Why People Can't Handle Disagreement Anymore, with Thomas Hübl

Thomas, welcome back to the show. How are you?

I'm good, Connor. Good to see you again.

Yeah, lots of life has unfolded. Lots of life has unfolded. Um, well, I'm excited to have you back on. I think we'll just dive straight in to something that we were talking about before, which I think will be a good entry point, which is what the heck has happened to our capacity as individuals and as a collective to just hold tension.

Yeah, it's a— I think that's a very interesting phenomenon that I think needs real attention. And that's just us talking about is giving, putting some light on it or pulling our attention there because I think I often see, like, one sign of maturity is like a mature self has the capacity to host discomfort or disagreement, even if it feels like a tension or uncomfortable, and not reject that sense of discomfort and other the other, like separate themselves from the other internally. And And I think so the mature self, a self that went through all our developmental journey into a mature person, I think has that capacity. But it seems like when we look at society, there's more and more cancel culture, there's more and more fast disconnecting. You don't agree with me, you're not part of my tribe. And it's like, so it seems to me that we, like, the life, we is always like, it's not the generalization, but it seems to me like that more and more we see the overwhelm that the data speed of life became so fast that we simply, our nervous systems feel overwhelmed. And I think every time, like, data speed flows through our nervous system, we can ground technology and process it. But if data speed hits trauma layers inside that are, that are basically stuck, so then it creates heat. And I think we see more and more the inability to host the complexity that that fast world creates. Hence, we reject more and more discomfort because we can't process it. And so the polarization in our societies is getting bigger and bigger, and we are losing, like, the capacity to ground disagreements on a common land. Because when we are together and we feel each other, our bodies are the land. So if we can embody the tension and really work it out together, then it becomes our development. If not, it becomes our stagnation or our relational cut. And so I think that this is a really interesting phenomenon to go deeper, what's happening individually, but also collectively on that level. And what's that an expression of, a symptom of?

Yeah, it's interesting because I, if, if I pull back a little bit, one of the things that I've noticed is just how much in the last you know, couple of years, people have become more— what seems to be, and maybe I'm misinterpreting this, but it seems to be more and more psychologically fragile and relationally fragile. Like, relationships have become so fragile because there's this presupposition that we should agree on everything in order to be in relationship. And they're seeing— and this isn't everybody, but there seems to be a very large subset of people who are so disrupted by disagreement that disagreement becomes the kind of weapon or the tool that's then used to collapse or destroy the relationship. It's like, well, you disagree with me on this, and so now I'm going to sever the relationship with you. And I think what I was saying to you before is I've been surprised at how many people I'll have a guest on the show, or I'll follow somebody on social media, and I'll get emails or I'll get DMs from people saying, like, I can't believe you follow that person. I'm unfollowing you. And I'm like, well, that doesn't mean that I agree with everything that person says. I just believe in being able to have a broader— I don't want to live in an echo chamber. You know, like, I really have tried to design my social media and my work to expand the bubble that I live in so that I'm not so constricted into this really tight perspective. And sometimes that means that I will actively follow or try and speak to people that I fundamentally disagree with. And that's hard for me too. And I think what makes it even harder is when I do that, the amount, the amount of shit that I get for doing that. And it's like, you should— you need to tell that person that you fundamentally disagree. And it's like, well, I'm not really a debater. You know, I can hold disagreement. I'm more interested in like, well, why do you think that way? And what got you to that place where you think that? And that, for me, helps me understand different people's perspective. And I feel like that has really collapsed in a big way. And I'm a very— just to out myself, I'm a very Jungian person. I really love Jung. He's just the myth and the archetypes, and it was my entry into psychology. And so, I think if he were alive today, I always think about what would he be saying about the culture and what's happening in society and the individual and the collective. And I think what you're saying is really true. I think that we are not designed to have as much interaction and relationship with the collective unconscious as we do. And the personal unconscious. Because when you go online, you're interacting with everybody's trauma and their reactivity and their fears and their insecurities. It's all just being spewed out through their posts and their comments and the content that they're creating. And I think for the average psyche, that can be very disorienting, very disrupting when you don't know, oh, this is somebody's projection, this is their shadow, this is their fear, this is their trauma. And so we end up that ends up inhabiting us, I think, in a lot of ways. I'm curious, from a non-psychological perspective, what do you think has happened in our culture and in our society that has contributed to this relational fragility with this diminishment of our ability to hold that tension of disagreement?

