Inspire Change with Gunter 7-312 The Truth About Masculinity, Human Nature & Equality

In this conversation of Inspire Change, Gunter Swoboda delves into the profound question of human nature and the concept of equality, challenging the traditional narratives surrounding masculinity. He explores the anthropological evidence that suggests humans are not inherently competitive or hierarchical but are capable of living as equals. Swoboda emphasizes the importance of reframing masculinity from a perspective of dominance to one of equality, particularly in relationships and therapy. He encourages men to confront their fears of equality and to embrace a more authentic way of being that fosters genuine connections with others. Takeaways - Humans have a deep capacity for egalitarian relating. The narrative of masculinity often promotes competition and dominance. Therapy should be a collaborative space of equality. Men are often conditioned to see vulnerability as weakness. Reframing masculinity involves recognizing the capacity for equality. Equality is not just a concept but a lived experience. The journey to equality requires confronting internalized fears. Men can grow into deeper parts of their nature. Being a good man is about being fully human together. The work of men's development is about realigning with egalitarian values. Sound Bites - "What kind of animal are we actually?" "We're trained to compete." "Being a good man is not about being on top." 

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GRATITUDE MENTIONS & CLOSING -
Hello to all our listeners, we thank YOU for tuning in and promoting positive social change. This makes you a part of Gunter’s efforts in transforming not only men's lives but lives in general and we are grateful you have joined us. This week we are taking a look at the Global Listeners List and we would like to share our gratitude with our listeners in Cameroon . You brought Africa all the way to #6 on the Global Listeners List! Congratulations! We thank you so much for your continued support and we appreciate your efforts to support positive social change! I, DeVonna Prinzi the Co-Exec Producer and our Show-runner Miranda Spigener-Sapon sincerely thank you and ask that you please take the time to like, follow, subscribe, and share as your efforts make a difference to everyone here at Inspire Change with Gunter. Please remember If you want to share your story of social change, feel free to reach out to the show directly. Please see the show-notes for our contact information. As always thank you to each and every one of our listeners, and most importantly please keep Inspiring positive social change.


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Gunter Swoboda and Lorin Josephson's neo-noir/supernatural thriller novel Amulets of Power, Book I A Brian Poole Mystery is officially ON SALE EVERYWHERE you like to get book, but if you want a discount please consider ording direct. ANY LISTENER who order's direct will get a surprise gift. https://shop.ingramspark.com/b/084?params=3RoOA6kVQ7ZgmqSK9LdnvNyDAZZFsg9IMaLUaprPgXK

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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, the 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 renowned psychologists, author, and speaker Gunter Swubota.
This is Inspire Change.

Speaker 3 (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 present. Come everybody to another episode of Inspire

(02:02):
Change with Gunta.

Speaker 4 (02:04):
I'm your host. Welcome back to Inspire Change with Gunta. Today,
I want to step back from the day to day
noise about masculinity and talk about something more profound. Not
another argument about toxic masculinity or real men, but a
question that sits underneath all of that. What kind of

(02:28):
animal are we actually? Are we really built for hierarchy
and domination or are we built to live as equals?
That's not a purely academic question. It shapes how men
human beings see themselves, how we show up in relationships,

(02:52):
and what we even think is possible in therapy and
in life. Now is I've been reading a book by
philosopher Ance Miller called The Roots of equality. It looks
at anthropology, at the lives of hunter gatherer societies and
ask a simple but powerful question, how did human beings

(03:17):
come to live as equals? And what does that mean
for us? Now? I want to bring that conversation into
the heart of making good men great because we've been
told a story, true or false, it's a story. Now.

(03:38):
Most of us have grown up with a very familiar
story about human nature. The story goes something like this.
Deep down, humans are competitive, selfish, iierarchical. Life is a
constant struggle for dominance. Men are naturally aggressive. If we

(04:01):
are not kept in line by strong leaders and strict rules,
everything falls abart. You know versions of this, Boys will
be boys. It's a dog eat dog world.

Speaker 1 (04:15):
Only the strong survive.

