MEN'S PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
IMAGINE
You’re walking through the narrow aisles of a supermarket and a young boy is playing ahead of you, blocking your path.
His mother turns around and apologises, saying ‘Watch out, you’re in that man’s way!”.
Right there, in that moment, you're caught off guard and find yourself wondering, ‘Am I really a man?'
BLURRING THE BOUNDARIES
For the 21st Century man, the metamorphosis from boyhood to manhood no longer contains within it any rites of passage, nor confirmation of process as it once did. Instead, in today's culture, exploring one’s own masculinity is regarded at best with suspicion and distrust, and at worst, outright hostility and contempt.
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The fallout from this cultural neglect can take many forms, but the hallmarks are:
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Uncertainty in oneself and one’s ability to take action in the world
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Fluctuations between crippling anxiety/depression and numbing apathy
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Dissociation from your external surroundings, as if living in a dream
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A tendency to ‘buy in’ completely to philosophies and ways of life, e.g. Stoicism/MGTOW, only to find them ultimately unfulfilling
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Fantasies of running away to ‘finally begin your adventure’, with no actual intention of following through with these plans
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Difficulty maintaining your own identity/uniqueness with a group
MEN FROZEN IN TIME
It’s reasonable to assume that the brief exchange in the supermarket described above occurs thousands of times a day - in different towns, different countries and different languages, all across the globe.
The alienation brought about by the concept of ‘Toxic Masculinity’ has driven many men to seek out more traditional ideas of gender - be that in the resurrection of philosophies such as Stoicism, or the popularity of figureheads such as Jordan Peterson, and the notion of ‘bearing your suffering nobly’.
The irony of so many voices weighing in on masculinity is that it robs you of your own inherent understanding and agency.
Accordingly, many men feel frozen in time and space. Taught to abandon their intuitions and internal perceptions, they are unable to trust their instincts and instead, subscribe to hollowed-out top-down ideas of what it is to be a man, or find themselves paralysed through lack of definite action. This leads to the feelings described above.
