Tuesday, February 27, 2018

BLOG SPOT - MARCH 2018


HERCULES 




REFLECTIONS YARO – MARCH 2018

MEN DO NOT KNOW WHERE THEY STAND AS MEN!

I spent over 10 years working with men by starting men groups, leading men gatherings and training men leaders. Now, currently, I am observing the many attempts in our culture to demean masculinity.
My first 3 days men group was in the outdoors of the Blue Mountains in NSW in 1990. The theme was called “FROM SLAVE TO HERO – a meeting of men”. At that time, we were 50 men coming to celebrate masculinity and share the stories of our growing up in a rigid society and culture of ignorance about the masculine qualities of strength, courage, aggression, self-reliance and competitive team work.

Today we read in the newspapers about the good thing for women seeking male partners is to have a “BETA” male vs an “ALPHA” male. As if those definitions, based on animal behaviour of males, is a nice choice. “We love Beta males was a statement of a couple of young women in the February Currier Mail (Sunday edition). They wanted to meet men who displayed the qualities of cooperation, sharing and being soft.

Dr. Jordan Petersen, a well-known psychiatrist and author and speaker on YouTube states: “We,
 (the Western Society) are suffering of the crisis of masculinity. Boys are encouraged from birth, by an apologetic culture, to believe that traditional (DNA based) qualities like strength, forcefulness, competition and self-reliance and team work are negative and destructive. He stated further:
“This notion is so stupid that it is very hard to know where to begin. Forcing men to become more agreeable, nice, less competitive will certainly be the death of masculinity”. He blames the left-wing academics for the ‘mumbo-jumbo ’of political correctness that is impacting public life. Why do we have “women studies” at the universities but no “men studies”. Most Universities that offer Social Studies courses are not obsessed with intelligent conversation but instead we are having an ideological conversation, says Dr. Peterson.

As a retired academic, I still remember clearly the conversation I had with a couple of the so called “radical feminists” of the 1990’s who were obsessed with changing children books using “he/she or some other neutral term. They also supported the extreme Feminist movement ‘manifesto’ to eliminate all ‘violent’ and ‘aggressive’ commentaries in all children’s fairy tale books. Fortunately, the idea was not successful.

So, today, more than ever, Men work is needed to guide the discussion at all levels of men meetings about how young men can be encouraged to free themselves of the burden of their cultural pressures and their childhood oppressions, to accept their failings and celebrate their successes and take control of their lives and stop being responsible for the burden imposed by political correctness and a culture of down grading what is a man. Do not suppress but express yourself honestly and authentically.

WHAT TO DO?

It is clear that men are at the centre of a huge crisis. The older men are attacked for their “inappropriate behaviour” - certainly, some are truly deserving this public exposure and punishment by law. However, the media is ‘painting’ all men with the same ‘evil brush’ and the young men are lost and seeking answers.

 I am indebted to Dr. Jordan Peterson, a Canadian academic that I quoted earlier to some suggestions he has for the men of this generation:

“Treat yourself as if you were someone responsible for helping and caring. Consider what would be truly good for you. This is not “what you want “nor “what would make you happy” – for “Happy” is, by no means, not synonymous to good. You need to look at the future and think: “what my life would look like if I were caring for myself properly”?

You must determine where are you going, so that you can bargain for yourself, so that you do not end up resentful, vengeful and cruel. You must keep the promises you make to yourself, and reward yourself, so that you can trust and motivate yourself.

Do not underestimate the power of vision and direction. There are irresistible forces, able to transform what might appear to be unconquerable obstacles into traversable pathways expending opportunities.

Start a discipline you care for. Define who you are, Refine your personality. Choose your destination and articulate your Being.” J.B. Jordan “12 Rules for Life: an antidote to Chaos” Allen Lane, (Penguin Books), 2018.


“The thousand and one statements that are made every day – “Isn’t that just like a man”…”Women are more sensitive than men” – have to be swept from the minds of everyone, like the tattered autumn leaves from the garden path before it is possible to think clearly at all”
Margaret Meade, 1949


MY OWN REFLECTIONS:

Sam Keen wrote a book called FIRE IN THE BELLY. I was very taken by his stories about fatherhood and wrote an article about my story of being a father. Perhaps one meaningful answer to the ‘moral relativism’ that is sweeping the West now is the idea of being a good father. He states:

"There is no way for men...to recover wholeheartedness, to become passionate and truly free, without rediscovering the central importance of the family." To rediscover the family, we, as men, must rediscover ourselves as fathers and parents, and place this role of the many roles we play at the centre of our lives. It is within the context of the family that we live our lives, and it is here that we receive our deepest wounds and most profound joys”. (Fire in the Belly)

As fathers, we give our children many gifts along with many wounds. Paradoxically, the wounds and the gifts are two sides of the same coin. When we give time and attention, we heal the wound of abandonment. When we acknowledge a child's accomplishments, we give the gift of confidence. When we support the free expression of feelings, we give the gift of self-esteem. In essence, if we show with our dedication and time, our love, attention, nurturing, it will demonstrate that we truly value our children and then they will come to value themselves and us.

We must be willing to be available to our children as often as we can, and to be with them as often as practicable. There is no substitute for time with children. They know it and so do we. As fathers, we can no longer afford to use such excuses as "college expenses," "personal growth," "bigger houses," " more cars, gadgets, or other toys" to justify our abandonment of our children. For at a deep and profound level all men are the fathers of all children whether they are biological or not. We must go beyond the personal to the communal, and work to heal all of the damage our forefathers still perpetrate through us. Such damage is evident in the many violent acts that men perpetrate even today.

When I conducted many men workshops, over the past ten years, I discovered that I am not really teaching about how to be a man, but learning how to be a man! When men asked me “what to do to become a better father to my children”, I had only one answer: “become aware that YOU need to change”. Change must come from within and not from the cultural, religious and social introjects. One important option to develop yourself as a father, that has been largely overlooked for centuries, is the importance of fatherhood as a spiritual practice.


Yaro Starak
Yaro Starak - Gestalt Psychotherapist.
Men leadership training
Author of books on Gestalt Psychotherapy & Group facilitation
PLEASE CHECK OUT OUR PROGRAMS - www.gestaltarttherapy.com