Yeah, first of all, I want to echo and share my love with Jung. And I think that there's such profound understanding of certain elements. And I think when also how Jung looks at the collective unconscious and, and the dimension of collective trauma, which basically describes similar things, is, is that there is a landscape that our society, for me, expresses itself through two different kinds of processes. One is an emergent relational process. Exactly what you said before, I think, is a function of a mature emergent process that I know the remedy for me not to become like enveloped in my own echo chamber, digital echo chamber, or digital suit. I, I have to proactively expose myself to opposing or different views and even conversations and relationships to keep myself active and growing and evolving and emergent. I think that's a very important part of a mature self. And not doing that is actually not responsible because we fall asleep in that echo chamber. It doesn't keep us awake because I think disagreement is also a way for societal growth. And not just, oh, we disagree, so we cut it. Yeah, but then we are not developing because we are not really, as you said, I inquire, I see how come you look at it that way? That's what's interesting. And then we see, and the other person might think, how come that you look at this that way? And then so we find some, some space to be together, even if we disagree. But that, that I think is, is mature and resonant and emergent. And emergent means it's relational. It has a future so it can evolve. It can bring forth new insights. It has also like a vertical development built in. And but then what at the same time, what we call society for me is many, many stuck CDs playing. Imagine society as like many CD players and, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm. And it looks like as if that's happening now. But in my understanding, many processes that are non-emergent, disconnected, they are just repetitive. They are the repetition compulsion of the past. And through us, and often unknowingly. Obviously. So, and so that what we see in society is that we put this together and call this, that's happening now without differentiating. Okay, like arguing with the stuck CD, it doesn't make sense and it's not helpful to grow. But noticing that that's what we are dealing with, as you said before, when I look at social media and I can see the projections and the externalizations and all these parts that are happening also as collectives on social media, then we have a wider awareness. And awareness is always the beginning of a change or a development. And so I think— so there is that. But then I really think what I said before also, that the higher is the speed of life, the more or the closer our development is held up in front of our face. You know, it was maybe possible to hang around in this unconscious soup for 200 years and not much was happening. Nowadays, that's not possible anymore because it will become so uncomfortable when, when we do that, because the delay time of karma is getting shorter through the speed of life. And so development comes up much faster. And the people that know this, and take it on and own it, we'll simply grow all the time. And if we resist it, it will be very painful. It is very painful. And so that's, I think, a mix of the speed of consciousness and technology and the trauma layers that are creating a lot of tension, inflammation, and, uh, like overheating the system. So it creates inflammatory processes all the time. And we see this also in rising conflicts. It's getting hotter on the planet. Climate-wise, conflict-wise, but also in ourselves, even physical diseases or physical symptoms that show up or mental symptoms that show up.

Yeah, it seems as though, I mean, when you look at the, the data, the rise of mental health issues amongst people, especially in the West, is just astronomical. You know, the rising rates of bipolar disorder and anxiety and depression. And I mean, you just, you name it, you go down the list. And I saw something the other day that was showing the increase in mental health issues. And maybe this is part and parcel because of awareness. People have access to social media where these things are getting talked about. And so they're kind of self-diagnosing. And there's a kind of a self-reinforcing piece to it. But it is interesting to see, as you're saying, that with the speed, with the increased speed of information and data that people are consuming throughout the day, that there's an impact on that when, when people's vessels and systems, their minds, their psyche, their nervous systems are already a little bit on edge, which is, you know, what trauma does. And so, so it activates those things. But I think that, that kind of brings me to what I wanted to talk about with you, which is You know, most people think about trauma as something that is— that's personal, that has happened to them, that's happened in their life. And your latest work with Richard Schwartz kind of talks about this collective and more ancestral trauma. And so I'm hoping that you can just from a broad perspective define what that actually means. Like when we talk— when people talk about collective trauma or ancestral trauma, What is, what does that actually mean? Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Let's start with, um, just short to define trauma as a response that is actually an intelligence within very adverse situations or experiences. So because often in mainstream understanding, it's either trauma is the bad thing that happened to me versus the trauma response is the intelligence that helped me to survive the difficult experiences that I had better than without the And there is a residue, there is something that kind of an aftereffect, and that aftereffect we need to take care of. But to differentiate these two is very important. And so, but when we look at, for example, attachment trauma, why do we see attachment trauma? Yeah, most probably in many cases because the parents also traumatized to a certain extent. So even there, it's not so clear-cut, oh, that's just what happens to me and it's separate from my parents because because my parents were all well and I'm attachment traumatized. No, there, there is a link between already there in this one generation. There's a link between my parents' psychology and their capacity to really hold me as a child and what happened with my experience. So they are interdependent. And so when you look further, then in the intergenerational transmission, no matter if you look at epigenetics, if you look at psychology, if you look at systems, family systems and so on, or if you look at social systems, We see that my grandparents, for example, lived through the Second World War in Vienna. Now, that they were traumatized was very obvious through the war. And, and so that, that has repercussions in my family. And they also ended up in me. And I needed to do a lot of work to really look at this deeper, that there is an interdependent effect in the family system. It's like a data flow. And that it's really interesting that through my body, there is an amazing way in our body to tap into the library of our nervous system. When our nervous system is not anymore seen just as a personal property, like it's my nervous system, my nervous system is so much bigger than the me that finds him or her themselves in there. So, but it's actually much, a much bigger library. And a lot of ancestral information is accessible. So if I learn to attune or do what we wrote in the book with, uh, Richard Schwartz to, to work on the ancestral burdens, like the information that our ancestors could not integrate, hence passed on to the next generations. So the unintegrated information is being passed on as kind of symptoms and, uh, processed to us as well as the integrated intelligence that we all all enjoy. Because that our bodies stick together for our life is, is not an invention that we invented. So it's something that life invented over millions of years. And so when you look further, then the Second World War and this phase that my grandparents lived through, this phase in history, is like an archaeological layer in Austria's, Germany's, Europe's, um, historical archaeology. So the war itself had a systemic impact. And so we could say another aspect are this kind of archaeological layers of First World War, Second World War, and all kinds of other things around the world— colonialism, racism, and so on. And And then if we go deeper, we can see, but even before those wars, there were other layers of trauma. So for me, collective trauma is a whole system, like a web, like a whole web that is, that is deeply ingrained in, in all the human societal structures and often unrecognized. So when we treat trauma as a merely individual issue, which it's often being seen as something that happened in my biography, it, it often doesn't lead to the full impact that we can have. But that's why we wrote about, yes, there is individual work and it's important to do that and not bypass it. And then there is ancestral work that sometimes reinforces the individual work. And then there's collective work to de-ice our societal learning because all the collective trauma that is stuck and frozen in time is learning we've never had. So in that regard, I would say even in Germany as a very progressive society that dealt with the trauma of the Holocaust a lot, like also overtly, there is still a lot of work needed to really de-ice the catastrophe that happened to get the, the, the societal learning and the ethical learning that humanity needs in order to deal with contemporary temporary issues, like as if something's lagging behind. So that's why we, we said okay, because we both came to this— Richard and I came to this through different backgrounds and ways, but we very much resonate that there are these three different levels of work that we both discovered in different ways. And so we wanted to reinforce this bigger map together. Connor Beaton.

