Ernesto Tinajero

Friendship has become rare for most today. Remember our childhood? Friendship was as easy as asking, “Do you want to be friends?”

Many men today are in trouble, as they are experiencing higher rates of drug addiction, suicides and deaths from despair. Many commentators, social media influencers and, even, government officials have proposed solutions to what they call the crisis of masculinity.

In this next series, I want to explore how the loneliness epidemic affects conversations about manhood and what virtues we can look toward to lead out the quicksand of the various views of manhood.

It is a mystery about chasing human greatness. Why do many of the totalitarian movements — whether the dreams about the Third Reich of the Nazi Germany or messianic dreams of a Proletariat Paradise of International Communist movement — always start with idol of restoring or increasing human greatness?

In Hannah Arendt’s "Origins of Totalitarianism," she looks at the rise of totalitarianism and its effects on humanity. In our contemporary discourse, we have returned to her analysis as we see the darkness of authoritarianism rise. She argues that the root of totalitarianism is hatred and fear, as it seeks to eliminate the other to maintain total control.

In my last post, I introduced an exploration of hate as an idea. We sometimes think of hate as this emotional force that overcomes us. As if we are walking down the street minding our own business, listening to Taylor Swift singing "haters gonna to hate, hate, hate, hate, hate," and like a vampire, coming upon us with a greeting of “good evening,” before launching onto our neck and sucking out our life and turning us into a creature of the night.

Hate is the idea of ridding the world of the “other” that will make life better.