When Your Manhood Fades
If you subscribe to “traditional” manhood, you’re becoming less of a man every day.
I’ve had plenty to say here about traditional masculinity. From revealing the weakness in the “protect and provide” framework that sits at the heart of patriarchy, to our warrior obsession, to the rubber dog shit society and competition that consume us.
But there’s another reason we should all start thinking about manhood, not as a journey to something, but a journey from being born male to a healthy self-determined adulthood. Our popular understanding of manhood that makes you less of man with every passing day.
This is something that has become increasingly clear over the past few month as I’ve watched my dad age what feels like decades. While I won’t dig into all the details out of respect for the man, there is one simple story that sums up what I’ve witnessed.
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From August to October
Last August I stopped by my parents’ place to drop off some Xero Shoes for my mom (if you’re curious, even her hyper-arthritic body loved them and she’s able to move in them with less pain than conventional shoes). While I was there, my parents mentioned that they were about to take a road trip from Denver to San Antonio. My only request was that they stop somewhere in the middle and spend the night, breaking the drive into two days.
Two months later, my kid had a school band concert and my parents came. I’m not sure what changed in those two months, but my dad had aged so much I was worried about them driving home after dark. The next day, I called my brother to express my concern.
A month later when he was diagnosed with skin cancer on his scalp, I assumed it had already metastasized to his brain which would explain the rapid physical and cognitive shifts I’d witnessed at the concert.
Today, knowing his brain scans are clean, I have to assume it’s just a combination of aging, his advancing Parkinson’s, and the toll on the body that comes with fighting the cancer.
Fading Manhood?
It’s not like this decline is lost on him. He begrudgingly acknowledges that, according to many of the “traditional” markers, his manhood is fading.
His quick technical mind now runs at what seems to both of us a painfully slow pace.
For years he’s talked about boy push-ups vs. girl push-ups, but now would struggle with the modified “girl” version.
The one-time Mario Andretti-esque driver now gets behind the wheel and resembles the little old lady he used to warn me against, dangerous because of her slow reaction time.
None of this is a knock on him. The truth is, all of us, no matter how much we honor our biology, sometime after 30, will start that descent. Testosterone levels will drop. Arthritic material starts to form and can unexpectedly flaring up, something I experienced a couple weeks ago after doing some jump lunges. And the broader effects of just being alive on this planet (especially on this planet today) will tear our bodies down and, as a result, leave us unable to embody “traditional manhood.”
So if shifting to something that is better for men, women, and children isn’t enough to motivate you, perhaps a bit of vanity and not wanting to become a lesser man will.
A Manhood That Enriches
In contrast us having to watch our manhood fade away, the perspective I suggest, one informed by Bill Plotkin’s Eco/Soul-Centric model of human development, actually allows the enrichment of our manhood over time.
Plotkin and Early Adolescence
In Potkin’s model, much of what we think about as manhood is actually part of the Early Adolescent stage of development. This makes sense given that it is in early adolescence that the bodies of those born male amp up testosterone for the second time (the first time happens in utero). As a result, the biological variance between boys and girls increases. It is also a time of life where the peer group, sex, and your position in society take on increasing importance.
None of this is fundamentally bad, if handled the right way. The challenge is that Western Society rarely takes the healthy path.
A Healthy Early Adolescence
Psychologically, when done in a healthy and eco-centric way, this stage is all about the development of an individual identity, an understanding of yourself beyond the family, but done within the protection of the home before being exposed to the challenges of adulthood. The eco- or soul-centric goals of this identity include:
masculine goals such as sustainable development and the triple bottom line of people-planet-profit. It also promotes mature soulcentric-feminine goals such as economic fairness and justice for all people, and basic rights for all species and habitats. Personal goals include the cocreation of an intimate, egalitarian relationship; forging a fulfilling and adequate livelihood; and contributing to the social, economic, and environmental health of the human community.
In this sense it is stage one of a healthy self-discovery, but one that remains incomplete unless abandoned to explore the depths of the soul (Late Adolescence).
The Deconstruction of Late Adolescence
Richard Rohr talks about this shift from Early to Late Adolescence in his “construction - deconstruction - reconstruction” model, where Early Adolescence is a construction phase, but the real value is found not in what you build, but:
Discovering that you put the pieces together incorrectly, quite possibly because there were dynamics you didn’t see clearly, forcing you to engage in deconstruction (the start of Late Adolescence), and
Having a good set of base materials and goals to work with when it is time for reconstruction (the end of Late Adolescence).
An Unhealthy Early Adolescence
The problem is that in Western culture is twofold:
We assume our initial ego-based construction is the end of the process so we never enter a phase of deconstruction let alone a healthy reconstruction. As a result we remain trapped in Early Adolescence long past our teen years, and for many, into old age and even until death.
Our goals are ego-centric, focused on serving self rather than the collective. This leads Plotkin to write:
In egocentric America, for example, the mainstream national conception of progress (usually, in fact, called “growth”) refers to the egocentric-masculine goals of an ever-increasing gross national product and an expanding market overseas, and to the egocentric-feminine goals of secure borders (to keep out those who “aren’t like us and don’t belong here”) and plenty of consumer goods for all real Americans. On the individual level, it’s a matter of finding an emotionally safe spouse or social group, keeping up with the Joneses, one-upping the competition, and dying with the most toys.
The end result of this unhealthy Early Adolescence is today’s Western world.
It’s Time To Be Young Again
So what do we do?
No matter our chronological age, if we’re stuck in an unhealthy Early Adolescent development, there’s only one thing we can do … shift to an eco-centric mindset and do adolescence all over again.
While this isn’t easy to do, and the journey into Late Adolescence is a discombobulating adventure like no other, this is the only path to elderhood where age is not a lessening of your manhood, but a gift to future generations so they have both an easier path to a healthy self-determined adulthood than you and a healthier society and world than the one Western history has given us. And that is a legacy worth pursuing.