Inspire Change Season 7-310 A Conversation with Greg Downey

This week on Inspire Change...In this engaging conversation, Gunter Swoboda and Greg Downey, renowned Anthropologist, explore the complexities of masculinity, touching on its evolution, the impact of toxic ideologies, and the importance of emotional health. They discuss the intersection of masculinity with community, politics, and religion, emphasizing the need for a nuanced understanding of men's issues. The dialogue highlights the role of anthropology in providing insights into masculinity and the importance of fostering connections and understanding in addressing these challenges.

 Chapters
Introduction to the Conversation
Shifts in Understanding Masculinity
Complexities of Male Violence and Victimhood
Toxic Ideologies of Masculinity
Psychological Impacts of Masculinity
Individualization in Masculinity Discussions
Navigating Politics and Religion in Masculinity
Apolitical Perspectives on Gender and Humanity
The Role of Religion in Community and Morality
38:26 Navigating Autocracy and Religious Influence
Masculinity and Emotional Responsiveness
Somatic Psychotherapy and Emotional Awareness
Aggression vs. Assertiveness in Male Behavior
Anthropology's Role in Understanding Human Behavior

Takeaways
Masculinity is embodied and practiced, not just theoretical.
The concept of moral injury is crucial in understanding veterans' experiences.
The men's movement has evolved, but some ideas remain problematic.
Social media influences perceptions of masculinity, often negatively.
Understanding domestic violence requires a nuanced view of perpetrators and victims.
Toxic ideologies harm both men and women in society.
Emotional dysregulation in men is linked to societal expectations.
Community and spirituality can provide support for men.
The intersection of politics and masculinity complicates discussions.
Anthropology can offer valuable insights into the complexities of masculinity.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, listeners, it's good to siboa here with some exciting news.
We're on the lookout for sponsors to join us on
our incredible journey with Inspired Change with Conta. If your
organization cares deeply about meaningful conversations around masculinity, self development,
and mental health, we'd love to partner with you. Our

(00:24):
podcast has a wonderful, dedicated audience committed to personal growth
and positive social change. By sponsoring Inspired Change with Conta,
your brand will connect with listeners who truly value thoughtful
discussion and support initiatives that promote real transformation. We're incredibly

(00:47):
proud to be ranked number one in Australia and number
five in the USA on feed spots top men's mental
health Podcasts. For more information on how to become sponsor,
please reach out to Miranda Spegner sap On, our showrunner
and executive producer. We'd love to explore how we can

(01:09):
work together to inspire change now. Thank you for your
continued support, and let's keep inspiring change together.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
You're listening to Inspire Change, a broadcast that strives to educate, motivate,
and empower men to challenge traditions of masculinity to guide
us through the intricacies and interceptions of emotions, relationships, and
male identity is renownced psychologists, author and speaker Gunter Swubota.

Speaker 3 (01:36):
This is Inspire Change.

Speaker 4 (01:40):
Before I begin the actual podcast, I would like to
respectfully acknowledge the gategor people of the or nation who
are the traditional custodians of the lane on which I work.
I would also like to pay my respects to their
elders past and Presentcome everybody to another episode of Inspire

(02:02):
Change with Gunter.

Speaker 5 (02:04):
I'm your host. Welcome everybody back to Inspire Change with Gunter.
Today we're going to do something a little bit different,
and I have my guest to thank for that. Now.
I'm assuming that you've listened to the show for a while.
Some of you may not have, but in any case,
you'll know I like to bring psychology, anthropology, the neurosciences, history,

(02:27):
and philosophy into the same conversation when we're talking, especially
about men, masculinity and social change. My guest today has
been working at that intersection for a long time. Professor
Brigg Downy is a cultural anthropologist and neuro anthropologist at
Aquari University. His work explores how culture quite literally gapes,

(02:50):
our brains and bodies. He's done field work on Afro
Brazilian capuera. I hope he pronounced that. Ryan mixed martial arts,
free diving, and human at a location. Very interesting field,
and he's written extensively about how practice and training real, why, perception, movement,

(03:13):
and emotion. Greek has also profoundly influenced my thinking, especially
in how I view masculinity as something that's embodied and practiced,
not just a set of ideas or roles that we
take on. Now here's the twist. When we were talking
about doing this episode, it was Greg who said, why

(03:36):
don't we flip it. Instead of you interviewing me, let
me interview you. And that's exactly what we're going to
be doing today. Greg, welcome back to Inspired Change.

Speaker 6 (03:48):
Thanks good to Yeah, it's good to be back, and
I'm glad you agreed to the switch in format. But
I hope it's interesting to everybody who's listening and maybe
gets you into some places you don't use go. I've
learned a lot from working with Gunter, and he's helping
me to really focus my own lens on masculinity. What's

(04:09):
happening in popular culture what's happening for men right now
in Australia, at the US, elsewhere. And I kind of
wanted to start off with a sort of long term
question for you, Gunter. I mean, you've been doing this
work for forty years plus. You've been working with men
adolescent boys, and it's shaped your understanding of masculinity. So

(04:31):
your approach is not based in theory, it's based more
in day to day working with people dealing with all
kinds of issues. Was there can you point to it?
Was there a time when you start to realize that
there need to be a fundamental shift or there needed
to be a change in the way we think about
masculinity men's issues like have you Was there some point

(04:52):
you could pin back in time when you realized we
need to talk about this, it's not good enough what
we're doing and is there anything and that sort of
pushed you to look for a transformation, to look for
a change.

Speaker 5 (05:05):
There's actually several The first one was I started really
focusing on men's issues through working with Vietnam veterans, and
that was in the early eighties, and part of it
was through drug and alcohol because a lot of the
vets had drug and alcohol issues, and the framework was

(05:30):
always pathological. You know, they were suffering from post traumatic
stress disorder, they had substance abuse disorders, and so that
was the framework. But as I was working with them,
one of the things that I realized was these were
men who felt socially completely dislocated. And I started wondering

(05:54):
about you know, like, after World War Two we had
people coming back as heroes, and I know full well
from growing up in the seventies until Whitlam sort of
got us out of the Vietnam War, that these people
were not venerated as heroes. They were seen as social
parias often and so coming out of it from a

(06:18):
philosophical basis, everyone was talking about in physical and psychological injuries,
and the thing that stood out for me whether these
guys were suffering from a moral injury. So that was
the first one. The second one was I found myself
part of the sort of first wave of the men's movement.

