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The Conspiracy
So far we have looked at how several key themes—history, sexuality, relationships, and fatherhood—are mobilized by the conspiracy in society at large to promote a specific and prescriptive vision of masculinity that bears little witness to the diversity of men’s experiences. In this chapter we will look at how archetypes have been used as a way of understanding masculinity within the context of men’s movement literature that began gaining momentum in the early 1990s, and which has continuing influence today.
An archetype is a template that can be used to describe various universal themes and motifs, most commonly employed in myths. The psychologist Carl Jung used archetypes as a way of understanding particular models of human behavior and characteristics, the basis of which can be discovered deep in the human psyche, and is shared across people and cultures. To be sure, this is a very simplistic description of Jung’s understanding of archetypes, which was both complex and dependent on the stages of his own conceptual development. However, the way the men’s movement uses Jungian archetypes is equally simplistic, so it will suffice for our discussion, at least as we allow the conspiracy to talk in its own voice in the first section, The Conspiracy. We’ll tentatively scratch the surface of what else resides behind the concept of archetypes in the following sections, the analytical The Problem, and the more visionary The Solution.
The two books examined in this chapter are themselves archetypal of men’s movement literature, or a particular type of men’s movement called the mythopoetic men’s movement, which made use of myth, metaphor and story to understand models for masculinity. The mythopoetic men’s movement is most notably connected with the poet Robert Bly, and we will look at his 1990 book Iron John: A Book About Men. Bly’s book started a movement that garnered significant media attention at the time with stories about men’s groups taking place in the woods, where partially-clothed and bearded men would get in touch with their “inner,” “mature,” or “deep” masculinity. Shortly after this came our second book, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette. These two books catalyzed a large volume of literature that, while less read today within the context of the men’s movement, is still influential in the way various forms of personal development coaches, popular psychologists and spiritual gurus describe masculinity.
Bly’s book, Iron John, recreates a Grimm Brothers tale about a young boy who meets a wild hairy man—Iron John—who becomes the boy’s mentor and leads him through various stages of development via initiation into maturity. Bly’s main point is that contemporary men have become “soft” and disconnected from their inner wildness. Men have been disempowered in culture, television, literature, and are too often presented as bumbling fools: “When we walk into a contemporary house,” writes Bly, “it is often the mother who comes forward confidently. The father is somewhere else in the back, being inarticulate.”
A significant part of the problem identified by Bly is the nature of modern work, which since the Industrial Revolution has removed men ever further from their families, in particular their sons. This has prevented them from bonding with their sons and initiating them into manhood: as such, we have a whole society that has never entered full initiated maturity. The result is what Bly describes as the “sibling society,” in which immature men are suspicious of older men and authority, while at the same time being naïve about men their own age and women in general. The absence of sufficient father-son relationships is also described by Bly as the “father wound,” which we touched upon briefly in the previous chapter about fatherhood.
Bly claims that contemporary men can counter this problem by rediscovering the Wild Man (Iron John) within themselves. While the Wild Man is a psychological archetype, Bly also extends the metaphor to include wildness in nature, where he believes masculinity most naturally resides: “to receive initiation truly means to expand sideways into the glory of oaks, mountains, glaciers, horses, lions, grasses, waterfalls, deer. We need wilderness and extravagance. Whatever shuts a human being away from the waterfall and the tiger will kill him,” writes Bly, citing Francis of Assisi and Henry David Thoreau as two “nature mystics” who appropriately communed with the land and exuded wildness. Bly believes there is a uniqueness to masculinity which, while also accessible to women, is rendered most eloquently in men: “in the man’s heart there is a low string that makes his whole chest tremble when the qualities of the masculine are spoken of in the right way.”
It is important to remember that while the mythopoetic men’s movement was often perceived as the “spiritual men’s movement,” it is chiefly psychological: Bly claims archetypes dwell “at the bottom of [the] psyche,” among “other interior beings,” which runs counter to a commonly-held assumption that archetypes are spiritual in character. We will explore the nature of masculine spirituality in the next chapter, but it’s useful to note that Bly is curiously hostile to the spiritual in Iron John, basing much of his critique on re-asserting the masculine (in the stereotypical understand of the word). Bly prefers Old Testament Christianity, paganism and indigenous spirituality to contemporary or orthodox religious observance, which he perceives as being insufficiently masculine and wild.
The psychological and even biological basis for archetypes is more explicitly articulated by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette in King, Warrior, Magician, Lover. They describe archetypes as being “hard wired” in the reptilian brain. While Bly focuses on the Wild Man archetype, Moore and Gillette focus on the King and Warrior (all four archetypes referred to in their book title are explored, but it is notable that the Magician and Lover—which resonate far less with stereotypical and combative models of masculinity—have gained far less attention in the men’s movement).
Moore and Gillette claim the King archetype “is primal in all men” and “comes first in importance.” We are told the King is based on creative principles, inasmuch as he literally creates the world (his kingdom) around him. To the individuals who reject the King’s world he says, “you are chaos, demonic,” and more than this, “you are noncreation, nonworld.” The King, then, is a reality-defining entity which Moore and Gillette intend to be of a generative or benign nature: his leadership principles are similar to the model of servant leadership discussed in the previous Fatherhood chapter (the father, if you like, is a domestic King archetype). There is a definite majesty behind the King archetype—and thus in masculinity—in every sense of the word: Moore and Gillette describe its return in our barren contemporary culture as an, “intuition of holiness … both dreadful and wonderful by virtue of its power … It drops us to our knees with the force of its holiness.” Should readers require music to help evoke this kingly drama, Moore and Gillette direct them towards, “soundtracks from ‘sword and sandals’ movies like Spartacus or Ben Hur.”
Just as the King is inherent in the male psyche (indeed, of primary importance within it), so too the Warrior archetype, which Moore and Gillette identify in numerous domains, both natural and fictitious. Moore and Gillette appeal to the great apes to explain what they perceive to be the natural basis for the Warrior archetype. They cite Jane Goodall’s study of chimpanzees, who initially were thought to be peaceful but ended up being Warrior-like (brutal), the suggestion being if the chimpanzees cannot remain peaceful, how can men? (You may remember how the appeal to the animal kingdom was discussed back in the History chapter.) They go on to argue, “What accounts for the popularity of Rambo, or Arnold Schwarzenegger, of war movies like Apocalypse Now, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket and many, many more? We can deplore the violence in these movies, as well as on our television screens, but, obviously, the Warrior still remains very much alive in us.” The prevalence of violence, both in the human and animal kingdom, is seen as evidence for the natural and rightful role of the Warrior as a defining characteristic of masculinity.
Further positively-framed examples of the Warrior include the shifting tactics of fencers and guerrilla soldiers, and the split-second decision making of “a good Marine.” Just as readers seeking to evoke the King archetype are directed towards “swords and sandals” cinematic references, for the Warrior Moore and Gillette suggest inspiration can be found with the exemplar of Yul Brynner in The Magnificent Seven who, “says little, moves with the physical control of a predator, attacks only the enemy and has absolute mastery over the technology of his trade.” Moore and Gillette even co-opt religiosity into their search for the universal Warrior, citing Jesus and Buddha (as they both had to endure temptation) and Islam which, “as a whole is built on Warrior energy” (one wonders if this would have been so enthusiastically employed in a post-9/11 world).
