00:00:00 Rosemary
If you’ve been listening to our podcast and are curious about the Compassionate Inquiry approach developed by Dr. Gabor Maté and Sat Dharam Kaur, consider joining the professional training program. It’s open to all healing professionals, including naturopaths, physicians, bodyworkers, coaches and therapists. In addition to learning how to use compassion to support your clients in their most vulnerable moments with greater empathy and authenticity, you’ll also deepen your own internal process. If you’re interested, look for the link in the show notes.

00:00:38 Joe
What does that feel like in your body? What does toxic masculinity feel like in your body? What does it feel like in your body to not be that boy that you were supposed to become? What does it feel like when you’re not being the man that you’re supposed to be, the person that you’re supposed to be?

00:00:57 Bret
What so many of us were taught about what it means to be a man, that facade is starting to be exposed for what it is. It’s not a deep, meaningful role. This facade of the tough guy, the superhero, the… one man can do it all alone. And I think a lot of people are confused about it because so many people are moving beyond that. And I think there’s a lot of men who are just like, wait. ‘That’s how I was conditioned to believe this is what a man is supposed to be.’ Where do we go from here? Because it’s clear things ain’t working.

00:01:47 Rosemary
This is the Gifts of Trauma Podcast. Stories of transformation and healing through Compassionate Inquiry.

00:02:05 Kevin
Welcome to another edition of the Gifts of Trauma podcast from Compassionate Inquiry. My name is Kevin Young, and I am delighted to welcome onto the show mister maybe / doctor Bret Hunt and Joe Baldock. And I’m going to introduce you… I’m actually going to get you both to introduce yourself in a moment or two, but I just want to share that you’re both Compassionate Inquiry colleagues of mine, friends who I’ve become very fond of over the last number of years. And I think the reason that I have become fond of you both, apart from your terrible sense of humors and your dazzling good looks.

Joe:
And great music tastes.

00:02:48 Kevin
That’s another podcast, Joe. That’s another argument. That’s another argument for another time, is that I feel safe in your presence because you are both grounded, conscious men who have invested time, money and energy into doing the work. So looking inside, looking outside, and I get a sense from you both that you’re men who are keen to tread lightly through life, tread lightly in your relationships, who want to help in some way, and I’m really proud to know you both. And the reason we’re here is to talk about all of those things, really how it is to be a man in the world today. And that conversation is. That’s an umbrella, to what might be a very wide reaching conversation. I have some questions that I’d love to ask you and I also have some questions that I’m not precious about asking at all. So we’ll see where the conversation goes. Maybe, Bret, you’re at the top of my screen. I wonder, would you take a moment and introduce yourself in whichever way seems relevant today?

00:04:03 Bret
Yeah. You know, when I think about who I am, I think about. First thing that comes to mind is I’m curious and I’m like a truth seeker. Like I’m always interested in getting to the bottoms of things and really understanding the world around me, whether that’s my environment, my relationships, my past, how trauma affects people. And so that’s I think in a saying it in a short way. And that would be how I would describe myself, is a curious truth seeker. I also think when someone asked me that question. Now I don’t know if you remember Sat Dharam giving that lecture at the Confluence in Romania and she talked about the different layers of identity, the biopsychosocial, spiritual, ecological. I could say biologically I’m a human, able bodied man. Psychologically I’m very inquisitive, I’m highly sensitive, I’m very playful and silly. And I’m also… my psychology has been shaped by being wounded. I’ve got trauma. So I’ve had experiences with anxiety and depression and addiction and codependence. Socially, what’s the Hindu word? Grihastha. You know, I’m in that householding stage. I’m a father, I’m a husband, I have a home. I would do work as a physician with Compassionate Inquiry. That’s kind of what I do in the world. Spiritually, I identify kind of with earth based spiritualities. I’ve learned a lot from 12 Step and a lot from non dual traditions. And ecologically, I’m living in what’s now known as North America. Some people know it as Turtle Island. We live on a little piece of land that we’re trying to restore to Oak Savannah. And we have two barn cats, six chickens and three little girls running around.

00:05:56 Kevin
Thank you, Bret. Already I feel as if I know you better. No pressure, Joe, but that was a wonderful answer from Bret. I’m wondering, would you say hello and let our audience hear your voice and tell us who you are?

00:06:08 Joe
Yeah, well, I guess practicing non competition is a way of being anti patriarchal. Luckily, I don’t feel the threat of Bret’s answer. And yeah, I guess the… I was thinking about this question and in Beyond Addiction, the kind of the predecessor to Compassionate Inquiry, at the beginning of the 12 weeks or whatever it is, 16 weeks, you ask yourself, ‘Who’s your best future self? Who are you going to be?’ And last year I chose. This is a risky thing to say in a public podcast. I chose, ‘I’m a sexy man.’ So I chose that partly because the word sexy in that for me, it breaks me out of my childlike my boy like trances that I’m in recovery from and it brings me into the present moment. And I partnered that up with I’m a sexy man. I reach in and then I reach out. And this has been my kind of practice for the last year. And it’s working, it’s working. So there’s lots of answers to your question. But yeah, I’m a sexy man who reaches in as much as he can with the capacity he has, before reaching out, not getting stuck inside. And another big part I think of who I am is I voice the unvoiced. I say the stuff that everyone else is thinking or maybe not always conscious of, and just dump it in there. Sometimes skillfully, sometimes not in a skillful way. Apart from that, yeah, I’m a caveman and Compassionate Inquiry practitioner. I work in homelessness services, bringing this Compassionate Inquiry flavor into the frontline homelessness world in… mainly in the uk. That’s a bit about me.

