I ran across this video today and it struck me how ironic it is that a woman would actually increase the possibility of a young man harming himself by demanding he not risk harming himself. She doesn’t seem to understand that the risk is what makes the doing of the trick so important.
Clearly, I don’t know the full context of the situation. But the video illustrates what is so screwed up with our current moment in history.
The young man is overcoming his fear of pain, pushing himself beyond previous physical limitations, and – if he should succeed – achieving fame and glory. The thing he is doing – namely a bike trick – is really of little consequence. What the bike trick means to his masculine soul is of great importance.
In a sense, her attempted intervention is more like an attempt to forceabley castrate him. An attempt to feminize him.
It wasn’t so long ago that this young man would have been storming the beaches of normandy, straining forward, ignoring the bullets and carnage all around himself. Ignoring the screams of his fallen friends. Ignoring even his own shrieking emotions.
But we live in a time of peace – relatively. There are no beaches for this young man to storm. Instead, he’s been forced to live in a ‘safe’ world, where all risk of harm is seen as bad and unnecessary. The education system he went through was designed around feminine sensibilities – sit, listen, and only speak when you are asked a question. He has been force fed drugs to keep him in that seat. He has been told to avoid danger, physical harm, and pain. He’s been told that to avoid these things is a moral imperative.
If the young man submits to the system but wishes his soul to still feel free, he might become a gamer. Video games can give that sense of risk and the adrenaline rush of achievement, without any possibility of harm.
But even video games won’t solve his problem. Not only will he be left hollow. Eventually, Karen will be back. Only this time she will scold him for spending too much time playing them. She will vilify him for not being more motivated. Get a job, loser! But somehow she doesn’t seem to realize, it’s her fault he’s sitting there, blank face lit only by the glow of the screen, cheeto dust speckled over his paunch, his soul dead and hopeless.
Karen would have done well to just get back in her cart, and go about her business, thanking God for all the men whose desire to risk gives her a life free of it.
