# The Way of Men  ## Metadata - Author: Jack Donovan - Full Title: The Way of Men - Category: #books ## Highlights - When men compete against each other for status, they are competing for each other’s approval. ([Location 81](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=81)) - Masculinity is about being a man within a group of men. Above all things, masculinity is about what men want from each other. ([Location 84](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=84)) - Relieved of moral pretense and stripped of folk costumes, the raw masculinity that all men know in their gut has to do with being good at being a man within a small, embattled gang of men struggling to survive. ([Location 101](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=101)) - Men are more interested in competing for status, and when they win, their bodies give them a dopamine high and more testosterone.[1] ([Location 143](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=143)) - Because of the differences between the sexes, the best person for jobs that involve exploring, hunting, fighting, building, or defending is usually going to be a male. This is not some arbitrary cultural prejudice; it is the kind of vital strategic discrimination that will keep your group alive. ([Location 147](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=147)) - Thomas Hobbes wrote that when men live without fear of a common power, they live in a state of “warre.” In warre, every man is against every other man. ([Location 159](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=159)) - Some researchers believe that the human brain can only process enough information to maintain meaningful relationships with 150 or so people at any given time.[3] That’s about the size of a military company, but also about the size of a typical primitive human tribe, and roughly the number of “friends” most people contact regularly through social networking sites. ([Location 186](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=186)) - Men revert back to this archetypal gang size, even for recreation and storytelling. ([Location 196](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=196)) - As long as other men maintain separate identities, there is always the chance that they will choose to put the interests of their own ahead of your interests. In hard times, agreements between groups fall apart. Competition creates animosity, and men will dehumanize each other to make the tough decisions necessary for their own group to survive. ([Location 228](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=228)) - It has always been the job of men to draw the perimeter, to establish a safe space, to separate us from them and create a circle of trust. ([Location 237](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=237)) - Men who are good at this job—men who are good at the job of being men—will earn the respect and trust of the group. Those men will be honored and treated better than men who are disloyal or undependable. ([Location 255](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=255)) - Vir is the Latin word for “man.” The word “virtue” comes from the Latin “virtus.” To the early Romans, virtus meant manliness, and manliness meant martial valor.[4] Demonstrating virtus meant showing strength and courage and loyalty to the tribe while attacking or defending against the enemies of Rome. ([Location 271](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=271)) - Epics and action movies translate well because they appeal to something basic to the male condition—a desire to struggle and win, to fight for something, to fight for survival, to demonstrate your worthiness to other men. ([Location 284](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=284)) - Strength, Courage, Mastery, and Honor are the virtues that protect the perimeter; they are the virtues that save us. ([Location 311](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=311)) - That’s not fair, but fairness is a luxury that men can ill afford in dire times. ([Location 329](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=329)) - Just as groups of men will compete against each other but unite if they believe more can be gained through cooperation, individual men will compete within a gang when there is no major external threat but then put aside their differences for the good of the group. Men aren’t wired to fight or cooperate; they are wired to fight and cooperate. ([Location 334](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=334)) - Weak men are regarded as less manly, but no one really cares or notices if a woman is physically weaker than her peers. ([Location 376](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=376)) - Average women who train with weights will increase strength and overall health, but most will still look like women. ([Location 385](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=385)) - Men who have more muscle tend to have and maintain higher testosterone levels, and men who have higher testosterone levels tend to have an easier time getting bigger and stronger. ([Location 388](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=388)) - Strength is the ability to exert one’s will over oneself, over nature and over other people. ([Location 423](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=423)) - The experience of being male is the experience of having greater strength, and strength must be exercised and demonstrated to be of any worth. When men will not or cannot exercise their strength or put it to use, strength is decorative and worthless. ([Location 439](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=439)) - Courage implies a risk. It implies a potential for failure or the presence of danger. Courage is measured against danger. The greater the danger, the greater the courage. Running into a burning building beats telling off your boss. Telling off your boss is more courageous than writing a really mean anonymous note. Acts without meaningful consequences require little courage. ([Location 449](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=449)) - Aristotle framed courage as a moral virtue, as a will to noble action. ([Location 456](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=456)) - Aristotle’s mean of courage is not the wild, “rash” confidence of a passionate man who fights in the heat of the moment out of fear or anger. Rather, he suggests that “brave men act for honor’s sake, but passion aids them.” ([Location 461](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=461)) - There is nothing wrong with acknowledging the difficulties others face, but we can also acknowledge, as Aristotle and the Romans did, that courage in its highest and purest form involves the willful risk of bodily harm or death for the good of the