Part 4
In Part 1, I shared my challenges with depression, the fact that the suicide rate for males is so much higher than it is for females, and how these realties have impacted men and their families. In Part 2, I looked more deeply into the underlying causes and potential solutions to this world-wide problem. In Part 3, I offered on an evolutionary understanding of what we need to know to help us address the major problems of male violence, directed inwards and outwards. In Part 4, I offer guidance for all those who are ready to see the truth about the times in which we live and how we can live, love, and work, for good in the world.
For most of my professional life I believed that treating depression and preventing suicide involved helping individuals, couples, and families. A new perspective opened for me in 1993 at a men’s leadership conference in Indianapolis, Indiana. I’ve written a number of articles about my experience over the years, including my most recent, “Transformations: The End of the U.S. and the World as We Know It and The Truth About Our Collective Future.”
As I write this article at the end of July 2024, fires rage throughout the west. Inside Climate News has an article posted today,
“Supercharged by Climate Change, Western Megafires Explode Simultaneously Heat waves and ‘flash droughts’ fuel intense fires in California, Oregon and Canada.”
My friend and colleague Richard Heinberg, author of numerous books, The Party’s Over: Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies, wrote a recent essay, “From Climate Crisis to Polycrisis” and said,
“The Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu wrote that, in warfare, it is essential to know both your enemy and yourself. Today, humanity has ‘enemies,’ including climate change and nuclear weapons, that are capable of destroying civilization and whole planetary ecosystems. So far, we are not defeating these enemies—which we ourselves created.”
Heinberg goes on to say,
“Our collective inability to reverse the rising tide of risk implies a failure of understanding: we don’t know our enemies; moreover, we evidently don’t know ourselves, because if we did, we wouldn’t continue generating such problems.”
I turned 80 years old last year and have spent much of my life getting to know myself so that I could help solve problems facing men and women. I realize that self-knowledge is a life-long process and none of us complete the process in a single lifetime. I have learned to be more compassionate towards myself for my own limitations and to accept the fact that everyone has their own time for recognizing and acting on the truth of what they learn.
I was given a great gift in 1993 when I saw the “sinking ship of civilization” and also the “lifeboats to a better future for humanity.” Here are a few of the things I’ve learned thus far. I hope they will be helpful to you:
- “Civilization” is a misnomer. Its proper name is the “Dominator culture.”
As long as we buy the myth that “civilization” is the best humans can aspire to achieve, we are doomed to go down with the ship. In The Chalice & the Blade: Our History Our Future first published in 1987, internationally acclaimed scholar and futurist, Riane Eisler first introduced us to our long, ancient heritage as a Partnership Culture and our more recent Dominator Culture, which has come to be called “Civilization.”
In her recent book, Nurturing Our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Shape Our Brains, Lives, and Future,written with peace activist Douglas P. Fry, they offer real guidance for creating a world based on partnership. Historian of religions, Thomas Berry, spoke eloquently to our need to be honest about our present situation.
“We never knew enough. Nor were we sufficiently intimate with all our cousins in the great family of the earth. Nor could we listen to the various creatures of the earth, each telling its own story. The time has now come, however, when we will listen or we will die.”
Get out in nature. Feel the changes we’ve created. Connect with the Earth again. It will connect you with yourself.
- There is a better world, beyond civilization.
When I was given the book Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn,I got a clear sense of the two worlds that are competing for our attention: A world where hierarchy and dominance rule (Quinn calls it the world of the Takers) and a world where equality and connection rule (Quinn calls it the world of the Leavers). In his many books Quinn offers a clear contrast in worldviews.
In his book, Beyond Civilization: Humanity’s Next Great Adventure, Quinn says,
“I can confidently predict that if the world is saved, it will not be because some old minds came up with some new programs. Programs never stop the things they’re launched to stop. No program has ever stopped poverty, drug abuse, or crime, and no program ever will stop them. And no program will ever stop us from devastating the world.”
Quinn goes on to quote Buckminster Fuller who said,
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
In my sweat-lodge vision in 1993, those who recognized our old way of being was not sustainable, got off the sinking ship of Civilization and connected with other like-minded people to create a new way to be in the world that has ancient roots that can lead us to a new way of life.
