130 – Defining Weakness - a podcast by Alf Herigstad

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DEFINING WEAKNESS…
Today I’m going to expound a little on a theme from the last episode, http://www.beingabettermanpodcast.com/129-nice-guys-finish/ (number 129).  That episode was about the myth that nice guys finish last, and in that episode I replaced the word Nice, with weak.  I want to talk a little more about weakness.The word weakness, immediately causes a response in men when they hear it…you know what I mean?  There is something about it that activates something deep down in the primal regions of our brain.  We know, instinctively that weakness is bad. 
I think it comes from way back in the early development of our species…back then, weak things died.  When animals hunt, they choose the weakest.  When men fight, the weakest most often loses.  If a baby is born weak, it will probably die.  The weakest tribe will fall before the stronger one.  A weak rope will break.  Weak vision will prevent you from seeing danger. So, as our species was emerging and developing, being weak itself was one of the earliest enemies of man.  It has zero redeeming qualities.  That’s why in our brains, even today when we hear the word, weakness…we are repelled by it.  It is synonymous with death, defeat, and destruction…the three ‘D’s’.
Now it’s 2016, we have come along way from our hunter gatherer forefathers, at least technologically.  As men though, biologically, we have changed very little.  Thanks to better nutrition and the lack of things trying to kill us, we live longer, healthier lives.  We know more stuff about everything, we have dominated the earth…but aside from all that, we are still the same creature that we started out as, and weakness is still our enemy, but for different reasons and in different ways.It’s more complicated now I think.  In antiquity it was pretty simple;  weakness was sorted out by the environment pretty quickly because everyday something was trying to kill you. 
Nowadays, we live soft lives.  Lives where our mortality is hardly ever an issue.  That creates an environment where weakness can hide, it can thrive and grow without us even realizing it. Thats why I think, in our modern culture, weakness has grown to proportions never before seen in history.  It has permeated every aspect of life…because it can.So here we are living among the oldest enemy of mankind, and we are totally unaware for the most part.  There are so many built in excuses for everything now that it is even difficult to notice at times, even in ourselves.  Being weak has become a habit.
I should define what I’m talking about a little better here though.  There are many different kinds of weakness. Lets start with physical weakness.  There are all kinds of people; big strong people, and smaller less strong people, but that isn’t the kind of weakness I’m talking about, I never assume that a smaller person is weak. 
True physical weakness comes from treating your body badly, being in poor health, and choosing not to be as strong as you can with the body you were given.
Likewise, mental weakness has nothing to do with mental illness.  Mental illness is a disease, while mental weakness comes in the form of apathy, a lack of mental application, the refusal to learn and grow your intellect constantly.  Your mind stagnates, and becomes weak.Emotional weakness happens when we allow our emotions to incapacitate us, and make us worthless…or stupid.  Rather than experiencing the emotion and still functioning as a man and doing the things you need to do.Any of these three weaknesses would have been enough to kill our early ancestors.  Meaning it was the stronger ones who lived and bred.  We are actually the product of the strongest of our ancestors.  Which makes the spread of weakness today even more tragic.
Then we have weakness of character.  I think this is a new one, because in antiquity weak people wouldn’t live long enough to develop weakness

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