Ask A Dude: Episode 5, Part 1

In this episode Nick shares his list of what it is to be a real man.

Music by: Lemon Music Studio at Pixabay

www.sacred-truths.com

Transcript

Welcome to Episode 5, Part 1, of Ask a Dude. Three women, one guy, where we get real answers on subjects most men aren't willing to talk about. This is Sacred Truths with Emmy Graham. (music)

Emmy: Hello and welcome back to Ask a Dude. I'm so glad that we are back together again today. Thank you Nick for being here, and hello. 

Nick: Thanks, great to be here. Great to see everybody. 

Emmy: And hello to Deborah and to Heather. 

Heather: Hi folks, nice to be here. 

Deborah:  Hello, good to see you all again. 

Emmy: Well, when we left off with our last episode of 'Ask a Dude' we were talking about our lists about what it is to be a good woman and Nick volunteered that he felt it would be important to share his list of what is a real man. Would you like to introduce that list to us Nick and thank you for volunteering to do this. 

Nick: Sure, thank you. Yeah, I have a list here and these are messages I received over the years about what it means or how I need to be in order to be a real man. And so some of these messages I rejected at the time. Others I accepted and have since rejected and others I accepted without realizing it and kind of carried them for a while. And, as I matured realized that they were there and didn't even know that they had been there. So that's kind of the origin story of this list. And some of them are conversations or interactions that I witnessed. Very, very few of them were explicitly said to me. No one ever sat me down and said okay here's the story. This is how you be a real man. These are all absorbed or witnessed in the world. It is important to say that none of this list has anything to do with anyone in my immediate family. These are not messages that I got in my home growing up or from anyone in my immediate family. If anything, it was the opposite of this list in my home growing up. These are all things that I picked up either from teachers, coaches, adolescent peer conversations, conversations that I overheard between other men, work environments that I was involved in, locker room talk that I overheard, or some other kind of social osmosis. So, that's the premise of the list. So, I'll just read it. And I'm imagining I'll just read it through and then we'll...whatever comes up comes up and we'll go wherever we go. Okay, so here we go. 

Nick's List:

I don't need anyone else. 

I can do this alone. 

I always need to be in control and on top of things. And, the most important phrase in my life is, "I've got this." 

Hard work is the key to life. 

Success and recognition in the world are the only measure of my worth as a person. 

Emotions are a messy distraction from the task at hand and need to be managed so that they don't cause too much trouble in my life. 

It is very important that I be able to set my feelings aside in order to get the job done. 

It is very important that I not let my feelings distract me from what I'm focused on. 

There's no valuable information in feelings and emotions. They are not rational and therefore they have no value. 

It is very important that I don't let any feminine traits ever show in myself and that I constantly point out and ridicule any feminine traits that I see in other men or in events or in things. I do this by calling an action, or an event, or a thing as being 'gay'. 

It is very important that I regularly mention that women are meaningless objects to me. 

It is very important that I never admit to being vulnerable in an encounter with a woman. 

In any encounter with a woman, I am in control of the situation and always working towards sexual conquest with everything that I'm doing. There are no emotions or vulnerability involved. Everything I do is part of the game of seduction. 

It is very important that I regularly make crude comments about women to make sure that everyone knows that I am a real man. 

It is very important that I regularly mention that the pursuit of women is purely an issue of conquest and has no meaning to me. 

It is very important that I regularly allude to my sexual prowess in bed and how much sex I have and how good I am at it. 

It is very important that I regularly allude to how many women I am having sex with. (And just to make a point, this is when I'm around other men, when I'm talking with other men. These are important things to do to raise my social status. All these things are about how I maintain my social status with other men.) 

It is very important that I regularly mention that I am a smooth talker and very good at seducing women. 

It is important that I have a good arsenal of effective pickup lines as well as an effective system for getting women to sleep with me, either by using charm, guilt, or coercion. 

The bigger the lie that I tell to get a woman into bed, the more points I will score with the guys. Lying is a key part of any successful seduction. Lying is a display of power in the act of seduction. 

