To Be a Gentlemen, You Still Have to Embrace the Animal…
What you refuse to be could also be what you need to allow.
There’s always blood on the wall.
Some just choose to hide it.
I’ve written a lot about the soul: its purpose, recognizing its voice, and using it to not just to be yourself, but to be something valuable…
But that doesn’t mean purity, Reader.
We aren’t anything without something to push against…and even the soul is created and grown out of the bestial antagonist.
…
Friction is necessary.
- It’s why success demands proof of hard work.
- It’s why the athletic body demands you to defy gravity.
- It’s why true love demands heartbreak.
So what do you think the animal in us is?
It’s friction.
We must admit to the fact that we are uncivilized too. That we’re raw. That we’re skeptical. That we’re dark and vicious. That we’re gross and abominable sometimes.
Understand though, that we’re not our thoughts.
We are the negotiators of them.
Our impulsive thoughts can be dark just as much as they can be angelic. They can be obvious just as much as they can be mystic. They can be carnal just as much as they can be chaste.
It’s almost always true that as we age our character needs to embrace the opposite of itself to grow and mature.
Some need to learn to cage the animal… others need to release it.
This is for the caged.
…
The human:
I love creating persuasive words and questions to promote virtue.
I love making people smile and feel good about themselves.
I love saying things that make people believe in themselves.
I want to stash money for my niece’s future.
I want to be a leader and something to lean on for my family.
That’s the part of me that’s here to make a difference. I want to do/be good.
But there’s another part…
The other:
I want to find the man who made his dog scream last night and make him bleed.
I want to hold politicians hostage who want to destroy our country.
I want to send the people to prison who have made us ravenous consumers of horrible food, made us drug dependent, and made entertainment so convenient we sit at home to watch the lives of millionaires and hopeless romantics rather than live our own.
I want to trick the world and take it for all its worth just to say, ‘fuck you. I got mine.’
I dream of passing bodies and want to touch their butts and kiss their lips just out of lust.
I look arrogantly at men and pride myself on what they don’t have and I do.
I’ve wanted to stand on stages among the lights and call out the bullshit everyone cries over and laugh at the very not pure truth about the human experience.
That’s the part of me that wants to fight, that wants to be lethal, that wants to be a monster.
I’m a fucking animal.
I now see the good in it.
And even as a gentleman, I’m learning to embrace it.
We’re all animals in different ways.
But somehow most of us have tried desperately to suffocate it.
Why?
…
For a lot of us men, we attempt to be the White Knight.
We fantastically see what good we can be to people. What we can do for them and how we can lessen their suffering.
But what most don’t want to admit is that there’s a hidden transaction here. We want admiration from it, appreciation, love. We want to feel valuable so we don’t have to feel invaluable.
We do it to prove what violent men cannot…we’re worthy.
Is that really a good man though?
A narcissist is a manipulator…and it comes in more forms than one.
But, back to the point.
…
I thought for a long time that it was admirable to put others before me, to hold women up as the purest sex, to show default respect to all elders, and to emanate only what others said being human looked like from their perspective.
But…all others? All women? All elders? All other perspectives?
Fuck. That.
Do you see how much that will kill who you really are? To do everything for the sake of all others? To turn away from skepticism, from self-confidence, from self-acknowledgment? From internal intuition and wisdom?
I suppressed all darkness.
All anger, all impure thoughts, all immorality, all militant and aggressive natures. Or at least I tried to…
Why?
Because I thought being “the best” meant being the most pure. I thought it meant that if I did everything that defined being a “good person”, then I would get the money I wanted, the sex, the relationships, and the success.
But there’s something about suppressing the carnal animal.
To deny the elements of what we are, the shadow, the dark side of ourselves, we give ourselves to its influence.
It claws and tears at the soul, it corrupts the mind and clots the heart.
The beast with which we disassociate, the archaic version we think we’ve left behind still very much exists. And when we try to scold it and chain it down, it manipulates us and becomes a constant task of guarding it in its cage.
Because we don’t feed it. We don’t allow it to express itself, and by doing so learn to temper it.
Mold to it.
Use it for value.
…
I don’t know.
Maybe it’s because of the vow I spoke to never be the tyrannical father. The aggressive abuser. The belligerent addict. Maybe because of what I saw happen to others, I chose to be as harmless as a boy could stand being.
Or maybe it’s society’s current state.
This weird attempt to demoralize and unarm men because society somehow thinks a harmless and soft man will “do no harm.”
An all-encompassing nice man isn’t even a gentleman. He holds something back at the mercy of others. To keep from hurting feelings, he will suppress himself. He will stifle his thoughts and beliefs for the sake of uncomfortable energy and to remain seemingly unthreatening.
But…the animal still exists.
Why is that?
It’s because the world has tried to remove itself from animal kingdom. We’re constantly trying to remove the animal and preserve the mind. We’re trying to pacify the world as if it can sustain that imbalance.
…
The animal has it’s purpose. It’s not something that we need to eliminate or dissolve as we mature.
It’s a bonding of the different sides of ourselves. It’s the most authentic state we can develop.
And this state…this emotional and freeing energy of allowing ourselves to think openly…And to take that energy and toss it into the mixing bowl of all that we are….
That’s authenticity.
That’s being yourself.
That’s being powerful yet in control.
That’s the intelligent animal.
…
It doesn’t mean we want to sexually violate women or be vulgar.
It doesn’t mean we want to commit murder.
It doesn’t even mean that we want to sacrifice the civilized part of us just because it takes control.
Because life itself is our ability to mold ourselves; to take the vanilla and the chocolate and mix that shit.
All in order to make us actually human.
- To make us interesting.
- To make us bold enough to flirt in public.
- To make us courageous enough to speak our minds and seek out what we love.
- To make us embrace what we really are — civilized animals — and put it to good use both in love and in mission.
To all good men:
Avoid the white knight personality.
Avoid the Mr. Nice Guy syndrome.
Avoid perfection and harmlessness.
Embrace the animal.
Embrace the teeth and claws and howl.
Embrace the power to fight evil with your own darkness.
Don’t be afraid to be what you are. Be afraid to release yourself from other’s expectations. Take the animal within you and use it to your advantage.
“A harmless man is not a good man. A good man is a very very dangerous man who has that under voluntary control.”
Truth and Love, Gentlemen.
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