Brandon Peele would like to re-define the word “Bro”.
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I’m a Bro. I admit it. I spent the better part of a decade bro’ing out in Chicago, LA and New York. I bro’d out like tomorrow didn’t exist – drinking, womanizing, drugging, traveling and otherwise rocking the “sorry for partying” – “fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke” credo. While I don’t remember most of this decade – between age 17 and 27 -, I’m told it was awesome (in the bro-sense of the word), marked by threesomes, public defecation, overdoses, blackouts, drunk driving, bull-riding, bull-running, reality television (VIDEO), skydiving and travel.
By the age of 28 I had been arrested in six states, yet managed to show up at work in investment banking, venture capital and technology start-ups and get an Ivy League MBA. I joined my fellow Bros in telling racist, sexist and homophobic jokes, having sex with co-workers, doing cocaine and watching deviant porn on the job. I was running a race, following in the footsteps of Hunter S. Thompson and Tucker Max.
The Noble Heritage of the Bro
However, this is only one way to bro-out. Previous generations of Bros were explorers, engineers and warriors, discovering canyons, fighting for their lives in the American Frontier, giving their lives in union battles to secure a living wage and the 40-hr work week, building the infrastructure of America (in the New Deal that would create the most materially abundant society in all of human history), defeating Hitler and Mussolini, creating novel devices for the improvement of human life (washing machines, computers, vaccines), marching with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Martin Luther King Jr. and walking on the Moon. But the Bro we know today is quite different. How did this happen? How did the Bro fall from grace?
Descent of the Bro
Since the advent of the information age, the Bro began finding himself at a loss. Our economy and culture shifted from doing and building to fronting and using, obscuring the pleasure of being a purpose-driven bro. In this noise, the Bro lost his signal. In so doing, he began to work with keyboards instead of tools, reading “men’s” magazines, developing his abs, grooming himself and indulging in increasingly ridiculous leisure activities, e.g. Tough Mudder, trampoline dodgeball and bar crawls in “Snuggies”. Our American cities are awash in these lost Bros, a Neverneverland of boys in large bodies, plaguing New York’s Sheep’s Meadow, LA’s Hermosa Beach, Chicago’s North Beach and San Francisco’s Marina.
In this shift from manufacturing to services, from making great things to redlining Powerpoint, from serving humanity to exploiting it, the Bro lost his way. However, each human, each Bro has a unique purpose in the world, and it is his job to find it. Admittedly, it was easier for previous generations of Bros to find purpose, as these were simpler times with visible frontiers and clearly defined enemies. The 21st Century is far more complex, and yet the call has never been more simple and more personal – go within, find purpose and live it.
Answering the Call
Our species depends on the Bro to find himself again, to do great things for society. Our species calls him to action – to fight the noble wars (economic inequality, gender / sexuality / animal / ecological rights), to reclaim the commons, to reform democracy and the electoral process, to breach the significant frontiers of mind, space, and oceans, and to save our species from self-extinction via sustainable transportation, renewable energy, local organic food, and distributed water efficiency and reclamation systems, devices and policies.
Chrysalis of the Bro
What few people realize is that the American Bro is evolving. He is waking up. As his white collar economic opportunities and big pimpin’ industry narratives evaporate—first Hollywood, then Wall St., and now Silicon Valley—as the world finds itself increasingly at peril due to the lack of empowered, purpose-driven Bros, the sleeping giant is waking up. He is finding purpose with books like “True Purpose“, written by MIT engineer, Naval Intelligence Officer and Silicon Valley executive, Tim Kelley. He is reacquainting himself with the complexity, mystery and order of the world, with works like “Theory of Everything” written by biochemist cum philosopher, Ken Wilber. He is exploring National Parks and his soul via yoga and meditation retreats with research scientist cum yogi, Pete Guinosso.
He is re-establishing himself as a man in the world, but not of it, with men’s organizations, like the ManKind Project, dedicated to creating purpose-driven, heart-centered men of action, integrity, accountability and wisdom. He is building community around his evolution, with business organizations like Bioneers and Net Impact. He has decided to evolve, to awaken his own purpose, and meet the world’s daunting challenges, for which only he is prepared.
Awaken the Beast
If you are a bro and reading about this evolution for the first time, now is the time to act. It is your time—to find your purpose, claim your spot in this sacred evolution, reinvent our species’ systems and technologies, to change our economic, political and ecological means of cooperation, and explore the great unknowns – mind, space, and oceans. Will you do the one thing the Cosmos put you here (VIDEO)to do? Will you play your role in saving humanity and the Earth’s ecology from demise? Will you find your purpose?
For the cost of two drinks, you can buy Tim Kelley’s “True Purpose” workbook and start doing the purpose exercises. For the same cost as a ski weekend, you can do the New Warrior Training Adventure. In return for one paycheck, you can work with a purpose coach, to hold you accountable and ensure you find your purpose in as little as four months. In so doing, you can make 2015, “The Year of the Bro”, reclaiming your noble heritage, and finding yourself once again on the right side of history, leading our species towards ever greater realizations of human potential, equitable prosperity, scientific excellence, and ecological biodiversity. Are you ready to awaken the beast? Are you ready to flip the switch?