It is very important that I regularly make homophobic comments so that everyone will know that I am a real man. 

It is very important that I go along with the crude jokes of other men so that everyone knows that I am a real man. 

Willpower is the key to life. Life is about deciding what you want and then single-mindedly pursuing it until you get it. 

Life is fundamentally competitive. It's a dog-eat-dog world. 

There is no moral authority inside of me. The only moral authority is the law of the land. If I can get away with it legally and have the money and the attorneys to win in court, then I am a moral person. The final answer that lays to rest any moral dilemma or doubt is: I did nothing that was against the law. 

Everyone else lies and cheats so it is okay for me to lie and cheat as well. 

Lying and cheating is okay as long as I don't get caught. 

It is very important that I never show the following emotions: fear, pain, ignorance, grief, or shame. 

I will never share what is really going on with me or how I actually feel, especially with other men. 

I will live this way for the rest of my life. 

Success is okay by any means necessary. 

I have to push through the pain in order to succeed in anything. 

Being able to do a job I hate is an essential skill for me to succeed in the world. 

If something isn't a struggle, then it has no value. 

If something comes easily, then it is worthless. 

Sacrifice is essential to life. 

I will have to sacrifice what is important to me in order to succeed. 

I will have to betray myself in order to succeed. 

The only people who have succeeded in this world are those who have betrayed their heart. 

Selling out is the only way anyone succeeds. 

Success equals betrayal of self. Being able to ignore my heart and betray my heart is an essential skill if I am going to succeed in this world. 

It is very important that I be a smooth operator and a smooth talker. 

I need to be able to smooth talk cops, teachers, women, bosses, and social superiors. 

I need to be able to kiss ass very convincingly while maintaining my contempt of those who have power over me or who are my social superiors. 

I need to be able to smooth talk my way out of trouble and into women. 

I define myself as being a moral person and living by a strict moral code. However, I am unable to describe the details of what that code actually is. 

It is very important that I display the following traits: stoic, hard-working, tough, confident, ambitious, charismatic, seductive, and courageous. 

Making mistakes is unacceptable. There are very high stakes if I make a mistake. If I make a mistake, people die and there is no room for failure. 

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Deborah: That's a monstrous list. Some of them I easily have seen examples of and so I can agree completely. Like yes, I have seen that in many men. Some of them seem so twisted. I find them difficult to fathom. Lying, cheating, everybody does it. Why don't I? As long as it's a strict moral code, my strict moral code is the law of the land. I've seen it. But I don't want to believe it's the rules of being a man. 

Emmy: In some ways what you shared, Nick, helps me say, "Ohhh," because as Deborah said, I have seen that - some of those I've seen maybe in every single man I've ever met. And it's a very exasperating quality of a male, which, okay, it's a rule that they've been taught. Oh, okay. Wow. And some of them were also, I don't even have a language for what I'm feeling yet, just totally not life-giving, the opposite of life-giving. 

Heather: I'm wondering what it was like to read it aloud that way or if you've done that before with others or if not, what it's like to do it. 

Nick: I guess when I started working a few days ago to just take another pass at it, like I said at the beginning, I found a new level of dark, like a new basement and was really unnerved by that, a new basement. And so initially, I was unnerved by several of these. And yeah, I'm not sure how I'm feeling right now. I haven't read this list to anybody. I haven't shared this with anybody. I've shared earlier shorter versions. So, I think there's a horror in it that's pretty powerful – a feeling of horror mixed with a weird exhilaration and encountering some truth, encountering a fairly deep level of truth that I'm not sure I've contacted before, which is what working with shadow is. You're working with these really often horrible, uncomfortable truths, but then there's a feeling of exhilaration at revealing something that feels so powerful. So a little weird, maybe a little numb, but those other things too. 

Emmy:  In your experience, I'm interested in knowing what happens within you as an adult that says, "I'm not playing by that anymore," and you're among other men, and you're saying, "I'm not playing by that one anymore." How does that feel to you? Does that take great courage? Or are a lot of men, perhaps your peers, saying, "Oh, thank God we don't have to do this anymore?” Am I making sense with my question? 

