Life and relationships, it seems to be a topic on everyone’s mind . . .
Yes, I am a man, so this topic may appear may seem one sided.
But, open your mind and consider . . .
Men are strong and resilient, yet, they are NOT unbreakable.
Many a man shows up in my office . . . broken.
How are they broken?
You and I generally understand that love in relationships should be shown and expressed unconditionally, both in familial relationships and between spouses in marriage.
Yet, what I’ve come to realize is that there is something more important to a man than unconditional love.
Most women and many men fail to comprehend this.
What is more important to a man that true love, unconditionally given?
Respect.
In comparison to women when looking at fMRI scans of the brain, the left amygdala, thalamus, hypothalamus, left caudate nucleus and medial prefrontal cortex are notably more activated in men when the emotion of respect is experienced [1].
All men need, crave and respond to respect more than any other emotion, including love.
When men experience respect, they have a powerful physiological response affecting heart rate, attention and bravery [2].
In fact, we are told by Moses in scripture that God’s power actually comes from His honor, and His honor comes from respect [3]. And, without this honor or respect of those he oversees, “God would cease to be God” [4].
With this understanding in mind, we learn, sadly, that thousands of men are being cheated on by their spouses.
How you ask?
This cheating is not in the form of adultery . . .
Yet, it is just as damaging as an actual affair with another person.
Our culture tells women that “men are owed nothing.”
Men are raised up their entire lives under the guise that they are not actually men until they’ve earned the respect of others – especially their wives.
Women are not required to meet any qualifications to be women.
Men are required to “become men.” They must earn the status of man.
I know very few men that would say, “I am not going to love my wife until she earns it.”
However, I regularly hear thousands of women say, “I can’t respect my husband until he earns it.” Or, “he will not get my affection until he earns it.”
Men need and ache for respect just as profoundly as women need love and attention.
What would you say about a man who chooses to withhold love from his wife if she doesn’t have the dinner ready, or isn’t properly satisfying him in other ways, or isn’t doing all the things he demands on his timetable?
Even if that wife was actually slacking in her responsibility, we would consider that man an absolute monster for using her “slack” as an excuse to degrade, demean or withhold love from her as if she only earns it.
So, why do men accept this approach from women?
Why is it acceptable for a woman to order her husband around and withhold respect, but not in reverse?
I cannot tell you how many women have told me in the exam room over the years, “I love my husband, but I no longer respect him.”
Why is it normal for a woman to assign “Honey Do Lists,” either written or implied, and withhold respect if not completed on her timetable and yet think a man tyrannical, abusive and toxic if he gave his wife a list of mandatory assignments for the day?
I know many women who withhold respect because their husband does not meet her time timetable when taking out the trash, putting the toilet seat down, mowing the law or other lists Honey Do Lists.
Yet, does he withhold love when she does not give him respect on the timetable he needs?
Any woman who belittles her husband, cuts him down, nitpicks him, withholds her affection – physical or emotional – as a ransom . . .
Nags him, criticizes him constantly, humiliates him in public or to her friends, family or in front of her children, and will not allow him to take a leadership role in the home, cannot be terribly surprised when he begins to withdraw in to work or other activities.
If he were to cheat – which itself is a great and indefensible evil, no matter how cold or domineering his spouse may be – it cannot be said that he was actually the first.
She cheated him out of the respect he most dearly needed, craved and thrived upon.
She lied to him, breaking her marital vows, when promising to respect him and treat him like a man, only to turn around and treat him like a child.
If I have not emphasized it enough, men have a profoundly deep desire to feel respected.
It is a travesty that we are not raising our girls to understand and appreciate this one fact.
Instead, they learn, often at the feet their own mothers, from media, from television, from advertisements, and academia that men are worthless oafs who should be handled as such UNTIL THEY PROVE themselves worthy of that respect over-and-over every day of their lives.
If they slip up, they should be nagged, berated, belittled and criticized until they straighten up and act like the hairy muscle bound women they should be.
Men are not hairy women. Stop treating them that way.
Give that man some respect and you’ll be amazed at the change and response to his character.
If you withhold respect, he will never say it, because he may not be able to articulate it, but that man will feel as if you are withholding your love.
Men respond profoundly to respect.
They will always withdraw when respect is withheld or ransomed. And, prolonged withdrawal of respect will have a secondary suppression on serotonin, dopamine and testosterone leading to further withdrawal from engagement [5].
“My husband will be respected if he earns it,” I’ve heard numerous wives declare.
“Let him do the chores the way I assign them, let him accomplish everything I require, let him dance to my tune, and then maybe I’ll reward him like a circus monkey with little pellets of respect.”
This approach will destroy him . . . slowly . . . but, mark my words, it will destroy him.
Paul taught the people of Colossae that a husband should not need to earn his wife’s respect any more than a wife needs to earn her husband’s love [6].
A wife ought to respect her husband because he is her husband, just as he ought to love and honor her because she is his wife [6].
Your husband may very well “deserve” it when you mock him, berate him, belittle him, criticize him and nag him . . .
Yet, you do not marry someone in order to give them what they deserve.
In marriage, you give the person what you promised.
What did you promise your spouse?
Are you unconditionally providing and fulfilling the promises to which you covenanted?
If not, you’re cheating on them.
Now, this does not mean that a man has any license to be lazy, abusive, or uncaring.
It means precisely the opposite.
The man has been challenged and commanded by God to live up to the respect his wife provides for him.
Yet, if you parcel out respect on a reward system, your husband will feel demoralized and empty.