(06:40):
You know, there was people like iron Well, the Robert Bly,
with Iron John, there was a number of sort of
mythopoetic writers. Joseph Campbell, you know, became very much a
driver with the hero's journ and having worked with veterans

(07:03):
and combat veterans and then first responders. What stood out
for me was that the hero's journey is somewhat misleading
in that framework. You know, we're not talking about heroes.
In fact, the last thing most of them wanted to
be this heroic. I was also then starting to work
with teenagers and everyone was talking about initiation rights. So

(07:30):
my wife, my partner, Lauren Joseph, who's part of the
second edition of Making Good Men Great Surfing a New Masculinity,
challenged me and she says, you know, all this stuff
about going out into the wilderness and you know, being naked,
playing drums, throwing spears, And she was a bit tongue

(07:51):
in cheek, but I got where she was coming from.
She said, is that making men better partners, husbands and fathers?
And I actually had to sit back and go, I
don't know, I'm not really sure. What I did know
is that there was sort of an enhancement of some

(08:14):
narcissistic qualities in that, and so I went, we're missing
the point here. And then the wave died like all waves,
you know, it hit the shore and sort of fizzled
out for a bit. And then the next art of
this was seeing the emergence through social media of the

(08:38):
sort of warrior you know, the Andrew Tates, the Jordan
Peterson who professed to be involved in assuring men are
teaching them how to be men again, be masculine, you know,
you know.

Speaker 6 (08:56):
The.

Speaker 5 (08:58):
Term alpha wolf, alpha male kept being spread around, and
you know, amidst it all, I was working with men
who were also there were two types of men, men
who were emotionally disregulated and prone to acting aggressively in
relationships and occasionally violent, but also men who were actually

(09:19):
the victim of violence. And again that the notion of
being binary these are good men, these are bad men
started to feel less appropriate, and that I went, you know,
hang on a minute, you know, we need to look
at this historically, We need to look at this socially.

(09:43):
This is not something you know, that's inherently necessarily biological,
even because I also did some work with gay men
and that gave me a new perspective on that type
of masculinity as well. So they're sort of the the milestones.
And since then my thinkings, you know, really gone on

(10:05):
to an even richer plane.

Speaker 6 (10:10):
Let me just go back to something you just said
and sort of redirect. You said that there was you
were working with men who were emotionally dysregulated and prone
to violence, and some men who are the victims of violence,
and that these were sort of dichotomized as good men
and bad men. And you say, it didn't really look
that way. What do you mean by that? You know,

(10:30):
I mean condemning like domestic violence would seem to be
the most obvious thing. What are you seeing in the
contrast between those two groups.

Speaker 5 (10:37):
I think that stood out for me was that we
couldn't throw all the meaning to the same basket. And
so we're not talking about domestic violence. We talk about
the perpetrator, but often the perpetrator is actually a victim
in themselves. And so my propensity to avoid in binary

(11:03):
arguments or explanations really came to the fore there and
I said, this conversation is much much more complex. We
need to look at issues and this is where you know,
the intersection of our fields of knowledge. I think is
really important that the temptation to throw you know, the

(11:27):
psychiatric or psychological umbrella over this unless we can do that,
but we need also a richer rhetoric, a richer epistemology
around it. We really need to understand deeper than what
we do currently in the sort of political and even

(11:49):
medical field, because psychiatry has really gone into the whole
biological explanation of whatever it is that we as humans
do good, bad, or into for it. Mm hm Does
that make sense?

Speaker 6 (12:03):
Yeah, it does. I want I'm gonna I'm gonna come
back to this. I think I want to. I want
to give you another question that's sort of more on
the on the it comes from some stuff of yours
that I've read, And then I want to come back
to the question of richer understandings. But let's start with
let's start with a current understanding. And you've you've said
in some of you writing that men need to realize
that they've been that they've either been sold or they've

(12:24):
bought into a kind of toxic ideology that is hurting
themselves and hurting others. Can can you just sort of
walk us through what that toxic ideology is and and
sort of explain that in the way you see it today,
sort of before we go on to what needs to improve,
What are they what's the current state of that toxic ideology?

(12:44):
How do you understand that I'm.

Speaker 5 (12:46):
Going to throw this as sort of ancient history modern
history perspective. Okay, So in some of my writings I
point out that patriarchy, which is, you know, inherently the
sort of traditional masculine framework, originated somewhere around eight to
ten thousand years ago and it was ratified by Hammurabi

(13:10):
in the Codex. Where women were fundamentally marginalized in ownership
and lineage now became male oriented, male focused, and we
began to see the emergence of a very strict hierarchy

(13:31):
that would involve possessions basically both material but also social
was about power, and so the hierarchy was the thing
that men began to be socialized, and that you are
part of a power structure, and there is a status
attached to each of the layers, and it designates who

(13:54):
as and who hasn't. And then a very simplistic terms,
women didn't have it. They could now in many instances
be sold, even if it's only symbolically, like you know, Dowry,
you know I'm going to give you my daughter, you
give me twenty sheep. The way that hierarchy and status

(14:18):
were interconnected then was through the accumulation of wealth as
well as power. So wealth and power now became hand
in hand. And the pinnacle in some ways at that
level was that men were socialized to be competitive. So
we saw the emergence of you know, who's the best

(14:42):
in the field of sword play, the warrior games. You know,
the Assyrians and the Greeks did a really good job
of it. So these behaviors were the model for the
embodied mail in my view, and you had a lot
to do with my formulation around that that framework, because

(15:05):
you know, you pointed me into Pierre Doors for years Abbatus, right,
and this is where it clicked. And when yes, it's
not biological. Men are not biologically geared towards this, were
socialized into it. And I know this from observ observing

(15:26):
little boys and little girls. You know, I've seen enough
little boys sit back and play with dolls, right as
much as the next minute is they're playing with trucks
and rumbling with each other. And you know, watching my
daughter and my son at the age of you know,
four and two, she was as good at rumbling as