Nick:  Oh yeah. There's a very small number of men I can spend time with because the fear of speaking up when something like that happens, when I hear one of these come up, the fear of speaking up when something like that happens. When I hear one of these come up, the fear is really intense for me still, and I really don't like that at all. So my tolerance is pretty small. And so that limits the number of men that I can spend time with and the amount of time. I'm involved with very few men who are in the process of deprogramming from this because I'm not really involved in any circles at the moment. So it's really just a small group of people who are aware of this and don't want to do this. I'm not interacting with people who are newcomers to this, deprogramming from this. 

Deborah:  I'll say two things as you had read your list. Three things. The courage of writing the list at all to look at this stuff, the courage of reading the list out loud publicly. Each item on your list felt to me like a blow in the chest. Just hammer after hammer after hammer. And then I was struck by how you are none of those things. And so for a lifetime of that programming coming from all directions, all the time, with all your interactions with men important to you and not important to you, that you somehow escaped or chose, I think you chose, to be a different kind of man. And I think of the men closest to you and they are not those men at all either. They are a different kind of man. So again there may not be many, but we know a few. It's a terrible list. It is. What Emmy said, it denies the beauty of life and somehow crushes the delicacy of life. And a great deal of history suddenly makes sense. 

Emmy:  That list kind of epitomizes the evil dictators of the world. That's what comes to my mind. And so we have all these men sort of striving to be that way. 

Deborah:  It's not my list and I'm having a physical reaction. It's a visceral pain. I'm so sorry. Good job escaping. Good job stepping away. Good job having the courage to deny this program. 

Emmy:  And I imagine it is, I don't know if this is true for you, but it feels like it must be a lonely life for a man who pulls away from this list. 

Nick:  That's interesting. It's really not. I've never thought about it like that. I do have a small group of men that aren't on this train and I don't feel lonely. There's enough connection in that space. And doing things like this and with you. I have all the connection I need in my life. 

Deborah:  I'm wondering then if, I'm wondering about the isolation people feel in groups when you're out of sync with the group. I wonder if your younger self felt lonelier because you were different than the boys you knew. Because I know I felt my version of that feeling so different than girls or women, I know. And before one has a sense of self, one wants, me, maybe, one wants to be part of a group or how do you be a person? We learn it from observing people around us. And I'm just wondering that if one observes people around us that doesn't feel right, that feels bad, that feels wrong. And then until one does have a sense of self, there's a connection gap. 

Nick:  Growing up, like middle school and high school, that was not... I did have a core group that I really connected with, but it was a lot harder because that environment is kind of this enforced socializing. Where you're just kind of dumped in this pile, there's like, like this arena where there's not really any rules and the adults are kind of off somewhere, like, "Ah, they'll figure it all out." It's like, it was free for all kind of deal. So, yeah. So, yeah. Growing up was a lot more confusing, yeah, a lot harder because there was no possible way I could have sorted out any of this at 13 or something. And that is true. Having one or two people to really connect with is way better than a larger group where there's no... There isn't a shared set of... A sense of shared values and connection, for sure. That's way lonelier.

Emmy:  When we were doing our lists, as women, Heather's list was slightly different. So, I'd be curious if you have any sense of... If men younger than you might have a different list, do you have any idea? 

Nick:  Yeah, I don't know. I haven't done something like this. I've done anything remotely like this with a very small number of people. And I haven't done it with anyone young, like in high school or something. That would be really interesting to see what...To hear what they would say to that prompt would be really interesting. I don't know how I would feel about sharing this with a young person. (chuckles) My own...I don't know about that. I'd have to really think about that. Because if I did this with someone younger, a group of young people, I'd want to share my list. But...Yeah. 

Emmy: Or, I meant someone in their 30s or 10 or 20 years younger or something like that. 

Nick:  Not to speak in an informed way about it. I've done this so few times with so few other people. But I'm certainly curious. And that's a great question. It would be amazing to do it with a kind of give the prompt with a range of ages and then let people work on it for a week and then come back and I'll share and then talk it over. That would be amazing. 

