11:26:23

Francis Foster on male courage. Full interview here

It used to be called backbone. The base that holds you up (was it Winston Churchill who said, “It’s on courage that all the other virtues rest”?) I value and need male sensitivity, it is necessary and important. I think we can all agree on that. But so many “sensitive” men are self-centered, unproductive with their sensitivities. Where is the masculine embrace and expression of inner strength? Where is male ethics and principles? What is strong divine masculine energy? Do we know? There has to be more to men now—to all of us. There has to be more than men colonizing, aping, and exploiting the feminine for themselves (because they don’t know the answer to what a strong divine masculine is) and then translating the feminine back to women through a kind of self-negating gender parody/cannibalism. The whole culture has become a bad drag show.

As Dr. Christian Northrup notes: “No matter what the culture tells us about non-binary stuff, the basic energy field of men and women remains different. But complementary.” It is a difference—this positive-negative charge, Ying-Yang (at conception, when the sperm hits the egg, a flash of divine/holy light is created. Zinc sparks fly. Is this the moment the soul enters?)—that should be honored, celebrated, and explored, not erased. Not defiled.

Only courage leads to right action. Being a “nice” person, as my mother always says, is not enough. Often it can even be bad, she warns. What does it mean to be “nice,” in the American sense? Plenty of nice people do nothing, stand for nothing, protect no one. Also nice and kind are not the same thing. I am a good person but I am not always nice. It is not always possible, needed, or right to be nice. You can be kind and angry at the same time. You can be sweet and tough. These days the requirement for inauthenticity and ingratiation (an American pathology) has surpassed every other human quality and virtue. Nice now means slavlishly tolerant and compliant. Nice people lie through their teeth, go with the herd. Let the world fall apart. “Nice guys are the worst,” a girlfriend/writer used to tell me. But a good man? Now that’s something.

Courage is divine temperament. As the saying goes, when you have a smooth sea, it does not create a good sailor. “Working on yourself” means being authentic, which means your thoughts and actions line up—match, cohere; are of one piece; not splintered, fractured, in chaotic or incomprehensible form. It means promises made, promises kept. It does not mean “love yourself first,” or “you do you,” as everyone chants. That’s bullshit narcissistic thinking. Know yourself, yes. Take care of yourself, yes. Be true to yourself, yes. Stand up for yourself, yes. Fight for yourself, yes. But love yourself? I’ve never understood that shit, and I would never use that language about myself. My own problem has been that I always give too much to the wrong people, which is to say, people who don’t know how to give back in the right ways. The problem is not giving too much, it’s giving to the wrong people, The right person will always love you back generously and fairly, Love requires the Two. It is relational (we are profoundly unrelational now) and relies on alterity (difference) to flourish and have meaning (to go back to my post on Adam Phillips last week, it requires knowing how to have a good relationship with frustration.). Being healed is not the same as actively loving oneself (again, I don’t know what that means. It’s like an oxymoron). We’re supposed to learn how to love other people—in the right ways. And let others love us, in the right ways. Being true to others IS being true to yourself. All of this to say: there is more than one way to have self-worth and courage. These two virtues are not in any way superficially achieved. They come at a price and they require risk, courage, and strength.

All I see when I look at people now—their social media, their selfies, their magazine covers, their movies, whatever—is that everyone is completely in love with and preoccupied with themselves. I can see it in people’s faces, and I can feel it—so self-satisfied, and for no reason. Or the worst reasons. It’s very obvious to me. Anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear, can see and hear this. There is so much glorified arrogance and selfishness in everyone now. As one nautropathic facialist observed about the lockdown Zoom-effect on self-esteem and beauty, people look at themselves now rather than other people (this is the real value of FaceTime). My parents brought that up over Thanksgiving and they don’t even look at social media, but neither do I (I can’t handle it and haven’t had any social media since 2017). They said they think it’s because of social media and kids having phones. “Little girls look and act like women now, and everyone is enthralled with themselves.” Which makes real—deeply feeling, deeply reciprocal, deeply genuine—relationships increasingly difficult to attain or hold onto. Argue and disagree with someone now, and it’s over—no one’s got stamina or respect for honesty and strength, but that’s a whole over conversation. Is anyone interested in true love or true friendship anymore? I don’t know. Like the difference between kind and nice, being social and well-liked is not the same thing as a real relationship, which always rattles. Real relationships are inevitably intense and take a lot of strength, faith, sacrifice, and work, which, let’s face it, are lost skills. Lost ideals.