i don't fully endorse Dixon's military history -- which is sort of outdated and conventional (the British officer class in WWI has been more redeemed over last twenty years) but the actual psychological model here is very uncannily accurate
Comments
Log in with your Bluesky account to leave a comment
The three groups it sounds most like are both the biggest "live players," in a sense, and losers of the twentieth century: German, Japanese & Russian militarists/expansionists
"scorn of intellectual and artistic endeavour, subservience to tradition, and emphasis on virility... the prevalence of an authoritarian type, fawning to superiors and often harsh or uncaring to inferiors. Such a man, by this analysis, is afraid of women (so only half human) and afraid of failure."
"He therefore ignores people and facts which do not conform to his world view, learns little from experience and clings to external rules, applying them even when the situation demands other approaches "
this is a very familiar masculine archetype, and becomes even more generalized when you simply reduce it to a tendency to become humiliatingly submissive to a 'big man', cruel and vindictive to those below him, and irrationally fearful of femininity
women of course generally understand implicitly that the "patriarchal bargain" that many men of this type tend to profess will be thrown out the window the moment it gets in the way of their need to genuflect to other men, hence it is a check that cannot be cashed
on the receiving end, it feels much like being the victim of an affair, except that the "other woman" is actually the man that their partner betrays them to impress or curry favor with
Comments