group. Lesser risks require greater dilutions of courage. ([Location 502](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=502)) - It is not the strongest man who will necessarily lead, it is the man who takes the lead who will lead. ([Location 531](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=531)) - The “men refuse to stop and ask for directions” joke never seems to get old for women, who are more comfortable with dependence, or socialist types, because reducing men to a childlike state of supplication and submission to state bureaucrats is required for big-government welfare states to function. Masculine loathing of dependence is a bulwark to the therapeutic mother state. ([Location 640](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=640)) - Mastery is a man’s desire and ability to cultivate and demonstrate proficiency and expertise in technics that aid in the exertion of will over himself, over nature, over women, and over other men. ([Location 664](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=664)) - A man once said, “If I allow a man to steal my chickens, I might as well let him rape my daughters.” That’s reflexive honor. ([Location 707](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=707)) - “Honor Diversity” is an interesting slogan, because it essentially means “honor everyone and everything.” If everyone is honored equally, and everyone’s way of life is honored equally, honor has no hierarchy, and therefore honor has little value according to the economics of supply and demand. “Honor diversity” doesn’t mean much more than “be nice.” ([Location 722](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=722)) - Honor is a man’s reputation for strength, courage and mastery within the context of an honor group comprised primarily of other men. ([Location 768](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=768)) - Honor is a concern for one’s reputation for strength, courage and mastery within the context of an honor group comprised primarily of other men. ([Location 770](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=770)) - Deficient masculinity is simply a lack of strength, courage or mastery. ([Location 791](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=791)) - Most high status men are not monsters, and most low status men don’t want to be a burden on others (because dependency is slavery), so men who are not good at being men generally try to find some way to make themselves useful or at least tolerable to a given group of men. Think of the funny fat guys and the frail artists and the nurturing fellows who make sure everything is in order for the men of action. ([Location 802](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=802)) - Men who are flamboyantly dishonorable are flagrant in their disregard for the esteem of their male peers. ([Location 816](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=816)) - Flamboyant dishonor is an openly expressed lack of concern for one’s reputation for strength, courage and mastery within the context of an honor group comprised primarily of other men. ([Location 819](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=819)) - Flamboyant dishonor is a little bit like walking into that room full of men who are trying to get better at jiu-jitsu and insisting that they stop what they are doing and pay attention to your fantastic new tap-dancing routine. The flamboyantly dishonorable man seeks attention for something the male group doesn’t value, or which isn’t appropriate at a given time.   At the primal level, flamboyant dishonor presents tactical problems for the group. By outwardly and theatrically rejecting the core masculine values, particularly strength and courage, the flamboyantly dishonorable male advertises weakness and a propensity for submission to outside watchers. ([Location 836](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=836)) - When men reject effeminate men they are rejecting weakness, casting it out, and cleansing themselves of its corrosive stigma. ([Location 860](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=860)) - What is a Man? 3,000 Years of Wisdom on the Art of Manly Virtue. Newell criticized those who came of age in the 1960s for establishing a cultural orthodoxy prone to believing that “nothing just, good, or true” had happened before their time, and for causing the “disappearance of the positive tradition of manliness through relentless simplification and caricature.”[34]He showed what he referred to as an “unbroken pedigree in the Western conception of what it means to be a man,” which he defined as “honor tempered by prudence, ambition tempered by compassion for the suffering and the oppressed, love restrained by delicacy and honor toward the beloved.”[35] ([Location 959](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=959)) - However, unless self-sacrifice and restraint are to be masculinity’s defining qualities—unless masculinity is to be an ascetic discipline and nothing more—there is a point somewhere down a road of diminishing returns that being a good man is no longer a good trade. There’s a point where a man who wants to “feel useful” ends up “feeling used.” When the system no longer offers men what they want, how long can you expect them to perform tricks for a pat on the head? How long until the neglected, starving dog turns on its master? ([Location 1018](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=1018)) - as one famous transgendered sociologist has, “that masculinity is not a coherent object about which a generalizing science can be produced.”[39]It is true that if a word or concept can mean anything, it means nothing. ([Location 1033](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=1033)) - To truly understand The Way of Men, we must look for where the masculinity of the gangster overlaps with the masculinity of the chivalrous knight, where modern ideas overlap with ancient ones. We must look at the phenomenon of masculinity amorally and as dispassionately as we can. ([Location 1051](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=1051)) - There is a difference between being a good man and being good at being a man. ([Location 1058](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=1058)) - Men of ideas and men of action have much to learn from each other, and the truly great are men of both action and abstraction. ([Location 1063](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=1063)) - Feminists, pacifists, and members of the privileged classes recognize that brother-bonded men who are good at being men will always be a threat, but forget that some of those men are necessary to create and maintain order in the first place. There is a call to do away with what even the United Nations has deemed “outmoded stereotypes” of masculinity that are associated with violence.