I'm listening to you through— I always try and listen to my guests through the lens of like the guy that's just starting this journey, you know, and because I think that there's probably, you know, many people listening to this and they're picking up exactly what you're putting down, you know, they're following along. What do you say to the guy who hears you talking about the sort of collective trauma, the ancestral trauma, and he's just like, man, I barely have my shit together. My shit's a mess. I'm just, I'm like, I'm so just trying to get my personal shit together so that I can, you know, make better decisions and, you know, not fuck up in my relationship and not yell at my kids. And you're talking to me about like collective trauma and ancestral are like, that feels maybe overwhelming for some people. Can you maybe just address that and speak to that? Because I think for some people, it's maybe it feels out there, or maybe it feels overwhelming. And I just want to, yeah, bring it down.

Yeah, that's beautiful. First of all, I would say the realization I barely have my shit together is already a great starting point because once I know that that's the case, something already happened that is very meaningful. That puts me on a journey. Once I say that, I'm already on a journey. So I would say congratulations, because sometimes we, we don't even know that. So knowing that and owning it and say, yes, life gets me to my edge and I don't understand that edge. And I, but I'm committed, more and more committed to find out what actually is happening in those moments. That is already a great journey. And, and I would say also, it doesn't matter if individual ancestral collective trauma really makes sense or is just an intellectual idea that we can follow or not follow. It's important that we do the work where it's needed. And when I see, oh, in my relationship, I'm struggling again and again, or with my kids, they trigger me and I, I I lose it at times. So then that's the way, that's like the commitment to say that's where the work starts. And as we walk the path, because the interesting thing is it sounds sometimes like as if, yes, there is a path that I need to find and then I walk it versus your inner motivation and the composition of your inner self like the motivation is the power that creates a path that only you can walk, that doesn't exist yet. And only when you walk it, you create it. So which means like only when we say, wow, I really realize I need support, I need exchange, I need communities like you create with your podcast, that people come together and we listen to stuff together, we share, we, you know, we come maybe together in groups and we really begin a journey. And we don't know where we are going. That's the point. Nobody really knows at the beginning of the journey where it's gonna end. And it's also irrelevant. It doesn't really matter because important is that we are walking. So we are walking together and life will tell us. And as I mature certain parts of me that my decision-making grows, my relationships get better, uh, I feel more regulated. And grounded in my life, naturally, when it's ripe, the other dimensions will knock on my door. Absolutely. And there's no— there's nothing to be missed. And if it feels to me too far out that, okay, I understand, okay, my parents, my grandparents, maybe my grandparents were soldiers in the war. And, and yeah, I understand that, but I don't know how that relates to me. It, it, that doesn't really matter. As I do my work, where are the most, like, the strongest pain points? And this will evolve me, and the path will walk me. And eventually, when it's ripe, the other dimensions will show up. But it's good at least to know that there is a bigger map, there's a bigger territory to the process. It's not just about my individual journey. And some of the symptoms I carry Maybe my father carried, maybe my grandfather carried, and before. And there is information that comes through my lineage that is not just my own personal issue, that has a bigger dimension. And I think it's good to at least know that without bypassing my personal stuff. So yeah.

