If Men Have All The Power How Come Women Make The Rules. (And Other Radical Thoughts: Fill & Download for Free

I recently wrote an answer to Does toxic masculinity actually exist? where one particular statement was a controversy.Saying that men should stop trying to hold themselves to high standards or that they should aspire to represent traditional masculine roles is not toxic masculinity... Many virtues of traditional masculinity are necessary in a successful society, but if distancing yourself from masculinity for the sake of being modern is the norm, we’re going to lose some necessary traits to a healthy society that happen when a man tells another man to ‘man up’.There was disagreement, so I’ll make the point that statements like “man up” or more precisely, the behaviors that put seemingly harsh emotional restrictions on boys and men are both healthy and necessary to socialize men.Here’s why:Men who cry openly are treated differently, and poorly, by everyoneYou say it’s fine to say, “It’s okay for boys to cry.” To argue with that is “toxic masculinity,” but how would you treat the phrase, “It’s okay for men to cry.”?“Ah, well… umm… I stand by my previous statement.”Okay, then when is the last time you saw a woman cry at the office? When was the last time you saw a man cry at the office? Were they treated the same?No. No they weren’t treated the same. Not by other men. Not by other women. Not even by good and kind people who read about the dangers of toxic masculinity in the Huffington Post and Buzzfeed. Not by anyone. Universally, people treat men who cry terribly compared to how they treat women. So we teach men to control those emotions and only express them at a time and place of their choosing, whether that’s alone or with someone they deeply love and trust.And you won’t fix this by fixing society. You can’t. To do so would require too great an effort of sustained social engineering and forced indoctrination that, frankly, almost anyone would find ethically uncomfortable.I didn’t write these rules; nobody did; but they are the rules nonetheless. So since I live that reality, I’m not going to raise my boys to be a social experiment to prove how modern I am. I’m going to raise them in such a way that they understand the rules of manhood because the world isn’t a very fair place and will judge them very harshly if they don’t act as if they know and understand the rules.Boys don’t cry.BullyingAnother example, schoolyard bullying. If a boy is being bullied, and then cries… his life is over.Because he showed that bullies can make him cry, he will be the unrelenting target of harassment forever, because he has proven that the bully has control over his emotions and can use him to show their dominance to others. The bullied becomes the power supply for the bullies, and mean old Andy is going to charge up any time his little battery comes out to play.That bully, by the way, isn’t even displaying toxic masculinity. Girls who bully act in the exact same way, seeking out the weak to make an example of show that they can show dominance over others. Girls, however, have different rules to address the bully, but boys? In that scenario it is absolutely not okay for boys to cry.If a boy cries who is the target of a bully, he is done for. But if that boy can control his emotions enough to think and act in a controlled manner right for the situation, the bullies will leave him alone. That kid might cry into his pillow that afternoon after school, but because he showed restraint when it mattered, he will not be the target for harassment for years to come.The literature on how “toxic masculinity causes mental harm” is almost non-existent and questionable at best, but the research on the harm caused to kids who suffer extensive bullying fills volumes. Changing the rules to say that boys shouldn’t practice emotional controls early on will leave them unprepared to deal with things like abusive personalities who dominate them because of their weakness. This is true on the school yard and in adult world conflicts, where the same sorts of bullying behaviors exist, but where it can be far more rewarded.Sexual DimorphismSexual dimorphism is where a species evolves radically different body types between males and females to better suit their roles in raising healthy offspring.Men and women are not the same and that matters because the differences are obvious. While domestic abuse is wrong, even if it happens to a man, there is a fact that if a man loses control of his emotions, he is far more dangerous than a woman, and especially to a woman.This helps us understand why chivalry evolved. It rewarded men who were both dangerous and controlled. It ensured that society honored men who could be a threat to evil men who harmed the weak, but not a threat to those same good people. This was especially true in their relationships with women.So it isn’t opinion that successful cultures evolved traditions that required men to control themselves, because as almost every mass shooter example shows, men are far more dangerous when they fail to learn how to regulate their emotions. Regardless of what you think about women showing emotion, it is more important that men learn early on to temper themselves.Rise in depression, suicide, and mass shootings among young malesSaying that toxic masculinity is the reason people have hardship and mental illness is something I don’t think any reputable psychologist would stake their license on. Perhaps, the opposite is true.We are starting to become aware of the rise in mental illness, and specifically it’s dangerous manifestations in men. Men are much more likely to commit suicide, much more likely to be successful at it, and much more harm others in their death spiral. As my last point stated, there is a common profile to who becomes a school shooter. That profile is young, white, and male, usually raised in the suburbs, and usually experiencing some form of pre-diagnosed mental illness, and usually socially dysfunctional.What seems to matter is that they come from places where conversations about toxic masculinity might be a norm and where they were likely raised to hear things like “it’s okay for boys to cry,” and, “don’t bottle it all in,” and even rewarded for emotional outbursts, as “healthy expressions of their emotions.”What the unrestrained rewarding of emotional outburst creates, especially in boys, are people who feed on an unquenchable thirst for immediate gratification, and therefore have higher depression, are more miserable, and more likely to lash out at others, or commit self-harm. If we look at the rise in teen depression, suicide, and mass shootings, it is happening simultaneously as kids are told to have the fewest emotional controls, to “let it all out” and “and it’s okay to cry.” This happened less when phrases like “man up” were not viewed as toxic.We are teaching kids that having emotional controls is itself wrong, toxic even, and their emotions are taking control of them, sometimes fatally for themselves, if not others, as well.Does “toxic masculinity” cause men to hurt themselves?The fair criticism is asking if the drive to be manly is setting unattainable standards on young men, that they are never allowed to have emotions, or must push themselves through injuries that cause more harm than good. It’s a fair question and needs to be asked… but not assumed.There needs to be a reasonable limit, and it’s men who need to teach that to young boys. What does that look like? It looks like what my football coach told me when I rolled my ankle during a