He will fill a tremendous thirst as if he were living in a dry barren desert. He will not feel at home in his home. He will not have the sense of masculine purpose and fulfillment that his family life ought to afford him.
After a while, he will dread coming home at night, preferring to remain at work where his contributions are appreciated and his talents are admired and respected.
It is at this point the marriage becomes a very dangerous place.
If a man feels more like a man when he’s away from his wife than when he’s with her, a gory train wreck is lurking right around the corner.
The marriage is already half-dead, and it won’t take much to finish it off.
I was blessed to marry “The Beautiful One.”
She operates differently. She strives to gives respect without condition, even during those many times I never deserved it nor earned it.
Her building me up with respect helps me to be more deserving of the respect she has already bestowed upon me.
GK Chesterton reminded me of the great lesson found within the story of “Beauty and the Beast.” The lesson is that “a thing must be loved BEFORE it is lovable.”
This applies to our wives and children.
In that same light, I firmly believe that a man must be respected before he is respectable.
The only reason I have grown as a man, a husband, and a father, is because my wife treated me with respect long before I had any idea what it meant to lead or how to be a man.
Sadly, the average man in America, and the average man I see in my medical practice, is not always given this advantage.
They enter a marriage and find themselves immediately in a dark hole.
They must prove their worth every morning as they wake, and prove their value before as they return home before they ever get treated like they have any themselves.
Thousands of wives’ paint lines across the floors in the kitchens and bedrooms . . . expecting the men to walk them perfectly.
If he stumbles or if he wanders, I think it essential to note that he is likely not the only traitor in the marriage.
She also betrayed him. She promised him a wife, and provided instead, an angry step mother.
This is how you destroy a married man. This is why many men show up in my office broken.
The two, then, have now betrayed each other . . . in their own way.
There are always two sides to a story.
As men, we will inevitably stumble, as all men do. We are not perfect.
And, many a wife will chastise you and use your mistake as blackmail against you.
Despite this, a man is called upon to endure, to fight for his family, and to never be unfaithful to his wife, and never to leave her.
It is my hope that he has courage and honor enough to never wander.
It is my hope that you give your man the respect he needs and deserves as a man.
To Your Health & Longevity,
Adam Nally, DO
References:
Jäncke L. Sex/gender differences in cognition, neurophysiology, and neuroanatomy. F1000Res. 2018 Jun 20;7:F1000 Faculty Rev-805. doi: 10.12688/f1000research.13917.1. PMID: 29983911; PMCID: PMC6013760.
Deng Y, Chang L, Yang M, Huo M, Zhou R. Gender Differences in Emotional Response: Inconsistency between Experience and Expressivity. PLoS One. 2016 Jun 30;11(6):e0158666. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0158666. PMID: 27362361; PMCID: PMC4928818.
Moses 4:1, 3
Alma 42:25
Perfalk E, Cunha-Bang SD, Holst KK, Keller S, Svarer C, Knudsen GM, Frokjaer VG. Testosterone levels in healthy men correlate negatively with serotonin 4 receptor binding. Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2017 Jul;81:22-28. doi: 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2017.03.018. Epub 2017 Mar 22. PMID: 28426945.
I was asked, recently, by a friend, “Why do you do that sword fighting thing?”
As I’ve pondered this question, I found my answer in the words of Jack Donovan.
“Strength, courage, mastery, and honor are the alpha virtues of men all over the world. They are the fundamental virtues of men because without them, no “higher” virtues can be entertained. You need to be alive to philosophize. You can add to these virtues and you can create rules and moral codes to govern them, but if you remove them from the equation altogether you aren’t just leaving behind the virtues that are specific to men, you are abandoning the virtues that make civilization possible.
“Plato at one point in time compared men to dogs. One of the great tragedies of modernity is the lack of opportunity for men to become what they are, to do what they were bred to do, what their bodies want to do. They could be Plato’s noble puppies, but they are chained to a stake in the ground—left to the madness of barking at shadows in the night, taunted by passing challenges left unresolved and whose outcomes will forever be unknown.
“If you are never truly challenged in a meaningful way and are only required to perform idiot-proofed corporate processes to get your meat and shelter, can you ever truly be engaged enough to call yourself alive, let alone a man?
“Men cannot be men—much less good or heroic men—unless their actions have meaningful consequences to people they truly care about. Strength requires an opposing force, courage requires risk, mastery requires hard work, honor requires accountability to other men. Without these things, we are little more than boys playing at being men, and there is no weekend retreat or mantra or half-assed rite of passage that can change that. A rite of passage must reflect a real change in status and responsibility for it to be anything more than theater. No reimagined manhood of convenience can hold its head high so long as the earth remains the tomb of our ancestors”
Sword fighting encompasses it all.
I’ve come to realize that training with the sword, against other men, fulfills a masculine yearning and desire I’ve felt for over 50 years. Why would God include hundreds of chapters of wars and sword fights in the scriptures? Because, the nobility of prophets and kings, their strength, courage, mastery and honor, was often forged at the hilt of a sword.
That’s why I sword fight.
Watch the video below and you can see where sword fighting provides the repeated opposing force, risk, hard work and accountability that are prerequisites of success. Sword fighting is really just rapid short and very exciting lessons on life.
I hope you enjoy watching as much as I enjoyed participating.
There is this feminist notion that masculinity is a basket of “good” and “bad” characteristics that men can pick and choose from. The pleasant qualities are things like provision of food, provision of funds, providing a home, duty, honor and procreation. The “bad” or distasteful characteristics are things like intense strength, lust, violence and furious indignation.
