A dozen beers deep in Ireland. Weighing about 45lbs heavier. Drinking and lifting. I couldn’t keep up with my mates, drinking everyday from noon until night. I realized they were serious alcoholics. 6 months of this. Getting twisted was.no longer fun.
WHO ARE THE LIGHT BEARERS?
“Defective mythologies and inferior role models keep men boys. Do not follow lost men into the abyss. They cannot show you the way out. So many men have declared that there is no more need in this world for a savior and prophets; how foolish, how terrible and how wrong. It is bad enough when a man no longer wants to be a man; he commits a great crime against himself. Beware the culture that creates inferior men; their crimes injure many for generations. Indeed, they commit a great crime against the world.”~Michael Kurcina.
Every man who proposes to follow the tenants of the heroic man of myth should not be seduced by a banal culture and let his blood be diluted or his soul poisoned by it. The man of myth fights to preserve mankind and its traditional institutions; he fights to bring sensibility to an insensible world; he fights to save humanity but takes no part in its trivialities. Some men know well enough to never be wooed by a culture they’re supposed to make constant war with.
Super masculine men in cinema such as the characters portrayed by the actor John Wayne, in the movies Hondo, Rooster Cogburn, & Rio Bravo are very appealing to men and boys because they are virtuous and brave. The archetype of the gunfighter in particular was the alienated hero with an inability to hang up his gun. The Gunfighter’s focus was on the villain rather than the woman or boy that adored him. In those movies, the gunfighter is our idealized loner who saves the community but doesn’t integrate into our society. Civilization has failed its heroes. Civilization can be a trap that catches all men except its hermits. Mankind needs thoughtful heroes, cool-headed heroes immune to the perversions of a corrupt world. I think the most heroic of men are solitary by nature, and do not want to integrate into In this fearful world. Yes, the world needs fearless men. The bravest man in sandals and robe strode essentially naked, and unafraid with a metaphorical sword and disrupted empires. His words transformed societies for millennia. He came to upturn an irreverent world. Romans 12:2
SELF RESPECT
Have self-respect. Believe in what you build. Don’t violate that and you’ll have power. Break it and you’ll find yourself a slave to every opinion. Work with those that want to work with you.
Oftentimes people mistake your earnestness for foolishness or weakness rather than shrewdness.
Don’t meander off the path of your purpose or you’ll end up chasing other people’s schemes and regretting it later on.
Be humble, be durable, be teachable, build real relationships and the rest will follow. Along the way you’ll meet some good and bad people, sometimes they’re the same people.
If it comes time to fight back then be unrelenting, defend yourself, destroy them and salt the earth.
Don’t look back.
“I brought peace until they brought war so I brought war until they brought peace.”~Michael Kurcina
-Dont build a brand, build a man
-Dont seek a reputation for yourself, seek Christ
-Purpose must proceed identity.
-Brotherhood must be real and costly.
-Men need ordeal and not affirmations.
-Abstractions are man’s enemy.
-Men must train and turn their tragedy
into a potential.
-Man cannot force his initiation
into a tribe that doesn’t want him.
-Para social belonging and online
identities contribute to his spiritual decline.
-Online stimulation brings no real risk and therefore bo real consequences.
-Man must not belong to a society without obligation.
-Man must not gain status without
sacrifice or pain.
-Man flirts with danger and destruction.
-Man wants love and will sacrifice
for more of it. 📸 Ai version of me
MISS YOU MOMMA
How do we respond as sons, fathers, husbands and men, when someone that we love is physically injured by a violent attacker? What’s an appropriate response? Years and years ago in Oakland, California our mother was beaten and robbed of her welfare money by a group of despicable men, when she left the bank. One of them happened to punch her to the ground and to the day she died she had a visible scar put by his hard ring upon her gentle forehead. It split the skin open. I still recall my older brother looking at me, after the police left the house, he with a telling glance that signaled we should get into the car and kill all of them. This isn’t a confessional; no men were found and so no men were killed but it puts to the test how far are you willing to go? 20 years later mother passed away October of 2020. I have to say that I miss her. She wasn’t a weak person. Once, I picked her up from the hospital for fighting 3 men on the bus. Once for cutting a man across the shoulders with her knife. She never relented. She wasn’t an easy person to be with. She was tough like iron, on the outside, but it didn’t mean she didn’t suffer within. She made her way shuffling around Oakland as best as she could, despite living in a terrible neighborhood known for its crime. Feeding pigeons was a cheap form of entertainment and a way to not feel alone. She loved doing that. Sometimes I wonder if I did enough to provide, or to care for her, or if I visited her enough, but it’s too late now to cry over what was. Her unusual life is over. She’s at peace now. She accepted Christ years before she passed. My brother carried her ashes home and placed her in a mausoleum in Nga Trang, Vietnam, alongside my grandparents remains. After 50 years away she was home. I will always know the answer to my pointed question. 📸 TBT me
Journal entry 2016
“And just like that our summer died; time took with him youth and twenty, and our dying magic this sad belief that we could live forever.”~Michael Kurcina
Do something good with your sacred struggles. Fight against being complacent. Live deliberately, live strenuously, change the culture, change yourself but live and in years you’ll look back with wonder instead of regret and anger. We men succeed so very well and in so many things though our singular struggle is in finding home because therein is youth and safety, but youth is gone. Protection is gone. The way ahead is sometimes deeper and further down the dark roads of danger and risk taking. Experience leads to maturity. You may find death standing in the graveyard, and find there is no place to hide, but do not worry as you go down those kinds of roads. He watches with admiration at your boldness to step so heavily through his home, and a healthy respect for him can keep you alive.
It often takes facing death to appreciate life. No one wants to die and some have some anxiety about it. Death is a necessary end for us, and perhaps we are okay with it however, before it takes away those
Pursuit: Modern success is defined by a lot of money, status, reach and mobility. Yet thru them is found less meaning
Go the other direction and withdraw: Show restraint, sacrifice, and commitment.
Ask: How many people served, how many commitments kept, how many skills transmitted, how many children taught, how many tribes formed, how many communities strengthened?
I’ll do a podcast on the Industrial Revolution, modern technology and the loss of meaning.
“I will live smaller so something larger can live thru me.”~Michael Kurcina
KJV If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there shall also my servant be: if any man serve me, him will my Father honour.
John 12:26