(15:47):
he was, you know, and it was like watching two
line cubs at it. So the whole notion of this
biological inherent way of being started to really erode, now
really truly erode. And so we've got this socialization with
those behaviors emerged the value set. So the value set

(16:13):
is about exclusive, about a hierarchy, it's about acquisition, it's
about competition. And the final one that the last piece
that slots in is when we don't get our way
figuratively speaking or literally, we become combative. And so for me,

(16:33):
it took the whole notion of Roant Connell's idea of
the hegemonic masculinity into a much more operational field because
out of that I could then attach it to Okay,
so part of this picture is emotional restriction, dominance, control,

(16:55):
and coercion. And so now we have a process where
we connect this socialization process with the psychological dynamic that
emerges from childhood onwards into the relational space. So what
do I do with other people in my field? Well,
if I'm a male, I'm going to be, you know,

(17:18):
needing to forge my space with other men. But I
also need to forge my space with women. So how
am I going to do that? Right? So the body
becomes very much an enactment of those values. So, you know,
the masculinize it's like, you know, watching three hundred. You know,
I've never seen so many six packs in all my life.

(17:40):
From the celluloid's green, I'm not sure whether the Greeks
were that packed. They were pretty cut, but I'm not
sure to that degree.

Speaker 6 (17:53):
Let me ask you about that. So that's sort of
the sociological historical, but you started to touch on there,
how does it actually wind up in individual psychology? Like, like,
how does this history wind up manifesting in an individual
man's habitusts or in his interactions with other people? And
that's I guess we want to sort of like, let's
let's bor in right on that real quick. In all
the work you're doing, both online podcasting but also in practice,

(18:19):
how is how are these misconceptions from hegemonic masculinity and
from the ideology, how are they showing up in individual's lives?
What do you see as like the way, because one
of the things I'm struck by is that you laid
out an ideal for masculinity that a lot of people
are going to fail on. They're not going to acquire
all the material goods, they're not going to acquire the
physical dominance all. So how do you see it in

(18:43):
actual men manifesting. How is it it stopping them? You
know what are they afraid of? What's holding them back?
When they come to you and they've got like, how
is this? How is this impacting men socer dynamically.

Speaker 5 (18:56):
One of the things that it's really clearly evident from chinages.
I've seen men who essentially suffer from the narcissistic word.
And it's not necessarily the father word, but it's close
to it. There's a number of ways, and I'm still
working and actually putting a very concise framework around that.

Speaker 6 (19:16):
What do you mean my narcissistic woman?

Speaker 5 (19:18):
Well, essentially in their socialization through attachment, let's focus on boys.
Boys develop a sense of self right, and they if
they're securely attached, they're going to feel pretty safe and
secure in the world, right, And as they get older,
their sense of self now enables them to feel safe

(19:43):
and secure in themselves, so they don't have, for example,
status anxiety. So if someone takes your business card away,
right and tears it up because you've been made redundant,
you're not going to go into inherently a fundamental crisis
and the sister crisis, because you know who you are

(20:05):
the job was a job. It's going to hurt, there
is no question about that, and it's going to take
some rethinking. But it isn't going to brigger depression, which
is inherently, you know, my neolistic response to myself. I
am nothing. And so in that process that manifests both physically,

(20:32):
emotionally and intellectually. Now, if we look at three levels,
so there's a conscious aspect of the mind, the subconscious,
and the unconscious. Most of our socialization inherently rests in
the unconscious. A lot of us aren't aware that we
performing masculine things would just do them and so, and

(20:53):
in of itself in a way, that's not a bad thing.
The problem is when we flide heavily into that space
where in order to feel okay, I need to essentially
internalize all my emotions, not express them, dominate other people,
control them, or coerce them, all all the above, right,

(21:17):
And if I can't do that, I'm not going to
feel good. Does that make sense?

Speaker 6 (21:21):
It does? I guess what you're saying is, but I'm
assuming for a lot of men they can't do that.
So you know they're they're not dominating them, they're not
dominating their families, They're not dominating the people around them
at work. So there must be a lot of unhappy
men who would be dominating but can't, or if this.

Speaker 5 (21:38):
Is reflected in our mental health statistics, so we have
this urging. You know, they're searching statistics in anxiety, depression, suicide,
which you know, I mean. I tend to see suicide
in men as an expression of rage not only against

(22:02):
themselves but against society's It's like, you know, of being emasculated.
I've never even got on to the run half the time.
And I say, I.

Speaker 6 (22:16):
Think the reason I bring that up is because so
often when like if I'm in a class and I'm
lecturing and I start talking about patriarchy for a lot
of them, and I think it falls flat because they
don't experience themselves as dominating. They experiencing themselves as like struggling, frustrated, scared,
you know, working there at butts off just to just
to stay you know, caught up with expectations. So I

(22:39):
think that the language of patriarchy for a lot of
men doesn't resonate because they don't like, I'm not in charge,
I'm not dominating. How is this? How am I part
of the the you know, the leading group of people
if I feel so lousy, and I think explaining that
to men is one of the ways that we understand
the price that bp for patriarchy, not just a yeah, you.

Speaker 5 (23:04):
Know, one of the sort of comments I sometimes maybe look.
All of us, to some degree or another, have drunk
the kool aid, except it came in a baby bottle,
and no one told us that what's in the baby
bottle is actually toxic. We just drank it. And some
of us grew up big and strong and you know,

(23:26):
but most of us sort of like struggled. You know,
there was a bully in the playground, and you know,
then I know, got into a relationship and my wife
bullied man. Didn't feel like I had anything to say,
partly because a lot of men in this conundrum actually
don't understand the difference between aggression and assertion because we
don't have those benchmarks. You know. The society media tells

(23:50):
us that we're the problem because we're violent and we're perpetrators,
and most of us sitting back, but I'm not like that,
and then we get hammered for saying that. You know,
It's like you can't win, and what we get there
is in psychology, what we're talking about learned helplessness. There's

(24:11):
no way out for me, firstly to repair my narcissistic wound,
which really needs repair, because my sense of self or
ego is being damaged in the socialization. I'm struggling to
express my emotions. Half the time, I don't even have
the words, and then, you know, out of frustration, you know,

(24:34):
I might smash a plate and then everyone freaks out.
But we're also told directly indirectly that you know, don't
step outside of yourself and ask for help. That's really bad.
You know, don't just think you're a pussy. So where
do we go? Now? That's gotten a bit better in
the reaching out for help beer, but you know, in

(24:55):
my practice, I still have to encourage men just to
get medical help because a lot of times there's many
coal issues that they're not addressing, and a lot of
times those medical issues are attached to ideals of masculinity.
You know, any sort of a rectl, dysfunctional, or anything
to do with genitalia is an ASSHOLEM.