The project of radical feminism has been to convince men, and women alike, that men must rid themselves of all the distasteful qualities and characteristics of their nature. If they don’t, they threaten, the “toxic male” will no longer find acceptance in the feminized world in which we now live. The term for this is emasculation.
And yet, you cannot cherry-pick the parts of masculinity that you are happy with. Just as an engineer cannot keep the abutments and dispense with the footings of a wall, bridge or building, the man is the totality of strength and weakness built in perfect tension and relationship to each other. The man is much like a high tension bridge. You cannot have the strengths without the foundation spanning the weak points.
In every textbook or class on biology, the male and female of a species are dramatically different and can never be expected to act, interact or look similarly. But, ask any woman and the majority will tell you that men are looked at from the female mind as a hairy, misbehaving woman.
When a man seeks to rid himself of the “nasty parts,” pointed out and perceived as “bad” by the female, the bridge collapses. You cannot bridge an ocean without tension, without a mass of steel suspended in configurations of terrifying force and power, that steel welded together with white hot heat and molten flux.
The solution is not to rid yourself or conform. It is to admit, acknowledge and own every aspect of your gender, no matter how ugly, volatile or untidy it may appear to the opposite sex.
Man is messy. He always has been. Try to bury that fact and your gender will bury you.
Denying the mess is a recipe for repression, misery, malaise, fatigue and heart disease.
Make no mistake, when you go off script and embrace the mess, you will feel, and appear, dangerous.
Feminism will treat your masculinity like a loaded gun because unapologetic fully-embraced masculinity IS a loaded gun. You are dangerous. That’s what it means to be a man.
Uncocking the hammer does nothing but emasculate you, and render you a useless tool, a dull blade, to your family and the world at large.
The lie is that you can get rid of the “nasty bits” and retain your masculine power. In truth, you have two choices.
Be dangerous, yet well disciplined
Scale yourself down to a cap gun . . . shooting blanks.
Be warned, the second choice sounds great, and actually is initially pleasant to the females in your life, but it leads to depression and the modern male malaise.
Chose wisely.
If you’re reading this, trying make a choice barraged by voices on all sides . . . If your reaching has reached its limit . . . If all the tendons of your soul are straining to hold it together, feeling like their about to snap . . . You’re not alone, my friend.
I can’t fix it for you, same as you can’t fix it for me. However, I can at least assure you that you’re no stranger to me . . . That your fears are my fears, your longings are identical to my own.
I see you not as some washed-up, broken down grizzly bear, but as one of our finest. An honorable, noble, disciplined dangerous man yet in the fight, nose split, teeth broken . . . Spitting dust and blood for the hundredth time . . . Swaying in his boots, but still standing.
Something is broken. Something shifted over the last 100 years causing a dramatic change to the average man. As a young boy, the only reason I ever heard about Audie Murphy, one of the most decorated war heroes of our time, is that he is a distant relative. My father told me stories about him. Audie Murphy was an icon of male history, a true hero.
But something happened to our culture. Men with the character of Audie Murphy disappeared, and the average male metamorphasized over a generation. The men of today often lack the basic skills of daily living. They are increasingly immature, anxious, and depressed. They increasingly experience fatigue and malaise and are often bereft of motivation.
I’ve been practicing medicine for over 20 years. Each year, more and more men show up in my office feeling depressed, anxious, lethargic, and fatigued. With the backdrop of a pandemic disease like COVID-19, these men are more frequently suicidal than ever before. And, the majority of them respond poorly to medication and counseling. Why is there an increasing manifestation of malignant male malaise and depression?
It’s not their lousy childhood, crappy job, lack of desire, or failure to grow up that cause’s these symptoms. It’s not a lack of serotonin, dopamine or norepinephrine. And, it’s not even low testosterone levels. Although these are signs, symptoms and secondary effects of the primary problem. The problem is lack of honor. Honor has been lost by both men and women. But, this lack of honor has a uniquely deleterious effect upon the man. Honor can be learned by women, however, it is not part of their true nature. Honor is an instinctual subconscious characteristic found in the men of our species.
The feminization and emasculation of men, the emancipation and objectification of women, and the sexual liberation both sexes in our society has played a huge role in suppressing and repressing the need for honor. Though many claim we are “better off,” changes to our view of the sexes has removed our desire to hold and retain honor, especially among the younger generations of men.
What changed in the picture above? Honor is gone.
Honor is Directly Tied to Manhood
Across every culture, and across all of known time, honor and manhood are instinctively tied together. Honor has been and always will be central to a man’s masculine identity. Men would go to great lengths to win honor and to prevent the loss of their honor.
In all of classical literature, honor is the central theme because it is central in the life of a man. It is part of his subconscious identity. The poems of Homer, the plays of Shakespeare, the writings of the Stoics, the chivalry of the knights and the gallantry of the Victorian Gentleman are all based upon the “fields of honor” where men defend their manhood.
I find it enlightening that penned upon the greatest document of governance ever written, the Declaration of Independence, our founding fathers “mutually pledged to each other [their] lives, [their] fortunes and [their] sacred honor.”
Honor is foundational. It resonates throughout Christian doctrine as well. It is part of the Ten Commandments, “Honor thy father and thy mother…” (Exodus 20:12). Men have been commanded to “give honor to their wives.” (1 Peter 3:7) And, even God himself told the ancient prophets Isaiah and Moses that the fall of Lucifer was because he sought God’s honor, which is His power. (Isaiah 14:12-14; Moses 4:1)
What is Honor?
