Integral Edge: Men, Meaning, and the Rise of the New Right | Everyone Is Right

Host: It's all your fault. Take responsibility. Like, do the work. Take the responsibility. It's just yours now. It doesn't matter. Like, your parents can't own it. And even if they did, it wouldn't help you if they came over and knocked on the door and apologized to you. Who fucking cares, right? You've got to do the work. You've got to take radical responsibility for your life, because who else is going to take responsibility for your life? Your wife? Your kids? Your parents?

Jason Lange: No, but I think part of the problem was the pain of men hasn't had a place to be voiced.

Host: Hell, yeah.

Jason Lange: I think partly because for a long time, men controlled the channels of communication and all kinds of things. So there was this vacuum and so there was this floodgate of all of the other pains of people that have often, sometimes been caused by men getting an opportunity to voice themselves. But I've seen it with clients I work with that they're like, am I allowed to even have pain anymore? Particularly if I'm, like, a white guy? Am I allowed to suffer? And the kind of ranking of pain, I think is one of the most destructive things I've seen kind of come out of that just messy, green environment.

Host: So welcome, everybody. This is the first episode of the Integral Edge, which is a new offering from me, Keith Martin Smith, and from Integral Life. Today, I'm very excited, as our first podcast, to be talking about men, meaning, and the new right, seeing the big picture. The idea here is it's been quite an interesting couple of years politically, socially, culturally, and there has been a lot of movement and energy around how men are viewed, what men are expected to do, how we're being called to show up. I would argue, and this is what I want to kick things off with, with the two of you, Jason and Raymond. I would argue that part of what we're seeing culturally with the rise of the right, both in Europe and in the States, is people see that there are a number of really intractable problems in the world and things that really require a lot of energy and a lot of intensity to make right, to make correct. And there is a desire for strong masculine to step in and throw its weight around and shake shit up. Right? You know, the Winston Churchill archetype in the Second World War takes kind of a big ego to deal with big problems. And so I think when I look at the United States, Trump obviously is a big ego. And then when you look at the rise of the three women in Europe, which is interesting, that they're all women, but Marie Le Pen, Alice. Who's that in Germany? Remind me again, Raymond. Yeah, and the premier prime minister of Italy as well. What's interesting is, though they're not men, they are all very much in a strong masculine. And they're sort of a take no prisoners. I don't give a shit what you say about me. They have some of these masculine qualities of pushing the order that is over trying to. And so this is part of what I want to start with, which is this idea of. It seems to me that we're a little limited in our ideas of what a strong masculine is. We have to go back to an older time where these strong masculines are very undifferentiated, not very refined, certainly not in their vulnerability. And they use sort of an old school way of power. So I just want to open it up to that and see what you guys think.

Jason Lange: Yeah. You know, I was thinking about a couple different things coming in here in. In one, this. So this is just me, right. Things I notice, having been in this community, in this world, and having, you know, produced and helped shot a documentary about a cult leader, when we get hit with information overload, which I think is another thing I just want to name here, of there is more information coming in to our nervous systems per minute, really, these days than ever before in human history. And it's too much for any one person to sort.

Host: Yeah.

Jason Lange: And we used to have trusted institutions and establishments and authority figures who'd kind of help sort that for us, for better or worse. Right. And as that's gone away, it overwhelms us. And in a place of uncertainty. I have felt this desire myself, both politically and spiritually. When reality starts to become unstable, I don't know what truth is. I'm gonna listen to the person who feels the most certain this is the truth. Yeah, right. There's like an ache in me, I've noticed, to like, oh, okay, well, that's the way then I should just do what they say. And I think that is happening globally. So this kind of strong voice and directionality is a part of that. And, you know, I work with men daily around growth and transformation and a lot around relationships. And another thing I just wanted to name here, and then I'll pause, is I see this commonly, you know, why. Why do women go for men who are jerks? This is something I've talked about. And as this is an integral audience, I think what's really interesting is how the pre. Trans. Falls. Falls out. Happens there. So a man coming from, you know, in data Speak kind of first stage which might be more kind of David.

Host: Data for those of you that do get.

Jason Lange: Yeah, but you know, just kind of more the primal place goes for what he wants, is very connected to his body and has a certain agency and take directionality to him. A third stage man which we would kind of call more integral in a sense is going towards what they want, has a directionality but is doing it from a completely different place that includes awareness of impact relationally on others, on the environment, on the world around them. The trick is they look very similar on the outside. Right. It looks like oh, this is a really confident man. He's got a lot of power. And I've worked, you know, my wife works with women and I've worked with a lot of men. And that confusion can be really painful because it's like yeah, why, why is she going for the guy who's clearly not treating her well. And I think there's a little something to that happening now as well is you know I, I certainly have my judgments about the current administration and where they're actually orienting from and I would put it in more of a pre than a post place personally and but the desire to feel that kind of powerful agentic. Okay, let's make a plan, let's move towards it and follow me, you know, really follow me is a. Is a real one I have in myself. I would just like it to come from a different place personally.

Host: Jason I'd go even a step further that it's not only about an overwhelming of information but really the problems themselves get more and more complex and so complex that well, we often really can't see solutions these. So in order really to solve the problems you need an awful competence of holding complexity and I think what the problem perhaps it's again something like this pre trans fallacy that many of the populist parties at least which I see in Europe here they are offering simple solutions but if you look further into their programs you can be quite sure that they won't solve the problems because they mostly offer solutions that are backward oriented, not going forward. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense with the whole sort of multipolar crisis that we're facing or the meta crisis. Right. We have multiple existential crises that are all co arising and all co independent. So it requires a complexity of mind be able to understand how the economy is related to the environment, is related to culture, is related to parenting, is related to plastic, is related to AI, is related to all these things. It's related to Energy to raw minerals. And all these things are sort of tied together in ways that you can't touch one without being aware of all of them. If you actually want to create any kind of real change.

Jason Lange: Another thing, I'll kind of name that just being like. So I'm kind of more in the trenches, right, of like working with men day to day. And I certainly work with a certain type of man more than others, but I do work with a huge range of, you know, particularly guys from the states and the world, from all backgrounds, ideologies, beliefs in. One of the things that I also think has kind of driven this development, we could say, of kind of a new right, and men in particular moving really sharply that way. You know, the post polling here in the states for our last election was like, oh, yeah, men, and really swung hard. And to kind of take it from an integral lens is right. One of the gifts of green we had was really presencing power differentials in pain, right. That that had been caused by previous stages. I think the trouble with that, which to some extent, you know, developmentally and in the process is normal, like the pendulum swings way far one side and then, you know, things even. But I think part of the problem was, and this word really came to me last night as I was thinking about this talk was the pain of men hasn't had a place to be voiced.

