Employed, their aggression and love of risk-taking proves destructive. Unemployed, their unemployment benefits are greater than some middle-class salaries. So how exactly can we reform the macho man for better times?
For the first time in millennia, the future does not look bright for overconfident, uber-masculine, move-making men. Steeped in the curious belief that a blend of audacity and self-aggrandizement would secure them a place among the masters of the universe, many of our hard-hitting, regulation-shunning cowboys are finding their raison d'etre incompatible with today’s business realities.
As Reihan Salam, a fellow at the New America Foundation argues, our current economic turmoil is almost universally perceived to have been brought about by the negligence of hawkish executives. As the unemployment rate for men skyrockets in relation women’s, a new model of the businessman needs to emerge if corporate men are to ever emerge from the "he-cession."
There are, as Salam discusses, several directions self-aggrandizing men could take. They could adapt to the changing times and embrace the new ideas and institutions that will emerge in an more egalitarian society. Or, as macho guys seem particularly prone to doing, they could resist the forward motion of history and become hostile, nostalgia-driven beings, harping back to the good 'ol days of global dominance in drunken isolation.
What happens to the macho will prove a powerful force in the post-recession society. While there will almost certainly be some sort of resistance to its fall, it may be less calamitous than Salam’s article forecasts.
A look at the success of recent books on the slow-food movement, or Mathew Crawford’s “Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work” suggests that the rebellion of the masculine impulse may take the form of a sort of a ‘back-to-the-land’ movement. If men accept the end of unbridled “penis competition” and embrace their inner-women--or discover new, socially beneficial venues for manliness--the spirit of macho as we know it could soon prove a curious remnant of the past.
Discuss
Pat R on July 9, 2009, 8:46 AM
The fall of the manly man is not an idea that can be embraced because when this occurs, manly men will do what they have always done in such cases, and recruit weasles to do the dirty work for them, out of sight, and accomplish the same task. When those weasles are offshore, they are very much out of sight, and unapproachable as well as uncontrollable.
The solution is to convert manly men into responsible men by channeling their talents into respectable maneuvers, and expecting them to stand by their decisions. It is the only way to prevent what is rapidly becoming as the cowardly man’s only source of redemption – to disguise and coverup – not exactly the attitudes worthy of admiration and honor.
Manly men must learn to use less bravado, and more legitimacy in their dealings, so that they, too, can learn to negotiate the world, not overpower it.
ed hardy on August 28, 2009, 4:57 AM
thanks, the article is very good~~
by ed hardy
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