Sometimes, I see on the internet men advising that men must be self-sufficient to be considered a man. I don't see this as a necessarily virtuous or optimal goal for civilization. I can understand a homesteader being self-sufficient, but does he not still buy some supplies to work the farm, or is the expectation that he makes his own tools and everything else he uses? The Soviets called those who were self-sufficient kulaks and had many of them killed. So, doesn't one have to be not just self-sufficient but also participate in broader society, or at least prevent oneself from being dragged to the gulags by having a strong network?
Is a thief self-sufficient because there will always be people to rob from? Is a government official self-sufficient because there will always be people to tax? Is a banker self-sufficient because checking accounts are almost necessary with how payments are structured in the modern era? Is a mobster self-sufficient because he has people to extort?
Cultivating a society that values virtue is the best masculine attitude in my opinion because large groups can be turned against those who are self-sufficient and will kill those who are all alone.
This is the advice thread that I am referring to for what that is worth (https://nitter.net/MasculineSage/status/1560589430729183232#m):
Conflating self sufficiency with total isolated independence. Farmers sell food instead of eating all of it because they need things that food itself can't provide. Even before a medium of exchange existed farmers were bartering their food in communities, and to detach yourself from society probably meant death (or at least a high sacrifice and risk). When we talk about self sufficiency today we are expressing something related but in a context so extreme that it disfigures what we mean. Today we would like the robber baron's entire sword arm removed from our arsehole. And only a little bit, in some instances, even if we were to leave it in at the wrist it would be a modern victory for the centuries, literal Ceasar level legend material. The level of interaction between us and the state today is entirely unprecedented and there has been zero stymie, no relief and no regression of the arm's procedure into the ass.
If we were left alone today only to be pestered once a year for literal wheat by a tax man, society "as we know it" would collapse into base social traditions and expectations. There is a problem with scale in comparing freedom and independence today to those concepts as they existed for our ancestors many centuries ago. It is like talking about inches and feet and then jumping straight into talk about lightyears with no segue or asterisk. Illustrated in a chart, an axis would be broken to "skip to" a feature at its extreme. Two entirely separate charts would organize it better: Antiquity & Today.
I think I am confused by the common definition of self-sufficiency as "able to supply one's or its own needs without external assistance." "Without external assistance" implies to me isolated independence inherently (unless external means outside of one's community rather outside of oneself).
"If we were left alone today only to be pestered once a year for literal wheat by a tax man, society "as we know it" would collapse into base social traditions and expectations."
I would love nothing more than a collapse or reformation to good values. I think it is inevitable. It is simply a matter of debating the number of generations it will take. I want virtue back, and I strive for that.