The Integrated Man
Saturday evening my fiancé and I had the chance to have a night out. We’re fans of the musician Khalid who was in concert with Ed Sheeran at Ford Field and after what was an entertaining show we headed over the Detroit’s “The Skip” for a nightcap. Upon doing so we got on the topic of the ways in which men and women counterbalance one another within a relationship. The conversation got me thinking on the topic of masculinity, the traits we typically associate with it, and where it stands within society today. While this essay seeks neither to evangelize nor to somehow imply “I am the man, I know manhood,” it is a topic worth dissecting through the lens of philosophy, psychology, and religion.
Toxic Masculinity
Within what feels like every movie or show we’re exposed to there seems to be a very intentional effort to characterize men a particular way. It feels as if every work follows a script that goes along the lines of, “White male character who is a bumbling idiot, weak, can’t do anything right, and is blinded by his male perspective of privilege that “doesn’t share the power.” A “strong” (feminist) woman who has no written character development, no personality, no flaws, smarter than every male character, kicking every male’s ass despite being half their size, emotionless outside of anger and resentment toward men and “the patriarchy,” all while being incredibly unlikable. These “Girl Boss” feminist characters are not the female protagonists of strength such as Sigourney Weaver in Ridley Scott’s “Alien,” Linda Hamilton in “Terminator,” Gal Gadot in the first “Wonder Woman,” Uma Thurman in “Kill Bill,” Lupita Nyong’o in “Us,” nor do they depict an actual woman in reality. And without fail, an evil male antagonist that can only be defeated once the silly and idiotic male protagonist finally surrenders the “power” to the female character who can then go on to defeat the antagonist, and “The patriarchy.”
The message that the male audience is supposed to take away is that they should make themselves as small and weak as possible while becoming pathetically subservient to women because that’s the only way we’ll win. The 2-hour implicit bias training seminars we now call entertainment rest on the belief that any exhibition of strength from men is dangerous and masculinity must be trained out of young boys and men for the betterment of humanity. “The world suffers because men have all of the power.”
We are able to arrive at this idea through the conflation of masculine strength and a popular phrase of our ideological time, “Toxic masculinity.” Toxic masculinity, as it’s commonly purveyed, does not necessarily mean being an evil person who happens to be a man. Instead, the term is used to describe any man who simply doesn’t go along with an ideology that seeks to eradicate them from positions of leadership and influence or exhibits qualities of the “Traditional man” which “reinforces a patriarchal structure that oppresses women and minorities.”
This issue with this thought process is many, but chiefly, the definition and characterization conflate all masculine strength with evil.
Well, what is benevolent masculinity?
Stoicism & Biblical Masculinity
A fair criticism of men from generations past that we typically think of as “traditional” was that they were hardened, emotionless men who struggled to express love. Men of these eras were a product of their time where it was necessary to be a hardened man in a world of chaos and instability. To expect men who were dropped overseas in two world wars, Vietnam, and Korea to go from “kill or be killed” and all of the wounds externally and internally that happen as a result, to then come home and be gentle, loving, and compassionate is a difficult ask. Men of these generations then became fathers to large families, often battling afflictions such as depression and alcoholism while being tough on the boys who then became fathers to their children and whose definition of fatherhood is tied to the experience they had as young boys.
Since this time, we’ve made it societally acceptable for men to express love and allow themselves to be vulnerable. While this comes from a good place and has managed to have a positive impact, I would argue we’ve done this to excess where we’ve swung too far in the other direction. We did not need a social doctrine jammed down our throats when the lessons and wisdom on masculinity have been in our possession for several millennia.
Whatever exactly defines, “toxic masculinity,” the figure that is the antithesis of it is Jesus Christ. I do not cite the Christian figure as means of evangelizing or attempting to convert readers, regardless of whether you believe in savior Jesus, historical Jesus, or not in Jesus at all is irrelevant because he represented the personification of Man-Perfected and the lessons we can draw from his actions and words are in many ways more true than reality itself.
From Corinthians, “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love.” Ephesians, “With all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love.” While I could cite scripture after scripture that describes traits such as bravery, courage, resolve, honor, and so on, one word that you will not find is “weakness.” Rather, Christ says, “Be imitators of me, as I am Christ” and while delivering the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” Who exactly are “the meek” and what are the characteristics that we ought to imitate of The Perfect Man?
The term “meek” in the context of the aforementioned scripture does not translate to, “Weak,” rather, from the faith perspective it refers to those that humble themselves before god, accepting the innately flawed human condition but finding the source of strength and resilience through faith. From the secular perspective, “meek” is also not defined as “weak,” but instead, it is as a man having the capability to be aggressive, violent, and dangerous but choosing to have those traits under voluntary control. This is not necessarily a physical strength but something far more impressive and difficult to attain, a strength of spirit. In short, meek is strength under control.
