Developing men. At some point in history, every boy was a developing man. Necessity and survival played an integral role. Smashing through Visogoths with a mace began in training as a child. Hard to imagine that world now. Not that I'd want to be there, personally, but then I'd be trained to deal with it.
The "fearlessness" of manhood was a concept, not a reality. Being a man meant subverting fear for the greater good, whether to retain territory or protect the family.
Our man-like state continued into the Industrial Age, whereby electricity diminished the impenetrable darkness of the unknown. Slowly, being a man was less about brawn and more about knowledge of mechanics and sciences. Men actually began to enjoy the leisure of power, derived from their knowledge and not some royal bond of blood. 
American culture, probably born out of the legends of the Wild West, began to mythologize our manliness. The belief that a man emerges from a bed of broken slate to become a figure of legend. Men wanted to assume more than they were. Flesh and blood wasn't enough. This idea incorporated the heroic ideal. Soon being a man meant being a hero. Audie Murphy, World War II multi-Decorated war hero (a severe Shaft-type badass on the battlefields) was almost physically the embodiment of the fresh-faced boy we once were and the feral mace-wielding warrior of a collective past. He saw his own dark savagery, and man's, staring out at himself, a shadow as deep as Neitzsche's abyss. Murphy accepted his shadow otherness by mythologizing himself, becoming an actor in Westerns and War Films throughout the 1950s. In effect, he made peace with "the Horror" referred to by Brando's Vietnam-shattered character "Kurtz" in APOCALYPSE NOW.
Justifiably, post-WW 2 and Korea, men took pride in their manhood. They began to reward themselves for the fires they'd already braved. Some veterans did not recover, as in any war, while others dedicated themselves to creating a persona of Man. What Men enjoyed, after work, was paramount to their being men. For a modern view, watch any episode of AMC's "Mad Men." The poetry of Man relies solely on the image. And yet the image detailed a man's role. The producers of the series walk a fine line between accepting why men dominated their environments in the 1960s and why the Image of Man distorted the American Ideal. Eventually, the Image of Man became an albatross harshly rebelled against by the Vietnam generation.
Manliness as an Image reached its apex sometime in the 1970s and early 1980s. As the Vietnam Generation grew older, the inevitable influx of sexuality much different and much more diverse emerged. An avatar of manliness, Rock Hudson, died of AIDS. His homosexuality was an ill-kept secret in Hollywood, but the real world wasn't prepared for the implications. The AIDS virus would deal a damaging blow to male sexuality as we understood it. The Man Image began to incorporate feminizing aspects as men struggled with the new battlefield. Frank Sinatra gave way to Andrew McCarthy's (actor, ST. ELMO'S FIRE circa 1985) softer, more vulnerable male persona. Ronald Reagan, "tough guy" President, represented Man as prehistorically dense intellectually. The schism had become generational, as Reagan's Image and "Brat Pack" McCarthy Image widened a gulf between the shrewdness of the Old and the intuitiveness of the Young.
As with anything in culture, Manliness has become cyclical as well. The Ideal, Guiniune Man has returned as a study in depth and meaning. George Clooney went from Andrew McCarthy's passiveness to become a rending force of gray-templed manly endeavor. Clooney represents Man as a free-thinking individual, with taste, and creative density. Nothing about him is lightweight, or unsure. He's become the Man we all want to be.
In direct contrast to this reevaluation of the Man Image, Oprah Winfrey's dominating presence in the cultural consciousness has solidified the female and the feminized man point of view. In establishing her own dynastic royalty (supported by millions of stay-at-home wives and career professional women, followed by the sensitive generational alternative to the Man Image), Winfrey has deified the schism between the Manly and the Supportive Male.
It should be noted that nowhere, at any point, has the idea of true Manliness been anything but a humble endeavor. It's hard to define how to be a man, except to say that being a True Man is not the cultural archetype we have now. It's not diversity of thought and process everyone believes, the kind of "broadening" of viewpoint that relegates Manliness to a kind of benign, easily-ignored buffoonishness. Manliness is an acceptance of the shadow Other by a man, the realization of savagery as a feral inevitability. The difference being, and this is important, Manliness is a reaction. It's a discipline.
To protect a loved one, to respect authority, to determine a course of action, is the province of the thinking human being. While Oprah Winfrey's estrogen-fueled corporation engulfs the accepted cultural norms, the Man Image remains a stoic representation of the Individual. Being a Man is exactly what it seems to be, an acceptance of the crucial disciplines. Be solid, be honest, be humble, and yet know there is a spiny shadow of bestial fury somewhere within. This shadow will forever alienate Men, as it is their nature. It's not to be taken lightly. This isn't about owning a handgun or a rebuilding a muscle-car or being street-saavy enough to score. It's about integrity. To do the right thing. To be brave in the face of doom.
In that regard, this is a part of the grand Internet experiment which focuses on the appeal of Manliness, the burly appeal of the cultural touchpoints of Manliness. There should be a place for Men, a cultural epicenter like a crater hole in the American southwest. We realize that at one point, something bright and shining and moving at high velocity once existed, and it exploded into shards of forgotten lore. Just because it's not there, inside the crater, does not mean Manliness does not exist. We're here to gather the shards into something undeniable, something rough and yet strangely comforting. A recognition. An acceptance.
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