What Is a Good Man?

A Guy said:
Self reliant and owns a giant sword
Click to expand...
giphy.gif
 
Deleted member 16771 said:
Before I draft my reply, I just wanted to point out the conviction in this statement, if anyone happened to miss it. When a man like this speaks; he who lives his entire life through a matrix of 'goodness', you all need to bear witness, heathens. The good man is irrepressible.


There's a few things to disentangle in this question, though, like many have pointed out. I don't think this question should rely upon what is sexually desirable to women to inform it, or what makes good 'people' in general. Rather, I think there is definitely a 'masculine' aspect to the moral character that we're trying to parse here, and to figure out the essence of that we might have to get a bit abstract.

We could imagine that it embodies the 'active' as opposed to the 'passive' principle when considering moral action. There are active or proactive ways to be 'good'/'moral', just as there are passive or reactive ways, and this is a good start for conceiving of this.

For me, the natural conclusion to this kind of abstract reasoning about the 'masculine good' (I'm skipping a few steps here for brevity) is something like that spoken of in 'archetypal' terms: the 'father energy' or the 'divine masculine', and therefore the question becomes 'what does the archetypal "masculine good" embody'?

I think Wyote touched on this earlier in the thread when he mentioned how being a good woman is easy; a good man impossible, and I think a part of why this is the case is because the ultimate embodiment of the 'masculine good' is the archetypal Sky Father or monotheistic God. This figure is the natural conclusion and ultimate expression of what 'masculine good energy' is supposed to be, and when I say 'supposed to be', I mean it in terms of what human beings crave as a necessary component of their individual wellbeing and social function.

Looking at it this way, then, we can see that Sky Fathers are always sources of ultimate authority, which conceptually might be thought of as a combination of power and law. They envelop their realms in a protective aura of order and justice, where the people living within this aura feel safe because everything makes sense. Fairness and justice prevail because of the masculine power which orders the realm.

The 'masculine good', then, seems more aligned with 'justice' than it does with 'mercy' (which would be the 'feminine good'), and of course justice requires power (which is 'active', 'willful', &c.) whereas mercy does not (though this is arguable).

If we wanted to ask 'what makes a good man', then, we might say that it is someone who embodies the energy of 'God' (as a Sky Father) - an absolute expression of law and power, used to the end of ordering a personal kingdom in which people feel safe and fairly treated. The good man has a keen sense of his law, his rules, and is able to express these outwards into his world as a personal kingdom.

Being a 'good man' is so impossible because in this view it literally asks men to be something close to supreme gods - limitlessly powerful, infinitely orderly; ultimate embodiments of right authority. When a man carries such 'right authority', his protective aura is palpable, and people are able to feel it - I'm sure many of you have experienced this when in your own homes because of your own fathers, or in the homes of friends with good fathers when you were children: there's usually a kind man (alongside a kind woman) at the centre of these spaces that makes you feel simultaneously welcome and protected (or conversely, you may have been in households where this energy isn't there, and felt the lack). I think men lose the ability to detect this aura as we mature, because we become our own sources of it, but I'm convinced that women and children are able to feel it when it's there.


Cultivating this kind of 'right authority' I think begins, as @Pin mentioned, by first conceiving of yourself as a man; a man with responsibility to others. It requires a 'stepping up' to action, to authority, and to presence in the world. It's worth mentioning, though, that even if you achieve this state, it's quite easy to lose.
Click to expand...

It's not hard for me to do or anything, wtf is your problem?
(Joke)
 
First, while women are allowed to say what they want about this, any man who claims “being a good woman is easy” has no idea what it is like to be a woman and how twisted, impossible, and contradictory the requirements are. If we are going to use a monotheistic, Abrahamic sky god to describe the perfect man, let us also remember that the “perfect woman” gave birth to a demi-god while maintaining her virginity.

In polytheistic terms, each god represents different strengths. As people, we may identify with any of those strengths wholeheartedly, or at different times in our lives. For example: Odin, Thor, Baldr, Frigg, Tyr, Heimdall, and Loki are all vastly different. (Well, we were speaking of heathens anyway….)

