How to Be a Man / On Masculinity

An enduring treatise.

Tony Soprano. A mob boss balancing the strains, pressures, and acts of a man both powerful and successful, yet cornered by the rules, the infinite dangers, and the brutality of the life he has chosen to lead, and can never be allowed to leave. An enigmatic contradiction who also has a soft spot for animals.

“Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.”
— Marcus Aurelius

“In him I observed mildness of temper, and unchangeable resolution in the things which he had determined after due deliberation.”
— Marcus Aurelius on Antoninus

How to be a man. This question came to me through small annoying insistences available to any self-aware person.

I heard my naive impatience in a conversation and disliked the sound of it. I noticed how easily I could be gracious with strangers and ungenerous with people who had more access to me. I could speak about humility in the morning and pride in my vanity by afternoon. I could admire discipline in public, then assemble cute excuses around comfort, pleasure, anger, and procrastination.

What kind of man am I?

The ancient world asked this question with more seriousness than we do. For them it was about honor and respect- sometimes a matter of life and death (see: bushido). Its best writers refused to reduce a man to dominance, style, conquest, money, coldness, sexual appetite, or aura. They cared about the...