We throw the word “honor” around a great deal. But, if you actually ask the question, “What is Honor?” most people scratch their head and struggle to answer. If you press a person long enough, you’ll probably get an answer like, “being true to a set of personal ideals,” “doing the right thing when no one is looking,” or “being a person of integrity.”
Honor is instinctual in men. Men define their character around honor, duty and obligation. This is an inborn trait of the male protector and provider. A man will do something for his mother out of duty and obligation. Not because she nagged or pressured him, but because taking care of her is part of his definition of himself as a man. He may hate it or despise the activity, and he may complain about it, but not doing it is not even an option. Not because he is afraid of upsetting his mother. It’s because honor, duty and obligation define who he is on an instinctual level.
The Medieval period added “integrity” to its code of chivalry to temper “reflexive” honor (we will discuss this later). In our society, honor has been watered down and emasculated to the point that it is now defined almost identically to integrity. However, honor does not equal integrity. They are two different characteristics.
Even Mr. Webster himself watered down the definition of honor when he defined it as “adherence to what is right or to a conventional standard of conduct.” That closely resembles his definition of integrity, “the quality of being honest (doing what is right) and having strong moral principles (following a conventional standard of conduct).” These two definitions are almost identical. Yet, honor is not integrity. Webster’s definition above is not what Homer, or Shakespeare wrote about. And, that definition is NOT what our Founding Fathers pledged upon the Declaration of Independence.
Horizontal honor implies mutual respect of two equal men. But this isn’t the watered-down feminized version of respect that pervades our culture today. This is not the I’m a human being and you’re a human being and we should respect each other because of “social equality” type of respect. No, this is honor that is contingent upon an unyielding adherence to a standard maintained within a group.
Horizontal Honor hinges upon three essential elements. The first is a code of honor. This is a standard that must be reached by any member of the group to receive respect within the group. There are rules that outline achievements of the standard and rules that delineate how that honor is lost. Any definition of honor that cannot be lost, is not actually honor.
An honor group is the second element. This is a group of individuals who understand the honor code and have committed to live by it. Anyone and everyone within the group understands the code and lives by it. The members of group must therefore be equals and hold respect for others in the group, being both their equal and living and maintaining the standard of the honor code. Honor is then rendered based on the judgment of others in the group, and therefore the opinion of those members must matter to you. This respect is rendered in a two-way street.
These honor groups must be exclusive. If anyone and everyone can be a part of the group, regardless of their adherence to the code, then honor becomes absolutely meaningless. Egalitarianism (equality of social, political and economic status) and honor cannot coexist. Social justice destroys honor and the honor code.
Lastly, the honor group must be a tight-knit, intimate group. In a society of people that is governed by respect, a member’s knowledge of every other member and face-to-face interaction is essential. Honor cannot exist in a society where anonymity dominates. The rise of social media, and the increased anonymity that comes with it, chips away at the maintenance of honor.
Honor is all or nothing. You either have it, or you don’t. A person who fails to live up to the group’s code loses his honor. He loses his right to the respect the other members of the group provide. This creates shame. The recognition that one failed to live up to the code is shameful. For honor to exist, a healthy feeling of shame compels one to check one’s behavior. When one cares not for the respect of others in the group, honor loses its power to compel living according to the standard.
You either have the respect of your peers within this group or you don’t. Bringing dishonor upon yourself by failing to meet the minimum standards of the group (or showing disdain or indifference for those standards) results in exclusion or excommunication from the group, including the accompanying shame. Failure to conform results in your membership card being revoked.
The last semblances of honor can be heard among men in our culture today when they talk about taking away each other’s “man cards.” Men actually understand this at an instinctual level. Horizontal honor is essentially the need to actually hold the man card. It is recognition that you are a man among other men. Losing one’s man card is an echo of the punishment for violating the original code of men – the honor code.
Vertical Honor
Vertical Honor isn’t about mutual respect between two men of equal stature. It is about giving praise and esteem to those “who are superior, whether by virtual of their abilities, their rank, their services to the community, their sex, their kinship, their office, or anything else.” (Honor, Frank Henderson Stewart, p.59).
Vertical honor is hierarchical and competitive. Vertical honor goes to the man who not only lives the code, but excels at the code. Vertical honor cannot exist without horizontal honor. First, you must hold the man card. Excelling at protecting or providing then defines the vertical honor.
The feminization of our society, along with an insistence of social justice for all, makes horizontal honor in-existent, and vertical honor thereby becomes despicable, loathsome and to some, even “toxic.”
There is this feminist notion that masculinity is a basket of “good” and “bad” characteristics that men can pick and choose from. The pleasant qualities are things like provision of food, provision of funds, providing a home, duty, honor and procreation. The “bad” or distasteful characteristics are things like intense strength, lust, violence and furious indignation.
When a man instinctively acts upon his role as provider and protector, gender roles that are repressed in today’s culture, he naturally bases his actions around those things that bring honor. Being an honorable provider and protector requires the man to excel at those things that are perceived by the feminist as “messy,” “bad” or “toxic.” Honor is an action word and can only be demonstrated through action. When that man begins to be true to horizontal and vertical honor, today’s society sees him a “toxic male.”
Men thrive on admiration of their honor, especially vertical honor. It literally recharges a man’s batteries. These are the trophies, awards, points and accolades that come from distinguishing yourself as a provider or protector. It’s why men are drawn to messy tests of their strength, power, and manhood against other men. It’s what drives a man to run a marathon, become a prize fighter, learn martial arts, to be a hunter, build a home, design cities, write revolutionary computer code, complete medical school and residency, and on, and on, and on.
