abomination, but with a “small, embattled gang of men struggling to survive”. [8] The gang or tribe stands to defend a territory, a behaviour found in animals and for mammals, generally associated with males. [9] This territory defines the in-group and the out-group. As William Sumner said in Folkways: “Each group nourishes its own pride and vanity, boasts itself superior, exists in its own divinities, and looks with contempt on outsiders”. [10] This is true today, except of course for Nordic (Northern Europeans) who have been most affected by the viral disease of globalism and cosmopolitanism.

The in-group is your tribe and the out-group other tribes which may or may not be a threat to your territory. Hobbes' war of all against all operates not at the individual level, but at the tribal level because humans have always lived in tribes, being social animals. Although Donovan views this biosocial fact positively, others who have written about territorial defence, view it negatively. Thus, Wrangham and Pederson in Demonic Males say: ““Demonic Males” gathering in small, self-perpetuating, self-aggrandising bands. They sight or invent an enemy "over there" - across the ridge, on the other side of a linguistic or social or political or ethnic or racial divide. The nature of the divide hardly seems to matter. What matters is the opportunity to engage in the vast and compelling drama of belonging to the gang, identifying the enemy, going on patrol, participating in the attack". [11] Mansfield also accepts that manliness "defines turf and fights for it, sometimes for no good reason, sometimes to defend precious rights". [12]

Men should be judged on possessing those qualities useful in guarding and defending territory. These qualities, Donovan argues, are tactical virtues. Vir is the Latin word for "man" and "virtue" comes from the Latin virtus, meaning manliness. For the ancient Romans, manliness meant martial valour. [13] As Roman civilisation expanded the concepts of virtues and manliness also expanded to include various civic and moral values, such as justice and honesty. However, these values vary more from culture-to-culture, and Donovan develops his account of manliness, the way of men, with reference to the fundamental fighting virtues, which are constants for men across history.

Jeff Costello [14] has argued that manhood/manliness may not be best viewed by looking at men in more positive and basic forms. Following Aristotle's argument about excellences, he believes that virtues should be looked at in the most developed form. Thus Costello sees justice and honesty as manly virtues and he follows Schopenhauer and Weininger as seeing justice and honesty as virtues not strongly associated with women. Much depends upon definitions here, as women today certainly have contributed a force to be aware of to "social justice" and "feminist honesty".

However, it seems that once one moves outside of the warrior virtues as defining manhood, there are an explosion of other "intellectual" virtues. Plato saw four cardinal virtues - wisdom, justice, courage and moderation. Frank Miniter in The Ultimate Man's Survival Guide [15] recommends these virtues along with many others. The seven virtues of Bushido are: courage, benevolence, eiquette, honesty, loyalty, rectitude and honour. [17] But one can add to this list, of "higher" manly virtues. Some include:

1 independence - living by his own lights and following his own way, as he defines it

2 authenticity - walking a man's talk, integrity (people know exactly where they stand);

3 freethinking and scepticism, a lack of mindless conformity;

4 valuing freedom and rebelling against tyranny;

5 pursuing the truth as it is perceived and

6 protecting kin and tribe and putting all of these values over money and material possessions.

Working along these lines one could develop a highly intellectualised account of manhood/manliness.

Nevertheless, I believe that Donovan is correct in focusing on the fighting virtues in developing this account of the way of men, qualities needed in survival situations. Such qualities include strength, courage, mastery and honour, territory protecting virtues. "Higher" virtues can only exist if these more fundamental, foundational virtues are present in sufficient numbers of men to protect the tribe. Further, these virtues are needed if human civilisation collapses. As Tyler Durden says in the manhood movie Fight Club 1999: "In the world I see - you're stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Centre. You will wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You will climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrapped the Seas Tower. You will see these tiny figures pounding corn and lying strips of venison on the empty carpool line of the ruins of a superhighway".

Costello also refers to Plato's notion of thumos, which in the Republic is taken to be a core characteristic of the guardians of the Republic. Aristotle, as well, discusses thumos in the Ethics and other works. [17] There is considerable scholarly debate about the ancient Greek concept of thumos. Some see thumos as the spirited part of the soul, striving for honour and victory and recoiling against injury and injustice, an essential social phenomenon, while others see thumos as primarily concerned with self-preservation and survival. [18] Costello however sees thumos as the spiritual, transcendental part of us that strives to be more than merely human and stands behind the virtues. D.H.Lawrence, himself, unfortunately, not a good example of manhood is quoted in this context as linking thumos and masculinity: "It is the desire of the human male to build a world: not "to build a world for you, dear", but to build up out of his own self and his own belief and his own effort something wonderful. Not merely something useful. Something wonderful".

