When Yin is Respect, Love is Yang

No more are the days wherein almost any man's mere presence meant potential competition, violence, or reckoning. These days, however, are not far behind us as man's nature is itself a force to be reckoned with. Men and Women do not easily change their nature across the span of a generation, regardless of generational/behavioral corrections instituted by ideologues and politicians alike. Any pursuit to this end would naturally create a society of individuals who despise their own capacity and fall into imbalance with their esteem, leading to the collapse of the male/female synergy that remains blatantly in physiological stone. For, Men are of such nature that respect, status, opposition, and triumph are essential to survival; Women are of such nature that unconditional love, care, protection, and nourishment are necessary for life and new life. To reject this basis is folly, and leads only to anarchy. Even Rome saw the rapid decline of what was arguably the worlds greatest known civilization all at the drop of a coin bearing Yin and Yang; Masculine and Feminine in Harmony.

Sculpted in timeless stone, the David's gaze reminds onlookers that even the smallest, most underrated men can triumph over all odds and doubts, and most admirably, over "greater" men. Capacity and potential have an interesting way of correcting assumptive judgment when fruition is imminent. Young men ought to recognize this in their hopes of great achievement and persevere toward the understanding that achievement does not always arrive in prizes and gifts, but in solitary embrace of one's purpose. True fruition for men stems from the acceptance of masculinity, responsibility, hardship, and strife; masculinity is defined by its pursuit and crowned by its achievements. Yet the statue captures the moment before the stone flies, and what precedes that moment is not glory but dismissal — the youngest son, the shepherd, scorned by his own brother and laughed at by his enemy. Contempt comes first. Nor is contempt weightless; it registers in the body. Testosterone rises in men not at danger as such but at challenges to standing, and in cultures that bind manhood to honor, an insult is metabolized as an injury. How then are men to react when perceiving disrespect?

The ancients answered plainly, and their answer was that the question misplaces the burden. Epictetus taught that the man who reviles or strikes you does not insult you; the wound opens in your own judgment that his words were wounding (Enchiridion 20). Reputation, then, belongs among the things outside of our control; outside of the body, property, and office, all of them subject to restraint and held in the control of others (Enchiridion 1). A man who anchors his worth to another's opinion has not secured himself; he has merely chosen his master. What remains in his power is his own conduct, and that domain is total. Marcus, ruling an empire, still found it strange that a man will value his neighbor's opinion of him above his own (Meditations 12.4). The intrinsic solution, then, is not passivity but sovereignty: govern the passions, discharge the duty, and let the verdict fall where it will. Self-respect is the answer, because self-respect is the only respect a man can be certain to receive.

Take away thy opinion, and then there is taken away the complaint, "I have been harmed." Take away the complaint, and the harm is taken away.

— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, IV.7

A harder pill asserts that cowardice often prevails in pursuit of endurance. Peterson observes that a man may call himself virtuous when he is merely harmless; the rabbit is not good, it is only edible. His first rule instructs a man to stand up straight with his shoulders back, and the instruction is not cosmetic: to carry oneself as a defeated animal is to adopt the chemistry of defeat, and to invite from others the treatment that confirms it (12 Rules for Life, Rule 1). Hierarchies outdate our species and are indifferent to our rebellion against them. A man who thinks himself above the contest has not escaped it, but rather forfeited it. Worse, the contempt he swallows does not vanish. It ferments. Peterson warns that weak men are the dangerous ones, and that the resentment a man refuses to manage or confront will surface in the worst that men have to offer. The answer, on this account, is to demand respect — to make oneself formidable enough that the demand carries, and to hold that capacity under voluntary control rather than pretending it away. A harmless man is not a good man; a good man is a dangerous one who has that under command.

Make friends with people who want the best for you.

— Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life, Rule 3

It is common experience to have disagreement between the masculine and the feminine on the topic of respect. To ask a common woman their idea and definition of respect, a primary response is comparable to common decency. Respect everyone equally, and hold space for everyone, as all humans deserve respect. To men, this is a slap to the face; men, who see respect as hierarchal, essential to structure, essential to survival; men who respect the bear for fear of death, pain, and humiliation. Biblically, the fear of God is more the ultimate form of respect toward God. Respect, then, is far greater in the world of men and far more necessary. Why do women seem to take it lightly; sum it up to mere consideration and sympathy? Because the meaning is foreign to their tongue. Women speak in love, consideration, empathy, care, and nurture — a stark change of scenery from the masculine world. Women so need to feel loved and experience love, that the mere absence of love and care creates rebellion against their source.

