Step-family Talk

I’ve been trying to figure out how to define a man all morning. When I first woke I was sure that this was going to be easy. I was ready to start of the paper by recapturing my midnight adventures. I woke to the sound of the dog barking and then my wife pushed me out of bed saying “I heard someone down there.” I heard nothing, but my wife was positive there were prowlers about. As a “man” it would be my duty to go downstairs and protect my family. The dog wasn’t interested in anything going on in the house; the neighbors were unpacking their car after a late night trip. Having discovered the cause of the dog’s barking and having reaffirmed my wife that no predators were lurking about downstairs I went to back to bed, my manly duties fulfilled. Or have they?

I did some quick research this morning and found two good articles on manhood. The first The 10 Qualities of Man suggests that I fulfilled one of the ten roles of a man. The other What Does it Mean to Be a Man I might have fulfilled part of the role of husband but there are eight other aspects of being a man that still need to be addressed. I provided links to the articles so I’m not going to go into length about them. I will say that I agree with the aspects or virtues proposed by both articles.

The articles have a Christian slant and at first I was inclined to make a defense for them, but then I remembered The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis. He made the argument for me, the virtues extolled in these articles are not exclusive to Christianity. Lewis does a wonderful job at pointing out that they are the central themes in almost any wisdom literature throughout the ages. He calls these values that man have followed throughout the ages as the Tao. It is a way of living that is consistent with Natural Law. Lewis suggests that defying these natural laws leads to a corruption of society. He warned us that society is now trying to do that very thing by taking some observations of the law to disprove other parts of it. Much like cutting of a man’s finger and using it to point at the man and say he doesn’t exist.

We are losing site of the values and virtues that make us men (See the articles) and prevent us from becoming mere animals. It is the qualities that are the trunk that separate the rational mind of man from the animal mind–what Lewis calls, “men without chests. We have used Law to destroy Natural Law. We are forbidden to teach virtues in our school and show our students right from wrong because such teachings lay to close to religion.

If we are to teach the virtues of Man to our children it must be done in our homes. This, I believe, is job number one of a father (though not limited to him—mom’s must teach it too). My biggest concern is for the growing population of society that includes my students, where men are not there to teach these virtues either because society says it is cooler to be a baby’s daddy or because economics say no government aid if Dad is in the house. (Either eliminate government aid all together or stop forcing split-ups of the house hold because a woman can’t receive aid due to having a father in the house.) Many of my students have gone generations now without a father figure present and are growing up with no opportunity to learn it because we can’t teach it in school.

Not every male need be a father, but as a society every male ought to be a man. I met a young man the other day, Ikaika Alama-Franics. He just got drafted for the Detroit Lions, and is using his new status to demonstrate the vary virtues talked about in the articles. He is taking time away from his hectic training schedule (and it is hectic!) to teach students like mine about perseverance, commitment, and dedication to a positive way of life. This is what a man in today’s society ought to be doing. Take responsibility for a youth. We must not forget the “it takes a village” mentality from long ago. We need to stop fearing our children and we need to stop being afraid to let them know that there is a right and a wrong.

As Lewis says, in The Abolition of Man:

If they embark on this course the difference between the old and the new education will be an important one. Where the old initiated, the new merely ‘conditions’. The old dealt with its pupils as grown birds deal with young birds when they teach them to fly; the new deals with them more as the poultry-keeper deals with young birds - making them thus and thus for purposes of which the birds know nothing. In a word, the old was a kind of propagation - men transmitting manhood to men; the new is merely propaganda.