The Code of Man: Love Courage Pride Family Country"In many ways," Waller R. Newell writes, "young men today are in deep spiritual trouble. But they are also yearning for a way back to the noblest ideals of American manhood." The Code of Man represents a deep and thought-provoking effort to help guide contemporary men back to those ideals, as embodied in what Newell calls the five paths to manliness: love, courage, pride, family, and country. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, he argues, we have grown so concerned about the roles of sex and violence in our society that we have forgotten the older virtues: romance and eros, courage and patriotism, the blend of love and bravery it takes to raise a family. In The Code of Man, he exhorts us to look to the traditional virtues of the past for inspiration. Contrasting the time-honored lessons of traditional voices -- Shakespeare and Abraham Lincoln, Jane Austen and Teddy Roosevelt -- with the chaotic signals emanating from sources like Eminem, video games like Thrill Kill, and Goth culture, Newell illustrates how we have come to associate courage with violence, "transgression" with wisdom. Most disturbing, he argues, the essential triumph of Western culture may have left us with a building reserve of untapped aggressive energy, and no consensus about how to channel it -- a situation that threatens to weaken us at the core. Seamlessly weaving together literary references from a diverse body of sources, Waller Newell offers an open-eyed look at what it means to be a man in America today, and a clarion call to recapture our traditions if we are to preserve our character as a society ... and avoid catastrophe. |
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... hearts they want to recover their voice and find another person to love . In this chapter , we will explore a proposition so deeply rooted in three thousand years of the Western tradition that to recover it today would amount al- most ...
... a pro- gressive ascent from bodily desire to the higher levels of family life , citi- zenship , and culture , until having reached the highest rungs , we have absorbed all those qualities of mind , heart , and 12 THE CODE OF MAN.
... heart , and soul that make a man complex , reflective , and interesting to himself and others . At every stage of this ascent , we become more virtuous and more satisfied emotionally . A man is attracted to a woman because he sees ...
... heart of medieval Christendom , supply- ing the dimensions of tenderness , compassion , and emotionalism less characteristic of the three male branches of the Trinity . The Virgin , he writes , " showed a marked weakness for chivalry ...
... heart , the perfect knight acted with restraint and modesty as he wooed his fair damsel . As a chivalrous man , he wanted his lady to love him for his worthy character . A man's love for his damsel gave him the strongest motive to ...
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