I learned something important about myself at an event last month, the annual convergence of a men’s organization called the Sacred Sons. Though I was there as a speaker, I decided to experience it from the vantage point of a participant as well. That is how I found myself in a circle of men that Friday afternoon, being asked if I wanted to put on boxing gloves and fight another man.
So many lovely comments here. I want to add one more detail to the story. Part of the instruction around the fighting was that it isn't all-or-nothing. There are degrees between passivity and all-out raging violence. It is a dial, not a switch. Boxing is a good expression of that, since it has restraint built into the rules. You can't kick the other guy in the balls or bite off his ear, for example. The other guy and I didn't actually want to hurt each other -- at least not too much.
I am a little surprised that this essay evoked such a positive response. I was expecting a lot of criticism (reinforcing gender stereotypes etc.) And what I'm saying here is really simple. Sometimes I overlook saying the simple things. Anyway, thank you all for your great comments and stories.
I've often said that my job was to make the children feel safe and my husband's job was to make me feel safe. In that space, the household is born and nourished. Yes, my husband is good tonic for sure.
Oh, yes. I love the image of the household being born and nourished. I'm currently staying in my Appalachian childhood home, where I was met with maggots and mice, plumbing and electrical issues--revenge for my neglect. I've now fixed everything, replaced the (new but left unplugged by the handyman) fridge, barricaded the mouse ingress, strung Christmas lights and have a pot of beans simmering. I can feel the house humming with contentment. A house (and moreso a household) is a living thing and will bite if not tended but purr when it is.
There's no better example of tonic masculinity that comes to my mind than you. Let me alert others to check out your beautiful and healing Substack with downright probiotic manliness (is that a thing?)
Tereza, I am deeply moved by your generous comment. I will continue to live in a way that merits that description.
Probiotic manliness.. haha, yes it is a thing now! Perhaps some of my more robustly flavored fiery kimchi recipes would fit that description? :)
For me, I feel like making a conscious choice to tend to the Earth in the garden and plant seeds in the fertile soil (nurturing them to grow, helping seedlings achieve their highest potential, harvesting homegrown produce to feed my loved ones and helping others to be able to do the same) really served as a powerful key to unlock the innate 'tonic masculinity' within. Using my hands to nurture, protect, remediate, cultivate and co-create (in alignment with the creative and regenerative forces of Mother Earth) provides a unique kind of healing to my body, mind, heart and spirit. Observing the miracle of life up close and personal in the garden (and in the forest) nurtured a sense of reverence for the sacredness of life in my heart and mind. This is what led me to feel compelled to walk the path of the peaceful warrior (which I sometimes express in my writing on substack) to do my own small part to stand in defense of that which is sacred, to call out the bullies, to strive to give a voice to those that cannot speak for themselves and to nurture the seeds for the more beautiful world all our hearts know is possible, to germinate and take root when the time is right.
Thanks again for the thoughtful comment, I am grateful we were guided to cross paths.
I will second Kieron in being moved to tears and you in being grateful we were guided to cross paths.
On Robert Malone's thread, I've been in a discussion with someone who says that communal farming never works and private property is key to abundance. When I wrote my reply, which I'll copy below, I was thinking of you and others, from whom I have much to learn. I was wondering your thoughts in it:
"There's a book I like called The Magna Carta Manifesto where he talks about the well thought-out rules that went into managing the commons and forest in England, to make sure no one overused them. The Tragedy of the Commons, he says, was written to justify enclosure, but it wasn't true.
"I think in the same way you could write rules for cooperative farming and animal husbandry. I know that, for me, growing one or two of each veg or fruit tree and wrangling a few chickens is pretty inefficient. I'd love to be working under someone who knew what they were doing and be on a schedule, and hang out with my neighbors, building my skills and relationships.
"I agree completely about private property for homes and businesses. I think the purpose of local gov't is to increase home ownership, small local landlords, and small local businesses. It's the fields and forests around the towns or cities that I'd like to take back, that are often foreign owned and used to extract the wealth from the soil and trees. An article on CHD talked about one county in Michigan that was over 80% foreign-owned!
"And what I'd picture is not a free-for-all, but neighborhood blocks taking responsibility for land together. I hope we get the chance to reinvent and see which ideas work!"
Tereza, thanks for inviting me to be part of that discussion.
I am not familiar with the book but I will check it out.
The first thought that comes to mind is that I feel like each individual and community has unique needs and circumstances so I would not claim to have a one size fits all solution.
The designs and concepts I have been experimenting with, honing and focusing on putting together for regenerative gardening are intended to be able to be applied at any scale (whether it be a south-facing apartment window, balcony, back yard, community garden or a community farm). I begin with focusing on the residential scale because in this world of intense corporate hyper-consolidation I feel like creating regenerative food production systems that are radically decentralized is of paramount importance. That being said, even if one has the knowledge, square footage and materials to create a diverse self-sustaining micro-ecosystem that produces all the food and medicine they need (a food forest) on their private property, it would still be wise to take steps to symbiotically embed that micro-ecosystem within a larger community framework what involves gift economics, exchanges of materials, ideas and seeds.
Given the economic blitzkrieg tactics that entities like Blackrock and The Vanguard Group have been utilizing to dominate (and manipulate) the real estate market, owning private property may be something that is increasingly out of reach for young people working a 9-5 trying to get their first home. Thus, community-scale co-operative initiatives can play an important and empowering role for people in such situations (that are looking to cultivate their own food and medicine regeneratively but do not own land). This could be especially powerful if people teamed up to purchase land and create a food forest (as that type of food and medicine cultivation has the potential to persist in being productive for many generations and offers many other benefits alongside producing food and medicine). In this article https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/in-pursuit-of-an-antidote-for-parasites I offer an honest assessment of the current state of affairs in our human world (elucidating on the corporate hyper-consolidation and predatory/parasitic schemes currently being employed by oligarchs and their puppets) and elaborate on what I feel is one viable solution worth exploring (on both the residential and community scale).
Pursuant to working towards applying the ideas I was writing about in that article in the physical, over the last year I have been working with a group of like-minded people in our local community. They started meeting up weekly after the injection mandates started and our local governments began implementing totalitarian edicts as a sort of support group. The disturbing government overreach and criminal corporate collusion of the last 2 plus years had forced them to take an honest look at how corrupt our government, medical and food system is, and then to seek out like minds to plan for the future). One of them sought me out at my place of work where I help design gardens (after reading about my upcoming book) and invited me to attend a meeting. I learned that one person in the group is a retired farmer with 70 acres and they said wanted to convert over to organic/regenerative cultivation methods. They decided to do a test plot this year and team up to see what they could produce by sharing the work load. I shared some heirloom organic seeds from my collection, propagation instructions, soil-building ideas and troubleshooting support. This year they grew about 2 acres organically with a mix of amaranth, legumes, sweet potatoes, herbs and squash. Each person volunteered about 5 hours a week and then at the end they divided their harvest and all got bountiful harvests for winter storage. They grew so many organic sweet potatoes that they are selling their surplus and saving the cash for expansion regenerative cultivation next year. I am hoping to get them a few dozen goji, elderberry, grapevine, blueberry and cold hardy fig cuttings from my garden next year so they can begin to create more permanent guilds of perennials. I have been giving them tips about seed saving at our weekly meetings and now they have saved enough seeds from this year's crop to double the area they will cultivate next year (while still having an abundance of food for winter). That would not have been possible if it was just one person on their private property trying to go it alone. It was through symbiotic teamwork that the potential for abundance was unlocked.
