We begin to define Man Jam by establishing what is not:

 

Man Jam is not a patriarchy.

Man Jam is not a breeding ground for Fascism.

Man Jam is not a hotbed for misandry or misogyny.

Man Jam is not restricted to Men’s Rights Groups, alt-right reactionaries, machismo, vulgar jokes and sexual passes, experimental therapy styles, nor snooty intellectualism, but neither is it NOT those things.

Man Jam is not defined by Rules; its purpose is to reassert a set of virtues. One learns the rules only to get good; one gets good so that one can break the rules.

 

So: if Man Jam is NOT all of those things, then:

 

Man Jam is a Month-Long, Annual Game Jam devoted to the exploration and the reaffirmation of Male Identity. Participants are encouraged to develop a work of electronic media which expresses what manhood means to them. Man Jam functions at once as both a Gladiator Arena and as a Forum. While we compete with one another, we also cooperate, using the Jam to communicate ideas about Male Identity in Modernity. In so doing, we draw upon a tradition which has thousands of years of heritage, including the Birth of Games…

Game: noun.

“1a(1): a physical or mental competition conducted according to rules with the participants in direct opposition to each other

(2): a division of a larger contest

(3): the manner of playing in a contest

(4): a particular aspect or phase of play in a game or sport

a football team's kicking game

(5): the set of rules governing a game

(6): the number of points necessary to win

(7): points scored in certain card games (as in all fours) by a player whose cards count up the highest

[…]

4a(1): animals under pursuit or taken in hunting

especially : wild animals hunted for sport or food

(2): the flesh of game animals

b: a target or object especially of ridicule or attack —often used in the phrase fair game

c: archaic : PLUCK”

 

Source: Merriam-Webster.

As you can see, the origin of the word “game” has its roots in hunting. The case has been made by lauded mythologist Joseph Campbell that the very origin of “gaming” could be found in the men’s hunting ground, wherein waiting periods were long (far longer than loading screens) and energy was in abundance, requiring early male hominids to let off steam somehow.

Over thousands of years of human evolution, Gaming has come to include people of all kinds, both for better and for worse. Throughout the march out of the caves and upwards towards civilization, men have been standard bearers and trailblazers. Males have been patriarchs, politicians, and prizefighters, as well as prophets, poets, playwrights, and philosophers. To be a boy was to be born into a noble purpose and heroic quest, one which would align one’s primitive, bodily drives with the Society and the Cosmos.

Yet with the onset of modernity the virtues of manhood have been corrupted. Restricted by a growing bureaucracy and reduced to a sexualized commodity, the modern man has been robbed of his dignity, left to decide between a helpless effeminacy and a barbaric machismo.

Man Jam intends to restore balance to the Male Psyche as well as to the male role. To be a man is not to follow rules or to fit a prefigured mold. It is to blaze a trail ahead, to look beyond and see the Spirit of the Law, that its content might be constantly restored and its virtue preserved. The World needs Good Men now more than ever, not conformist automatons.

Recent years have seen a rise in the tendency to “unmask” great men. In service to a variety of special interest groups and ideological echo chambers, the new generation has made it a point to expose the faults of heroes. While a full accounting must be made for such faults, and it almost always has been so in academic circles, the new generation uses the vices to ignore the virtues, excusing a lack of virtue in its own constituents. This process of “levelling” and “dumbing-down” erodes the integrity of our Global Society, for we lose anyone to look up to.

Without Great Men to serve as role models for boys, Great Women also cannot exist, for any Great Society must have both living in harmony.

  

What happens when the idols have fallen? Simply look around. Men lead the charts in suicide. Officers of Enforcement abuse their power; those who remain loyal to the proper function of the Law are alienated from the citizens they serve. The temptation for corruption looms ubiquitously, as “being a man” is reduced to a fetish. Even to be born a boy weighs heavily upon the conscience of the modern child, producing all kinds of confusion.

In short: to be Good and to be Smart are no longer one and the same, since any practical life is divorced from genuine Virtue.

 

It is time that we do our part, as Individuals, to reaffirm a positive identity. Obviously, I cannot regulate participation in this Jam, nor do I wish to. Anyone can submit work to the competition, but it must be consistent with this ethos, expressed as a list of guidelines instead of rules:

 

• Show respect for what men CAN be and what, at their best, they HAVE been.
• Work towards the excellence of men.
• Work towards interdependence with women, but not mere codependency.
• Work towards independence of thought and creative action.
• Aspire towards genuine Morality, neither libertine excuses on the one hand nor bureaucratic rigidity on the obverse.
• Build community and solidarity worldwide.
• Resist the temptation to surrender mythology and tradition for ideology and superstition.
• Learn constantly; accept criticism and consequence.
• Channel energy in a positive way, veering neither towards aggressive barbarism nor towards impotence and helplessness.
• Have fun!! That’s what games were always about.

 

As we move forward, let us leave no one behind.

 

Rinzai.