What kind of man will you be?

Understanding the true and meaningful difference between being male and a man, you can become a man.

• A letter from Jack
• Image of Man
• Values & Role Models
• Cultural Considerations

     Below is a listener letter featured in the book, Ten Stupid Things Men Do to Mess Up Their Lives, sent in to its author by a man named Jack. It’s a very personal letter, in which Jack outlines his immaturities, and the unmanly and manly things he has done in life.

What comes after hormones?

     Like many men nowadays, Jack has, unfortunately, learned through hard life lessons that hormonal biology isn’t the sole terminus of human development. Most sexually reproducing animals, assuming they survive long enough, do reach sexual maturity. Your background deals you your starting hand of cards, and your physical maturation gives you certain advantages in certain areas, but as you gain more freedom and agency, you become responsible for your own actual life outcomes—no one else.

 

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     If you have social anxiety, don’t know how to dance, constantly blame your mother for everything in life even long after you moved out of her house (bro, cut the umbilical cord already), and are in general a selfish asshole to the people closest to you, guess what? After testosterone, you’re still going to be a selfish, whiny asshole who doesn’t know how to dance and has social anxiety, but with more butt-hole hair and more B.O. Puberty is life-altering. But life doesn’t end after puberty. Puberty… marks the start of adulthood. Not its completion.

     Now, it’s quite possible that you already have everything else in life settled and figured out. You already have the three-bedroom, three-bathroom house you want, you have a low resting heart rate, you volunteer bi-weekly at your local neighbourhood organisation, you have a career you take pride in and you’ve won seven Emmys and have two-and-a-half children. That’s awesome. In that case, maybe puberty is the end of your journey, and the final step to self-realisation! For the rest of us, we have to deal with the cold, chilling revelation that we have to keep working on ourselves in order to find meaning in existence.

     What is your image of the man you want to be? Do you want to be a man who can run a mile in under 6 minutes? Do you want to be a man who can do barrel jumps on a skateboard? Do you want to be a man with spiky hair and a cool wallet chain and a sick sense of fashion? Do you want to be a man with a wife and kids?

     Do you want to be a man who labours and rages hard, and laughs even harder? Do you want to be a man who keeps calm and collected in every situation, carefully gathering information before coming to a wise decision? Do you want to be a man who inserts a joke at every opportunity, lighting up the room and bringing joy, ease, and good memories to the people around you? Do you want to be an instructor in a specific craft, a leader in your own community? Do you want to sweep someone off their feet with poetry and song?

     You’re not going to know exactly and completely what sort of man you want to be—that takes experimentation, mistakes, detours, meanderings, and happy accidents. But you can start by really imagining who you want to be, what you want to do with your life, how you want to interact with people. And if you still don’t know where to start…? Well, you have no choice but to live life, treat people well, and study when you can. That is true for all of us. Embarking on masculinisation might be your first important step in shaping your own personhood; but life has a volley of challenges to throw at you after puberty. If you allow your problems to fester, you’ll only end up a disappointed or even miserable man.

 

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     When you began to consider masculinisation, who or what inspired you? Who or what did you see that made you go, “Wow! I can do that, too?” Is there a specific type of man you admire, or many? Can you talk to any of these people? If you have specific role models, read their biographies. You’ll come to learn that their lives weren’t straight paths, either, and what sorts of experiences opened their eyes and shaped their decision-making processes.

     Life is a series of actions. And I assume you would like to experience twenty years of life post-puberty. Ask yourself: What sort of life would make you proud in twenty years?

     There’s only so much that dypshoria can teach you. Dysphoria doesn’t lead a path for you; it only forces you to run off your current path or stay miserable and die. A set of values serves as your guiding North Star. As for “euphoria”, yes, happiness is important, but heroin can also make you happy so the true pursuit of euphoria would involve habitual drug-seeking. Self-gratification, especially instant self-gratification, isn’t a practical or admirable rule to live by. Identify what is important or at least interesting to you, give it a go, and see if you want to stay the same course, try something a little different, or reorient yourself dramatically.

