User:Peterjmullan/sandbox

Old bull

This is a term that historically refers to an older human male who feels threatened out of his previous position by younger males, and behaves in a posturing and aggressive way to defend his territory, often using outdated responses from a previous generation.

When in this situation a person is often highly sensitive to status loss, jealousy and possible loss of social status.

Having aged, but being in denial, they often behave inappropriately, but will defend this behavior, often using appeals to their status and validity based on age, and therefore experience, despite getting older.

In certain ways the feeling that the will be replaced or phased out causes worry over a loss of control and their position in society, and causes a set of difficult emotions to cope with to arise in coming to terms with a possible restructured future social order.

They often behave aggressively in a brutish dismissive way to younger people, and want to fight despite this being an agenda that other people are not interested in.

They might attempt to preserve their perceived social options in the way a person going through a midlife crisis would, attempting to behave in the way a younger person would, in terms of approaching younger women sexually to try affirm themselves in the face of the loss of their youth, and often buying expensive status representative items, and attempting to show off their `virility` despite having aged themselves out of this, and often making fools of themselves in the process.

The term refers to the way a hypothetical older bull behaves scraping his hoof in the ground and lowering his horns, snorting and posturing aggressively at younger newcomers.

It's possible that a lot of this behavior is rooted in the older version of masculinity and how men behave, and theories of folk psychology based on pack animals and the theory of alpha males in wolf and ape societies that the previous generation had been brought up with, and could largely be outmoded in future generations, the thought that a leader needs to be aggressive and hostile being replaced by, in the modern world, caring, intelligent, informed and understanding.

People described in terms of being an old bull often won't understand the disconnect between the way the modern generation views things, in conflict with the way their generation did, and blindly make social errors repeatedly in attempting to posture in an outdated way.

This is again reminiscent of a hypothetical old bull whose senses have faded, their responses seeming to mostly be like an old machine puffing steam, not suited to function in the current situation a modern one would, and their self defensive responses in response to this situation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_status

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machismo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jealousy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragile_masculinity