Czech dissident Václav Havel captured the sense of our times when he said,
“Today, many things indicate that we are going through a transitional period, when it seems that something is on the way out and something else is painfully being born. It is as if something were crumbling, decaying and exhausting itself, while something else, still indistinct, were arising from the rubble.”
- An Old Kind of Masculinity is On the Way Out.
The old dominator systems were ruled by frightened, wounded, men who came to believe that the only way to survive was to rule by force. Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat describes these men in her book, Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present. She says,
“For ours is the age of authoritarian rulers: self-proclaimed saviors of the nation who evade accountability while robbing their people of truth, treasure, and the protections of democracy.”
Among the seventeen protagonists in her book she includes: Adolph Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Benito Mussolini, Vladamir Putin, and Donald J. Trump.
Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Anne Applebaum describes the way modern-day autocrats support each other in her book, Autocracy Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World. “Nowadays, autocracies are underpinned by sophisticated networks composed across multiple regimes…The autocrats are rewriting the rules of world trade and governance as their propagandists pound home the same messages about the weakness of democracy and the evil of America.”
- A New Kind of Masculinity Has Been Quietly Emerging.
Like many men in today’s world, I grew up without an engaged, caring, supportive, and loving father in the home. As I result, it took me a long time to learn what it means to be a good man in today’s world. My healing began in 1979 when I joined my first men’s group. When we began meeting there were very few men’s groups that supported men in being our authentic best selves. Now there are millions.
We don’t talk about “toxic masculinity,” but how we can develop an expanded masculinity that allows us to embrace the archetypal male qualities of risk-taking and protection and to express them in healthy, life-sustaining, ways.
In my book, 12 Rules for Good Men, I describe the evolution of our group and what I have learned since we began. My wife, Carlin, will tell you that a key reason we have had a successful 44-year successful marriage has been because I have been in a men’s group for 45 years.
In my most recent book, my seventeenth, Long Live Men! The Moonshot Mission to Heal Men, Close the Lifespan Gap, and Offer Hope to Humanity, I describe a number of innovative programs that are at the forefront of this emerging new men’s movement including:
The ManKind Project is men’s community for the 21st Century. MKP is a nonprofit training and education organization with over three decades of proven success hosting life-changing experiential personal development programs for men. We believe that emotionally mature, powerful, compassionate, and purpose-driven men will help heal some of our society’s deepest wounds. We support the powerful brilliance of men and we are willing to look at, and take full responsibility for, the pain we are also capable of creating – and suffering. We care deeply about men, our families, communities, and the planet.
“The Good Men Project® is a glimpse of what enlightened masculinity might look like in the 21st century,” the press raved when we launched. We had set out to start an international conversation about what it means to be a good man in the 21st century. And with over 3 million visitors coming to join in every month, it looks as if we’ve done exactly that.
Guys today are neither the mindless, sex-obsessed buffoons nor the stoic automatons our culture so often makes them out to be. Our community is smart, compassionate, curious, and open-minded; they strive to be good fathers and husbands, citizens and friends, to lead by example at home and in the workplace, and to understand their role in a changing world.
What began as a suicide prevention campaign has morphed into a men’s mental health campaign where the goal is to support all men before they are ever in crisis. We remind men that taking care of their mental health is the manliest things a man can do, that therapy comes in many forms and connect men and their loved ones to information, tools and resources. Our goals remain to bust through the stigma, increase help-seeking behavior and reduce suicide among working-age men.
MenAlive seeks to help men, and the women who love them, successfully navigate the unique stresses of life in the 21st century, so that all our relationships can survive and prosper. The economic and ecological changes going on in the world are unprecedented in human history.
Our vision for MenAlive is to focus on critical aspects of men’s health and well-being. MenAlive is a safe haven in this time of transition. It offers time-tested resources to help you when you need it the most. It’s a place you can trust for yourself and your loved ones, a place we can all come together to share our experiences to help us weather the storm. None of us have all the answers, but together we can find our way.
We believe man’s mental, emotional, and relational health is the key to empowering men to live long and well. Our mission is to help men live healthier, happier, more cooperative lives—fulfilling lives of purpose and productivity, where men are supported and valued as they make positive contributions to their families, friends, and communities.
We bring together organizations who are committed to men’s health, connect them with each other, and offer resources so that they can help men and their families to live long and healthy lives.
If you found these articles helpful, I invite you to subscribe to our free weekly newsletter.
