The Assertive Man

Here is The Assertive Man. He is not short, not tall. He is not Malaysian or Chilean, not Puerto Rican or American Indian, or African American or South Korean. He is not slender or robust, ugly or handsome, arduous in conversation or inquisitive about the time. He is assertive by nature, not by learning. He will lead you to the truth, and like a horse to water it will be up to you to drink it. He will make you feel like it is the Water Of Life, or Love. He can call a fish a fish, an ace an ace, or say black is black and white is white, in terms of opposite things. Yet he can call your bluff if you use the humor of Aristophanes or the logic of Socrates to move in a particular direction. For he knows philosophy is for wisdom only and not for gain. And we all want something, The Assertive Man will tell you or I. When we choose to manipulate sounds and colors and sensations to sell, politicize, to make love or make war, we have set aside truth. We have made goals the supreme fire of our values. Ask The Assertive Man for a light and you will recieve it. He will stop to smell the flowers along the sidewalk, seemingly for an entire day, or until a policeman pulls up beside him to notify him that he cannot stand in this spot all day and admire the daisies. This is the man that asserts that he can loaf, but knows that one does not stand by the road and look at flowers for a long time. Not in the culture he lives in. He knows this is the an assertion made by society and government. He does want to survive. The Assertive Man would like nothing more than to ask the cop, the attorney, the government, the bureau what harm is there is in doing nothing all day. Fine, they would say, if you do it where you reside and don't bother anybody. The Assertive Man might be handcuffed and taken down to the police station for his appearance of insurrection. There is just one reason this man does not act capricious, and that is because he wants to go on with his life that runs parallel and apart from others.

The Assertive Man has no animosity toward people he shares his world with, except for groups that cause terror and mayhem as part of their dogma. He feels that a very assertive attitude can be dogmatic at times and pragmatic at other times. That takes a special kind of person, The Assertive Man thinks. Yet he believes that if the the world were taken care of by only dogmatic people we would all be free, crime would be almost nonexistent, and medicine would be available for every one of us, even Tiny Tim. And so he can be assertive, even if only basically, remembering that the people of degrees and high ideals are not to be dealt with on the same plane he is on because they assert greater things. And to govern dogmatically and assertively, such leaders have to be unswerving in their decisions, with no desire to manipulate.

The Assertive Man in his zest for assertive actions, wishes a lot. He wishes that he could be indifferent about words said before. He has discussed food, sex, money, alcohol, time, transportation, virtue, health, music, sleep, television, and history with other people all of his days. He has made so many words that his words could be every sun in Andromeda. He has been wrong, been right, been confused, unsure, mixed up data with emotions and said what others have wanted to hear more times than he wants to remember. Talk about an Assertive Man. Always wanted to be liked, the Man still wants to be liked, but by only a handful. Assertiveness is something that goes on inside him, a kind of philosophy, and philosophies he knows are for a way of life, not of maintenance.

The Assertive Man, as you have determined by this time, is not a man in the field, or the office, or classroom, or factory, or store, or board room. Yet he has a value in society. It is that he has touched the lives of many, he loves and is loved. The Assertive Man has lost his place in the world of scratch and claw, the world of catch as catch can, the world of toil. He lives on money he recieves from wherever he can get it, and if other people do not understand or resent his way of life, he knows that is just too bad. We all should assert.