Deborah:  I was interested and revolted to hear so many items on your list have to do with subjugation and domination of women. So I guess my question is, do you think that's been going on forever? Is it just systemic misogyny? Do you think there's any sort of origin to that way of thinking? Safety of the tribe, production of more people so that our team has more people than their team. Why do you think so many rules of how to be a man are fundamentally against the agency of women? 

Nick: That feels like 'the' question to me because it's hard for me to imagine any survival advantage, any positive social outcome from that part of that list, the subjugating women part of it. It's just, how could that possibly provide anything to a society? If it's competing or something, that's really baffling to me, how that could be. So I just can't, I don't know what to think of it. That was something I learned is that human societies are in competition with each other and they develop one advantage over another and that's how one society wins the battle. But I can't see how that fits this set of concepts. And, it feels old. The energy in that part of this list feels thousands of years old to me. And so, I don't know, it just kind of fades into the past, the distant past, like goes into just the darkness. And I do wonder how a set of ideas this destructive could become social norms. Like that is just an incredible mystery to me and I don't have any way to know. 

Deborah:  Years ago, I read a book by Leonard Shlain. It's a book by Leonard Shlain called, The Alphabet Versus the Goddess. It remains one of my favorite, 'how the world makes sense books' ever. Briefly, his thesis, I may have mentioned it on an earlier podcast, his theory is that life made sense to many people, whose a fairly balanced society, men and women sharing the jobs, the rules, the leadership. And historically, people relied on their inner sense of right or wrong as a moral compass. So every culture had its taboos and everyone knew what those rules were and they were intrinsic and they came from within. His theory is that as soon as we invented, we humans, invented any form of writing for record keeping and therefore communication, we started having written laws. And society went from a sort of more feminine, imagistic, intuitive society to sort of a more male-based, linear, written-laws, word-based society. And as soon as you write laws, people start looking for loopholes. And he talks about the big shift, kind of globally, from those kind of some early societies: ancient Egypt, celebrated the goddess Neeth, the goddess of all things. I think they still do. Then the Assyrian culture came in with cuneiform, a form of writing. And the Assyrian culture is one of the most warlike, masculine, repressive of women cultures. And that's ancient and early. And we know that the relief of the Assyrian king, classic sort of powerful male, crush anything you can that smacks of vulnerability or softness or in that case weakness. I think everything you just described on your list comes from that time and that place and those folks. I'm not a historian, so please don't write in, but this book suggests many of those kinds of things. 

Heather:  I just want to echo the thank you for bringing that in the courage it takes. I'm trying to process the difference between how it felt to listen to Emmy, listen to you read your list, not just you, but the way that list felt and then like the way that Nick yours feels, like being in the room as it's coming out. And there's this like, there's this kind of like yearning for love with Emmy’s, you know, this like, what do I have to do to be someone who can be loved? And then Nick yours, it's like, it's totally absent. There's nothing in there that has anything to do with like, how can I be loved? And it feels so different. You know, Emmy's list feels kind of like at the end of listening to it, it just was like the room was just like kind of pulsing with this...something. And you know, I'm listening to yours. It's just very numb and flat and dead. I'm just kind of like sitting...feeling that, I guess. 

Emmy:  I would agree that my list when I read it was a lot about please accept me, please may I be okay. And Nick, I think, I think you hit it, Heather. It's like I'm just crushing all life out of everything. That's my job, and 'to the hell with everyone' kind of feeling...very different. 

Heather:  You two may have stumbled on kind of the theme. That may be the answer to everything, that men are taught to crush and destroy, and women just want to be loved. And that may be the fundamental imbalance in the world because those two trajectories don't work together. 

Emmy:  So to try and have a conversation with someone who's programmed to crush and your need is to be accepted and loved and validated. I don't see how it's ever going to work. 

Heather:  Or I wonder if it's not really necessarily who we are, but that the programming, like the list, was about you’re valuable, if you're lovable, acceptable. And I'm trying to remember what yours - yours had a specific line about this is what makes you worthy or I can't remember what it was though. 

