At 38 I was probably lucky that my childhood role models were action movie heroes. Rocky, Rambo, Arnold in Commando, none of this silly trend today that every second movie is about cartoon superheroes in spandex. They were more down-to-earth male role models.

So imagine that if you sometimes feel insecure about your masculinity or something, you go through the list of 1980's action movie classic manly things to do.

For example, there was a lot of gunfight in the movies, so you go to a shooting range and try shooting a gun. I did and I did not feel any special. For example, there is a lot of hand to hand fighting, so you try learning boxing, and I must admit I had quit at the light sparring stage so maybe I should have sticked around to real contests, but anyway, I did not feel anything special.

And then I picked up a barbell and in just few months I changed on a deep psychological level, basically becoming pretty comfortable with my level of masculinity, basically I become content with myself, despite it did not solve my many failings, I don't even look that good because body fat covers those muscles, it is just the inner feeling of strength that does it. (When I was younger I was doing some more isolation work type body building, that actually had the same psychological effect, it is just more boring to do, I don't have that much patience now, I do deadlift, overhead press and lat work for good posture and GTFO, it simply feels enough for now. Squat later, when my lower back will not be complaining so much about the deadlifts.)

So there is something about strength that works really "magically" inside the male mind. But why is it working so much better than other things?

Jack Donovan defined male virtues as Strength, Courage, Mastery and Honor. I suppose all three could work, it is just the later three does not have so convenient ways of building them?

Aristotle already called courage something that can be trained. Given that I was basically never in a dangerous situation (being punched in the nose with boxing gloves is not dangerous), I probably don't have much courage but then again I am not looking forward to seeking out danger for its own sake.

Mastery, well, I am pretty good about my job, it does not make me feel very manly, but then again sucking at it would probably feel much worse.

Honor, as in, respect by the in-group, well, I don't have a gang. I have some long distance-friends, but we just discuss stuff in e-mail, not have this gang spirit and a spirit of respect or something. Just exchange thoughts.

So I suppose I feel strength is the best working psychological cure of all four because it is just the most straightforward to develop? Or is it because it is in a way really special?

But what makes it so? If we think evo-psy, the typical hunter 100K years ago had many virtues. Actually cardio was perhaps the foremost: humans are evolved to be endurance hunters who tire out their prey. The skill, accuracy, speed... "lifting" was done after the prey was already killed and taking it home. So if strenght did not play the foremost role but a supporting role, how did it become so important and so transformative today?