Garth George: Ethos of manliness missing from selfish men of today

I share with Sir Edmund Hillary a profound disgust that British mountaineer David Sharp was left to die on Mt Everest while 40 or so other climbers pursued their own selfish ends.

But unlike Sir Edmund, I have little trouble in understanding why this young man was left to perish alone.

It's quite simple really: Men today are not the same as the men of Sir Edmund's day or, indeed, my day which came a generation later.

The ethos of manliness which threw up the pioneers and explorers of the last century and earlier - and that includes Sir Edmund - and which provided the astounding feats of selflessness, courage and endurance in both peace and war, is long gone.

Where once our manliness was defined by our commitment to our families as husbands, fathers and providers; our commitment to our land, our neighbourhood and our community; our service to our country; our courage under pressure, in adventure or under fire, today manliness seems to defined by hugely paid sportsmen or mincing "metrosexuals".

When Sir Edmund and Sherpa Tensing "knocked the bastard off" in 1953, they did it because it had never been done before. And their lives then and since bear witness to the fact that ego had little to do with it.

Sir Edmund wasn't there for the fun of it - although no doubt he enjoyed the experience immensely - he was there because the job had to be done, to push the boundaries of human endeavour.

And, take note, he has since spent much of his life and, I suspect, much of his substance in doing what he can for the Sherpa people of Nepal, without whom his conquering of the world's highest peak would never have happened.

I wonder how many of the self-absorbed ego-trippers who parade up and down the mountain today with their up-to-the-minute, hi-tech gear spare even a thought for the Sherpas or for the people of Nepal in general.

Or for men like Sir Edmund, who made the journey to the top of the world without any of that stuff - equipment which, had they imagined it in some wild hypoxic fantasy, would have seemed as remote as a man on the moon. And for whom the mere thought of leaving a fellow mountaineer to die would have been unbelievable.

"There was no way that you would have left a man under a rock to die. It simply would not have happened," said Sir Edmund last week. Amen to that.

I exclude, incidentally, Mark Inglis from any criticism for what happened to Sharp. Inglis is, after all, a man with artificial legs and at most, all he could have done was sat and held the dying man until he expired.

I have to say that the very thought of a man with artificial legs climbing, or even wanting to climb, Mt Everest is so far beyond my ability to understand that I can't even try. That aside, men aren't what they used to be.

We have allowed ourselves to succumb - in the Western world at least - to the depredations of radical, hate-filled feminism; and to the poison of pernicious political correctness.

We have presided, with our women, over the unravelling of the very foundation of human society, the nuclear family. And we have, in droves, deserted our wives and children, in pursuit of our personal ambition and/or gratification.

We have dived - in most cases willingly - into rampant immorality, both heterosexual and homosexual.

We have permitted womankind to enter into fields of endeavour for which they were not created and sit back, for instance, and let wives, mothers and daughters die in the front lines in war.

We have cast aside the timeless virtues and principles of Christianity and, having arrived at a place where we believe nothing, are prepared to believe anything, particularly if it fits in with our baser desires.

We have become a selfish, self-absorbed, greedy, grasping, immoral species for which "I'm all right Jack" is an anthem, and "women and children after me" is a prayer - and for whom money, property and prestige are the be-all and end-all of life.

These are just the sort of men who spend money to buy property necessary to gain the prestige of scaling Mt Everest, and who walk blithely by while a fellow human being - a fellow man - lies in the snow and slowly, and I pray painlessly, departs this world, without the comfort of human company.

And although it is shocking, it is nevertheless also understandable, for the worst thing to have happened to mankind in the past 30 years is the diminishing of our concept of the sanctity of life.

Men who are prepared to allow the murder of their unborn children are unlikely to be much bothered about the life of a bloke whose name they don't even know. Poor David Sharp didn't have a dog's show.