[45] “Outmoded” is a word you’ll see frequently in academic writing about masculinity. So-called experts talk about manhood like it was last year’s fad, in part because they subscribe to convenient but discredited blank slate theories about gender being “as lightly linked to sex as are the clothing, the manners, and the form of head-dress that a society at a given period assigns to either sex.”[46] ([Location 1091](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=1091)) - A man who is more concerned with being a good man than being good at being a man makes a very well-behaved slave. ([Location 1110](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=1110)) - The story of Rome is the story of men and civilization. It shows men who have no better prospects gathering together, establishing hierarchies, staking out land and using strength to assert their collective will over nature, women, and other men. ([Location 1205](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=1205)) - Sometimes men pick fights just for something to do—just to feel something like the threat of harm and the possibility of triumph. ([Location 1236](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=1236)) - James laughed at the now-vindicated fears of his contemporaries who believed that without a sufficiently warlike nationalism, the United States would degenerate into a society, “of clerks and teachers, of co-education and zoo-ophily, of consumer’s leagues and associated charities, of industrialism unlimited, and feminism unabashed.” However, he also warned that “a permanently successful peace-economy cannot be a simple pleasure-economy.”[50] ([Location 1246](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=1246)) - When men are materially invested in a society—when they believe there is more of what they want to gain by working for the group than by working against it—men will control and redirect their energies in the service of a prosperous society.   When men are emotionally invested in a society—when they feel a strong connection to the group, a strong sense of us—men will control and redirect their energies in the service of a peaceful society as long as the most aggressive men (the men who are better at being men) are provided with desirable “equivalents” to gang aggression. ([Location 1260](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=1260)) - As opportunities for men to do what they evolved to do decrease, greater emphasis is placed on simulated, vicarious, and intellectualized channels of masculinity to maintain order and cultural unity. Men still get to feel like men, but the threat that men pose to order, to established interests, and to the interests of women is mitigated. ([Location 1327](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=1327)) - Pornography is not the same as sex. It’s a substitute for it. Would pornography lose its appeal without the possibility of sex? Will war and survival simulations be enough without even the remotest possibility of war or strife? Will they simply become empty, depleting, and depressing?   This is one reason why people love zombie movies and “disaster porn” so much. The apocalypse—any apocalypse—offers an opportunity. As the back cover of The Walking Dead comic book reads, “In a world ruled by the dead, we are forced to finally start living.” ([Location 1359](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=1359)) - If you want to create a society of listless antisocial losers, convince the majority of your men that they’re already losing, and that no matter what they do, they will never be able to win.   What’s the point in trying if you know the game is rigged?   For the satisfaction of knowing you are contributing to the greater good?   That’s just the kind of stupid thing an intellectual would say. ([Location 1368](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=1368)) - The introduction of women into a field of competition short-circuits its viability as a substitute for male gang activity. ([Location 1381](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=1381)) - Boys are scolded even for their violent fantasies—for the violent stories they want to hear, the violent books they want to read, the violent games they want to play. Male “demonism” is punished, pathologized, and stigmatized from cradle to campus. Even the good guys are treated like bad guys for ganging up, for being “xenophobic,” patriotic, or too exclusive. ([Location 1390](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=1390)) - The repudiation of violent masculinity is the murder of male identity. ([Location 1399](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=1399)) - Look at what hopeless, directionless, angry young black men have done to the cities that were never theirs. See how well the once-proud Aztecs reacted to the rape of their cities and foreign rule. White men are equally capable of bringing down a future they have no place in—a future built on dreams that are not their own. ([Location 1413](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=1413)) - The goal of civilization seems to be to eliminate work and risk, but the world has changed more than we have. Our bodies crave work and sex, our minds crave risk and conflict. ([Location 1550](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=1550)) - Our society has almost no tolerance for unsanctioned physical violence. Children are expelled from school for fighting, and something as historically common as a weaponless, drunken brawl can land men in court or in jail.   As coalitions of females, pandering politicians and fearful men organize to child-proof our world, to ban guns and regulate violent sports, men retreat to redoubts of virtual and vicarious masculinity like video games and fantasy football because it’s all they have left. ([Location 1560](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=1560)) - Sex today is increasingly disconnected from mating, and for many it has become a matter of “masturbating with someone else’s body.” ([Location 1579](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=1579)) - Cosmopolitan journalists from elite schools like Betty Friedan filled women’s imaginations with fantasies of exciting big-city careers that only a few could ever hope to attain. For every woman living that fantasy today, there are a bunch of women scanning merchandise through a checkout line at some big-box retail store, or doing repetitive data-entry in some gray office. In the East, women are answering our phone calls or performing monotonous assembly line tasks in factories. This is called “progress.” Many of those women would probably rather be spending more time actively engaged in the lives of their children, but they no longer have the choice to stay home. ([Location 