When Martin Luther King Jr sought to achieve equal rights for blacks, he studied Gandhi who achieved liberation for India from the control of Britain. When Gandhi sought to liberate Indians from British control, he studied Christ whose philosophy overtook the Roman empire 300 years after they executed him. Christ, the literal or figurative son of God depending on your beliefs, could perform miracles and at any point could have called down angels to overthrow the Roman empire and save him. And yet, he voluntarily chose to allow himself to be tortured, humiliated, and brutally murdered. Rather than angrily lashing out, he was stoic, still and silent in the face of adversity, allowing himself to be sacrificed to achieve the greater goal. Was it “weak” of him to not fight back? Or instead, was it the embodiment of divine strength and sacrifice in order to save his people in the name of love and servitude? The words, “Be imitators of me, as I am Christ” means to aim to become the most dangerous man in the world who channels that strength in benevolence to serve, sacrifice, and love.
Falling Behind
While the focus from our media and institutions centers on “empowering” young girls and women, it is young boys and men who are falling behind in many categories at shocking rates. A LendingTree analysis of 2021 Census data found single women have surpassed single men in rates of homeownership. As of 2020, the decline in college enrollment was seven times greater for male than female students. A recent YouTruth survey polling 25,000 2023 graduates found only 57% of young men actually plan to attend college while 83% of young women want to go and 77% expect to go. Women constitute 60% of all undergraduate degrees, a rate that is only going to widen as we move forward. This is not to say, “Women achievement bad, man gooood,” this is to say that while we should be happy young girls and women are making greater independent achievements, it is being done at the direct expense of young boys and men who are falling behind in every category outside of suicide and incarceration. In the attempt to emasculate men and harden women, we’ve ushered in a societal crisis of masculinity, generations of young men entering the world void of purpose and meaning leading to the degeneration of society. Perhaps that’s the point.
Young boys and men are being punished in our institutions, chiefly education, for the original sin of being born male. We’ve created a system of accreditation within our economy that does not seek to find the best talent, but instead, seeks to open and close doors of employment based on degrees that are typically completely useless, valueless, and pointless. We’ve instituted a system of indentured servitude where to receive your ticket to the middle class, a student must go tens of thousands of dollars in debt by taking a multitude of useless classes that provide no information of value.
In primary education, so much of the focus is on social-emotional learning, anti-bullying, compassion, and empathy where the emotional state of the child is of greater import than actually educating them and providing them with discipline and structure. Boys, who are more aggressive, competitive, and play-centered than girls are forced into a system set up to train out their innate instincts through professional coddling rather than accepting the nature of young boys and channeling that energy into something useful and productive.
Speaking from the perspective of a former male college student who attended 15 schools and chose 18 different majors, I can tell you the institution of higher education is the most frustratingly infantilizing system I’ve ever encountered. Whether it was being forced to ask to use the bathroom, being ridiculed by a professor for taking too long on a bathroom break or getting hauled in front of a Central Michigan University kangaroo court for the cardinal sin of getting caught with a beer at 20 years old, the system of higher education is not designed to create a class of independent adults as much as it is a bureaucratic institution arbitrarily designed by petty tyrants seeking to sabotage personal growth. A professional nanny state.
My fiancé and I were having a conversation Saturday evening where we were talking about a philosophy-related topic. My intelligent, two-graduate degree-achieving fiancé stated she had a very difficult time in her philosophy course despite excelling in all other areas of study. I, on the other hand, never took a philosophy course and was instead at one point in nursing school which often featured incredibly detail-orientated minutiae. Because of this, I felt like a fish out of water and struggled mildly with lab checklists and the million small details because my brain does not function in that manner.
Quite simply, men and women tend to think differently on average than one another despite there being no discernable difference in terms of average IQ where the sexes share the same level of intellect. Women tend to think of micro-details on average while men tend to think in macro terms, on average. Women, for example, can effectively multi-task while men lack the ability to do so because women are able to focus much better on two objects at the same time due to their ability to hold their attention on the detail that men lack. As much as society would love everyone to think it is because we condition girls into a feminine lifestyle and men into a masculine one, this is not true. The reason my intelligent fiancé excelled in all areas outside of philosophy and I struggled in nursing but am deeply interested in philosophy is not random, it’s because it is the natural state of the masculine and feminine evidenced by the fact that only 12% of nursing graduates are male and only 35% of philosophy graduates are female.
To put it another way, have you ever noticed how a man can look for something located in the house or the closet endlessly without finding the object and then the moment the woman of the house looks for said object, finds it immediately with the object typically being right in front of the man’s face? How about the way men can never seem to remember dates of future events and must ask their wives fifteen times leading up to the event when it is? Or even at social events when husbands and wives migrate to completely different rooms where the men stand around a grill, engage in competitive yard games, or sit in a living room watching football (competition) and discussing politics or world events if they’re not observing comfortable silence while the women congregated talking without cease in the other room sharing conversations about their children, gossip, or smaller details of everyday life? The interests and conversations of men tend to be more thing and idea centered while the conversations of women tend to be more people-centered.
