Last updated on December 26th, 2023 at 01:24 am
Real men work, and they work hard. If you ever come across a man who says he doesn’t want to work, then recognize that he is not a man. Rather, he is a child playing pretend in the adult world. A great career is more than just holding down a job. It is working consistently, fueled by purpose. Since Adam was assigned to tend to the Garden of Eden, Man has taken it upon himself to work. Men have built pyramids that have stood for thousands of years. They’ve built boats that have circumnavigated the globe. They’ve built highways and railroads that have crisscrossed continents. With their minds, they’ve worked to develop vaccines for diseases such as polio and tetanus. They built atomic bombs and wrote code to connect the world through computers. Real men work, and they take pride in their work (sometimes to an unhealthy level).
By no means am I diminishing the contributions of our female counterparts. I am simply trying to stress a key truth about manhood. You, Must. Work. Sadly, we live in a time where “men” are losing sight of this reality. Pew Research released a study in 2022 showing that for the first time in the history of America, women outnumbered men in the college-educated workforce.
But Sam, that’s because women are going to college for Art degrees and English degrees. It’s not really the same thing. Au contraire sir. It is true that the difficulty of the degree may not be on par with male-dominated fields, but the most interesting statistic is shown in the following picture.
Notice that the percentage drop for All Ages 25+ for men is QUADRUPLE that of women. This is simply following a disconcerting trend that we’ve seen developing since the 1950s.
Somewhere, a switch flipped in a lot of men’s heads, and they decided that working wasn’t too important anymore. This enlightenment has been propagated by the culture many of today’s men have grown up in. I believe that there are 3 key culture wars that we need to be on guard against as we prepare for, start, and develop in our careers. It is imperative that we don’t fall prey to this mentality. If this mentality has already become your reality, then I hope this serves, serving as a wake-up call to the direness of your predicament.
A culture of emasculation prevents a great career.
Since the beginning of the radical feminist movement in the 1970s, the emasculation of men has become increasingly mainstream. When did society deem it reprehensible for men to behave in manly ways? To allow a boy to play with toy trucks and soldier figurines is child abuse. To open a door for a lady tells her that you think she is weak. Waiting until marriage for sex tells a woman that she is undesirable. Desiring to take time to be a father and husband means that you don’t have what it takes to develop your career. Desiring to excel in your career means that you are doing so at the behest of a much more deserving female. In fact, she is suffering because of the wage gap you’re helping to perpetuate by seeking the promotion! I see the response, and I understand that the original intent was to feminize men. Sadly, this has been largely successful in our culture, and it has prevented many a man from having a great career.
It’s gotten so bad that we celebrate men who pretend to be women! Dylan Mulvaney, Bruce Jenner, Richard Levine, and James Charles are all perfect examples of this. These are all men who decided of their own volition to participate in emasculation for the purposes of personal branding and personal wealth. Absolutely disgusting.
So what are you doing about it? We don’t need to storm the streets in revolt, but we should live our lives in a way that unequivocally denies and denounces these influences in our culture. No man should spend an hour fixing their hair, or binge-watch romance flicks, or peruse the clothing aisles at the mall. There is nothing wrong with supporting your woman and giving your time to do things with her, but this shouldn’t be your go-to when you are operating solo. Men should understand how to shoot a gun, how to cook a meal, how to change a tire, and how to tie a tie. They should know how to both throw a punch and hold their peace. Men need to know how to defend a lady’s honor in both word and deed. They need to know how to lead in their work.
A culture of emasculation seeks to take these things from men. It tells them to model themselves after femininity, which is disturbing and evil. I once counseled a child who had no male role models in his life. He was raised by his mother and grandmother. He knew how to garden flowers and watch soaps. In talking with him, four things stuck with me. He didn’t like getting his hands dirty, he was somewhat overly emotional, he was insanely polite, and he missed having a dad. He loved his mother and grandmother, but he was getting to an age where he needed a man in his life to talk about things with. He was feeling urges that he didn’t understand. He was beginning to look at girls differently. I poured into him all I could, but I realized that he needed a more permanent fixture in his life than I could be. If no man stepped up to the plate, there was the chance that he would go on to be emasculated. He would be celebrated in the culture that seeks to bring men to their knees. He would be another success story. Another boy without a father who was, by no fault of his own, turned into a pseudo-woman. He would grow up and take this mentality into his job and his relationships. We can make a difference by standing strong on our beliefs, working both inside our families and in our jobs to counteract this. As you develop your career, you must remember that you are not doing it just for yourself.
Boys will look up to men. We have enough boys who look up to weak, yellow-bellied athletes. We have enough boys who look up to cross-dressing entertainers, and womanizing musicians. We need men in the workplace who work as real men do. Men who these boys can look up to. Men who aren’t afraid of grease and sweat. Men who use both their minds and their hands, working to make tomorrow better than today. We need men who understand that being a great man is part of having a great career. Whether the job is white-collar or blue-collar, whether it is behind the scenes or out front, there is an opportunity for every man if only he decides to take it.
A culture of instant gratification prevents a great career.
When I was in college, I spent a lot of time listening. I would listen to professors, I would listen to TAs, and I would listen to fellow students. A common theme that ran among my peers was the desire to be rich. After all, software engineering has the potential to be a very lucrative field. When I began my freshman year of Computer Science courses, the professors asked us why we chose the major, and that same answer came up repeatedly. I want to make a lot of money. Interestingly enough, the majority of the kids who gave that response ended up dropping out of the major that first year. What started as a class of over 50 turned into a class of less than 15. Why? These students wanted instant gratification instead of a great career. They wanted the result without the work.