Host: Hell, yeah.

Jason Lange: And I think partly because for a long time, men controlled the channels of communication and all kinds of things. So there was this vacuum and so there was this floodgate of all the other pains of people that have often, sometimes been caused by men getting an opportunity to voice themselves. But I've seen it with clients I work with that they're like, am I allowed to even have pain anymore? Particularly if I'm like a white guy, right. Am I allowed to suffer? And the kind of ranking of pain, I think is one of the most destructive things I've seen kind of come out of that just messy green environment. Well, your pain, it's not as da da da because of da da da.

Host: The kind of oppression Olympics, right?

Jason Lange: Yeah, Oppression Olympics in men are in a lot of pain. Whatever you want to feel about that, fine. But many men I work with, right, Things are changing fast. The types of jobs, you know, I often think about, you know, manufacturing jobs, kind of blue collar jobs have started to disappear in a lot of ways. Men tended to work a lot of those factory jobs, dangerous jobs as that shifted away, you know, there was this pocket of kind of information technology with like coding and men were doing that. You know, I just saw the anthropic CEO yesterday. He's like, yeah, I think within 12 months, 95% of code will be AI written. So there's going to be this huge shift in what was an economic driver for a lot of men.

Host: A lot of young men being a.

Jason Lange: Lot of young men being a coder. And that really, that, well, is going to dry up for better or worse. And what's left, you know, I would argue, is a lot of more service and relational jobs where it's about interacting with people. And us men are often not taught the skills from a young age of how to be relational. The shadow side of this kind of strong man archetype, the macho man, the Marlboro man here in the west, the rugged cowboy. Right. I'm just on my horse. Living life hard and alone is. It doesn't really give us the skills for how to interact with people. And so I think a man are way behind. I mean, I work with them daily. I had to develop these skills like nobody taught me what's a feeling in my body and what do I do with it, how do I talk to someone about my inner world? And I think that's just putting a lot of pressure on men that they don't know what to do with their pain and they don't feel equipped with how can I be of service in this new society? And when that's there and no one else is talking to them, they're going to go, who's talking to them? In the Andrew Tate's of the world, what they do is they make men's pain okay to feel. They say, I see your pain, I know your pain is real. Their prescription, I would argue, is kind of bullshit.

Host: It's a lot of bullshit.

Jason Lange: But the acknowledgement of pain, I think is really important.

Host: Yeah, well said, Jason. I think that's really very accurate. And I think part of what happened with things like the MeToo movement in 20, what, 16, 17, 18, is that the message got into a lot of guys that didn't actually need to hear the message. You know, like the sensitive, attuned kind of guy, like heard like, oh my God, men are brutes and we're kind of horrible. And so it further collapsed them into their own shame and their own self judgment. And part of this sort of cultural melo of sort of saying that like, you're a man, sit down, shut up, you need to listen or you're not an ally, you know, and this sort of. And it was like I see Saul and see a lot of men doing that to themselves, sort of self. Self shaming, self shutting down. Because it's like, oh, my God, I don't want to be one of those guys. And they didn't quite get that, like, you're not one of those guys. You're already a good guy. And the message isn't don't talk to women and don't speak up. It's actually like, you're doing okay. It's like, just be a little more attuned to keep doing your work. So I think that was a big cultural movement. And part of what I see as the swing to the right for a lot of men and some of these things is again, we have these like. We have these. This polarity, which is like, traditionally, men are what they're like. They're tough, they're strong, they're reserved, they're hardworking, they're self reliant, they're confident, ambitious, honorable, disciplined, principled, protective. These are good things. Culturally. Do I want a leader that has those traits? Yeah. But we're also being told as men that we should be empathetic, vulnerable, emotionally expressive, collaborative, inclusive, aware of privilege, nurturing, accountable, authentic, open minded and caring. And so part of me looks at culture and goes, well, fuck you guys. You're asking men to hold two sides of this polarity that are so in some ways at odds with each other that no wonder men are so confused. And I think the reason is from an integral perspective, is we're not being asked to be one side of those two poles anymore. If I'm just in the empathetic, vulnerable, collaborative, inclusive, privileged, nurturing, accountable, et cetera, I'm not going to be a strong leader because I can't stand up and take the shit. And if I'm too much on the other side, well, then we have our trumps and we have all these other kinds of people. So to me, the new man is the man that can live inside of a conscious polarity where I can see that I need to be tough and empathetic, strong and vulnerable, reserved and emotionally expressive, hard working and collaborative, et cetera. And that polarity will change on the circumstances and the conditions that are arising. And I'll be attuned enough to know that if I'm leading a company, I need to be in that more masculine column. And if I'm leading a small group or talking with my kids that maybe I need to be more in that right hand column. Absolutely agree, but I think that's what you're describing is really the development, if we talk in developmental stages, that would be a yellow or teal, really an integral kind of male personality. And a big problem with the postmodern view on masculinity then is that it can only see the one side of criticizing toxic masculinity and everything. And in effect its main message is don't be a man, at least not in the classical way. And you have to. Well, like all these other soft skills you mentioned that they are the only ones that are relevant. So it didn't really give men a perspective where to go on that. Not a feasible one, but ended up somehow in a. Well stuck.

Jason Lange: Yeah.

