Why Evolutionary Men?

All right, and welcome back. So, on this week's episode, I want to talk about why Evolutionary Men, Right?

Why is the name of this podcast and my menswork organization Evolutionary Men? Well, first thing I want to point out is as you get into the men's work world, you're going to see basically countless examples of the blank man. There are so many organizations branded that way, right? The adjective man, you can fill in the blank there with whatever you want to describe some of the different qualities of the masculine that these different organizations are wanting to cultivate and elevate.

And I'm friends, frankly, with a lot of the men who run these different men's work organizations, and they're awesome. So I'm not here to discount those. But something I want to point to and where this really starts our conversation today is in the difference. Most men's work organizations focus on and highlight the individual. And in a subtle way, I focus on men, the collective. And there's a big difference here, I think, in that one of the things a lot of us men fall prey to is that I've talked men talked about many times on this podcast, and my various different appearances are kind of falling for the myth of the lone wolf, right?

That a solo, rugged individual man is tougher and better and more manly than a man who uses community around him. And Evolutionary Men is partly here to kind of disrupt that belief, right? Just like as I've talked about wolves in the wild, the wolf that's alone is the one that was kicked out of the group and is often not going to live as long they rely on the pack for longevity, so to speak.

And this is true, I think, for us men, too, in one of the big shifts we're getting to kind of make here as a collective, are that, hey, we can be each other's allies, not just competition. And I think, actually looking to the roots of why we believe this rugged individual, particularly for those of us here in the States, in the west, is such a kind of concrete ideology is really useful.

And, you know, I think a lot, a lot of times this is associated with the idea of, you know, pick yourself up by your bootstraps, and there is a lot of truth there. I'm not here to discount. We should all be completely over reliant on each other and unable to act with agency and take care of ourselves in the world. That's important. But I think that's been overemphasized and there's all kinds of reasons for that. And I'm going to argue pretty fiercely here.

One of them is actually power and control. So one way we can control other people, in a sense, let's say we're the people in power in our government or in our financial system or whatever you might want to call it, is by creating this belief that anytime you're not succeeding or getting ahead, it's because of a fault of your own. It's your fault. Because in this ideological dream we have, anybody can pick themselves up by the bootstrap.

And it's just a matter of sheer discipline and will. And there are countless examples of that being true. But I think it's a pathology and it actually prevents us in some pretty big ways from saying, hey, why are things the way they are? And if we keep pointing people back to if you're not succeeding, it's your fault. That turns it into shame versus outward facing.

Well, this is up. Why are there these different power differentials in our society? Why do certain people have certain shortcuts that other people don't have because of where they were born or what color their skin is? And emphasizing the put pick yourself up by the bootstraps, I think that is one way we can keep those in power, in power. We don't want to disrupt right as much when we think it's our fault I'm not succeeding, it's my fault, I can't get ahead.

Obviously this is a very nuanced cultural conversation, but I think it's one that's not being talked about enough. Because if we realized at a collective level that, hey, this system doesn't work for as many people as it could, there would be disruption, right? Massive disruption of some of these entrenched systems. And obviously the people in those systems, they don't want that. So there's going to be this strong, constant narrative that if something isn't working in your life, it's you.

Even though it's far more nuanced than that. Your actions are only one part of what happens to you in the world. You are embedded in a system. And it's important for us to acknowledge the systems we're embedded in are very different depending on what class we were born in, what gender we were born in, and what color of our skin we were born with. Right? And these things have a pretty massive impact.

And the more we learn about childhood development, polyvagal theory, stress, autoimmune disorders, this stuff becomes pretty apparent. You know, Maslow really pointed it out. If you're pretty low on the hierarchy of needs, if survival is your basic daily action, you don't have much energy to do a whole lot else. Now, there's always going to be exceptions to this, right? People that can push past that.

The question is, what's the cost of that? And I see it every day in men. There is a huge cost to constantly pushing. And so many men are trained to push and, and push alone. Go right through the pain, work yourself to death, don't ever ask for help, don't ever show weakness. And I think it's partly the training we've gotten from this embedded system.

When the truth is, and part of, again, why I emphasize, emphasize evolutionary men, the collective, we're doing this together. It's not just about you, the blank man. It's about, hey, if you actually want to become the most effective version of yourself, that is going to happen in Community and in connection. And a few episodes ago, I was talking to my friend David Romero, and he, he highlighted this amazing phrase, right?

Community is immunity. Or I like to say connection is resilience, which is really similar in a sense that to be truly resilient in the world, we can't just rely on pushing alone and thinking we can do it all by ourselves. And I think this is epitomized for us men when I ask them. The question that I've been thinking a lot about lately is okay, if you emphasize push only, right, that it's all about individual, your yourself as an individual and how hard you can work, how much you can push yourself.

What happens to you when your body fails, and it will at some point, everyone ages. Might happen sooner for some than others, but what happens to you when your body fails? And pushing isn't a choice anymore? Who's going to be around you to take care of you? How do you thrive in that circumstance? And to me, that is the real resilience available in community.