I saw a similar trend when I graduated. Students got into the workforce but became dissatisfied with their entry-level wages. They wanted the promotion now. They wanted the bump up now. They wanted to live the life that their parents had afforded them right on. Rather than being wise and saving, working to learn and excel where they were placed, they quickly became frustrated. Many quit. These boys never became men. They never understood the value of hard work. They never understood the time that it takes for hard work to pay off, especially in a career.
When I was a child and I asked for a toy, the answer was almost always no. If I hadn’t saved up the money from birthdays and Christmases, I’d have to wait until one of those times to get what I wanted. As Christmas approached, I’d make lists of what I wanted, and then narrow it down to what I REALLY wanted, because I knew there was no way I was getting all of it. As I got older, I decided to try bartering with my parents, to see if I could combine their Christmas fund for me with money I had saved, to get a particular thing. I learned at a young age the importance of waiting. I came to find that the thing I wanted in July wasn’t as important to me in September.
This is a key realization that every boy must come to if he is to become a man. Mastering a delay of self-gratification will take you farther almost everywhere in life. You will be a better worker, a better significant other, a better friend, and a better person because you will learn to put things before your wants.
I may want a bigger title in my job or a bigger paycheck, but I have learned that I need to delay these wants and focus on excelling where God has placed me. If that means that I’m not able to buy a particular car, or I have to save up longer before I put that down payment on a house, so be it. If I have to share an office with a coworker, rather than getting my own, so be it. If I have to get up early and leave late, so be it.
Somewhere along the way, we decided that all of life needed to work like Amazon Prime. We needed one-day shipping on all of our dreams and goals. You pair a mindset like that with a couple of credit cards, and you have a serious problem on your hands. You pair a mindset like that with an entry-level career position, and you will almost always be disappointed. Learn now to be content with the wait, and you will see that a great career lies in your future.
A culture of normalization prevents a great career.
Nobody is different anymore. It seems like everyone marches to the beat of the same drum and sings the same tune. We are all supposed to accept and laude whatever foolishness is put on display in front of our faces, and we are supposed to march lockstep to the gates of hell, bleeding uniformity. If you take a minute to think about it, you realize how sickening it really is. This all comes from a place of normalization. In an attempt to make everything and every one equal, someone made the decision to normalize all behaviors and statuses.
A good case study for this phenomenon is K-12 academia. There was a time when participation trophies weren’t a thing. There was a time when, if a child flippantly refused to apply himself to his studies, he would not progress through the educational system. He would handicap himself of his own volition, then he would feel rightful shame as his peers progressed and left him behind. Under the tactful guidance of his instructors, the child’s natural aversion to shame would then push him to perform better, take his studies seriously, and get back on track.
As America became a wealthier nation, and the attitude of entitlement began to rear its ugly head among our youth, the government stepped in with the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. Seeing the drop in educational scores nationwide, the government attempted to act. Well-meaning in its purpose, but catastrophic in its execution, the NCLB act incentivized teachers and administrators to push children through the system or risk not meeting Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) goals. Not meeting AYP goals meant being subject to penalties at the federal level. NCLB also propagated the tragedy of standardized testing, which encouraged teachers to teach a narrow subset of subject matter (so that the student would pass the test), rather than teach more holistically and give students a deeper understanding of the curriculum as a whole. Missouri even admitted to lowering the academic standard in order to perform better on the standardized test!
Alas, “leveling the playing field” often means bringing everyone down to the lowest rung on the ladder. Our younger generations of men have been content to go through lackluster programs where they aren’t challenged to do more. They’re encouraged to simply satisfy the metric. On top of this, many of them become enamored by the meaningless popularity brought on by their high school baseball careers, or their Hudl stats, and they peak way before these formative years have really begun to pay off. And thus they become a statistic.
What would happen if a young boy challenged himself to study more than to simply pass the grade? What would happen if a college student spent his summers working through internships, rather than partying in the tropics? What would happen if that fresh hire didn’t spend his first years making “big-boy money” buying cars and clothes and boats and alcohol? How different could it be? In today’s time, it wouldn’t be normal to climb higher on the ladder or rock the boat. There is an expectation in our culture to behave as our peers behave. Statistically, it would seem that this means living in a state of financial and/or social immaturity until your 30s. This is ridiculous, and we should take great pains not to fall into this trap if we are to have great careers.
Recap
Work is essential if you are a man. You should be seeking to provide for yourself and those that God has placed in your care. As you seek to accomplish this, you should do so with a spirit of determination, power, and humility. Don’t let this culture cripple you by telling you to “get in touch with your feminine side”. You need to respect women and work in tandem with them, but you should not operate as one of them. Don’t get wrapped up in trying to make your dreams next-day delivery. Realize that a great career is built on a good foundation, and sometimes it takes a while for a sturdy foundation to be poured. Thirdly, don’t seek to meld yourself into the pack. Rise above the pack. Don’t deviously undercut the competition, but don’t be content to be average and do what everyone else is doing in their careers. Whether it is in academics or in the workplace, make it a point to seek to excel above and beyond.