Speaker 4 (04:18):
Neoliberalism has taken this to another level. Now hereing lies
the problem. When you actually look at the anthropological record,
the picture is far more complicated. There are many small
scale societies where people have gone to enormous effort to

(04:40):
stop anyone becoming the big man, the tyrant, the bully.
They share food, they keep wealth from piling up. They
tease and undercut anybody who starts getting too full of himself.
Some anthropologists call this reverseddance. The group bands together to

(05:03):
make sure no one individual can dominate everyone else. In
other words, humans are capable of building fiercely egalitarian worlds,
not just pyramids of power. So straight away, the simple
story that men are naturally dominant and hierarchical gets really wobbly.

Speaker 5 (05:30):
Now.

Speaker 4 (05:30):
One of the things I like about Miller's work is
that he doesn't treat equality as a slogan on a
protest signe or on a paragraph in a constitution. He
treats equality as a lived way of being together. In
many foraging societies, nobody can lock up the food supply,

(05:52):
nobody owns the water. If you are hungry, you can
walk over and eat it. If someone tries to to hoard,
there are social tools to deal with that. People move camp,
they share, they mock the hoarder, they walk away from
would be tyrants. Equality here is not everybody gets the

(06:15):
same salary. It's not that one can easily put their
boot on someone else's back. Now think about how far
that this is from the way many men are shaped
in today's society. We are trained to compete, to climb,

(06:36):
to measure ourselves against other men. We're told our worth
depends on being on top, or at least not being
at the bottom. Inside that becomes what I call the
masculine introject, an inner voice that says, if you're not winning,

(06:56):
you are nothing. If you show weakness, you will be crushed.
If you let go of control, you'll be humiliated. Now,
put that inner critic inside a man who grew up
in a family that rewarded toughness and control. Then train
him as a therapist in a system that still quietly

(07:18):
values expert distance, and you have a problem. So here
I'm focusing essentially on the therapist. But think of this
of all men at different levels of our society. Now,
the capacity for equality is still there, but it's covered
over by layers of fear and shame and performance. So

(07:44):
what does this really now mean for any new masculinity?
And you might well ask, so what has all this
got to do with a new masculinity and with making
good men great? Now? For me, it changes the starting point.
If you believe men are inherently dominating, than any call

(08:05):
for change sounds like a moral lecture. Be less toxic,
be nicer, be more sensitive. Many many men hear that
as an attack on something essential in them. If you
start from the idea that humans, including men, have a
deep capacity for egalitarian relating, then the conversation shifts. The

(08:30):
question becomes what has blocked that capacity in you? Where
did you learn that being a man means being above others,
or at least never below. Who taught you that a
quality is weakness? It also means that when I talk
about making good men great, I'm not asking you to

(08:53):
become some abstract ideal. I'm really asking you to recover
and grow into something we know humans can do, and
humans have been living as an equal, not a ruler,
not a doormat, but an equal. In practical terms, that

(09:13):
shows up in three areas. Firstly, in your intimate relationships,
can you really sit with your partner as an equal
human being, with your fears and needs on the table,
instead of armoring up as a stoic problem solver. Secondly,
what about your friendships with men? Can you step out

(09:36):
of constant banter as defense and occasionally say mate, I'm
really struggling without feeling you have been broken some masculine law. Thirdly,
is it in how you show up at work and
in leadership? Can you hold authority without needing, to dominate,

(10:00):
to humiliate, to outshine. Those are all questions of equality,
not just skills. And the point that I want to
make in this broadcast is that therapy is a space
of equality, or at least it should be. So let

(10:24):
me bring this into the clinic for a moment. One
of the quiet revolutions in psychotherapy has been the recognition
that therapy works best when it's a collaboration, a relational process,
rather than a one way expert performance. If equality is
about protection from domination, from control, then good therapy is

(10:48):
at least partly about building a space where the client
is not dominated or coerced, not by the therapist, not
by their own internalized critic, not by the expectations of
what a real man should be. For ale therapists, that
isn't simple. We have our own masculine introject Many of

(11:13):
us have been rewarded from being confident, decisive, and in control.
Sitting as an equal with uncertainty and vulnerability can feel
at times like failure. What the anthropological story gives us
is permission. It says humans can live this way. You

(11:36):
are not violating nature by stepping down from the pedicel.
You are actually drawing on a very old human capacity
now in supervision and training. This has big implications. We
should be asking not only what is your theoretical orientation,

(11:57):
but how does your own masculinity sh show up in
the room. Are you simply reproducing hierarchy status or are
you really practicing equality? So where does this leave us? Well? Firstly,

(12:17):
it under minds the lazy claim that patriarchy and male
dominance are simply the way things have always been and
must always be, the conservative catch cry. The record shows
that humans have other options. Secondly, it reframes the work

(12:39):
of men's development on not asking you to betray your nature.
You are being invited to grow into deeper part of it,
and that is a way of being. It's a performance
in some respects that is honest and true and authentic.

