Angst Is Not A Virtue

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey finally hit theaters. It’s shaping up to be quite a success. Rotten Tomatoes has 94% critics, 97% audience approval. IMDB has it at 8.5/10. Its opening weekend pulled in $124.5 million domestically and $264.1 million globally, both records for a Nolan film (with the caveat that we must factor both inflation and IMAX prices into that assessment).

The fanbois and cultural scolds are having fun mocking those who criticized Nolan’s casting choices, despite popularity not being an actual rebuttal of the arguments that many (myself included) made.

I haven’t seen the movie, so I’m in no position to offer a review. But, having read a number of other reviews, I noticed a prevailing theme that served as today’s blog-aspiration.

That theme is well-explained in the review at Tablet.

Christopher Nolan made a masterpiece. He just didn’t make The Odyssey.

The film is breathtaking to watch—but by turning Odysseus into a guilt-ridden modern man instead of Homer’s cunning, glory-seeking hero, it loses the very spirit of the epic that made it timeless.”

Nolan’s Odysseus isn’t funny. Or wily. Or cunning. Or proud. Or anything, for that matter, that we know him to be from the three-millennia-old text that is one of the cornerstones of Western civilization. Instead, he is a haunted man.

We are endlessly harangued into believing that the “modern man,” who is full of self-doubt and self-loathing and angst and guilt and expected to grovel endlessly for the original sin of being born with XY chromosomes, is a positive evolutionary step. That the old virtues of honor and self-determination and responsibility and pride in achievement are not only dated but destructive, and we are better off for being rid of them.

I cannot help but flash back to Don Corleone berating Johnny Fontane for sniveling over his declining career, telling him “you can act like a man!” Then elaborates about a “real man’s” obligation to his family.

Old school values, for sure. Which makes them automatically suspect in the eyes of progressives. The attitude that “if it’s old and found in European culture, it is de facto a Bad Thing.” Yes, it really is that simplistic. Those old-school values came over with the colonists, and built the greatest nation in human history.

Those old school, “manly” values are universal. Honor is a common theme throughout history and across the world (Bushido, Pashtunwali, Izzat, to name three examples). The role of provider is wired into male DNA. The “Protestant work ethic” is found in countless other successful societies. Ayn Rand’s Objectivism offers “the concept of man as a heroic being” - a notion that isn’t limited to the males of the species, by the way.

Some modern societies have sought to tear down these “manly” virtues. The Scandinavian “Law of Jante” tells men not to stand up or stand out. Australian culture similarly discourages men. See: Tall Poppy Syndrome.

There’s a reason that American culture has produced progress and wealth and innovation, while those others have lagged and stagnated. The desire to achieve and excel, properly harnessed, builds great societies.

Unfortunately, the virus of the angst-ridden man is spreading in America, with predictable results.

Labor participation is at its lowest point in half a century (excluding COVID). While sources cite many other factors, underlying this number is a growing swell of cultural discouragement among able-bodied men of prime working age. Men have been dropping out of society. More and more don’t date or seek to start families, and more and more are finding ways to get by without working.

Many culprits deserve blame. The zero-sum nature of later-stage feminism, which told women the way to achieve cultural equality is by tearing men down rather than by embracing freedom and self-determination, is one. Critical [insert adjective] Theory also teaches a tear-down world view. Identity politics rejects equality in favor of social stratification, with men always below everyone else. “Woke” insists that anyone deemed to have inherent privilege spend a lifetime groveling and apologizing.

Back to The Odyssey. Nolan cited a recent translation, by feminist Emily Wilson, as the source material for his movie. One source notes that Wilson focused on “critical attention to power, class, and gender,” which is basically saying that she filtered Homer’s epic through a woke lens. You can read more here.

One Internet commenter put it thus:

Let me sum it up for you. The Odyssey’s most iconic phrase is actually the very first one. In English, it goes like this: “Sing to me, O Muse, of the man of many turns—the cunning, the wise, the brave.”

Her version, though, reminds me more of something you’d hear in a therapist’s office: “Let me tell you about a complicated man.” There—you can imagine the rest.

Meanwhile, women in today’s dating pool constantly lament the dearth of “good men.” Many young men, desperate for something other than self-loathing, are being lured by numbskulls like Andrew Tate down a caricature path that teaches preening and actual misogyny instead of Gary Cooper-esque, “see a problem, solve a problem” manliness. Not all masculine things are toxic, no matter what the Best-and-Brightest insist.

It’s no coincidence that socialism is growing in appeal in parallel with the tearing down of the traditional male. I often quote David Mamet: “socialism is the abdication of responsibility.” It’s also no surprise that an emasculated, angst-ridden Odysseus is proving quite popular among modern moviegoers.

It’s also a harbinger of doom. We see the harm the “modern male” archetype is perpetrating on our society. Angst is not, no matter what the woke tell us, a virtue.