Arguably the most valuable masculine trait

Today we're going to talk about one of the most foundational pieces of masculinity. Recently I put a post up on Instagram essentially talking about how masculinity isn't inherently toxic. And that this notion of spouting off about toxic masculinity and constantly talking about it and sort of coming at men for toxic behavior or masculine traits that are toxic actually has a net negative impact. It actually, I don't see it actually doing anything necessarily good or helpful or creating any sort of change. You know, it's like the climate activists lately that have been going into art galleries for some reason and throwing tomato soup onto Monet paintings and Van Gogh paintings. It's like, those dudes are dead. Like, what the hell did they do to you? And why are you throwing tomato soup and onto a painting and gluing yourself to a frickin wall as a protest for oil? Like, there are so many different ways to create change and to alter the course of things when it comes to these types of issues. But it seems to me that there's this notion that by trying to use shame and trying to use derision, that we can create change. And the challenge here is that shame never creates the change that we want. You know, if you're in a relationship and you want to have more sex or, you know, you want to have better conversations, you want to feel more emotionally connected to your partner, shaming them is legitimately the worst way to go about it. And yet there's this notion that has showed up within the gender wars, within the mainstream narrative, within the main, you know, stream conversation between men and women and on mainstream media that makes it socially acceptable to shame men, to try and get them to change. And it has a net negative impact because you see a lot of men that fight back against that, they start to like, really realize, like the main issues aren't being talked about. And it can create an equal force of rejection of sort of disrespect and not wanting to listen and et cetera. And I think it actually misses the mark on what's actually happening. You know, there's a lot of conversations happening about what, you know, are men struggling? Why are they struggling? Men are struggling, you know, not going to college as much or university, not having as much sex, you know, dying younger. I mean, it's just across the board, men seem to be really struggling, specifically within Western society and culture. And so when we look at this problem, a lot of people are just like, well, it's toxic masculinity, it's the patriarchy. And they sort of point to these very vague systems and say these systems need to change. The problem is, is that the individuals that occupy those systems might not see it that way. And from doing a tremendous amount of work with tens of thousands of men over the years, what I can almost unequivocally say is that masculinity is not toxic and it's not a problem for men. Some of the narratives that we as men sometimes carry and buy into maybe not so helpful. But I think what this does is it often overlooks the underlying issue. And the underlying issue is very clear that there are a lot of men carrying around pain, trauma, abuse, neglect, that we as a culture and a society haven't learned how to work with, that we as a culture and a society haven't learned how to deal with or accept. Because the reality is that when a man's hurting and when a woman is hurting, how they express that hurt is different. And the mainstream narrative in conversation is, well, men should express their hurt like women do. And that's not always necessarily the case. It's also not necessarily as helpful as we think it might be for men. You know, the notion of like, vulnerability is this cure all. Just be more vulnerable and, and you'll be a happier man and you'll be more socially safe. And maybe that's the case sometimes, but not all the time. This brings me to this, this foundational pillar of masculinity that I think is at the root of some of what the challenge is that we're facing in our culture today, which is that to me, one of the main pillars of masculinity, especially healthy masculinity, is this notion of non conformity. And there's something within the masculine core, within the masculine drive that, that desires to move deeper and deeper and deeper into a state of sovereignty, into a state of independence, into a state of competence and mastery. And when you can do those things and have that be a contribution to the world, to the community that you're a part of, to your family system and your friends and the environment that you're, that you are, that you inhabit, then there's a deep purpose that's baked into that you find a deeper sense of freedom. But ultimately the challenge with this is that when a man is bucking up against this non conformity of rejecting, you know, living a life based on what other people have told him he should be doing or acting, how he, you know, other people have told him he should be acting, it naturally creates a rejection and a Resistance, because no man really wants to be told how to live his life or how his life should be or what it means for him to be masculine. The real essence of masculinity is that if you read any book, any myth that embodies the masculine essence, that embodies the hero's journey or a man's journey, or a boy's journey into manhood, what you're going to find, right, Homer's the Iliad is a perfect example, is a man who has to go on his own journey. And it doesn't mean he's not surrounded by people who are supporting him and who are helping him and who are giving him feedback. It simply means that that man goes on a journey of some form and it bucks against the norms, it pushes against the social norms in some way, shape or form. And so this is hard in our current society, where it's very commonplace for modern culture, for modernity, for the main narrative that is projected out into the world through social media and big media is telling men, here's how you should be. You should actually conform to exactly what we are telling you to do. And we've defined what toxic masculinity is. We've defined what it means to be a man, and we've defined how you as a man should operate and how you shouldn't. And you as a man should operate in the world and in your