Speaker 6 (25:18):
I want to come back to because I think there
is a kind of double bind, you know, damned if
you do, damned if you don't. Around Like the expression,
the expression man flu bothered me before I really understood.
It bothered me because it seemed like it was mocking
men for getting sick and allegedly complaining too much. But

(25:39):
we know from statistics that men don't go see doctors
as much as they should and they you know, And
so I was always really bothered by this man flu
because I felt like it was shaming men from having
symptoms and then simultaneously saying you're a wuss if you complain,
but also, you know, don't get sick at the same time.

Speaker 5 (26:00):
Yeah, And that's exactly it is shaming men. And here's
the reason behind it. We know from lots of research
in infant attachment UX plugs do the whole bunch of
stuff on this. It's really good work. Always tend to
be under nurtured or over nurtured. So you can imagine

(26:22):
being a boy who's growing arm and he loves mummy dearly,
and mummy loves him dearly, but you're not getting a
lot of what you actually want. It's going to make
you feel safe and secure, and that's sort of by
and large absent, So he's not getting The boy's not
only not getting a lot of it from mum, but
he's not getting a lot of it from dad, which

(26:43):
is more common than the bit with mom. So as
we get older, a lot of us, as men, enroll
our intimate partners as maternal rather than keeping them as
a passion. That is, I lust after this woman. We
slip into this, she's got to care for me. And

(27:04):
if you've been over nurtured, God forbid any woman that
gets into a relationship with that dude, because she can
never do enough to make him feel careful. So I
see that stuff with a man flu as being part
of that low grade give me, give me, give me.

(27:25):
But it's not about the flu. It's about emotion. It's
about a needy you know, hold me, nurure me. The
only problem is for most women that's a definite turnoff.

Speaker 6 (27:37):
Well not just that, but also it's like trying to
get a problem solved by acting asking to solve a
different problem and helping. You know, you're sort of misdirecting
the very person you're asking for help. I need your
emotional help, but I'm going to ask you. I'm going
to complain about physical stuff. And so it's this kind
of mixed signals of I tell you I want one thing,
if I tell you anything at all, and I'm actually

(27:59):
trying to get something else, which you know, it can
be a it's sort of again a double bind. I'm
not going to get what I want, and so I'm
gonna be frustrated and feel uncared for.

Speaker 5 (28:10):
Yeah. Absolutely, and so the other thing that we know
biologically speaking, and I'm not sure if this is an artifact,
I think to think it's an artifact of our socialization
is that by and large, men have a lower pain
threshold than women. Now some people attribute that to childbirthing
and all that sort of stuff, but it's true. But

(28:33):
there are men who are extraordinarily resilient with respect to pain.
You know, I never thought I had a very good
pain threshold because my mother was out of the box
with that stuff. And then you know, having recently had
some surgeries, you know, the feedback I got from surgeness was, man,

(28:57):
I'm not sure how you're doing this, but someone else
would be taking to wask the amount of it, and
I don't want the med's just like keeping through this.
But I also know, like I said in my grandsons,
for example, there's a difference in how pain is dealt
with between miles and I'll come back to that idea.

(29:17):
That one is we can't overgeneralize in this space. If
we're going to make an impact, we can't make a
binary because it doesn't give us a strong enough, a
powerful enough explanation.

Speaker 6 (29:30):
So, you know, you've just done like a whole bunch
of questions for me. Let me just jump to one,
which is what you just touched on, which is the
individualization question and not over generalizing. Yeah, because because you've
written you know that in your work you're about helping
each man find their own happiness, their own solutions. But

(29:50):
how do you how do you balance you know, giving
advice and guidance with focusing on each individual's unique, separate path.
How do you balance that? Are they two different things? Audiences?
Are they you know, do you do something very different
in your podcasting than you do in your counseling the
psychotherapy or how do you deal with that variation but

(30:13):
yet at the same time wanting to talk to the
broader population.

Speaker 5 (30:17):
Really good question. Let me just think that through a
little bit, because there is a difference. You know, on
this show we talk a lot about living with purpose,
flowing down, paying attention, and being intentional about the choices
we make every day. Because when we simplify the noise
around us, we can better hear what really matters, empathy, connection,

(30:39):
and showing up as the best version of ourselves. That's
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(31:49):
Inspire Change. That's Distilled Union dot com with promo code
Inspired Change. The checkout let me I do talk in
generalities when I podcast, It's about patterns. In part, it's
one of the things that I know helps us in
terms of resilience is if we become good at pattern recognition,

(32:13):
and the other bit is if we are good at
meta cognition thinking about thinking. Right. If we got those
two skills, they're good tools to have in the box.
Some people can overdo it, though, and so that brings
about some individual issues. In a podcast, I'm trying to
alert people to think about the bigger picture and how

(32:35):
it connects individually. In therapy, my main concern is identifying
how this particular person has embodied their socialization where there's
a rupture and what sort of repair does that person
need r and me telling them isn't going to fix it.

(32:55):
I have to help them fundamentally explore around that and
occasionally I do give advice. So in my work I
talk about psycho education. So one of the things that
I do do psycho education with is the physiology. If
you only get for our sleep a day, you're going

(33:16):
to be sleep deprived. And this is what it's going
to mean. Okay, so here's the reason I'm going to
look at you and go and you up the amount
of hours you get for sleep and if you can't,
we need to look at why not. So drinking you know,
half a dozen studies before you go to bed is
definitely going to interfere with your quality of sleep. So

(33:38):
there is psycho education on a psychodynamics, a psychological point
of view. It's the better I can be with that
person to help them come to their own understanding of
themselves in terms of what's impacted them. Things like, you know,
what did it feel like when your mom and dad

(34:01):
broke up? You know, describe that to me? And when
you think about that, where in your body do you
experience it? If at all? And so it's this, you know,
I took a lot about peeling the onion. You know,
let's go through. You know, we eventually get to the
soft call, and not freaking out about the soft call.