Yeah. All right, guys, really quick aside. First off, thank you so much for tuning in to the show and to the channel. If you are wanting to go deeper, if you're a man that's working on himself in some way, shape, or form, you're wanting to be more self-led, you want to trust yourself more, you want to have a deeper level of self-worth, or maybe you're looking to improve your relationship, then I encourage you to check out the Man Talks Alliance. You can go to mantalks.com/alliance. We have over 1,000 men in this incredible community from around the world, men who are just like you, working to better themselves, to be a better husband, a better father, a better leader in your own life. So check it out, mantalks.com/alliance. Yeah, I think that's great. I mean, I've, I've certainly tried to pay very close attention to my own ancestry. And I mean, I think one of the layers that we can talk about with men specifically is this this collective trauma layer of war. And I think one of the things that I see happening and emerging in the culture or the cultural conversation between men and women is the kind of unique sacrifice, I guess you could say, that men have made. And then the unique sacrifice that women have made throughout previous generations. And one of the sacrifices that men have made is, you know, dying. They're giving their lives to protect, giving their lives to serve. And I think sometimes in our culture that seems to be underrecognized, um, not really respected or honored. It's kind of flipped aside as, you know, something not necessarily meaningful. Um, so I'm curious, when you look at some of these collective layers of trauma, how does that play for men specifically? What's, what's the cost that men have maybe paid? How has that collective trauma infiltrated or affected men in general, especially within the West or within Europe?

Yeah, that's— well, that's a powerful question. I would like to put that question in a bigger context. And so the context— and then I'll return to the question, but for me, the context is also important. I believe very much that it's incredibly important to be kind of an agent of peace. And so when, um, when we say peace is not the absence of fighting. The absence of fighting is a ceasefire agreement or a political agreement to end the war. Like, it's— let's take the Second World War in Europe. Like, okay, there was an agreement. And from that time on, like, the war was over basically. And the reconstruction of society started again. And okay, there were all kinds of after processes, but And I think it's very important to see that this didn't end the war. The war continued, the drumbeats of war continued in family systems. We call it domestic violence, we call it alcoholism, sexual violence, we call it all kinds of things, sexual abuse in family systems. So in a way, if we talk about peace and peace is not a state of harmony in my understanding. It's like peace is the capacity to stay related within tensions and disagreements and conflicts. As we started the conversation, I think this is peace, that we can develop out of disagreements a mutual development for both of us or for all of us. And like this, we keep growing. And And so I see this very much as— that's why I also speak so much about collective trauma, because I think it's very important that we see we need to change something in our understanding as citizens, that the citizen's responsibility is to follow— it's like a root canal treatment of war so that we create more and more sustainable peace. And I believe attachment trauma and family issues and other issues in society they need a root canal treatment so that really peace becomes sustainable, like we embody peace basically. And often that doesn't happen. So what that does is it leaves the repetition compulsion in the collective unconscious active. And then we wonder, oh, how come that we again have a war? Yeah, of course, because we don't have the right tools to treat it. So if you don't treat it, it will come back. It takes 50 years, 80 years, 120 years, doesn't matter, but it's going to come back. And And so, so that's one thing. So I want to put the other conversation into this dimension of a responsibility to heal deeply in order to change the trajectories of war on the planet into a more peaceful coexistence. But that doesn't mean that we become naive, that suddenly, oh, once I understand this, okay, there will not be any armed conflicts. Of course, the world— and if that kind of disconnect often in spiritual communities, or like we see like a disconnect from the reality that's on the ground that needs us to be more connected and grounded with what's happening. And so in that sense, when you look back thousands of years, and that's again something that is changing in the last decades, most probably even stronger, that often the sacrifice that, that, that I see in many men and their lineage, their parents, their grandparents that went through wars, even if we haven't experienced the war, is that there is a sacrifice of sensitivity. There's a sacrifice of our heart. And in order to, let's say, in the good sense, to protect the tribe, not even the active aggression outside, even if it's a protective war, it's the same sacrifice. And, and so that combined with the moral injury of what it really means to hurt or kill other people left a deep imprint, I believe. And, and we need to have collective spaces where we address those That sacrifice needs to be addressed collectively. And I believe there's a lot of healing. And I saw this also in some groups. There's a lot of healing potential in, in owning that sacrifice, noticing it, because witnessing is like, makes certain things more real. Like when I, I see, I see you, I see you in and as that. And then something can melt. It's not anymore held in an isolation inside. It becomes a shared space. And I think these shared spaces, what we often call these healing collectives, are missing often. And I'm sure you and your work do this and it's happening some places, but it's not mainstream understanding that societal rituals need to keep the collective psyche digesting and integrating the past. And I see often that, like, also when you look at the suicidal rates and the alcoholism and addiction rates of veterans, just the veterans now, let alone the intergenerational transmission of them, you can see it's very, very high. So we don't have yet the right societal ritual to really heal that. And, and that becomes part of this unconscious repetition compulsion, and we need a remedy for that, and that we need to create. I think it's— we cannot wait that somebody does it. I think we need to, we need to do it. We need to find ways how to treat this or how to be with it together. That's the first, first— yeah, it's so much bigger because it's a big topic.

