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This is why I love HN. This thread including sibling comments gave me a new way to to think about this quote. The way I always read it was that "strong men" are your "protectors" the kind of folks who run into the burning building, who risk themselves for others and the greater good. When you have a lot of those types in society, society will prosper. I think of it as literally a "strong" person, physically and psychologically. As the strong people make the world better we have good times and end up not paying attention to building (or valuing) strength which makes people weaker, things get crappy and then we need to build more strong people to pull us out. Think of the early 20th century. In the lead-up to the depression, the 20s were all about partying and buying stuff of on credit and watching the market boom (at least at the broad scale narrative that we're taught, I'm sure there are nuances about it). Then we get the depression and WWII which required men to become strong and fight which lead to the post war boom. I'm sure there were many smaller cycles in history too, but I'm not really a scholar of history. I look at today, we have an epidemic of weakness around us. Everyone needs a safe space, needs the government to take care of them and provide them with things, everyone gets offended by everyone else and has to go lie in bed because they "just can't even". At least that's what the grand narrative on social media is. And even from that, I see the cycle beginning. We're entering a tough time with famine and such, and people who decide to get strong and face the challenge are the ones who will do well and provide the next round of good times (The irony is that they probably won't be participating in the good times). Long rant, sorry. But one of my mental models that I've been refining is that problems are caused by weakness and fear. If you are strong and confident, you are more likely fixing problems or taking care of people, not causing problems. |
We can perhaps use more descriptive or objective terms such as resilience and still find differences and subtleties. Are military veterans with several tours of duty that are going through PTSD "less resilient" than the civilian population? Are people that are bullied for their sexual orientation or their country of origin for decades resilient, as well? The way I see it we're all vulnerable somehow and find different means to try to protect ourselves mentally and physically, most of the time not very productive nor efficacious due to our own self deficiencies in the first place.
As such, to me the "weak" are those that cannot join coalitions of others readily and find ways to contribute in some manner or refuse. We are social animals and have survived for better or worse through making up for our own individual deficits with the strengths of others. As such the anti-social (doesn't matter what the political orientation is BTW) are the weak in society, and in that respect I think we can both agree that there is a trend toward weakness globally at least among economically developed societies.