War didn’t just take lives, it shattered the emotional and structural fabric of the family.
We taught men how to survive the battlefield, but never how to return to life when they got back home.
They came back with medals and nightmares, with silence in their mouths and fire buried in their chests. Fathers in body, bipolar in spirit.
And what do you think that did to the children and the wives?
To the sons watching a man who could fix a car but couldn’t fix his own disorder.
The nuclear family wasn’t blown apart overnight.
It was dismantled, brick by brick, word by word, until all that remained were broken homes, people and blurred roles.
Masculinity was recast as a disease, fatherhood as disposable.
Men were told they were toxic, not by warriors, but by limp-wristed men and angry, bitter confused women, who consistently discredit the patriarchy.
And from that collapse, a void opened.
Where once there was guidance, now there’s guesswork.
Where once there were fathers, now there are phone screens.
We replaced discipline with diagnosis, taking responsibility with victim mentality, purpose with distraction, commitment with what ever feels good and truth with trend.
And so boys drift. They scroll. They vape, escape via drugs and then they vanish.
They lose themselves in violence, social media, pornography, pills, and pixels.
They chase status without meaning, and freedom without direction.
This isn’t liberation.
This is abandonment with a fresh coat of paint.
We stripped them of their roots and offered no replacement. We mocked tradition, then cried when they stopped showing up.
They weren’t raised. They came home to an empty house. They were left to figure it out in a culture that can’t even agree on what a man is.
And still, we ask why.
Why are they angry?
Why are they numb?
Why are they violent, addicted, or gone?
Because the world they were born into told them they were a problem before they ever had a chance to be a solution.
So here we are, generations deep into a slow unraveling, with too many young men lost in the void of structure.
But it doesn’t have to stay this way.
Because a man who remembers who he is, what he comes from, what he’s capable of, can become the very structure that was missing.
He can stand tall, even if he was never taught how.
He can speak truth, even if no one ever spoke it to him.
He can father the future, even if he was never fathered right.
This is the time to build again.
Not just buildings. Not just brands. But men. Real men. Humble. Grounded. Gentle. Strong enough to carry weight, and wise enough to know when to put it down.
The void was man-made.
But so is the bridge out of it.
Let’s build it.
c 2025 Chu The Cud
All Right Reserved.
Chu The Cud 