Yeah, well, I mean, You know, I've— my grandfather fought in World War II as well with the Canadian military and was a pilot for— I think he was a pilot for a transport plane at first and then was upgraded into a fighter pilot. And yeah, I mean, seeing the impact that that had on him and then how he raised my dad and and my two uncles and, you know, seeing how that transferred into how I was raised and my siblings. And I mean, it's very, it's very interesting because it is a kind of— it's almost like many of the people that I know who were raised by World War II vets or Vietnam vets, it's like a lineage of being raised with a man whose heart was vacant, you know, like the man was there, but the heart was absent. And that leaves an imprint. Like in my book, I wrote this line from Nietzsche where he said, that which is hidden in the father is revealed in the son. And I think that there's this, you know, there's this awakening, that there's this, you know, resuscitation that's been trying to happen within our culture. Of men who don't want to live like that. You know, they don't want to live with their heart absent from relationships. And I think that's— I think that's challenging because our culture has become a little chaotic. And I think right now we're entering into this period of more uncertainty, more warring, more disconnection, more polarization. And that's kind of all textured by the rise of extremism within cultures and societies. And I think oftentimes what I can tell is that when those things start to happen—warring, extremism, polarization—there really is a kind of battle for the life force of men and trying to divert men into camps of who are you warring with, who are you fighting for. And I can't help but feel like that is in some ways transpiring right now. And I wonder, you know, what, what are your thoughts on that? Like, how does a man walk through a time when uncertainty is, you know, seems to be at its highest, you know, since in recorded history and chaos, you know, and extremism and polarization are going bonkers. How does what we're talking about then play in with how that man walks through the world? What can he be aware of? How does he start to, you know, hold on to some type of agency and autonomy and leadership without compromising and, you know, getting sucked into the extremes that are vying for his attention?

Exactly. Yeah, that's exactly— that's the key question also, like right now. And I think it's exactly what you said. When the heart's vacant, the compass of life, the GPS of life is reloading. And so I think what we— what I think it's actually a citizen's responsibility. It's not enough anymore to say, yeah, but that, that's my life story. That's my father's or my grandfather's story. Yeah, that's right. But like yourself, you most probably inquired a lot to resolve some of, some of that past and not let it run your life. And I think it's our responsibility as grounded citizens to do that. That's not anymore something that's out there and a few people go to crazy therapists. It's like, it's a responsibility. If I want to create a different world and if I'm standing with my life energy for a world that is pro-life, that is pro-resolving this kind of tensions and polarizations and not just become part of a camp, because part of a camp means means that part of me is unconsciously acting out something. And otherwise, I'm not in a camp. Otherwise, I have the capacity to host that polarization as tension inside and become part of the solution, like a vertical development. And hence, I think it's very important. And that's why I think also your work's important, is, okay, how can we come together and re— re— own the vacant— like our heart, heal our heart. And that happens through, I see you and you see me. I feel you and you feel me. We are together in this and we bridge this gap that I privatize my own pain or the pain of my father, my grandfather. And we come together and we see each other in this and we will reown our sensitivity and we will reown the fact that we are struggling with some of the ethics that are in this moral injury, kind of not clear. They might be mentally clear, but they are not fully clear. They are not embodied. And I think embodiment is a commitment to nature. And so when it's not enough that I know things, it's how I live it every day that shows me my development. Because when people say, how can I know my development? I say, look at your life. I mean, if you look how your life looks like, that's your development. What you are able to live, that's whatever. What you know is irrelevant if you cannot live it. It's great that you know it, but it's not your truth. And if once it becomes your truth, if you're a generous person and people around you experience you as generous, yeah, then it's true. If you think you are generous, but people around you experience you as stiff and tight, so something is not working. And or so like, look at the mirror that life mirrors you back. And, and so there you see your consciousness, you see your humanity, you see your real agency, how to contribute to society in a way that is meaningful for life, not only for you, for life. And, and I think that, that agency and that part of our agency is also Well, let's say it differently. In modern society, purpose has been a little bit abused as career. Like, what I'm doing, my vocation, my career, my work is my purpose. And I would say, yes, that's part of your purpose, but the other part of your purpose is to heal yourself. Because you have been born into a family system, into an ancestral system that has certain dynamics built in, and they are as important as your mission and your career. So part of our mission is to become more whole, and that serves also our purpose and expression in the world, obviously. And our purpose in the world might serve our becoming more whole. And so the purpose is, is both. It's not my difficulties are not blocking my way. They are my way. And if I live my life like this, then, then also the wounds of war is exactly what we need to take on and say, we will take care of this, even if we don't know how. And this commitment, I find it's very powerful that we know we will take care of this. We will take the wounds of war, and we will take it on and we'll find a way. Same as in many other things, we'll find a way when we really take it. I think we can do this here too.

