In 1972, Ann Wilson Schaef, an American psychotherapist, coined the phrase ‘White Male System’ — a consciousness that she says infects everyone living in western society. Schaef describes the White Male System in this way:
It is the system in which we live, and in it, the power and influence are held by white males. It controls almost every aspect of our culture — it makes our laws, runs our economy, sets our salaries, decides when and if we go to war, decides what is knowledge and how it is to be taught.
The problem is that most of us don’t even know the system exists because we have been brought up in it. According to Schaef, it is a very addictive way of thinking and feeling — one that captures us and keeps us locked into a narrow way of perceiving the world. Imagine a prison cell with four walls which Schaef calls the four myths of modern manhood.
Myth #1: The White Male System is the only system — power, status, wealth are the goals
The first wall of the White Male System Prison consists of the myth that White Male System is the only legitimate system and that power, status and wealth are the goal. Within this model, identity is found in usefulness. Therefore, I am what I do. If I cannot perform, I am of less value. Usefulness is given an economic value, and everything serves it.
Inside the White Male System, power and wealth are limited so I must hoard it to prevent others from getting it. “MORE!” is the motto of the system. It is an obsession with personal security based on the possession of external stuff.
If doesn’t matter what we do to the planet in the process. Anything of potential economic worth must be conquered and possessed. There is no notion of stewardship and much less of kinship with any part of nature. A Native American response to the invasion of the white male system on North America was this: “When the last tree is cut down, the last fish eaten, and the last stream poisoned, you will realize that you cannot eat money.”
This story illustrates the point:
An American investment banker was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellow fin tuna.
The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.
The Mexican replied, “Only a little while.” The American then asked why didn’t he stay out longer and catch more fish? The Mexican said he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs.
The American then asked, “So, what do you do with the rest of your time?”
The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siestas with my wife, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine, and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life.”
The American scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat, you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats.
Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually New York City, where you will run your expanding enterprise.”
The Mexican fisherman asked, “But, how long will this all take?”
To which the American replied, “15–20 years.”
“But what then?” Asked the Mexican.
The American laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions!”
“Millions — then what?”
The American said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siestas with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.”
Thomas Merton wrote “If I had a message to my contemporaries it is surely this: Be anything you like, be madmen, drunks, and bastards of every shape and form, but at all costs avoid one thing: success . . . If you are too obsessed with success, you will forget to live. If you have learned only how to be a success, your life has probably been wasted.”
***
Myth #2: The White Male System is innately superior to any other way of viewing the world
This wall of the prison cell creates a dualism that affects everything. If we are threatened or challenged by anything, we refer back to the fact that we have a better way, so the other way must be wrong. Anyone who challenges or disagrees with the system is scapegoated. They are stupid and bad. This creates inherent narcissism — which is ultimately void of life.
If I am innately superior, I will confuse colonization for engagement. I will bring my better way to you to change the way you live, assuming my way is the right way. I ignore all the wisdom of “their” tradition because it is “primitive.” I can learn nothing outside my system because there isn’t anything outside my system that is empirically true — therefore I am immune to any critique of my system, because I am white, I am male, I am educated, I am heterosexual, I am Christian, I am a westerner, therefore I know I am right.
Richard Rohr said, “There are two ways of being a prophet: one is to tell the enslaved that they can be free. This is the difficult path of Moses. The second is to tell those who think they are free that they are in fact enslaved. This is the even more difficult path of Jesus.”
***
Myth #3: The White Male System knows and understands everything
In the White Male System, people in positions of authority know what is right for everyone so they define everything. Truth doesn’t matter because if it is different to what I want it to be, then it is just lies spread by the media, or a conspiracy by governments. The truth is whatever I say it is.
This sees doubt and questions as faulty thinking. This even infects faith communities — the man (it is usually a man) tells me how to live, how to think, what to do with my money, my time. If it doesn’t work it’s because I haven’t tried hard enough or I have sin in my life.
