Men

Recent feminism isn’t a failure of women, but a failure of men. When men degenerate, something fills the chasm of power that is left behind. It could be dogs. It could be disease or environmental destruction. In this case, women, sensing the need to protect their children, fill the gap. We receive a terrible result. The men of North American who blame women are as men who blame corn when it is not tended and watered. It will not grow and flourish. Shouting at the barren corn fields does no good. Telling men how to find and eat the remaining healthy plants does no good. Men must look at the fields and recognize there is trouble in this year’s crop. They must tend to their crops, and then, only then, think about their next meal.

Andes

This was what I was looking for—riding alone in wilderness and beauty. The cities have too much—far too little beauty and far too much which weakens a man. Far too many people. A man loses his independence and edge. Once a man’s desire for security predominates over his actions, adventure ends. When adventure ends, masculinity declines or disappears. When masculinity disappears, you have the societies we see today: socialist, weak, dependent, sick. This must have been the authentic attitude which Sarte spoke about, at which he grasped but was never able to articulate. For, as Moraline aptly put, Sartre was a sitter, a man of the city. He was brilliant and realized how false the human mindset had become. He said there was an authentic path, a path that was available originally. He just could not see that it was the ‘primitive’ adventure for the man away from others that held the key to this authenticity.

The Sun

1. A man wakes and rises with the sun. Now, a man should rise as the sun rises. This is his being an individual, alone and away from the village. Yes, the men in the village may awake at the same time, but none of them know singly what wakes them. Is it the sun? Is it an animal or the animals? Is it other men? Even if a man, among other men, thinks he knows why he wakes in the morning—perhaps he is convinced it is the sun—he will never know unless he alone. (And how can a man really ever be alone?)
2. Why should a man be awakened by the sun? Being awakened by the sun represents a pure connection to the earth. His sleep suddenly has meaning. He no longer follows the meaningless rising tides of other men, of society, of a village. The sun is the last great reach of a mountain from which a man can pull himself from other men.

archeologist of morning

Shitting out the West

Nietzsche claims a man who leaves his culture will be weaker for it, but his creation—what he tries for in his lifetime but won’t get—will be stronger than the culture he left.  This is right, and is describes the pain frustration, isolation, and loneliness of a man who has left his primary culture and has moved on to start a new one. 

When a man has such space, a vacuum is created. If he had many ideas that could not flourish in his old land, they explode in size and depth in the new land--so much so that we can call these 'new ideas.' 

Yet in the new land there are new people and new languages. These new people and new languages compete with the man’s ideas which are now flourishing in the new land. The language competes with his new ideas and soon his mind grows exhausted. 

He admires the new culture and wants all the new women. He must make a living and find shelter and explain himself constantly. All of this competes with the strength of his new ideas. Nietzsche means to say that the ideas are stronger and better than ever, but the man himself cannot handle both his new ideas and his new surroundings.

Only his children will know the ease of a familiar culture and the strength of their father’s new ideas.

A beginning: the bicycle

Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, aphorism 212:

Today, conversely, when only the herd animal is honored and dispenses honors in Europe, and when "equality of rights" could all too easily be converted into an equality in violating rights--by that I mean, into a common war on all that is rare, strange, or privileged, on the higher man, the higher soul, the higher duty, the higher responsibility, and on the wealth of creative power and mastery--today the concept of greatness entails being noble, wanting to be by oneself, being capable of being different, standing alone, and having to live independently; and the philosopher will be: "He shall be the greatest who can be the loneliest, the most hidden, the most deviating, the human being beyond good and evil, the master of his virtues, he that is overrich in will. Precisely this should be called greatness: to be capable of being as manifold as whole, as wide as full." And to ask this once more: today--is greatness possible?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A point to begin. But in Moraline's writing over the last 2 years, it is clear a physical challenge must be at the forefront of such a 'project' or attitude. A man has never achieved greatness by sitting. A sitter can never achieve greatness because his experiences are drawn from those who have physically moved their bodies while he has not. He cannot know of other languages were it not for the man who went to the foreign land. He cannot read about the greatness of the sea or the mountain were it for it not for the man who climbed that mountain and swam in that sea. He cannot look at a map were it not for the man who first eyed the contour of that land. Hence the milestone of Moraline's attack upon the sitter.

The bicyclist: he has contact with the land and people and carries a reasonable amount of belongings. I have great admiration for the hiker who covers all kilometers on foot and carries the weight of his belongings on his back. He is able to access far more remote areas than the bicyclist. To hike across Brasil--one may aspire.

For the bicyclist: The climb and the descent represent a certain overcoming of the modern road, a reclaiming of the auto-based culture with an equally strange machine, the bicycle. But we must not lose sight of hiking, of swimming, rowing, canoeing, and running across terrain. There is no primacy in bicycle touring--it may be the perfect combination of effort, the ability to 'efficiently' cover distance while at the same time challenging one's body, the ability to meet new people on the roads of villages, the ability to return and backtrack which the hiker or swimmer do not enjoy with such ease.

Indeed, the bicycle represents a certain convenience, but the convenience does not come at an obvious compromise. Bicycling is difficult, and the rock climber and hiker would not have an obvious attack upon the bicyclist because they must admit to the difficulty of long days in the saddle.

Contrast this to those who choose the bus or the train for their method of exploration. The movement of the bus tourist is not powered by the food the bus traveler obtains. The bus traveler does not carry his own weight. The bus traveler hires a man for monetary compensation and pays this man to drive him over mountains and long stretches of valley. A bus traveler thus requires a necessary intermediary: the servant, the 'driver.' A bicyclist requires no such servant.

The purity of running across terrain: a man carries his weight and requires no mechanical artifice save his moccasins or modern running footwear. The primitive foundation of the ancient subsistence hunters. Yet there are limitations that the tribes recognized and 'solved' with the domestication of horses (the ability to carry food and gear and the ability to cover large distances to hunt animals). The horses required care. Horses themselves present challenges in modern travel--air travel to the destination becomes complicated and the safe housing of the horse is problematic in the villages. One may well can observe that the bicyclist has no relationship with a living creature, but there is a certain bond to the bicycle and I myself have spoken to my bicycle yet have never caressed or stroked or consoled my bicycle or led my bicycle to water in a way a man does with a horse. Yet a man is dependent on his horse and the health of his horse in a way a man is dependent on the health of his bicycle. Should he not feed his horse or should his horse develop sores or break one of his legs, a man faces disaster similarly in the way a man faces disaster with certain mechanical failures such as a cracked frame or broken spokes in the absence of spare spokes or a broken chain in the absence of a chain tool or a malfunctioning hub in the absence of grease, tools, or bearings.

Hence the bicycle represents a certain equilibrium very similar to the domestication of the horse. A bicyclist has domesticated a technology and has agreed to stick with one set of artifices which he shall henceforth call 'the bicycle.' He shall not attempt to improve upon this bicycle yet will modify his handlebar, saddle bags and living gear he sees fit.

He loved running in the mud