Yeah, it's interesting because I think— I mean, we have something called The Alliance, and we've got over 1,000 guys in there from all over the world. And one of the core tenets is that we're trying to create create a community and a culture where men experience something that they don't often experience outside in the world, which is having other people genuinely give a shit about them. And that's a strange thing to say. But so, so often men, men walk through life with this background. This is what I've learned with 12 years of doing this, working with men, literally everywhere in the world, is that most men walk through life with this unconscious or very conscious experience of like, at the end of the day, no one really gives a shit about me. Like, push comes to shove, I'm either a tool for providing for somebody or my family or whatever. You know, nobody really wants to hear about my problems. Society's telling me that I am the fundamental problem with everything in existence. And so, you know, I need to blah, blah, blah. And so, men really walk through the world with this kind of like, yeah, people don't really give a shit me. And we've tried to develop this community where it's like, yes, you're here for your work, you're here to lead yourself more effectively and have, you know, better decisions and be able to support, blah, blah, blah. But you're also here to be of service to another man in a way where he gets that somebody genuinely gives a shit about him. And that is something that is like baked into how we try and encourage the men to relate to one another so that then they hopefully take that back out into their lives. Because I think it's this— I think the, the collective trauma you're talking about that I've seen with so many men is that the byproduct is like, I'm just here to work and die. I'm here to pay taxes or sacrifice my life to protect something. And that can undercut And there's this notion, I think, in, in like the red pill culture. I don't know if— are you familiar with like red pill? Have you ever heard of red pill culture? Like the red pill culture? It's a— no, well, yes, but it's in— it's, it's online. It's like the manosphere thing. But there's, there's this notion in the red pill culture of like women are, are born with inherent value and men are born without value and they have to earn it. And so there's a devaluing of male life. When it comes to our culture and our society. And I think a lot of men live with that perspective. And I think that's part of the collective trauma that I hear you talking about is like, oh, my life as a man doesn't have inherent value. I have to work to prove that my life has meaning. And I think part of that personal work that you're talking about, which is so important, which is you as a man can find purpose in in doing this work to realize that you actually just do have inherent value. You know, that can be part of the equation. And, and if you don't feel like you have purpose in your life, this can be a path of purpose. That's right. Beautiful. I'm curious, you know, do you think that many of the political, um, sort of cultural conflicts and extremisms that we see right now, would you say that those are, are are actually expressions of unprocessed collective trauma? Like, how does that play in? Because it seems like there's just so much division politically, culturally. How much of that is a manifestation or a mirror for what we're talking about?

Yeah, first of all, I do. I think that this, that we do not have or that we have very little understanding. When you spoke about Jung before, like the collective unconscious, it's like a deep ocean. And I think we need to bow down. I often say, like, there's a prayer that once came to me with a group in the Himalayas that says, "And I'm grateful for what I see, and I'm grateful for what stays hidden, because this is thy will, and that's why I'm here." So that to bow down to the not seeing, like all the defenses, also the collective defenses against massive amount of pain create like like this whole architecture. And I think only when we are able to bow, not to grasp it, this kind of, I need to see everything, but to bow down to the hiding, gives us the blessing of the unconscious. And so then we begin to see the things that stay hidden, but not because we want, because we can bow down to the intelligence of hiding stuff, anesthetizing, like, like, like shutting down, painkillers. And And when we— so I believe we have very little idea how deep that ocean is, like in mainstream culture. So we see, oh, like things are happening, but they're not just happening. They're like, as you said before, there's many symptoms of things. And so on a fundamental level, I believe that as long as we don't take care of certain processes that are kind of lurking in this deep water, it has to show up again. And that is combined with a world that is rapidly becoming a village. And so when a lot of identity structures, religious identity structures, political identity structures that made sense maybe for a long period of time in this vast world where tribes and communities and even nations were like very separate. The very technology that allows us just to have this intimate conversation here makes the world a village. But that also means that certain qualities of evolution that were needed for a long time, they, they're obsolete. But in our healthy parts, change happens fluidly, like evolution, like we are evolving and developing naturally. But when old structures are iced over and they need to change, they release a lot of pain because they have to change. Certain identity structures don't make sense in this global village. And even the driver of competition turning into collaboration is a huge thing. It's like the same, like you change fossil fuels to alternative energies. It's a different It's a different thing. And that creates, I think, a lot of turmoil at the moment. And the structures that cannot change because they are frozen, they create a lot of noise. And I think that's why we need a different treatment. We need collectives, I believe. We cannot work through this just individually. We need strong collectives, like what you said before. You have 1,000 men in your Alliance, that's a collective. And the power of such a collective can do so much, so much more than everybody on his own or her own. And, and, and I think we need more of that. We need a different treatment model for these collective structures to facilitate what AI and data speeds like advancement and, and so many other things are producing right now. We really get to the edge of what we can process. And so I think this extremism, strong polarization, this fragility, the relational fragility that you started with, and, and also the conflicts that are coming up and also the reinforcement of— because with trauma comes scarcity. Every time there's trauma, something is not enough, not enough protection, not enough love, not enough attention. I don't know. Something is missing. And, and collectively we feel there is this scarcity. And, and I think that lets us act out— if that takes hold of us and we cannot anymore host it and own it and transform that scarcity into abundance, then, then we become part of a world that doesn't have enough. And, and so that's And then we reproduce it all the time. So I think all of these are just a few things because that's such a big topic.

