Rewilding The American Boy
If there was ever a right time to raise strong boys, it is now.
I don’t mean boys who hide their feelings or assume a macho persona to conform to an outdated and useless notion of manhood. Nor am I referring to men who lack compassion and empathy. And I’m certainly not referring to the growing number of ‘strong men’ currently in positions of world power who hide their insecurities under a veneer of blustering bravado. Those men are just the cowards G.K. Chesterton referred to in this blistering quote:
“Brave men are vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle. But these modern cowards are all crustaceans; their hardness is all on the cover and their softness is inside.”
It is precisely of brave men I’m talking about, instilled with the virtues of valor and stoicism.
A stoic man is one who endures hardship with an even temper and without complaint. A valiant man is one who displays great courage in the face of danger. The world, I insist, could use more stoic and courageous men right about now. Otherwise, as warned Martin Luther King Jr., a civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men will purchase its own spiritual death on the…
