Trousered Apes
“We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”
– CS Lewis
This is a quote that I have been seeing and hearing more and more lately. It dumbfounds me every time I hear it. “We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise.” Truer words have not been spoken in relation to the supposed “men” of today. It is especially interesting to think that CS Lewis spoke this way at a time that nearly everyone today would consider to have had great men. Men with chests so to speak. He would be greatly disappointed to see his warnings were not heeded.
What is the chest Mr. Lewis speaks of? Is he speaking of your physical chest? Obviously he can’t be. A man literally without a chest cannot live. Or at the very least cannot live independently enough to make his way in the world. Does he mean a small or weak pectoral? Perhaps. Lewis is speaking to a general condition of masculinity as a whole. The chest is symbolic of a man. His chest outwardly facing the world as he does. Facing it down and taming it. Men without masculinity lack virtue and drive. Much of a man is his enterprising drive to provide and protect. Virtuous men are those who exhibit excellence in morality. The word virtue itself coming from the Latin word meaning man. Emasculated men lack their morality and their drive towards morality.
Today’s “men” have no time for virtue. They are only concerned with themselves. How will they be able to make the best life for themselves. They as CS Lewis says laugh at honor. They mock their responsibilities to their own detriment and to the detriment of our society and culture. Not only do men allow this but our culture at large pushes this ludicrous idea.
“We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.” Our culture castrates men both figuratively and literally. All aspects castrate us. No longer will boys be boys. Boys will grow into men and oppress the weak therefore we mustn’t allow them to wrestle. The schools maintain a firm grip on boys. Women force boys to stay still when a boy’s body commands he move. They put boys on drugs to prevent what he ought to do and wonder why he is unable to function in day to day life. We expect boys to act as girls to the day he enters manhood and expect him to be able to act as such. All the while we are assaulted by various environmental factors including poor diet, pollution and plastics. Soy and sugar are injected into every food imagined and we are told it is healthy to eat such poisons.
Our men in the West have been completely subverted. We no longer know our place in this culture. Increasingly we are being left behind. To whither and die. We have forgotten what made our culture and society. I throughout my life have exemplified a “man without a chest.” This metaphor is exactly how I have been. I am fat, unhealthy, physically weak. My interests regularly were focused on things that don’t matter.
My understanding of this topic has been piqued largely by the birth of my son. I had seen how the culture has gone. Our culture of death propagated by men without chests continues to worsen. I see everything falling down around me as I sit and wonder where it all went. I will no longer be a man without a chest. I will be the man I needed as a boy to look up to for my son. Our culture will not continue without strong men. There is no political savior. We have a Savior. His name is Jesus Christ through Him we will become the men we were always meant to be. The stewards of this creation.
Lewis in an earlier section of his writing of the Abolition of Man also wrote, “What I have called (presuming on their concurrence in a certain traditional system of values) the ‘trousered ape’ and the ‘urban blockhead’ may be precisely the kind of man they really wish to produce.” His overall theory was of education leading us into this path. He thinks that it is possible that the specific gentlemen he was writing about were intentionally subverting boys. Lewis wrote that he doubted this hypothesis. My belief is that we have been intentionally raised as ‘trousered apes’ and ‘urban blockheads.’ There is no other way to see this at this point. As I continue to learn how we have been increasingly lied to I will continue to describe it. My first focus will be on my physical health. Only then can we begin to resolve the issue of education and soundness of mind.
