Thread by @startupdaemon

THE MASCULINE ARCHETYPES AND THE BED OF PROCRUSTES

Procrustes was the villainous son of Poseidon, the lord of the sea-ocean and patron god of old Atlantis.

The best of men inflict on themselves the same villainy as Procrustes did on his unsuspecting victims.

Every day Procrustes invited passing travellers to overnight in his mountain stronghold.

Every night Procrustes lay his guests to sleep in an iron bed.

If his guests came too short, Procrustes set to work on them with his smith’s hammer to fit them in.

If his guests proved too tall, Procrustes cut them in to size with his scythe and sickle.

Theseus, the mythic founder of Athens, ended Procrustes’s reign of terror by fitting him to his own bed.

Every time you try to fit you Character to someone else's pattern, you make your own bed of Procrustes.

As a child, you are a receptacle for new experiences, a sponge for impressions and stimuli. Your react to survive.

As an adult, you have to be the author of your own action, regardless of circumstances. You act to create.

The masculine archetypes are many, but the timeless distinction is between normies and misfits, the accepted and the rejected sons.

Nowadays, the male archetype isn’t Zeus or Hades – it’s Jim from ‘The Office’, a spineless degenerate who wastes his days in senseless pranks.

The degenerate culture has left young men starved of masculine mentors and leaders.

They can become the mindless jims of the world or fall victim to fitting themselves in the bed of Procrustes.

Maturation is a process of transcendence of established patterns and received wisdoms, not of fitting into them more snugly.

The men who fit perfectly in any of the archetypes are the men who never transcended – and never grew up.

The normie men of old are one type of Procrustean victim.

Years pass and they realize that the archetypal straightjacket won't hold them.

They can’t fit the button-down world or the shrinking button-down world rejects them. They end up day-drinking and lying to their ex-wives.

Let the fate of the normie men of old be your warning.

The world ejects them from their loathsome jobs because they were too busy fitting in to shape it.

They gave up their masculine agency to be another brick in the corporate wall.

Without agency, you become a future victim.

This is not my judgement, it is the judgement of timelessness.

Get triggered and defensive or get triggered and empowered.

'Once he was a well-dressed professional, now everyone despises him.'

Here’s the deal.

He despised himself when he was the well-dressed professional.

Because he knew it was a fragile façade, and he was a scared child behind it.

Every time you try to fit an archetype, you fit yourself into your own bed of Procrustes.

What are you by nature?

It doesn’t matter.

As an adult, you have to cut out your own suit and carve out your own niche.

It is no less childish to be the misfit than it is to be the normie.

Maturation isn’t like filling out a colouring book.

Caricatures aren’t adult individuals.

In adulthood, you don’t ‘find yourself’. You face your childhood demons and consume your Shadow, but to create your own Character.

Self-authorship is the essence of adulthood. You must craft your own image and a world unto it.

Create yourself, and you will shape the world.