Over the past decade there’s been a sharp uptick in what I call the “barbarian aesthetic”. Tattoos (often of skulls), beards, long hair, the suddenly popular hobby of axe throwing and the cultural cachet of Vikings and the Dothraki. These are but a few examples. Once you begin to notice you start seeing it everywhere. It’s a kind of performative masculinity analogous to a woman who feels the need to over sexualize herself in order to feel feminine. Such men often listen to Joe Rogan or Jocko Willink and they follow trends like swinging kettle bells and taking ice baths or becoming hyper focused on their deadlift numbers.
Nothing’s wrong with any of that.
I’m not knocking it at all. Joe Rogan has some great shows and kettle bells are good for you and axe throwing is fun. Great. Awesome. Keep at it. What I do take issue with is the idea that doing such things makes you an iota closer to being a real man. Or, at least, a free one. That’s what a barbarian fundamentally is after all. A free man. Someone outside of the system. Covering yourself in tattoos and building up your biceps is fine and good but if you’re still a code monkey in a corporate office somewhere you’re just LARPing. And LARPing is fine. LARPing can be fun. But recognize that’s what it is. It’s live action role play. You’re not the tough guy you’re pretending to be.
Just as I believe most women over sexualize themselves because they don’t have a real loving partner in their lives, I believe men overcompensate for being what is essentially a corporate serf. By and large, most men in the “developed world” do not have agency in their lives nor control over their own time. A boss or a manager tells them when they have to be somewhere and when they can take off. They must adhere to arcane and constantly changing codes of conduct set by others. Their dress code is dictated to them. Their speech has to be “professional”. In essence they’re selling their freedom for money and no amount of skull stickers on your pickup truck or AR-15s is going to change that. It’s been said that the only real chains are supply chains, and he who controls your ability to feed yourself is de facto your master. That’s actually where the term “lord” originated, from the word loaf. The lord was the keeper of the bread. The guy you worked for to get food. Slowly, without anybody really noticing, society has drifted into something closer to neo-feudalism than anybody is comfortable admitting. The word “lord” is out of fashion but “C.E.O.” works just as well. The fiefdoms are decentralized today but nonetheless very real. The world full of people struggling to move up a single rung on the corporate ladder, everybody with a boss, a master, a lord.
This is not barbarianism. That’s all.
To be clear, I also have a pickup truck. I also own guns (not an AR-15 in my case, mostly just hunting rifles and shotguns). I’ve also swung kettle bells and done BJJ. I’m not saying these behaviors are bad in themselves. I’m saying they’re bad when they’re compensating for what is essentially a form of soft slavery and perpetual adolescence. Men out there are almost forty years old and still asking permission to go out for lunch and trying not to be tardy. People will tell me there’s not really any other option available for most people and they’re probably right. I just find it somewhat grotesque to plaster “Molon Labe” on the back of your car and then spend your life taking orders from an HR woman named Danielle.
In my vision of an ideal world most people are self employed and reasonably self sufficient. They are the keepers of their own bread. They are their own lords. That’s what the people who first uttered “Molon Labe” were. Landowners. People that sustained their own livlihoods. Maybe this is unattainable in a modern industrialized information economy. Maybe it isn’t and we just haven’t tried. I’m not sure. I am sure however that I believe the words of the late American Author Edward Abbey:
“If America could be, once again, a nation of self-reliant farmers, craftsmen, hunters, ranchers, and artists, then the rich would have little power to dominate others. Nether to serve nor to rule: That was the American dream.”
Edward Abbey
We need a return to the physical. A return to digging in the dirt and cutting down trees and hauling fish out of the water for your supper. All that is needed for survival is out there, in the Earth. No it won’t be fancy and you probably won’t be the coolest kid on Instagram. Sure. But you just might attain a degree of real unfettered freedom. I think that’s worth it. I think you might be able to live a life where you wake up and decide for yourself what to do with your time and not have it dictated to you by others. I really think you might be able to do that. Don’t be afraid to try. Don’t be scared that you won’t have enough if you strike out on your own and go free.
Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?
And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
Jesus
I believe part of the gospel is that you can be free. Not simply one day in Heaven, but here, now too. The fear that you have that the company “owns” you is just that. A fear. The fear that you wouldn’t make it on your own is the same. God will provide for you if you step out and try to pursue what is good. What you were made to do. The inner calling of your heart.
Be your own lord. Be your own master. Have faith in God and get your own bread.
Then, hey, sure, maybe get some tattoos.
Brilliant! I thoroughly enjoyed this piece.Thank you.