Self-esteem and masculinity
In Sparta, boys were moved into barracks at the age of seven.31 They would be forced to play “games" like "steal the cheese from the altar.” To get the cheese, they had to run through a gauntlet and endure flogging so fierce that some died shortly afterward from concussions and blood gushing out of open wounds.32
This stealing of cheese was a perfea metaphor: the constant plagues and famines forced the military to defend what little food citizens had and to steal what it did not have Stealing required the courage to risk death.
Why were the boys removed from home at age 7? The less a boy valued intimacy, life, and loving, the more he would allow himself to be disposable. We bribed him to do this by offering him respect — actually, conditional respect that we called love when he met the conditions. The Catch-22 was that the process it took to get love disconnected him from love.
Disposability training started at birth With the penis. Studies of male circumcision find that the more a society needed hunters and warriors in order to survive, the harsher were its procedures for circumcision of boy babies.35
The problem for the women these men married was that death training rarely included courses on intimacy in marriage.
And the problem for fathers?. . .