it's interesting that there are no legal ways to take risks unless you've got money

Join the army?

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Ok, that's a fair point. It's probably less fun than climbing Everest, though.

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Taking risk and experiencing excitement are not the same things.

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Even with a shooting war going on, joining the army is far more likely to net you boredom and chickenshit than an outlet for acceptable risk-taking.

(Or, to quote from Murphy's Laws of Combat: "Don't be a hero. It tends to draw fire." Also: "Avoid drawing fire. It tends to annoy those around you.")

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Am I the only male person who feels really, really alienated from my gender whenever I read these laments about how Men aren't allowed to be Manly Men any more?

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Possibly not. However, there does seem to be some kind of motive behind the "men will be boys" justification (and behaviour) that does need some sort of productive outlet that isn't out there right now.

-- Steve can't resist ending this with "maybe it's a thumos."

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Probably not.

Even among men, the proportion who have thumos as a primary motivation may not be all that high, but damn, they're noisy.

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Actually, I think it's the people who write these laments who are really, really alienated.

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Legal ways to take risks--thinking of Russ's short-short "Risks," you could always leave the tuna salad out overnight and then eat it. Go jogging in the dark, on a road, wearing dark clothes.

But it's not just about risk--it's a particular kind of risk, one that has either a particular sort of adrenaline rush, or (at least the belief that) the person taking the risk has some control over the issue.

You don't have to be rich to join the local fire department.

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Don't need money to go rock climbing either, there are plenty of adrenaline junkies who go out w/out rope, chalk, or expensive shoes. Just build up the body strength, and find a large chunk of rock. Or those survivalists who go out and spend a week camping with only what food and materials they can find naturally. I think those sort of things would fit well with the whole Thumos idea.

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For a lot of people, it takes money just to get to the interesting rock.

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true, but you don't have to be rich to do that. I mean, you can walk or ride a bike to fairmount park and find some fun climbing (we used to do that all the time when i lived in the city)

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The rock doesn't have to be "interesting." It has to be something a person can climb and risk breaking his neck. (Pronoun chosen on purpose.) Boston is not in mountainous terrain at all, and a person can take the commuter rail to sufficiently dangerous climbing areas. With a car, it becomes possible to go on a weekday afternoon between work and summer sunset, but on the weekend it takes less than $10, plus patience and stubbornness.

In less rocky areas, or areas without commuter rail, young men take other risks. They hike into the desert. They swim alone at night in reservoirs. They dare each other to tumble in clothes dryers.

Have you ever watched teenaged boys showing off at a skateboard park? (Sometimes there are a few girls, but it's mostly boys.) No legal ways to take risks unless you've got money? I suppose a skateboard does cost something. But it's not something exclusively for the rich.

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There are serious rock climbers in the northern parts of Central Park. That's in walking distance of a number of poor neighborhoods, and if not, I suspect that a teenager who's looking to take risks wouldn't mind jumping the turnstile to get on the subway up there.

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You're absolutely right--I'd forgotten about skateboarding. My only excuse is that the skateboarding I happen to have seen in Philly (possibly I haven't been to the right places) has been really unambitious.

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I'm afraid I'm not buying a word of this.

The only way for this to even attain coherence in my mind is for me to accept that the following words are being used in a way that bears no resemblance to the english language I use: man, manly, manliness, feminism, security, professionalism, courage, democracy, role model, hero, equality, reason, war, peace, risk.

On my planet, manliness does not prefer war, stupidity and insanity do.

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Ok, the way I see it is thumos makes sense as a desire to do difficult risky things. It can manifest in various ways, depending on how much good sense and good will a person has or lacks. I see the gender aspect, but it wasn't the important part for me.

I tend to be a low thumos person, and am also somewhat depressed. One aspect of the latter that I'm working on [1] is my habit of thinking that huge numbers of people are getting things right while I'm getting them wrong, and one of the things that can set that off is thinking about high thumos people. It might just be my craziness (thinking that a lot of traits are crucially wonderful precisely because I don't have them), but it seems to me that doing some difficult risky things gets a lot of respect, even when there's no point to them.

For me, it was a relief to see thumos presented as just another human trait which needs to be kept in proportion rather than feeling as though there's something wrong with me because I don't want to do triathelons.

[1] I had a sudden insight recently. An ljer who I read has fairly serious medical problems, works part time (was full time until disability made it impossible), is raising a kid, ljs intensively, is writing a complicated fantasy story I haven't been following, and is setting up to do a dramatic charity thing which also involves raising a fair chunk of money. I was reading about the charity thing, and suddenly realized I don't have to beat myself up because I'm not doing that. It was the first time I'd gotten sufficiently outside the habit of self-attack to viscerally realize it was a thing I was doing rather than something which was just happening.

I entirely realize she doesn't do any of that stuff to make other people feel bad--I'm talking about the inside of my head, not the inside of her head.

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Just tripped across that interesting word and found your blog. I don't know that in our world, it is entirely appropriate to take only Plato's word on thumos, because our world is much less gender specific than his. He would of course claim that courage/spiritedness is a male characteristic because Greek women were not allowed to wander out of the household, let alone do battle. What makes very young children, male or female, call out to their parents or friends: "Look at me!" We want to mean something to the people who feed us and protect us, but we also ALL feel that desire for recognition. I don't think it's just about risky behavior. We want to achieve and be rewarded. As an artist, just the act of making art is achievement that can be compared to focused passion. Maybe this association with "manliness" is incorrect in the sense that it obviously exists in both men and women. I believe that it does seem to be a human reality, and maybe someday point to what makes people afraid of risk, as well as madly pursuing it.

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