Orin J. Hahn on why being a good man is a losing proposition from the start.
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What kind of man are you?
That is one of those questions that can be spoken a million times throughout the course of a man’s life and hit him in a million different places. Spoken with admiration and pleased surprise, it can lift him up like a god, able to bestow a bounty that’s adored and imbue him with a connection to feeling limitless.
Of course, there’s always the chance that it’s spoken with question, doubt, incredulity. There are many types of pointed daggers that can be wrapped in the question of “What kind of man are you?”.
The delivery of that question allows so much pain in too many men, pain that we are helpless on first and even repeated stings to avoid, at least until we develop callouses and scars.
The reason such a simple collection of words can impart so much, good or bad, is because in our deepest hearts, below the masks we wear to get by and survive, we hunger for the pronouncement that we are good.
It is such a vast cavern of often unfulfilled desire for men that any road into acknowledging it can easily topple the best of us into an intellectual processing loop of trying to comprehend while simultaneously experiencing a wealth of feelings we’re often poorly able to digest.
That is the unspoken challenge behind any discussion of being “good”…it is a final destination that seems to move and taunt us, a place to go to that we may never arrive at.
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Am I good yet?
The challenge starts when we are children with fairy tales and silly songs, whether its hearing of the heroic acts of brave knights and wondering if will we deliver, or listening to schoolyard taunts of, “Girls are sugar and spice and everything nice, boys are snips and snails and puppy dog tails”.
Either way, the message is the same: we will have to make our worth; it’s not inherent, it’s based on what we deliver. We are worthless ’til we put something out into the world. What that something is, we not only have to deliver and deliver well, but figure out how to create, acquire and bring forth.
That is the unspoken challenge behind any discussion of being “good”…it is a final destination that seems to move and taunt us, a place to go to that we may never arrive at.
So what about women? Do they get off easier from this challenge? Is the challenge of being good that different for them?
At first as we glimpse this challenge as men it can feel like that. It can be tempting to vilify, envy and hurl our pain at women, especially as we see how inherently desirable they seem to be. After all, they are the ones worth saving in the stories, the ones made of “sugar and spice”. They are the ones to be quested after, and on behalf of. So we come to resent them.
After all, what is resentment but simply a desire wrapped in fear and the dread that it will never be fulfilled?
There is a solution.
I propose that there is a better way. That there is a solution to this endless questing and the hostility towards women it can and does often breed.
The solution is to stop looking at the picture linearly and as a riddle we are alone in as men. To begin to realize that the desire and gift of being good lies within us all as humans, and the challenge is to go beyond our gender roles and ourselves.
It may seem like women have inherent worth and are therefore good from the start. In fact, that belief often corrupts and entraps women in roles to retain this goodness, to stay pure. To back away from all the adventuring and experience that we as men must engage in to claim our stake in being good.
The good and worth that seems so plentiful in women comes at the expense at knowing the world, at knowing themselves and discovering. A good woman stays good by being insulated from the richness of life.
They are fighting their own mirror image of the fight we fight. The trap of being good does not look any more fulfilling when viewed through their eyes than the constant search for it does to us as men. And the resentment lies within them too, knowing that we can search, that we can pursue as men with a wider range of acceptance.
Is this any more empowering than feeling forced to search for it?
I propose this; we take a moment to laugh at the folly, to grieve for the pain created in the great misunderstanding of it all. That we take time to apologize for never realizing the pointless point we’ve held each other to. We need to turn to our fellow brothers and see their goodness and acknowledge it for simply being. As men we need to turn to our sisters in this struggle and tell them we get it. That the battle to quest or to stay pure when based on a static goal is killing us.
In short we need to declare ourselves and all we encounter good. And then, then maybe we will fill those caverns and lose our resentments.
And now wouldn’t that really begin to create a good unseen so far?
—Photo Wolfgang_Staudt/Flickr
See the original at Orin Hahn’s Blog
Being ‘good’ or ‘innocent’ or ‘pro social’ is a fundamental need of any human being, or at least those who have not had their capacity for empathy diminished beyond repair (psychopaths). It’s genetic, built into our emotional architecture as feelings of guilt and shame if we do things that are antisocial. the problem is where we allow others, such as religions, to define what ‘good’ means. I agree with you that the power lies with us, to define for ourselves what it is to be ‘good’ according to our own values, but the task is not easy when we are… Read more »
Yes Paul. It’s about inner values – and for me the experience that this male ‘quest’ is not for a woman, but for my soul. The maturer fairy tales tell us this? I’ve found that I’m a soul before I’m a man. And I don’t think there are female/male/trans/bi souls.. Just all of us like lights, yearning to go home. So my search is the search for God in my heart, and through that my search for ‘goodness’ makes a lot more sense. We all want to be mirrors of our creator? Good… Unless we teach core community values, we’ll… Read more »
Hi Duncan
Please, please tell us more…….
Hi Iben
In my culture your last post sounds a little sarcastic.. 🙂 But.. do you want to dialogue about something in particular?
Hi Duncan
In my culture it means encouragement . Applaud , bravo, interesting …..
You said :
✺–” and for me the experience that this male ‘quest’ is not for a
woman, but for my soul. The maturer fairy tales tell us this? I’ve found that I’m a soul before I’m
a man. And I don’t think there are female/male/trans/bi souls.”✺
I think what you said is beautiful !
Thank you so much Iben.. yes!!
What a thoughtful, authentic piece. So much better than the hypocritical implorations by Hugo Schwtzer and others to become a so-called “good man” through feigning purity. Great job.