game my sophomore year. It hurt very, very badly. I told him I thought I was hurt. He looked at me very sincerely, and asked,“Are you in pain, son, or are you hurt?”It made me internalize the difference. Was I suffering from a temporary suffering I could endure for the rest of my team and do my job, or was something wrong where I was putting myself in danger? I had to be mature and answer the question for myself. I wasn’t in danger. I was in pain. I could keep going for my friends.In Marine Corps boot-camp, knowing the difference between being hurt and being in pain really helped me get through. There I learned another valuable lesson; when you have a leg cramp, you can still keep running if you’re motivated enough. Eventually the cramp goes away just as quickly as if you had stopped. I learned that in the middle of a 52 mile hike through the California desert aptly named The Crucible, all while carrying a 70 pound pack. And yes, I said running, because the Marines aren’t the Girl Scouts. I was motivated by fear of Drill Instructors. DIs would probably be some people’s definition of toxic masculinity personified, but long distance marathon runners know that my discovery is true. Throughout boot camp, I also knew of people who broke ankles, but laced up their boots tighter and finished The Crucible without mentioning a word of it. I’m sure that people think that’s wrong, but I also think about the story of Marcus Luttrell, the Navy SEAL who is the subject of Lone Survivor. To read his account of survival and endurance; mental, emotional, physical, spiritual — you realize that there are people in this world who needed to be trained to endure suffering for the sake of learning how to endure suffering.Don’t misread that. I don’t think that all men should be expected to be Marines or Navy SEALs, and I think that masculinity becomes toxic when men who are honorable, hard working, and fulfilling all their responsibilities to their families, are made to feel less masculine than a Navy SEAL or fitness fanatic. One of the men I respect more than any other wasn’t a Marine, but whenever I need an appliance repaired, he shows up when says he will, never overcharges, never misses a Sunday of church, and raised the only girl in town I trust to watch my kid. He’s a good man. I’m not saying you have to be a Marcus Luttrell to be a good man.But society needs to be able to make Marcus Luttrells.A society must be capable of producing people like Marcus Luttrell in sufficient quantities that the rest of us can continue to live the lives we do. They are people who can “suck it up” and “man up” to a point that they can do things that seem impossible. Not everyone can do that job, but if we stop telling young men that they need to push through pain and difficulty in the pursuit of a worthy goal… we will no longer be able to produce any Navy SEALs.That’s important. It’s important because most men are made better through the lessons of youth which teach them to do more than they thought they could, but for a few people that we rely on in society… that mentality is absolutely necessary. I’m very glad I had a coach who taught me the difference between pain and being hurt. I asked myself that same question many times in boot camp and in the Marines, and I hope that many men will ask it of their sons and boys they influence after reading it here. All men are better from learning to endure pain, but a society that refuses to teach that as a virtue will not remain a society for long.Inoculation from VictimhoodDr. Campbell is the Associate Professor of Sociology at California State University, but he came on the scene for many with his publication Microaggression and Moral Cultures in the journal Comparative Sociology alongside colleague Jason Manning. It is explained by noted cultural sociologist Jonathan Haidt here: Where microaggressions really come from: A sociological account and was expanded into the book The Rise of Victimhood Culture: Microaggressions, Safe Spaces, and the New Culture Wars. (For those really curious, I suggest the Haidt explanation linked above.)A simple explanation of Campbell’s victimhood culture starts with the victimhood mentality. Victimhood mentality is one where a person identifies their self-identity as a victim of circumstance and unable to overcome it by any means. Because a person views some hardship as an immutable characteristic of their identity, they don’t do the work to try to overcome it. They can become locked in this behavior where they avoid the hardships of solving the problems that lead to their suffering, then one bad thing leads to another as their problems pile on as they descend into a death spiral.Further, the dangers of victimhood mentalities multiply when there are more rewards to simply communicating hardship than solving problems. Some “victims” communicate pain, suffering, hardship, and injustice they have experienced for the purpose of gaining something from others. Whether that is pity or special treatment, the person is sharing their suffering not to overcome it, but to receive favor from others with some power to affect their lives. Whether their targets are friends and family who enable them, faculty and students in campus ‘safe spaces’, wealthy sponsors and donors, or even the government, the appeal to third parties is their goal. This becomes dangerous when a person becomes intoxicated by the rewards of others for their victimhood status. At that point, they take experiences they have actually had and exaggerate them, or make trivial events into something that is a matter of severe trauma, and worst of all, fabricate stories of suffering and injustice wholecloth. They do this because the positive attention they receive encourages them not to solve problems, but celebrates their suffering, no matter how significant or slight it may be.Victimhood culture is when the rules of society as a whole reward people more for perceiving themselves as victims and communicating their victimhood than overcoming their problems. This echos as systemic problems culturally. The examples Dr. Campbell gives of what victimhood culture looks like are very, very bad and don’t lead to societies which produce a healthier, happier, more productive population. He also produces good arguments that the rise of victimhood culture has caused many of the negative problems we suffer today in politics and social discourse, such as stating that “microaggressions” like “man-up” are examples of “toxic masculinity” and politically incorrect speech.I agree with his assessment, but I will add to his point that I believe most of what is called toxic masculinity is actually an inoculation from the victimhood mentality, and furthermore, protects society from descending into a victimhood culture. I’ve written that I do believe some forms of masculinity are toxic, but not those described by most left-wing activists. They seem more motivated to call out all positive characteristics associated with masculinity as toxic then caring about the mental health of men.Phrases like “man-up” (or my personal favorite first told to me by my mom, “Suck it up, Buttercup.”) are not toxically masculine. They are instead communicating something fundamentally empowering.