But yeah, yeah, I mean, it's, it's interesting because it does seem like individuals, as these external structures and institutions that we've known for so long, that people have been so familiar with, decay and change. You know, I think just, just even the shift from a multilateral world to a more multipolar world where people, countries are returning back or trying to return back to this kind of, you know, country-centric approach and less of a we're going to collaborate is very disorienting for people. And the power structures are changing and the institutions are shifting. And I think for the average individual, that can be disorienting when, again, you know, they're just trying to get their shit together or pay bills and, you know, get the promotion and raise their kids well. I think for the average person that I, that I talk to, what they communicate is a lot of— I think disorientation is probably the right word. It seems— and I think that, that from what I think you're saying is when the structures and the institutions and the framework that has normally held things together starts to change, that is just naturally disorienting because there's an unknown that's emerging. And I think that we have a very low— I think that the majority of people have a very low tolerance for the unknown. Like, I think Western civilization is predicated on knowing everything, and I think it's very challenging for the individual psyche and for the collective psyche to be like, I don't know what's going to happen, you know, and everybody just kind of freaks out. And so how can you just speak to that in whatever way you'd like? I mean, maybe I was going to say, how can an individual, you know, expand their tolerance for the unknown? But maybe that's not the right question to ask. But what are your thoughts on that?

First of all, I think it's such an important topic. And you said it in a way If, if I'm connected to myself and if I'm grounded, if I'm relatively safe in myself, then the unknown is a room that I walk into in contact with myself. And I know my compass. If I know my GPS, then I trust my GPS to Oh, guide me. And I think this is the fundamental leadership function, or at least one of the fundamental leadership functions of our time, is that leaders of organizations and like everywhere, we know it doesn't matter where, that when uncertainty comes up, we don't go into over-controlling or checking out, but we stay and say, okay, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. It's okay. But because I feel that the path is creating itself, there is no preformed path. But in a collectively hurt world where there is a lot of hidden and kind of numb fear, when we don't know, it starts shaking in us. And then one way is to go back to what we know instead of to stay open to what we are learning right now. And so this openness to, oh, something new wants to happen through us. That's why the old is slowly dissolving and falling away, dropping away, because we need to go to a next level. We need to go and co-create a new world, not the world to bring back the world that we already know. And so the identification with those old habits is very strong. And so in— but the leadership function, what does it mean, leadership? It means that I, that I have the skills to go into territories that are unknown, and I, I can be in that process, or I can be with that process and don't need to shut it down. And that's, I think, also again a function of an integrated, mature self where I feel myself and when I know, okay, yes, I I don't know, but I'm committed to find out. Not, I have to know. It's different. To be committed to find out means I feel that there's agency, and agency creates a path. And that is the essence of creativity, I believe, is that in the unknown, we have new impulses. Suddenly I have an intuition. Suddenly I have an insight. I say, oh, wow. And I feel how the future knocks on my door if I stay open in that moment. And in meditation, we see that space is the function that invites future. Otu Sharma at MIT talks about this, that the theory U, when you are at the bottom of the U in a deeper state, you are communicating with emergence. Emergence arises. And I think that's a deep spiritual practice, is to be able to be spacious enough. And but that also means that I need to be grounded in myself enough that I can stay there. And, and, and that I'm so happy that you brought this up because I think for current leadership is not anymore I'm the guy that knows everything and I am the guy that has his shit together. Like, no, no, no, no. I'm, I'm vulnerable and I'm able to communicate also to people around me that sometimes I don't know. I don't know, but I'm committed to find out and that we are committed to find out and we will walk through this valley together. And that has a power. And I think that's deeply inspirational also in leaders that can do that, that I find this every time I am with some of my clients that are leading organizations and then, and I feel, wow, they can be. Yes, it's so beautiful that, that not knowing is a capacity. Not the failure. And so, yeah, so thank you for bringing this up.