To men, love is not a necessity, but a luxury; not always present and not always needed, but preferable to have. Needless to say, men are so well versed in the world of honor, respect, and status that they speak the language natively, and women are so much more fluent in social grace, care, and affection that the two rarely arrive at the same sentence. It is the sad disposition that offense between the masculine and the feminine is so often a loss of translation. Men who desire respect, but receive an outpouring of social grace; women who feel unheard and disconnected, and receive protocol. Each has spoken the truest thing he knows in the only tongue he has, and watched it land as noise. Men, being individually minded, have been schooled at length in the modern age on the requirements and importance of the feminine dialect per se. Have women been so schooled in the grammar of respect? A woman may state plainly that she requires love and the age calls it health; let a man state as plainly that he requires respect, and the age hears entitlement.

Retrospectively, the David possesses a truth of the capacity of Men: only because of the character of David was he able to conquer in righteousness. The male body is built outward and armored. Muscle laid over the frame like plating, the strength of it worn where it can be seen and measured, nothing vital left soft. It is a body that announces itself before it speaks, and it is read at a distance, assessed, ranked. This is how a man is met by the world, and so it is how he learns to ask for what he needs: in the open, in the language of standing, by demonstration rather than confession. He is built to be evaluated, and the tragedy of him is that evaluation is the only affection he trusts. The female is built the inverse; the vital work housed and shielded, the whole of it composed to protect what cannot be seen. It is a body that yields nothing to a glance, that must be known rather than assessed. A woman learns to ask in the language of nearness, by being attended to, by the slow work of another coming to understand what is not on the surface. Even in our physiological natures, our disposition is definitive.

What breaks the deadlock is the willingness to give what has not been given. A man who extends care unearned by any prior warmth; who attends to her on the day she has offered him nothing; who continues in a tongue that does not come naturally to him, even where it goes unanswered. A woman who grants him standing before he has proven anything; who takes him seriously in the hour he is least impressive; who treats his competence as real when nothing in the moment obliges her to. This is not fairness, and it was never intended to be. It is the deliberate refusal to make another's need contingent upon one's own satisfaction, and it is the only thing that has ever broken a stalemate between two people who are both, in their separate languages, asking to be met. Each holds what the other cannot manufacture alone. The one who moves first has not lost; he has ended the standoff, and the other, receiving at last what she had ceased to expect, discovers she has something to give in return.

Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it.

— Ephesians 5:25, KJV

All things carry the yin and embrace the yang, and through their union they reach harmony.

— Tao Te Ching

Synergy of the Masculine and Feminine adopts the language of each. In a society that lambasts both, it falls to the individual to rebuild foundations of harmony. A world where men are respected and women are cherished is a paradise formed upon the constant circular progress of true humanity. Attrition of society due to a lack of translation is the whimpering end of progress. Simple effort to understand and interact with honor and compassion, with perseverance and dedication would make for a substantial medicament.

References

1. Aurelius, Marcus. Meditations. Translated by George Long, 1862.
2. Cohen, Dov, et al. "Insult, Aggression, and the Southern Culture of Honor: An 'Experimental Ethnography'." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 70, no. 5, 1996, pp. 945–960.
3. Epictetus. The Enchiridion. Translated by George Long, George Bell and Sons, 1888.
4. The Holy Bible. King James Version.
5. Laozi. Tao Te Ching. Translated by James Legge, 1891.
6. Peterson, Jordan B. 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. Random House Canada, 2018.
7. Sapolsky, Robert M. Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst. Penguin Press, 2017.
8. Taylor, Shelley E., et al. "Biobehavioral Responses to Stress in Females: Tend-and-Befriend, Not Fight-or-Flight." Psychological Review, vol. 107, no. 3, 2000, pp. 411–429.