The Cuck’s Spirit Animal

[Editor: A guest post by Chronoblip]

In certain mystical circles, creatures in the wild are endowed with various traits, and in figuring out which spirit animal an individual is aligned with as their guide, it will tell them something about themselves as well. Think of it like a more spiritual version of a personality test, or perhaps a more earthbound form of astrology.

There are many different spirit animals that one could be paired up with, and there is even a spirit animal for cucks: Horton the elephant. In a children’s book from 1940 comes a cautionary tale about idealism and manipulation.

“I’m tired and I’m bored and I’ve got kinks in my legs from sitting. Just sitting here day after day, it’s work, how I hate it I’d much rather play. If I could find someone to stay on my nest, if I could find someone, I’d fly away free!”

The story is that this lazy bird wants to be free of her responsibilities. She needs someone to sit on her egg because this was published in 1940 and Roe v. Wade wouldn’t come along to help her out for another 33 years. Instead, Horton the well-intentioned elephant happens upon her predicament and, while initially refusing, he eventually agrees to sit on her egg while she rushes off.

When the other animals make fun of him he stands by his choice, and utters this line as justification:

I said what I meant, and I meant what I said, an elephant’s faithful, one hundred percent.

Eventually elephant hunters come across him, but instead of shooting him, they put him in the circus. An elephant sitting on an egg! A father having custody of his children! The circus eventually ends up in the city that the bird was vacationing in, and when she discovers how much attention Horton has, she demands she be given her egg back.

And despite all his “faithfulness”, Horton is expected to just move on. His sacrifices were not respected or honored, his hard work not appreciated, the significance of his role discarded. Except that, the egg hatches and a half-bird half-elephant creature is born, and then both the newborn and Horton return home, living happily ever after, while Maizy the lazy is left with nothing. Do such fairy tale endings exist for men who are guided by the spirit of Horton?

Modern Maizy just breaks the egg, and even demands her fellow animals pay the bill to clean up the mess so that she can keep on partying. If she does rope herself a Horton, the minute he tries to assert himself at all the custody courts will tear even his biological children away and he’ll end up paying for someone else to raise his offspring.

The Horton mindset was weakly “redeemed” in the story by an ending that is fake and unrealistic, and any young boy who would read that story and think highly of Horton is being set up for failure.

While Horton’s antagonists back in 1940 mocked and ridiculed him, put him on display as an oddity, Horton’s behavior is now expected to be the norm for modern men. Modern men must always keep their commitments, no matter how difficult or painful that commitment is, no matter whether they were lied to or not, no matter their responsibility in creating the current circumstances they find themselves in or not, because otherwise they won’t be seen as faithful.

Horton’s faithfulness changed from a measure of virtue to chains.

What was supposed to be praiseworthy has turned into an avenue for exploitation.

Every personality has an animal guide, or a spirit animal, associated with it and for the men whose idealism about their qualities becomes the means by which they are abused and manipulated, they are simply following their spirit animal’s guidance, in their animal guide’s footsteps.

Don’t be one of those men who pattern themselves after Horton the elephant.