Well Veeky Forums are you a man?

Well Veeky Forums are you a man?


artofmanliness.com/2016/11/28/100-books-every-man-read/

I'm about a tenth of a man.

No, I'm a woman.

Apparently fairly manly though, since I've read 52/100 of those.

Who exactly is the audience for all this GQ, Esquire, Art of Manliness horseshit? I can only assume it's members of the insecure and neutered managerial class, because self-reliant and self-assured men usually don't need some NYT-educated West Coast blogger to explain why reading Jane Austen and voting Democrat is totally the alpha choice, bro.

london etc.

If you read 10 of these books you'll be 20th of a man!

I am a person with penis raised by a feminized, modernistic family with an indiscernible set of values that focused only on education.

Since I was never taught how to be a man, I read such things to rediscover my natural state. I was depressed once, but now I see the light. Embracing masculinity opened many doors; my only regret is that if I had learned as a young child it would be more intuitive to what I now had to learn with effort and painful experience.

I'll make sure that my children will not grow up like abandoned dogs left to their own devices.

Manliness is a meme.
All that matters is the ability to achieve a desired end.
Using "manliness" as a tool to achieve an end is fine, if it is viewed as such.

The fundamental reality is results based. If you achieve the result you have Truth.

Truth is real. Manliness is relative.
Same goes for femaleness.

A "man" is someone who achieves results.
A "man" is not an aesthetic based around a reaction to a changing sexual and economic landscape.

Seriously, your are turing somthing that you already are into a commoditized lifestly equpied with flannels and straight razors.

Traditionalism is fine. Shallow attempts at an idealized masculinity is not.

Be potent, that is all.

I'm fairly certain that Wealth of Nations is not a book .most men would want to read, considering it's primarily focused on economics.

i've read 28 of them
that's a fun list

Maybe like 10 with another 10 I want to read sometime soon

>femaleness

"It’s all well and good to be a dreamer, but a man must also be grounded in reality. It’s a lesson that Don Quixote comes to learn in the 17th century eponymous book, which is widely considered to be the world’s first novel. Quixote, along with his squire Sancho Panza, travels the world in search of grand adventures and heroic deeds which would earn him the title of Knight. He continues against all odds, and in some cases, against all common sense. It’s funny, surprisingly easy to read given the fact that it’s over 400 years old, and can provide a man many lessons on the aspirations of heroism."

?

Manliness is not just an ideology. It's hubristic to put humans so much higher than animals. A monkey put in the pit of despair will come out as monkey as well. But it'll behave much different than monkeys should naturally.

honestly not that bad

huge variation in merit between works though

I like making up words.
So sue me.

Im sorry, i dont really follow.

If you mean, manliness is what man is, sure i agree. There is a underlying law that makes some XX and som XY. Along with these, there is associated average ranges of action.

Sure, one can act outside of what a certain culture sees as manly, but these are not universal. Still there is common ground.

Any range of action availiable is the range of man. Manliness is thus the ability to exercise this range. Flying like a bird or giving birth are both unmanly. Wearing a skirt is "unmanly" in some cultures but not others.

If you mean noble and strong, sure that is usually the domain of man, but women can do this too in some cases. Many men fall short of this.

Clearly, we are arguing definitions. Either were talking manly as in the domain of the being man, or were talking the cultural scene of manliness. One is a fundamental state, the other a culturally accepted range of action (basically an aesthetic).

Thus the sythesis of these two would be the potency of the individual to do as he must. The more manly is the one who is able to exercise their power, even if they are "girly."

Of course, the naturalist view would be that the manliest is the male whovcan successfully pass on their genes.

There's no need to make up words, when alternatives exist. "Femininity"

This site should be renamed Art of Nu-Maleness

????????

This is nice, but I don't believe "manliness" is just cultural or even mainly cultural or even 50/50 cultural. No debate will change this. Perhaps you are right, but I have experienced it differently and my research suggests differently as well. But I am sure your explication makes sense to many and as I said, perhaps you are right.

It's a decent list

True, but not as fun. Also, sometimes i struggle to find the right word so i use the main word and add an "acceptable" suffix. Gets the point across, but sure, makes me sound dumb.

not a single russian other than bulgakov? into the trash it fucking goes.

My great grandfather was the most masculine person I've met and I think he only read the German Bible

real men write books. reading is a feminine act, to receive writing instead of creating it.

Thats pretty mature.
Are you suggesting that manliness is a state that trandscends all cultures and times?
I admit i am fairly feminine for a man so i am biased. I am however, pretty potent in some things. I get my self worth from pragmatism over atavism.

I see you as taking masculinity as an archytypal state that all men tap into. Is this accurate?
Its a beautiful view, and i see it as a very deep spring to draw from. A sort of solar cult of man.

I dont trust anything cultural so Truth must be transcultural. I believe your view follows this stipulation. Me and you seem to differ in the nature over nurture debate.

Please, tell me more.

>naturalist view would be that the manliest is the male whovcan successfully pass on their genes
and the part about power
This is ofc right and this is where both the social idea of manliness and the naturalistic view meet. But there is more to it. You feel the missing part and those books show you actions that fulfill hard to describe abstract desires subtly hardwired in your brain.

I'm tired and will now go to bed, since we more or less come to the same conclusions anyway. I consider those books, magazines, blogs and so on rather eye-opening since I always felt something was missing and I didn't know what it was until I found the "manosphere". It just works.

Fair enough my man. No offense meant. Your view is very perrenial.

Im a realist above all, so if it works for you, more power.

Id advise you to look into the Traditionalist school if it wasnt obvious you already have.

That truth is less transcendental and more within how the male brain works. However one has to reject the idea of tabula rasa of the mind. I think our brain comes with somewhat predetermined pathways that merely refine and develop over the years through experience. It will always feel somewhat off if one goes against the more primordial reptile parts of the brain. Instead of a solar cult of man I believe in the reptile nature that we cannot completely reject if we don't want to become depressed or otherwise ill and weak. However, since we are complex and intelligent animals we have to be either taught how to act according to our nature or we have to rediscover how we were meant to live by deep introspection and experimentation. This is my theory.

About a quarter of a man, it seems. If you count watching Hamlet instead of reading it, which seems fair enough because IT'S A GODDAMN PLAY.

Oh, i totally misjudged, youre going further naturalistic than myself even.

If you were anyway conspiratorial, one could argue that cultural conditioning is used to override the natural reptile pathways thus rendering the human impotent and docile.

Youre calling for a return to nature where many of these masculinists seem to be proping a masculine aesthetic on a thoroughly impotent lifestyle. Thats why lumbersexuals get so much flak, becuase its obviously a put on.

>randomly reading the Republic

>Manliness is a meme.
t. das Man

Yes.
I will look into the traditionalist school. Good night.

Isnt the one blindly following the new trend of flase atavism really the man who does what he is cultured to do over the one who does as he chooses. Are these lumbersexuals truly so individual?

About what I'd expect from a bunch of mormons living in a disneyfied alt reality. Let's all buy boutique pocket knifes and designer flannel and act manly.

Yup, what ive been saying.
Masculinity is a state of being, not an aesthetic.
They are selling a commodity to people with so little self worth they need to pretend to be rural woodsman while living in suburban apathy.

Man buys into Art of Manliness, and changes - BECOMES A MEME. Many such cases!

Can you read. Testosterone too low? Dostoevsky is on the list.

Lumbersexual rates through the roof--why doesnt the america do somthing about meme-inflicted lumbersexualism. We lose nothing to try.