There were three important deaths recently: Ted Kaczynski, Silvio Berlusconi, Cormac McCarthy.
Or maybe not so strangely assorted; maybe the three men were variations on a theme — that theme being alienation, and specifically masculine alienation, from the patterns and rules of late-modern civilization, and the different rebellions that alienation might inspire.
In a phrase, when we talk about traditional modes of manhood, we’re often talking about mastery through physical strength and the capacity for violence.
That kind of mastery will always have some value, but it had more value in 1370 than 1870, and more in 1870 than it does today.
And the excess, the superfluity, must therefore be repressed, tamed or somehow educated away.
Persons:
Ted Kaczynski, Silvio Berlusconi, Cormac McCarthy, we’re