When I grew up, things were markedly different. We lacked some of the conveniences that the new generation expects as normal. Our teachers were allowed to discipline us. Our soldiers were known for kicking butt and taking names. Men were men; women were women; most of the time we could tell them apart. We apologized for nothing, partially because we were the moral authority, but also because we were strong. Much of that has changed. We've gone soft.
When I was a child, people didn't worry so much. We would play with bugs, skin our knees, get dirt under our fingernails, catch colds, etc., and nobody worried too much. By then, nobody worried that epidemics would wipe out neighborhoods or towns, and that was considered good news. Now, any ailment at all is considered bad. Police shut down lemonade stands and pull over kids on bikes without helmets.
During my childhood, there was more discipline. Our teachers and parents raised us. Some of us governed ourselves. It used to be cool to be disciplined. Now the opposite is true, and the government facilitates this by telling people what to do within the confines of their own homes. We have become more interested in diversity than discipline, and this has allowed people to do all sorts of things without any ramifications and confused all of the standards I learned by which to guide my choices. Sometimes you can't tell the men from the women, the good guys from the bad, the imagined world from the real one. So-called 'reality TV' exacerbates the problem.
One practical scientific application is that we're breeding a weaker species. When women became emancipated, they no longer needed masculine men to help them do things. Gone was the need for strong and fit men, like you see in film, because women did things themselves. Now, they sit around sipping wine coolers in tweed jackets thinking instead of acting. I have tried to date women who didn't like me because I didn't have a 28" waist. Seriously? Add to that the fact that our medical and technological advancements help people who would otherwise not have survived to reproduce have offspring. A century ago, I would have had few vocational options and probably would have ended up selling newspapers on the corner or working in a factory and not lived to have children. I might have caught a disease and died. I'm not saying it's wrong to save people; what I'm saying is that we've increased the pool of available genes and made it vogue to pick ones that make mankind weaker.
We also actively weaken ourselves. We eat garbage, we play down our strengths, and we try to work with and get along with everyone. We have become afraid to offend other people. We inconvenience ourselves because we can't bring ourselves to bring scrutiny to people who are more likely to be miscreants. So, we hit ourselves with a faggot to show we are penitent. Walking on eggshells hasn't made us safer. We've escaped other terror attacks because of other interpolations. Even as recently as grad school, a visiting PhD from Turkey told me that he liked America because we fought wars for other reasons than simply to expand our holdings. Our soldiers were people I admired and to which I aspired. We gain a mile and only hold an inch. We undermine our own success because Statists and Tyrants play on our consciences while they live unbound by their own and luxuriate at our expense.
Very little strengthens when it is coddled. It will not make better men if we baby them. It will not make more successful men if we excuse them. It will not make a safer country if we act as if we're villains. It will not make moral men if we excuse immoral behaviors. It will not make men if women refuse them. Muscles you never use grow weak and atrophy. Walking on eggshells gives you no callouses. Run where the brave dare not go.
Do not let what might happen paralyze you against the discovery of what will.
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