Honor as Defined by Our Forefathers
Honor as our Forefathers understood it was two-fold: respect from the group (horizontal) and praise from the group (vertical). Implicit in this definition of honor is that it depends upon the opinion of others. You may have a sense of honor, but that just does not cut it. Others must first recognize your honor before it can actually exist.
I can hear some of you say, “Wait a minute, Doc, honor is universal to men and women. What about the honor of women?”
Yes. You are correct. However, honor differs between the genders. Though codes of honor have varied across time and cultures, in its most primitive instinctual forms, honor was usually related to chastity for women and courage for men.
During the periods of history when governments did not exist, professional military’s were few and far between, and there was no one to enforce the “rule of law,” the moral force that governed the tribe and maintained survival was “honor.” Men were expected to act as the tribe’s protectors, a role in which strength, courage and vitality were essential. If the man was not physically strong, then he was expected to contribute through mastery of a skill (shaman, medicine man, scout, black-smith, weapons maker, shepherd, etc.) that provided benefit to the tribe. Honor is the driving force that motivated men to fulfill these expectations.
Demonstration of courage and mastery provided horizontal honor as men. That honor provided privileges of being a full member of the tribe. As they excelled at the code, the were granted even greater status and more privilege within the tribe (vertical honor). However, cowardice, laziness, and weakness were shamed as unmanly causing loss of access to privilege within the tribe.
Defending Your Honor
Defending your honor or reputation was a matter of life or death for many of our ancestors and forefathers. It is literally instinctual in the male. Even into the late 19th century, one could not get a good job as a lawyer or politician without maintaining one’s honor. Thus, to maintain privileges, men were highly motivated and tremendously vigilant about maintaining their honor.
Insult to one’s reputation or honor, or the honor (chastity) of a female member of your family, required immediate remedy. If you were hit, you hit back. Saving face was supreme. Retaliation was necessary to prove you still had the courage that made one worthy of honorable status. The chasity of a female member of your household could be remedied by the courageous act of the protector. Dueling was a common and acceptable means of defending that honor.
Defending honor can lead to what anthropologists call reflexive honor. This was inspiring and, also, problematic. When taken to the extreme, reflexive honor becomes an “irrational pissing contest” between men, clans or even communities. This could destroy a community. So, as societies became more civilized, they attempted to temper the male instinct to retaliate when honor has been maligned. This tempering is what brought about the honor code of chivalry with the Medieval knights and the gentleman’s code of the Victorian era.
A Man’s Honor vs The Group’s Honor
Concern for one’s honor is both selfish and selfless. On one hand, men want to be respected as men, respected in the tribe and desire the privileges of membership (horizontal honor). Membership in the tribe entitled the person to gain vertical honor and status through worthy deeds. One’s reputation for strength and honor also kept other members of the tribe from picking on them or casting them out.
A man’s honor benefited the tribe as a whole. Each individual’s reputation for courage and strength added to the group’s courage and strength. The more formidable a tribe’s reputation, the less likely other tribes would try to bother them. This is why men who do not care about the tribe’s honor are shamed by the group. Disloyalty of an individual puts the whole group at risk.
20th Century Honor is Depressing
In the 20th Century, urbanization and anonymity dissolved the intimate face-to-face relationships that honor requires. People have grown uncomfortable with violence and shame. Individuals feelings and desire have been elevated above the common good of the tribe or society. People began forming their own personal honor codes and refused judgement of those codes by anyone but themselves. This transformed honor into a concept synonymous with personal integrity.
Yet, the instinctual male defines his character around honor, and true honor has been whitewashed into personal integrity, the man experiences depression. Honor is the moral imperative of men. Obedience is the moral imperative of boys.
As a child, you did the right thing out of obedience to authority and out of fear of punishment from that authority. As we mature, we begin to recognize that our behavior affects others and the needs of groups to which we belong.
Honor is a moral imperative. As we age, we begin to operate and act out of honor instead of out of obedience to authority. Men begin to recognize that they have a role to play in helping the group to survive or thrive. Men recognize that their individual actions add to the strength or weakness of a group.
Honor in a Man Begets Love
The mindset of honor is different. When men function from a mindset of rules and laws, they do the bare minimum they can without being punished. Or they push the law to see how far it bends. When men function from the mindset of honor, they seek to pull their own weight, and then add further to strengthen the group.
Honor moves a man’s motivations to act from the base, childlike fear of authority, to a higher, nobler respect that becomes love. The love of family, love of church, and love of country are all borne of honor. A man will NEVER let those he loves (or himself) down by slacking off. Love, from the perspective of a man, is born of his honor and strengthens his honor.
If a man leaves his church, or is disinterested in and organization, it is likely because he’s lost the sense of mutual respect in the horizontal honor of that group or congregation. He has lost faith in that congregation’s ability to provide the innate horizontal honor he seeks.
Not only is honor a more mature moral imperative than obedience, it is often a much more powerful motivator. Social pressure, the very thing that drives honor, is more powerful than rules and laws in getting people to do things. Studies show that people are more likely to change their behavior when they think their respected peers are watching them. The key driver is respect of peers considered to be equal in group or standing. We are still social animals at heart – we still feel motivated by shame, loneliness and/or desertion.