In the future, I hope to encourage them to check out my friend John VanDeusen Edwards' "Food Is Free Project" and my other friend Andrew Barker's "Grow Free" movement for ideas on how they can allow the abundance they are co-creating to send out positive ripple effects into the broader local community, where they can take root and increase the resilience of all that live around here.
So while I strive to grow and forage for everything my wife and I need to survive on (if need be) I also simultaneously strive to find ways to embed our little mini-food forest into larger community-scale gift circles and symbiotic relationships. I feel that through embodying the decentralized solution in every way we can on the residential scale while also finding ways to offer our unique gifts to increase the resilience of the community we are a part of, we can create fractally embedded gardens that are intrinsically connected to broader decentralized food and medicine production systems.
With regards to the ownership of land in general (private property) I personally do not feel that I have the right to claim to "own" land.. (regardless of if my name is on a title somewhere or not) I consider myself as a steward, protector and guest on the land, considering it to be my possession feels wrong to me. After all, I did not create this land, that took the work of countless other beings and millennia, I consider living on this land and nurturing it as a sacred task I perform in service of the living planet that sustains us all, in service of the Creator of all things and in service of all generations yet to be born that will one day call this land home.
I will have to contemplate further with regards to your comments about rules being imposed before I speak to that, but the first thought that comes to my mind when thinking of frameworks for imposing rules related to taking responsibility for the land is the Edo Period of Japan.
Sorry if I was rambling a bit there, it was a long, wet and cold day at work planting trees and I am tired, but those are my thoughts so far :)
Thank you Gavin, I knew you would have a nuanced view informed by direct experience. I heartily agree (and like that the word includes heart) that individuals and communities have unique needs, and one size doesn't fit all. My focus, as you know, is on being a producer of new system ideas rather than just a consumer or critic of the current thing. We share a deep perspective of what's gone wrong. But you raise an interesting question as to ownership and its difference from entitlement.
The single system change that gives communities the tools to meet their needs, as I see it, is being the default owner when properties change hands, rather than private bankers. This enables them to issue both the debt, as the mortgage, and the currency to repay the debt as monthly distributed subsidies. So the benefit of living on the land, with an infrastructure, and in buildings our ancestors cultivated, fostered and built is paid back in gratitude and dignity to the previous generation and paid forward in passing them on in a better form to the next. HOW this is distributed is up to local residents but its success is measured by how many times it circulates, creating new productivity, before being extracted or monopolized.
The purpose of the commonwealth is to enable family home ownership, small business ownership, and small local landlords. As you've stated, the land owns you--you're responsible to it. As a homeowner, in California and Appalachia, it's a living thing that will bite if neglected, as I've found out more than once. Would you say that a fox doesn't own its den, and should abandon it to the first opportunistic badger who comes along? Or that a wolf doesn't own her territory and should allow her children to starve?
I'm belaboring this point, not because I think we disagree at heart, but because I think this confusion and even mistaken humility is allowing the Blackrock predation. "You will own nothing and be happy." You will not be a selfish breeder. You have no rights, only privileges.
Your example, which reminds me of my Grange experiences, is a good way that private ownership and responsibility can combine with sharing and cooperation, creating more for all. In my fiefdom, I've thought that property taxes should provide discounts for uses that improve the soil, enrich the knowledge base, or generate donations to global charities--empowering all. And just on cue, I see I have a message from Regeneration Int'l, one of my favorites ;-)
And I love the title of your Substack. I have an episode called Home is Where the Hearth Is, so I'm looking forward to reading your familial wisdom ;-)
Jay! I didn't realize what you meant by that until one of my readers commented on my Tonic Masculinity & Feminine Wiles "It seems like a lot of people are scooping your term and running with it" with a list of links. So I checked them out and replied: "So Jay wrote your second link on Jan 10, John Carter wrote your first on the 14th saying "I stole that from Jay Rollins, and I’m not giving it back." On Jan 19, Harrison Koehli on Political Ponerology writes "What is a man? Quality masculinity is tonic masculinity" citing John Carter and with a clever gin & tonic photo: https://ponerology.substack.com/p/what-is-a-man and then Luc Koch does What is Tonic Masculinity? citing all three."
Does this make me an influencer? Please say I'm an influencer. I've always wanted to be ;-) I'd say I feel like a proud momma but that might emasculate the term.
I will too but I am against it being called stealing even if you mean it, as I imagine you do, in a humble way and in keeping with current social norms.
No one owns knowledge naturally. It is only through means of an unnatural legal structure that ownership of knowledge is ever imposed, to the detriment of everyone.
Thank you, rubyred! I was just writing elsewhere that in my imaginary fiefdom, I would have three economies: a 'commons' for neighborhood food production, a reciprocal economy for goods and services, and a gift economy for ideas that can be replicated infinitely. Intellectual property is fencing off the mind as the last frontier!
I love how you always push us beyond the easy lines our culture and subcultures have drawn for us. After the last two to three years that have so radically scrambled ideological and party lines, some of us who have lost membership to our sometimes life-long groups now have a need to understand where we belong. The whole currently raging debates around gender only add an element of confusion, further splitting tentative newly formed communities apart.
My whole adult life I have seen myself as a coastal leftist, knowing clearly where I belonged, clearly knowing that I was in the right group, fighting the anti-progressive forces brewing all over the large land masses populated by the scary ignoramus. Then the “pandemic” happened. Enough has been said about how the official global response affected humanity in profound ways we are only now starting to understand. For me, as for many thousands of others, I completely lost faith in the integrity of “my side” and started navigating in utterly unknown waters. I have certainly grown from the experience, even though many times I am still not sure I know on which land I emerged.
Reading your post made me realize that one of the pillars that has been shaken is that of my sense of masculinity. As life on the Canadian West coast became unlivable for me, my family and I decided to move from the moneyed capital of the liberal establishment to the “Texas of Canada” in a smaller conservative city where nothing much happens. Not only have I quickly unlearned my acquired and mandated repulsion for big trucks and cowboy hats, but I have also quickly learned to love the realness of people actually doing things with their hands. How refreshing to have men relate with a frank handshake ready to take on the task at hand, without hiding behind the multiple veils of conditioning to ensure that the right thing is said, to ensure that they are good safe men who behave correctly, always being aware of their privilege, always trying to appear smartly but not overbearingly informed.
