>>23592003 (OP)
of course
it's naturally been very difficult to hold onto that piece of me: to protect it, furnish it, and painfully investigate and explore it—intellectually and as qualia—but I think to allow others to take it from me would constitute weakness
it's very easy to allow oneself to become blunted, and it significantly retards a man's spiritual and intellectual growth to succumb so, to feral inferiors who would view emotion, empathy, and consequent kindness in one's treatment of others, as a weakness, or flaw
no
it is a weak and selfish man who cannot bear the weight of his own emotions, and it's his immediate dependents who suffer: this constitutes a failure of what it is to be a man
neglect is not mastery; stoicism is cowardice
women will often say that 'emotions are not a problem to attack': I disagree; they're a system to be probed, dissected, abstracted, codified, and reasoned about, much like any other
to explore them in this way, one must experience them in full
also contrary to the female position: the 'negative' emotions are just as valid, important, and meaningful, especially to men:
wroth, hatred, loathing, misery, resentment
these are the drivers of positive change; they are necessary, and a good for the species, sunshine and rainbows be damned
the tendency to drown out a core facet of sentience, simply because it poses some imagined difficulty (and it is imagined), is perhaps the most pathetic thing I find about most other men I meet
it's incorrect to call them men, even; something so stunted and broken, with no tools to fix their innate issues, and no experience in doing so, is not a man in my opinion—it's a husk or withered root, of something which once lived
they have allowed themselves to become lever-pulling automatons
what kind of a man does not use tools?
what kind of a man does not maintain things?
what kind of a man has no intellectual curiosity about even his own mind?
surely not one worth suffering to live