"Two more good men killed by Chivalry. Let this be a lesson to your sons. Challenging a madman for being verbally abusive is not heroics, it is stupidity. Glorifying this kind of death is insane...People want men who are willing to die for them. That's why they think mindless Chivalry, stupidity, is heroics. How sad."
Elam has criticized this kind of behavior before. His basic argument is the same one adopted by Radical Feminists: that what we call 'chivalry' is an artificial social construct, although the Red Pills and Feminists assign different causes for why it came into being. Either way, the idea is flawed. What Western Culture traditionally defines as chivalric or heroic behavior is simply codified social norms of masculine instinct. We see this instinct played out even in the most primitive peoples. Our earliest literature of the Homeric Poems was centered on the idea of men protecting our common heritage. Thus in The Iliad, the Greek nation rightly saw the rape of one man's wife as an affront to the entire nation. In The Odyssey, the same principle applied on the family level. Through his literary skills, Homer elevated instinctual---yet logical---behavior into civilized conduct.
After centuries of religious, philosophical, and legal speculation the ideals of ancestors still hold valid force. The heroes on the PDX did not act from instinct, but from a common heritage based on varying degrees upon reflection and acted accordingly. They saw what was a threat to two young women---part of our greater community---and put themselves at risk to defend against the antisocial element. What they did was no more stupid than some of the military heroes' actions referenced in an earlier post.
The thing that makes these three men heroic is that they believed in an ideal strongly enough to risk life for it. For Civilization is based on Ideals. Our ancient forefathers who saw through a glass darkly unillumined by Revelation or Reason, nonetheless knew in their hearts---as St. Paul writes---no greater love than one who lays down his life for another. This is a far deeper concept than the gloomy Materialism which ascribes the men's actions to sexual desire or faulty education.
When Elam argues that "People want men who are willing to die for them," he betrays both the vulgar cynicism and crass Materialism that characterizes the Red Pill movement. He supposes that men who sacrifice for others are chumps and that Society cynically hopes to protect itself by sacrificing men. There's also a strange implication here that men who do sacrifice their lives somehow desired that outcome. In reality, very few heroes especially want to die, they usually are involved in kill-or-be-killed situations; or at least in situations where another party is in danger from a stronger opponent.
Elam is basically just regurgitating the old "better a live coward than a dead hero" nonsense. People like this fail to realize that ultimately we all die. People still remember heroes---even ancient ones---cowards and the smart boys, not so much.
No comments:
Post a Comment