00:08:07 Kevin
Thank you, Joe. Thank you, Bret. So what is clear from looking at the three of us, certainly looking at you two, our audience can’t see this, but Joe, you probably got the longest hair, probably followed by me, then followed by Bret, but we all have long hair. And what is clear from the answers that you both gave, they were very thoughtful and thought through. The world that I grew up in and probably still live in to some degree. I would suggest that, and I’m going to put this in air quotes, that “neither of you are normal men,” if you get what I mean. And this podcast being around, what is it like to be a man in the world today? Maybe I’ll just start by asking you both that question. What comes up for you when I ask you, what is it like to be a man in the world today? Joe, did you want to take that question?

00:08:59 Joe
I guess my immediate response is I want to speak for myself and not try and speak for all the men in the entire world right now, but maybe similar to what you just said. I wonder how much it really has changed since I was younger. So for me, growing up in Essex, I thought I was gay. I thought I was a girl. I thought I were all these things that at the time I thought were bad things in a… What I’d now call a toxic masculine culture where it wasn’t okay, really, in an obvious way, to dress up in my grandma’s old clothes, play with girls’ toys, even to dance around and sing. Those parts of me have been really repressed for a really long time. And thanks to CI, also known as Compassion Inquiry, I’m now able to access more and more of these parts of me that haven’t been able to play for so long. So I think, to kind of answer the question, I think being a man today is being separate and divorced from the boy that you were and the boy that you were supposed to become if you’d been able to keep on playing and being just how you were being without any explicit or covert, “No, you probably shouldn’t do that because you’re a boy.” Yeah, I’ll stop there for now. Yeah.

00:10:32 Kevin
Thanks, Joe. Joe, something I’m going to swing back to is this. I. I love that idea that being a man in the world today is somehow related to being allowed to be the person you were meant to be when you. When you were small. And I love how you dropped into that sentence, toxic masculinity. I’d like to circle back to that and the relationship between those two. When you’re not allowed to become the person that you ought to have been allowed to become, does that manifest as toxic masculinity? And we’ll even talk about that word, toxic masculinity, or two words. But, Bret, I wonder, would you answer that question. So just what comes up with the headline of this edition of the podcast? “What does it mean to be a man in the world today?” What comes up for you?

00:11:10 Bret
Yeah, the first thing that comes up for me is I think it’s confusing. And I think the reason it’s so confusing is I think what so many of us were taught about what it means to be a man, that facade is starting to be exposed for what it is. It’s not a deep, meaningful role. This facade of the tough guy, the superhero, the one man can do it all alone. And I think a lot of people are confused about it because so many people are moving beyond that. And I think there’s a lot of men who are just like, what? Wait. That’s how I was conditioned to believe this is what a man is supposed to be. I think there’s a lot of confusion. I think there’s a lot of loneliness. Joe spoke about the disconnection not just from our younger selves, which is certainly true, but I think there’s so much disconnection inherent to modern, maybe you could say post industrial masculinity. There’s disconnection from the natural world. There’s disconnection from children, from women. There’s disconnection from our inner feminine aspects that It sounds like, Joe, you were in touch with that as a little boy. Who cares? You know, why do we care if a little boy wants to wear a dress? But it’s so taboo in this industrial culture. And so that loneliness and disconnection is, I think, another hallmark of it. And there’s a lot of fear and a lot of fear, which makes sense. If we’re lonely and confused, there’s a lot of fear. Because where do we go from here? I think that’s really the interesting question that I think Joe and I are working on, and I think you’re working on Kevin, and really anybody in the Compassionate Inquiry space is where do we go from here? Because it’s clear things ain’t working.

00:13:10 Joe
And what does that feel like in your body? What does toxic masculinity feel like in your body? What does it feel like in your body to not be that boy that you were supposed to become? Maybe that’s a question for you both. What does it feel like when you’re not being the man that you’re supposed to be? The person that you’re supposed to be?

00:13:29 Kevin
Yeah, it’s an interesting thing, Joe. And the reason that hosting this series of podcasts was complicated for me was because the people that I run with, the people that I know, the people that I hang out with, are all people that are in this sort of world or seem to be men that want to be doing the work. Somebody asked me, I was sharing that when I do a sound bathing event or a meditation event, it’s usually 20 women, or defined as women, and one guy in the corner. And somebody asked me, why do those other men not come to your events? I don’t know, because they don’t come to my events. So. And that’s an interesting question because I feel that I have grown into the man that I was supposed to be. And through a lot of… through a lot of work, therapeutic and spiritual work, and I want to swing back to this idea of toxic masculinity. There is a shield… and I know It’s a much an often used term. And I was having a conversation with one of our friends, Frederik, and I came up with this idea of traumatized masculinity. And how does that land? I like that. Yeah, it seems to be a better description of what you’re both talking about. So not being allowed to become whatever you want to become is traumatizing. And then when you can’t do that, you show up confused, angry, fearful, disconnected, which are all words that we would use around this term of trauma. So traumatized masculinity, how does that land with you both?

