In my younger days, I thought a lot about what we, as a society, were doing to cultivate good men. I saw boys sidelined, teased, and stigmatized because they favored the arts rather than the gym. I watched the dominant model of manhood calcify around jocks, tough guys, and warriors. Working in Massachusetts correctional institutions and county houses of corrections, I met men whose boyhoods had been damaged in ways that would define their adulthoods. What struck me was how so many of them had absorbed the abuse they received only to inflict it on others. Anything that smelled of weakness had to be hidden, punished, or beaten out of someone else.
All of these encounters caused me to consider launching an organization and a magazine for boys and young men that would speak to their sense of self and accentuate the ethical principles of righteous manhood.
I wish I’d followed through on that aspiration, because time has proven I was onto something, and in the vacuum I didn’t fill, others, both positive and negative forces, have.
Read the entire commentary on Substack In The Center Lane With Herb Paine →
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