There is a stylistic and structural element to Moore and Gillette’s presentation of archetypes that also appeals to a commonly accepted (in other words, conspiratorial) model of masculinity. Their introduction states, “our purpose in writing this book … has been to offer men a simplified and readable outline of an ‘operator’s manual for the male psyche.’ Reading this book should help you understand your strengths and weaknesses as a man and provide you with a map to the territories of masculine selfhood which you still need to explore.” The Mars-like masculine characteristics suggested by John Gray in the Relationships chapter are evident here: the “operator’s manual,” and the “map to the territories.” Moore and Gillette divide their archetypal map up into four quadrants, which offers a model suggesting some kind of systematic or scientific rigor, and which shares a commonality with Ken Wilber’s map of the human psyche, as referred to in the History chapter.
The four quadrants do not just map out different types of archetypes, but balance elements both within and between archetypes. Moore and Gillette aim to be cautious, reminding us that archetypes need to be offset by other archetypes to produce full and rich personalities. For example, the Warrior might be offset with the lover to produce depth and nobility to what might otherwise be a rather mono-dimensional “real” person (Winston Churchill, Yukio Mishima and General Patton are referred to in regard to this particular combination: make of that what you will). The balancing element is also addressed with the notion of the “shadow,” which is when an individual over-identifies with an archetype, or has mobilized archetypal energies in negative ways due to insufficiently addressed neuroses or character flaws.
In sum, there are very clear messages to be had about masculinity and archetypes from Bly, Moore and Gillette:
- Archetypes are inescapable character templates that are rooted either in the depths of the human psyche or the reptilian brain.
- Masculinity is defined by a particular set of archetypes: namely the Wild Man, King and Warrior (echoing those repeated themes of masculinity being about aggression, assertiveness, leadership and the public domain).
- Modern society is out of touch with these archetypal energies and must re-connect with them via a process of initiation to solve our social ills.
- Masculine archetypes must be combined or balanced with other archetypes in order not to manifest the “shadow” or negative character traits.
· The Problem
· I’ve written about the problem with archetypes in a detailed (read academic) fashion in my earlier book, Numen, Old Men: Contemporary Masculine Spiritualities and the Problem of Patriarchy. A good deal from this section (and in others) is drawn from that book: I’m telling you this so if you happen to have read it you won’t feel deceived about repeated content, and also so that you don’t have to go and read it, or know where to look for greater depth on the subject if you feel inclined.
· The mythopoetic men’s movement made a great deal about its use of “Jungian” archetypes, suggesting it was drawing upon a deep and sophisticated psychological and analytical heritage. The reality is somewhat different, which has resulted in the movement more accurately being described as “neo-Jungian,” which in more everyday language might be translated as “Jung lite.” There isn’t the space here to outline how the mythopoetic men’s movement misread Jung, but suffice to say Jungian scholar David Tacey has charged it with “conservative and simplistic appropriation of Jungian theory.” The archetypes the movement aspires to are, in short, simply reflections of the way masculinity is modeled within the conspiracy or, as masculinities researcher and counselor Philip Culbertson has described them, such archetypes are “calcifications of a patriarchal world view.” What I’m more interested in are the types of masculinity such archetypes promote and some of the more general problems with identifying with archetypes (in a neo-Jungian, if not genuinely Jungian sense).
· Take, for example, the Wild Man. Let us put aside the problematic issue about initiation around which the Iron John story revolves, as I have shown how this is a conformist strategy on behalf of the conspiracy in the previous Fatherhood chapter. It is a simple fact that Bly claims wildness is the essence of masculinity: it is a clear and prescriptive statement. If you have no inclinations to wildness, in all its earthiness and hairiness, Bly believes you are missing the essence of masculinity and are presumably one of the “soft males” he identifies on numerous occasions in Iron John.
· Bly suggests, with his allusion to “the glory of oaks, mountains, glaciers, horses, lions, grasses, waterfalls, deer,” that there is something inherently beautiful about wildness, as if the psychic wildness of masculinity is the same thing as the majestic wildness of nature. But this is not so: the psychic wildness that Bly refers to is subject to all the pathologies and neuroses instilled by the conspiracy, whereas nature is not (although nature is massively impacted by the dominating mindset of the conspiracy, but that’s another story).
· Folklorist Jack Zipes does a great job of teasing out some of the inherent messages of Iron John and the Grimm Brothers tale, Iron Hans, on which it is based. In its original form, the Wild Man folklore archetype was a demonic figure, not a mentor. Further still, the tale was used not to encourage some “natural” masculine wildness, but to initiate young aristocrats into the role of warrior or king. Zipes concludes that, “both Iron Hans and Iron John are warrior tales, and both celebrate violence and killing as the means to establish male identity.” Is that the kind of masculinity we really want? Certainly not, but it’s the kind of masculinity the conspiracy promotes, as we have seen specifically in the History chapter.
And of course, one does not need to look to the pre-history of mythopoetic men’s movement literature to see this pre-occupation with violence, as Moore and Gillette’s book indicates. As I mentioned before, Moore and Gillette deal equally with the four archetypes of King, Warrior, Magician and Lover. However, when the book was first written, far more attention was given to the conspiratorially-flavored King and Warrior archetypes than to the Magician and Lover. Two decades later, mobilization of the Warrior archetype by far outstrips all other archetypes and can be found in a range of men’s movement contexts such as The ManKind Project, counseling and group work, and a range of alternative spiritualities, whether of an earthy nature (such as Paganism) or corporate nature (such as Integral Spirituality).
Moore and Gillette’s presentation of the Warrior archetype would be funny were it not intended so seriously, and it is no surprise that such literature was lampooned at the time by satirists such as Alfred Gingold and his book Fire in the John: The Manly Man in the Age of Sissification. The appeal to swords and sandals movie soundtracks and Yul Brynner genuinely make it appear as if they are playing for laughs, but it is a tragedy rather than a comedy, because so many men continue to take them seriously by appealing to the “Warrior within.”
I find it deeply disturbing that questions such as, “What accounts for the popularity of Rambo, or Arnold Schwarzenegger, of war movies like Apocalypse Now, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket and many, many more?” can be answered with the assumption that the Warrior archetype is natural in all of us. At the very least, equal consideration must be given to the answer that we have been systemically conditioned into violence by the conspiracy. Indeed, it seems like something of a conspiratorial cover-up that such a question is not given adequate consideration by writers with otherwise serious and clever backgrounds.
This is the way the conspiracy works: the blindingly obvious is routinely overlooked and replaced with what, on examination, are quite absurd suggestions that are commonly accepted as true. As I reiterate repeatedly throughout this text, when something appears to be natural, we are often witnessing the conspiracy conditioning our understanding of how masculinity is defined. In the current context, there is plenty of awareness that the Warrior is a problematic model to follow, as demonstrated by the need to routinely qualify it by such terms as “peaceful warrior” or “noble warrior.” But warriors are what warriors do, and that is facilitating violence and death. But such is the effective conditioning of the conspiracy that even those who identify a problem would rather soften or sanitize the Warrior than reject it out of hand, which is by far the most sensible thing to do.