Host: And what do you see, Raymond? There in Germany and around the continent also sort of in the UK you're a little closer geographically, but do you see the. It is sort of the way that I've laid down as a possibility that people are drawn towards people that are just demonstrating, as you said, sort of just kind of a simple strength. Because Jason alluded to as well that culturally we're craving strength and we don't have this third way that's not available culturally. This integrated man isn't out there anywhere publicly really. So what do we do? Do we pick a soft man or do we pick a strong woman? Well, it seems pretty easy on the continent what people are doing. Altogether it's quite a complicated development on one side, I see. I think for the mass of men you don't have role examples like you just said, for this new type of. But on the political side I saw an interesting development in the last years, at least in the German speaking countries, all of them in Germany as well as in Austria and Switzerland. If I look into gender politics, that's the area where I've been working for the last years. Not so much with individual men. You find quite an openness of the feminist organizations to the pain of men, really. Oh, that's encouraging. And yes, and men's organizations are no longer put aside. Interesting point. Mostly in the Scandinavian countries we mostly saw this he for she attitude that you can be active as a man for gender issues, but only he for emphasizing the women's interests. But in the German speaking countries we really have this movement that more and more realizing that it is important to voice the interests of men too. Like I think this in the book, Richard Reeves did it in a fascinating way in the States describing all these points where men and boys drop back in education, in work, in health and everywhere, everywhere. But I think that I found that a very positive development in this Small bubble of gender politics. But I don't think it's really seen on a wide scale for the majority of men. I think they. Or even the majority of women too, they don't see this. Well, that it's a goal for itself to find solutions for men too. It's more still this kind of men bashing feminism. Yeah. Misandrique sort of nakedly like, yeah, that's interesting. I mean, that's hopeful and inspiring because I do some volunteer work with an organization here in the states that works with men and boys. And one of the things we've been talking about is if we can get any group of women or girl, any women, girls organization, or a feminist organization to support us, that would be a game changer. But it's very hard to do because people see a zero sum game. So zero sum game means that, like, okay, if we're gonna help boys, it's gonna be at the cost of girls. And it's like, no, that's not what we're talking about. Right. It's like, if you let an entire generation of boys fall through the cracks and then they go into the world, that's gonna be really bad for women. Like, I'm sorry, guys, but you don't wanna live in the culture where you've let a whole generation of men be let go. That's very, very bad and very dangerous. Very stupid. So even from your own complete self interest, you should be helping boys to actually get the education, the resources, the help, the different kinds of education. You know, let boys be boys kind of a thing. Not in a let, you know, boys will be boys. Not in a misogynistic way, but boys and girls are different. You know, it's like. I hate to say it, you know, but like, we play different, we think different, our bodies develop differently. And boys need different things in schools than girls need. And we've spent two generations not giving them that. And we're living in the consequences of it.

Jason Lange: I would say even more than two generations just in. Yeah. I often kind of tell the story of the man box, right? This idea that from a very young age, from all different sides, boys who then become men are given the message, you are valuable for being disconnected from your body. So, you know, it's changing for sure. But you can often see it. And there's lots of research studies on how boys are parented versus girls. You know, boy falls down, scrapes his knee. Oh, get up. You're fine, you're tough. Don't cry. From a young age, you know, Moms and dads kind of treat their boys often this way. And when you really think about that message, what is it? Oh, what's happening in your body? Ignore that. Override it with your head. Then we get into school, the industrial school system, you know, once the Industrial Revolution came and we had to educate our kids, and kids are no longer raised in the context of older men, you know, training them in a trade or whatever. So off to school. And what are you taught to do in school? Sit still. So that desire in your body to move, ignore it.

Host: Right. And educators are, what, 90% female in most cultures.

Jason Lange: Yeah. Override it with your head. And then. And then we get into the locker room kind of adolescent age, and then it's actually coming from our peers. Right. My body's changing at a different pace than another guy's. Anything I bring forward in terms of awkwardness or vulnerability is an opportunity to be ostracized or very heavily bullied or. Many men I work with, yeah, many men I work with are terrified of men because of what happened to them at that young age. It's not a theoretical thing, it's an actual thing. And then we get out of that, let's say, and we get into the workforce. And in our glorious Western workforce, what are we rewarded for? Oh, you work 70, 80, 90 hours a week.

Host: Good for you. You get the quarter off musk. You're sleeping under the desk.

Jason Lange: Great. What is that teaching us? Ignore your body. Override it with your head. We're getting this from all directions. It's changed a lot. But, you know, the most dangerous jobs in the world, like, toxic men.

Host: Toxic in the sense of, like, physically dangerous.

Jason Lange: Yeah. Like working in coal mines.

Host: 99% of workplace deaths in the U.S. happen to men. 90%. About 4,000 people a year. And I always say, imagine if 90% of workplace deaths happen to women. I bet there'd be a hashtag. There's no hashtag for all those men that die in the job. Nobody really gives a shit.

Jason Lange: Totally. And it's this, you know, the masculine body, the male body is disposable. And, you know, there's biologicals for that. Right? Yeah. Right. One man can repopulate in a way that one woman can't. But all of this said what's really key here. And I experience this all the time with men, and I was on this journey myself. When we're taught to not be in our bodies, guess what? Guess what starts a sensation in your body? Emotion. It always starts.

Host: Including sensation.

Jason Lange: Yeah. So if we're not in our bodies. We're not connected to feeling. And a man who's disconnected from his heart and feeling, that's the man who goes out and does all this damaging shit. Be it me too, environmental war, you name it. And then people don't know how to connect to us. Nobody teaches us what to do with it, what a feeling is, let alone how to process it. So what does our culture do? It says, smoke it away with weed, drink it with alcohol, porn, use porn and ejaculate. The ways the only medicines most men are allowed to use to regulate their emotions, of which the only emotions they're really allowed to feel are generally anger. It's like the one that's okay, you're a man if you're angry. Anything else? You know, we can think of all the expletives. But point being, yeah, there's a lot of cards stacked against us men that make it really challenging. And we're not necessarily put in environments that cause us to thrive. And again, us creating more environments for that doesn't have to come at the expense of everyone else who needs environments to thrive in as well. We're all being asked to do more. You named it. As men, it's not enough to just go and work and provide. I work with guys every fucking day whose wives leave them when they're around 45, 50 kids are raised and they're like, we haven't had a relationship in 25 years. All you've done is work. And he's like, I thought that was the bargain. And she's like, no, I need a lover, I need a husband, I need a co parent, a friend and a friend. And we are being asked to do more. We are being asked to be more fluid as men, but other people are being asked to do more as well. The thing with us guys is you don't want to beat us up when we're trying to do the best with the tools we've given. What you want to say and what we hope conversations like this can start to point to is we want to make as aware as possible to as many men as possible. Hey, there are tools and ways of being that can help you successfully navigate these very challenging times that whatever you think of them are going to lead to. I say this to a lot of guys, longer health, you will live longer.

Host: You will live longer and be healthier.