Speaker 6 (34:24):
I'm going to redirect you completely. I was looking at
some of your stuff and you you've sort of positioned
a lot of your work as intentionally and explicitly a
political and a religious You sort of stayed away from
those things. And I'm going to ask you because today
I think a lot of the discussion of masculinity is
both tremendously political and shot through with all kinds of

(34:46):
religious assumptions right now. And that's in Australia, in the
United States elsewhere as well. So why do you try
to draw this line up and say, you know, I
want to make it a political and a religious And
how has that affected the way you go into this territory,
the manisphere, given that it's so politically charged and you know,

(35:06):
so how do you deal with that trying to stay
away from religion and politics? The reason I'm originally from
the States, you know, your audience may or may not know,
but and watching the way that the manisphere and masculine
discussions of masculine online has sort of morphed into politics
by other means, and it's morphed into right versus left,

(35:28):
and women versus men, and Republican versus Democrat and the States,
So how and why and how do you try to
keep and we'll come back to that. Just still leave
with that, what are you doing with it?

Speaker 5 (35:40):
So listening to you, the first thing that stands out
for me is you beautifully demonstrated the binary polarization. Right. So,
and this comes out of you know, gestalt therapy in particular,
but whenever there is an internal conflict and there's tension
between two polarities, you get anxiety. Right, So psychodynamically we're

(36:04):
in a constant state of anxiety as a result of
polarizing things. Right now, I'm going to be very blunt
in many respects. If there are two things that have
fucked humanity over really well, it's religion and politics. I
cannot get away from that no matter how I slice

(36:26):
andze it. And I know this offends some religious people,
and I know it offends some people in politics, but
politics doesn't need to be politics. And what I mean
by that is that we can have a process, a
social process that doesn't create this binary you know Westminster

(36:48):
system where we have to fight each other because we're
in opposition, because it's competitive, it's not collaborative. But immediately,
and this is the same with you know, my god's
better than your God. But what if we had both gods? Well,
we can't have that really. I mean the Romans sort
of tried it with Christianity, but they didn't didn't flowed.

(37:11):
I mean Rome, Rome had lots and lots of different
religious cults, mythraism, you know, the cult of vices and
so on. They actually worked that quite well as long
as you paid your tax and you know, paid your
tribute to the Senate or the emperor as it was.
Later you were okay. It's when you tried to overturn

(37:31):
the system that they got a bit nasty about it,
lot called sedition, get it. So, so the idea why
I go into I am fundamentally a political and a
religious is because I need a higher order of conceptualization philosophically,

(37:52):
ethically and morally. And so that led me to in
a sense being a human, to get existentialist. You know,
if I'm going to put it bluntly, I'm not necessarily
even that interested in gender issues like man, woman, I go,
if we can preserve the human being in this the

(38:12):
ontology of being human, I think we're in a much
better space, you know. But we've got what we have,
and that is we actually it's actually useful to understand
our gender, know better, whether that be male or female,
and how that influences it's relating. I think it's you know,

(38:36):
it's because of this insistence of making gender political that
we've got a lot of problems about you know, what's
okay and what's not okay? Does that make sense? Does
that answer that question?

Speaker 6 (38:48):
It makes sense. I want to I want to go
back to the religion piece, because we've talked a bit
about a values orientation. Yeah, and I think for a
lot of I mean, maybe traditionally when I grew up,
I grew up in the Catholic tradition and in a
lot of my community, you know, the value and morals

(39:09):
were largely given not just by parents, but also by
this church and religious education and Sunday school, and that
was all sort of focused. And there's a lot of
folks who point to the decreasing rate of church attendance
and the decreasing influence of religion in people's lives. Not
every community, some communities broadly in Australia, it's a demographic trend,

(39:33):
and say, well, this is the problem. People feel like
they're lost and isolated and alone because they don't have
this community. And how would you respond to that, you know,
saying is that community interesting but obsolete? Is it something
that there are elements of that we would you know,
possibly create a new institutions or what do you do

(39:56):
with that sense of lost community? Sense of lost especially
around moral and values and orientation.

Speaker 5 (40:02):
You could have a conversation about this for a long time. Okay,
I want you to understand, I want anybody listening to
this understanding I'm not rapidly militantly atheist. I have a
strong sense of spirituality which is both relational and reflexive,

(40:24):
and so my belief in community is really important. And
I would in a way have no issue at all
if religions stayed out of politics and politics stayed out
of religion. But it's almost like it's the same beast
in different claues. And so the formation of community as

(40:49):
an agenda, and that agenda is to adhere to a
particular both religious or theocratic, but also a political framework,
and press get themselves into difficulty with that often because

(41:10):
you know, they're the conservative or progressive in a way,
you know. And it's interesting because in the Catholic Church,
I mean, if I go back into church history, I
completely identify with Francis of ASSISI no problem at all, dude,
it's great. I equally, you know, if we could strip

(41:33):
away all of the Roman stuff that shape what Christianity
is today, I have no problem with the teachers of
the Christ none at all. Very communitarian, you know, in
in you know, I'm sure in the United States that
call him a socialist, anarchic socialist, but he was. He

(41:56):
was a good Jew at the same time, but he
wanted to elevate Judaism out of the san Heedra, out
of the temple mm hm and gifted to the people.
And so the the the issue that we have come today,
given we're at a crossroads and there's this resurgence of autocracy.

(42:19):
Both religion and politics is factionalized in that way, and
the autocrats seem to be getting a stronger hold on it. Fortunately,
the Catholic Church keeps coming up with the antithesis, and

(42:42):
we had both like transance, you know, and I appreciate that.