“You have the power to overcome this, and if you want the respect of people you respect, you will try harder until you do.”The mentality behind phrases like man-up themselves an inoculation from victimhood mentality. They encourage people to put whatever problems they have to the side and try to overcome them, to take responsibility for their own actions, and not let hardship define them.But why would so many people be against it? Well, who would the “man-up” mentality hurt? For starters, the very same people who call almost all expressions of masculinity toxic. Perhaps the same people who say that absolutely anything can immediately become a microaggression. And especially, those same people that want everyone else to bend over backwards solving the problems that are their responsibility to solve. If the culture expects people to do everything they can to overcome their problems before coming to others, to show a committed effort to define themselves not by their suffering but by their effort; then most of the professional social activists who use the victimhood of others to gain political power would have to try much, much harder to get the power they seek.Phrases like “man-up” don’t reward people for being victims and certainly doesn’t for people who exaggerate their victimhood. It asks you to honestly ask the question, “Are you in pain, or are you hurt?” and if more people really did that, and didn’t have the incentives to use victimhood as a source of power… maybe things would be better, because a lot more people who are hurt wouldn’t be fighting for attention from people who believe they’re in pain, and who are championed by people trying to get elected. Maybe that means victimhood is a lot more toxic than masculinity.Having said all that, with love, “Suck it up, Buttercup.”Relaxed. Researched. Respectful. - War Elephant

If you’ve read any of the responses I’ve written on Quora then you are probably familiar with my story…Five(ish) years ago, I was broke, living on my brother’s couch, reeling from a recent breakup, out of shape, and a borderline alcoholic.I was clinically depressed and would regularly fantasize about driving my beat up Honda Civic off of the Coronado bridge on my way to work.My life felt like a living nightmare…Slowly and surely, through years of trial, error, and plenty of “failures” I’ve arrived at where I am today.Running a 7-figure business doing what I love, leading an incredible movement that inspires men all over the world, in the relationship of my dreams, with incredible health, and best of all… I’m genuinely happy.It wasn’t easy and it didn’t happen overnight.But these 7 rules or “Guidelines” as Barbarossa from Pirates of the Caribbean would say were the foundation that bred my success.… And if I were a gambling man, I’d bet that they will help you achieve whatever results you’re after in your own life.So without any further ado, here are the 7 rules I followed to build an unbelievable life.Rule #1. Love YourselfTo fall in love with yourself is the first secret to happiness. ~Robert MorleyWithout this rule, everything else fails.For years, I lived in a state of scarcity.I desperately searched for love from other people, from friends, romantic partners, family, and my career.I wanted to be loved with ever fiber of my being.But at the time, I failed to realize that you cannot truly be loved by another human being until you first love yourself.Learning to cultivate radical self love is the first step to living the good life.Without it, you will constantly be a leaf in the wind, blown this way and that by whatever forces are in motion in your life.But loving yourself doesn’t come easy…It’s not something that you can do once and forget it.You can’t chant some corny New Age b.s. in a mirror and think “Yup, that’s all it took! I love myself now”Just like a romantic relationship takes constant work and communication, so does your relationship with yourself.Therefore, the first rule for living a good life is to make a habit of expressing daily self love.Whether it’s taking the time to follow a morning routine, saying “No” to friends and family when you need to, prioritizing your goals and dreams over other people’s desires, or just taking a hot bath and jamming out to 2 Chainz (because those things go together, right?)You need to do something every day that deepens your level of self love and connection with yourself.You are the only person that you have to spend the rest of your life with.… So you might as well invest some time into making the relationship work.Rule # 2. Define Your Mission and Purpose… Then Go After it WholeheartedlyYour purpose in life is to find your purpose and then give your whole heart and soul to it. ~BuddhaA man (or woman) without a mission is a man who does not have true control over his life.Your mission or purpose is what grounds you.It’s your North star, your compass, and your guide to living a life of integrity, honor, and achievement.You cannot live a good life without some sort of purpose that is outside of yourself.After years of chasing the wrong things (money, women, fame, etc.) I realized that my life wasn’t truly my own. I realized that I wasn’t living on purpose or with purpose.Eventually I discovered my mission…To impact 1,000,000 men around the world with life changing content to create a better future for the next generation.If you don’t currently have or know your purpose, don’t freak out.This is normal…Until you have a definitive purpose in your head (you’ll know it when you find it) your purpose is to find your purpose.This means drinking deep from the cup of life. You won’t find your purpose sitting in a cubicle or playing Call of Duty until 1 a.m.You can only find your purpose by living the fullest life possible. By travelling, exploring, trying new things, failing at a lot of things, and ultimately giving this human experience your all.Rule #3. Your Body is Your Vehicle for Success, Treat it as SuchHealth is like money. We never have a true idea of its value until we lose it. ~Josh BillingsI never appreciated my health until I lost it.About a year and a half into building my business, I woke up one morning after a conference with searing pelvic pain.I could barely stand the pain was so intense.I freaked out…Worried that I’d somehow contracted an STD or other nasty illness, I immediately made an appointment with a Doctor and had a comprehensive panel of blood work and scans done to get to the root cause of the issue.Their diagnoses?Nothing…They couldn’t explain why I was hurting so much or what I could do about it.And so I was left to fight my battle alone and figure out how to overcome the chronic pain.After nearly 3 years of constant trial and error, I am happy to announce that I’m now pain free.I didn’t find my cure in a pill bottle or some other form of medication.I found it by recommitting myself to living a healthy lifestyle and caring for my body like a friggin temple.I began:Training with free weights three times a weekSleeping 9 hours a nightDoing yoga for 30–60 minutes a dayGetting outside in the sunlight every afternoonEating a whole foods diet with more veggies and less meatTaking time to destressMeditating, journaling, and practicing other forms of self careI took a holistic and whole life approach to my health and the results have been astronomical.Beyond ending my battle with chronic pain, this new commitment to my health gave me more energy, focus, and vitality in my business, relationships, and life.Now, if I don’t take care of myself, I feel it.Even one night of bad sleep reminds me what a precious gift health and energy truly are.If you are’t caring for your health then you are digging your own grave.Rule #4. Find the Minimum Effective Dose in Every SituationIf you live for having it all, what you have is never enough. ~Vicki RobinWhen I first started my business I believed the hype…I thought that, in order to be successful, you