Jason Lange: Yes. Like, this isn't just woo, woo, feel your feelings stuff. When this stuff is integrated, not collapsed into, but integrated, you're going to live a longer, more resilient life. And you're going to be able to create more of the things you want to create in the world. I see it every day.

Host: Right, beautiful. Yeah. Let me share just a brief personal story here, which ties into that, Jason, and it gets into this idea of the sort of archetypes and how we move forward from here. And I'd love to hear from you, Raymond, once I finish this little bit, but about five years ago, I went through a major relationship ended, and I was super heartbroken. And then a whole bunch of trauma that I sort of didn't know was in me rose up sort of from the bottom. And so I was in this, like, this really challenging place. Really, really challenging place. And I was getting acupuncture and really just kind of in emotional agony and had been. And to Jason's point, I was in agony, but I was really shut down. I was drinking pretty heavily almost every day. I was trying to kill the pain in some way. I didn't really want to feel it because I didn't really know what the point was to feeling all this pain. And so I was getting acupuncture. And I saw. It was like a mystical vision. It was like a portal opened in the room. And I saw through time, and I saw myself in the future, like 12, 15 years in the future. Like. Like a really good physique and, like, sort of silvering hair and totally in his power and totally in his heart. Like, it was this powerful, powerfully strong, powerfully vulnerable man. And it was me, right? It was an old version of me looking through time back at me. And it was so powerful because what I saw was what I was growing towards. It was like, all this pain and all this work means I get to be that fucking guy. And I'm down for that ride. And once I had that vision, doing that work was not a problem. We need to create that archetype for men out there and be that archetype for men out there. I think that's mostly an important point that is missing to have positive visions there for masculinity or in the whole society. I think that's an important point. The postmodern has been missing for the last time that they don't have positive visions for society, where to go. It's mostly the. Well, all kinds of catastrophes are going on, but no answer where we are heading for. And I think, yeah, and you are talking about men. This personal vision could be a driver. From my experience, another very important driver can be fatherhood. For myself, it was, I think, the really turning point with my little boy. I really realized I don't know what it means to be a father because I didn't have a role model there. My father was, I think, as most fathers of the generations, was mostly absent. He didn't know what to do with children younger than 12 years or so. You can't talk with them reasonably. So I began really to ask myself, well, what do I want to be there and how do I get there to really achieve a positive relationship with this little human being there? And I was, I think, really in a quite egalitarian parent role even at 35 years ago now with my son. So it was not that usual at that time. But that's another point where I really see slow progress in society nowadays. It's quite normal to see dads in the playground with little children or with the pram and so on, which was not usual 40 years ago. There's slow progress going on. And I think that you can catch many men at that point if they don't take the diversion. Only I'm the breadwinner, only I get the money in and the wife is responsible for the kids. But take your own responsibility there. And I think that is another point where it's not only looking for the individual solutions, but. But where society and politics can change something really opening up. For example, times for fathers, paid fatherhood leave something like that, which we have more and more. I don't know how the situation. This is the United States. We don't have anything like that here.

Jason Lange: This is one of the things that gets me going, you know, the parties of family values. And then, oh, you had a kid. Good luck. Don't. Don't spend the first two years of your life, you know, close to the kid. Get your ass off to work and then have a good family. Right.

Host: Good luck affording your health care as well.

Jason Lange: This is one of the things that kind of annoys me about, you know, again, what I would kind of project as a regression to traditional family values is again, I work with people, men every day, who were raised in a traditional family. Mom and dad and the unit were present and they lived in there. And it was terrible. I mean, legitimately terrible. The unit itself does not equal the health of the unit. And to have, you know, a healthy family unit. Yeah, you have to have some resource take. Parenting takes a lot. We want to have, you know, be raising good kids. We should be flooding the. You know, someone talked about this a couple of years ago, but, you know, the old. I don't remember what the moonshot thing was called where they just, okay, we're going to spend all this money on getting to the moon right now. I would do it 0 to 5. I mean, make the biggest investment in 0 to 5. Literally just give the money away with some standards for sure. Of how do you actually raise healthy children? Because, you know, I can't speak for Raymond because I don't know him as well, but I know Keith well. I know a lot of the men in my community and I work with. Stuff happens to us between 05.

Host: That's where all the trauma comes from.

Jason Lange: Guess what? Guess how many years we spend unwinding that. We're adults, going to workshops, paying for therapy, still doing it for all of this stuff. Yeah. Like you want to talk bang for your buck. Let's raise healthy kids. Let's totally transform what that looks like. And nobody's really having that conversation.

Host: So, Jason, you're a parent of two little ones, right? So, so. And you have a son and a daughter. So maybe a little reflection on how your both practical and your intentional difference between raising the two of them.

Jason Lange: I'm still figuring out the latter one.

Host: He's a wee little one.

Jason Lange: Here's what I would say. I mean, in some sense, I don't know if there's a difference when you're truly attuning to your child.

Host: Right.