Nevertheless there are alternative conceptions of thumos or spiritness and Donovan mentions one interpretation which sees thumos as a quality of aggression or drive, much like the "gameness" of the dog in dogfighting. Mixed martial arts fighter Sam Sheridan in A Fighters Heart [19] refers to this "gameness" as "the eagerness to get into the fight, the berserker rage, and then the absolute commitment to the fight in the face of pain, of disfigurement, until death". Mansfield also characterises thumos by comparison to the aggression of dogs: thumos is the "bristling snappiness of a dog… As a dog defends its master, so the doggish part of the human soul defends the human ends higher than itself". [20]

Thumos in this sense should be added to Donovan's list of fighting virtues that define manliness. Thumos is more than mere courage, as it will be defined, and far more than aggression and assertiveness, which as Mansfield says, women are comparatively lacking in. [21] Thumos could be defined as the living flame behind the warrior spirit and a primal warrior value. [22] Richard Strozzi-Heckler says in his book In Search of the Warrior Spirit that the way of the warrior is not something to fearfully reject, but is rather something men should embrace:

“… Part of being human is the longing, or perhaps even need, for the experiences of courage, selflessness, heroism, service and transcendence. Young men have traditionally been led to believe that war will provide the sole context for these experiences… Instead of categorically disclaiming war as an evolutionary back fall into animal territoriality, or blaming industrialisation, technology, geographical boundaries, ideologies, or the modern state or burying our combative urges under exotic new age rituals, we urgently need to embrace our warrior impulse. [23]

Strength, both physical and mental (determination) are key fighting virtues. Probably a better depiction is psycho-physical prowess. Men are on average physically stronger than women; the weak man is typically viewed as being less manly, although a woman is not considered less womanly if weak. Strength in men is the result of progressive resistance training, adequate nutrition and ample testosterone, the male sex hormone. Testosterone levels seems to be declining in men. Boosts can be made by medically prescribed injections administered by a doctor, or better yet naturally. [24] In a nutshell, men need to eat manly diets, of a rich variety of vegetables for vitamins, micronutrients and antioxidants, adequate levels of proteins and (good) fats and much less carbohydrates from sources such as bread and pasta. Fats are needed in the body for the mobilisation of fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K, and also to trigger testosterone production. A mainly diet needs to be combined with, relative to one's level of fitness and age, relatively heavy weight training, and some form of fighting, with fists, legs, grappling, sticks and blades, just to keep the animal juices flowing.

The fighting virtue of courage is closely linked to warriorhood and manliness. As Carl von Clauswitz said in On War: "War is the province of danger, and therefore courage above all things is the first quality of a warrior". [25] The Greek word andreia, meaning "courage", is derived from andros meaning "masculine". Aristotle, in Book III of the Nicomachean Ethics, gave an influential account of courage as seeing the courageous person as fearless in the face of death. [26] An alternative conception, as expressed by John Wayne is that manly men, even if afraid, "saddle up anyway" and go into battle regardless, facing pain and death for a higher good. Courage is linked to thumos, for it is the will to hang on, to keep struggling and fighting to the end -"true grit", to use another John Wayne reference. Such a man has gravitas or weight - he won't tolerate being pushed around and therefore deserves respect - the right not to be liked - but to be taken seriously. As John Wayne's character in his last movie The Shootist (1976) says: "I won't be wronged, I won't be insulted, and I won't be laid a hand on. I don't do these things to other people, and require the same from them".

Honor is another fighting virtue. Honour is the value of a person as seen by society, the totality of the "traditions, stories and habits of thought of a particular society about the proper and improper uses of violence". [27] But, as Donovan notes, there is a much more basic type of honor, a right to respect, to be treated as having a certain value. [28] Honor is a manly virtue; in societies where honor is important, the value is prescribed to men, and it requires an honour group to bestow honour. Donovan doesn't mention it, but loyalty is another manly virtue, closely linked to honor, but in some respects transcending it. Loyalty is the glue that holds tribes together, the commitment to defend the group come what may. Loyalty is a product of group identity and belonging - one is loyal because being so, defines who one is.

Mastery ties together the manly virtues, being the proficiency and capability to use technologies and skills to control one's environment. Mastery and technics allow an increase group status for individuals having high skill levels and special skills. This virtue depends upon a sense of practical intelligence, not bullish learning, but a real-world ability in problem-solving and getting the job done.

The work of James LaFond goes beyond that of Donovan in the taboo-smashing stakes. His literary work resembles that of Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1894-1961), in its dark view of human nature and degeneracy. As he says in his philosophical masterpiece, Taboo You: Way of the Terminal Man (2016), “While Jack wishes to save men from their yearning to be more like women, I say let that 70% die on the vine. Genghis Khan would have killed them all.” (p. 130) James is spot on in his natural selection culling thesis, as a garden which becomes too full of weeds, ultimately degenerates, degrading ecological capital. Too many weeds have artificially survived in the nanny welfare state, and the dark future ahead will sorely test their survival instincts.

