Overcorrection – Tidbits of Audacity

Imbalance Empowers Extremes

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I recently read a great article concerning the plight of boys and young men. It hit home because I’m dealing with this issue in my own family. My oldest bonus son is a self-made millionaire. He’s extremely intelligent, hard worker, and pretty positive guy. He also has almost zero theory of mind. He’s not narcissistic. Just completely unaware there are other people in the world. Therefore, his only logical arguments are online. Then, in his attempt to persuade me into his web of conspiracies, he was met with facts, reason, and experience that he didn’t expect. Then he resorted to, “You just don’t know, you haven’t been educated on the issues.” To which I retorted with education. Now he either steers clear of me or listens intently.

He’s convinced that:

Israel (the country, not people or religion) is the reason for all global woes.
Nick Fuentes is a brilliant mind speaking for his generation.
Charlie Kirk’s death was an entire conspiracy.

He sounds like a male Candace Owen. But Wokal Distance laid this idea out well.

The Path of Thomas Sowell

How we arrived here is similar to the path Thomas Sowell took. When Sowell looked at the issues in the world and primarily in America, it appeared that the rich had taken from the poor, namely the black poor. This had to be dealt with. And to Sowell, the solution was Marxism. The utopian delight. Manage all production. Control all means. Then distribute fairly. To him, it made sense. To Sowell, it was the only alternative presented. And that is precisely where we are. With no alternatives, the course of action is overcorrection. And overcorrection looks like Fuentes, Tate, and Alex Jones. And until someone finds societal homeostasis, they will continue to rise.

These young men, like my bonus son, are looking for an alternative and no one is presenting one. They see that the government is too big. They see that woke-ology doesn’t work, it only stifles businesses. They see that worrying about everyone’s feelings incessantly drives mental health cases up and progress down. But so far, the only solutions presented are the existing ones. Capitalism! No, socialism! No, democratic socialism! (Note that the only one of those three that hasn’t killed millions is capitalism).

Gynocentricism

But maybe more importantly, Wokal points out that the gynocentric zeitgeist we find ourselves in is the real culprit. My wife noticed this recently at a church gathering. We were having a small group gathering and some women kept making comments that displayed beliefs centered on ideas that masculinity, men, and male spaces are inherently malevolent. She almost couldn’t believe her ears. She hears this rhetoric all the time at the high school where she teaches, but not in a church in the Bible belt.

Generational Theory

In Wokal’s post, there’s mention of a catastrophic distrust of institutions. This lines up with the Strauss and Howe Generational Theory. In this theory, it posits that we go through four societal (or generational) turns. The distrust of institutions began the 3^rd turn around the early 1980s. We have been in the 4^th turn for a while now. This is marked by societal upheaval. Survival. They rolling over stones to find the answer, even if the stone hurts someone along the way. The good news, we should be returning to the 1st turn in the next five years, according to theory.

I mentioned in my post, Gen Z’s Breaking Point, that we have a new group of young men who are over the nonsense they’re being forced to accept. Most of the GenZ men I see are still making sense, common sense. But the ones overcorrecting are grasping onto guys like Fuentes as the lesser of all evils.

The Rise of Peterson

One more excellent point made in the article by Wokal was that Jordan Peterson rose to fame on the position that men are good, needed, and capable of responsibility, protection, and production. He told men to stand up straight. Make your bed. Be early to interviews. Negotiate early and often. Treat yourself like someone you’re responsible for helping. Men gravitated to the call. Peterson was calling them up, not calling them out.

Then Peterson fell ill. This left a void, a void that Tate and Fuentes saw could be filled with an overcorrection of masculinity, conspiracy theories, and righteous anger at the wrong things and people. They swooped in with promises of a better future. But overcorrections always dissolve, they never sustain.

Solutions

There are many possible solutions to this crisis. One real solution is to stop apologizing for what it means to be a man and start insisting on it. One should be capable of danger but wise enough to know when to use it. Not reckless, not violent, but formidable. A man should be the strongest person at this father’s funeral, but willing to express emotions when grief hits. A man handles the crisis first. He stabilizes the chaos. Then, when the threat has passed, he becomes gentle, attentive, and emotionally present for his wife and children. Jason Wilson calls this “The man the moment demands,” and he’s right. What we’ve done instead is shame men into paralysis, telling them their strength is suspect and their masculinity is dangerous unless constantly restrained.

We must be willing to tell men and boys that it’s ok to be a man. That it’s not just ok to be masculine, it’s necessary! Strength is good. Roughness has a place. Humor matters. So does restraint, vulnerability, emotional expression, and clear communication with our wives and children. This is not a contradiction. It’s balance. It’s psychological regulation. It’s Emotional Homeostasis. With this, we must stand against the gynocentric narrative that feminine is the only way forward. It’s one way forward. Masculine is also the way forward. When you suppress one and moralize the other, you don’t get a healthy society. You get confusion, weakness, resentment, and instability. A society that refuses to cultivate strong men is not compassionate. It is reckless. And it is setting itself up to be overwhelmed by the very chaos it pretends to manage.

Gynocentricism has created the very men it fears. There’s a rise in men, but the wrong men. Chaos is recruiting, and it’s becoming successful. We have taught boys to hate themselves, then wonder why they flock to the extreme opposition. Disoriented men are easy targets. Empowered men are unstoppable.

If we want our boys to see Fuentes and Tate for what they really are, vultures thriving on click-bait, contrarians with no real solutions, insecurity hiding behind the masculine façade, we must show them what it means to be a man.

I know a guy who wrote a book about this very subject. Maybe you know him too.

Stay Classy GP!

Grainger