Jason Lange: Which means whether my daughter identifies as a woman or not, what I want to do is attune to what's going to help her thrive, follow her curiosity, notice what happens in her body, and it's going to be the same thing for my son. Now, are there going to be some differences? Yeah. I can tell you, Keith, you met him when he was maybe a year old. And that kid only wanted to be held upright, facing out from a very young age in a way that my daughter just didn't like. He just wants to be seeing and engaged with the world. Are all boys like that? No. Is he? Yes. So I can tell he's very excited to get out and get involved. It's that. But I mean, here's part of the thing is we're not taught how to attune to kids. Right. I just had to. Keith knows some of my story. I had to do some deep work over the last months of figuring out, wait, what does it mean to actually be a healthy parent? Because what I noticed is when I'm stressed, all I do is default to how my parents raised me. That's it. I just totally regressed to this is what was done to me. And turns out, you know, things have evolved a lot. We know a lot more about what creates a thriving nervous system. And so I've had to educate myself on how to get present and track my kids. And not everybody has the time to do that because of the way our society is structured. And then, yeah, you know, I did personally have to deal with, you know, my wife probably handles 70% of child stuff, but I'm like 30 to 40%, depending on weeks. We try to split the time equally. And the first thing I was unprepared for is, whoa. No one told me about the hormonal shift in men. When you have a kid, testosterone totally drops. It's like, I just feel doughy and relational. And then it was like, you have three hours to work, go. And I was like, whoa. Like, that gear shift. Nobody had talked to me about of what it means to go from relational, totally present to a kid to go time. My wife's had to navigate that as well. And that's the new fluidity. I think a lot of us are being asked for, and there's no modeling for at all in the culture. And I'll say one last thing here, and then I'll open it up to you guys, because something else he said around the lack of models. Keith was there in one of my seminal experiences in my 20s, where a mentor of ours came in to lead a men's group we were in. And I joke about this because I was probably 26 at the time. I had the experience in my body of, that's what I want to be when I grow up. And it wasn't his job. It was seeing his nervous system, how he moved, how he talked, how he breathed, how he made eye contact. I was like, oh, what is that? Because I want that. Like, I want that. And I think that's the thing a lot of men are missing. And, you know, I teach my guys that, you know, just like in the spiritual world, masculinity is a transmission. When we're in its presence, we feel like, oh, wow. Yeah, there's like, a deep, loving, caring, and fierce presence that's grounded. That's grounded. And it hits our nervous system in the way it generally hits people's nervous systems. What I would call the healthy masculine is it relaxes people, creates a container. Yep. It relaxes everyone in the room. And when I got that, like, oof. That kicked off a journey for me of, okay, how do I cultivate that in myself? And the truth is, no, this is the other thing. I'm huge on Men's groups and peer groups. And, you know, I think it was Thich Nhat Hanh, right? The new Buddha is the Sangha. I see that happening in men's groups, in that, you know, you can have a great father, but no father can give you everything you need or perfectly embody healthy, masculine. But if you get into a group, everybody often has a piece of that missing pie that you get to feel. And this is what I see open men on the more personal level of, you know, they have judgments around what it means to cry or whatever. But then you're standing in front of a man whose tears are pouring down his face, whose heart is open, but who is still incredibly powerful. You feel like, wow, no, this man is not collapsed at all. And it rewires what's possible. And same thing with anger. I see it with guys who were bullied or abused. When they see a man who's fully present in his clean anger but still feels safe, suddenly the light bulbs go off. Nobody told me this shit was possible, right? I never experienced it before, so I assumed I had to live in these certain ways. But I don't know how to do it at the cultural level, which is why I'm here. And connecting to amazing men like you is like, you know, I can work one group at a time, but it's not fast enough. Well, these discussions are so powerful. Powerful.

Jason Lange: I love that. And often forward facing, retributive or whatever that word is, right. There's a sense of taking it forward to protect others. And you know, with that, I'll just say, because I know you, you've practiced to earn this. To be able to catch your nervous system, to be able to distinguish anger from a core aggression is really important. Aggression is when we reactively push that out without consent on the world, on the environment. I've punched walls, any men I know have. But when we can learn to not push it out, but stay connected to it, that's actually what makes anger safe, particularly in the masculine.

Host: That's right.

Jason Lange: You know, again, little boys, women, other men. The most frightening man is the man who's not aware he's angry, right? You're like, are you upset? No, that's the guy. You're like, whoa, get me out of the room.

Host: Yeah, nervous system goes to 11.

Jason Lange: The man who's, you know, I mean the human, it's not even just a man, but the person who has that subject object differentiation of. Yeah, I'm very angry right now. My palms or squeezing, there's heat radiating in my arm and I want to hit something. That's someone who's way safer. And most men just do not have that capacity in their nervous system and just are the reaction, you know, that's the truth. That's honestly the truth. You know, not everyone's going to Agree with this language, but the lineage I was kind of brought up in, of polarity. You can use whatever words you want, but for simplicity, I'll use masculine and feminine. You know, anything we can feel is our own inner feminine, whether we're a man or a woman. Right. Emotional content, content that moves. And so men who are highly reactive, they're actually quite feminine, Right? They're quite feminine in that capacity. Meaning they don't. They haven't developed the capacity to become aware of it. And this is the kind of fragility of the tough man. I see who they're. They're fragile. They're really fragile when it comes to their feelings. And again, this isn't collapsing it just into men and women, but this capacity to be aware of what's moving inside of us and not immediately react, but have some conscious choice about our response. This is what we desperately need more of, I think, particularly for men right now, and particularly for men to model for young boys. And, you know, to me, that would be okay. How do we do that? Would be one of my prescriptions.

Host: Yeah. How do we really not only find, but show role models, positive role models. And the way we've been talking now, if I look at the media, at movies or so, no hope at the moment of finding positive models there and would be, I think, quite a long way to transform Hollywood in that sense. The other way. Well, like you guys are doing at the moment, group by group, interpersonal. But as you said, you can do more than the groups you're doing. So is there any intermediate level we can find how to project these images on a larger scale somehow? Yeah. The problem, Raymond, that I see is that it's a couple. One, I have a background. I spent a bunch of years in marketing. And so I say this sort of tongue in cheek, right? But we have a big marketing problem, which is we're selling this third way of masculinity. But the trouble is most men don't know they need it. They don't know there's a problem. Most men. How you doing, Jason? I'm fine. Really. You don't look fine. Don't. No, man, I'm fine. Are you fucking sure you're fine? I'm fine. I got a thing that might help. Nope, I'm fine. Okay. You know, I run up against that all the time. I was invited to give a. To give a talk for Movember, which sort of a, you know, men's thing here in the States for a company called Medtronic. Big, big, big company. And there were there were 50,000 people. About half of them were men that were available from. For this talk that was being given. And about 115, 125 showed up. And so I asked the presenter if this was when you do this for the women in the company, how many people show up? And she said, oh, a few thousand women will show up when we do this kind of thing for women. Why? Because men don't think they need the fucking help. We have a marketing problem, right? This is the thing I'm up against all the time. And so I think that's something that we can transition to, maybe next to how we could do this. But before we do, I just want to circle back to Jason's point point there about reactivity. So doing men's work, doing shadow work, getting communities, being in conversations like this, being aware there's a problem. But one of the hard things as a man and the work that I had to spend years and years and years and years doing, and it's still work that I have to do, is the idea that because of our conditioning, which usually is suboptimal, something happens. There is an impulse that arises in the body and it triggers a reaction, which is the way that our brains have been habituated to fire, usually because of our trauma and acculturation. So it fires this way and I react and I go, fuck you, right? Or I turn it inside and I just let it eat me like a cancer, right? And just with all this anger, and I do that with most of my emotions, they're just these reactions to what's happening in life. And you actually have to train and practice. Oh, there's an impulse arising and there's a choice point where I can respond or I can react. And the fact that there's a choice point is not conscious for most men. I mean, it's not conscious for most humans, frankly. You only get there by slowing down and really looking inside and going, oh, well, if there's care inside of anger, and I've never felt care before, I might have to slow down the next time I get angry and look. And then maybe I can respond to the fact that I give a shit rather than react and pretend that I don't. And right. There is a place that I think when we work, especially with men, especially with anger, it's a place where they can begin to see how little freedom they actually have. And if you're okay, man X, being a Pavlovian dog, and every time I ring a bell, you drool. If that doesn't bother you then go for it, man. Keep watching porn, keep drinking. Right. Have fun with that life. You know, it's going to be a short one and it's going to suck. And if you want something better, well, there are options, but you're going to have to work. Sorry it's not going to be given to you.

