It’s true that language is defining your existence. It’s all that you are. It is you.
(And here I am again, talking about that weird stuff you can’t foresee having anything to do with your health, but which actually does, because you should never forget how complex and nuanced you are, how serpentine the body and mind.)
Language is at one moment the deliverance of communication between forms, and then suddenly the sole limitation in a wave of experience reduced to this annoying term: indescribable.
Language is a storage unit for the past, present and future, and a medium for religion, symbology, and the psyche as a whole. It’s the container in which culture presses up against and then recoils in mortal frustration.
Most of this frustration is unconsciously directed toward this device of duality – two opposites, as in Yin and Yang. Good and bad are syntactical terms, just words, loaded bazookas in the wrong hands. They don’t exist as biological or environmental factors, but consume us absolutely as conception, passed down and down and down…
Therefore, can we not transcend language and therefore duality?
When presented like this it sounds romantic and idealistic. It becomes so grand and unobtainable that anyone unwilling to go the full shamanic may as well turn the TV back on and be consecrated in white noise. But there’s a subtle path, always.
A life doesn’t have to look like a sweeping hand gesture along a boundless and roaring vista. It can be a thumbs-up or a peace sign on a gentle drift. It can be unique to you, soulful in the way Thomas Moore talks about soul. The Spirit is about transcendence, large-scale, the Soul is modest in its desires, grounded, the root of the word human, after all, having earth-wed connotations.
There’s a duality present in all things veiled by language, most evident in the duality of the masculine and the feminine.
Carl Jung, who I always go on about, mainly because he was an alien who knew the human animal inside out, posits this idea of archetypes, the Absolute Male (Animus) and the Absolute Female (Anima).
These are exact opposites and can’t exist in the world of form without the magnetic push and pull of the other. These concepts connect us to the mythic and spiritual dimensions, and via modern social standards you belong to one or the other, or spend your whole life trying.
The Spirit is about transcendence, large-scale, the Soul is modest in its desires, grounded, the root of the word human, after all, having earth-wed connotations.
Differences between men and women are symbolised physiologically by the sex organs.
The penis is external, removed from the body: a man is detached from his sensuality and sexuality. The woman carries her stuff inside: Hindu thought supposing that woman is not other than sexuality, but sexuality herself.
Archetypal males surround themselves with abstract systems of logic and intellect, maybe initially to insulate their jewels. Archetypal females, born of slighter bodies, need to deceive the more physically able men through games and creativity, decoration and aesthetic. We can see how something as trivial as the location of a gland can set off a binary of ways to do either the Anima or Animus.
Because we do ‘do’ gender. These are choices, even though they’re heavily mandated by your community. And these characteristics did stem from somewhere, differences in our physicality being the obvious one, no matter how minor they are in the infinite manifestations of cell formation.
Gender is something we ‘do’, actively, in a scramble to make sense of ourselves.
So when my friend Taylor (a unisex name free of duality, but in this case a male) suggested we ‘hang out’, him and I and two others, Jordan (funnily enough another name free of duality, but in this case, again, a male) and Haydn (a name inappropriate for crossing the binary), I was uneasy, of course.
Just men, no beer or sports. Men I didn’t know too well either, considering I’d only recently moved here. But it seemed a good way to make friends and I was reminded of Thomas Moore and the soul’s yearning to connect through a splitting open of everyday matters.
I had no idea this would become my therapy, or that therapy could come in a shape like this, or that I even needed therapy.
Thursday nights at 7pm became a time in which all other time was measured and compared. How many sleeps, how many groups of hours, how many minutes until Thursday 7pm? The environment was revolving, we took it in turns to host, we made food, we ordered out. The arrangement settled into place and became background noise to the quivering but powerful foreground: a man learning how to twist the sophomoric language he’d been handed down into something more vulnerable, less self-conscious, not gagged by the ribbon of the past.
Mark and Rez (one man and one alien) soon joined and our men’s night was something very real, still tied to the sturdy leg of the soul, but now threatening to flutter away into transcendence. It’d become so sweeping and so grand without us even noticing, and when we decided to expand and the men came in droves to share their stories of love and lack and the lives they were on and off, we combusted and went heaven-bound. It was a very sublime moment listening to the men around me, knowing that I had played a part in orchestrating this.
The point is we started small, a minor revolt in the face of language, and we grew because there was demand for something like this. This wasn’t anything new. This was simply a platform for men to say something about themselves, be it a few sentences or a back catalogue of break-ups and break-ins, while other men actually listened, actually.
But we were defying language in two big ways: we were using the very medium that sought to confine us, and we were resisting the duality of the masculine and feminine in a multitude of expressions, the obvious being our proclivity to nurture vulnerability.
Brené Brown is the word on vulnerability (go read some of her books). She says this:
“Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity. If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path.”
Vulnerability is emotional exposure, a softening of the edges between your internal and external worlds.
Very risky if you want to be popular and get married one day. Very risky if you want to be a man.
Vulnerability hides behind Carl Jung’s ‘Persona’, which he referred to as a mask or face-lift, one intended to make a favourable impression upon others. Think of social media as the neo-persona, a meticulous assemblage of only those things that make you worthy.
But who could blame us in wanting to hide out? We’re judgemental beings. You’re judging me right now – what does he know? this isn’t vey funny, this doesn’t make sense, I could write something better than this.
In a patriarchal society ‘Nurturing vulnerability’ is not something the penis allows one to do.
Women, I adore you – my mum is a woman, as was I in a past life and will one day be again – so why would I mean to harm you or discredit your suffering when I say men have suffered too? Our suffering doesn’t discount yours, and if anything, serves to bolster it.
We’re all victims of a stifling 5000-year-old patriarchy where men are expected to be pitiless automatons who live and die, indispensable because of their strength and bravery, incapable of emotion or desire because of their externally located gland and predilection for blood-sport and logic. The Absolute Male is doing all the damage, and I don’t know any men who want to be that guy, even if they think they do.
Here’s some carnage left by the Animus (courtesy of Steve Biddulph’s beautiful book The New Manhood):
There’s another stat here that’s interesting: Out of 100 men, only 10 will be close to their father. Men have to see good men to be good men. There’s a cycle of exchange here, which isn’t being honoured like it once was.
Out of 100 men, only 10 will be close to their father.
Are you a man? Do you know some other men? ‘Yes’ to these and you’ve got the makings for something great. Self-improvement won’t always work on its own. Realign your mind with the real cosmic energy, and do it with your hairy buddies and some Kombucha. It doesn’t have to be grand to be life-changing.
Are you a woman? Do you know some men? Please show them how to be more like you and then accept them when they do. Stilettos can be sexy on men too.
That was a joke aimed to restore some of my masculinity after writing such a soppy piece.
Further Reading:
Food of The Gods – Terence McKenna (LANGUAGE)
Earth Honouring: The New Male Sexuality – Robert Lawlor (ARCHETYPES)
Care of the Soul – Thomas Moore (SOUL + SPIRIT)
Daring Greatly – Brené Brown (VULNERABILITY)
The New Manhood – Steve Biddulph (MEN’S LIVES)