Yeah, and like building the tolerance for that. I always, I always kind of, um, feel like my job as a facilitator, as a practitioner, is to help, help men be able to track what they, what they're needing, what they're looking for. You know, it's like You don't know where it's going to go. You're not exactly too sure all the time of like, yes, this is— because I think a lot of times we as men, we're so analytical and rational. It's like, well, I just want you to tell me what I need to do. I need you to tell me what I need to see. I need you to tell me what action I need to take. And a lot of the times it's like, well, no, my role here is actually to guide you to be able to better track your own instinct, intuition, gut, and internal intelligence of what you need and what's necessary for you in your life. Rather than externalizing it onto somebody else. And, that's a very challenging thing because in some ways, you are bringing that person into contact with the unknown of, "I don't know how I'm going to deal with the grief that comes up or the anger that emerges or the pain from that situation." And so, I think it's a very useful practice for many people. One of the things One of the things that you talk about, I think, in this new book is that you kind of offer practices for releasing inherited burdens, for releasing things that we genuinely have received from the lineage, from our ancestors, from fathers, mothers, grandparents, et cetera. What are some of the practices for the men that are listening to this, for the people that are listening to this, what can they do to start to implement some of this collective or ancestral work that you're talking about?

Yeah, yeah, I was gonna say before when you spoke about what, how we find out what we need, I think an additional aspect of what you just said is also that I have tools to work with my insecurity, with my fear that I, what that comes up when I don't know. That it makes me maybe insecure, and I like to feel strong and heavy together, but sometimes I don't. And if I don't, what are my tools to work with it versus pathologizing that that comes up? And you said also grief or anger. And that leads now to your question is like, there is often this notion, which is part of our psyche obviously, that the things that disturb us are being seen as something that we need to get rid of. And but deeper in the trauma understanding, we know that things that disturb us are usually the things that we got rid of already, that we split off already. The fear is bothering me again and again because it wants to come back, and I am suppressing it again and suppress it again, and until one day I say, okay, I'm afraid. Okay, yes, I am afraid. And then Then I begin to own it and look at it and say, wow, the fear is not the fear. The fear is me. It's like the liver is also not the liver. It's just like a part of my body. And so these emotions that seem so disturbing or the numbness in us or what we said before, the vacant heart. Yes, we— to shut down part of our sensitivity in very painful moments is intelligent. And I think one thing we described in the book, and Dick talks about burdens and I speak about it a bit different, but is, is all of these parts or aspects of us are intelligent functions. When somebody as a child needs to shut down their body awareness because they have chronic pain or they, I don't know, have stuff happen or be very afraid as children or neglected, Then later on, when that person— yeah, it's hard for me to feel my body— we could also say, well, you managed to shut down the awareness of your body. There's much more agency in, in the intelligence of it than if it's a dysfunction. And of course it has side effects, we all know this, but the parts of us that come up are interesting, and they are me, they belong to me. And, and I begin to speak my own language again. And that needs a part of it. My defense is a part of it. My, my insecurities, my emotions are part of it. And I think if you change the, the, the level of attention that we bring to it. So that's a huge change for many people. That's a huge unlock that I don't have problems. I need to relearn my inner language. To understand myself better, and that will help me to become more whole. And, and so, like, speaking again, like becoming literate again in our own language, like inner language, is, I think, a big unlock. And that we are not looking at problems, we are looking at aspects of ourselves that we maybe don't understand today, but they are very important. And when they— when something— and the second part is also when something is recurrent. I know with my wife I have the same conversations again and again, or with my children I have similar triggers, or like with my colleagues at work I have similar frictions. Once it's coming back again and again, it has a message for us. There's a message in the bottle, as Sting sings. And so like, it's good to look at, to read the message and not try to get rid of that all the time. And so, so that makes us more whole. And I think that's a fascinating journey.

It's— I feel like that's probably a good place for us to pause. It's such an interesting thing because it's so easy to externalize it. I need you to change. I want you to be different. And I think what we— this is how we started the conversation, right? It's that there— that has become so accentuated with social media and the internet and and just on, I need you to change. I need you to be different. If you're not going to be different, I'm not going to be in relationship with you in any way, shape, or form. And that seems to have become much more intense, which is usually the thing that happens before a big change happens, before a big transition or transformation happens. For your book, Releasing Our Burdens, it's out. People should definitely go and check it out. Where can people learn more about you? More about your work, more about your books, where can they go to find you?

Yeah, first of all, I want to say thank you, Connor, for, for another great conversation. I really enjoyed this. It's a deep dive and there's a great resonance. So thank you. And yeah, in terms— Thomas Huebl, thomas huebl.com. Thomas Huebl is my website, uh, and, uh, we have two NGOs. One is the POCO Project, and the other one is globalrestoration.org. And this one is US-based, one is— the first one is Germany-based. There we do a lot of nonprofit collective trauma work. One is more government-oriented in Washington and the other one more grassroots-oriented in Europe. And yeah, so people can find out all on our websites. About the books, everything. Yeah, beauty, beauty.

We'll have the links to all that in the show notes. You can check them out whether you're watching this on Spotify or YouTube or wherever you're tuning into. And definitely go check out Thomas's work. It's awesome. I've really enjoyed it. And as always, don't forget to man it forward. Share the episode with somebody that you know will enjoy the conversation. It might spark a conversation between you and them. And as always, until next week, Connor Connor Beaton signing off.