Speaker 6 (42:47):
I'm appreciated Originally, Yeah, I get, I mean because the
reason I bring this up is, I mean, it's it
seems to me right now, there there's competition for both
diagnosed seeing the problem. So people can agree depression rates,
depression are high. Too many men are self harming, you know,
there's too many young men who seem to be rudderless

(43:09):
and diagnosing the problem and the solution. There's a real
competition out there in the world. And one is they
just need that old timey religion, you know, they just
need that old you know, whether it's fire and brimstone,
or they just need that, you know, and it'll straighten
them out, or they just need to go back. Like

(43:29):
there's a whole competition for the meaning of these sacred ideas,
and for a lot of us it's led us to
just get out of out of at organized religion because
we've brought up against somebody who used religion in a
way to try to smash down individual differences and try
to impose their point of view on everyone or and

(43:51):
it's it's I think it's causing both the crisis of religion,
but it's also making religion super important as a point
of struggle.

Speaker 5 (43:59):
You know, all the religions, the main monotheistic religions from
my studies, have had a mystical school in it. So
in Judaism it's the Kabbala in Islam, and in the

(44:20):
Catholic Church there a number of characteristics. Yeah, and I
think that's the core of we need to get into
the core of what this is. And then fundamentally it
is in my view in my reading, technically about how
is it that we can be the best human being
that we can possibly be. That is always going to

(44:42):
be relational it's always going to be irreflexive. It is
never hierarchical. And so if we apply this to gender,
the Roman Church hijacked Christianity away from humanity and placed
it into the patriarchy. Yeah, and that's happened in Islam

(45:05):
as well.

Speaker 6 (45:05):
I mean, I totally agree with you. I mean, as
a man you know, an older man who's married, I mean,
I know that in some ways, my relationship with my
wife is the most challenging relationship I have. It's the
place where my biggest fears come out to be addressed
and I have to deal with them. It's the one
I care about the most, and hierarchy would be incompatible

(45:27):
with that. Imposing my will on my wife is incompatible
with the fact that that's my place to grow the
way I.

Speaker 5 (45:35):
See it, And that's what the evangelicals are asking. And
if you go into Islam, it's the radical version, of
fundamentalist version that asks exactly the same thing.

Speaker 6 (45:49):
Which I find it so disturbing to think that this
which should be the person who's helping you to grow
the most, because they are demanding your trust, the biggest
investment of your life, your future together, all these things,
and yet these ideologies say dominate this person. That's just

(46:13):
it's simply incompatible to me with growth.

Speaker 5 (46:15):
Yeah, I agree, I agree. And this is where I
come back to, is you know, so why am I
spending all this time on the issues of masculinity, being male,
being a man in our society. It's because part of
the process conceptually is to help us to become more

(46:36):
human and more humane, where values of equality and being
distributive and being inclusive and being collaborative are expressed, not
just given, you know, acid verbal approval, but it's my

(46:57):
behavior on a daily basis in all my relationships.

Speaker 6 (47:02):
Mm hmm. That's really good. When when you're working in
counseling and you've got a patient client, how how do
you help men to develop their emotional responsiveness and their
ability to express and their and their resilience, especially given

(47:22):
how society trains men to suppress their emotions, And how
do you because you talked about that the line I
think you said with some of like someone's they don't
even know what they're feeling, how do you help people
to get it?

Speaker 5 (47:34):
Like?

Speaker 6 (47:34):
Is there practices? Are there techniques?

Speaker 5 (47:37):
Absolutely agreed, So some of this kind of I did.
I did a little bit of work, not as much
as I would have liked, and there were some issues
around that. But semantic psychotherapy okay, and it's focused on
the body, right. Unfortunately, my training in Gestold, which was
really extensive, also brought that home.

Speaker 6 (47:58):
And would you be briefly explain those two just so
that I don't know if your listeners know that.

Speaker 5 (48:02):
Yeah, okay, So semantic psychotherapy is a psychotherapy that works
fundamentally through the body into the emotion and then you know,
into the our narrative, our story we tell ourselves.

Speaker 6 (48:15):
So you're supposed to really learn to attend to your body.

Speaker 5 (48:20):
Yes, okay.

Speaker 6 (48:22):
How's gestalt different from that?

Speaker 5 (48:24):
Not a huge amount, except semantic psychotherapists are a lot
more hands on. And this is where this is where
we run into trouble these days when we have injunctures
about touching the client right. It's a bit unfortunately like
teachers when a kid falls over, they can't give the
kid are hard because it's not accepted and that has

(48:47):
all sorts of ramifications which we need another podcast or so.
So those two things really and my work in working
with PTSD, where you know bestl vunder cults is the
body keeps the score. Emotional traumas are stored physiologically, psychologically,

(49:08):
and socially, and it's a reflexive thing and there's a
cycle in this, and so part of the work is
when someone starts telling the story. As a therapist, I'm
an active tool in that process, right, so, you know,
and it could be as simple as you know, what's
coming up for me as I'm listening to this person, Oh,

(49:30):
I'm feeling a bit tense around my midriff or what's
that about? Oh, I recognize out of that story in myself.
So that so that might lead me to go, just
stop from ament and just reflect on your body, what
is it that you're feeling and where are you feeling that?

(49:50):
And most of the time, very few of us ever
do that on our own accord. You know, I might
sit there watching a movie that makes me teary, but
unlike women who let it out, most of us men
sort of suck it back up and thinks your jaw
and hold our breath and you know, at the end
of the movie, go, oh, I'm never going to get

(50:13):
that hour and a half back. And so in therapy,
you know, as a therapist, as a male therapist, I
need to have spent time, both in my training and
in my therapy exploring my own unfinished stuff, because we
all got it, and so it allows me to recognize

(50:34):
that and not inhibit. So when my client starts crying,
I'm not going to redirect him and go, oh, by
the way, how did it go with that job interview
that had the other day. I'm going to go just
let this be in touch with it, let it happen,
bringing it out.

Speaker 6 (50:53):
It's true in conversation. So often we help each other
to avoid true emotions. You know, like if somebody starts
to get choked up, you almost feel like what you're
supposed to do is to lighten the mood. That's your
you know, like a job. But in fact, in counseling,
you're in therapy, you'd be in the opposite.