1606](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=1606)) - In the future that globalists and feminists have imagined, for most of us there will only be more clerkdom and masturbation. There will only be more apologizing, more submission, more asking for permission to be men. There will only be more examinations, more certifications, mandatory prerequisites, screening processes, background checks, personality tests, and politicized diagnoses. There will only be more medication. There will be more presenting the secretary with a cup of your own warm urine. There will be mandatory morning stretches and video safety presentations and sign-off sheets for your file. There will be more helmets and goggles and harnesses and bright orange vests with reflective tape. There can only be more counseling and sensitivity training. There will be more administrative hoops to jump through to start your own business and keep it running. There will be more mandatory insurance policies. There will definitely be more taxes. There will probably be more Byzantine sexual harassment laws and corporate policies and more ways for women and protected identity groups to accuse you of misconduct. There will be more micro-managed living, pettier regulations, heavier fines, and harsher penalties. There will be more ways to run afoul of the law and more ways for society to maintain its pleasant illusions by sweeping you under the rug. In 2009 there were almost five times more men either on parole or serving prison terms in the United States than were actively serving in all of the armed forces.[64] ([Location 1637](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=1637)) - The true “crisis of masculinity” is the ongoing and ever-changing struggle to find an acceptable compromise between the primal gang masculinity that men have been selected for over the course of human evolutionary history, and the level of restraint required of men to maintain a desirable level of order in a given civilization. ([Location 1718](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=1718)) - Enkidu complained that he had grown weak and that he felt oppressed by the idleness of civilized life.   Men have known since Gilgamesh that civilization comes at a cost. ([Location 1727](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=1727)) - Modern men are not merely lacking initiation into manhood, as some have suggested, they are lacking meaningful trials of strength and courage. Few modern men will truly “know themselves,” as men, in the way that their forefathers did. ([Location 1738](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=1738)) - Later in the Epic of Gilgamesh, after Gilgamesh killed the Bull of Heaven and overthrew the monstrous Humbaba, his comrade Enkidu died. Gilgamesh was distraught, and he searched for a way to cheat his own death. He met a young girl who made wine, and she told him that there was no way for him to avoid death. She told him to fill his belly with good things, to dance and be merry, to feast and rejoice. She told him to cherish his children and make his wife happy, “for this too is the lot of man.”[67] ([Location 1743](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=1743)) - In times of peace and plenty, when their bellies are full and they feel safe, women have always advised men to abandon manly pursuits and the way of the gang, to enjoy the safe pleasures of vicariousness and to join women in domestic life. When no threat is imminent, it has always been in the best interest of women to calm men down and enlist their help at home, raising children, and fixing up the grass hut. This is The Way of Women. ([Location 1749](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=1749)) - Strength requires an opposing force, courage requires risk, mastery requires hard work, honor requires accountability to other men. ([Location 1804](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=1804)) - Everyone from schoolteachers to the United Nations is rushing to do away with “outmoded” models of masculinity, but they’re not replacing it with anything better. ([Location 1819](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=1819)) - The Italians have a saying for this. Tutti colpevoli, nessuno colpevole.   It means, “If everyone is guilty, no one is guilty.” ([Location 1947](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=1947)) - The new Way of Women depends on prosperity, security, and globalism.   Any return of honor and The Way of Men and the eventual restoration of balance and harmony between the sexes will require the weakening of all three. ([Location 1964](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=1964)) - In the chaos that follows disappointment, gangs of men can restart the world. ([Location 1987](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=1987)) - Their future—the one world nanny state from cradle to grave, the global civilization of managers and clerks, the thin consumer identities, the bonobo masturbation society—is already showing signs of stress. Their future is based on unsustainable illusions and lies about human nature. Their future requires too many men to deny their own immediate interests to serve an abstract “greater good” that is far beyond human scale. All over the world, the Star Trek future that was once considered “inevitable” is starting to look improbable. The European Union is struggling, the global economy is faltering, and every day more people are starting to acknowledge that America is in a decline from which it will not recover.   Their future is already falling. It just needs a push. ([Location 1988](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=1988)) - They were emotionally attached to the idea that the government cares, but they already suspected that it doesn’t.   It doesn’t, because it can’t. Like global corporations, States have escaped human scale. There is no “man” to fight. States are institutions whose ultimate goals are survival, perpetuation, and expansion.   When the protesters went home, they achieved nothing. Nothing changed, though a few talking heads offered reassurances that the protesters had been heard. ([Location 2001](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=2001)) - If you want to follow The Way of Men, if you want to advance a return to honor and manly virtue, if you want to steel yourself against an uncertain future—start a gang. ([Location 2035](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=2035)) - No woman can take the place of men in a man’s life. ([Location 2044](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=2044)) - Men have been negotiating the “crisis of masculinity”—the push and pull between civilized domesticity and lure of gang life—for centuries. ([Location 2047](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007O0Y1ZE&location=2047))