What this qualification also suggests is that the task at hand for an individual is to identify with the “spirit” or “essence” of an archetype rather than fully embodying it, which can lead to problems, or what is referred to as the “shadow” of the archetype. However, there are no effective strategies provided for how to achieve this, and knowing when enough is enough: it relies on individuals knowing what is “wrong” and what sensibly resides in the “shadow.” However, given that everyone has different values, and even smart writers such as Moore and Gillette do not ask necessary and blindingly obvious questions about why things are the way they are, such “knowing” is rife with danger.
Let’s have a look in a bit of detail at how such a process is insufficiently addressed. The following example from Moore and Gillette discusses the Shadow King, which should be the ideal opportunity to nail down the problematic nature of both Kingship and navigating the shadow:
In the story of King David and Bathsheba, Bathsheba was the wife of another man, Uriah the Hittite. One day David was walking on the roof of his palace when he spotted Bathsheba bathing. He was so aroused by this sight that he sent for her and forced her to have sex with him. In theory, remember, all the women of the realm were the king’s. But they belonged to the archetype of the king, not to the mortal king. David unconsciously identified himself with the King energy and not only took Bathsheba but also had her husband, Uriah, killed. Fortunately for the kingdom, David had a conscience in the form of Nathan the prophet, who came to him and indicted him. David, much to his credit, accepted the truth of the indictment and repented.
Moore and Gillette’s point is that if a man identifies with the shadow aspect of the King archetype he will become tyrannical. They state that, “as is the case with all archetypes, the King displays an active-passive bipolar shadow structure,” yet their example of such shows David identifying not with the shadow but the archetype itself: “David unconsciously identified himself with the King energy.” The shadow is the net effect of the identification, not part of “an active-passive bipolar shadow structure.” This represents one of the least practical elements in the whole mythopoetic call to archetypes: identify with the archetype to find your wholeness, but do not identify too much. One must wonder that if King David found this process tricky, with all his experience navigating kingly energy, what hope is there for the average man? Let us give Moore and Gillette the benefit of the doubt on this confusion.
Moore and Gillette say, “In theory, remember, all the women of the realm were the king’s.” “But,” say Moore and Gillette, anticipating the feminist outcry, “they belonged to the archetype of the king, not to the mortal king.” One must therefore assume that belonging to an archetypal dominating structure is considered less oppressive than a real one. “David unconsciously identified himself with the King energy and not only took Bathsheba but also had her husband, Uriah, killed.” In short, by being a rapist and a murderer David bears witness to King energy, not just in its shadow form, but its full archetypal form. “Fortunately for the kingdom, David had a conscience in the form of Nathan the prophet, who came to him and indicted him.” In other words, David did not have a personal conscience, rather an external conscience which was enforced upon him in the same way that fairness must be enforced upon all conspiratorial models of power, for it does not eventuate of its own accord. Even then, David is removed from the equation, as the indictment is not fortunate for David personally (though one assumes he had some desire to redeem himself before God) but “the kingdom.” “David, much to his credit, accepted the truth of the indictment and repented.” So, King David is an archetypal-delusional murdering rapist who requires external pressure to awaken his conscience for the sake of the supposed greater good, but “much to his credit” he repents. It is as if Moore and Gillette have unconsciously identified themselves with David and are in need of their own prophet Nathan to point out the deeply disturbing nature of the King. At best the King is a benevolent dictator, at worst a despot.
So the conspiracy mobilizes archetypes in a very specific way: it suggests there is a narrow range of characteristics that are “natural” to masculinity: it allows very little diversity, suggesting anything which falls outside these characteristics is insufficiently masculine or, in Bly’s words, “soft.” Note another strategy here: the lip service to a broader range or archetypes and balance. Certainly, both Bly and Moore and Gillette refer to a broader range of archetypes than those that are overtly dominating and combative. Certainly, both Bly and Moore and Gillette refer to the danger of identifying with the shadow aspect of archetypes and the pathologies that can result. This allows them to have their cake and eat it. When people like me come along and point out the problematic nature of pathological Kings and Warriors, they point to the other archetypes as evidence that the criticism is selective, yet their massive weighting towards Kings and Warriors is itself selective, and it is deceptive to suggest that alternative archetypes are given equal consideration within the movement.
At the end of the day, these writers know that if they want to sell books and get bums on seats at workshops they have to appeal to a populist understanding of masculinity, which until the conspiracy is overturned at a systemic level can only ever mirror the conspiracy. I suspect that a lot of writers who appear to support the conspiracy do so not because they firmly believe in what they are writing, but because they know there is a market for what they are writing, and because they enjoy the privileged position of being a thought leader within that market. Speaking out against the conspiracy is, after all, a lonely place to be, and certainly does not pay the rent (we’ll explore the financial motivation behind the conspiracy in more depth in the concluding chapter).
So to recap, there are various problems with the way the mythopoetic men’s movement uses archetypes as models for masculinity:
- The archetypes used have none of the subtlety or nuance intended by Jung, rather they reflect commonly held conspiratorial perceptions of masculinity.
- Those perceptions of masculinity are largely pathological: the violence of being a Wild Man or Warrior, or the domination of being a King.
- There is no adequate system in place to explain how men should identify with the archetype, but not so much that they inhabit its “shadow” aspect.
- References to a broader range or archetypes and the “shadow” give the impression of balance, but this is at best lip service or at worse deception.
The Solution
There are three key strategies for mitigating the problems caused by the men’s movement and their use of archetypes. The first strategy, and one that I find most compelling, is to simply reject them out of hand. I can appreciate that Jung may have had subtler intentions about archetypes, and that today it is also possible to imagine different types of archetypes. However, my feeling is the common understanding of archetypes is ingrained in such a problematic way in popular culture that those more useful levels of meaning will forever be eclipsed, and it is best to redeploy that meaning in an altogether different type of language. The problem, though, is that because archetypes—as a metaphor for understanding reality, rather than a psychic reality in themselves—are so deeply embedded in society, it seems almost impossible for people to shake free of them. As such, we are left with strategies two and three: creating different types of archetypes and thinking differently about the nature of archetypes.
As I mentioned above, while greatest attention was given to Moore and Gillette’s King and Warrior archetypes, they also wrote about the Magician and Lover. In a similar way, while Bly wrote chiefly of the Wild Man, he also referred to other archetypes (albeit not in any productive manner) such as the Mythologist or Cook and Grief Man. Back at the height of the mythopoetic years, some effort was made to redress this balance. For example, Glenn Mazis wrote a book called, The Trickster, Magician and Grieving Man, but it sank largely without trace because its rejection of the hero motif ran counter to the kind of conspiratorial masculine fantasies found elsewhere in the movement.