To cite scientific evidence to dig deeper into this concept, in pre-civilized times we organized ourselves into clans of hunters and gatherers. Men, the innately larger and more aggressive sex were tasked with going out into the wilderness to hunt for food while also being tasked with the security of the tribe by fending off attacking-outside tribes. Women were tasked with the caretaking and educating of children in addition to gathering, although the physically strong did hunt as well. Because in the nomadic period, tribes did not settle in one location, they were constantly mobile, searching for new locations that are safe and bountiful. Men would go on explorations trying to find safe and secure areas with wildlife for sustenance. According to National Geographic, “Hunter-gatherer culture is a type of subsistence lifestyle that relies on hunting and fishing animals and foraging for wild vegetation and other nutrients like honey, for food. Until approximately 12,000 years ago, all humans practiced hunting-gathering. Anthropologists have discovered evidence for the practice of hunter-gatherer culture by modern humans (Homo sapiens) and their distant ancestors dating as far back as two million years.”
Through sexual selection where women chose the greatest hunters and warriors as mates while the weak ones often died, millions of years of evolutionary sexual selection have led to males being physically larger, with more innate aggression, and thinking in broader societal terms that concern social order and security. Millions of years of evolution have wired our brains to think in a way that counterbalances one another for the betterment of the family unit and tribe and our ancestors organized their society in accordance with the innate aspects of ourselves which led to using women’s strengths of being far more detail-oriented than men while men often think in terms of broader-macro issues tied to providing food and security.
The entire system of education designed to force generations of students into mountains of debt in exchange for ideological brainwashing needs to be torn down to the studs. Men don’t need more communications classes, they need to be in a system that exploits the areas of strengths within masculinity including learning a skill, a trade, and to be exposed to ideas that utilize their nature such as engineering and architecture rather than directly run counter to it as the educational system often does. When young school-aged boys are hyper, lack focus, or get into mischief we immediately attempt to remediate with coddling or drugging them with medications that dull them instead of finding out what stimulates them and providing structure to channel that energy into something productive. Our educational institutions need to stop trying to remove competition to be replaced with the social-emotional learning mantra that says, “Everyone’s a winner!” The world is cruel and unfair, a product of our innate human faults and the universal laws of nature. Lying to young men by creating false utopian environments where nothing is more important than emotions does nothing but castrate males into becoming shells of themselves, making women miserable in the process by creating weak males who grow to be poor husbands and fathers.
The Integrated Man
The integrated man is not “Nice” nor agreeable, seeking to have the approval of everyone he meets, the integrated man is kind but with a necessary edge. The integrated man does not seek out conflict nor to be disagreeable but is prepared for conflict and to disagree when it is right, not convenient or even safe. The integrated man has explored the light and darkness within his soul to gain an understanding of his shortcomings and who exactly he is. The integrated man understands and has control over his emotions. The integrated man does not tyrannize over the weak but instead protects those who cannot protect themselves. The integrated man always has a watchful eye as he understands the fallible nature of human beings and the potential for evil within humanity. Then integrated man does not speak to hear his own voice, but speaks with intent and purpose, speaking softly and carrying a big stick. The integrated man does not choose hate, but love.
The film Beauty and the Beast is among my favorite movies. In it, the protagonist Belle is a beautiful and intelligent woman who is the desire of the insufferable Gaston. Gaston is the handsome, muscular, alpha male of the village who is the desire of every woman with the exception of Belle who pays him no attention because he is also arrogant, self-centered, and shallow. Beast, on the other hand, is terrifying to the village people, physically repulsive, and is the desire of no one. The irony of his appearance and name, “Beast,” is that while he is an incredibly dangerous threat, within him is a hero with the desire for good which is brought out by Belle who teaches him love. Gaston, on the other hand, while being physically impressive and what the world might consider the epitome of manhood, is instead a weak, immature child with a penchant for chaos. The only antidote to this dangerous tyrant is another dangerous man who has learned to integrate his beastly aggression as a force for good to save the life of Belle, her father Maurice, the characters within the castle, and the French village. “Women civilize men and men civilize nature.”
Hitler, or any murderous authoritarian for that matter, is the personification of Gaston, a dangerous tyrant who was motivated by hate. “Beast” could be personified by the “Traditional men” who left their lives at home to storm the beaches of Normandy, accepting their almost assured death and channeling their innate strength as men to fight the evils of weak men. To quote perhaps the greatest Brit and man of strength The West has ever seen, Winston Churchill when tyranny was knocking at the door, “We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, We shall never surrender.”
“Strength” is not forcing your hate-or-power-motivated will on to others, “strength” is found in having the capability to be dangerous in strength and leadership but using it as a force for good in the name of love and servitude. “Toxic Masculinity” is not an excess of masculinity, it is the absence of it. A society of weak men will inevitably devolve into chaos, death, and destruction because weak men do not object to wrongdoing, rather, weak men indulge in it. A society of masculine strength will create a society where women and children are free from tyranny and free from weak men who indulge in the desires of the flesh such as the lustful pursuit of power and control. A society of masculine men will create, invent, and construct everything you see around you, ushering in the era of unprecedented freedom and prosperity that we find ourselves in now. When chaos comes knocking at the door, the antidote is not feminists nor weak-castrated men, it is strong men, as it has always been throughout the history of civilization.
A harmless man is not a good man. A good man is a very, very dangerous man who has that under voluntary control.”
Jordan B Peterson
Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.”
G. Michael Hopf