life based on how we are telling you to live. That goes against the grain of this core pillar within the masculinity within, within the masculine, which is to press against the constant onslaught of conformity, of conforming to the narrative, of conforming to the collective, the hive mind, of not being able to find your sovereign self within the collective. And so there's this notion that I think one of the things that comes out of this conversation is that it can be incredibly rewarding for a man to be unapologetic about the decisions about the lifestyle and about the way in which you ultimately want to live as a man. You know, for you to not conform to right wing or left wing political ideologies, to not conform to the way that mainstream media on Fox News or CNN is telling you to be as a man. Because there is a constant onslaught within our current culture telling you who you should be, sort of provoking you into a form of submission. And so this rejection of the. The often indoctrinating tenants of modernity, right, which is more, more, more, more, more. The newest is the best. You know, being a part of the collective is where it's at there's safety in that. You got to go along with what people say. You can't live your own full expression be, you know, especially if that full expression is going to offend other people. You know, you're not allowed to post pictures of you hunting deer or bison guys, God forbid somebody has a meltdown about that. You're not allowed to do those things because it might offend somebody. And so rejecting the indoctrinating tenets of modernity, of political authoritarianism and really of this centralized power that has been more and more creeping into Western culture, which really creates the narratives that everyone is expected to abide by, when you start to press against some of those things, the only means to control you, the only means to rein you in is to call you toxic, is to call your behavior toxic. And we've actually eroded this very important piece of society, which is civil discourse. To be able to like you and be friends with you, but still disagree with you. And I have many friends in my life that I disagree with. I disagree with their perspective, I, I disagree with their politics, but I still respect them. You know, I can still love them, I can still appreciate them, I can still have conversations with them. But this notion that if you don't agree with me, I'm going to unfollow you, I'm going to cancel you, I'm going to push you out of society, I'm going to unperson you, is ridiculous. And this is where the masculine is so potent and so powerful and it's why it's so valuable, I think, especially in our current times. But it's also why it's dangerous. Because this is the same sort of strength or mechanism or characteristic or trait that can move into a hyper rigid orientation that can cause damage in relationships, in community and society, especially when it's being evoked by an uninitiated man, right? A man who doesn't care at all about the impact and the ramifications of his choices of his behaviors. So the notion here of being non conformist isn't to say, you know, screw society, I'm going to rebel against everything that is mainstream. It's actually to look at the forces that are pressing themselves upon you and to discern who you are as a man, how you ultimately are, want to live the choices that you want to make. That's what it means to be masculine, to risk living your truth, to risk living your truth in the face of a certain onslaught of what people will say within mainstream culture or society or online or whatever it is that is at the heart of nonconformity. And this is incredibly potent and powerful and necessary for, for a number of reasons. To assure that things like fascism don't take hold again, or authoritarianism or totalitarianism. Those things are only capable and possible when men have been conscripted to not be their own men, to not invoke this very potent and powerful and valuable masculine asset of non conformity, of being disagreeable when necessary and conforming into one sort of hive mind. So it allows you as an individual, this non conformity that can be very powerful. It allows you to chart your own course, to find a deeper sense of meaning in your own life, to create powerful decisions, to find out who you are, to press yourself against the edges of the cultural grains and norms that often intentionally and unintentionally work to compress the individual and the individual psyche and the individual ego and the individual identity into a very specific character that fits with the narrative, that fits with what's socially acceptable. And so part of being a man in my perspective, and you don't have to agree with this, and part of being masculine again in my perspective and you don't, you don't have to agree with this, is to look at where nonconformity can show up in your life, where that asset and that skill, because it is a skill, it takes something to develop, can show up in your life. And this is where you see nice guys, right? There's so much conformity. There's no non conformity, right? It's sort of been beaten out of them and trained out of them. And I get this, I was a nice guy for a long time. And that pull towards conformity. You'll be a good man if you operate how society tells you to operate. You'll be a good man if you do what women tell you. You'll be a good man. You know, if you live the happy wife, happy life mantra. You'll be a good man if you know. And all of a sudden all of these things press in on your life as a man. And you are not your own individual. You are not charting your own course. You're not living life the way that you ultimately want it to be. I mean, when I moved my wife and my kid out into where we're living right now, we're two hours north of the city, we're, you know, on five acres of land. We're far away from sort of like society, you know, as it, as it sort of normally looks. And I think for a lot of people it was like well, why are you doing that? And the response is, because that's how I want to live. Because I want to wake up in the morning and I want to walk outside into nature and into the forest and, and not have the insanity of the city around. And so for many people that seems a bit absurd or scary or terrifying or