This new environment has freed me, making me feel more authentic. I am still me, still fighting against the abuses of the corporate state, but ready to fight in new ways, claiming a stronger masculinity that does not have to excuse itself for existing, letting go of false masks to engage in a fight without reserve. So, I am planning on buying a cowboy hat. Not because I am now copying a new form of masculinity and joining another in-group, but because, first of all, these hats offer great protection from the sun, and, most importantly, as a way to remind me to stay open, to expand my preconceptions, to embrace a stronger more assertive self, to fight by taking on the job at hand with a smile and a strong warm genuine handshake.
I live in the Texas/Oklahoma part of California which is Fresno south to Bakersfield, the local governments refused to implement much of the Covid restrictions. I remember attending a city council meeting with a wear your mask notice on the door of the city hall and seeing none of the council members and their staff wearing one in the meeting room! Unlike the Bay Area no vaccine card was ever needed to enter restaurants. I know Trump supporters who would make splendid neighbors and are generous and giving people in their daily relationships.
I used to live in Bay Area, the California of California, and was part of the group that looked down upon Fresno as a town of "ignoramus". I apologize for my own ignorant past self! How small my world was back then!
I moved to the coast you left the summer before the crazy started and as much as I love the land and climate here, I desperately miss the culture you've found in 'North Texas' where I spent most of my life. I'm a centrist politically and didn't know how I'd fit in here. Turns out, I don't. It's still an open question as to whether I stay and adjust to a lonelier social life or keep moving looking for community elsewhere. I'm happy for you having found the thing I'm missing.
I am a veteran descended from native warriors. In the Spirit Warrior Trainngs I have taught, a repetative theme emerges. Many peaceful caring folks are horrified to discover the violence inside themselves. Why? Are we horrified by an eagle protecting it's nest or any animal mother protecting it's young? How did we get domesticated into such unnatural positions of powerlessness that we think it wrong to fiercely guard what we love and feel responsible for? There is a big difference between a sovereign human defending family and home and the military-industrial complex's horrific manipulations of the honorable warrior archetype.
Thank you Charles for all you share here so generously. As the mother of two boys I hope they can experience the depth and complexity of their masculinity surrounded by support like this.
My day has been brightened to know that there were 400+ men gathered together to heal and dig into their masculinity. Always grateful for your words and wisdom.
When I was a 24 I worked for a church for three years as a youth director. One of the programs the church had been doing for years was a playgroup for moms and their kids, who were in a domestic violence resettlement program. The church had a gymnasium, which was so fun for the kids, to run around and be crazy. We would pull out the tumbling mats, and ALL the little boys wanted to wrestle with me. I grew up with a Dad (just recently now passed) who loved to wrestle and so did I, and so, naturally, I would get down on the mat and wrestle 5-7 little boys who had so much joyful aggressive energy they needed to work out. It was a blast, it was like puppies piling on. I aways ended up sweaty and scratched from their exuberance. I knew these boys had experienced all kind of negative behavior from their own Dads, and I knew it was healing for them to work it out with a safe male. Aggressive sports of a variety of kinds were a pressure release for me and salvation from school, too. My Dad told me just a few years ago that his father liked to wrestle too, but he would hurt you if he wanted to get the upper hand. Dad told me he made a conscious decision not to pass that along to me. I think about that all the time, the little change my Dad made that broke a legacy of pain and turned it into something I can give as a gift. Thanks Charles.
I am a father of four sons. All of them LOVED playing rough games when they were little. We had all kinds of games. For example, Jimi (age 12) and Matthew (age 10) would try to "escort" Philip (age 4) from one end of the living room to the other, while I would try to escort him the other direction. "Manhandle" is a better description than "escort." Philip was like the ball in a game of rugby. (He was on their side). Man those boys loved that game.
I can SO picture that! That is an awesome game. My daughter at 10 still loves to play the game where we "accidentally" run into each other while walking side by side down the sidewalk. Or, we play the "wrong way game" where I playfully start barking orders at her while yanking her around by the hand and pretend she can't listen well. She loves this game, but I'm always afraid some passerby will think I'm abusing my kid!
The rough and tumble play for boys is so important. And now it's frowned upon and banned in schools. Yet that is where boys learn to be men and how to control their strength. It's why a silverback gorilla can cradle a newborn gorilla because they learn the boundaries of their strengh by playfighting other male gorillas. But that's been taken away from kids now and boys are being labeled as hyperactive and medicated when a lot of the time they just need to be allowed to act naturaly and work off that energy they have in a healthy way.
I disagree with you a lot but i contribute every month because you write and think so well. I also think about what you write… and this time you outdid yourself. Beautifully written and completely uplifting.
I'm very soon to have my 57th birthday, to place this in a cultural historical context. Also, for such context, I have always lived in the American West -- California, Oregon, and now New Mexico.
When I was in my early twenties I had a profound insight into this gender stuff. What I realized was that the women's movement had had utterly culturally shifting consequences, but there had been no men's movement of similar magnitude, and therefore our cultural evolution was bogged down by the absence of such a men's movement. Men were lagging behind women in healing their enculturated gender wounds--severely.
I think this remains true today as much as it was true when I was a young man.
So I'm pleased to read what you have written here, Charles. Perhaps our time has come?
I’m really appreciative of this essay and the one you recently wrote on feminine depictions of power/use of the sword which my significant other sent me.
I definitely agree that rebuilding and rethinking masculinity, processing grief/trauma, and telling new stories/myths is a vital part of global healing we need and this is exactly what men’s work focuses on, however much of men’s work falls into the same trap as psychotherapy.
There has been over 100 years of psychotherapy and yet by nearly every metric of well being you can look at from depression, anxiety, addiction things are not better, are climbing, or are worse than they’ve ever been (and this was before the pandemic/polycrisis.)
I’m sure our unhealthy views of masculinity and femininity play into these horrific numbers but the economics of therapy and many offerings in the men’s movement also are to blame. I can’t even begin to say how many times I’ve seen gatherings, wilderness retreats, and men’s workshops that cost hundreds to thousands of dollars without any offer of scholarships or financial assistance.
Therapy and men’s work can be an extremely valuable investment, but to quote Childish Gambino in Atlanta, “Poor people don’t have time to make investments. They are too busy working to not be poor.”
We are not going to fix society from the top down or by any method that charges over $100 dollars an hour. It amazes me how many wise men and women with backgrounds in Jungian psychology, storytelling, and myth have so much to offer but do not seem to understand how out of reach much of it is for so many. There is plenty available that is free but anything that actually involves the chance to interact with other men in person is almost always prohibitively expensive.
Now that zoom exists and people can watch a conference online is there any real justification for charging hundreds of dollars? For much of the last several hundred years even the stories of the poor have been told by the rich.