Lack of Honor Breeds Ineptitude
Without honor mediocrity, corruption and incompetence rule. Honor is based in reputation and when people stop caring about their reputation, shame disappears. When there is no shame, people devolve into creatures with little inertia that do the very least they can without getting into trouble, getting fined or getting fired. This breeds a culture of mediocrity, corruption, and blatant incompetence. You can see this in any business or customer service network today. People no longer have any fear of their history following them and have no incentive to perform with excellence. Instead, we have a culture of employees with mind blowing ineptitude.
This lack of honor has resulted in a society that now relies upon obedience to rules, regulations and restrictions to govern behavior. The minutia of rules in your office, town, city, community, and state seem innumerable is because they are. We must now be policed by external authority to constantly check behavior in the absence of honor.
Honor Creates Meaning
The reason people tend to like old movies and books better than the modern variety is honor. It’s not nostalgia, or talent or lack of topics. The drama of old literature captures our attention because the characters had to operate in a culture of honor.
Honor provides structure to navigate and push up against. The struggle of moving up through a group by following a code, avoiding shame and earning honor.
The reason reality shows have become popular is that these shows create temporary groups of people experimenting with unique situations forcing the creation of and adherence to the groups temporary honor codes. Otherwise life is mundane and boring.
Without honor life feels like a great charade with our own self-constructed realities that lack comparison, competition and esteem of others. Life seems empty and insubstantial. Evil runs unchecked. Good goes unrewarded. True merit goes un-honored and everyone gets a participation trophy that holds absolutely no meaning. Everyone gets a piece of the egalitarian pie that does not nourish or satiate our hunger.
Arlington Cemetery – horse drawn casket for fallen soldier
Every Man Needs a Platoon
We are all part of large groups that provide us identity and belonging. You might be associated with a political party, a company, a church, a company, a town, a state or a nation. Yet these groups are usually too large to provide the intimacy necessary for honor to thrive. In these groups, no one really cares if you are living honorably or not. We must give up the notion that honor can be revived at the macroscopic level.
Initially, I thought each of us needed a community or congregation. That may work, but I realized the average size of a military company is 150 people. This is also “Dunbar’s number.” It is the maximum number of people in which stable social relationships can occur at any given time. It is the maximal number in a group in which honor and shame can govern effectively before rules and regulations are required to govern behavior. Interestingly, this is also the number of people to which ancient villages would grow before they would break off to form separate settlements.
Withing each military company, there are 3-5 platoons consisting of 16-44 men. Platoons are the smallest “self-contained” unit in the army. Each one has a medic, radio operator, headquarters element, and forward observer. A platoon of men usually sleeps together, eats together, fights together and, under severe conditions, dies together.
I have always been fascinated by comments made to me by soldiers when asked about their allegiance to one another. This was reinforced by journalist Sebastian Junger in his book, War. Soldiers admit they would risk their lives “without hesitation for anyone in the platoon or company.” This sense of identity, loyalty, and brotherhood drops off in groups larger than the platoon or the company.
Junger states, “For some reason there is a profound and mysterious gratification to the reciprocal agreement to protect another person with your life, and combat is virtually the only situation in which that happens regularly.”
Only a small percentage of those in the military are directly involved in regular firefights. The rest serve in support roles. Though support roles experience an honor culture in degrees lower than combat soldiers, it is of a more profound degree than civilians. Other than combat soldiers, police officers and firefighters are the only others who experience a similar degree of honor. They may not have their lives directly threatened every day, but they constantly work under the risk that they could, and they know that their comrades are willing to risk their own lives to protect them.
Where Do You Find A Platoon?
Not all of us can be a soldier, police officer or firefighter, even if they if they wanted to be. Yet, every man can, and should be part of a small, tight-knit honor group. This may be a sports team, men’s group at church, fraternity, professional group, etc.
If you can’t find one, start your own. It doesn’t have to be formal and you don’t need a lot of people. 2-3 people are enough to start.
For your physical survival and your psychological health, you need to be part of a group. Men want meaning in their lives, meaning that comes from being a part of something larger than themselves. But, if you are like me, until I understood the importance of honor groups, we are often unwilling to trade some of our individualism to get it.
Studies done decades ago showed that men who belonged to a group that was close-knit showed less fear when jumping from an airplane than groups of men who shared only weak ties. The studies demonstrated that men could also withstand greater pain from electric shocks when they were part of a highly-bound group, as opposed to one with loose associations. The military found that tightly-knit units suffer less cases of mental breakdown, depression and PTSD than units where morale and bonding is low. The reason for these findings is that men in a tightly-bonded group both know that the man on either side of him has his back. The fear of dishonoring their brothers drives them to overcome their own fears and move forward and not let others down. One of the men Junger interviewed said, “As a soldier, the thing you were most scared of was failing your brothers when they needed you, and compared to that, dying was easy. Dying was over with. Cowardice lingered forever.”
Men of Today Must Have Honor to Survive
Men around us in society break down and cave to depression and stress, just fighting their individual battles. I see it every day. They lack the strength to deal with life’s difficulties because they don’t have honor pushing them forward. They don’t have honor because they lack a platoon.
The core of honor, then, is this – to act in such a way that does not let the man on your right and the man on your left down when they need you most.
Conclusion
People talk about wanting honor. They desire the end, but do not want the means. Honor, then, will only live on in small units and platoons of men willing to accept and carry the burden and responsibility that must accompany it.