00:14:58 Bret
Yeah, I love that. I think I like it because it’s a description, it’s not an indictment. Sometimes I feel like when we use terms like toxic masculinity, you’re not going to reach anybody with that. They’ve heard it so much they feel the shame. Doesn’t really describe it, really. It’s like with addiction, you could describe somebody as a heroin addict. You could also describe them as somebody who’s experienced a lot of pain. Which one is going to get somebody to feel more compassion? So I love this term that you’re coining of traumatized masculinity. So thank you, Kevin, for bringing that into this space. I think it’s… It’s an evolved term for this.

00:15:39 Joe
And I think as you say that, and following what we’ve been saying, what I’ve been sharing is this. The word constriction is coming up for me. And this constriction, I don’t know if you can imagine, I’m thinking more of a British or an English guy who is just holding so much in. He’s so constricted. And you can see it in his jaw. You can see it in his face. You can see it in the inflammation in his body. You can see it in the color of his skin. He’s maybe like more of a red or a pink or a purple color. And so this… the toxic word, I think in that sense it makes me think of like the poison. It’s like the color purple of poison that’s in cartoons. And when I think about how my dad affected me in certain situations, the way I experienced it was like he fed me poison. This is what you should think about your mom’s new partner. Tell me that you don’t like him. All this kind of stuff. And in Compassionate Inquiry sessions, I actually experience toxic masculinity as like a poison around my heart. So somatically, visually, metaphorically, allegorically, all these things, it’s like it is like a poison. And just when I think about those constricted men as a constricted man in recovery. The first time I saw myself, I fucking hated it when I saw myself in the mirror. It was the Enneagram. Enneagram. I saw Enneagram number four. Fuck, like the worst Enneagram type you could ever possibly be. The emotional, moody, dramatic… The one who hides in the corner wanting to be found, but doesn’t want to tell people to come and find him. When I saw that, that pushed me away from the work for like five years. And maybe that’s what eventually got me to come and do this work. Maybe that was the seed. But I reacted for five years. But within seeing myself in that for the first time, it was all of the things that we’re told that are not okay about being a man. It’s the emotional side. It’s the all the qualities and the attributes that go to describe a woman. And this is a big thing. And I’m training with Terry Real at the moment, and he talks about that. We have these men, they’re like half beings because they’re not allowed to be the other half, which makes up the feminine qualities. And then on the flip side, we also have these women that aren’t allowed to have the other qualities of the men. So we have all these like half people going around. And that isn’t conducive to holistic health in society.

00:18:23 Kevin
That’s a really beautiful description of these half beings. It’s Harry Potter-esque or something. Is it Dementors or something?

00:18:29 Joe
Or maybe Lord of the Rings.

00:18:31 Kevin
Yeah, maybe Lord of the Rings. Yeah. So then let’s talk a little bit more. I want to ask you a little bit about the men that you be with in your lives, in your workplaces, maybe your clients, your friends, that might be brothers, fathers, uncles. I want to talk a little bit about that. But also, Joe, you were just leaning on something, and I’m really keen from your point of view and the work that you do. What is it that men perceive or believe that they shouldn’t or can’t express? What is it that’s stuck inside them? What are they constricted with?

00:19:03 Joe
Just like any feelings, pretty much. It’s like they can be a bit frustrated at something that’s happening in the world or a football game. But what else are men allowed outside of some frustration? I don’t know. I’m asking myself this question. I could give a kind of guess answer. If they’re not allowed to be sad, they’re not allowed to show acts of love in public or whatever it is, but they’re certainly not allowed to be their whole selves.

00:19:33 Bret
I think in our culture, feeling is taboo. Have you ever tried feeling in a public area? I mean, I remember I’ve had some pretty gnarly experiences in the emergency department where we had a child who just died. And not just men, but women, too. And I think it’s just because of the patriarchal over-culture is feeling is not okay. People, like most people, like myself included, at that time, I didn’t feel safe to be sad, to cry. And we all know, what does Gordon Neufeld say? “We’ll be saved in an ocean of tears.” But that’s taboo. Feeling is taboo. And if you. If you look at, like the history of colonization, when these people were going all over the world or in their boats, one of the big things they would write about is how these indigenous people were so emotional and dramatic and that was something to be stamped out of them. It was seen as a negative. And I think that’s such a… It’s such an old wound. We don’t even recognize it. It’s just the broth we’re swimming in. But if we can get better at feeling, that’s going to open up a lot. But we’re fighting, we’re going against the headwinds there because the overarching culture says it is not okay to feel. That’s what I love so much about the Compassion Inquiry community is it’s, hey, your feelings are welcome. Oh, really?

00:21:02 Kevin
I don’t know. Again, the reason for hosting this was for me to gain some more knowledge and insight and around my own curiosity. And I don’t know if I’m chasing ghosts, but again, listening to your booth talk and as you were chatting there, Bret, I’m thinking, but yeah, but why is it taboo? Where did that start? And I hear you talking about, you know, and we’ve read that in the 1600s, when the English and the Dutch, I think, together, were heading out around the world and stamping out the felt sense or the ability that people had to connect with their environment and with each other and with themselves and to live in community, they were stamping that out. But why were they stamping it out? What went on for those people? Where did this happen? I don’t know. Was it the Romans? Was it the Greeks? Or… what started this thing that it’s not okay for man to feel it? You know what?

