Look for the best in a man, and don’t be surprised when he steps up.
Dave Doolin´s last blog ..Merry Christmas from Website In A Weekend

But (as with any paradigm), it becomes difficult to recognize that it isn’t the only tool available.

It is great for Getting Stuff Done. But, not necessarily in the Modern, Interconnected world.

Hmmm. I mentioned “Real Men” stepping up when something needs to be done, and no one is doing it – the corollary is that you don’t step in when someone else IS doing it. This distributed nature helps the system parallel process, and isolates failure in a loose network.

But, the “isolation” is artificial in a tight network, failure affects the whole network, and pretending it doesn’t does its own damage.

So, we men have been learning new tools to better work in the Modern world, but we have the Control tool in our back pocket. Learning where and when to use it is yet another lesson.

This really does fit in so well with the control paradigm you guys talked about in the Freak Revolution Manifesto. It’s funny how we can wrestle with the same problem in so many different guises.
Hayden Tompkins´s last blog ..The Controversial Way I Saved My Marriage

Real Men ™ are guys who are good at this – others look to them to fill in the empty space and get things done.

Leaders-of-Men ™ are guys who do this with their personality – they push themselves out and fill in the space. Man-training says to let them, but make sure you keep pressing yourself outward, too. Not from competition, but so the Leader knows the boundary, and knows how to better use you.

Those are the ideals, the archetypes. Some take the Real Man image and forget that it is supposed to be about getting stuff done (stuff no one else wants to do), not getting what you want. Others take the Leader to mean they must control everything, and must crush all dissent.

Throw sex into the dominate/control paradigm we started with, and you can get a big mess.

The Man-model gone wrong can create catastrophically bad environments. But, by its top-down, individual nature, it is also one of the easiest environments to change.