James Davidson Hunter put it this way, “We say we want a renewal of character in our day but we don’t really know what we ask for. To have a renewal of character is to have a renewal of a creedal order that constrains, limits, binds, obligates, and compels. This price is too high for us to pay. We want character but without unyielding conviction; we want strong morality but without the emotional burden of guilt or shame; we want virtue but without particular moral justifications that invariably offend; we want good without having to name evil; we want decency without the authority to insist upon it; we want moral community without any limitations to personal freedom. In short, we want what we cannot possibly have on the terms that we want it.”
Are you one of those men of honor? Or, will you settle for the pain and depression of living true to only a part of yourself?
Yes, you heard me correctly. It is National Cheesecake Day today. Today you must eat cheesecake – or you could be considered un-American.
“I can’t eat cheese cake, I’m doing a ketogenic diet!” you exclaim.
“Yes. So am I.”
Eating cheesecake is actually good for you, (low-carb cheesecake that is) and it’s also good for your family. This is the perfect day for ketogenic cheesecake . . . like my wife Tiffini’s Low-Carb Key Lime & Blueberry Cheesecake and as my gift to you for #NationalCheesecakeDay, you can get the recipe by filling in that pop up box!
And, “NO – I know what you’re thinking,” you can never have too much heavy whipped cream.
So, why am I so excited about National Cheesecake Day? I love low-carb cheesecake for a number of reasons.
Testosterone & Cheesecake
National Cheesecake Day makes me think of testosterone.
I know. Leave it to a man to start with testosterone, but in the big picture, a man really isn’t a man without testosterone, right? I mean, it was during the 5th week of embryonic development that my Y chromosome began signaling the differentiation of male fetal growth in-utero. And like every male, that same hormone, testosterone, continues to differentiate me from the human female counterpart throughout life. (And, boy am I grateful for that.)
The reason testosterone comes to mind is that I see a large number of men with low testosterone. Low testosterone has become a significant issue. 20-30% of the men in my practice suffer from some degree of suppression in testosterone when they first present in my office. In fact, you can’t watch late night TV without being asked if your testosterone is too low (“Do you have Low ‘T’?”).
We know that the primary nutrient shown to affect testosterone to the greatest extent is fat. Studies reveal that diets low in fat and high in carbohydrates are associated with lower testosterone compared to diets high in fat (1, 2). That begs the question, has 50 years of our low-fat high-carb diets made us less manly? I am convinced, but I’ll let you be the judge when you look at the pictures below . . .
When did this become acceptable?
Testosterone is essential in providing energy, muscle mass & growth and actually keeping the waistline down. Adequate testosterone is one of the key components allowing the man to fill the fatherhood rolls of protector and provider.
Female Brain Has A Testosterone Meter
Interestingly, the female brain is actually subconsciously wired to see the male physique and identify pheromones indicating your testosterone is higher or lower. Most women won’t admit it, because they probably don’t even recognize it, but studies show that men who lack muscle, have lower testosterone and have a beer belly are actually less attractive to the female sex. Men who produce more testosterone produce androstadienone in their sweat at a greater concentration which can be detected by the female improving her mood, focus and sexual response (9). If your diet isn’t helping you stimulate testosterone production, you’re less inclined to perform well in areas requiring its presence and you may be seen as less attractive by the women in the room.
That means that, bacon and eggs you craved this morning improve your manliness and actually give you more sex appeal. And, I’m sorry to say, the bagel and orange juice you had this morning are feminizing, they’re turning you into a woman, especially if you are like 85% of other men who over produce insulin because of insulin resistance.
When insulin is high and being over produced, it suppresses Luteinizing Hormone (LH) and Follicle Stimulating Hormone (FSH), lowering testosterone production. The high insulin and high fructose of the bagel and orange juice stimulate increased uptake of fat into the fat cells and decreases adiponectin production. This causes increase in Sex Hormone Binding Globulin (SHBG) which further decreases available testosterone. High insulin and low adiponectin puts your “man card” through the wash.
Cheesecake and Men’s Muscles
Men need muscles for all sorts of important things. It’s often Dad who carries the child on his shoulders, or lifts you above his head. It takes muscles for that.
We talked about the importance of testosterone in muscle development. That that’s not all. Many men can provide for their families specifically because of their ability to use that muscle. I’m not saying women can’t use muscle, too. In fact, muscle is essential for the female body to be healthy. What I’m saying that there are a number of jobs that make our country function that require men who are fit. Jobs like policemen, firefighters, special-ops military teams, construction workers, life-guards & delivery drivers require the strength and power men bring to these fields. These jobs require muscle, and specifically “manly” muscle from healthy testosterone.
In addition, we know that ketones, the primary fuel in a ketogenic diet, inhibit muscle breakdown by decreasing leucine oxidation and preserving muscle mass (3). Being in ketosis increases testosterone and increases the presence of leucine preserving and allowing for bigger stronger muscles. So, yes, visiting the donut shop actually does make you less manly by allowing the more rapid degradation of your muscles.
“Wasn’t it my muscles that first got your attention when we met and got this whole father thing started in the first place, honey?” I asked my wife in the kitchen.
“What?! No . . .” she responded.
“Oh, . . . never mind.”
Energy & Cheesecake
Whether you have great muscles or not, you need energy for the muscles you have to fill your role as a man. Work requires energy. As fat is increasingly used as your primary fuel, instead of sugar, the liver converts it into ketone bodies, or ketones. The liver itself, doesn’t use the ketones, so they are taken up by the muscles and brain for fuel. Increased energy, mental clarity and suppression of inflammation are the key findings that are noticed while using fat as your primary fuel. What man couldn’t us a little more of that?