00:21:52 Bret
I have a theory on that.

00:21:54 Kevin
Please share it, Please.

00:21:55 Bret
Have you heard of The Neolithic Y chromosome bottleneck?

00:21:59 Kevin
Nope.

00:22:00 Bret
So in 2015, some scientists discovered that there was, about 5,000 years ago, a profound drop in the diversity of the Y chromosome. So you can track basically how many men and women were breeding based on the chromosomal variability. So 5,000 years ago, the Y chromosome, which denotes breeding males, it dropped to… like 90 to 95% of men, like, disappeared off the genetic map. It didn’t happen to women. So something happened to men 5,000 years ago. And there’s some theories on why this is. The predominant theory is that there was massive, and this is worldwide. This didn’t just happen in Africa or the Middle East, this is throughout. Actually, it was most severe in Europe. That the predominant theory is that there was widespread violence. And what’s interesting about this is that this drop in Y chromosome diversity coincides with the widespread adoption of agriculture. Relatively recently, we went from being these egalitarian hunter gatherer bands to being an agricultural species. And with agriculture came a lot of changes. People now had more sedentary lifestyles. They had a surplus of wealth, which in those times is measured by food and livestock, and so they had to defend it. And there became this also, this very stratified society where the people at the top of the agricultural society had all the resources and the people below had so few. And so they. They believe that through a combination of probably violence and also the people at the bottom of the society weren’t able to breed and pass on their genes. There Was this like 90 to 95% of male genetic diversity was lost. And so my theory is that when that happened, just like in Compassion Inquiry, look, we go back to a person’s childhood. What happened that this became an adaptation for you? But what happened to men so long ago that we became adapted and were like, afraid of each other or constantly on guard? Like, I think it’s an adaptation. I think it was really dangerous to be a man. And the men who survived that decline in genetic diversity, they were on guard and they were less trusting and maybe they were a little more vicious and got to the top where they were safe. So I think it’s a survival thing.

00:24:35 Kevin
I really like that, Bret. I really like that description. I think you should do a thesis on that and see if we can work out of it. That question has always… Yeah, but why? I’ve been doing a victimology module in some studies I’m doing, and we are as men, we’re epicenter and the source of most of the problems. Like, there’s really no way to dress that up. And I know some of us can say, yeah, but not me. I get it. But as a population, we are the problem and we are what’s causing the problems. And I just would love to understand. Yeah, but why is that? Because I think if we can make inroads to understanding why, then we can try to untangle that a little bit. And Joe, you were saying earlier, what’s next, Bret, what’s next? Then we can start to look at what’s next from a place of awareness and consciousness. Sorry, Joe, you were about to say something.

00:25:30 Joe
No, it’s. It’s a nice segue. Like, so when I was thinking about this, why are. Why are these guys not coming to our group? Why are they not going to this? Why are they not doing the work on themselves? And I think, yeah, it’d be great. Let’s get the time machine. Let’s go back to that moment and see what happened. I’d love to do that. That could be a nice little men’s trip that we do sometime, right? But if we assume that then created this fear of expression, whatever happened, the fear of being who you are. I’m overly simplifying here. Let’s just say most men became avoidant, if we use attachment terms, Most men became walled off. They became hard, they became shut down or whatever. And I think that’s what we’re working with. We’re working with these guys who are behind a wall, who don’t even know they’re behind a wall, let alone have the skills to say, I’m behind a wall, and I want to come out from behind the wall. So if we take this kind of… And this is really generalizing, not everyone’s like this. I’m definitely not a walled off guy, unfortunately. I wish I was. Maybe make it easier to live in this society. But if we assume that most guys are walled off, they don’t even know that they’re walled off, then we can start to interact differently. We can start to dance differently with those men and help them understand they’re behind the wall and then learn how to come out from behind the wall. I have no, like, time frame for when we’ll be able to roll this out internationally, globally. But, like, I think there’s something in that. And I just wanted to say, like, a name. And maybe this is a bit controversial, but even in Compassionate Inquiry, even in the Relational Life Therapy world that I’m in, which is headed by Terry Real, who talks about male grandiosity and shame all the time, he wrote a book about depression ages ago. Like, not many people come to the men’s groups in either of these establishments. So even us, even the men doing the work, we’re not really feeling safe around these other men. And we all have our own different experiences of that. But for me, like, actually, I’ve shared this with you before, Kevin, because we started the CI men’s group that I… My fear when at first was actually, oh, there’s going to be all these other men who are sensitive as well. And being sensitive was like my exclusive superpower that I’d only just learned to enjoy for myself. So I was worried that there were going to be these other sensitive guys and then I wouldn’t be special anymore. This is all subconscious. Whereas other men, if we take the avoidant typical type, they open up and they share and it’s heard and it’s held and they’re accepted and they’re loved. And then, because they’ve never experienced that before, this overwhelming flooding. Oh, my God. That is not that. I do not feel safe with that. I do not feel safe with that. Shut down, like, twice as hard and then disappear. This is another reaction that is really common. So people come once and then they disappear. And I noticed that sometimes. I don’t know about YouTube, but with clients, that can happen in different places and healing spaces, right? Someone’s, like, really vulnerable, and then they completely just shut down. So I think that’s a bit of what we’re working with. And I’ve had the mic a while here. Hello, “too much” core belief. But the question also is, how do we get those guys into these spaces, but without resorting to, like, manipulation or patriarchal kind of oppressive bullying kind of ways? Like, how do we do that without saying, me and Bret were thinking with our group, oh, we’ll just ask the CI, heteronormatively ask the CI wives to send their husbands, but in a way that’s feeding the same issue and the same problem. It’s still getting the women to do the work that the men need to do. How do we do this without resorting to gym-like analogies of come down to the emotional gym, Stop being a weakling and be an emotional strongman. Yeah, it’s. We’re working this out as we go.