     If you had a son, what kind of role model would you like to be for him?

 

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Are you a Danish man or a Finnish man?

     Let me tell you two jokes told by Europeans about Finns.

     When Finns were told to stay two metres apart from each other during COVID, they responded: “Why so close?”

     And: How can you tell when a Finn is introverted? He looks at his own shoes when talking to you. How can you tell when a Finn is extroverted? He looks at your shoes when he’s talking to you!

     Let me recount to you a story about a Danish man.

     “Norwegian exchange students here in Canada would be so quiet, and head-down-respectful during the day. Come 2 AM? The only thing that pierced the sound of softly falling snow and freezing temperatures, was the sound of lopsided Norwegians bellowing out their baritone bars of drinking songs, as they made their way back to the dorm rooms. They said that the best part of their foreign exchange experience in Canada was ‘the pub being only a hundred metres away from on-campus housing’— that, and the fact that beer was ‘so, so much cheaper here!’ Meanwhile, the only Danish grad exchange student was nigh-on permanently wasted from morning until sundown, and was one of the better functioning alcoholics I’d ever seen, and probably ever will. The downside being he just became increasingly difficult to understand as the day wore on, and by 9 PM, his English sounded like a Canada goose honking at a passing bicycle. Incidentally, this is how Danish normally sounds when spoken.”

     The Nordic countries are known in Europe for a popular temperament towards reservedness, and of these the Finns are known as the introverts amongst introverts; and the Danes are known as the “happy, drunk uncle.” Whether you have prior experience living as a man or not, you already have cultivated expectations of what is the typical conduct of a man in your community, and what is not. I quote Stanley I. Greenspan, M.D., developmental psychiatrist (emphasis mine):

     “each culture has its characteristic way of fostering growth. In one culture, for example, a parent might respond to a child’s nonverbal signal of reaching for a block with a quiet look of recognition and a soft nod of the head, whereas in another the child’s reaching for a block might elicit extravagant praise and the offering of sixteen more blocks. In both instances the child is learning to be intentional and is forming a mental organization in which emotions and desires are integrated into a willful sense of self. Similarly, the very different dramas exhibited by children of different cultures in pretend play and daily conversation will all assist their development of the use of ideas and symbols. It is important not to confuse healthy cultural patterns with obstacles to the advancing process of mental organization.

     “In general, most cultures support both the development of the different organizational levels and certain basic emotional themes, such as dependency, sexuality, and assertiveness, that are typically dealt with at each level [of development]. What tends to differ across cultures as well as from one family to another are the ways these levels are supported and the content of the interaction or drama that gives each person’s experiences an individual signature.”

     —The Growth of the Mind, and the Endangered Origins of Intelligence, p.102

     Some questions to consider:

• What is manly in your given culture?
• What is typical behaviour of men in your culture?
• What do you admire about the various expressions of masculinities in your culture?
• How would you like to be recognised as a man? (What sort of compliments and admiration would be important to you?)
• How do men go about being recognised for their masculinity in your culture and subcultures?
• How would you like community, friends, and family to depend on you as a man?
• What acts of service are meaningful to you?

     All communities call on men, but different communities call on them to play different roles, fulfill different responsibilities, and accept and disapprove of certain ways of acting within the community. What is normal and works for one community, can be highly functional in and particular to that community. To put another way: What kind of insect are you?

The Freedom to Choose

     As an adult, not only do you have a family and cultural background that you subconsciously and consciously draw on, you also have the freedom of agency to choose which communities you fraternise with. You can expose yourself to different ideas, environments, and people. You can create new situations and opportunities for yourself, and others. You can think, reason, show compassion, show restraint, set forth in curiosity. You can create a new family, much like your own, much different from your own. You are the master of your own choices. You choose who you want to be.

 

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