With that said, I just wanted to say thank you for making your substack open and available to all. Even though you say you like to, you are one of the few people I don’t feel the need to fight.
The Sacred Sons gathering had a large proportion of the men on scholarship. It was diverse in terms of both ethnicity and class. But yeah, the limitations of psychotherapy should be pretty obvious by now. But we can't blame the therapists. What can they do to reverse the disintegration of community? Enormous economic forces are behind that.
Thanks for the clarification on Sacred Sons. I’m not familiar with them as a group and didn’t mean to suggest I knew anything about the cost of attendance in regards to the gathering in your post, yet many are prohibitively expensive and still act like niche organizations.
I genuinely appreciate the optimism you show and I agree in its need and effectiveness but Men’s work needs to be incorporated into what churches/temples/religious organizations, and secular non-profits do rather than primarily as a for profit model. This is what Franciscan Richard Rohr did with the Center for Contemplation/Action.
As for blame I *mostly* see it as an insurance/lack of coverage issue but with zoom groups and other technologies being an option now things needs to be kicked into high gear and offered much more broadly and affordably.
While I respect you and your writing I’m not sure I’d be so quick to write off all the costs to “economic forces.” There are options that exist today that have never existed before but we often apply old economic habits even when new pathways dramatically reduce or altogether eliminate costs. (Also I literally live on a street with multiple houses converted to therapist offices including the house directly next to me. I know several therapists and see the BMW and Mercedes SUVs come and go every day.)
Our planet is on fire and men need help. We need to acknowledge the problem but also the scale of the problem and think more broadly and more creatively about how to make meaningful change and quickly.
Oh my dear Charles, this brought tears to my eyes to read. Yes, I grew up with 4 brothers and have numerous nephews, and I know that physical fighting when done lovingly, is essential! I used to love to wrestle, my brothers taught me how, but I dated a man who had been a wrestler and he could not understand that pinning me and holding me down helpless simply caused me to panic and triggered PTSD (from long term abuse). I tried to explain that I loved the physicality of being strong; I wanted to wrestle with him just to let my body be strong, and feel the joy of testing my muscles against his. But he could not escape the competitiveness he learned in wrestling, so for him, it was all about immobilizing me. I love physical men and it has saddened me how we have taken the idea that physical fighting = toxic masculinity. I will repost this on all my social media and thank you for sharing! Thank you for fighting! Thank you for taking a stand, thank you for healing yourself and taking us along with you!
Cat, I love how you expressed this and feel like it gets at something really important. There is a kind of fight that IS based on mutual respect, on co-creating the conditions for release and expression and the bringing alive of power in one another. I find this happens often in my dance group- we meet each other with a ferocity that helps to unlock latent rage that is hard to access alone. And with that release comes the clarity of what is true. In arguments with my husband, what is important is to be able to get to the seed of my truth that needs to be heard- sometimes the best way to find it is in physicality, going straight into the energy of the fight which is very much a physical burst of energy like any animal. I love it when he will sit face to face and growl and roar with me😄 When the energy gets tended in community, with trust in one another, then the clarity, the true words and the resolution are more natural, easier.
Wonderful!! I love that you include this type of "dance" in your dance group. I have taught rage workshops in the past where everyone gets a leather doll to bash around and yell - it was very helpful back in the early 2000's to teach people that expressing rage leads to mature anger, and mature anger is the energy of the Warrior that Charles describes - that would die for what it believes in and loves. I feel like slowly we are making our way through a landscape littered with the bodies of our ancestors, and as we go, we are picking up the wounded energy and finding ways to sort out the ancient wisdoms, incorporate it, and bring healing to the collective archetypes.
Thanks Charles for your openly shared experience as a Man.
I learnt an interesting saying some years ago when in Australia where there is a movement called 'Mens Sheds ', a space where men get together to make and fix things with all their shared tools as well as taking on community projects together.
They say 'Mens don't talk face to face, they talk side by side"
It has made a lot of sense to me over the years (working with Permaculture) as through positive action, moments of reflection can naturally arise.
Many men don't feel comfortable sitting and talking, so working together while talking is a great way to go too. The essential conversations and preoccupations will always arise while hands and hearts are active. Thanks again,
Fifteen years ago my son went to a small private high school. Back then I ran into a student who also went there and mentioned that my son went to that school. A smile spread across the girl’s face and she said, “Nathan, he is always so kind!” My heart was proud. Nathan is tall, very strong, athletic, intelligent , good looking and he could have been the mean superior jock type. A number of years later I was proud of him for a different reason. He told me a tale from his senior year. A bully was picking on Nathan’s good friend, a small, nerdy computer geek. Nathan interrupted and told the guy to pick on someone his own size. The guy challenged Nathan to an immediate fight . Nathan said no, and said that it would be settled after school off campus. Nathan had his own car, paid for by a job at a fitness center and at that time had his own independent life so I was unaware of it all..They met for the showdown in a parking lot behind a local supermarket. The guy got the first punch in and bloodied Nathan’s nose, but Nathan went to work and got the guy on the ground and was pounding away with his fist. Nathan then realized he shouldn’t keep pounding so he jumped up and the guy fled in his car. The next day, Nathan was the hero at school. Years later he ran into the guy and the guy nodded his head, and said, “Yeah, I was a real jerk back then.”
I smile at myself for I am sure if I had heard about the fight when it happened instead of five years later I would have done the responsible parent thing and told him violence was the wrong choice, he or the other guy could have been hurt bad and he should have let the school administration handle the problem, blah, blah, blah. But when I heard the tale, it was Captain America stopping evil and teaching someone a lesson they needed to learn!
I've always said the farther we move from nature and the natural, the worse off we are. What does a lion do when a cub gets out of line? He puts up with a lot, but he finally lays down the paw.
It gives me hope to read this story of your son, and may he instill the same values in his children.
As a man one must make himself strong, in every way. Physical, mental, emotional, and especially spiritually. Our strength isn’t for ourselves. It is for others less powerful than ourselves. Our strength is to carry others when they need carrying.
So many lovely comments here. I want to add one more detail to the story. Part of the instruction around the fighting was that it isn't all-or-nothing. There are degrees between passivity and all-out raging violence. It is a dial, not a switch. Boxing is a good expression of that, since it has restraint built into the rules. You can't kick the other guy in the balls or bite off his ear, for example. The other guy and I didn't actually want to hurt each other -- at least not too much.
I am a little surprised that this essay evoked such a positive response. I was expecting a lot of criticism (reinforcing gender stereotypes etc.) And what I'm saying here is really simple. Sometimes I overlook saying the simple things. Anyway, thank you all for your great comments and stories.
This does my heart good. I think we need a world that puts children at the center, surrounded by women, who are surrounded by men. Tonic masculinity.
I've often said that my job was to make the children feel safe and my husband's job was to make me feel safe. In that space, the household is born and nourished. Yes, my husband is good tonic for sure.
