Men know the world isn't inherently good

Today's children are raised in comfort.  Their parents protect them from hard decisions and the pain of failure.  It's a logical strategy.  How can we make our kids happier?  Let's remove all forms of pain and sorrow.  This is a new way of raising children has not been tried before in history.  Some call it the self-esteem movement, where children only hear compliments with minimal negative feedback.  Children receive less discipline from their parents than prior generations.  Children see the glass as half full and a world full of endless possibilities, a world that is their oyster.  This raising technique is short term beneficial and long term detrimental, especially for boys.

The world is not inherently good.  People fight for resources every day - physically, emotionally, and economically.  There is pain everywhere - the pain of failure and loss.  There is darkness everywhere - the darkness of malevolent people and dangerous ideas.  The world is not the happy place that today's children are being raised to believe it is.  Understanding the world's evil is important for all people, but particularly boys and men.

Men are protectors.  From the simple tasks of killing the cockroach in the house to locking the doors at night to fighting our wars - men are the protectors of society.  Women can do these things also, but men are built by nature to be boundary setters - to protect their family and community from harm.  Women expect this from men, and men want to serve this function.  It's the load that nature designed men to bear.  When boys are raised in an environment where they are not forced to develop the discipline of battling hardship or the hard heart that comes with persevering through failure, they do not develop the skills to battle a world that is inherently not good.  This discipline and hard heart are part of the iron backbone that fully developed men have.

Boys must be taught to navigate a world that is not inherently good.  The world didn't defeat the Nazis with nice words and an optimistic attitude.  The burglar holding a family at knife point won't back off when he's told that he's being rude.  Men know the world is not inherently good and develop a darkness and an emotional resilience for battling the world's darkness with their own darkness.  A man's darkness doesn't define him, but he needs to be able to call on it.  It's an essential part of his maleness, and then world wants and needs men to have it.