"Great advice already on here from Tim & Nick.
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The Decline of Manliness: Downfall & Revival(also known as help me with finding sources)
Hello AoM,
I'm not going to delve into the subject of how Manliness died, but I do want to spread the word on how it was dying and is now reviving. Fellow men, and young men in the journey to become men, I need some help finding sources for a speech I'm going to present.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AxLaCltp2o
I was largely influenced by Brett's performance at Ignite Tulsa, and I wanted to emulate that somehow. Today, I was given the privilege by my professor to present a speech on "Cultural Awareness" that is due within two weeks. He wouldn't mind if I delved into subcultures, so I wanted to do something different and difficult. I want to tell how Manliness isn't necessarily wrong. Before I discovered AoM, I believed manliness to be only what I found in media and magazines. These were buff, burly men who acted like jerks and had sex everywhere they went, gathering the women as a farmer does with wheat. I wasn't a jerk, but I believed there was a change in the way men were. Now, I know there is an alternative to this a. I have pledged to being counter-cultural, and help spread how to be a better person through becoming a real man. A man of strength, virtue, and intelligence.
Of course a man must help himself before asking others for help, so I have already found some sources myself:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/dec/25/fathers-disappear-f...
http://www.uwplatt.edu/library/ereserves/decline_of_marriage_and_fa...
http://www.utne.com/Politics/Decline-Of-Fatherhood-American-Nuclear...
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s1337.pdf
And what has been a real great help, was studying speeches of other men. I had Brett's Manvotionals with me a few months ago, but I lost it. But the words of MLK and William Ernest Henley have stayed with me, even now. Pericles' funeral speech was a big booster of support for me. If anyone else has a problem with making speeches, look to other men who made great speeches.
However, there are many variables that prevent me from actually doing this:
1.) There are a lot of girls in this class. In my Speech class, there is a 2:3 ratio of young, bright young women to men who dream of a future for themselves. How bad would it be if I came into class with my ideas of reviving "manliness" in their faces? Of course I attempt to be polite daily to both genders, but the results seem unpredictable right now as I sort through what could happen. Maybe they'll raise their standards for the men they date, hopefully.
2.) I am a giant square. I try to be chaste, I never try to use coarse language, and I read books all the time. Now I will be a bigger square by presenting this speech. I shouldn't care about what others think, but someone has to think about their standing with the other students and professors.
3.) I'm very guilty of being both the metrosexual and man-boy that Brett presents in the video. I enjoy buying fashionable clothing, and I do play video games. In fact, I am soon to buy a custom computer on which that I can make mods for PC games. But I know my limits, and I never try to spend what I cannot afford by being frugal nor do I frequently play video games from dusk-til-dawn inside my room. I also try to believe there is a manly way to game but that's an entirely different discussion for another day if I manage to get there.
So please, could you help a young student? Are there any other articles, or books from the library that I can read to cite as a source? Are there any other speeches that can I study? Thank you for reading.
tl;dr version: I have a speech due in two weeks about the decline of manliness. Could you help me find sources, please?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Michael D. Denny on -
What does "going Roman" mean? Total warfare? You pursue that and you're going to lose the battle for hearts & minds, which is a key piece of terrain in the fight. That translates to mission failure.
Were you sick that day in history school, sparky?
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Permalink Reply by Vytautas on -
Even the Romans didn't practice total warfare, because such a concept didn't exist. They did at times slaughter innocents, enslave survivors, and burn cities out of existence. Anyone remotely familiar with military practices today would call these war crimes, completely illegal and immoral, and detrimental to mission accomplishment.
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Permalink Reply by Michael D. Denny on
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Again,, were you sick that day in history school?
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Permalink Reply by LShieldes on
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So when the Romans conquered a town and assimilated their Gods into the Roman heirarchy, even leaving much of the local infrastructure intact, that was an act of Total warfare rather than a calculated work of integration or even "winning the hearts and minds"
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Permalink Reply by Rick Shelton on -
It was, actually, a political and economic move. The Romans took out the existing leadership and replaced it with their own but allowed the citizens (new Romans) to continue their daily lives fairly much unchanged. They (the Romans) knew that if they disrupted the citizens too much they would revolt and draw more troops that would be needed elsewhere and tax revenue would go down as well (it's all about the money and power).
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Permalink Reply by Michael D. Denny on
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So when the Romans conquered a town and assimilated their Gods into the Roman heirarchy, even leaving much of the local infrastructure intact, that was an act of Total warfare rather than a calculated work of integration or even "winning the hearts and minds"
You guys are skipping over parts that don't fit your argument. Romans did such things as assimilate the local pantheon into their own, yes. But they did it after they raped every female from 8 to 80, killed, castrated, crucified, and whipped every single male from 8 to 80, hauled all the healthy ones off for the slave markets, burned the town to the ground, carried off all the livestock and grain and completely destroyed the existing power structure. They then installed the political leadership that either worked for them directly or was from within their own ranks. They won hearts and minds, after breaking them first.
Again. Were you sick that day in history school?
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Permalink Reply by Vytautas on
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Again, I mentioned the "total war" thing... and all those behaviors you discuss are what we call war crimes. Romans fought a kind of war that we don't anymore, because it's immoral, impractical, and will not result in mission accomplishment.
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Permalink Reply by Nick H on -
I'm going to take a different route here. I'm not going to suggest anything other than suggest you look it up yourself. When you are learning a course, be it to write a paper or give a speech, the point of the lesson is not the material but the process you learnt by researching your topic and presenting it. Just imagine how many "why pot should be made legal" reports are currently in various stages of production in any North American university. Do you think any of them are containing some vital piece of new information? Perhaps, so the bigger importance is how the research of those papers developed the author's skills. Not to sound like too much of an old curmudgeon, but in a world where you can now just type any question into google and get a million hits, there is no excuse for not being able to find information by yourself. Honestly, you'll do yourself more good by tackling this question yourself and reading more.
Also, forget metrosexual or style or being a gentleman with the ladies, if you want to develop real manliness then work on your self-reliance and other skills that let you be the sort of guy who can get stuff done without having to ask others to do it for you.
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Permalink Reply by Jack Bauer on -
Heh. Yeah ... I thought about suggesting he do a Google search on "Asking AOM to do my homework for me, and its contribution to the decline of manliness."
JB
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Permalink Reply by Will on -
Unfortunately, I have a tl;dr answer. Some great resources on manliness and modern changes: Iron John by Robert Bly; Manhood and Ritual in Victorian America (mostly about fraternal organizations); maybe Muscular Christianity. The modern men's movement has been about opening ourselves up emotionally and has relied a lot on mythic sources, unlike the women's movement, which has been about political action. (Women do things like the men's movement, but when they do it isn't call "the women's movement.")
There's a book titled Manliness on this topic IIRC; tl;dr for me.
Economics? I don't know. Isn't there a book titled The Decline of Males? There are bound to be stats. I'm less familiar with this aspect.
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