Assumption 5: Embodying Manhood is Biological and Psychological

Otherwise you’re just a boy who shaves … or a bully.

Before Jordan Peterson told guys to make their bed or anyone who had heard of Andrew Tate, there was Pastor Mark Driscoll, the founder of what was once the largest churches in the country, Mars Hill in Seattle. What started as a home Bible study in 1996 grew into a mega church and in 2013 had over 10,000 in attendance every week, spanning 15 locations over 4 states. A year later, the church’s elders brought charges of “bullying” and “patterns of persistent sinful behavior” against Driscoll who, rather than seeking reconciliation resigned. On January 1, 2015 the church dissolved.

Driscoll, a devout Calvinist, had a theology rooted in human depravity, one that sees people as worthless until Jesus saves them and then, once they are saved, they better demonstrate their salvation through a righteous life or, well, did they ever really get saved? This combination of depravity, election, and transformation sat at the heart of Driscoll’s preaching and viral clips would often spread of how him talking about how much God hated you before saying Jesus loves you. Personally, I see it as a sign of God’s grace that the church collapsed.

One of the things I found most interesting about Mars Hill, was the number of young men who were drawn in. It’s a phenomenon we’ve seen repeat itself with Peterson and Tate.

They would flock to see a man would would disparagingly call them boys who shave who need to put down their video game controller, marry a woman, knock her up a few times, and take care of a family. Yeah, Driscoll was a check the boxes to manhood kinda guy.

As gross as so much of this is, I think there’s something to the dynamic of not just Driscoll, but Peterson and Tate.

From Boys To Men

I once heard someone argue the opposite of a man isn’t a woman, it’s a boy. On the first part, I agree in the sense that masculinity and femininity are not opposites. On the second part, I don’t think I totally agree, but there is also something to the idea that just being male doesn’t make you a man. And I think we as men often sense this, which is what gives guys like Driscoll, Peterson, and Tate appeal. They tell us we need something more and give us a path forward.

I touched on this a couple days ago with the checkbox post, and I proposed character as the distinguishing factor, but I’m still wrestling with some of what that might mean (I told you in the opening post this wouldn’t be fully thought out or organized).

So like I’m prone to do when I’m wrestling through something let me tell a story.

Confronting My Inner Peter Pan

One of the most helpful tools in my journey right now is psychedelic breathwork, so much so, that I’ve become a trained facilitator so I can guide others in this work.

The other day I did a session with a friend and, in the playlist she put together for me, she included Ruth B’s, Lost Boy. She didn’t know that it used to be one of my kid’s favorite songs so that it would stir up all kinds of memories surrounding my struggle to be a good dad (largely because I spent far too long as a boy in a man’s body). She also didn’t know that Peter Pan and fly boys are an image that Robert Bly uses to describe boys on the journey to manhood in Iron John: A Book About Men (affiliate).

The combination of my two associations with that song, combined with my now altered-state of consciousness, took me on a roller coaster journey that is actually responsible for what you are reading right now.

Iron John

In Bly’s work he talks about a young prince who escapes the confines of palace life and ventures off into the woods with a wild man. At a magical lake he discovers a sense of grandiosity, but it has no rootedness in the world. In other words, he feels great about himself, he feels independent, free, and competent, but it doesn’t serve anyone and he’s averse to any kind of struggle.

Bly talks about boys in this state (even if they are fully grown boys) as passive, naive, and numb. All of this must be worked through on the road to becoming a man.

My Growing Up

I seem to be working through Bly’s list in reverse order, and yes, I’m still working through it, and expect I will continue to do so for a while (currently I think about it as moving from boyhood, to manhood, to elderhood).

First came addressing numbness. In the summer of 2016, I sat in a therapists office fully aware that I had to do something. He asked me to give him five words to describe how I felt. I was so disconnected from my body that I couldn’t identify one. So I spent the next few years reconnecting to my body through things like Spartan racing and ultimately discovered somewhere in the mix that, in addition to physical feeling, I actually have emotions.

Naïveté really struck me a year ago while recovering from an intense but abusive summer relationship. At the time the good was so good that I had no interest in looking elsewhere, and the bad, which mostly seemed to flow out of her past struggles with men, felt like I was honorably enduring the pain she had gathered and was now letting go of. This dynamic kept me blind to her dark side until I woke up one morning barely able to open one swollen eye with bruises covering much of my body. Shock took over for a few days but I was released from it when she pulled a kitchen knife on me. Needless to say, boundaries have been a big thing for me this past year.

And while I continue to address my naïveté, passivity has moved to the front more recently, especially after that breathwork session. At the center of this is the recognition that for decades I’ve been dreaming about creating a business that actually changes lives, but I’ve never had any sense of devotion, dedication, or self-discipline to actually make it happen. I just always figured if I put something out there Google or chance (or Substack) would bless my work. Today, I’m seeing that I need to be the one to make it grow.

So …

The point of all this is that while all men are males, not all males take the journey to manhood. Yes biology makes it possible, but there’s something else that needs to happen along the way.

I’m curious, what do you see as key to discovering on the road to manhood?