The Male Challenge: Encouraging Males to Evolve Consciously
Conscious Masculinity - Is it possible?
Evolve Consciously or Evolve Haphazardly
While men are responsible for most of the violence on the planet does embracing conscious evolution provide an opportunity for change?
Can the unprecedented problems faced by humanity, climate change, coronavirus, financial inequity, be solved more effectively if males become more aware?
What is possible when sufficient numbers of males embrace masculinity narratives more suitable for our times?
As we (males) become more alert to our deepest thoughts and beliefs we can observe how they play out in our behaviours. In this way we might begin to identify some of the unhealthy (toxic) male norms we have unknowingly taken on via peer group programming.
Perhaps, with conscious effort, we transform these unhealthy male norms for the good of all.
Laughing at sexist jokes is one example of a learned male norm and can lead to physical and sexual assault, even murder of women and girls.
Conscious Evolution refers to the theoretical ability of human beings to be conscious participants in the evolution of their cultures, or even of the entirety of human society.
This is based on a relatively recent combination of factors, including increasing awareness of cultural and social patterns, reaction against perceived problems with existing patterns, injustices, inequities, and other factors.
That cultural and social evolution can be guided through conscious decisions has been in increasing evidence since approximately the mid-19th century, when the rate of change globally began to increase dramatically. source Wikipedia
Many men contribute to society in meaningful ways
How can Conscious Masculinity help Humanity and the Planet?
Hello, I’m Pip Cornall, welcome to the Male Challenge.
Like many men I like finding solutions to problems.
One such problem is the old male narrative (hyper-masculine or macho) thinking is one such problem.
It underpins many of the big issues humanity faces today. I believe we can solve this problem and make the world a better place.
Working with other men who also like finding solutions, we can build healthier, more sustainable forms of masculinity that are more appropriate to our times.
We can each start by becoming more conscious to our thoughts and behaviours. As we watch our thoughts, we may identify unhealthy (toxic) masculine ‘norms’ (memes or beliefs) that we have embraced.
By learning to understand the power of male socialisation we can ‘re-write’ the social programming and help boys grow into good men. The world desperately needs more good men.
I believe the future sustainability of the world depends on changing the dominant male narrative and building a critical mass of ‘conscious males and females.’ The hyper-masculine aspects of the old male narrative are responsible for gender violence, gender inequality, and even economic models that destroy the planet while making a few people very wealthy.
It is a self destructive or suicidal narrative which feeds the dominator model complete with the ’embedded’ memes of dominating other people and nature. In contrast, the partnership model (global village/planetary stewardship ) is more sustainable. The safety of women, children, other men and ‘mother nature’ requires sufficient numbers of conscious caring men prepared to work alongside conscious caring women.
The masculine prisons:
I’ve worked with young men in a juvenile prison in Oregon and in Juvenile Justice Courts in Australia. But before they were sentenced, these boys and young men were already in prison.
Prisons: The mental/social prison of ‘false masculinity,’ sets them up as macho boys or men, often leading to criminal or anti-social activity, often followed by time in a prison. Both prisons have walls. The first walls are mental, emotional & social, the others are physical walls of concrete and razor wire.
As we attempt to help boys grow into good men we can show them how to ‘get out of jail free’ or how to gain their release from the prison of ‘false masculinity.’ This false masculinity is an old fashioned meme; totally inappropriate for the times we live in. It is as irrational as many other old superstitions; e.g. ‘flat earth thinking.’
As men, as humans, we have a choice. Evolve randomly/haphazardly or Evolve Consciously.
As ‘good’ men we need to change how some males treat women, who of course represent about 50% of the global population.
We are all born inside a woman: By abusing women we also abuse the place of our birth; the place we came from; where we took shelter for 9 months. We need to learn to honour and respect this place – a woman’s body – our place – our beginning.
How to build conscious masculinity: One of many ways to produce more good men is to begin exploring the negative aspects of our gender programming. (its not all bad – it’s mostly good) Having identified negative social socialisation we can choose to manage or discard the programming.