Quotes from Manhood in the Making: Cultural Concepts of Masculinity

By David Gilmore (1990)

• To endure, all societies confront two basic formal requirements: production and reproduction, that is, economy and rebirth… To a large extent, both women’s and men’s roles are directed at replicating social structures rather than at some socially neutral or inconsequential path of personal self-fulfillment. Society is a delicate perpetual motion machine that depends upon the replication of its primary structures, the family in particular, because without the family there is no context for socializing children and thus for perpetuating the culture.#
  Anthropology
• Myths, whatever else they may be, are also guides, or charters for right action.#
  Anthropology
• From a psychological point of view, it is clear that this ancient morality of man-acting has something to do with the cultural encoding of impulse sublimation. An inspirational model of right action, it directs energies away from self-absorption and introspection toward a strategy of practical problem-solving and worldly concerns.#
  Anthropology