Book Review:The Way of Men

The Way of Men by Jack Donovan is the first book I read on masculinity and am glad I finally got around to reading it. In fact, this is the second reading; I found the book so profound I read it once, waited a few months, then read it again taking notes. I always figured any dissertations on masculinity were bound to be subjective, which is why I abstained from reading anything on this topic, but Dovovan does a fine job of considering his own bias as well as those that disagree with him and the result feels like an honest and clear look on masculinity.

The book is broken up in essentially two sections. The first goes over the virtues that Donovan believes are at the core of masculinity and the environment in which they are supposed to thrive, while the second part of the book is a synopsis on today’s culture and modernity and how that conflicts with Donovan’s beliefs on The Way of Men.

The Way of Men is The Way of the Gang, this is the central premise of the first section of the book. Humans have always broken off into groups based on their sex, and they interact differently between each other based on their sex. Masculinity is about trying to figure out how men should interact between themselves and how best to be of use to one another.

Before civilization, this is how survival took place. Gangs of men did the hunting, they provided the security, and built the basic infrastructure needed to repel the elements. In order to be more successful in these activities men naturally grouped up and performed the necessary work to ensure survival for a tribe.

It’s been theorized that as humans we can form meaningful relationships with no more than around 150 people, so gangs of men cannot grow indefinitely. Trust has to be built up, hierarchies created, and codes established so men know what is expected of them.  Donovan believes that the martial virtues are at the center of masculinity because throughout history gangs of men have had to cultivate them in their groups in order to ensure survival, and they are: strength, courage, mastery, and honor.

But when we examine the current cultural landscape today, these martial virtues are hard to find, especially in the ruling class. Who doesn’t shake their head in agreement when John Dutton tells Rip in the show Yellowstone “cowards rule the world these days, coward rules and coward customs.” In the past decade the idea of toxic masculinity has also sprung root in the lexicon of academicians to describe the virtues that men once revered. In a time of plenty where existential threats have faded there seems to be a concerted effort to re-imagine masculinity and make men more tame and accepting to a new order. This new order is more global where men are more removed from the decision making process and surrender ever more liberties to the ruling class.

If the proverb that “hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times” is true, then it’s hard to argue that we are at the stage where weak men have created hard times. People are more disillusioned than ever with governments and the leaders that represent them in the West. The inflation of the last few years has shaken the beliefs of many and hardly anyone in the middle class really believes that the systems we have in place really benefit them. In such an environment, the biggest threat the ruling class faces is gangs of men that begin to reassert their interests; therefore, it makes sense for them to break up and isolate men so they can’t resist.

The book makes many interesting points about how men function in today’s society and I found myself agreeing with many of them.

When I first started blogging over ten years ago I did so because the government I was living under was taking actions I thought were insane. My idea was that if people were only a little bit more educated on basic economics, logic, and some social sciences, then things would change rather quickly. That idea came crashing pretty quickly, and so my second idea was to promote drastic de-centralization, mostly in the form of secession. Texas should secede from the USA, Alberta from Canada, Barcelona from Spain, Veneto from Italy and so on. My thought was that if all the producers of welfare states stood up and refused to be taken advantage of, the system of predation set up by central governments would collapse pretty quickly and indeed a new order would spring forth, just not one the ruling class had in mind.

Even that though has been hard to achieve, and so in the last few years I focused a lot on the works of Jordan Peterson because I thought what if we as a society just focused on producing good men? Strong competent men, what would society look like then? A lot better I should think. I feel Donovan’s book is a neat little piece of the puzzle to orient men on a better path forward. At the end his suggestion is for men to start their own gangs and reinforce the tactical virtues. Go to the gym, go hunting, master skills, and look to each other, not a government that asks you to trade your liberty for more security that in the end it does not provide. This is even more of a radical step towards de-centralization than I had thought up but Donovan is right, this is even better.

In our age it seems men are more indoctrinated than at any other time in history. From an early age schooling is compulsory and most men will be told that to be properly educated they will have to attend university where even then the indoctrination does not seem to end. Any man that does not function well in these channels will most likely be prescribed drugs to calm him or otherwise be put through the institution system. Today we have the highest rates of incarceration we have ever had, perhaps in the past we could have relied on these more restless men to provide for our security or take up more dangerous jobs but in our world of plenty it seems these men are more expendable than before. In the words of Tyler Durden in the movie Fight Club today’s men are “working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man: No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war; our Great Depression is our lives.”

I believe The Way of Men is a path out of that depression for any man that is feeling it’s angst.