Oh, yes. I love the image of the household being born and nourished. I'm currently staying in my Appalachian childhood home, where I was met with maggots and mice, plumbing and electrical issues--revenge for my neglect. I've now fixed everything, replaced the (new but left unplugged by the handyman) fridge, barricaded the mouse ingress, strung Christmas lights and have a pot of beans simmering. I can feel the house humming with contentment. A house (and moreso a household) is a living thing and will bite if not tended but purr when it is.
A little while back I did a post on When Mothers Ran the World. It builds on Charles' essay about Feminine Power: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/when-mothers-ran-the-world.
This provides a tonic for my heart as well. Thank you for the beautiful comment my friend :)
There's no better example of tonic masculinity that comes to my mind than you. Let me alert others to check out your beautiful and healing Substack with downright probiotic manliness (is that a thing?)
Tereza, I am deeply moved by your generous comment. I will continue to live in a way that merits that description.
Probiotic manliness.. haha, yes it is a thing now! Perhaps some of my more robustly flavored fiery kimchi recipes would fit that description? :)
For me, I feel like making a conscious choice to tend to the Earth in the garden and plant seeds in the fertile soil (nurturing them to grow, helping seedlings achieve their highest potential, harvesting homegrown produce to feed my loved ones and helping others to be able to do the same) really served as a powerful key to unlock the innate 'tonic masculinity' within. Using my hands to nurture, protect, remediate, cultivate and co-create (in alignment with the creative and regenerative forces of Mother Earth) provides a unique kind of healing to my body, mind, heart and spirit. Observing the miracle of life up close and personal in the garden (and in the forest) nurtured a sense of reverence for the sacredness of life in my heart and mind. This is what led me to feel compelled to walk the path of the peaceful warrior (which I sometimes express in my writing on substack) to do my own small part to stand in defense of that which is sacred, to call out the bullies, to strive to give a voice to those that cannot speak for themselves and to nurture the seeds for the more beautiful world all our hearts know is possible, to germinate and take root when the time is right.
Thanks again for the thoughtful comment, I am grateful we were guided to cross paths.
I will second Kieron in being moved to tears and you in being grateful we were guided to cross paths.
On Robert Malone's thread, I've been in a discussion with someone who says that communal farming never works and private property is key to abundance. When I wrote my reply, which I'll copy below, I was thinking of you and others, from whom I have much to learn. I was wondering your thoughts in it:
"There's a book I like called The Magna Carta Manifesto where he talks about the well thought-out rules that went into managing the commons and forest in England, to make sure no one overused them. The Tragedy of the Commons, he says, was written to justify enclosure, but it wasn't true.
"I think in the same way you could write rules for cooperative farming and animal husbandry. I know that, for me, growing one or two of each veg or fruit tree and wrangling a few chickens is pretty inefficient. I'd love to be working under someone who knew what they were doing and be on a schedule, and hang out with my neighbors, building my skills and relationships.
"I agree completely about private property for homes and businesses. I think the purpose of local gov't is to increase home ownership, small local landlords, and small local businesses. It's the fields and forests around the towns or cities that I'd like to take back, that are often foreign owned and used to extract the wealth from the soil and trees. An article on CHD talked about one county in Michigan that was over 80% foreign-owned!
"And what I'd picture is not a free-for-all, but neighborhood blocks taking responsibility for land together. I hope we get the chance to reinvent and see which ideas work!"
Tereza, thanks for inviting me to be part of that discussion.
I am not familiar with the book but I will check it out.
The first thought that comes to mind is that I feel like each individual and community has unique needs and circumstances so I would not claim to have a one size fits all solution.
The designs and concepts I have been experimenting with, honing and focusing on putting together for regenerative gardening are intended to be able to be applied at any scale (whether it be a south-facing apartment window, balcony, back yard, community garden or a community farm). I begin with focusing on the residential scale because in this world of intense corporate hyper-consolidation I feel like creating regenerative food production systems that are radically decentralized is of paramount importance. That being said, even if one has the knowledge, square footage and materials to create a diverse self-sustaining micro-ecosystem that produces all the food and medicine they need (a food forest) on their private property, it would still be wise to take steps to symbiotically embed that micro-ecosystem within a larger community framework what involves gift economics, exchanges of materials, ideas and seeds.
Given the economic blitzkrieg tactics that entities like Blackrock and The Vanguard Group have been utilizing to dominate (and manipulate) the real estate market, owning private property may be something that is increasingly out of reach for young people working a 9-5 trying to get their first home. Thus, community-scale co-operative initiatives can play an important and empowering role for people in such situations (that are looking to cultivate their own food and medicine regeneratively but do not own land). This could be especially powerful if people teamed up to purchase land and create a food forest (as that type of food and medicine cultivation has the potential to persist in being productive for many generations and offers many other benefits alongside producing food and medicine). In this article https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/in-pursuit-of-an-antidote-for-parasites I offer an honest assessment of the current state of affairs in our human world (elucidating on the corporate hyper-consolidation and predatory/parasitic schemes currently being employed by oligarchs and their puppets) and elaborate on what I feel is one viable solution worth exploring (on both the residential and community scale).
Pursuant to working towards applying the ideas I was writing about in that article in the physical, over the last year I have been working with a group of like-minded people in our local community. They started meeting up weekly after the injection mandates started and our local governments began implementing totalitarian edicts as a sort of support group. The disturbing government overreach and criminal corporate collusion of the last 2 plus years had forced them to take an honest look at how corrupt our government, medical and food system is, and then to seek out like minds to plan for the future). One of them sought me out at my place of work where I help design gardens (after reading about my upcoming book) and invited me to attend a meeting. I learned that one person in the group is a retired farmer with 70 acres and they said wanted to convert over to organic/regenerative cultivation methods. They decided to do a test plot this year and team up to see what they could produce by sharing the work load. I shared some heirloom organic seeds from my collection, propagation instructions, soil-building ideas and troubleshooting support. This year they grew about 2 acres organically with a mix of amaranth, legumes, sweet potatoes, herbs and squash. Each person volunteered about 5 hours a week and then at the end they divided their harvest and all got bountiful harvests for winter storage. They grew so many organic sweet potatoes that they are selling their surplus and saving the cash for expansion regenerative cultivation next year. I am hoping to get them a few dozen goji, elderberry, grapevine, blueberry and cold hardy fig cuttings from my garden next year so they can begin to create more permanent guilds of perennials. I have been giving them tips about seed saving at our weekly meetings and now they have saved enough seeds from this year's crop to double the area they will cultivate next year (while still having an abundance of food for winter). That would not have been possible if it was just one person on their private property trying to go it alone. It was through symbiotic teamwork that the potential for abundance was unlocked.