In a similar way, Aaron Kipnis wrote approvingly of the Green Man as an archetype, a largely pagan understanding of masculinity that combined it with the more nurturing and organic characteristics of what is commonly perceived of as the Earth Mother. Kipnis’ Green Man—described as “a creative, fecund, nurturing, protective, and compassionate male, existing in harmony with the earth and the feminine, yet also erotic, free, wild, playful, energetic, and fierce”—is useful in trying to offer different archetypes, but also shows how difficult it is to erase conspiratorial themes. For example, these counter-conspiratorial characteristics are muted when Kipnis goes on to remind readers that Green Man energy also envelopes carving a phallic staff, copulating on the 30-foot-long penis of the Cerne Giant and having the power of massive erect trees. The reader is stirred in the knowledge that he can be simultaneously nurturing and hard, in every way: with the Green Man, just as with the rest of the conspiracy, the cock is always central.
But there remains, nonetheless, some benefit to this line of thought. The Trickster archetype is, I believe, particularly useful. It has the potential to offer a framework for masculine characteristics that may or may not be stereotypical. Importantly, too, its values range from playful through to malicious. The Trickster always resides in shades of gray—rather than being black or white—which, as an analogy, is more representative of the truth when looking for models for masculinities. For those who find the Trickster too akin to a medieval joker or Castaneda-like, I would suggest a more contemporary version of the Hacker. The Hacker archetype again may or may not be stereotypically masculine: he may be imagined as an epic battler with his acts of online transgression, but equally can be a scrawny loser living with his parents. A spectrum of values is also apparent: white hat hackers who are there to transparently highlight flaws in data security; black hat hackers who are overtly villainous and out for personal gain; and that vast section in the middle, the gray hat hacker who, like most real people, comprises a bit of everything. I certainly see myself as a gray hat type.
One other useful archetype that may be worth considering is drawn from gay literature, the Androgyne. Toby Johnson writes of the Androgyne, “a potent blending of male strength and competence and of female sensitivity and feeling makes for a more interesting human being with a more complex and fascinating personality.” It’s interesting to note that while the Androgyne is discussed here within the context of gayness, there is nothing about it that requires same-sex attraction: any straight man should be able to embody the Androgyne without compromising even his commonly-understood sexuality (let a lone a more fluid version of the same, as suggested in the Sexuality chapter).
There is, however, a word of caution in regard to the Androgyne, which is useful to remember whenever the idea of “balance” is tabled. Johnson’s reference to “male strength and competence” and “female sensitivity and feeling” might initially look like a good idea, but those images of male and female are drawn directly from the conspiracy. A more useful way of thinking about the Androgyne would be to unhook “male” from “strength and competence” and “female” from “sensitivity and feeling” and allow those characteristics to reside side-by-side without any connection to biological sex. The Androgyne is then not a combination of conspiratorial masculine and feminine, but a separate category altogether, and one which itself is not a fixed, prescribed archetype, rather a broad spectrum of positions. We are not looking for a “third gender” here: we are looking for multiple alternatives to the conspiratorial binary understanding of gender.
This separate category altogether, one which itself is not a fixed, prescribed archetype, rather a broad spectrum of positions, is an ideal segue from our two strategies of thinking about different types of archetypes to thinking differently about archetypes. To begin with, as I have already noted, the mythopoetic understanding of archetypes is a greatly simplified version of Jung’s presentation of archetypes. A vast volume of words could be consumed discussing what Jung did and did not mean, but suffice to say he was a product of his time and cannot be taken as an exemplar for how people should be thinking about gender in the present day.
Of significant interest is the 2009 publication of Jung’s visionary journal The Red Book, the editor of which—Sonu Shamdasani—claims is “nothing less than the central book in his oeuvre,” and that his other work cannot really be understood without reading this in tandem. There is little in The Red Book that resonates with a mythopoetic understanding of masculinity, and it would be interesting to speculate how the mythopoetic movement would have been different if it had this source at its disposal. Remember, too, that Jung was at heart a mythologist: he constructed ways of understanding reality through and as myth. The mythopoetic movement repeatedly referred to story and myth, and repeatedly conflated it with reality: for archetypes to be useful they must genuinely be considered mythical, with all the caveats that implies.
Further still, however much we unpack what Jung may or may not have understood by archetypes, his is not the only view on the matter. As one commenter (Butters) on the first chapter of The Masculinity Conspiracy writes:
I hope your definition of archetypes do not rest on one definition of them only—the classical Jungian definition. The Archetypal Psychology school of thought, which branched from Jung in the work of James Hillman, and was popularized by Thomas Moore (e.g. Care of the Soul) is at least as popular as the classical definition of archetypes. Difference being that the classical school perpetuates stereotypes under the name archetypes, whereas the movement launched by Hillman and co has philosophically corrected the limitations of the former. The Archetypal Psychology branch of Jung’s Analytical psychology is almost completely compatible with the notion of a plurality of masculinities and indeed promotes the cause very strongly among the masses! For instance, Hillman and co state that both sexes have equal access to roles of nurturer (Geb/Gaia), the Warrior (Athena/Ares), the lover of beauty (Adonis/Aphrodite), the power/status seekers (Zeus/Hera).
I don’t cite Butters here to agree with him (I’m not sufficiently informed on archetypal psychology to have a useful opinion), rather to demonstrate that there are always different takes on such things, many of which get overlooked by the popular discourse on the subject at hand.
I believe the simplest way to usefully mobilize archetypes is to think of them not as models for (in our case) masculinity, rather as elements of self (which may or may not be gendered). For example, I’ll list some elements that first spring to mind when I describe myself (in no specific order): writer, thinker, father, husband, loner, son, neurotic, visionary, polemicist, contrarian. All these words describe elements that go towards the construction of my complete sense of self, but no single one gets anywhere near that complete sense of self. Indeed, to pick any single word almost immediately suggests a narrow perception of self that borders on pathological.
Thinking archetypically in a useful way would therefore involve identifying a range of individual elements and fashioning from them a sufficiently nuanced sense of self. Some of these elements (such as father, husband, or son) may have a clear connection with biological sex; most will not. Any archetypal element that is not based in biological sex is socially constructed and therefore available to all people, male or female. The conspiracy works by reducing the number of elements available to a person to a very low number (say, one to four elements), and then—in practice—assigning those elements exclusively to either men or women. To counter the conspiracy we make any number of elements available to the individual and allow them to be assigned to any individual, in any way the individual sees fit (this is not about prescribing values, after all, rather enabling possibilities, which may not always be pleasant).
The result is an “elemental suite” or an “archetypal suite” that is bound by nothing other than the individual’s values, characteristics and desires. It is unlikely that a sufficiently nuanced suite could be described as either masculine or feminine. But, importantly, this does not reduce the suite to being “gender neutral” (as Mansfield would have argued in the History chapter). Instead, the suite is “gender unique,” each one bearing witness to the specific way the individual navigates their complex journey between biological sex, the expectations of a prescriptive conspiratorial model of gender, and aspirations for freedom from that conspiratorial model.
