“(masculinity)...marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression—is, on the whole, harmful.” As a 20 year practitioner of the primal dominance ga

“(masculinity)...marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression—is, on the whole, harmful.” As a 20 year practitioner of the primal dominance game of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu I’d like to address dominance and how it is completely mid-understood. Dominance is not the act of dominating other people. It is people allowing themselves to be dominated. A key characteristic of alphas is that they are indomitable. Since people perceive dominance instead of indominance they view it as a scarce zero-sum resource. If I dominate you it’s because I either accidentally transgressed your boundary or we have boundaries that conflict and we haven’t negotiated new boundaries. Just going about my business people grant me dominance but this is not something I actively do, it is on them. When people label dominance as bad, this tells me that they have poor boundary establishment and enforcement skills. What are your values as an individual. From that, what are your boundaries? Are you willing to unflinchingly communicate those boundaries? Are you willing to attempt to defend those boundaries from transgression? Can you incrementally develop indomitability and eventually read as dominant? Some who believe they have zero ability to defend boundaries will retreat to the surrender of the boundary-less feminine. This might work, but I think it is more productive to metaphorically die defending boundaries than not have them in the first place. The unique magic of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is that even if you are powerful with clear boundary establishment, for years and years you will utterly fail to defend those boundaries. Knowing you may fail to defend boundaries but trying anyway is a key to next level masculinity. One of my precious jobs as a coach is to show men that they can die well. When I think they’re ready, usually after 1-2 years of training I will show them that they are almost completely powerless. From the outside it looks like I’m torturing these men because I never fully checkmate them so that they can quit by tapping out. I encourage them to keep moving, keep trying, try to keep a clear head and act well despite the fact that it’s utterly hopeless. This human condition is hopeless, but act well in accordance with your values anyway. This quote by Rickson Gracie sums up the process: “Where there's discomfort, there's fear," he said. "In these very tough positions, you're in a little piece of hell. And through this daily suffering, you learn to survive in these situations. You have to find comfort in uncomfortable situations. You have to be able to live in your worst nightmare. Jiu-jitsu puts you completely in the moment where you must have complete focus on finding a solution to the problem. This trains the mind to build that focus, to increase your awareness, your capacity to solve problems. Sometimes, you don't have to win. You cannot win. But that has nothing to do with losing."