In the future, I hope to encourage them to check out my friend John VanDeusen Edwards' "Food Is Free Project" and my other friend Andrew Barker's "Grow Free" movement for ideas on how they can allow the abundance they are co-creating to send out positive ripple effects into the broader local community, where they can take root and increase the resilience of all that live around here.
So while I strive to grow and forage for everything my wife and I need to survive on (if need be) I also simultaneously strive to find ways to embed our little mini-food forest into larger community-scale gift circles and symbiotic relationships. I feel that through embodying the decentralized solution in every way we can on the residential scale while also finding ways to offer our unique gifts to increase the resilience of the community we are a part of, we can create fractally embedded gardens that are intrinsically connected to broader decentralized food and medicine production systems.
With regards to the ownership of land in general (private property) I personally do not feel that I have the right to claim to "own" land.. (regardless of if my name is on a title somewhere or not) I consider myself as a steward, protector and guest on the land, considering it to be my possession feels wrong to me. After all, I did not create this land, that took the work of countless other beings and millennia, I consider living on this land and nurturing it as a sacred task I perform in service of the living planet that sustains us all, in service of the Creator of all things and in service of all generations yet to be born that will one day call this land home.
I will have to contemplate further with regards to your comments about rules being imposed before I speak to that, but the first thought that comes to my mind when thinking of frameworks for imposing rules related to taking responsibility for the land is the Edo Period of Japan.
Sorry if I was rambling a bit there, it was a long, wet and cold day at work planting trees and I am tired, but those are my thoughts so far :)
More on this soon.
Thank you Gavin, I knew you would have a nuanced view informed by direct experience. I heartily agree (and like that the word includes heart) that individuals and communities have unique needs, and one size doesn't fit all. My focus, as you know, is on being a producer of new system ideas rather than just a consumer or critic of the current thing. We share a deep perspective of what's gone wrong. But you raise an interesting question as to ownership and its difference from entitlement.
The single system change that gives communities the tools to meet their needs, as I see it, is being the default owner when properties change hands, rather than private bankers. This enables them to issue both the debt, as the mortgage, and the currency to repay the debt as monthly distributed subsidies. So the benefit of living on the land, with an infrastructure, and in buildings our ancestors cultivated, fostered and built is paid back in gratitude and dignity to the previous generation and paid forward in passing them on in a better form to the next. HOW this is distributed is up to local residents but its success is measured by how many times it circulates, creating new productivity, before being extracted or monopolized.
The purpose of the commonwealth is to enable family home ownership, small business ownership, and small local landlords. As you've stated, the land owns you--you're responsible to it. As a homeowner, in California and Appalachia, it's a living thing that will bite if neglected, as I've found out more than once. Would you say that a fox doesn't own its den, and should abandon it to the first opportunistic badger who comes along? Or that a wolf doesn't own her territory and should allow her children to starve?
I'm belaboring this point, not because I think we disagree at heart, but because I think this confusion and even mistaken humility is allowing the Blackrock predation. "You will own nothing and be happy." You will not be a selfish breeder. You have no rights, only privileges.
Your example, which reminds me of my Grange experiences, is a good way that private ownership and responsibility can combine with sharing and cooperation, creating more for all. In my fiefdom, I've thought that property taxes should provide discounts for uses that improve the soil, enrich the knowledge base, or generate donations to global charities--empowering all. And just on cue, I see I have a message from Regeneration Int'l, one of my favorites ;-)
Yes!!! Love this!
Especially tonic masculinity!
💗
And I love the title of your Substack. I have an episode called Home is Where the Hearth Is, so I'm looking forward to reading your familial wisdom ;-)
Thanks Tereza 💗 it seems my hearth keeps me so busy that I just don’t seems to get there haha. But you’ve re inspired me x
Tonic masculinity -- I like it!
Yes to “tonic masculinity”! I love that!!!
Yes please! I was hoping someone would. It took me a minute to figure out what the opposite of toxic would be.
Jay! I didn't realize what you meant by that until one of my readers commented on my Tonic Masculinity & Feminine Wiles "It seems like a lot of people are scooping your term and running with it" with a list of links. So I checked them out and replied: "So Jay wrote your second link on Jan 10, John Carter wrote your first on the 14th saying "I stole that from Jay Rollins, and I’m not giving it back." On Jan 19, Harrison Koehli on Political Ponerology writes "What is a man? Quality masculinity is tonic masculinity" citing John Carter and with a clever gin & tonic photo: https://ponerology.substack.com/p/what-is-a-man and then Luc Koch does What is Tonic Masculinity? citing all three."
Does this make me an influencer? Please say I'm an influencer. I've always wanted to be ;-) I'd say I feel like a proud momma but that might emasculate the term.
Synchronistic timing! I just ran with it too in an episode called Tonic Masculinity & Feminine Wiles: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/tonic-masculinity-and-feminine-wiles.
I will too but I am against it being called stealing even if you mean it, as I imagine you do, in a humble way and in keeping with current social norms.
No one owns knowledge naturally. It is only through means of an unnatural legal structure that ownership of knowledge is ever imposed, to the detriment of everyone.
Kudos to Tereza for the phrase.
Thank you, rubyred! I was just writing elsewhere that in my imaginary fiefdom, I would have three economies: a 'commons' for neighborhood food production, a reciprocal economy for goods and services, and a gift economy for ideas that can be replicated infinitely. Intellectual property is fencing off the mind as the last frontier!
Love text and surname; great for a fighter !
Also Tereza, love your vision for future community land use >
Thank you for all those nice compliments, Peter. Were you referring to the more fleshed-out response to Gavin below? You might like this post of mine on Socio-Spirituality and Small Scale Sovereignty: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/socio-spirituality-and-small-scale or this one for ten universal principles of community-based economies: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/build-a-new-model. The future is my favorite thing to imagine!
small world. www
I like that - tonic masculinity.
I love how you always push us beyond the easy lines our culture and subcultures have drawn for us. After the last two to three years that have so radically scrambled ideological and party lines, some of us who have lost membership to our sometimes life-long groups now have a need to understand where we belong. The whole currently raging debates around gender only add an element of confusion, further splitting tentative newly formed communities apart.
My whole adult life I have seen myself as a coastal leftist, knowing clearly where I belonged, clearly knowing that I was in the right group, fighting the anti-progressive forces brewing all over the large land masses populated by the scary ignoramus. Then the “pandemic” happened. Enough has been said about how the official global response affected humanity in profound ways we are only now starting to understand. For me, as for many thousands of others, I completely lost faith in the integrity of “my side” and started navigating in utterly unknown waters. I have certainly grown from the experience, even though many times I am still not sure I know on which land I emerged.
