Lessons From History

Why what we did might not work today (especially when it didn't work that well then).

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After my last post where I said it was time to remove protection and provision from our understanding of manhood, a reader asked, “But why have men historically offered protection and provision?” The answered turned into a post so I figured I’d just post it.

Doing What Is Necessary

For most of human history, survival required that men and women work together. People needed food, shelter, and clothing. The perpetuation of the species required (and still does) birthing and raising children.

While everyone was able to gather food, find or build shelter, and make clothing, only women can have and nurse children. At the same time, the later stages of pregnancy and life with a newborn left women vulnerable in a rather uncertain world. In this environment, men naturally assumed the role of provider and protector while women focused on life at “home.”

At this basic level, whether in a prehistoric age, feudal Europe, or during the Industrial Revolution, it was often about the division of responsibilities for mutual survival.

From Description to Prescription

But, as happens all too often, something done for the sake of function in one age becomes codified in the next. The description of what happened then becomes the prescriptive for what should always happen.

It’s like the story of the daughter watching her mother cut off the end of a roast before cooking it and asking why. “Because that’s what my mother did.” So the girl asked her grandmother who replied, “Because that’s what my mother did.” Luckily the little girl’s great-grandmother was still alive (and rather feisty). Her response was, “Because my damn pot was too small.” What started out of necessity became normative, even if the conditions changed. So much so, the roast story, is about a little girl and generations of women rather than a little boy.

Women being vulnerable in the later stages of pregnancy and while watching small children turned into women being vulnerable and constantly needing protection. Men taking on the job of provision and protection became something that only men could do. Functional decisions become mandates in cultural traditions and religious texts. Before long, that which described how people decided to do something prescribed how it had to be because “that’s how men and women are.” This is even seen in the energies we describe as masculine and feminine, not because men have one energy and women the other, but because each is linked to the tasks men and women took on.

This is not to dismiss some evolutionary realities. Because of their testosterone levels, the average men is stronger and takes on more risks than the average women. But that has more of an effect on how the job is done rather than the job itself. Since men were the providers, they went after the Wooly Mammoth with spears rather than setting traps to catch prey.

But that uncertain world we once lived in is not so uncertain anymore. What once had to be done out of necessity is no longer required. This creates space for asking how we want to move forward.

Faith Moved Forward

Interestingly enough, this is something much of Western society has done when it comes to faith. In his tome, “A Secular Age” (affiliate), Charles Taylor explores how in five-hundred years Western culture transformed from one where non-belief was incomprehensible to one where belief often feels untenable.

He concludes that, much like an array of faith traditions in undeveloped places, Western Christianity offered God as divine protection in an uncertain world. But that is not the world we live in anymore.

Irrigation allows us to water crops even when the skies a dry. Our buildings can largely withstand an array of natural disasters. Even in the years following a global pandemic we can say with some confidence that we know how to manage disease, the real question is what we choose to do about it.

This means all the things we once counted on God to protect us from are not the threats they once were, so why would we hold onto that understanding faith?¹

And yet, for some reason, while many in the West are happy to walk away from Christianity, we continue to cling to gender roles developed in a world we no longer live in.

Good For the Gander, Not the Goose

Ultimately, this structure, whether in the prescriptive or descriptive forms, works well for men. It gives them meaning and purpose beyond getting women pregnant, the only role a man has to play for the species to perpetuate. After all, women can protect and provide for each other when pregnant, and they often have when men only show up for their one mandatory role.

Further divisions of labor, broadly speaking, also make men better. It gives us inspiration and purpose, something other than fighting or fucking to channel that testosterone laden energy into. From this angle, what we often call patriarchy is an attempt by men to create value and a sense of meaning in a world that, on the surface, doesn’t need a whole lot from us. To put it another way, it gives men some level of self-determination.

But this structure that works well for men doesn’t work well for women. The whole model strips away her opportunity for that same self-determination. It requires her to become overly vulnerable and dependent upon a man leaving her without autonomy because society deems her incompetent in many aspects of life essential for survival. From birth, she is told that the best she can hope for is attracting a man whose work is profitable and either chooses benevolence at home or can have kindness tease from him. All this makes a healthy sense of self nearly impossible.

Better People

So how do we become better people, whether men or women?

At the risk of being redundant:

• Honor your biology &

• heal your psyche so you can

• discover your authentic self,

• overcome societal obstacles,

• grow beyond cultural expectations &

• use your gifts to serve the world.

There’s a lot more on how to do that coming soon.

1. For those who might be curious, this is what I explore in my doctoral dissertation.