Suffering does not fit in the model because it is the enemy of power, status and wealth. So, suffering is your fault, because my system is superior. You will notice how the walls of the prison cell hold each other up and reinforce the other walls, making it a prison from which you cannot easily escape.
So we make uninformed judgments about other cultures, other religions, anyone different to us. We discount or dismiss what we don’t know as unimportant. We seek to protect ourselves from “them”. We know we are right, because of the system. So we can never leave the prison cell of certainty. Certainty is the enemy of faith and curiosity and discovery and wonder and mystery, where our life is always hiding, waiting.
Rigid (rules based) responses are the only way to create a consistent, ordered society. An ordered society is one we can control. So we have organisations representing religion that attack people who don’t fit the system, which amplifies tribalism, which disconnects us from one another — even from others in the same belonging system, because they have to hide behind the masks to fit in the system.
Because I understand and know everything, I can debate, I can discuss, but I cannot dialogue with you. There is nothing you have to offer that I don’t already know. In fact, whatever you share is an opportunity for me to help you know what I know that will fix you or correct you.
The absence of dialogue is the root of the divisive nature of public debate on almost any topic. Social media has become the forum for polarising debate. Because I know I am right, and because you know you are right, we see everything through a binary lens. Everything is dualistic — religion, politics, gender issues, sexual orientation, education, everything is either/or, because my belief is the only thing that exists. Educated liberal attitudes are as affected as uneducated, conservative opinions, because the white male system infects every sphere of society.
A person then is a problem to address and a challenge to confront. I need to be the expert and I will only identify the thing that I can test, measure and prove: their thinking. The mind becomes a control tower where everything is evaluated empirically. Approaches that fit this framework are favored over the slower, difficult to measure methods.
***
Myth #4: The White Male System believes that truth only exists in the logical, rational and objective
The final wall of the White Male System asserts that all truth consists only in what is logical, rational and objective. The problem with this is that being logical, rational and objective excludes the world of emotions, which excludes any depth in relationships. It confuses fact for truth — what I can measure for what is real — and treats humans as objects instead of living beings. It ends up treating everything we encounter as ‘that’ instead of ‘this.’
Our actual lived experience — all our true spiritual energy — is found hiding inside things that you can’t be logical, rational or objective about. Love, suffering, death, God, eternity, sexuality — these are all trans-rational, you can’t figure them out with a MBA. Because of the white male system, our lives are hidden in plain sight. It usually takes a crisis or some kind of suffering to discover this.
***
Putting it All Together
Putting it all together, the White Male System gives you an illusion of control. For men especially, this is often the most valued belief. However, the moment it does not work, it leaves us feeling dazed and discarded. And, there DOES come a time when the system no longer works — usually precipitated by a crisis that you never saw coming.
Cancer. Job Loss. Divorce. Failure. Tragedy.
In that moment, success no longer matters. Money doesn’t help. Certainty slips like sand through your fingers. There are no satisfactory answers.
Those who are wise are not so beholden to the system. The are finding truth beyond it’s wall. They are finding that real meaning consists in things outside of the White Male System. In reality, we are addicted to a way of thinking that is anti-human because it’s not how we were created to live. But letting go is scary. Going towards something you don’t know feels dangerous and foolish.
There is a story about a Buddhist monk walking with his novice alongside a wide river. The novice asks, “Tell me master, what is the river like? Is the water cold? Is it deep? Is the current strong? Do the fish bite? Will I drown?” This went on quite a while until eventually the monk said, “Let me answer all your questions” and pushed the novice in the river. Nothing can change until a person loses control, and experiences immersion in the alternative.
—
Previously published on medium
—
◊♦◊
Talk to you soon.
If you believe in the work we are doing here at The Good Men Project and want to join our calls on a regular basis, please join us as a Premium Member, today.
All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS.
Need more info? A complete list of benefits is here.
—
Photo credit: istockphoto