00:29:44 Kevin
Along, all of us, and that’s what the conversation’s about. You. We sure are. And I really like how you included us in this dysfunction, if you like. And I mean, that’s an icky word. But this dysfunction of the male character, and I think it is a dysfunction. I think there’s something… it must be when we look at the world around us and the issues that are prevailing, it must be a dysfunction of the male character, that this is what’s manifesting from it. And as you were chatting, Joe,I was going to ask you about men that you see, maybe clients. And I was remembering a story from not so long ago with my dear father. And my dad’s a really cool guy. Like, a really cool guy, helps a lot of people. Has been an AA for, I don’t know, a number of years. A real gentleman. And recently I was asking him questions about him growing up in Belfast. So he grew up at the height of the troubles in Belfast. And he was telling me a story about one day, him and his three friends were standing on the street corner talking, and one of the three got shot. Got shot in the head and died in the street. So facing this sort of thing and telling me other similar stories. And I was saying, and how did that feel, Dad? How was that for you? And he said, you got to understand that the political situation at the time was interwoven with this community. Like, dad, you know, I get that, dad, but how did it feel? Like, how did it feel to be part of that? It’s really important to understand the socioeconomic makeup that was driving, and… Yes Dad, I get the socioeconomic makeup. How did it feel for you to be involved in that? And he just couldn’t answer the question. Couldn’t answer it, and didn’t know that he wasn’t answering it. You know what I mean? But he just. And I think I asked three times and then thought, I’m asking an impossible question of someone that isn’t able to answer that question. And it really saddened me and frightened me at the same time that he couldn’t say. It was really scary. It was really frightening. We were at our wit’s end. We were anxious all the time. He just couldn’t articulate that. And I’m wondering, does that make us the unusual? Don’t want to use the unnormal word. Does that make us the outliers? Or what’s your experience of being out in the world and being with people and men in your workplaces, your clients, your friends? Bret, do you want to grab that?

00:32:15 Bret
Yeah, I think it is unusual. It’s certainly not the norm. I will say maybe it’s just because of where I’m at and the law of attraction kind of thing. I do tend to connect with these men out in the world. But, yeah, like, if I’m out in the world in general, that is not the energy that I am receiving with most other men. There’s not very much vulnerability. There’s certainly little to no conversation about her feelings. It’s just very matter of fact. This is how things are. There almost seems to be a sense of resignation around. There’s like, this unspoken belief that feeling isn’t going to do any good. Let’s just get on with it. And when that’s the pervasive norm in all of our social interactions, it’s hard to break out of that. It’s scary even for me to want to slow down with other men and be like, hey, like, can we… Like, I feel shame and fear. Like, if I need to speak about something with another man that, like, bothered me, you know, I start to have these beliefs, like, you’re too emotional. Oh, you’re. God forbid. You’re being like a woman. You know, like, why is that a pejorative term? We need to honor our inner femininity or, you know, that part of us. We all have it. Joe was saying, we’re walking around half creatures, and once we start to honor it within ourselves, then we’re going to be able to honor other people. But it’s got us and it’s got.

00:33:50 Joe
And as you’re speaking, I’m thinking of some different, like, places and spaces where I work. And what’s really sad is that a lot of the women that I’m thinking of right now are behaving. They’re being like these men, and they’re being like half men. These organizations that I’m thinking of would benefit so much from these women being more whole. Just to bring that in a little bit here. And this is. It’s really sad to see the patriarchy, the patriarchal stuff. And again, that’s a loaded word, right? We start talking about patriarchy, how many men are going to start to shut off or get really angry at us talking about patriarchy? Similar with toxic masculinity. But, yeah, like, I’m just thinking about these women who are, like, mimicking unhealthy men in order to be able to push through and succeed and do well in their job or in their organization and what I mean. It’s really sad. It makes me feel sad.

00:34:53 Kevin
I’d love to maybe steer this conversation a slightly different direction. Get your thoughts on something. Bret and Joe. So there was the poet and spiritual teacher, Jeff Foster. Have you ever heard of Jeff Foster? He writes lots of spiritual poeting. Yeah.

00:35:06 Bret
Oh, yeah.

00:35:07 Kevin
Really cool. I like him.

00:35:08 Bret
I love Jeff.