something that they wouldn't want to do, but it's how I want to operate and how I want to live. And so not conforming to the sort of social norms of, well, you gotta live in a city and you have to be, you know, five steps from McDonald's and a Starbucks, otherwise you're not living life properly. I just don't agree with that. So this non conformity, this pillar of masculinity, this ability to be disagreeable and to discern where and when and about what you are going to disagree where and when and about what you are not going to conform any longer is actually radically important. It's very, very important because otherwise you can get caught in the cycle of living a life and becoming a man that is wholly predicated on what everybody else wants you to be and extracting yourself, your true self, your true nature, from the equation of this is who I want to be as a man. And that's part of the prerequisite within the, within the space of masculinity. I think it's part of the prerequisite within embodying a man and becoming a man that you actually deeply respect. Because if you are a man who is constantly conforming to the social narratives, the relational narratives, the relational expectations of friends and families and the women that you date or the men that you date, you're destined to have this quality of feeling washed over and pinned down by life, like you have no room to breathe. Because you aren't embodying or taking a hold of what your internal soul, what your body, what your mind is trying to evoke out of you, trying to press you towards. And the truth is, is that when you follow your own truth, when you begin to say and not that you, you know, ignore the confines of science and reality, that's not what I'm, you know, sort of promoting here. Right, but when I'm talking about your own truth, as in the thing that wants to come out of you, you know, the type of life you want to live, the choices you want to make, the decisions you want to make, the path you want to follow and carve for yourself and your family, the vision that you have for yourself as a man and the conversations that you want to have and the people you want to be around. When you start to live that truth from that place, there's a price to pay. There's a cost that is associated with it. And that cost is that you are no longer conforming to, to how other people want you to live your life. Your parents might not understand it, your friends might not get it, your family members might not approve of it. You know, society might look down on you or frown upon it because it's not the sort of mainstream narrative of how you should operate or what you should believe. And there is extreme value in that. And any man that I have ever interviewed, and I've interviewed hundreds and hundreds of men from many different walks of life, what I've noticed is that all of them at some point decided, consciously or unconsciously, to move their life in the direction of non conformity, of really being tired of conforming to the narratives either that society and culture had pressed upon them or not conforming to the narratives that their family had pressed upon them or not conforming to the stories and the expectations that, that their relationship had pressed upon them, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Right, we just keep going down that path. This is the challenge that I think many men face to just tie this back around and then close, close out this section, close out this conversation for today. I think the big challenge that many men face in our culture right now is that when this conversation of toxic masculinity is constantly swirling around, it is predicated on this notion that you as a man should conform to specifically how women are telling you that you should operate. Now, again, I'm not saying that women haven't been harmed by men. I'm not saying that men haven't been harmed by men. I'm not saying any of those things. But what I am saying is that this notion of toxic masculinity is not only a tool for derision, but it is more so a very specific tool of conformity, of getting you as a man to conform to how other people want you to operate and expect you to operate. And the moment that you are disagreeable, the moment you disagree with them, the moment that you act in a way that is different from how they want you to act or expect you to act, you are toxic. And that, my friends, is control. That, my friends, is causing you to conform to other people's way of living, other people's beliefs, and how they think that you should operate. And that is not embodying the masculine core, the masculine tenant, the masculine essence. Because in, in embodying the masculine essence is a bit, not a lot, not the, not like over leaning on this, on this tenant or this trait, but is a bit of being able to become masterful in practicing non conformity, of saying, I hear you, I understand, I disagree, or that's not what I believe, or that's not how I'm going to live my life. I'm not interested in that, thank you. And if you have a problem with that, I understand and I'll respect your decision, whatever that decision is. But this non conformity.

Is dangerous to the narrative that wants men and wants masculinity to be sequestered into this very small sort of disenfranchised version of itself that is largely defined by not men, by not masculine qualities. And so I would love to hear your thoughts. Again, you don't have to dis, you don't have to agree with me. You can disagree with some of what I've said or all that I've said. I really have no problem with that. This is just based off of my life, my work, what I have seen in the work that I've done with other men, the cultural conversations, mythology, a good amount of reading. But you don't have to agree with me. And so I'd love to hear your thoughts. If you're watching this on YouTube, comment below. What did you think? What stood out to you? Why do you think some of these things are happening? What do you think I missed or should have talked about or added in? And if you're listening to this on the podcast, same thing, head on over to YouTube, subscribe to the channel, comment below or DM me on Instagram mantalksunlay. Let me know your thoughts. I would love to hear them. And until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off.