Jason Lange: I love that. How I would just frame that is again, I think it's part of the marketing problem. For one. Yeah, many men aren't aware they're in pain. And it takes often by the time a man's got to me, it's because something has really hit them. Their wife left them, they got extremely ill, they got fired from a job. Like, the pain level goes so high they're like, oh my God, I need to do something. They're desperate, but yeah, they are desperate. And I don't know if there's a way to change that. Might just be what it takes from that first person thing. But the other part of the marketing problem that I think you just named is it's a lot of work to take responsibility. Right? To take self responsibility for. Wait, I have agency over how I show up and respond to the world.

Host: Ooh.

Jason Lange: And I have to do work to kind of get some more control over that. That's just some people don't want to bite that off. You know, resentment is a lot easier a place to stay, staying in stew. And this is a painful thing, you know, for a lot of guys, at least from my frame is, yeah, we didn't cause all the damage in the world. But you want to help, you step into taking responsibility first for yourself and then, yeah, hey, I wasn't those men. But I don't want to contribute to that anymore. So I'm going to make my life a living testament to another way and support his other as many other men and take that responsibility. And you know, the truth is that's it's not super sexy, right. It's crunchy. And if you're not in a community that really values that, there's not a whole lot of incentive to go there.

Host: And there's a pre transcendental problems. There's a pre trans on the responsibility piece as well. Because in a green postmodern culture, everybody's a victim and no one takes responsibility. That's a generalization. But generally it's like, well, in. It's an ism, it's a sexism, it's ableism, it's racism, it's genderism, it's anti transism, it's whatever. Some fucking ism out there is 100% responsible for me not being happy and actualized. And so that's a big problem when you're trying to do work, at least for me, with people that have been enculturated in that mindset. When it's like, now it's all your fault, take responsibility. Your dad. Do you live with your parents still? Why are you still blaming them? Like, do the work, take the responsibility. It's just yours now. It doesn't matter. Like, your parents can't own it. And even if they did, it wouldn't help you if they came over and knocked on the door and apologized to you. Who fucking cares, Right? It doesn't matter. You have to own it. You've got to reparent, you've got to do the work. You've got to take radical responsibility for your life. Because who else is going to take responsibility for your life? Your wife? Your kids? Your parents? No. Right. So I see so many people, even really smart, educated, wise men, get caught in this thing of, I'm going to go back and confront my dad now that I'm 60 years old and I'm like. And do what? Like, get an apology. You're making yourself six years old again. You know, do your work. Let your parents off the hook. Right. Not their fault. It's not their fault. And it's not your fault either. But it is your responsibility if you want to get off the ride.

Jason Lange: Yeah. You know, I'll just give you a polarity of that. I do get a lot of guys coming in who are, maybe there's nothing wrong. Tell me about your childhood. How was it? I had a pretty good childhood. As soon as I hear those words, I'm like, okay, there's a lot to uncover here. And sometimes it's men who don't want to blame their parents.

Host: True.

Jason Lange: And sometimes how I tease this apart is there too, like, well, I get where my dad came from and he was raised a certain way. I dial it into impact, but there was still an impact. Whether their intent was malicious or not. How they chose, how they raised you had an impact on you. And you have to be sober about that.

Host: Yeah.

Jason Lange: How culture played out previously had an impact on us, and we just want to be sober. It's not about dying in shame or your dad's totally irredeemable, but it's about, hey, this is the impact. Right. Discernment those circumstances had on me. And I have to acknowledge those if I want to be able to take responsibility and Start to shift things. I see that a lot in men I work with. I tend to work with more kind of the nice guy green. But, you know, I get guys from all over and they, you know, will sometimes defend the people that hurt us the most.

Host: Sure.

Jason Lange: Very common. Very, very common. And we want to just give a little air to know you're allowed to acknowledge the impact. And I think there's a cultural level of that as well that we're reckoning with that it's not about shaming men into. You're the. You personally are responsible for all the ills of every man that came before you. No, that's not useful. Should you be aware of the impact? Yes. Is your. Is the greatest gift you can, you know, I think, give. Taking responsibility now for your nervous system? Yes. If you're doing that, I think you're way ahead of the curve and you are serving the world and women and children and trans and everybody else in all those other sub pockets. That's one way us men can help. I've taken responsibility for our nervous system.

Host: I want to say one thing, and then I want to hear from Raymond. But, yeah, I just want to encapsulate that. What I'm hearing, Jason, is another healthy polarity. Right. So between me being okay with my childhood and me over blaming people for my childhood, there is a polarity loop there where it's like, okay, actually things got put into me. That's not mine, that's not my fault. And my parents did the best job they could. And that's also true. And so you work with that polarity, which sort of lets everybody off the hook.

Jason Lange: Right.

Host: But you got to do the work if you want to be free from it.

Jason Lange: It's a great way to put it.