Importantly, some of those suites may look identical to a conspiratorial understanding of gender, as genuine freedom must allow for any particular combination. The big difference is that in the model I am suggesting, the suite that resembles the conspiracy is achieved via a proactive choice to construct that suite, not because it is “natural” or “appropriate.” This is the fundamental difference between my message and the message you will read in most popular books about masculinity. When I critique conspiratorial models of masculinity, I am not denying those models (although I am showing how they are problematic); rather, I am denying the conspiratorial claim about what masculinity should be, and offering not a specific alternative but the freedom to choose.
The Conspiracy
In the very first paragraph of this book I asked you to look in a mirror. I asked you to contemplate certain details and to notice that there is an increasingly large disconnect between who you feel you are and the person in the mirror, a distance between the two yous that is difficult to articulate in words. I then asked you to imagine that gap between the mirror and every man in the world alive right now, then for every man who has ever lived. That’s a lot of disconnect, a vast space between men and the men in the mirror.
This is largely a thinking exercise about perception and how easy it is to realize that what you think you know—your image in the mirror—can swiftly be called into question. If we can acknowledge that new perceptions can be established even in our own reflection, then we can acknowledge that new perceptions can be established in all aspects of our identify. But there’s also a more literal sense to this disconnect between men and the men in the mirror. The masculinity conspiracy is chiefly a dissociative exercise: it forces an unwanted space between men and their potential in order to pursue its own ends (which we will explore shortly). Let’s briefly look back on the previous chapters to see where these spaces are constructed:
- Within the context of history the dissociative space is constructed by tethering men to the past. The conspiracy argues there are innumerable historical precedents for its model of masculinity, demonstrating it is not just culturally and socially determined, but also biologically determined.
- Within the context of sexuality the dissociative space is constructed by tethering men to sexual polarity. The conspiracy argues that men’s rightful sexuality is defined chiefly by assertiveness in opposition to women’s sexual receptivity.
- Within the context of relationships the dissociative space is constructed by tethering men to specific relational dynamics. The conspiracy argues that men and women think and communicate differently and that these differences must be decoded and mastered in order for men to be successful with women.
- Within the context of fatherhood the dissociative space is constructed by tethering men to a narrow understanding of boyhood. The conspiracy argues that boys develop in particular ways and that to ignore this is to rob them of their true nature.
- Within the context of archetypes the dissociative space is constructed by tethering men to simplistic behavioral templates. The conspiracy argues there are a small number of mythical or metaphorical models of manhood to emulate that encapsulate its true essence.
- Within the context of spirituality the dissociative space is constructed by tethering men to Biblical masculinity. The conspiracy argues that sacred texts provide a divinely ordained model of masculinity that does not only show men how to behave, but resists the feminization of faith and society in general.
In each chapter I have unraveled some of the initial problems with these lines of thought, and provided some solutions for re-thinking them in more useful ways, all the while opening up a more fruitful space for your own visions of counter-conspiratorial masculinity rather than a specific alternative.
However, the conspiracy has done a very good job of convincing both men and women that its vision of masculinity is correct. It has, after all, operated in most places throughout most times. But it does not rest on its laurels. It continually regulates the domain over which it reigns and asserts in a mantra-like fashion phrases like “real,” “authentic,” or “true” masculinity. It also continually seeks out other domains in which to function, and is very clever at describing all sorts of “new,” “evolved,” and “counter-cultural” masculinities that continue to perpetuate conspiratorial values, turning over old orthodoxies and creating new ones. The conspiracy is dead! Long live the conspiracy!
Throughout this book I have shown you numerous examples of the conspiracy at work. But let’s dig a bit deeper into how the conspiracy works. Remember Michael Barkun’s description of conspiracy thinking from the introductory chapter? Barkun states it is characterized by three chief elements. First, nothing happens by accident: there is always intent behind actions; the willed nature of reality is paramount. Second, nothing is as it seems: the source of a conspiracy tends to conceal its activities through the appearance of innocence or misinformation. Third, everything is connected: patterns abound in conspiracy; exposing conspiracy is about unveiling these hidden connections.
I confess that when I initially mobilized the conspiracy motif it was done so rather cynically. While I was genuinely interested in finding a different way of discussing masculinity that moved beyond the binary proposed on the one hand by feminists and on the other hand by men’s rights advocates, I was also simply hoping to capture the imagination of readers who were into conspiracy books. Conspiracy logic as defined by Barkun seemed reasonably applicable to gender politics, so I used it. But as I have finished each chapter of this book, I have fallen more into line with the idea that the conspiracy motif is far more applicable than I originally imagined.
As we have seen throughout the text, nothing happens by accident: Each chapter has demonstrated that while the conspiracy claims its presentation of masculinity is simply the way things are, a specific and proactive agenda is being fulfilled. As we have seen throughout the text, nothing is as it seems: Each chapter has demonstrated that while the conspiracy claims its presentation of masculinity is natural and inevitable, there are clear alternatives, and not just imagined and theoretical alternatives, but ones that are surprisingly easy to embody. And as we have seen throughout the text, everything is connected: Each chapter has demonstrated that while the conspiracy claims to be based on “evidence” and “science,” this is often a closed ecology of connected people and ideas that simply choose not to consider conflicting options, referring instead only to those who confirm their worldview.
But how does the conspiracy pull it off? How has it managed to perpetuate itself so successfully for so many centuries and in so many places? Answering that question is in itself another book. Today, one of the chief problems with the conspiracy is that it robs us of the ability to even realize it is in operation. This is what all the “real,” “authentic,” and “true” language is all about. The conspiracy is framed not as a specific regulatory dynamic with a particular agenda; rather, there is no conspiracy, only the way that it is. By concealing the fact that it even exists—by appealing to the supposedly “natural” and “common sense”—the conspiracy hides in plain sight. There are some nice fictional precedents for this tactic. Think, for example, of the movie The Usual Suspects in which the villain, Keyser Söze, secures the potency of his evil persona by creating an aura of doubt about his existence. As he sits before his clueless interrogator, Söze transparently shares his methodology with the memorable line, “the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” (The more literary among you may prefer the same point as made earlier by C. S. Lewis, and before him Charles Baudelaire).
Further still, the conspiracy robs us of the critical thinking skills required to identify that it is hiding in plain sight in the first place, let alone to do something about it. This is achieved by the extraordinary dumbing down of information around us, which I have referred to in earlier chapters. It has been an interesting exercise as this book has been published online to witness a small but persistent number of readers complain that the style of writing is too complex and “intellectual.” On various occasions I have been asked to cut out the jargon, make it easier to read, provide allegedly “real life examples” and so on, which would all bring the text more into line with the kind of self-help books many folks seem to have become conditioned to expect.
The impression seems to be that this is an “academic” book trying to pass itself off a something altogether different. But this is genuinely not the case. If you think this writing is academic, you clearly have not read much academic writing lately (which often I can’t figure out either). The demand for ever-simpler writing, bullet points, instant insights, micro-summaries and so forth render books incapable of addressing the complexity of the issues at hand. Masculinity is a complex issue: you might think some of the popular writers are writing about it with “clarity,” but they are simply stripping it of all subtlety and nuance. It’s certainly desirable to aim for clarity, but at some point compromise becomes fatal: it might result in a slot on Oprah’s couch, but it will not result in anything useful. Complex issues require appropriately complex handling.