had to do more than everyone else, work harder, work longer, and most importantly work MORE.Only when I ended up on Doctor ordered bed rest did I pause to consider that working more might not always be the answer.Tim Ferriss has made millions of dollars by helping people all over the world achieve more while working less. I’d always heard people talking about the principles he taught but figured that they were little more than the “Lazy Man’s” solution to life and success.It wasn’t until burnout and sickness took my arse to the ground that I considered he might be onto something.After overcoming my intial bout of burnout, I took a step back and analyzed my work, relationships, and life.I asked myself a simple question that has changed everything for me…“Where am I doing more when I could achieve the same or greater result with less?”I quickly realized that the answer to that question was a resounding “Everywhere!”So I took action.I hired new employees, found a virtual assistant, stopped doing low level work, and cut my hours in half.I removed the unnecessary activities from my business, life, and relationships.And it made all the difference.Within months, I doubled my income. I increased my results at the gym (who knew you actually need to prioritize recovery?). And even enjoyed my relationships on a deeper level.Everything in my life changed because I hacked away at the unessential and left only what was absolutely necessary.If you want to change your life then ask yourself what is the minimum required input to achieve your desired outcome.Rule #5. Minimize Material Possessions and Maximize ExperiencesFill your life with experiences not things. Have stories to tell not stuff to show. ~UnknownIn line with the last rule, I’ve found that one of the keys to living a good life is to shift your resources from “things” to experiences.If you live in a Western society, you’ve been sold the lie that you need more “Stuff” to feel happy.If you could just have…That big house in the hillsThat fast Italian sports car with hand crafted leather seatsThat overpriced diving watchThat suave $400 cologneThat fancy new iPhoneTHEN you can be happy.But the truth is that these things actually hold us back from happiness.True happiness isn’t found by swiping a credit card and going home with a bag of even more sh*t that will clutter up your home and eventually break apart.It’s found by living a rich and fulfilling life.It’s found in experiencing everything that this world has to offer.It’s found in relationships, travel, and trying new and exciting things.Life is meant to be lived, not bought.If it’s your goal to live a truly rewarding and fulfilling life, then cut away at your material posessions and double down on your experiences.That trip to Italy will make you far happier than that new suit or sports car.Rule #6. Don’t Take Anything too SeriouslyDo not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive. ~Elbert HubbardHere’s a fun fact you might not be aware of.You are going to die.Let me repeat myself…No matter what you do, how much you accomplish, what you buy, what you experience, or how much you love… You are going to die.(Talk about an uplifting post, right?)But this shouldn’t be seen as a bad thing.The fact that life is short is what makes it worth a damn.You only have a few precious moments that you get to spend on this world and (as far as we know) we are the only species blessed and curse with this knowledge.So what are we going to do about it?Well, you could sit in a corner, cry, mope, and whine about how unfair this universe is (and many people do).Or you could smile let out a deep belly laugh and realize that our inevitable demise is our ultimate hall pass.The fact that you are going to die means that nothing and I mean nothing you can do in this lifetime is worse than the fate that is already yours.No failure or screw up matters.No amount of embarrassment or shame really makes a difference in the long run.So enjoy your life.Laugh at yourself.Don’t take this whole thing too seriously.Life is meant to be a game, not a chore.The more fun you have and the more things you try, the better the game will be.So stop taking yourself and your life so seriously.It doesn’t matter in the long run and thinking otherwise is vain and arrogant.You’re going to die.So live it up while you can.Rule #7. Stay GroundedStorms make trees take deeper roots. ~Dolly PartonIn every interaction, we have a choice.We can be swayed by the opinions, thoughts, and desires of others.Or we can stay grounded in our values, virtues, and vision.There is no middle ground.Years ago, I realized that staying grounded in what I believed and who I knew myself to be was the key to everything.From this state of “Groundedness” (yes, I’m making up words) everything follows:DisciplineProductivityAchievmentLoveCompassionIntegrityEVERYTHING is dependent on you staying grounded in who you are and what you believe.Without this bedrock to return to, nothing will make sense and the world will overwhelm you.But when you know who you are and what you stand for and you are willing to draw a line in the sand and say “This is who I am”, everything will change.So stay grounded.I’ll catch you on the flipside.Andrew.

This answer may contain sensitive images. Click on an image to unblur it.Have any of the “anti-bullying campaigns” of the last decade done a thing to combat the radically violent nature of mass shootings in schools?People hate generalizations, but here you have a fairly undeniable one. School shootings regularly are perpetrated by almost exclusively males, either boys or young men, who have had severe socialization problems. I’m not even aware of a single female shooter in the lot. Following Columbine, schools began implementing “anti-bullying” campaigns, attempting to target everyday violence and general mean behavior among kids. Did that solve anything? Anything at all?I have two stories, one where I was beaten up pretty badly in the sixth grade, followed by another event a few years later when I finally stood up to my bully. After the first fight, I experienced a drastic decline in my popularity, not that I was very high up to begin, along with all the suffering that came with that. Next was a prolonged period of intense bullying. Rarely did this involve physical violence, but it was still hell. The initial fight didn’t cause that. The fact that I didn’t have strategies to adapt to other boys, to navigate and understand them as a group, caused that. It was the result of the other boys making clear that my character didn’t meet their definition of masculinity or something they wanted to be a part of their tribe. No amount of telling the teacher would have solved that, in fact, if we’re being honest, it would have made it far worse. I needed to be respected. To be respected by the other boys, the only real way to make the abuse stop… I had to change. Harsh as that may sound, I adapted. I was able to eventually knock my own bully down a few pegs as I rose from the depths of hell myself. One day I finally said, “I don’t care about the consequences,” meaning that I knew I would get in trouble for “fighting” even though any objective witness could clearly articulate the relationship I had with my bully. Most adults of my town even confessed how happy they were that someone finally taught that kid a lesson. Still, rules are rules so my school and my mom punished me. My mom smiled as she did it though. That’s because she knew that I had made the first manly choice of my life, to place my own personal honor before the fear of getting