And, you know, our body failing us is just one extreme example, but that's an example of real resilience. And I think status, so to speak, as men these days is who do we have around us that can hold us when we can't hold ourselves anymore? And that takes building connections and investing in others, not just ourselves. And so I really want to emphasize it's about evolutionary men.

It's us women growing Together and in fact, in the collective, we can grow exponentially faster. That's the whole point of coaching. That's the whole point of men's groups. I constantly use the example, because most guys get it, of, you know, working out. When we work out alone, yeah, we can push ourselves, and on great days, we can push ourselves really hard. But you really want to take it to the next level. Work out with someone else next to you, whether it's a trainer or a friend, and you will hit it harder.

You will actually grow faster. And other people around us, they can see our blind spots much faster than we can. Something else I've talked a lot about on this podcast, right? It's kind of the essence of shadow. At first we can't see it ourselves, but to other people, it's often extremely obvious. Wow, you don't see what's happening here. Or that every time you say X, your body does Y in the collective.

We can see that. So then we can work with it faster in that do the evolution sense I mentioned, we can make it an object much faster when we have another subjective experience seeing it with us. This is the beauty of therapy of relationship, whether it's men's group, intimate friendship, you name it. And this idea of the collective of evolutionary men is what we're trying to figure out together is how to take the best of what men have been, discard the crap that's no longer useful or applicable, and move it forward and add to it.

So in my lineage, this is called the idea of to transcend and include. We want to go beyond, but we want to bring the best with us. And we get to do that as a collective. And in fact, we get to do that with each other in that a men's group, in a sense, is so much more resilient than any given man because it's going to be a collection of. Of strengths and weaknesses. And they have research these days, right?

In that what makes a system more resilient is diversity, right? Is difference. And we see this a lot these days in our culture, right? We have all these mono crops, we have limited types of. What's the word? Antibacterials now that aren't working as well as new bacteria evolves because we've used too much of the same thing.

We saw it in our supply chain in Covid too many things relying on far too few points. If you want to create more resiliency in any system, you increase diversity, you increase the number of perspectives and difference. So evolutionary men is about doing that in the collective field of a men's group and for men's work in general. It's this idea of don't believe the you have to do it all alone. You can do it better and more effective in community.

And anyone who's telling you otherwise is just falling prey to this old paradigm because that paradigm allows, well, if it's not working, it's totally your fault. And as long as you believe it's your fault, you are not going to get out there and disrupt in demand difference. And that's what the world really needs right now on a collective level, a waking up to, hey, this system we're all kind of saying yes to, it's kind of let's do better, let's take care of each other, let's work with each other.

And we're going to do that most effectively together, not just alone, not just solo. You know, strikes me that, you know, as a guy who grew up in the 80s with the Stallone movies and action hero movies, those were really the epitome of, of kind of the Reagan generation of this pick yourself up by the bootstraps, you can succeed if you just put your mind to it.

And of course, like I said, there's an element of truth to that. There are countless examples of that. But for every example of that you see that worked, there are many, many more that didn't who tried just as hard in whatever it was they were trying to do or create, but the cards were stacked against them. Just be honest about that. I'm a white guy here in the States from a middle class family, had pretty much all the cards stacked in my favor and life's still been a challenge.

So why evolutionary men is we can do this whole thing called the human experience better together and you will grow faster in a collective than you will as an individual, I guarantee it. And if you don't believe it, you just haven't been in the right collective that can hold you accountable and call you forth and challenge you to be an even more whole version of yourself.

And who can hold you when you can't hold yourself? This life does happen. You can try to be the perfect, the perfect healthy man doing your ice baths, eating well, exercising, and there is always a chance something will come out of left field that you have no control over. And it's in that moment who do you have around you is going to matter the most?

And you want to have your team of men, the men you can trust, the men you can rely on, the men who know who you are and what you want and where you're going on that speed dial for that moment. And the truth is, knowing you have those men on that speed dial for those moments is going to embolden you to take even more risks to begin with, to move your life forward in more bold and inspiring ways.

Because what allows us to take a jump in the most effective sense is when we know there's some kind of net underneath, we can only fall so far. When we're doing the rugged individual cowboy thing, the blank man thing, we don't always have that. And so we'll still play it a little safe, and we'll beat ourselves up for never doing it quite right or never doing it enough. Ah, other guys are getting to X, Y, or Z, but I'm not. So I really want to emphasize it's about the collective.

When you work with me, when you work with my men's groups, yes, we're going to emphasize what do you need to do to grow. But that is going to happen the fastest and more most effectively in the collective, in the group. So it's not just about growing alone. We have to grow together. And that's why this show and my groups go by Evolutionary Men. All right, until next time, if you're interested in working with me around dating relationships or your masculine presence in the world, just go to Evolutionary Men.

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