Speaker 5 (51:10):
I mean, one of the requests that I get from
a lot of guys, especially in mid thirties, late twenties,
mid thirties, is I need some advice. Oh god, that's
I'm curious. What is it that makes you think that
you do need advice from me? And they go, well,
isn't that your job? Well, in certain situations it could be,

(51:32):
but at the moment, I haven't heard what the issue is.
You know, how about you share what it is that
you're sort of grappling with and let's see where we
go with that.

Speaker 6 (51:44):
So in terms of in terms of like how how
do you help people become more responsive and more is
one of the things that's actually to pay more attention
to themselves. Ironically, Yeah, yeah, that's that's really interesting in
a frame.

Speaker 5 (51:56):
And again there's like in my therapy is the several frameworks.
One of the frameworks is about that whole notion of
what is it that I'm looking to not necessarily achieve
but experience, right, And so when I get that question directly,

(52:18):
I go, I can give you a simple answer, but
it's a lot more challenging to experience. But here's the answer.
I want you to be more self aware. I want
you to be more flexible, more adaptable, and become more resilient.
That way, you and I can become redundant in each
other's lives.

Speaker 6 (52:38):
That's actually that could be a whole of the question.
How do you deal with that? You know, my goal
is to make it so that we stop having these conversations,
not because you're sick of it, but because you've learned
so much from the process.

Speaker 5 (52:50):
Yeah. Yeah, and it's embedded in spiritual practice, the whole
notion of enlightenment. You know, when you find the border
on the middle of the road.

Speaker 6 (53:00):
We have to make them obsolete in this learning. One
of the reason I want to sort of bring this
up is I wanted to touch on a couple of
specialized issues. I don't about how we're doing on time.

Speaker 5 (53:09):
But I'll give it a little bit more time.

Speaker 6 (53:12):
I was going to say that because I think one
of the things that's interesting right now in masculinity is
models of expression that are not suppressed emotion. So it's
quite the opposite. Whether it's the influence of reality TV
or I think like professional wrestling, the Trump presidency, there's
this kind of like confrontational, could say, whiny, aggressive, you know, quiet,

(53:39):
piggy hyper masculinity that's being celebrated to kind of like
you know, talk to the hand. You know, there's like
just a lot of different models for it, of like
trash talking. So how would you advise somebody who is
finding themselves or others in their lives becoming more combative
or more expressive emotions, but in ways that you think

(53:59):
are not creating connection or creating vulnerability, but the opposite,
they're they're they're about dominating. So maybe we get a
patient there who's sort of you find is maybe doing
this talk give me.

Speaker 5 (54:13):
I'll give you. Well, I have these examples usually on
a daily basis. That's number one. Okay, So our propensity
to move towards aggression is based usually on fear or
on that narcissistic word. So there's a number of ways
coming in here. So you know, the question might be,

(54:34):
so do you understand the difference between being assertive and
being aggressive? And you see the difference between you know,
being present without being controlling or coersive, you know, like
you know, if your partner says, honey, not tonight, do
you persist in badgering her until she goes, oh a fox,

(54:57):
let's do it. Uh. And that's sort of example. I'm
quite blunt in that sort of situation, and usually you
get some thinking, oh, well, you know, you're just got
to be a bit persistent. But at some point there's
difference between being persistent and being coersive. You know. My
rale of thumb is usually once twice and then I'll
sort of go okay, well, fair, enough. But what comes

(55:19):
up for a lot of meaning in those sort of
situations is a sense of rejection, so an unstable relationship
with self or abandonment, which is utder that process as well.
So they feel them they have to get their need
met now, and that's not the immediate needs gratification do

(55:43):
in some mean it translates into aggression and enrage and
the violence. And you know, fortunately the usually the guys
that I see aren't at that level, but a lot
of them have said to me, I could see myself
getting there and it scared me, and that's why I've

(56:05):
come to see you. And so for me that is
like a huge step into awareness because they've now detached
from my immediate need that needs to be gratified into
I can delay gratification, but I need to understand me better.
And so yeah, so the other part of it is

(56:29):
looking at you know, so where else in your life
do you get really really frustrated and in what way?
And how do you experience that? If you could, what
would you do about it? Because a lot of guys
are not happy being easily triggered. Over time, I've had
lots of men who are also fathers. I don't know
what it is, but my son, really he knows all

(56:51):
my buttons. At the moment, we're in a Mexican standoff.
He and I don't communicate. Oh, that's really sad, he guys,
I know. But what do I do? Well? What is
it that most of your communication consists of? Well, usually
it's about checking homework or has he done his chroll?

(57:13):
So you put up d Macca? Okay, So how much
of the time do you spend checking in with him
about how he is and what does he need for
me today? And the Usually I never have that conversation.

Speaker 6 (57:25):
Ine, have we got time for one more double barrel question?
That something very specific to So first of all, you've
recently started in anthropology, and I want to know what
you hope to get from anthropology and what are you

(57:46):
hoping for the next I mean, you've been doing this
work for a long time forty years.

Speaker 5 (57:50):
What gives you.

Speaker 6 (57:50):
Hope about the future of your work but also about
this area, this field? So I guess I'm wondering if
is there an anthropology part of the future for you?
And what do you see that's given you hope for
the next five to ten years?