in trouble. That was what got me accepted into the tribe.In that moment, I learned how to stand up for myself, as well as others. I went from being a nerdy wimp to a path that eventually led to the United States Marines, to speak of the importance of such as a transformation. And here’s what really matters; I even grew to become friends with my bullies. By working to attain physical dominance I gained the respect of my aggressors and peers.The second fight changed my life for the better, placing me on a much more healthy, productive, and happier life track then the boy I was devolving into. It also taught me I never wanted to be the guy at the bottom again. To make that clearer:… I became anxious, nervous, paranoid and mean, none of which helped me at all build relationships that would have improved my lowly station. A stutter I developed around the time of my father’s death and mother’s first bouts of cancer became pronounced after the fight and it became almost impossible to read aloud in class. I was in collapse. It is not a good place to be at the bottom of the Middle School dominance hierarchy. I want to be honest and upfront here. I understand why boys commit suicide at far higher rates than girls and I understand why boys commit school shootings and girls don’t. I fantasized about killing my classmates like what I had seen in video games and also about the atom bomb following a school project. This was mixed with thoughts that the world have been better if I was never born. The homicide and suicide rates disproportionate to boys is misery is a thing that is objectively measurable. It’s not because of bullying. It’s because no one taught them how to be men in a society where an understanding of both masculine and feminine value structures matter. I say again, it is not good to be at the bottom.The problem with being at the bottom is that there are many barriers to prevent you from exiting it, but few to climb back up. There simply aren’t many ways to overcome your oppressors. Fighting my bully was how I did it. This was how I was able to right my situation.Does it sound extreme? Well, not so much if you were born before the 1980’s. And if you born after, it probably sounds barbaric. After three years as a teacher, I saw a culture that acts very foreign from my own. Almost no one gets into fights. At first, I thought this was a good thing, but then I started seeing what was missing. The boys are almost completely incapable of competing academically besides the very few with parents who are very motivated, mostly teachers themselves. They lack motivation and a sense of purpose or meaning. Obviously there is more going on then a lack of the schoolyard tumble, but that seemed to be part of it. I found that many longed for the presence of an authoritative male figure. With two Iraq deployments under my belt, I fit the mold. I was surprised the authoritarian routine worked. Everyone said it wouldn’t, but it was all I knew, and it was like they craved it. But the darker thing I noticed was that it seemed very hard for my personal success story to work today. Those who started off losers stayed losers, forever. There was no climbing the hierarchy as I had. As I said before, it is not good to be at the bottom, especially for long.I pieced together that this had a great deal to do with the anti-bullying policies put in place since I graduated. Again, I thought it was fine to avoid problems and keep the peace so that students could learn. But they weren’t learning. At best, it felt like they were being herded. What’s worse, “bullying”, at least the far more pervasive and much more common forms of bullying I experienced, the non-violent kind was just as present. Ironically, bullies now used the system to bully others. The worst bullies manipulated the system, claiming to be victims of bullying to get their intended targets in trouble with third-party administrators who themselves are compelled to act. And they were compelled. Finding out that a teacher had “warning” would place guilt on their head if something happened. All the while, I saw these same kids guilty of unimaginable cruelty while still convinced that they are somehow justified by some self-diagnosed victimhood. Multiply this, by a new dynamic where all it takes to appear to be right is a phone call to a news agency on a slow day or an emotional vlog on social media telling a completely one sided story millions would share with the righteous outrage of an ill-informed internet mob. All that is really needed for a clever bully is a good story and a smartphone.According to a 2015 study Microaggression and Moral Cultures, this is textbook victimhood culture. Victimhood culture is when a culture evolves to handle slights against them through responding to each of them, not directly, but leverage third party intervention. These third parties could be parents, school authority, police, voters, or political donors. What makes victimhood cultures dangerous was that it incentivized “victims” to catalog and broadcast every conceivable slight against them, no matter how trivial or unintentional the insult. They need to build cases and this encouraged to exaggerating or falsify harm they received to create a case against the accused satisfactory enough to warrant some desired or demanded action. That said, I sympathize with schools. To stand up to a mob and say, “You don’t have all the facts,” is hard. So I understand why schools gravitated in this direction.But victimhood culture does something else to the character of its members. It causes them to value victimhood as a form of virtue itself. That means that those within such cultures seek to gain the short term benefits of being perceived as a victim, such as pity or advocacy, but at the cost of long term appreciation from the culture, as classic (and more healthy) character traits, such as self-reliance and self-respect are ignored and allowed to atrophy.This matters to those concerned about the development of boys. The reason that victimhood culture is dangerous is because it short-circuits natural boyhood development by specifically contradicting with the nature of boys. Boys align themselves in the same way as anyone else, through dominance hierarchies. The adolescent male dominance hierarchy is one which is attempting to collectively define what being a man should look like, and it socializes its members to this archetypal masculinity identity. Every group of boys is different, but usually the character of this archetypal male is one who is self-reliant, can defend himself, is attractive to girls (women if you prefer, but we are talking about adolescents here), is trustworthy, and loyal to his friends. Likewise, they’re reactionary, and will attempt to challenge even the slightest attempts to shame themselves, their family, or other groups they are loyal to. This makes the dominance hierarchy of young males an “honor culture” according to the same study above.