Month: May 2021

But the concept that lies at the root of all of Girard’s theories is the idea of mimesis. Mimesis is the idea that humans copy each other and that it is at the core of being human. Humans “Mime” each other. When I first heard this, I was unimpressed. Everyone knows our capacity for rationality is at the heart of being human. But upon letting that idea marinate, I realized that mimesis is essential. Mimesis is the core of education and the passing of knowledge. What good is being rational and discovery if you can’t pass it on and teach it? The ability to teach and build upon logical findings is a defining human characteristic. Rationality without mimesis is not that impressive.

Mimesis is so ingrained in humanity that we often don’t realize we are copying people. But instinctually, we seem to know that it’s essential. The concept of having Role Models or heroes speaks to this truth. And the phrase my mom used to yell at me when I was younger, “Be a good example for your sister,” also speaks to this innate subconscious human tendency to imitate each other. 

I won’t go into the whole history of Rene Girard or his entire theory on scapegoating, which builds on mimesis. That’s a topic for another post. I’ll recommend his book, “I See Satan Fall Like Lightning,” for a good introduction to Mimetic theory and Rene Girard. 

There are practical implications to this understanding that humans have a mimetic desire. We will subconsciously copy the people we are around, or in the modern world, we will imitate the media we consume. Therefore we must surround ourselves with good people and good ideas. We live in a world that is antithetical to most Christian beliefs. Every day anti-Christian views bombard us. Humans have…

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Management is about the known. Exploration is about the unknown. Dwight Gibson has studied the techniques of the explorers from the great age of exploration. He will discuss how people and organizations can make use of those oft-forgotten methods to help navigate today’s uncertain and unprecedented world.

Be sure to check out the live stream with Dwight Gibson on May 27th at 2:00 pm Eastern time.

Feel free t check out all of Aaron’s live streams, and see the last live stream with C. R. Wiley.

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This post is the third and final post in a series and is taken from excerpts from Masculinist Newsletter #40. Here are Part One and Part Two.

Lean into your support network, recognizing that they will struggle to help you and may well fail you.  If you are going through a personal trauma like divorce, you need to have personal relationships to sustain you through that. Sadly, many men don’t have many other male friends, and divorce itself may end up cutting you off from what you thought was your support network. Many married men, for example, are friends primarily with other married couples, and that because the wives are friends with his wife. It can end up that the divorcing wife keeps the friends and the husband gets frozen out or ends up more distant from his previous network.

Churches tend to be unrelentingly pro-wife in their public teachings, but in my admittedly limited observations, pastors tend to be more evenhanded in private counseling situations. Nevertheless, you may find yourself explicitly or more likely implicitly expelled from your church. The other women of the church may well side with your ex-wife, which can render your position untenable.

In either case, I don’t think there’s much to be gained to try saving these relationships once they evaporate or go south, except for other men who were your personal friends prior to meeting and marrying your wife. In my view, they are just part of the losses you take when divorce happens. Best to accept it and move on. You can always try to rebuild these relationships later when the fallout of the divorce has died down.

You do need to press into what relationships with other men you do have. (I’d avoid relationships with…

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Aaron M. Renn

When I started the Masculinist, the church was a barren wasteland for advice on sexuality. I barely saw anyone else writing constructively about even the most basic issues—things like attraction, the differences between men and women, marriage, divorce.

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The GOP here thinks it’s clever. Last week the Biden administration got less than stellar economic news, and the GOP is trying to pile on. However, they’ve managed to self-own themselves. They’ve worked themselves into the position of wanting to separate children from their mothers. Getting mothers back to work, because the “economy” is more important than the family.

The GOP is denigrating motherhood and putting children in poorly run government schools to own the libs. An anti-family movement is growing in the GOP; we’ve posted about that before.

I have a traditional Christian perspective. Because of that, I am admittedly more sympathetic to the Republican party. In the recent past, the GOP used to show lip service to the idea of “family values” or caring about families. But boy, is it hard to support the GOP when it puts out tweets like this. 

Neither major party supports families or wants to see families flourish. The GOP, which we thought would stand for these issues, has a strong current within it that’s more interested in owning libs than actually seeing this country succeed. 

Keep that in mind when supporting politicians or going to the voting booth.

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