Real Men
Kim du Toit
May 7, 2008
5:00 AM CDT
Here’s an interesting take:
When Ernest Shackleton planned the “last great journey on Earth” - a hazardous attempt to cross the Antarctic continent via the South Pole - he went about recruiting for his expedition team by placing an advertisement in a newspaper.
It read: “Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.”
More than 5,000 aspiring adventurers replied to that 1913 advertisement. What would be the odds for generating so much enthusiasm for such a daring, even foolhardy, mission these days?
Small, according to historian and archaelogist Neil Oliver. “Frankly, the only thing that would get so much interest these days is an advert for bloody Big Brother,” he sighs.
“Nothing matters today unless you’re being filmed doing it. Everything has to happen live. People don’t do things just for the sake of doing them any more.”
...
Shackleton’s heroic but ill-fated expedition is one of the stories retold in Oliver’s new book, Amazing Tales for Making Men Out of Boys, which revives historic acts of bravery from the Battle of Thermopylae to the Penlee lifeboat rescue mission - tales that Oliver hopes will remind boys that “becoming a man was once about comradeship and standing by your friends whatever the circumstances” and that “sometimes it was more important to die a hero’s death than live a coward’s life”.
Stirring stuff indeed. According to Oliver, “manly men” have been “hunted to near-extinction in the British Isles. There’s been some kind of politically correct revolution where we’ve forgotten - or discarded - the value of being manly men,” he laments.
He may be right—although I note that the Royal Marines seem to have no shortage of recruits, and the SAS always fills its quota.
Ditto Over Here.
I note with extreme pleasure the disappearance of men from the Pink Collar Ghettos of the academe, and the constant ability of the Armed Forces to meet its recruiting goals. The Real Men are still out there, doing their jobs without complaint, performing feats of absolute heroism on a daily basis.
We just don’t hear about them, because apart from other Real Men like Michael Yon (himself a veteran), the Press is mostly peopled with women and girlymen who wouldn’t recognize a Real Man if their lives were saved by one.
And in today’s Pussified Era, Shackleton’s expedition, even before setting out, would be crippled by having to purchase all the insurance required by law. But that’s a rant for another time.