* A part of this is that schoolyard fights are common, even normal form of social interaction for boys. In many ways, they are necessary to create an ordered hierarchy, establish norms, set ideals, and importantly, provide a vehicle for boys to climb the hierarchy. So that I am not taken out of context, schoolyard fighting is in no way the same as the violence that is the subject of this question. They are categorically different. The fighting among boys was not intended to cause permanent physical injury or death. It is a simple non-lethal duel by two unarmed combatants until one of them gives up. The fighting provided a means for all boys to attain respect across the local microculture, even those at the bottom of the dominance hierarchy, so long as they proved to the collective that they were willing to take their lumps.Victimhood culture disrupts this process and is contrary to honor cultures. Both are reactionary when slighted, but honor cultures seek to handle matters personally without intervention of third-party authority. With victimhood culture, third-party intervention is the goal. In this way, one playing by the rules of a victimhood culture can undermine the entire adolescent male dominance hierarchy, disrupting its ability to socialize males, preventing the establishment of positive male ideals, and removing a means for the boys at the bottom to rise to a healthy middle.The last element is important for the subject of school shooters. Without the normal processes of restitution, such as fighting, boys at the bottom of the school’s dominance hierarchy may have no means to gain respect in their local community, relegating them to the bottom of a very brutal hierarchy for a very long time during many of their formative years. In this way, the banned behavior of schoolyard “violence” may actually be what immunizes boys from murderousness later in life. Obviously, letting a student rule through fear and intimidation is something that can’t be encouraged and prevented when possible. In my experience, though, when there is a healthy culture that respects boyishness, there is usually someone who has enough of it and knock that bully out of his place of tyranny (which is of benefit to everyone) But banning this process may have contributed greatly to accelerating the process of school shooter evolution.I want to illustrate the importance of the dynamic nature of the natural boy dominance hierarchy, where boys can move up or down based on their ability to model their behavior to the collective norm. Virtually all boys see themselves as at the bottom sometimes (all people do, I’m sure), but the ability to move up or down allows for something important — hope. If you’re a guy, you know that hope in the form of the fantasies you played out when you were young, or likely still do even today. Most boys fantasize about beating up the boys who pick on them. I say beating them up, but rarely murdering them. They want their oppressors to know that they are not to be messed with and to give them peace. If you murder someone, you haven’t really “beaten” them, at least not to boys. Murder achieves nothing, as the goal is really about respect from the other boy and everyone who saw it.Even if you haven’t experienced this personally, you’ve seen it many times. Think about successful stories marketed toward boys. They’re successful because something about them touches their target market in ways you can’t force with other demographics. They’re archetypal. These great stories feature a hero, defined as one who fights for manly reasons like protecting others, often who overcomes some great adversity, and beats up the bad guy, one who often cheats or hurts innocents. But the hero rarely kills the villains. You think this pattern is just to pass muster with the censors? No, we have many comic books that feature killing, primarily the bad guys, but it’s rare for the good guy to kill. That’s because a strong hero simply subjugating the villain, without killing, is the real fantasy of the demographic of young boys longing to attain a place in the tribe, to climb the male dominance hierarchy.Think of Superman. We all know his unimaginable powers as a hero, but his other form is that of a timid, meek, doormat of a man Clark Kent. But remember, Clark is the real identity of Superman, not the other way around. Clark is special as he can transform at will into an undefeatable paragon of justice. Tell me that story is just about an alien with superpowers and isn’t one hardwired into the imagination of boys on a subconscious level. The same is true of Spiderman, whose real identity is that of the meek and socially awkward genius Peter Parker.This is hardly an American universal, as Japanese imports like Dragon Ball Z and Naruto are also rife with the theme of the underdog rising to the occasion to defeat the tyrant monster. What they all have common… the good guy almost never kills. It isn’t an element of the boyhood fantasy to kill their enemy. They want to be acknowledged by their enemies. They want to be loved by them and accepted as part of the masculine tribe. Naruto, a coming of age Shonen (young boys’) comic book and animated series goes even further in demonstrating this. A common theme in that story is that, like other shonen, the protagonist constantly faces unbeatable odds but rises to the challenge and defeats his enemies through hard work, martial prowess, and determination. But what makes Naruto special is that in nearly every single case, his enemies are moved by his goodness and sincerity to reject their evil motivations and become his friends.We all know the success story of Superman. Social pressures have tried to recreate it with other heroes or heroines, but none are able to stick. It took how many years for Wonder Woman to get a movie? This isn’t because the industry is willfully sexist. It is because Wonder Woman is not a female Superman. That’s what many people want her to be. She isn’t. Wonder Woman just doesn’t mean to girls what Superman means to boys. She has evolved to be a great character, but she doesn’t personify everything that most young girls want to be in the way that Superman does.This is why we need to accept there is a reason that Superman and Spiderman are the most popular franchises of the two most popular comic book companies in America, and have been so for decades, and it’s the same reason that Naruto has regularly been regarded as one of the most popular anime and manga since it first entered print in 1999. They stumbled on themes that affect their target market in ways that can’t be replicated elsewhere. In these cases, that is targeting boys coming of age.Boys crave these outlets and to place themselves in fantasies such as those experienced by Clark Kent or Naruto. I’d ask why would they long for it so desperately if they were fulfilled by their own lives? I’d argue that system of discipline we have in place short-circuits this all important process of childhood adolescent development. To prevent “bullying” we have prevented this necessary outlet for boyhood socialization and replaced it with one where real bullying, the manipulation of those in power or who know how to game the system, continues to take place. Without the outlet, the means to settle the score, the tyrants have no means of being humbled, as the only power they respect is prevented from reaching them. By that, I mean a truly self-righteous boy. But worse, those who are their victims have literally no means of recourse… unless of course they want to taddle and increase their suffering tenfold in the days to come.I say this is worse because we believe we have protected the boy who is being bullied by preventing only one form of conflict - physical violence. Because we have conflated a schoolyard tussle with a school shooting, we’ve made all forms of violence evil. I’ll say this to make it clear, there is a need for the Marines to kill people. There is a need for the justice system to sometimes take a life in defense of others. Sometimes, violence is necessary, but in making the idea of violence taboo — “there’s never a reason for violence” — we’ve short-circuited that all important understanding of the