Hipsters, Ron Swanson, and True Manliness

Hipsters. You know the type. Flannel shirt. Skinny Jean. Boots. Glasses. Pabst. Beard. Bicycle. Kids that have never even split wood trying to look vaguely like lumberjacks. Don’t ever become one of these kids. Now, I’m fine with all the items I listed, with the exception of the skinny jeans. There is nothing unmanly about any of the other things. It is not those things that make the hipster unmanly. Rather, the hipster is unmanly despite the accouterments that would seem to link him to groups of manly men.

Manliness doesn’t come from the outside, from the beard you grow or the flannel shirt you put on. It comes out of the inside. That where both the hipsters and the Ron Swanson fans have gone wrong. Ron Swanson is a fictional character from the TV show “Parks and Recreation.” I first started watching the show a couple years ago because people kept telling me I was “like Ron Swanson.” I enjoyed the show for a while, but after taking a several month break from watching anything, I saw a few episodes and realized that Ron Swanson is nothing but a false flag in the culture wars.

Ron is perceived as uber-manly because he believes in small government, wears a mustache, drinks a lot of alcohol, and eats a lot of meat. However, despite his belief in small government he consistently allows his subordinate, Leslie, to create new initiatives of colossal proportions, and even tell him what to do and how to do it. When his ex-wife comes around, he abandons his work and runs for the woods. After a tryst with his ex-wife, he begs his subordinate to break up with her for him. And he throws a hissy fit any time he gets a little hungry. Seriously, this is what the culture thinks masculinity looks like?

The Ron Swanson crowd makes manliness about being a slave to your stomach. This is no more true than the pick-up artist or game-blogger’s lie that manliness is about being a slave to your penis. Just like flannel shirts and beards won’t make you more manly, neither will Lagavulin and steak or “banging hot chicks.”

Not that there is anything inherently wrong with flannel shirts, or scotch, or sex. But they won’t make you manly.

Do you want to be truly manly? Embrace your place in the hierarchy–under some, above others. Recognize and render the fealty you owe to those above, and the care you owe to those below. Live by the sweat of your brow. Be indebted to no man. Walk with justice and mercy. This is what manliness is. This is what Him who made man has instructed.

Having heard everything, I have reached this conclusion: Fear God and keep his commandments, because this is the whole duty of man. —Ecclesiastes 12:13 (NET)

Selections from My Favorite Short Story

But that night after dinner and a whisky and soda by the fire before going to bed, as Francis Macomber lay on his cot with the mosquito bar over him and listened to the night noises it was not all over. It was neither all over nor was it beginning. It was there exactly as it happened with some parts of it indelibly emphasized and he was miserably ashamed at it. But more than shame he felt cold, hollow fear in him. The fear was still there like a cold slimy hollow in all the emptiness where once his confidence had been and it made him feel sick. It was still there with him now.

His wife had been through with him before but it never lasted. He was very wealthy, and would be much wealthier, and he knew she would not leave him ever now. That was one of the few things that he really knew. He knew about that, about motor cycles–that was earliest–about motor cars, about duck-shooting, about fishing, trout, salmon and big-sea, about sex in books, many books, too many books, about all court games, about dogs, not much about horses, about hanging on to his money, about most of the other things his world dealt in, and about his wife not leaving him. His wife had been a great beauty and she was still a great beauty in Africa, but she was not a great enough beauty any more at home to be able to leave him and better herself and she knew it and he knew it. She had missed the chance to leave him and he knew it. If he had been better with women she would probably have started to worry about him getting another new, beautiful wife; but she knew too much about him to worry about him either. Also, he had always had a great tolerance which seemed the nicest thing about him if it were not the most sinister.

They had a sound basis of union. Margot was too beautiful for Macomber to divorce her and Macomber had too much money for Margot ever to leave him.

Their figures stay boyish when they’re fifty. The great American boy-men. Damned strange people. But he liked this Macomber now. Damned strange fellow. Probably meant the end of cuckoldry too. Well, that would be a damned good thing. Damned good thing. Beggar had probably been afraid all his life. Don’t know what started it. But over now. Hadn’t had time to be afraid with the buff. That and being angry too. Motor car too. Motor cars made it familiar. Be a damn fire eater now. He’d seen it in the war work the same way. More of a change than any loss of virginity. Fear gone like an operation. Something else grew in its place. Main thing a man had. Made him into a man. Women knew it too. No bloody fear.

From the far corner of the seat Margaret Macomber looked at the two of them. There was no change in Wilson. She saw Wilson as she had seen him the day before when she had first realized what his great talent was. But she saw the change in Francis Macomber now.

“You’ve gotten awfully brave, awfully suddenly,” his wife said contemptuously, but her contempt was not secure. She was very afraid of something.

Macomber laughed, a very natural hearty laugh. “You know I have,” he said. “I really have.”

“Isn’t it sort of late?” Margot said bitterly. Because she had done the best she could for many years back and the way they were together now was no one person’s fault.

“Not for me,” said Macomber.

Entire story here.