00:35:09 Kevin
Yeah, he’s really cool. He released something on Substack or one of the social media things, and he was really berating the idea of spiritual leaders or spiritual traditions that cannot say, to engage in abuse of women or children is a bad thing. Yeah. These spiritual teachers, and they all say, yes, but, and yes, but. And it really left a mark. I read it maybe two or three weeks ago and I was thinking about it and it is abhorrent that anyone should be hurt or injured in any way, that it is important and their abusers should be held to task. There’s just no other way around that. But I’ve been thinking, you know, if we stop there, if we stop there, I think we’re doing victims a disservice. If we stop there, we’re just going to be continually mopping up victims for the next 10 years and the 10 years after that and the 10 years after that. If we can’t say, yes, this is wrong, and we need to understand why men are doing this. We need to look at them. And for me, there has to be some level of understanding that men are also a symptom of a system that is enabling this behavior. So, yes, the victims are mostly women who have been abused by mostly men, they should take the lead in this. They should be held with the highest regard, those women. But if we just keep vilifying the men, lock them up, cut their balls off, I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere. We’re just going to be cleaning up. And that’s where I would love this… I’d love to understand, what do we do then? What do we do with that? If we can’t look at and understand why men are doing this, then surely we’re just going to continue to have a free flowing tap of victims going forward. Please, Joe.

00:37:08 Joe
Yeah. This is so important and it frustrates me so much to read news articles about murder because it goes, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So and so killed this family of three, husband killed wife and children, blah, blah, blah, is locked up, blah, blah, blah, the end. And are we gonna do any. Are we gonna. Like you’re saying, are we gonna do anything? Are we gonna change this? Are we going to be, heaven forbid, curious about what might have motivated this man to behave in this way? And for me, I think what I’ve been thinking about for the last few years is this is where parts work. This is where Internal Family Systems stuff, I think could really change the criminal justice system. If we can help the public understand this concept, which I don’t know how possible this is to understand that a really repressed part of this person, this man, flared up and hijacked him to then go and do this murder or whatever it was. Then we realized that this is not an evil man. This man has this part that was out of control. And another side of this is people think we can’t understand this person because then we’re being. It’s a disservice to the victims. If we’re compassionate, that means we’re letting him off. No, send the guy to jail, lock him up and be compassionate and curious, because I’m willing to guess he probably didn’t have a very nice childhood. And does that make it okay to murder? No, it doesn’t make it okay to murder. But I think just because we live in a traumatized society, that with news media stuff that just perpetuates these kind of dualities, you know, rather than non dualities, we end up, like, not being able to be curious about why someone might have done this act of murder or violence. There’s a really great book, and I’ll add this, if this is okay, to the show notes or whatever, called Violence by James Gilligan. It’s absolutely essential reading, and it covers what we’re talking about right now. I think I might have even read some of it to you once, Kevin, in a voice note.

00:39:26 Kevin
Thank you, Joe. Yeah, so I hear you, Joe. I think we’re on the same page. There has to be a two pronged approach. Yes. You cannot behave in this way. I mean, I’m saying that over a number of times just in case someone might say we’re condoning the abuse or violence from men on men or other women. We are not. But what we’re saying is. I think what you’re saying, Joe, is that we also need to go that step further and say, let’s understand. Bret, have you something you’d like to add there? I want to say a few words just on that, too, but I want to hear your voice.

00:39:57 Bret
Yeah. What’s coming up for me, and I know we were just talking about the non dual perspective, but one of my favorite writers, Wendell Berry, who writes about agriculture, he makes this distinction between kind of two different ways of viewing the world. And one is a view of exploitation and extraction, and the other one is of nurture and care. And I think where we find ourselves right now is we live in a world where to be safe, so many of us believe you have to engage in this extractive, exploitative behavior to get your material resources so that you can be safe. And in some degrees it is true, and it’s really sad, but that wasn’t always the way. People used to have more of a nurturing view of the world. It wasn’t just this thing to be owned and extracted from. It was something to take care of, that you could get what you needed, but that there would be enough left that when you passed on, the next generation would be able to do the same thing. So I think there needs to be almost like a realignment of our values culturally. Kind of like what Sat Dharam was talking about, where the exploitation, extraction of resources by these people at the top of the pyramid, that’s not our highest good. What if we had different things that we’re measuring as our highest good? And you could pick any number of statistics, but the incarceration rates, the rates of mental illness, rates of autoimmune disorder, cancer, the health of the water, the whatever, like we’ve lost sight of all that. We’re such a short sighted species these days. And if we can get back to looking at that bigger picture, okay, we’re gonna, we’re as men, we’re gonna value raising children who are attuned to, who are held well, who are taught to process their emotions in healthy ways. So many men didn’t get that. And if you don’t get that and you don’t see that there’s a, that it’s safe to be in the world as your authentic self, then you’re going to go over to that other side that tells you now the world is a mean, dark place. And you got to learn to be mean, dark and hard to survive.

00:42:10 Kevin
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00:43:31 Joe
Yeah, just as you’re speaking. And I’m just having this thought I mentioned, maybe with parts work we can change the criminal justice system. But if we think about it from a Compassionate Inquiry perspective, the people doing these quote unquote bad things, extraction, the murder and everything, they’re boys, right? If we think about the nervous system of the people doing this, they are actually our little boys or teenagers or whatever. So what we need is, as a society, is to stop seeing them as demons and as evil demonic creatures or whatever. And we need to see them as boys. And they need holding. These boys really need holding. And maybe that holding is a prison cell. And that prison cell, in my ideal world, in my more beautiful world that my heart knows is possible, is a place that is full of therapeutic intervention and curiosity and compassion, getting to understand what is going on. What did that little boy not get that he needed or what happened to him that shouldn’t have happened? These people, these men, that’s I think, like the approach we need to take. We need to treat them like boys. Not in this patronizing way, not in a kind of dismissive way, but they really need that nurturing that they need.