world where we teach kids what kinds of violence are acceptable, what kind is not, and what kind is necessary. Yet we tell ourselves we have prevented bullying, but if we look at all evidence, this child — the victim — is far more likely to become not just a bully, but a repressed monster. By removing the most observable conflict method, we removed from him the ability to rectify his own situation through that ancient of means, and I’ll add, the means most common and most widely respected among boys. At the same time, we interfered in socialization through friends and peers, a form of solidifying social norms which the data is clear on, is far more powerful than teachers and schools. And worst of all, we never taught him about violence, so he’s teaching himself.Now, look at many of the cases of school shooters. I see disturbing similarities to my own story. What was different, was that I figured out how to move up a few notches, so that no matter how bad it got, I was never the guy on the bottom. It needs to be understood that the difference between the least popular kid and the next to least popular is enormous. For mathematicians (many of whom probably understand this personally) the pattern follows somewhat of a pareto distribution. The kid at the bottom doesn’t just have it worse than the kids above him in the dominance hierarchies, he has it exponentially worse. They start off on the wrong foot, then stress causes them to make mistakes which causes them to fall further. Continued stress causes their grades to slip, which causes problems with parents and future outlook. Stress amplifies. Eventually emotional regulation becomes a problem and eventually, even their immune system is weakened. Logically, these children are more likely to need medication to cope or adapt normally to the world, either in the form of antidepressants or through self-aid, in the form of illegal drug use. The former may help or it may only exacerbate their problems, while the latter will surely only provide short term relief at the expense of long term suffering. Maybe other things are factors. Perhaps divorce of the parents, or someone with cancer, or a recent death is part of the story. All of these make it harder and as unfair as that may be, make it easier to fall down the dominance hierarchy. Maybe they seek help by playing up their victimhood status for a while, and maybe it will help for the short term. Pity can feel very good for a little while. However, if they do it wrong, they risk revulsion because neediness is repulsive. There is a point where you can become so bad off, that even asking for help makes others resent you more. These people are in complete collapse.I want to be fair here, stress is good for kids. If you are in that 98% range of “normal” kids, stress is something to be desired because it serves as an incentive, and overcoming that stress builds resilience and other positive character traits they will need once they leave the nurturing and protective environments of their parent’s homes and their schools. But those kids on the bottom, that bottom of the hierarchy, they are categorically different than anyone else in the hierarchy. Stress causes them to crumble and worsen their lowly station. So it doesn’t solve the problem to remove stress from the total population. All that does is make the population weaker and less able to reach their potential later in life, or even handle the stress coming their way. But those kids at the bottom, we need new strategies to recognize and deal with them. Of course, we shouldn’t get too full of ourselves. No matter what strategies we develop, their internal culture will always be a more powerful catalyst for their behavior than anything adults do. Providing healthy means for them to self-heal their situation means that an adult can’t fail in this task, and that the cracks fix themselves before someone falls through. This is also why it is so very important to maintain pathways for kids to escape the bottom of the dominance structure that don’t require adult interference.As I said, these kids are categorically different than their peers. I mean that. They are nothing like their peers if left alone long enough. Multiply their experience at the bottom by years, the collapsing stress I described two paragraphs ago. When you do that, you start seeing the world very differently. You start taking influences from irrational sources and coming to dangerous conclusions. To them, it isn’t just the individual bullies who are at fault. It is all the bystanders who do nothing. It is an authority that does nothing. It is even a God who does nothing or who would be so cruel as to create a world with such suffering as theirs. We can look at the Columbine Shooters to understand that much. One of the shooters left us a great deal of evidence about what was going on in his mind before the massacre. He communicated visions of the world that was corrupted and evil, where he was a victim of a flawed creation, and his self righteousness was such that he placed himself in the role of the judge for all of that flawed creation. This meant that he had lost complete hope in the world and was justified in lashing out against not only his aggressors, but the whole system on an existential level. He wasn’t just out to punish his aggressors, but even God for creating something so terrible as creation.He said all these things, placing himself in the position of arbiter of cosmic justice, even as he failed to correct the problems in his own life that held him back. Perhaps he wasn’t able to recognize what his own problems were. Perhaps he was told too often that he was fine just the way he was when the world communicated to him a very different message. Regardless, this kid lacked hope for climbing out of his hole, so he wanted to drag everyone and everything into his hole with him. I don’t think his story is in any way unique to just his case.Put all this together, and I think we have a much better understanding of what makes a school shooter. They aren’t just bullied kids. Everyone faces some degree of meanness from time time, but they are kids who absolutely cannot escape the bottom rungs of the adolescent social structure. Over a period of years they absorb abuse by other kids using them to climb their own dominance structures. They never develop strategies to deal with this, but instead, attempt and fail at other strategies which exacerbate their position, such as retreating into isolation or seeking to accentuate their own victimhood to the revulsion of everyone else around them, even adults. Given all of this, claims that they are suffering from mental disorder due to long-term sustained trauma seem warranted, however, as these symptoms are only beginning to manifest, it’s doubtful there would be much of a record for anyone to know to watch their behavior. Finally, they absorb some negative influences that begin to place a predictable set of ideas in their head about the nature of people, the nature of the universe, and their role within it. Then the final evolution is to embrace that hatred for the world, hatred for themselves, and sense of meaninglessness to the point of suicide. Many simply stop at that tragedy, but some take it even further, wanting to take as much with them before they go. Maybe they’ll use a gun, maybe arson, maybe a bomb, but those few will stop at nothing to express their resentment of Creation.So I want to return to the question I started this discussion off with. Are the anti-bullying programs we started implementing following the Columbine