Speaker 5 (58:06):
Okay, that's a really good question. So first, why anthropology,
Because I think if I go and take this into
your psychology, they're going to want me. And I'm making
an assumption here. I do not know this for sure,
but having scanned the psychological research, they want me to

(58:26):
look at this problem through a psychological lens. And my
view is that that's insufficient. You know, It's a bit
like if you know, if I sit to a chemist
or a physicist, you know, H two I consists of
hygiens and oxygen, which bit makes it wet right, And

(58:48):
to me, that's the same as going I only I
can only look at this through the psychological lens. Yeah,
but what about the social aspect of it, the ethnograph
aspect of it. So that's one part. The other part
of it is that, for whatever reason, but I think
inherently is because my work's effective, I have a seriously

(59:14):
long waiting list, and unfortunately, what I hear from through
stories is when I see men who have tried several
different therapists with whom they haven't clicked with. And part
of my work is that I don't do anything until
I feel like I've got a relationship with that person.
There's some click, and that might happen in the first

(59:37):
fifteen minutes, and quite often it takes somewhere between fifteen
and twenty minutes, and then I go, I get this feeling,
and I'll go, Okay, we're connecting, Because to me, the
therapeutic relationship fundamentally is everything. You can be fantastic as

(59:57):
an analyst or as a gestult therapist or but unless
you can forge that human connection, none of that's really
gonna have it. It'll help, but it won't be penetrating.
And so so that's one aspect of the other part
of it is doing what I do, and because I

(01:00:20):
tend to think about how I think and how to
apply that to what I'm doing. Is there are things
that we've left out of the build of knowledge because
we've only looked at it through one lens and not
multiple lenses. And I think I can I can add
something to the body of knowledges that we have that

(01:00:41):
one hopefully gets us to talk to each other. Collaborative,
not competitive. You know, oh, look at those anthropologists. There
are a bunch of weirdos hanging around in the push.
And then you know, the psychologists are like pseudo scientists.
But you know as a psychiatrist, well you know, walking

(01:01:03):
prescription pads. None of that's useful. It represents the problem
that we got at hand, which is a form of discrimination.
It's an either or dialos and I think we need
to abandon that. And I'm not saying we need to
dismountle faculties or schools. I'm not saying is we need
to come together and talk. We need to have in

(01:01:26):
a way for one of a better word, although they've
come in somewhat disrepute in some areas, think tanks that
bring this together. I mean, we've let the tech bros
run rampant with no guardrails. There should have been anthropologists, psychologists,
social sociologists, have you socialists as well as well. But

(01:01:47):
in a and chewing this over, just because you can
do something doesn't mean you should. That's you know Oppenheimer
come to that conclusion. Does that help? So? I think
the legacy piece for me because I know my age,
hopefully I've got in a more than ten years in me,

(01:02:10):
you know, maybe fifteen. I mean I did a masterclass
with George Rossmo when he was in his early eighties.
It was legally blind, but the dude was as sharp
as anything. So that's that's my sense. And if I
can coach teach, you know, I'd like to do that.

Speaker 6 (01:02:28):
Yeah, that's great. I mean, I'm gladly part of it.
I mean to me, it's one of the facts of
our species distinctive evolutionary capacity that we you know, we
live our lives. We gain so much through experience, and
unlike another species, when basically the next ra actually punched
the reset button, not a lot of that gets passed on.
We're in a position to try to actually build ladders

(01:02:50):
for each other where you know, the next generation doesn't
have to make every single mistake we made. We can
we can hopefully get them to a stage where they
can make some interesting and new mistakes and instead of
the same ones we've been making. And that's the key
to that is is thinking about how do I pass
this on or how do I help other people to

(01:03:11):
do what I did? Quicker come to the realizations even
if they even if they have to experience it themselves firsthand,
maybe instead of having to make that mistake ten times,
they'll make it once or twice and they'll read what
I wrote and realize what's happening and move on more quickly.
I mean, to me, that's part of that. It's almost
like evolutionary.

Speaker 7 (01:03:29):
Yeah, I agree, And especially in psychotherapy and in psychology,
I think that if we are literally going to step
into someone else's world, someone else's habitus, we need to
have really checked in with ourselves through the work.

Speaker 5 (01:03:47):
And the work is psychotherapeutic in a way.

Speaker 8 (01:03:52):
You know where I know myself enough to know where
my potential blind spots might be a continuing relationship with someone,
not as a like hierarchical supervision, but more is a
you know, a peer with whom marche experience and knowledge

(01:04:15):
with well that.

Speaker 6 (01:04:16):
That to me is part of what anthropology. I mean.
David Graeber was heavy influence on me, one of the
guys I knew in grad school, and he talks about
how anthropology in some ways is a practice of freedom
because you don't have to imagine alternatives. You can actually
just go look at them. There's lots of alternatives out
there in the world if you just pay attention and listen,

(01:04:36):
so you can sort of get a sense for the
you know, the option set a bit better by looking
at other societies, looking at other ways of doing psychotherapy.
You know that you can You don't have to invent
everything anew, you can learn from each other. So I
feel like I should. I feel like I should give
a thank you to Kunter, but we've traded hats in this.

(01:04:59):
This on my podcast.

Speaker 5 (01:05:04):
Yeah, excellent, lovely being here. But my thanks to you
as well. I mean this is this is a great
idea of yours. I really enjoyed it, you know, you
know it's it's interesting on some level. You know, I'm
quite private, but I love sharing you know what I

(01:05:28):
think and how I think, and I like being challenged
as well. Someone turns around and says, well, I think
you're full of ship, then I'll go, okay, let me
let me in. Give me an understanding of why you
say that. That doesn't tell me anything, you know, So
if you can step back and try not to be

(01:05:48):
personally insulting, then we can have a conversation.

Speaker 6 (01:05:52):
What piece of this doesn't ring true? What fact have
I not taken into consideration I need to digest?

Speaker 5 (01:06:00):
Yeah, our Greg, thank you very much. I really appreciate it.
And as all wise, if this has triggered a little
bit of inspiration, by all means, share that with others
and as always inspired change and cape on caping on.

Speaker 9 (01:06:17):
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hope more Labs makes a difference for you and we
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our contact information. Hello to all our listeners. We thank
you for tuning in and promoting positive social change. This
makes you a part of Gunther's efforts in transforming not
only men's lives but lives in general, and we are

(01:08:06):
grateful you have joined us. This week, we're taking a
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(01:08:27):
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(01:08:48):
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Please remember if you want to share your story of
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(01:09:09):
and most importantly, please keep inspiring positive social change.

Speaker 4 (01:09:14):
Love to hear from you, and if you interested, please
check out my work on www Dot Gotosboda dot com
or www Dot gutman grit dot com.

Speaker 3 (01:09:31):
Thank you for listening to Inspire Change a broadcast. This
strives to educate, motivate, and empower men to challenge traditions
of masculinity. For more information on the making Good Men
Great movement, or for individual or group coaching sessions with Gunter,
visit Goodmangrade dot com.