I do agree that men should be allowed to define what a good man is, and that being such a man should have little to do with what women find desirable, and it should be the same for women defining what a good woman is. It is up to you, as men, to define what being a good man is.
The conundrum here, of course, is that strong, mentally and emotionally healthy women are attracted to good men and vice-versa. It is our nature.

While we are speaking of gods, I wouldn't say a good man is measured by his power.
 
Asa said:
While we are speaking of gods, I wouldn't say a good man is measured by his power.
Click to expand...
Don't you think that 'power' is a necessary component of that 'archetypal masculine energy' we're talking about?*

*I suppose there's a couple of ways to conceive of this: the Jungian archetypal, and the semantic. In the Jungian sense, I suppose what we're trying to capture is some kind of instinctive pattern of 'the masculine' encoded by evolution, while semantically all we have to believe is if a sense of 'power' is colligated with everything else into the word/concept 'masculine'.
 
Deleted member 16771 said:
Don't you think that 'power' is a necessary component of that 'archetypal masculine energy' we're talking about?*
Click to expand...

I do not, but I am a woman. Strength, yes. Power, no. I do not necessarily mean physical strength. Strength comes in many forms.

A world leader is the ultimate icon of human power, but not all world leaders are "good".
 
Asa said:
I do not, but I am a woman.
Click to expand...
Oh yeah, I forgot. Overruled, then. ;)

Asa said:
Strength, yes. Power, no. I do not necessarily mean physical strength. Strength comes in many forms.

A world leader is the ultimate icon of human power, but not all world leaders are "good".
Click to expand...
Hmm. I'm thinking about things like this in my free time because I've decided to write (another) personal moral code, and I keep being drawn to the 'king archetype' as defined by Moore and Gillette in King, Warrior, Magician, Lover. It captures some kind of truth for me. Under this conception, there are two shadow forms of the king - the tyrant and the weakling. Power is a necessary component, I think, but out of balance can result in the tyrant. Conversely, without power, one becomes ineffectual - the weakling - where one's moral law is made redundant by a lack of means to enforce it.
View attachment 57181

I've posted this a ridiculous amount of times by now, but I think it belongs here, too:
 
P.S. One darkly ironic thing about our world today is that almost every time I read something about the tyrant, I keep thinking that it's some veiled satire of Trump. E.g.:

The Tyrant

Unlike the King archetype which creates and blesses others, the Tyrant seeks to destroy and tear down. Plagued by narcissism, he really does think that he sits at the center of the universe. The Tyrant wrongly believes that power is finite; he has a scarcity mentality. He doesn’t understand the truth–that power and influence actually increase the more you share it with others. Thus the burden of maintaining his fragile illusion of absolute power makes him very insecure; any threat to his authority and supremacy enrages him and causes him to lash out with abuse–physically, emotionally, or mentally.

When the Tyrant isn’t viewing others as a threat and putting them in their place, he sees them as objects to exploit for his own gain; he is willing to push his friends, family, and employees under the bus in order to further his goals. We see the Tyrant manifest itself in this manner when businessmen or politicians further their own career at the expense of the people under their stewardship.
Click to expand...
 
Asa said:
If we are going to use a monotheistic, Abrahamic sky god to describe the perfect man, let us also remember that the “perfect woman” gave birth to a demi-god while maintaining her virginity.
Click to expand...

Yeah, super easy
 
ruji said:
How about a nice guy?

Click to expand...
How about a good person?

giphy.gif


Mina said:
I

think it comes down to true intentions . Only ourselves know that. To me that’s pretty scary. Are we able to face ourselves and self reflect?
Click to expand...
yup, and it takes proper cohones.

No man is ever perfect, but should strive to be the best of his honest self.
- cheesy quote
 
Obviously, this is subjective to what one considers as "good". As cliche or corny as I may sound... Personally, I like to think the strong foundation of a good person, is humility and empathy.

Some of the best people you'll ever meet are those whom are or were less fortunate and been through considerable anguish. So much so, that they don't want anyone to suffer the same or will often put other's before themselves.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top