{"id":939,"date":"2019-09-26T20:18:45","date_gmt":"2019-09-26T20:18:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jack-donovan.com\/sowilo\/?p=939"},"modified":"2019-09-28T03:22:45","modified_gmt":"2019-09-28T03:22:45","slug":"whose-man-are-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jack-donovan.com\/sowilo\/2019\/09\/26\/whose-man-are-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Whose Man Are You?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It started out as a joke. An insult. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhose man is this?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWho is responsible for this mess of a man?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve laughed as hard as I laughed that night in a very long time. The same joke in endless variation, all night long, with all kinds of confused and archaic grammar. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhose man are you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhose mans are we?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhose phones are we?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Good jokes are funny because there is truth in them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was hanging out with a handful of friends at Waldgang, meditating on the nature of Lord Ingwaz, or Freyr, or *Fraujaz, depending on which name you like best. He\u2019s associated with nature and fertility, and the tendency with *Fraujaz is to focus on agricultural and seasonal cycles. However, Freyr \u2014 whose name means \u201clord\u201d \u2014 is also associated with lordship and leadership in this world. My mind eventually turned to the concepts of lordship and leadership and fealty and \u201cbelonging.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhose man are you?,\u201d is a crisis of modernity. Everyone wants to belong and to fit in somewhere \u2014 to find an anchor and a place and an identity. Men seek out groups of men to help them locate themselves in the universe, because that is the way we have always survived. It is in our nature to do so. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Way of Men is the Way of the Gang.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We feel more comfortable and less vulnerable and more at home in the world if we have some kind of close-knit group \u2014 some sense of brotherhood. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where there is a need, there is a market, and opportunists looking to exploit it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the monkey wants a banana badly enough, it\u2019s easy to make him dance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brotherhood is a banana that every man wants. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes it develops organically. This is probably the best and most truthful kind of brotherhood. Friendships develop over time and are tested by life, and you demand more of each other and make each other better and hold each other accountable, and eventually there is a loyalty there that you\u2019re not willing to compromise. Those men become part of who you are. This is an informal honor group. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Often, brotherhood is created artificially by institutions — the military, fraternal orders, gangs, clubs and so forth. A social technology has been developed, and if you observe how this is done and have the audacity to use that technology, you can indoctrinate and test and initiate men who are looking for belonging into a formal brotherhood \u2014 a formal honor group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Formal brotherhoods are often fealties disguised as brotherhoods. Most people want to be told what to do. It\u2019s not even fair to stigmatize that, because it is a human norm. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even the most self-aware followers are attached to the romance of self-determination. One of the best ways to manipulate people is to convince them that your idea was actually their idea. Pretenses of democracy and collectivism are flattering, ego-affirming fictions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhose man are you?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are our own men. We belong to each other.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNah. That charismatic guy out in front, the leader, the one who you are copying and who you want to impress so desperately \u2014 you\u2019re HIS men.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is probably a hard pill to swallow. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there is something more honest about fealty<\/a> than there is about most organizations that call themselves \u201cbrotherhoods.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some guy messaged me recently, telling me I should join this group he was affiliated with. It was probably a criminal organization, though it was never named. He was really excited about it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new guys trying to get into those organizations always tell me that, \u201cit\u2019s not like you think it is.\u201d Of course, no one ever tells the new guys how it really is until…after they sign on.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I certainly didn\u2019t want to get in between him and whoever had him on the line. So I told him it wasn\u2019t my thing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I wanted to tell him was that he was probably going to go to prison saying \u201cbrotherhood\u201d while his new \u201cbrother\u201d smiled knowingly, fingering a fresh roll of hundred dollar bills. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But as I said, most men want to be given a purpose and told what to do. Is it wrong to give them what they want? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is one of the deeper ethical questions of lordship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most lords have always been middle managers. They held authority under someone else\u2019s authority. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was listening to Jocko Willink\u2019s book Extreme Ownership<\/em> recently, and he made the point that a good l\"\"<\/a>eader has to find a way to \u201cbelieve in the mission\u201d so that he can convince his men to believe in the mission and get the job done effectively. To do that, Willink looked for the wisdom and benevolence in a given leader\u2019s master plan.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most people want to believe that they are good and decent people. Most leaders want to be wise and benevolent leaders. Some genuinely try to do the right thing and are willing to take the heat when they don\u2019t \u2014 which is basically what Jocko\u2019s book preaches. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some leaders know they are sending men to their doom, and convince themselves \u2014 perhaps rightly, perhaps wrongly \u2014 that they are doing it for the greater good. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes they know they are doing it to save their own asses or serve their own immediate interests. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes they just don\u2019t give a shit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s nothing wrong with fealty groups. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s an un-American concept, but American men are still men and historically this is pretty normal male behavior.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhose man are you?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m HIS man!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s tidy and not necessarily something to be ashamed of. Men used to ride into battle under the banners of lords and kings. It was glorious! Given the amount of loyalty and emotional investment people give to corporate sports franchises or political parties \u2026 I\u2019m not sure how an explicit<\/em> cult of personality is any worse or more laughable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everyone wants to be an \u201calpha,\u201d but \u201calpha\u201d is a position, and a group full of \u201calphas\u201d is a group with too many chiefs and not enough Indians.  Someone is almost always in charge, and when they claim they aren\u2019t, they are usually playing a much more elaborate and disingenuous game. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My advice here is simply, \u201cknow thyself.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And read the fine print. Make sure you know who you are giving your allegiance to, and why. There are benevolent leaders and exploitative leaders and leaders who are just passing through. Most are probably a combination of all of the above.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019re going to offer fealty to someone or a group of people, he\/they also owe you something in return. Is that lord going to protect your farm and your family in exchange for your allegiance? Is he offering something of value beyond a good feeling and a pat on the back?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a reciprocal relationship.  If it\u2019s not, you\u2019re a voluntary slave, and you should probably move on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

X<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“ma\u00f0ur er manns gaman<\/em>” (H\u00e1vam\u00e1l) and Hom\u014d homin\u012b lupus<\/em> (Latin Proverb) are both<\/em> true. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some thoughts on lordship, leadership, brotherhood, identity and meaning. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1064,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,23],"tags":[45,50,51,47,56,48,44,60,55,46,52,53,54,59,49,26,58,57],"class_list":["post-939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-journal","category-paganism","tag-extreme-ownership","tag-fehu","tag-fraujaz","tag-freyr","tag-identity","tag-ingwaz","tag-jockowillink","tag-king","tag-leader","tag-leadership","tag-lord","tag-lordship","tag-management","tag-masculinity","tag-rune","tag-runes","tag-the-way-of-men","tag-the-way-of-men-is-the-way-of-the-gang"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.jack-donovan.com\/sowilo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/DSC05249-scaled.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jack-donovan.com\/sowilo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jack-donovan.com\/sowilo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jack-donovan.com\/sowilo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jack-donovan.com\/sowilo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jack-donovan.com\/sowilo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=939"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.jack-donovan.com\/sowilo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1073,"href":"https:\/\/www.jack-donovan.com\/sowilo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/939\/revisions\/1073"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jack-donovan.com\/sowilo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jack-donovan.com\/sowilo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jack-donovan.com\/sowilo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jack-donovan.com\/sowilo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}