Massacre helping to prevent more like them?No. Kids are still mean, and most of the behavior associated with “bullying” is far more than physical bullying. It is often social manipulation or similar targeted persecution. These leave little evidence of the crime committed or the residual effects of enduring them for years. Often, the advice they need to hear, “You need to stand up and take care of yourself,” comes far too late, at the point when they actually needed more than affirmations, but professional help and to be removed from the situation. They need strategies to deal with people who can be told a million times, “Don’t be a bully,” and not even see themselves as such. Remember, no one thinks they are a bad guy… Even the shooters believe themselves justified. The one thing we know for sure, there are still people trapped at the bottom, and we’re also seeing that being at the bottom is a terrible place to stay. And as much as schools are trying to resist this message, it’s becoming clearer with every instance of young men and boys massacring their peers, that all the ad-hoc programs cooked up by our “Anti-Bullying Committees” aren’t helping. At best, they are patronizing programs intended to communicate a child’s uniqueness and individual value, diluted by the fact it is exactly like the message given to all the other kids. Like the message of the Syndrome in the Incredibles, “When everyone’s special… no one will be.” At the same time, these programs seem to do little more than categorize many of the behaviors necessary to escape the bottom of the social hierarchy are the same as the violence it evolved to replace. Throwing these behaviors out has left a hole in how we socialize boys, not just in preventing them from committing massacres, but in how we they define their own identities and how they become healthy men in society.As an appendix, I’d like to talk about two other elements that come up when trying to understand the motivations of school shooters — violence in entertainment media and infamy.Many conservatives say that violence in video games leads these sorts of killings. Their arguments are that graphic violence is glorified in movies and with games, and furthermore, that kids are incentivized with points systems designed in such a way that it encourages further gameplay and hold interest. The arguments are that they desensitize children to the weight of killing and in fact, make it seem fun. One psychologist Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, a former Army Ranger and the author of the books On Combat and On Killing, both clearly articulated the body and mind’s remarkable behaviors when engaged in combat, wrote another book Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill. You can judge that book by its title, as Grossman lays out his arguments that the incentive systems in games act as a form of classical conditioning (Pavlov’s dog) rewarding kids for carnage and training kids to desire the bloodshed. He makes compelling arguments and I would recommend people take his work seriously, if for no other reason than the brilliance of his work breaking down the psychology and physiology behind combat from his other two books.That said, I am skeptical as with most of my generation who grew up playing such games. I don’t believe video games are a danger to the vast majority of gamers. Many people have followed this belief and provided mountains of data to support this counter. That said, I don’t think that the counter-arguments are totally correct either.I think that we need to always keep the fact that the bottom of the hierarchy kids are categorically different. They are stressed in ways better off kids aren’t. Their cognitive defenses are weaker than their peers. They are susceptible in ways that other kids aren’t. I’ve even felt this. When I was young and deep in the bottom of my own pit, a game that wasn’t particularly graphic inspired me to draw pictures on the computer of my classmates as characters in the game being killed in the same ways one of the main characters. I thought nothing of it at the time, but my mother found them and we had “a talk” about them. I stopped drawing the pictures. Later, after I rose up out of that pit, I could play video games and never fantasized about the deaths of real people or any people. This is true even today, where I am completely unaffected by the games I play. That is to say that while I was on the edge of the abyss, it would take very little to push my mind over to very dark places, but now that I am normal, I am resistant to the shadow. I think this is true for many kids, the vast majority are simply manipulating pixels, while a very small minority of players are in such a weak place in their lives, that they are affected.That’s saying that I think conservatives need to reframe their arguments. It needs to be understood that almost no one is being affected by games so censoring them is a bad direction to take the argument. But gamer culture needs to accept that there are those who will get ideas, a very small minority, but they are there. Working together, they might be able to do something pretty interesting. One such example is the creation of a hotline or website where gamers can report dangerous things which other players say beyond the normal reporting systems inside the games themselves. This might flag it for someone with the FBI to investigate and perhaps get help to someone planning on doing something very dark. I can see this being a tool of victimhood or even a tool of trolls, but I think it is better that the gamer community acknowledge a problem exists and conservatives acknowledge that only a small minority of gamers fall into this category.The next thing to talk about is infamy. Many, many people circulate an idea that the motivation of the shooters is fame, or at best infamy. “They weren’t successful in life, so they want to go down in a blaze of glory.”I just don’t see any evidence to support this idea. Some, like the Aurora Theater shooter, the deranged looking clown haired guy, maybe. But the majority of people, I think they are just in a state of collapse where wrath overcomes reason and suicide is their primary motivation. Maybe a lack of reason isn’t even correct to say. Maybe they are completely reasonable, assuming a hatred of existence and absolutely none of the social barriers preventing murderous behavior remaining in their souls. Either way, I don’t think they care about your opinion of them. I think they would murder you too if they thought their killing spree could last long enough. I’d like to see if someone can provide some hard evidence, but I’ve done a lot of research on this subject and never stumbled on an argument that convinces me that people shoot up schools so that their names will be remembered.* I mentioned that honor cultures were masculine, and many may see a juxtaposition of victimhood culture as implying that to be nature of the culture of women. It isn’t, if anything, another type of culture mentioned in the essay, “dignity culture” seems to describe the culture of women more accurately. Victimhood culture seems to borrow from the worst elements of both but is not representative of masculine or feminine in nature. I’d encourage readers to read the report. I found it fascinating, but going in too deep to explain that goes beyond the scope of this question.Thanks for reading. If you liked this answer, please upvote and follow The War Elephant. If you want to help me make more content like this, please visit my Patreon Support Page to find out more.