(13:02):
Third it sharpens the ethical edge of what I'm trying
to do with making good being great. This is not
about polishing up the same old masculine script so that
it looks nicer on the surface. You know, a better hero,
or a better protector, or a better provider, one who
has the compassion. It's about realigning masculinity with an egalitarian

(13:27):
way of being human now believe may, folks, that's hard work.
It asks you to confront your own need for control.
It asks you to feel the shame that comes up
when you are not on top. It asks you to

(13:47):
sit with people, especially women and other men, as genuine equals,
no matter we've placed yourself in our current social hierarchy.
This fundamentally is exceptionally liberating because once you no longer
have to be above everyone, you are actually free to

(14:11):
be with them. Now, if this has starred something, and
you take a moment after this episode and ask yourself
one simple question, where in my life am I afraid
of being equal? Could be in your relationship. Oh, maybe
it's with your boss. Maybe it's with your dad, even

(14:34):
though he may be long gone. Notice what comes up
in your body when you imagine stepping out of the
hierarchy and into equality, tightness, anger, relief. Where's the rupture
and where's the repair? And this is where the work begins.

(14:56):
As always, if you want to go deeper, this exactly
the territory we explore in Making Good Men Great and
here on inspire change. Okay, folks, thanks for listening. Please,
in this festive season, look after yourself, look after each
other and remember, being a good man is not about

(15:17):
being on top, It's about being fully human together.

Speaker 5 (15:22):
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 and showing up as the best
version of ourselves. That's why I'm genuinely pleased to welcome

(15:46):
our newest sponsor to still Union. Their philosophy aligns beautifully
with what we do here. The still Union creates slick,
thought fully designed essentials. Wallet key organizers, pne cases all
build with a less is more approach. There Wally Wallatt's

(16:08):
bearst Key organizers. These are everyday tools that make life easier, cleaner,
and calmer. In that simplicity, there's space for clarity. This
space change. As I thank you to our inspired Change community,
they're offering any product with the promo code Inspired Change.

(16:34):
Have a look, drave them out and see how simplifying
your day and open the door to something deeper. Visit
distilled union dot com and enjoy twenty percent off any
product with the promo code Inspire Change that's distilled Union
dot Com with promo code Inspired Change the check out.

Speaker 6 (16:57):
Hello to all our listeners, Thank you for tuning in
and promoting positive social change. This makes you a part
of Gunther's efforts and transforming not only men's lives, but
lives in general, and we are grateful you have joined us.
This week, we're taking a look at the Global Listeners
list and we would like to share our gratitude with

(17:18):
our listeners and Cameroon. You brought Africa all the way
to number six on the Global listener's list. Congratuations. We
thank you so much for your continued support and we
appreciate your efforts to support positive social change. I Devana Prenzy,
the co executive producer and our showrunner Miranda Speidner's apone

(17:41):
sincerely thank you and ask that you please take the
time to like, follow, subscribe, and share, as your efforts
make a difference to everyone here at Inspire Change with Gunther.
Please remember if you want to share your story of
social change, feel free to reach out to the show directly.
Please see the show notes for our contact information. As always,

(18:03):
thank you to each and every one of our listeners
and most importantly, please keep inspiring positive social change.

Speaker 4 (18:12):
Love to hear from you, and if you're just did
please check out my work on www.

Speaker 1 (18:20):
Dot Goto Savoda.

Speaker 4 (18:22):
Dot com or www Dot goodman Grete dot com.

Speaker 2 (18:29):
Thank you for listening to inspire change. A broadcast is
for us 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 sesships
with Gunter, visit goodmangrade dot com