Reading your post made me realize that one of the pillars that has been shaken is that of my sense of masculinity. As life on the Canadian West coast became unlivable for me, my family and I decided to move from the moneyed capital of the liberal establishment to the “Texas of Canada” in a smaller conservative city where nothing much happens. Not only have I quickly unlearned my acquired and mandated repulsion for big trucks and cowboy hats, but I have also quickly learned to love the realness of people actually doing things with their hands. How refreshing to have men relate with a frank handshake ready to take on the task at hand, without hiding behind the multiple veils of conditioning to ensure that the right thing is said, to ensure that they are good safe men who behave correctly, always being aware of their privilege, always trying to appear smartly but not overbearingly informed.
This new environment has freed me, making me feel more authentic. I am still me, still fighting against the abuses of the corporate state, but ready to fight in new ways, claiming a stronger masculinity that does not have to excuse itself for existing, letting go of false masks to engage in a fight without reserve. So, I am planning on buying a cowboy hat. Not because I am now copying a new form of masculinity and joining another in-group, but because, first of all, these hats offer great protection from the sun, and, most importantly, as a way to remind me to stay open, to expand my preconceptions, to embrace a stronger more assertive self, to fight by taking on the job at hand with a smile and a strong warm genuine handshake.
I live in the Texas/Oklahoma part of California which is Fresno south to Bakersfield, the local governments refused to implement much of the Covid restrictions. I remember attending a city council meeting with a wear your mask notice on the door of the city hall and seeing none of the council members and their staff wearing one in the meeting room! Unlike the Bay Area no vaccine card was ever needed to enter restaurants. I know Trump supporters who would make splendid neighbors and are generous and giving people in their daily relationships.
I used to live in Bay Area, the California of California, and was part of the group that looked down upon Fresno as a town of "ignoramus". I apologize for my own ignorant past self! How small my world was back then!
I moved to the coast you left the summer before the crazy started and as much as I love the land and climate here, I desperately miss the culture you've found in 'North Texas' where I spent most of my life. I'm a centrist politically and didn't know how I'd fit in here. Turns out, I don't. It's still an open question as to whether I stay and adjust to a lonelier social life or keep moving looking for community elsewhere. I'm happy for you having found the thing I'm missing.
I am a veteran descended from native warriors. In the Spirit Warrior Trainngs I have taught, a repetative theme emerges. Many peaceful caring folks are horrified to discover the violence inside themselves. Why? Are we horrified by an eagle protecting it's nest or any animal mother protecting it's young? How did we get domesticated into such unnatural positions of powerlessness that we think it wrong to fiercely guard what we love and feel responsible for? There is a big difference between a sovereign human defending family and home and the military-industrial complex's horrific manipulations of the honorable warrior archetype.
Hear hear
Thank you Charles for all you share here so generously. As the mother of two boys I hope they can experience the depth and complexity of their masculinity surrounded by support like this.
My day has been brightened to know that there were 400+ men gathered together to heal and dig into their masculinity. Always grateful for your words and wisdom.
When I was a 24 I worked for a church for three years as a youth director. One of the programs the church had been doing for years was a playgroup for moms and their kids, who were in a domestic violence resettlement program. The church had a gymnasium, which was so fun for the kids, to run around and be crazy. We would pull out the tumbling mats, and ALL the little boys wanted to wrestle with me. I grew up with a Dad (just recently now passed) who loved to wrestle and so did I, and so, naturally, I would get down on the mat and wrestle 5-7 little boys who had so much joyful aggressive energy they needed to work out. It was a blast, it was like puppies piling on. I aways ended up sweaty and scratched from their exuberance. I knew these boys had experienced all kind of negative behavior from their own Dads, and I knew it was healing for them to work it out with a safe male. Aggressive sports of a variety of kinds were a pressure release for me and salvation from school, too. My Dad told me just a few years ago that his father liked to wrestle too, but he would hurt you if he wanted to get the upper hand. Dad told me he made a conscious decision not to pass that along to me. I think about that all the time, the little change my Dad made that broke a legacy of pain and turned it into something I can give as a gift. Thanks Charles.
I am a father of four sons. All of them LOVED playing rough games when they were little. We had all kinds of games. For example, Jimi (age 12) and Matthew (age 10) would try to "escort" Philip (age 4) from one end of the living room to the other, while I would try to escort him the other direction. "Manhandle" is a better description than "escort." Philip was like the ball in a game of rugby. (He was on their side). Man those boys loved that game.
I can SO picture that! That is an awesome game. My daughter at 10 still loves to play the game where we "accidentally" run into each other while walking side by side down the sidewalk. Or, we play the "wrong way game" where I playfully start barking orders at her while yanking her around by the hand and pretend she can't listen well. She loves this game, but I'm always afraid some passerby will think I'm abusing my kid!
The rough and tumble play for boys is so important. And now it's frowned upon and banned in schools. Yet that is where boys learn to be men and how to control their strength. It's why a silverback gorilla can cradle a newborn gorilla because they learn the boundaries of their strengh by playfighting other male gorillas. But that's been taken away from kids now and boys are being labeled as hyperactive and medicated when a lot of the time they just need to be allowed to act naturaly and work off that energy they have in a healthy way.
I disagree with you a lot but i contribute every month because you write and think so well. I also think about what you write… and this time you outdid yourself. Beautifully written and completely uplifting.
Aw, thanks! I love that you subscribe even though you disagree.
Thanks Charles.
I'm very soon to have my 57th birthday, to place this in a cultural historical context. Also, for such context, I have always lived in the American West -- California, Oregon, and now New Mexico.
When I was in my early twenties I had a profound insight into this gender stuff. What I realized was that the women's movement had had utterly culturally shifting consequences, but there had been no men's movement of similar magnitude, and therefore our cultural evolution was bogged down by the absence of such a men's movement. Men were lagging behind women in healing their enculturated gender wounds--severely.
I think this remains true today as much as it was true when I was a young man.
So I'm pleased to read what you have written here, Charles. Perhaps our time has come?
I’m really appreciative of this essay and the one you recently wrote on feminine depictions of power/use of the sword which my significant other sent me.
I definitely agree that rebuilding and rethinking masculinity, processing grief/trauma, and telling new stories/myths is a vital part of global healing we need and this is exactly what men’s work focuses on, however much of men’s work falls into the same trap as psychotherapy.
There has been over 100 years of psychotherapy and yet by nearly every metric of well being you can look at from depression, anxiety, addiction things are not better, are climbing, or are worse than they’ve ever been (and this was before the pandemic/polycrisis.)
I’m sure our unhealthy views of masculinity and femininity play into these horrific numbers but the economics of therapy and many offerings in the men’s movement also are to blame. I can’t even begin to say how many times I’ve seen gatherings, wilderness retreats, and men’s workshops that cost hundreds to thousands of dollars without any offer of scholarships or financial assistance.
Therapy and men’s work can be an extremely valuable investment, but to quote Childish Gambino in Atlanta, “Poor people don’t have time to make investments. They are too busy working to not be poor.”
