Edward M. Adams - Reinventing Masculinity: The Liberating Power of Compassion and Connection

I was delighted to be asked to write a foreword for this book by Ed Adams and Ed Frauenheim because it offers deep insights into the problematic nature of modern masculine identities.

What we become as men is so much out of our control. We didnt choose to be a maleto have the genes, bodies, and the early life social conditioning we have. Males often engage in aggressive competition with other males for reproductive opportunities. Females too create their own hierarchies. We find our social competition culturally textured. We find ourselves with impulses, attitudes, and beliefs about the way we should be.

For men, this is typically some archetypal version of a hero prepared to sacrifice life and limb for kin and country, for honor and tribute. We are to be tough and fearless: to hide emotions of fear, grief, vulnerability, and despair, to be the right stuff. We live in fear of being shamed as a wimp or a coward, as unwanted or irrelevant! As so much entertainment infecting young males demonstratesfrom James Bond myths to Superman and the Avengersits all about power to defeat the other.

This book highlights the fact that it doesnt have to be like that. Indeed, new evidence suggests that during the few million years we evolved into hunter-gatherers, males were relatively nonaggressive; their status was gained through altruism, caring, and sharingand sexuality was open. Our basic nature has been deeply corrupted. Modern cultures have basically driven us all crazy.

Yet were also beginning to understand the evolution of emotional needs and what brings out the best and worst in us. With such insights, many of which are expertly outlined in this book, we can gain new awareness about who we are and what we can become. We can consider if the roles we inherited are good for us, for our relationships, and indeed for humanity. The reality is they are not, and they havent been for many thousands of years.

Modern anthropologists are finding that early humans were not particularly aggressive. Instead, scholars are pointing to very peace-loving and caring human beings in the hunter-gatherer groups that were the primary social structure that shaped our minds. In fact, its likely that human intelligence and language evolved partly because we focused on developing prosocial relationships.

If we are by nature quite benign, peace-loving, and caring, then where did it all go wrong? Most scholars point to one thing: agriculture. With agriculture the hunter-gatherer way of life gradually disappeared. Then, as groups got larger, static settlements emerged, and resources expanded. This opened the way for aggressive dominant males to race to the top of the hierarchy, threatening all those below them.

And where has this got us? Its tragic to consider the billions of men who have rushed at each other with spears and swords, the guns and bombs that over the centuries have left screaming, terrified, and dying bodies strewn over countless battlefields. Why are men so vicious toward other human beings? Why do we spend so much of our energy inventing sharper blades, longer-flying arrows, and more-powerful bombs to kill and maim? We must face the fact that we are a species with extreme potentials: both to inflict great harm and to offer profound compassion.

The message in this book will help wake us up. And it may make us angry. That anger comes from becoming aware that we men have been scripted to see ourselves as nothing but disposable bits of DNA, strutting our stuff, prepared to step on whoever gets in our wayand to be stepped on. This can be seen on countless battlefields, on the football field, and in our race to the top of million-dollar salaries. It suits one group only, and thats the ruling elite.

How can we free ourselves from this absurd, competitive, destructive, and intensely hierarchical culture? First, we must begin to care for each other. We have to start to care about being men connected with the destiny of other men. Men all over the world need to say enough is enough. We need to demand better social conditions and wiser scripts for us all. We need to demand better entertainment, better education, better emotional support, better guidance, and better leadership.

Women too have had an incredibly bad deal in the last five to ten thousand years as a result of male hierarchies. Females have been exploited, traded and raped, suppressed and marginalized, and even in religion treated as second class. But they are rebelling more and more, and quite rightly too.

Men can support that. And we should do so without hanging our heads in shame. We must see the tragedies weve all gotten caught in as coming from gene-built and culturally shaped scripts that none of us chose. We did not choose our brains or social environments. But we must aspire to be compassion-focused and live our lives as helpfully as we can.