More than this, the status quo critiqued here requires people not to think with appropriate complexity, subtlety and nuance in order to perpetuate its nonsense agenda. So when I hear complaints about the book being too complex, my immediate thought is not that I’ve failed in my task to clearly communicate, rather that the reader is showing how far they are conditioned into the conspiracy (a classic example of conspiratorial logic, if ever there was one!). It also seems a bit fishy to me when critics will focus on what they claim to be stylistic problems rather than the topics under discussion, which seems a rather transparent diversion tactic.
Instead of meeting the reader behind such complaints fully on their ground, I ask them to meet me half way (as I have already moved from my natural domain into the middle ground). In doing so we collectively claw back some of the critical thinking territory lost in our dumbed-down world. My aim, too, in writing in an appropriately complex manner is to pay readers the respect they deserve in assuming they are capable of understanding complex issues: an important but increasingly rare gesture. I find that in my face-to-face communications with people (often in rather random circumstances) I can get into some really quite complex territory, the like of which it is assumed they are not capable of reading in books. This assumption was made even clearer to me recently on receiving comments from several “professional” readers from an unnamed mind-body-spirit publisher who read The Masculinity Conspiracy. Have a look at the following feedback:
- Reader 1: I like the style. My question is how much more is it than an extended book(s) review, (most of which I haven’t read, so confess ignorance in the area), and how we’re going to sell it.
- Reader 2: Love the short blurb, it immediately made me want to read the book. Extremely well written in a reader friendly way that makes even someone completely uninterested in the subject sit up and take notice. The book certainly makes some good points and although it examines other books on the subject it does so in a style which, although serious, is light and sometimes humorous. I found this an enjoyable read and it made me stop and think and in doing so I realized that a part of my mind had already explored these issues but without having anywhere to express them. I’m not sure how many people would actually buy it.
- Reader 3: I agree, well written, great style and an interesting subject, but general sales will be a problem.
This is an excellent example of how the conspiracy regulates society. Here we have three professional readers who all seem to like the book, but they can’t imagine anyone else liking it! Certainly, they know the market and what people tend to buy. But people buy largely in accordance with their conditioning by the conspiracy, so to narrowly serve that market is to serve the conspiracy. This is forgivable for people who do not know any better, but I find it troubling that people who knowingly like a counter-conspiratorial text choose not to publish it, as this is nothing short of spineless collaboration. One could be forgiven for thinking it was not that these readers could not imagine anyone else liking the book, rather they did not want anyone else liking the book. But that would be the kind of paranoia Barkun identifies as being symptomatic of conspiratorial thinking, rather than exposing it
This leads to the final twist in the act of self-concealment: despite all the dumbing down, the conspiracy will often paradoxically give the impression that the people it dupes are extremely clever. Barkun echoes this point in his description of conspiracy thinking, noting that it will often mimic mainstream scholarship (I spoke a bit about the use of the term “research” and flaky PhDs back in the Relationships chapter). Not only do conspiracy writers give the impression they are extremely clever, citing other fancy writers, describing themselves as “philosophers” and perhaps belonging to some kind of vaporous Institute of Evolved Personhood (often little more than a paper entity with a bank account set up to accept donations and workshop fees), they also talk about their followers as being extremely clever. This is a cunning maneuver as it at once makes people feel very special for agreeing with the conspiratorial worldview, implies that if you do not agree with it you must not be very clever, and neutralizes momentum to move beyond it to something genuinely clever (or, more accurately, and as we shall see next, something elegantly simple, because while the machinations of the conspiracy are complex, its ultimate source is not).
In sum, the conspiracy functions via numerous sleights of hand:
- Through its prescriptive vision of masculinity the conspiracy produces a forced space between men and their potential.
- By giving the impression that there is no conspiracy—simple the way things are—the conspiracy hides in plain sight.
- By robbing us of the critical thinking skills required to identify it exists, the conspiracy prevents us from imagining a viable alternative.
But identifying how the conspiracy manifests—and even how it functions—is not the end of the story. Indeed, the chief problem remains: what is ultimately behind the conspiracy? When talking about this with people there is often an assumption that I am doing something very simply here: namely, using the word “conspiracy” instead of “patriarchy.” That initially sounds quite plausible, as a good number of the points I have made in this book are based on a feminist analysis of patriarchy. Others points are based on an understanding of “hegemonic masculinity” as described by Raewyn Connell, which is about how men regulate themselves as well as women in relation to time-honored ways of being a man. Still others are based on queer theory, which is about subverting and demonstrating the fluidity of meaning that surrounds terms like “masculinity.” All these ways of looking at gender foreground patriarchy, so it is certainly a reasonable assumption that patriarchy is the conspiracy. But it is only a partial answer.
While understanding patriarchy is a crucial aspect of exposing the conspiracy, we have to move past typically entrenched positions on this subject. In debates surrounding men and masculinities, there are two commonly held positions on patriarchy. On the one hand are those with feminist sympathies who talk about patriarchy, and how this marginalizes and oppresses women (and atypical men). On the other hand are men’s rights advocates who identify the many problems suffered by men in society (such as poor health and education standards, violence, incarceration, social isolation, suicide, and so on) and simply do not see claims about patriarchy as valid any more.
But there is a way to reconcile these two seemingly opposed positions. Yes, it is true that patriarchy exists, but patriarchy is not the conspiracy, rather patriarchy is mobilized by the conspiracy. The conspiracy co-opts men to oppress women, a statement which supports the feminist claim that patriarchy operates as a regulating force within society. But, paradoxically, the conspiracy has little interest in men as individuals, which explains why men simultaneously enjoy the benefits of systemic privilege while often being on the shitty end of the stick as individuals. (There is a lot more complexity to be unpacked in this paragraph, but this will have to wait for another time).
It is crucial for those with a feminist worldview to realize that patriarchy is ultimately a tool of the conspiracy, not an end in itself. And while there are only few radical separatist feminists around these days, it is therefore important to acknowledge that there is nothing inherently bad about men, simply that they have been co-opted by the conspiracy in such an extraordinarily effective way that they usually don’t even realize it has happened. Of course, this does not absolve men of the ills wrought by patriarchy, nor of the requirement to counter its oppressive effects. It is also crucial for those with a men’s rights worldview to acknowledge that patriarchy does exist, to understand the complexity that comes with owning systemic privilege (the kind of thing that still results in men often earning more money than women for the same job) and understanding this is different to individual privilege (from which individual men may or may benefit).
Clearly, if patriarchy is not the conspiracy then there must be some higher—overarching—force (maybe even, according to Barkun’s original conspiratorial formula, a “demonic force”). There are plenty of people I speak to who, having agreed that patriarchy is not the conspiracy, then swiftly move on to the conclusion that it is capitalism that is the conspiracy. There is, after all, a long-standing Marxist tradition that shows how capitalism is the driving oppressive force in society, and it is easy to imagine that it is this that mobilizes patriarchy in the way described above. There are other contenders too: classism, racism, and so on. All these contenders either mobilize patriarchy in some way, or we can imagine how the conspiracy is using them as a vehicle for perpetuating its prescriptive vision for masculinity.
