Yes, it is a consumer-oriented view and it functions inside the profit-oriented system that shapes our lives. We have been conditioned to equate wealth with success, winning with truth, performance with "what it takes" and progress with increased control over others. In such a world -- as you suggest -- the poor, the sick, the mentally ill, the visible addicts and those who are variously disabled are, quite simply, the Losers. I have rarely encountered anyone, male or female, who has successfully pried themselves lose from profit-oriented logic who has not experienced a significant crisis -- a diagnosis, death, divorce, professional failure, critical injury, natural disaster, bankruptcy, violent attack, unveiling of secret obsessions -- any of these can (but doesn't always do) lead to a reassessment of what success, truth and integrity are really about. And what does that tell us about values we swim around in?
Lovely. Your point reminds me of Eckhart Tolle's premise in "A New Earth," with regards to needing to strip away layers of ego. We are worthy of life because we are alive. Being is enough. Nice work!
This is a tough one, Ryan. It's taken me a couple of days just to read it through.
Yes, I see the connection between the manosphere bros and the rest of us (no matter what gender) doing the public performance of our personas. I do suspect, though, that there are choices to be made regarding what kind of persona one adopts, and that toxic masculinity is just that, toxic to those who choose it as well as those in their orbit.
As another of your commenters noted, it seems to be something the culture trains us to do early on, and it becomes the function of crisis - divorce, job loss, failure, big diagnosis - to break that shell and allow our true humanity to peek out at the world. Perhaps that is also what is happening at a global level - our collective masks of power and greed are breaking apart so that something wiser can finally flourish.
Yes, it is a consumer-oriented view and it functions inside the profit-oriented system that shapes our lives. We have been conditioned to equate wealth with success, winning with truth, performance with "what it takes" and progress with increased control over others. In such a world -- as you suggest -- the poor, the sick, the mentally ill, the visible addicts and those who are variously disabled are, quite simply, the Losers. I have rarely encountered anyone, male or female, who has successfully pried themselves lose from profit-oriented logic who has not experienced a significant crisis -- a diagnosis, death, divorce, professional failure, critical injury, natural disaster, bankruptcy, violent attack, unveiling of secret obsessions -- any of these can (but doesn't always do) lead to a reassessment of what success, truth and integrity are really about. And what does that tell us about values we swim around in?
Lovely. Your point reminds me of Eckhart Tolle's premise in "A New Earth," with regards to needing to strip away layers of ego. We are worthy of life because we are alive. Being is enough. Nice work!
This is beautiful to me: "the reality of your unexplained and unconditional state of belovedness."
This is a tough one, Ryan. It's taken me a couple of days just to read it through.
Yes, I see the connection between the manosphere bros and the rest of us (no matter what gender) doing the public performance of our personas. I do suspect, though, that there are choices to be made regarding what kind of persona one adopts, and that toxic masculinity is just that, toxic to those who choose it as well as those in their orbit.
As another of your commenters noted, it seems to be something the culture trains us to do early on, and it becomes the function of crisis - divorce, job loss, failure, big diagnosis - to break that shell and allow our true humanity to peek out at the world. Perhaps that is also what is happening at a global level - our collective masks of power and greed are breaking apart so that something wiser can finally flourish.
Thanks for being one of the good guys - and for doing the work to deconstruct the patriarchy.