Host: I'm just realizing in a way that we come back to the more political level we had at the beginning that, well, the world is terribly complicated and people look for simple solutions and follow them. And here on this individual level, we see something similar that. Well, to become a healthier man, it's not an easy job. Five hours of some therapy or so, and you're an intuitive. Well, it really takes a lot of work and pain and suffering and so on. And it's a complicated process, too, and that's difficult to convey to people or even to convince them to go on this way. So the simpler solution is much more attractive to turn back to all solutions in this individual way, too. To follow the ways I've seen from my father or I see in the media or somewhere. Yeah. Let's go back to when things were simpler. Let's turn the clock back. When I get to be a man, she gets to be a woman, I get to show up at my job, right? But the trouble is we can't go back, except with tremendous and violent cultural force, can we go backwards? And I think there's certainly the men I've worked with, there's a fear. How would I say it? Because the men that come to me tend to be a little sort of fiercer and more independent and more the rebel archetype than the good boy archetype. And I would say their fear is that, like, are you sure this isn't going to make me soft? Some version of, hey, like, I don't live in a super blue liberal place. I'm not a liberal. Like, I kill things, I hunt. Like, I'm a man. Like, are you gonna fuck that up for me? Right? And it's like, no, no, no. Like, all those things are really good and I really treasure them. And I want you to keep those. We just want to add. We want to add to that stack. We don't want to take that stack away from you. But there's a big fear there for a lot of traditional men that if I go and do a men's group in the Bay Area, they're all going to be hugging trees and not using deodorant or something, right? It's this, like. It's this fear of, like, oh, my God, they're. They're all weaklings. And I think that's another thing that we have to overcome as we offer this work again by modeling that, like, you know, I can hang out with hunters and I can hang out with MAGA Republicans. Literally. Like, it. It doesn't bother me. I'm not personally offended. I'm not so sensitive that I can't stand an opinion that I disagree with and that I can't be in my heart and that I can't talk to men and be caring and loving, you know, and like, that's part of all this for me. You have to reach across. I have to reach across my personal opinions for the greater good.

Jason Lange: This is so important. You know, one other thing I was thinking about, and this ties into it. It was maybe Ezra Klein or someone I was listening to recently talked about one of the big shifts of moving from physical geographical community, meaning your communal connections, came from people around you to what really started to spring off with social media in the 2010s, to it moving more and more online. At least here in the west, when it was geographical, there was always the weirdo down the street who like collected cats or thought about aliens. There was a certain level, you know, there was homogeny, homogenousness, or however you say it for sure. But there was always going to be some variation in beliefs and backgrounds to some extent. When we went online, what's it really good at? Creating community for niche identity. Niche identity. So suddenly all you're hearing are people.

Host: Who are like, just like you, fully.

Jason Lange: Aligned with you in these narrow, narrow bands. And again, in terms of that polarity, I think what is hopeful to me, that I see, particularly in online things I lead, is this kind of virtual web that's a little bit of both. So for me, right, it's a men's group. I run a men's group. And what is the same in there is all the men who come through my groups have been raised in the same cultural context of what it means to be a man. Right. So they've had biology and culture related. So there's some similarity there. But then with within that, very different. I'm talking LDS church to San Francisco hippie to polyamorous to monogamous gay. Like, there's a range that then we have to learn to work with. Like you said to like, well, you're still a human. And I love to lead shadow work in particular, and I will tell you, nothing gets cuts below all that identity crap, is when we go straight to the shadow and you see a man in his deepest pain and suddenly it's just, this is a human being who is suffering just like me. And all those judgments, it's wild how they don't go away, but they're softened and suddenly it's like, well, you're human to me, so I care about you, even though politically you're on the other side of the aisle. Me or I don't believe in whatever you believe in and in whatever that is. Having that capacity to stay connected through difference of belief, I think is one of the things that is drastically underrepresented in our culture right now and that we are having to create new, I don't know, something new to tie people back together at a level that's intimate but not overwhelming. You know, I think the research is what, like, we're made for 100 person tribes. We can basically hold something like that, hundred people connections in our head. And you know, I. I've lived in big cities and it's way more than 100 people. And you know, on the polar side of that, we don't want to be just trapped with the people we were born around. Because then you get stuck in these systems that can be just trauma after trauma for generations. We won't be able to differentiate and then come back to something to integrate. I don't know what that something is to integrate. We're all, I think, creating that in our own ways.

Host: Yeah, well said. So maybe we can move into something a little more prescriptive for people that are listening. Just sort of what you guys think could be helpful. Guys like, all right, guys, I heard you're thrown down. So maybe just get into a little bit of what. Just simply what guys might do or what we might recommend guys do. And I'm going to start looking at this, chats, and we're going to open it up for questions. When we're done with this.

Jason Lange: I can start.

Host: Yeah, go for it, man.

Jason Lange: You know, for. For me, it would be men's work. If you're a guy or, you know, a guy, it would be guiding him to some kind of men's work that resonates with his nervous system and gives him a path of something to grow towards that freedom that Keith was talking about. And for a lot of men, you know, the stats that I do see, see, tend to find men are around health. I've just read. I was just reading a new research study that came out. It was. I think I talked to you guys about this when we were planning. Men who strongly identify with stoic ideas and kind of that traditional masculinity. Way more likely to commit suicide. Socially isolated men, more likely to die early. Like, it's. It's just as bad for you as a pack of smoke smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. Like, these things have real consequences. And it is not the either or. You don't have to just be soft or hard. Right. The sweetest spot is in between the fluidity. Right. Be the bamboo, not. Not the stone slab and not the porous water. We want to be flexible but strong. And so, you know, get help, man. That's the other thing I say is I'm a guy who used to. Rather than asking for help, I would suffer through days, weeks, or months trying to figure things out on my own. Because I asked for help, I don't look stupid. Turns out when I learned to ask for help, it's like, oh, that took an hour. That took an hour. Now I have so much more time to do the things I want to do. Like, there's a lot of productivity involved in the things we're talking about. As well, you know, which I'll just share to men and that the other thing I'll say is I love men. I'm totally aware of everything that's come before. And I think we got it. We just got to kill toxic masculinity as a term.

Host: I thought you're going to say we have to kill toxic masculinity. I was like, well now we have to have a whole nother debate then.

Jason Lange: Just that to me there is no such thing as toxic, which means irredeemable. I like pathological. Just something's grown awry and it can be addressed and that as part of that, you know, this term was going around last election cycle and it's got wild roots if you trace it back. But just change of one word, right? From toxic to tonic. We can all do a job of highlighting examples of tonic masculinity that when you see it, it has that impact on my nervous system of oh, that feels so good. I want to be around that. I trust that. I want to be that. Yes, right. Just yes to that. And there's not enough examples of that. And we need to highlight that in our daily life. Culturally. Art needs to start telling those stories to start to give men this, this other pathway. And you know, I'm particularly interested in. Yeah, what's the story? There's not a better story for men right now. So they're going to go to the one that is being sold to them in I think integral. Integralists listening to this. We have a responsibility to help craft that new story of hey, there's a better narrative here that can guide you towards more health, more goodness, truth and beauty. Right. And guide men after you. And for me, I do it, you know, ground level men's groups, embodiment work. Keith, I know you do a lot of that, but we need all levels. Just like Raymond here working it from kind of the bigger political, cultural thing as well. Because you guys have the power to help send the resources to people doing the boots on the ground work. And that's where I'm like, I have no clue or, or ins on how to help.