All these contenders are reasonable, but the conspiracy ultimately works on a broader level still. And it’s nothing obscure or esoteric, nothing that requires a PhD in developmental psychology or political science to understand. The conspiracy is simply power and domination. A good place to get a description of this is Walter Wink’s Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination (a quick nod to Luke Devlin, whose comments on earlier online chapters drew the Wink connection). Wink is a theologian, so genuinely tends towards the forces at hand being “demonic” and our salvation from them being of the literal variety. However, the way he describes power and domination is also largely valid from an atheistic point of view.
Wink argues there has been a domination myth at the heart of humanity that dates back thousands of years in which “might makes right.” Quite early in his book, Wink also tables a version of the masculinity conspiracy, stating “this myth also inadvertently reveals the price men have paid for power they acquired over women: complete servitude to their earthly rules and gods. Women for their part were identified with inertia, chaos, and anarchy.”
So the conspiracy is an abstract assertion of power and domination over people at an individual, institutional and systemic level (in other words, at every level). In our present context, the conspiracy demands a particular form of masculinity that lends itself towards domination (think again of all the references we’ve heard about aggression, assertiveness, warriors, and so on) and mobilizes men to put that domination to work against women and other men via various methods such as patriarchy.
But in exactly the same way that the conspiracy constructs a particular form of masculinity (demonstrating its changeability), so too is the conspiracy itself constructed. Wink argues the domination myth took hold through various accidents of social and cultural construction and warfare (and, importantly for Wink, humanity’s Fall from grace in the eyes of God), to the point where it seemed ingrained in human nature. This does not mean that domination is inherent in humanity, simply that it was forced up on it, as noted by Wink: “The struggle for domination meant that many humane cultural options that people might have preferred were closed off. The self-interests of individuals were subordinated, often even sacrificed, to the interests of the larger systems in which they were embedded.”
Identifying how the conspiratorial machine operates then becomes increasingly simple. Domination as the myth of default human behavior took hold, and we can see how this filters across society. Wink claims, “power lost by men through submission to a ruling elite was compensated by power gained over women, children, hired workers, slaves, and the land.” In that sentence alone we see our previous contenders for the conspiracy: patriarchy, capitalism, class, race, and how they all serve the domination myth.
The domination myth became the consensus reality, taking on a life of its own: this is why it is impossible to identify a “person” behind the conspiracy, because the conspiracy is the sum of all our actions and complicity within the domination myth. Further still, Wink argues that even the leaders who run the various modes of domination do not have genuine agency in the matter: their roles are conferred upon them by the domination system. For Wink, “people have thus become slaves of their own evolving systems, rather than civilized society being the servant of its members.”
In order for such a false consensus reality to take hold, we—as actors in this conspiratorial drama—must allow ourselves to be blinkered by the conspiracy. Or, in the parlance again of The Matrix movie, we must choose to take the blue pill: “wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe.” Wink claims that “whatever the System tells our brains is real is what we are allowed to notice; everything else must be ignored.” This explains how the “natural” and “common sense” appear to prevail in the conspiracy, despite there being easy-to-grasp alternatives: our conspiracy-conditioned brains simply cannot see them, they must be ignored.
Have you ever been faced by a large quandary (let’s say third world poverty) that seems so blindingly easy to fix (a more equitable distribution of global capital), but the solution seems so obvious and simple that you feel it must be wrong—otherwise we’d be doing it, right? That’s the domination myth at work: the consensus reality it constructs will not allow us to accept the blindingly obvious solution. Similarly, the conspiracy will not allow us to accept the blindingly obvious alternatives to the model of masculinity it demands.
For many, the real horror is not that this has happened throughout human history (although this is bad enough), but rather coming to the realization that this trick has been pulled on us personally and our role within it. Wink states, “It is only after we experience liberation from primary socialization to the world-system that we realize how terribly we have violated our authentic personhood—and how violated we have been.” For some, the horror is too great: Plug me back into the matrix! For others, the pulling back of the curtain to see the “great” wizard is a genuinely empowering revelation: I have met people who have woken up to this fact and rapidly changed their lives in fundamental ways.
So to recap, while it is important to understand how the conspiracy works in terms of masculinity, it is also important to understand what is actually behind the conspiracy:
- The conspiracy mobilizes patriarchy by encouraging men to oppress women (and atypical men), but paradoxically has little interest in men as individuals.
- Patriarchy is not the conspiracy, nor are other plausible-sounding contenders such as capitalism, classism and racism.
- Power and domination are at the heart of the conspiracy.
- The domination myth is simply a consensus realty. Despite the claims of the conspiracy, it is not natural or inevitable.
The Solution
Our challenge, of course, is what we then do about it, this thing that has had us duped for most—if not all—of human history. The good news for us is that we do not necessarily have to immediately construct glorious alternatives to bring about great change, rather simply withdraw our support from the conspiratorial status quo. Wink cites the sixteenth-century French political philosopher Étienne de La Boétie who wrote in reference to the masses who allowed themselves to be hoodwinked by rulers who really had very little power over them: “I do not ask that you place hand upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break into pieces.”
I’m not sure it’s quite that simple, but it’s a damn good start. In order to withdraw our support we need to firstly and primarily start thinking differently. This is the point where I often hear people moan about over-intellectualizing at the expense of action. But this too is the conspiracy speaking through the person in front of me, a cunning act of ventriloquism. If we do not firstly create a new thinking space there can be no useful action. Without the thinking space we are either rendered impotent by the conspiracy and do nothing, or we act without sufficient thought, both of which play expertly into the hands of the conspiracy.
Creating new thinking spaces allows us two equally valuable options. First is the obvious path of significantly changing our lifestyles. More people than you imagine do this. I have met a number of people who live radically counter-cultural lifestyles who were once some kind of deeply entrenched cog in the machine. These folks are not, as is so easy to imagine, people who never bought into the system in the first place, folks chasing an endless adolescence and delaying the inevitable perils of settling down under the yoke of responsibility. These folks have woken up to the reality that alternatives are possible and take only a relatively minor leap of faith to manifest (relatively minor, that is, to the alternative of spending the rest of one’s life being plugged into the matrix). I don’t want to speak further here about specific alternatives because they depend on individual needs and desires, and I am more interested in catalyzing the thought processes for people to construct those alternatives for themselves.
Second, creating new thinking spaces allows us to think afresh about our current circumstances. You may, for example, perceive yourself to be an administrative drone working for some nameless organization. You don’t need to pack it all in and move to a commune to embody a solution. The solution lies chiefly in our interior, and despite efforts to the contrary in various conspiratorial domains, this still belongs to us as free agents. And don’t make the mistake of thinking that you’re not a free agent, because you most certainly are. You may well be locked into a job and a mortgage with all manner or ties (some you’re happy about, others you’re not), but you remain free to think yourself out of the conspiracy while remaining in your current circumstances.