Health of Family Influenced By Father’s Health
In fact, several studies report that the man in the home has the biggest impact on the overall fitness and on the overall weight of his children. It was found that the father’s, not the mother’s, total and percentage body fat was the best predictor of whether or not the couple’s daughters gained weight as they got older (4). All the more reason to keep your waistline under control, Dad. And, all the more reason to have low-carb cheesecake today.
Another fascinating study showed fathers’ (again, not the mothers’) body mass index is directly related to a child’s activity level (5).
Cheesecake Helps Rough-Housing
Energy and muscle is essential for “rough-housing” and there is science to prove that “rough-housing” makes your kids awesome! Psychologist Anthony Pellegrini found that the amount of rough-housing children engage in predicts their achievement in first grade better than their kindergarten test scores do (10). What is it about rough and tumble play that makes kids smarter? Well, a couple things.
Rough-housing makes your kids more resilient. Strengthening resilience is a key in developing children’s intelligence. Resilient kids tend to see failure more as a challenge to overcome rather than an event that defines them. Intellectual resilience that comes from energetic fathers helps ensure your children bounce back from bad grades and gives them the grit to keep trying until they’ve mastered a topic.
Intelligence From Cheesecake?
Neuroscientists studying animal and human brains have found that bouts of rough-and-tumble play increase the brain’s level of a chemical called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). BDNF helps increase neuron growth in the parts of the brain responsible for memory, logic, social intelligence and higher learning–skills necessary for academic success. We, also, now know that the brain that uses fat, or ketones, as its primary fuel recovers from injury and makes BDNF more effectively (6,7).
So, remember, that rib-eye with steak butter your kids gave you for dinner and the low-carb cheesecake you had for dinner is actually making you and them smarter and more resilient. You could even say that a diet high in fat and low in carbohydrate gives your family more grit.
Overall Happiness from Cheesecake?
The Harvard Grant Study completed in 1934, the longest longitudinal study ever done on the lives of men, found that a man’s father influenced his life in multiple ways exclusive to his relationship with his mother. Loving fathers imparted to their sons:
Enhanced capacity to play
Greater enjoyment of vacations
Increased likelihood of being able to use humor as a healthy coping mechanism
Better adjustment to, and contentment with, life after retirement
Less anxiety and fewer physical and mental symptoms under stress in young adulthood
It should be noted that “it was not the men with poor mothering but the ones with poor fathering who were significantly more likely to have poor marriages over their lifetimes.” Men who lacked a positive relationship with their fathers were also “much more likely to call themselves pessimists and to report having trouble letting others get close” (8).
You, as a testosterone producing man and father, matter. And, being in ketosis makes you an even better father! Seriously.
When all is said and done, a man’s relationship with his father very significantly predicted his overall life satisfaction at age 75 — “a variable not even suggestively associated with the maternal relationship” (8).
So, to circle back, the low-carb key-lime cheese cake just made me more manly. Thanks, Honey! Happy National Cheesecake Day!
In a medium bowl, whisk together flour and sweetener. Stir in butter until well combined. Press firmly into bottom and up the sides of a pie pan or spring-form pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 8 minutes (watch closely so that the crust does not over-brown)
In a large bowl, beat cream cheese, sour cream, lime juice with pulp and zest together until smooth. Beat in the sweetener until well combined. In a small bowl, whisk together 2 tbsp of heavy cream and the gelatin. Stir into the cream cheese until well combined.
In another bowl, beat whipping cream until it forms stiff peaks. Gently fold whipped cream into the cream cheese mixture.
Spread the filling over the cooled prepared crust.
Refrigerate for a few hours until set and ready to serve with blueberries sprinkled on top.
References:
Hamalainen, E., H. Aldercreutz, P. Puska, and P. Pietinen. Diet and serum sex hormones in healthy men. J. Steroid Biochem. 20:459-464, 1984.
Reed, M.J., R.W. Cheng, M. Simmonds, W. Richmond, and V.H.T. James. Dietary Lipids: an additional regulator of plasma levels of sex hormone binding globulin. J. Clin. Endocrin. Metab. 64:1083-1085, 1987.
Nair KS, Welle SL, Halliday D, Cambell RG. Effect ofβ-hydroxybutyrate on whole-body leucine kinetics and fractional mixed skeletal muscle protein synthesis in humans. J Clin Invest. 1988;82:198–
Figueroa-Colon R, Arani RB, Goran MI, Weinsier RL. Paternal body fat is a longitudinal predictor of changes in body fat in premenarcheal girls. Am J Clin Nutr. 2000 Mar;71(3):829-34.
Finn, Kevin et al. Factors associated with physical activity in preschool children.J of Ped., Vol 140, Issue 1, 81-85
Vizuete AF1, de Souza DF, Guerra MC, Batassini C, Dutra MF, Bernardi C, Costa AP, Gonçalves CA. Brain changes in BDNF and S100B induced by ketogenic diets in Wistar rats. Life Sci. 2013 May 20;92(17-19):923-8.
Masino SA, Rho JM. Mechanisms of Ketogenic Diet Action. Jasper’s Basic Mechanisms of the Epilepsies [Internet]. 4th edition. Bethesda (MD): National Center for Biotechnology Information (US); 2012.
Valliant GE. Triumphs of Excellence: The Men of the Harvard Grant Study. 1934
Verhaeghe J, Gheysen R, Enzlin P. Pheromones and their effect on women’s mood and sexuality. Facts Views Vis Obgyn. 2013; 5(3): 189-195.
DeBenedet A, Cohen LJ. The Art of Roughhousing. 2010. Quirk Books.