The terminal man, unlike the tribal man of Donovan is a loner, the man with no name in a world where the wild west is on every street. Such a man, a neo-barbarian, would be the ultimate survivors at the end of battle for existence which we are now entering into:

.

In reviewing this material, it is clear that modern "man" is a long way from classical manhood. The feminists see this is showing that the "way of men" is over. I disagree; the age of the Y-chromosome is only just beginning. Our era of over-consumption, over-civilisation and softness, is a singularity in history. It will not last. It is inevitable that the "way of men" and the taboo man will return. Those of us still capable of thinking and acting should adapt, or perish.

To conclude, we can do no better than to quote John Wayne, being in a John Wayne mood: "I want to play a real man in all my films, and I define manhood simply: men should be tough, fair and courageous; never petty, never looking for a fight, but never backing down from one either". And, "one day those doctrinaire liberals will take up and find the pendulum has swung the other way". Yes, and they will be crushed by the earth-moving machinery of history.

1 Maria Shriver, “The Shriver Report: A Woman's Nation Changes Everything,” The Centre for American Progress, October 16, 2009, at progress.org/issues/2009/10/womens_nation.html. Big Arnie banging the Hispanic maid, is perhaps one response to this worldview

2 Lionel Tiger, The Decline of Males, Golden books, 1999; Michael Kimmel, Guyland, HarperCollins, ebooks, 2008; Guy Garcia, The Decline of Men, HarperCollins, ebooks, 2008; Hanna Rosin, The End of Men: and The Rise of Women, Riverhead, 2012.

3 D.Mack, “Manhood: The Bare Necessities”, The Weekend Australian, April 16-17, 2011, p. 25; Jack Donovan, “Everyone a Harlot”, July 5, 2012 at

4 Jack Donovan, Everyone a Harlot, above.

5 Roosh, “The Men's Rights Movement is Dead”, at ; Jack Donovan, “Long live the Manosphere”, September 9, 2012, at ; Paul Elam, “Adios, C-ya, Good-bye Man-o-Sphere,” September 5, 2012 at .

6 Jack Donovan, The Way of Men, Dissonant Hum, Milwaukee, Oregon, 2012.

7 Harvey C.Mansfield, Manliness, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2006.

8 Ibid p.3.

9 See K.Lorenz, On Aggression, Harcourt, Brace, New York, 1963, pp.34-39; E.O. Wilson,Sociobiology, Harvard University press, Cambridge, 1975, pp.256-278. Mansfield in Manlinesssays: “lacking as women are, comparatively, in aggression and assertiveness, it is no surprise that men have ruled over all societies at almost all times”. (p.64)

10 William Sumner, Folkways: A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores and Morals, Dover Publications, New York, 1959; Harold Robert Isaacs, Idols of the Tribe: Group Identity and Political Change, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1975.

11 Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson, Demonic Males: Apes and The Origins of Human Violence, Horton Mifflin, New York 1996, p.248.

12 Harvey C.Mansfield, Manliness, p.20.

13 M.McDonnell, Roman Manliness: Virtues and the Roman Republic, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2006.

14 Jeff Costello, Jack Donovan's The Way of Men, at .

15 Frank Miniter, The Ultimate Man's Survival Guide: Recovering the Lost Art of Manhood, Regnery Publishing, Washington DC, 2009, pp.175-179.

16 Ibid, p.116.

17 W.F.R.Hardy, Aristotle's Ethical Theory, second edition, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1980.

18 S.M. Purviance, “Thumos and the Daring Soul: Craving Honour and Justice”, Journal of Ancient Philosophy, volume 2, 2008, pp.1-16; H.A.Kraugerud, “'Essentially Social'? Discussion of the Spirited Part of the Soul in Plato”, European Journal of Philosophy, vol.18, no.4, 2009, pp.481-494.

19 Sam Sheridan, A Fighter's Heart: One Man's Journey Through the World of Fighting, Grove Press, New York, 2007.

20 Harvey C.Mansfield, Manliness, p.206.

21 Ibid, pp. 50-81 and p.64. The learned Professor says: “despite the laws, the customs, and the morals that we live under, it is still a considerable fact that almost any man can beat up almost any woman”. (p.42). But, from the puny examples of computer game boys that we have seen, even this may no longer be true.

22 John F.Gilbey, The Way of a Warrior, North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, 1982.

23 Richard Stozzi-Heckler, In Search of the Warrior Spirit, third edition, North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, 2003, pp.79-80.

24 Two great books on naturally boosting testosterone levels are: Myatt Murphy, Testosterone Transformation, Rodale, New York, 2012 and Lou Schuler, The Testosterone Advantage Plan, Rodale, London, 2012.

25 Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1949, p.47.

26 M.G.Brady, “The Fearlessness of Courage”, Southern Journal of Philosophy, vol.43, 2005, pp.189-211.

27 James Bowman, Honour: A History, Encounter Books, New York, 2006, p.6.

28 Frank Stewart, Honour, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1994, p.21.