00:44:46 Kevin
I just want to swing back. That’s a really beautiful thing you said, Joe. I just want to swing back. J’aime, our producer, sent me a message to say, actually men are the biggest number of victims to violence perpetuated by men. And yes, and then the other side of that is the violence that is perpetuated against women is mostly done by men as well. Yet men and women are suffering violence, or the traumatization of men. And as I was thinking about coming to chat to you both, I was thinking about it through the week and it links into our victimology studies and criminology studies. Because, Joe, what you’re asking for is that we all, you both used the word ‘as a society.’ So we all, as a society, in my opinion, need to step back and say there are no others. These violent or vicious men or traumatized men aren’t ‘other’ from us. And that is not a very popular line of thought. It’s very easy to say. And again, through victimology study, when we can appropriate blame to another, that is a way of keeping us safe. I’m not like that, or I wouldn’t walk down that street, or I wouldn’t wear those clothes, or I wouldn’t drink that much alcohol. So therefore I am safe. So if we can blame this violence and dysfunction and traumatization on those others, then that’s a method to keep us safe. But it hasn’t worked. In fact, it seems to be at its worst of all time. When we think of the men that are leading some parts of the world, the violence that’s happening and the destruction of the earth itself, to ‘other’ doesn’t seem to work. I wonder if you both would have thoughts. What would it take to get us as a society? And here we are, three ignorant men trying to resolve the problems of society. What would it take to have our society think like that? This is something within us that is causing that problem, not something other than us. Joe, you were about to say something.

00:46:55 Joe
I just wanted to say one of your favorite Compassionate Inquiry questions is, “What do you believe about yourself when you abdicate responsibility?” You know this from Compassionate Inquiry. The answer is powerless. Almost everyone experiences this powerlessness. And to me, that’s what’s going on. It’s these. These powerless men with all this access to power through patriarchy and privilege. Right? Powerless men with lots of bombs doing this. So to me, it comes back in some way to powerlessness. So I just wanted to bring that question in.

00:47:30 Kevin
It’s like a Banksy. Are you familiar with Banksy, Bret? Yeah. You’re over there over the other side of the world, that powerless man with lots of bombs. It almost sounds like a piece of Banksy graffiti, doesn’t it? That’s really profound, Joe. I really like that.

00:47:43 Bret
Yeah. And I love what you’re saying, Kevin, about what I’m hearing with what you’re saying is one of the levels of compassion Gabor talks about, the compassion of recognition, really. I’m not that different from this murderer, from this rapist, from this violent person. Like, I’ve got that in me, too. Why is this person expressing it to such a level that it’s actually affecting other people? It makes me think of some traditions. I’ve heard of the Mamos, people who live up in the Andes and South America. They wear the white robes, they don’t have prisons, but when a member of their community is acting out of line, they put him in this dark house with no light, and they sit in there with him for as long as it takes to bring him back into alignment with the community. And they basically help him remember who he is. Because I think when we’re perpetrating violence against other people in whatever way, like we’re forgetting who we really are, and how can we help each other remember even those of us who have done the worst of the worst things, is there room in our society, in our hearts, to find a way to reintegrate them somehow? Even if they spend the rest of their life in a jail cell, which they may need to. It’s just like the shadow, right? If we don’t integrate the shadow, it’s just gonna keep coming in in indirect, more painful ways. How do we integrate the shadow of this largely masculine energy into our whole selves? That’s help.

00:49:25 Kevin
And it’s a big piece of work, right?

00:49:27 Bret
Yeah, I can’t think of a bigger one.

00:49:30 Kevin
I’m thinking of another really quick story. I was listening to a news broadcast. This was a couple of months ago here in the north of Ireland. The story was about a racist attack on a house that some, I think the people had come from Bangladesh or something. They were living in a house and the house had been attacked and graffiti daubed on it and I think set on fire and stuff, you know. And it was one of it was a local politician and he was admonishing, you know, what sort of sick individual would do that. And as he said that, I heard it really differently. I was nearly going to phone into the radio show and say he’s right, it is a sick mind. But not in the derogatory way that he is using. Like if we ask that question in that curious way that you were speaking of earlier, Joe, what sort of sickness must be in a mind for them to do that? Then we’re looking for a really different solution, aren’t we? We’re not trying to fight it with a big stick, we’re coming at it with a different view like that. I heard similar to what you were saying earlier, Joe, this was only about a week ago, maybe 10 days on the news and I heard somewhere in England that a 13 year old boy had been arrested for stabbing two people. What is happening for a 13 year old boy that he would stab two people? What darkness must be going on in the mind of that child? But we tend not to look at it from that compassionate way.

00:50:57 Joe
I guess as you’re speaking, the problem is the mind, right? And kids, teenagers, even my generation, I’m 37, we’re even less in our bodies, because of these screens. And I think a lot of what you may be just meant, referring to then is disembodiment and it’s being up above the shoulders, plus other things to create this sickness, this sick mind. And I don’t believe in evil at all. I really believe that any act of violence comes from unwellness. And for us to be well, we need to be in our bodies and we’re less and less and less in our bodies.