Host: I'd like to pick up on that point on, on all levels. If you say that if you really convince a man to engage in a long term men's group, that's really a big step. I think before that there are all these kinds of possibilities. You haven't got to do it yourself, look for help somewhere. Although that is damn difficult because how do you find advice and help specialized for men's problems? That was one point we took up in this men's organization here in Germany that we created a website for Germany now only to collect all these kinds of possible points of organizations who give advice to men on different levels. For fathers, for health, for if you're unemployed, for sexual problems, for alcoholism or whatever, but in a special perspective oriented for men's problems and not in only general way. And it was a hell of work to find out these addresses. There are not so many for the 80 million people here. We have some hundred points where you can look at and there are large blank spaces on the map, especially in the countryside where you've got nobody you can contact there, but anyway you still have help, phone lines or things like that. And really that's another point we could enhance to have these points and institutions where men can find first aid. You could say, and from there this message, you don't have to do it alone. Yeah, yeah. I mean, Corey pointed out in the chat and another guy, Larry, asked, you know, where do most men get stuck? And I think rather than answer that, from a developmental place, I think people get stuck in hyper agency and hyper individualism, certainly in the States. But I think for any man that's struggling, if they can do just what you said, Raymond, which is like lean into the resources that are here, to the connections that are here, that's a tonic right there. That's actually part of the problem we have as men is this idea of being the cowboy, being the self reliant archetype. And the more we are that way, the more susceptible we are to being controlled by and defined by our conditioning and our culture and just really being automaton. Right. And to Jason's point, doing a lot of, potentially doing a lot of damage. So for me, I would say for the men listening, yeah, get, get in a men's group. You reach out to someone like Jason, reach out to someone like me. If you get in a men's group, make it a good group. You have to have a strong container. You can't just have a bunch of guys together. I work with a group of really amazing guys. They brought me in as an outside consultant a couple years back. And these were educated, intelligent men that had been in a group for a long time. And I sat through one of their meetings and the first thing I saw was like, you guys are all really nice guys. Good for you. And nobody's calling anybody out here. You're all just being nice guys to each other. And where's the, hey man, I've got a Charge and a judgment, and I want to clear it with you. And this gets back to. To me, the beauty of men's work, of being a man. One of the things I love about being a man is the confidence of confrontation when it's done well. And I get to say to Jason, hey, man, I don't think you're showing up in a way that I respect. And, like, we gotta have a clearing about this, right? It's not okay with me. And then we get into it, because why? Because I'm in my heart and because I care. And I'm already at that decision tree where I can tell the fucking difference between the two. So I'm not just projecting my shit onto him and being like, well, that's fucked up. You do that. I would never do that. Which isn't helpful. So part of a good men's group is you have to be taught and learn these skills so you can go deeper than you think you can go. And the only way to do that, usually, is to have someone who's done it mentor you. You hire someone to come in and help you. You take it deeper. But the last thing you want to do is just have a circle of guys without some way to make sure that you're not just reifying each other's shit stories and not actually doing much, but being a support group. Which is okay to have a support group, but men's work is about actually leaning into your edge and leaning into your discomfort and learning to not play at safe, which for me might be being vulnerable and open, and for the other guy might be being strong and confrontational. But how we all play it safe really depends on our personality construct. I would say, if there's any North Star for me in men's work, it's how to lean into where you don't feel safe, because that's where you'll grow. So let's see here. We'll open it up to any questions. If anybody wants to call in, you can use the bottom of your screen there. It won't work. Well, unless you have Chrome or Microsoft Edge. It tends to be a bit glitchy in the meantime. Jason. Raymond, if people want to get in touch with you, what's a good way to do it?

Jason Lange: I can go first. Sure. You can follow me. And all my men's work at Evolutionary Men. So, I mean, I'm a big proponent of. Yeah, it's. We want to transcend and include.

Host: Right.

Jason Lange: We want to take the gifts of the masculine and bring them forward and add to them and that's what it's all about, right? That's just what it's all about. And so the mission of. My mission in life, mission of my organization is every man should be in a men's group. So whether it's with me or supporting getting you connected to someone else in terms of some of the dumpster fire that our world currently is, I'm like, okay, that's what I feel like I can do. And where I think I can move the needle is getting men connected in those spaces because that's where we grow, that's where we change. And in my mind, healthy men get into healthy relationships, create healthy families, create healthy kids, keep the whole thing spinning forward. So, yeah, evolutionary men. Great.

Host: Thanks, man. And what about you, Raymond? Yeah, at present, I'm not leading any men's groups. As I said, in the last years, I have been more in the political level, which was really an interesting change from another perspective there. And at present I'm mostly more in. In fact, I'm writing a book on all this stuff and reading quite a lot about that. So you'll hear from me sometime in the future. And as a small point, I will be present on the Integral European Conference in Hungary in May, where there are a lot of American intervalists too, and from all over the world. Now I'll be leading workshop there on gender dialogue. Simply. Well, I've. In fact, I. I've opened up my thinking more not only to focus on masculinity and men, but what is all this construction of gender about and this conflicts in culture wars rising there to better understand what's going on there. That's my main topic at the moment. Great, great. And for me, I'[email protected] and. And I'm leading a men's group open to all this June 6th, I believe it starts in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. There'll be four leaders and we take up to about 15 guys. It tends to sell out. It's really good work working in groups. Much better than working with individuals because we get to teach each other and it's surprising what comes up. But you can find more about that on my website and. All right, guys, we don't have any calls, so we're just going to sort of do a wrap here. I really appreciate the time and the passion and the energy. I appreciate the work you're both doing, and not just on behalf of men, but on behalf of all of us and on behalf of the world. It's really inspiring. And I'll have you all on again. We'll do this again. Maybe, you know, we'll see where things are in nine months or 12 months and, boy, that we'll have another interesting discussion about where things have moved. Yeah. Love it.

Jason Lange: Thanks for having us and hosting.

Host: All right, guys. Yes, I am curious. All right, until then, Sa.