The conspiracy is a confidence trick, and it is surprisingly easy to call its bluff. Indeed, it may be more valuable to be an “enemy within” the system by reimagining your current circumstances than to opt out of them. You can create a quiet revolution: subtle re-thinking, transgression and subversion. You might be surprised at the liminal space you can make around you which, when connected with that of others, gently transforms rather than overturns the environments in which you live and work.
To create new thinking spaces we can return initially to the mirror. When we look in the mirror and begin to notice the disconnect between our interior and the person in the mirror, an obvious question bubbles to the surface of our consciousness: Who am I? Whether your worldview is spiritual or humanistic, this points to a fundamentally existential line of thought which is crucial to exposing the conspiracy. The conspiracy wants to tell you who you are, populating our interior with all those assumptions about masculinity (and femininity) we have worked through in the previous chapters. But the existential line of questioning has no time for such packaged answers: it wants to know the fundamental question: Why?
If you can, go and pick up a copy of Irvin Yalom’s Existential Psychotherapy (actually, any of his books will probably do the job, and also be lighter to carry home from the library). Yalom does an excellent job of unpacking the four existential ultimate concerns: death, meaninglessness, isolation and freedom. (As it happens, I’m not convinced these four concerns are equally ultimate. For example, isolation and freedom are like water off a duck’s back to me, but death and meaninglessness—two sides of the same coin—routinely keep me awake at night).
I would suggest if you have not wrangled with these issues at some point, you are not paying sufficient attention. Yalom demonstrates how many of our neuroses come down to trying to address these issues, often in unconscious or inarticulate ways. We grapple with death: how do we live in the face of death, what strategies do we employ in an attempt to cheat death? We grapple with meaning: How do we construct meaning, what’s the damn point of it all if we’re going to die anyway? We grapple with isolation: How do we navigate this bleak territory that keeps us isolated both from ourselves and other people? We grapple with freedom: How do we accept the horror that we are free to choose (and, indeed, have already chosen) or at least interpret the circumstances in which we find ourselves, rather than putting the blame elsewhere?
These four concerns alone are sufficient to fill a lifetime of contemplation and anxiety. I am told it is possible to move beyond this line of questioning and if not to find actual answers then at least make peace with the questions. I’m not convinced of this personally, but at 37 years old am nevertheless open to changing my mind on the matter at some period in the future when I have discovered mental tranquility
Once we are routinely creating new thinking spaces we can begin to look outside of ourselves. Again, I’m not interested here in identifying specific solutions, rather making basic points that will enable those solutions to emerge within the experiences of you, the reader. On a number of occasions throughout this book I have stated that in the same way that there is a masculinity conspiracy, there is also a femininity conspiracy: As the flip-side of the conspiratorial coin, the masculinity conspiracy requires an equally prescriptive model of femininity to perpetuate its power grab. However, I firmly believe it is the masculinity conspiracy that is more problematic. While the femininity conspiracy asserts power in various ways (an example commonly perceived being the use of sex as a bargaining tool with men, and a shaming tool with other women), it does not have the power footprint of the masculinity conspiracy, which has mobilized patriarchy within our social and cultural systems, and which in turn has extended into a whopping ecological footprint on our planet.
As such, when looking outwards for solutions, the primary agents in overturning the conspiracy must be men. I’ll say it again: the solution lies mostly with men. Of course, this does not absolve women of responsibility, it simply suggests men need to do more work than women. This requires two distinct steps. First, men need to own their individual privilege within patriarchy, and also their part in the systemic privilege that patriarchy confers upon them. Again, this may seem counter-intuitive to some men whose experience echoes the shocking statistics of men and poor health, violence, isolation and so on. But them’s the breaks, and the conspiracy wants you to resist it as to do so continues its concealment. Second, once men have owned their role in patriarchy, they must do something about it: but, crucially, not be shamed by it.
There are a small number of men who, having discovered their complicity in patriarchy, become overwhelmingly shamed, and retreat into self-loathing. (This is the type of “mangina” perceived and bemoaned by hostile men’s rights advocates. As it happens, most of those labeled as such are not bound by shame and self-loathing, rather men healthily seeking to counter patriarchy, but nevertheless it can be an issue.) This type of shamed individual sometimes has a habit of assuming women (and queer people) have the moral high-ground when it comes to issues about gender. As such, the solutions tend to have a focus towards their agency, when as much attention needs to be given to “regular” men’s agency.
I have already mentioned this above in regard to the two commonly held positions in the gender debate, but I firmly believe the solution lies in getting men to understand that patriarchy paradoxically has little interest in them as individuals. There is a tremendous amount of energy within men’s rights communities, but it is too often hostile towards women and feminism. Many of the problems those communities rightly identify are often blamed on the too-far-swung pendulum of women’s gains in recent decades. But this is not the case. Women’s gains do not come at the expense of men’s; it is not a zero sum game. Women’s gains have been earned by claiming what is rightfully and justly theirs: they have extracted this from the conspiracy, not from men.
I believe that once it becomes clear to men that they have been co-opted by the conspiracy into patriarchy to further the domination myth, and that it is this and not women’s gains that is responsible for the problems men face in society, they will see the benefit of overturning both patriarchy and the conspiracy. And they will do so swiftly. All the energy that is currently wasted on finger-pointing from men’s rights advocates can then be usefully spent elsewhere. I also believe that such a realization will allow the kind of healing in men’s psyches that has been sought since the men’s movement flourished in the early 1990s, but which to date has been misdirected by the conspiracy into concerns about the feminization of society.
However, while it is primarily men who must step up and counter the conspiracy, a further necessity is the realization that we are all in this together: men, women, gay, straight, and anyone who quite rightly resists such categorization. As gender and identity politics evolved over the past forty or so years it has been necessary for a certain amount of separatism to eventuate. Women and queer people, for example, needed to get together on their own, celebrate and assert their identities, and hold their oppressors accountable for the injustices dealt to them.
While it remains as important as ever for such specific voices to be heard, it is now necessary to complement these with strong alliances. This means moving beyond the women’s movement, and beyond the men’s movement, towards a people’s movement. Do not hear me say that individual oppressed voices—such as women and queer people—should be in any way erased in such a movement. A people’s movement is built precisely on the different experiences of its members: it celebrates and advocates for those differences. However, a people’s movement is not defined by specific differences. A people’s movement is defined by the assumption of everybody’s differences. It is in such an alliance that the critical mass is achieved for a multiplicity of new thinking spaces and resulting actions that will overturn the conspiracy not just at the individual, but at the systemic level: the great colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away falls of his own weight and breaks into pieces.
And while the people’s movement is born out of gendered identity, it does not stop there. It is inevitable that the kind of thought processes—and then actions—that go into supporting genuine gender difference extend into other domains, those other sites of oppression referred to above: class, race and so on. The people’s movement demands freedom from power and domination wherever it operates. The people’s movement shouts, “The emperor is wearing no clothes!” The people’s movement calls the conspiracy’s bluff. It’s so simple, so elegant. And it all starts with looking in the mirror, and questioning who it is who looks back.