Nick: It was success in the world. 

Heather:  Success in the world. Okay.

Nick:  Was the only definition of value. 

Heather:  Because I feel like we all know that we all want to be loved, you know, and that may be the whole reason programming even has anything to latch on to is because we like want to be loved. 

Deborah:  But maybe that's, that's the source of the trouble. If women, I know I have tied myself in knots, to be loved, denied things that matter. Pretended that I felt differently or, the list goes on and on and on. So that if someone who will do virtually anything to be loved comes up against somebody whose desire is to crush and dominate. No wonder we subjugate ourselves to the destroyer because it's a massive imbalance. And maybe only by realizing first of all, we're asking to be loved by people who cannot love because it's not even on their list. 

Nick:  Yeah. Thinking of it as, this is an anti-life programming. And when it collides with the feminine or when it encounters the feminine programming, you just get terrible outcomes like just catastrophic harm, just terrible, terrible outcomes. But then there's kind of this larger picture that feels like where it's colliding with the planet. We're on an anti-life trajectory for the whole planet. And so that, that almost feels like an inevitable outcome. If something is organized around an imbalance between the masculine and the feminine, like two sets of programming that lead to these catastrophic outcomes and harm and injustice and all these terrible things, it's like this anti-life and the whole planet is showing it. 

Deborah: I'm thinking of war. War is the annihilation of life, often for political gain, land grab, power of all kinds. I can't think of too many wars whose purpose was to save lives because that's the opposite of what war does. I'm thinking of the current world, with situations. And I'd be hard pressed to think of a time where women started the war. 

Emmy:  I feel like every question on my list for 'Ask a Dude' - because I have pages of questions for Ask a Dude - it sort of fits under your list. Like, oh, oh, when I look at my questions, I can sort of understand what the answer might be. Well, because the programming is this, fill in the blank, therefore. So it really does answer a lot of questions for me. And help me, Deborah. Is it Antigone? No, it's not Antigone. It's Lysistrata, where the women stop having sex with the men so they will stop going to war. It comes back to these roots, doesn't it? That's our only power as women is having sex with men. 

Deborah: Or not...

Emmy: Or not. And maybe they'll stop fighting if we stop having sex with them. It's a very intriguing play. It's a great play. 

Deborah:  Well, if so many things on that list are domination, subjugation and seduction of women, it's very skewed toward that. And I'm not faulting your list. I'm just so interested, and revolted. Because on the one hand, I think how could it be that important? Good grief. On the other hand, no, I've got nothing. 

I think we're on the precipice of some powerful understanding of why the world doesn't work. And I kind of want to talk about this for the next 10 hours, but obviously not all at once. Because I think it just feels like between Nick's list, Emmy's list, Leonard Shlain's book, to judge your own morality by what the law says you can get away with, which we see played out again and again. Again, look at the news right now, as opposed to that inner moral compass that I thought until I was 45 years old, I thought we all had the same inner moral compass. And I discovered to my great surprise and dismay that it's a sliding scale for a lot of people. And by a lot of people, I mean a particular man in my life at that time who said, "Oh no, I'm a moral and upstanding man." And then he proceeded to lie and cheat with impunity. And so that absolutely resonates with the things on your list. And I think about powerful men in politics and business. And it's all about getting away with stuff and finding loopholes and hiring more expensive lawyers and hiring lawyers for your lawyers because they have to be defended now too. And none of that is life affirming or life respecting or even brings with it the awareness of anybody but oneself. That's a really selfish list. 

Emmy:  I agree. It's a very selfish list versus my list, which is how can I be of better service? I think I could say that. So that's fascinating and explains a lot. If that's the rulebook, I get to be selfish as hell in many ways. 

This is Sacred Truths with Emmy Graham with music by Lemon Music Studio from Pixabay. And with special thanks to our dude, Nick Oredson. This concludes episode five, part one of Ask a Dude. Please join us for part two. Please visit our website at sacred-truths.com. Thank you for listening.