Last Saturday, at 2 p.m., a horde of half-naked men made its way down to the shore of murky, plant-infested, bacteria-laden Lake Winona with a bunch of cardboard boxes. The horde hailed from Simpson, Galloway, and Niedfeldt, and they sought to restore a Cravats and Bluestockings-founded tradition whose loss not all had mourned: the Naval Battle.
Most of its vessels do not last long in the water, meaning the “battle” usually devolves into a shallow-water brawl: Think more rugby in a monsoon than “Master and Commander.”
Staged in past years in the Arboretum pond, construction in and around that body of water forced the custom into exile last year. Some of us were hoping this disruption would end.
But no. Yet again, armies of male students charged from their respective dorms to engage in an activity at once childish, stupid, and dangerous. For the sake of some horseplay, they risked injury, disease, and the invasion of mud and lily pads into parts of their bodies where mud and lily pads likely have not yet touched.
Good for them.
For the puerility, fatuity, and peril inherent in such an exercise also demonstrate in its participants physical robustness, courage, and manliness.
On Hillsdale’s campus, one could hardly find an official event more disgusting than the Naval Battle. Lake Winona may beautifully flank the IM fields and the football stadium, but the contents of its water are questionable, to say the least. But when did such considerations stop boys from having fun? Rolling around in the mud, scraping knees, swimming in the creek — all are activities that both serve as an effective respite from the Hillsdale default mode of abstract contemplation, and should have marked the childhood of every self-respecting male.
To the extent that modern society overprotects children and limits the playing freedom of boys (and young males), we stunt the adventurousness, the courageousness, and the boldness of our youth. We produce what C.S. Lewis called “men without chests,” and we spread throughout society virtues antithetical to the thumos (“bristling reaction of an animal in face of a threat or a possible threat,” according to Harvey Mansfield) proper to every soul.
And especially to the male soul. For, to put it bluntly, stupidity is part of the essence of manhood. Now, usually, we call this virtue “courage,” but this is mostly a difference of degree, not of kind. Without this virtue, no human, and no man especially, could motivate himself to do things neither immediately nor ever conducive to his own selfish pleasure, to be bold for its own sake, or to make sacrifices for the good of others when necessary.
In an age when cultural elites are rapidly coming to regard differences between sexes as imaginary products of a society biased in favor of men, when more women populate and graduate from most college campuses than men, and when employment fields traditionally dominated by men (construction, manufacturing, agriculture) are fading before globalization and automation, it is refreshing to see a group of young men plunge into a disgusting lake, fight with each other, and get a little dirty and bloody. Theodore Roosevelt may not have much purchase on this campus, but his description of masculine virtue rings true to the Naval Battle:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
You’ll probably never see me wrestling my fellow males in Lake Winona’s muddy waters anytime soon; I like to think I hone my masculine virtue in other activities. But maybe sometime I should. After all, there’s nothing wrong with a little mud.
As long as I don’t come out of it with a parasite.