00:51:40 Kevin
Thank you. Joe, I’ve never asked this question before, but just as you were chatting there, Joe was thinking, so what have we learned? What have we learned in our discussion? What might we take away from this discussion that we can take forward?

00:51:52 Bret
Bret I think that all of the dysfunction that we’re seeing manifested through the masculine archetype in our world today, it doesn’t come out of nowhere. There is historical realities that contribute to it. And it’s not separate from us. It’s part of us. It’s all of ours to own. We have responsibility for that. And it’s our responsibility, especially as men, to look at this and begin to do the work that it’s going to take to heal us into a different way of being.

00:52:30 Kevin
Thank you, Bret. Joe, how might you surmise this conversation? What might you take away?

00:52:35 Joe
I think what’s present with me is that just being together as us having this conversation, it unlocks something. It’s… How do I say it? Like, almost like this conversation in itself is just enough, and it is modeling and is showing a different way of being together. And I think that this is so important is that we just keep being like this with each other and bring more and more men and women into the conversation and just trust that the conversation and the way that we’re being with each other will just expand and grow. Maybe this is a bit optimistic, but, yeah, I just. I kind of trust that the conversation is enough in itself.

00:53:19 Bret
Yeah and just one other thing I wanted to say was we’ve spoken a lot about the dark side of the masculine today, and that’s really important. But I also want to say that an important thing that draws me to this conversation and this work is that healthy masculinity that encompasses all aspects of that and doesn’t divide it between certain good and bad masculine traits, is so beautiful, it’s so powerful. When you’ve experienced the presence like we have today, I believe, of men who are embodying that wholeness… that is so powerful, that is so good. I do have a lot of hope, because I think when men experience this, they realize, oh, there is a better way that we… There’s a different way we can move through the world. I just wanted to put that in there, that masculinity has so much more to offer than it’s offering now, and I’m really excited about that.

00:54:25 Kevin
It was once said to me that when a man can honor that healthy masculinity, that he gets the opportunity to relate to healthy femininity in a much… to use a word, that Joe used earlier in a much sexier way. So there are rewards as well. There are rewards for stepping into this healthy masculinity. And I don’t just mean how we relate to inner intimate relationships, but there are rewards with how we relate in the world and with our colleagues and with our children and with our parents and with our friends. There are rewards. Just on the other side of that fear of being authentic. Something I’m taking away from this conversation is responsibility without blame. I like how you both said on that we can hold ourselves responsible, but we don’t have to do that. We don’t have to do that with violence. And that seems something that really seems to be close to my heart and has done for as long as I can remember in my life. So I will ask you both the same question. And it’s a question I ask all my guests. I’m going to change my question today. Maybe you did have an answer prepped. If you had the ear of men, if you had the ear of men, what would you whisper into the ear of men?

00:55:44 Bret
I think I would say, “Hey, it’s okay. You’re not alone. You don’t have to do this alone. Things can be better.”

00:55:56 Kevin
Thank you. Bret. Joe?

00:55:59 Joe
Yeah. There’s so much more to you than this. Like, you’re a bit miserable, aren’t you? And do you want to have more fun? Do you want to have more sex? Do you want to play more games? Do you want to have some joy? You don’t have to stay behind that wall. Here, here’s a guidebook to coming out from behind the wall. You don’t need to do this by yourself. I know it’s hard, but it’s hard for lots of us, not just you. So let’s do this. And it will take as long as it takes, so no rush.

00:56:38 J’aime
If I may, if you’ve had the ear of all women, what would you whisper? Would it change? I’m just curious, each of you. Kevin?

00:56:51 Kevin
I would say. “Christ the night, love. I am so fucking sorry. Can we start again?”

00:57:02 Bret
Yeah. I think I would say, “I see you. I know a little bit about what it’s like to be in the world that we’ve created and we’re trying to do better.”

00:57:19 Kevin
I’d also ask her if she was single. Just joking.

00:57:23 Joe
Cut that bit out. “You’ve had to put up with so much shit, and this has not been fair at all. And we’re going to do our best to change this as quickly as possible. It might take some time, but we really want it to be different.”

00:57:45 Bret
Yeah. And, oh, I also want to add, “We’re ready to follow your lead. We’re not going to solve like we can’t solve. If we would have been able to solve this, we. It would have been solved like, we need you up here at the front. We need to fall back. It’s time for women to be elevated and valued. What can I do to elevate you? What can I do to honor you?” So that. Yeah, that’s what I would say. “Get up front. We’re going to learn. We’re going to listen.”

00:58:12 Kevin
Thank you, Bret. Thank you, Joe. Shall we land our conversation?

00:58:17 Joe
No.

00:58:18 Kevin
Yeah, I know, I… Quite often we just get warmed up and get into the free flow of the conversation and it’s time to end. Hey, maybe we’ll have you back on the show really soon and maybe we’ll come back and we will talk about the light side, the bright side, the authentic side, the true side, the good side of masculinity. Because it’s half of everything there is, and it is a beautiful thing. Joe Baldock, Bret Hunt, thank you from the bottom of my heart for coming on to the Gifts of Trauma podcast from Composted Inquiry. I wish you all the best and look forward to seeing you both soon.

00:58:56 Bret
Thank you so much, Kevin.

00:58:58 Joe
Thanks. Kevin Young.

00:59:08 Rosemary
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