It may seem like women have inherent worth and are therefore good from the start. In fact, that belief often corrupts and entraps women in roles to retain this goodness, to stay pure. To back away from all the adventuring and experience that we as men must engage in to claim our stake in being good. I think there is a little bit more going on here that ultimately adds to the resentment. While women are trapped in roles that tell them to back away from the adventuring and experience they still maintain the self appointed right to declare themselves… Read more »
Is there sarcasm in the “which we really do need to hear more of” bit? If the lectures you get about rape were simply, don’t do it, it would just be “yes, thank you, for your enlightening advice. How about murder, mugging old ladies, torturing animals? I’m not clear on any of these things either.” However it often goes off into a major set of “even if” scenarios and “don’t try and persuade, don’t use emotional blackmail, don’t make her feel like she owes you” (I’ve gone through this checklist with girlfriends – they assume it’s my fragile male ego… Read more »
Hi Joseph
You are good. You write well.
✺”After a while you’d be thinking, “I don’t really need to go in the kitchen at all. I’ll get a takeaway, or buy snacks or something”. And every time you see someone use a liquidizer you’d shudder a little”.✺
Thank you, Joseph.
I know exactly what you are talking about.
Agree. A man knows who he is, what his values are, and acts accordingly. A good man is one who has chosen “good” values. But the opinions of others, be it a woman telling you you should be different or a man opining about what he feels is right, is all input to be processed. I believe, unlike a boy, a man can not be shamed. That doesn’t mean he can’t feel shame, but he isn’t a victim of it. He owns it. (And if he’s smart he know’s it’s toxic and lets it go.)
Paul I like your comment, I agree empowerment is about knowing yourself and your values. Men need this as much as women, it should not be assumed that a Y chromosome automatically makes someone sure of themselves. Like most things in life, empowerment takes effort. I think at the heart of the “Quest” to become a “good man” is the hero myth where the man does something heroic and wins and then “gets the girl”. It’s obvious that women are disempowered by this because they are merely prizes to be won and also seen as needing to, “be good” so… Read more »
You’re onto something important here. The idea of seeking to be approved of as a “good man” doesn’t make you a good man at all. At best, it makes you a good boy. We don’t need a “Good Boy Project”. We need to call SHENANIGANS on that. We’ve had way too much of that nonsense already. And…while we’re at it…women don’t need a “Good Girl Project” either. Once again, they’ve had way too much of that nonsense already. Where women are ahead right now – and men need to catch up – and women who write for men need to… Read more »
“Then first, you’re going to have to choose to be a MAN. First, you’re going to have to unplug from the matrix, and go on the essential inner journey of finding your own values, your own ideas, your own expression of self. Of course, if you do that, you’ll figure out soon enough that rape is bad.” Nice, Paul. And I would assert that this journey will teach a man hundreds of ways he can enrich his life and that of everyone he loves. He can do this from a place of security and confidence and that his ability to… Read more »
It is very true that you have to be a man before you can be a good man. It is a bit odd to juxtapose a call for men to decide for themselves what it means to be a good man, and a separate call for this site to stop “shaming” men. I am of the opinion that “shame” is not something someone else can inflict on you. You’re either ashamed, or you’re not, regardless of what someone else writes in a column about what they think men ought to be doing. If they bring up a topic, and you… Read more »
Jack Bauer: It is a bit odd to juxtapose a call for men to decide for themselves what it means to be a good man, and a separate call for this site to stop “shaming” men. — Not odd at all. When the zeitgeist is kicking men around like a soccer ball, and making all sorts of contradictory demands about how men should and should not think, feel and behave that have no real roots in any fundamental ethics or morality, that’s toxic. That’s shaming and blaming men. We’ve had way too much of that already – and it really… Read more »
It is undeniable that it has been deemed socially acceptable to mock men for being men. It is equally undeniable that a feminist site would find objectionably any “shaming” of any woman for anything, shameful or otherwise. My point was not to dispute either, but to state that the better response is to be unapologetic and shameless (when shame is unwarranted) not to complain about people attempting to “shame”. This site had an absurd column a month or so ago complaining about men who eat meat, the intersection of meat-eating and traditional masculinity, and that meat-eating oppresses women (or something… Read more »
Jack writes: My point was not to dispute either, but to state that the better response is to be unapologetic and shameless (when shame is unwarranted) not to complain about people attempting to “shame”. >>> I think that both are warranted and appropriate. Yes we need to be unapologetic and shameless about simply being men (who are also decent and mature MENCHES). But I also think it’s necessary to call BULLSHIT or SHENANIGANS or whatever on the shaming and blaming when it occurs – ESPECIALLY when it occurs on a site like this, which (ostensibly) has a positive agenda when… Read more »
Hi Jack I think you are right when you say ✺”I am of the opinion that “shame” is not something someone else can inflict on you. You’re either ashamed, or you’re not, regardless of what someone else writes in a column about what they think men ought to be doing. If they bring up a topic, and you feel “shamed”, then you were already ashamed, and they just pointed it out … otherwise, the topic would just bounce off.”✺ And I am surprised how often I see men say they feel shamed in debates on GMP. I have never heard… Read more »
Always enjoy your comments, Paul.
The lie is not in the existence and attainability of “being a good man”. Good men exist, and the standard is not unattainable. The lie is that anyone (or everyone) is inherently good. We are defined by what we do, not who we are. That is as it should be. That some men will fail to be good is necessarily true, as goodness is not in our nature, and the moniker is earned, not bestowed. If we fail to distinguish between good men and not good men, if we discount the value of good men, or if we abandon the… Read more »