We are not going to fix society from the top down or by any method that charges over $100 dollars an hour. It amazes me how many wise men and women with backgrounds in Jungian psychology, storytelling, and myth have so much to offer but do not seem to understand how out of reach much of it is for so many. There is plenty available that is free but anything that actually involves the chance to interact with other men in person is almost always prohibitively expensive.
Now that zoom exists and people can watch a conference online is there any real justification for charging hundreds of dollars? For much of the last several hundred years even the stories of the poor have been told by the rich.
With that said, I just wanted to say thank you for making your substack open and available to all. Even though you say you like to, you are one of the few people I don’t feel the need to fight.
The Sacred Sons gathering had a large proportion of the men on scholarship. It was diverse in terms of both ethnicity and class. But yeah, the limitations of psychotherapy should be pretty obvious by now. But we can't blame the therapists. What can they do to reverse the disintegration of community? Enormous economic forces are behind that.
Thanks for the clarification on Sacred Sons. I’m not familiar with them as a group and didn’t mean to suggest I knew anything about the cost of attendance in regards to the gathering in your post, yet many are prohibitively expensive and still act like niche organizations.
I genuinely appreciate the optimism you show and I agree in its need and effectiveness but Men’s work needs to be incorporated into what churches/temples/religious organizations, and secular non-profits do rather than primarily as a for profit model. This is what Franciscan Richard Rohr did with the Center for Contemplation/Action.
As for blame I *mostly* see it as an insurance/lack of coverage issue but with zoom groups and other technologies being an option now things needs to be kicked into high gear and offered much more broadly and affordably.
While I respect you and your writing I’m not sure I’d be so quick to write off all the costs to “economic forces.” There are options that exist today that have never existed before but we often apply old economic habits even when new pathways dramatically reduce or altogether eliminate costs. (Also I literally live on a street with multiple houses converted to therapist offices including the house directly next to me. I know several therapists and see the BMW and Mercedes SUVs come and go every day.)
Our planet is on fire and men need help. We need to acknowledge the problem but also the scale of the problem and think more broadly and more creatively about how to make meaningful change and quickly.
Inspired. Love this: “The true warrior is the one who is willing, if need be, to die. Courage and not violence defines him.”
Oh my dear Charles, this brought tears to my eyes to read. Yes, I grew up with 4 brothers and have numerous nephews, and I know that physical fighting when done lovingly, is essential! I used to love to wrestle, my brothers taught me how, but I dated a man who had been a wrestler and he could not understand that pinning me and holding me down helpless simply caused me to panic and triggered PTSD (from long term abuse). I tried to explain that I loved the physicality of being strong; I wanted to wrestle with him just to let my body be strong, and feel the joy of testing my muscles against his. But he could not escape the competitiveness he learned in wrestling, so for him, it was all about immobilizing me. I love physical men and it has saddened me how we have taken the idea that physical fighting = toxic masculinity. I will repost this on all my social media and thank you for sharing! Thank you for fighting! Thank you for taking a stand, thank you for healing yourself and taking us along with you!
Cat, I love how you expressed this and feel like it gets at something really important. There is a kind of fight that IS based on mutual respect, on co-creating the conditions for release and expression and the bringing alive of power in one another. I find this happens often in my dance group- we meet each other with a ferocity that helps to unlock latent rage that is hard to access alone. And with that release comes the clarity of what is true. In arguments with my husband, what is important is to be able to get to the seed of my truth that needs to be heard- sometimes the best way to find it is in physicality, going straight into the energy of the fight which is very much a physical burst of energy like any animal. I love it when he will sit face to face and growl and roar with me😄 When the energy gets tended in community, with trust in one another, then the clarity, the true words and the resolution are more natural, easier.
Wonderful!! I love that you include this type of "dance" in your dance group. I have taught rage workshops in the past where everyone gets a leather doll to bash around and yell - it was very helpful back in the early 2000's to teach people that expressing rage leads to mature anger, and mature anger is the energy of the Warrior that Charles describes - that would die for what it believes in and loves. I feel like slowly we are making our way through a landscape littered with the bodies of our ancestors, and as we go, we are picking up the wounded energy and finding ways to sort out the ancient wisdoms, incorporate it, and bring healing to the collective archetypes.
What a very beautiful, haunting and accurate description♥️ this is just how it feels. The great healing.
Thanks Charles for your openly shared experience as a Man.
I learnt an interesting saying some years ago when in Australia where there is a movement called 'Mens Sheds ', a space where men get together to make and fix things with all their shared tools as well as taking on community projects together.
They say 'Mens don't talk face to face, they talk side by side"
It has made a lot of sense to me over the years (working with Permaculture) as through positive action, moments of reflection can naturally arise.
Many men don't feel comfortable sitting and talking, so working together while talking is a great way to go too. The essential conversations and preoccupations will always arise while hands and hearts are active. Thanks again,
This is super cool Charles. I want to fight you!
One has to be the DEFENDER even until death. Honour and self sacrifice without glory or reward is our way. You are a fight club punk and I salute you!
LOL
Fight Club punk? Please.
If that were true, why does he just stand there allowing me to repeatedly & thoroughly soak him down with a garden hose? ; ^ ]
Fifteen years ago my son went to a small private high school. Back then I ran into a student who also went there and mentioned that my son went to that school. A smile spread across the girl’s face and she said, “Nathan, he is always so kind!” My heart was proud. Nathan is tall, very strong, athletic, intelligent , good looking and he could have been the mean superior jock type. A number of years later I was proud of him for a different reason. He told me a tale from his senior year. A bully was picking on Nathan’s good friend, a small, nerdy computer geek. Nathan interrupted and told the guy to pick on someone his own size. The guy challenged Nathan to an immediate fight . Nathan said no, and said that it would be settled after school off campus. Nathan had his own car, paid for by a job at a fitness center and at that time had his own independent life so I was unaware of it all..They met for the showdown in a parking lot behind a local supermarket. The guy got the first punch in and bloodied Nathan’s nose, but Nathan went to work and got the guy on the ground and was pounding away with his fist. Nathan then realized he shouldn’t keep pounding so he jumped up and the guy fled in his car. The next day, Nathan was the hero at school. Years later he ran into the guy and the guy nodded his head, and said, “Yeah, I was a real jerk back then.”
I smile at myself for I am sure if I had heard about the fight when it happened instead of five years later I would have done the responsible parent thing and told him violence was the wrong choice, he or the other guy could have been hurt bad and he should have let the school administration handle the problem, blah, blah, blah. But when I heard the tale, it was Captain America stopping evil and teaching someone a lesson they needed to learn!
I've always said the farther we move from nature and the natural, the worse off we are. What does a lion do when a cub gets out of line? He puts up with a lot, but he finally lays down the paw.
It gives me hope to read this story of your son, and may he instill the same values in his children.
As a man one must make himself strong, in every way. Physical, mental, emotional, and especially spiritually. Our strength isn’t for ourselves. It is for others less powerful than ourselves. Our strength is to carry others when they need carrying.