Tapestries-58 | Male role models

Where do we look, and what do we seek?

Photo by Tommy Bond

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1. What I’m thinking

Where does today’s thoughtful man turn to find his role models? Who are the people we look up to, and what type of characters are we trying to emulate? I’ve been blessed with some great male role models: father, grandfathers, brother, uncles, cousins, friends and peers (and some outstanding female ones too). They model the values I seek to embody, and hold me to account when my behavior doesn’t match up to these standards. But outside of this core and familiar network, I can’t tell you who it is I look up to and want to emulate. I’m not sure where to find the archetypical male role model. When I ask friends who comes to mind, Roger Federer invariably gets mentioned, but can’t we do better than a guy who’s defining traits are a gentlemanly demeanor and an unplayable backhand?

I’ve been thinking about this question a lot over the last few months. I’ve been partially driven by personal reasons, as I begin thinking about the man I want to be once I become a father in the middle of the year. And I’ve also been driven by a growing body of research that suggests boys and men are struggling (a topic for another piece). As our culture goes through a turbulent (but necessary) reframing of what it means to be a man, where can we point our young men — especially those without the benefit of role models in their immediate vicinity — to find examples of healthy male role models and a “new model of mature masculinity”?

My sense is that role models are less about values, and more about behaviors. We can all broadly agree on the values and principles we should try to live our lives by. Respect, honesty, compassion, gratitude, courage and temperance will show up on most lists, whether you look to the Ten Commandments, Aristotle’s virtue ethics or the Noble Eightfold Path for inspiration. These values are timeless, hence their persistence across millennium. But as young men finding our way in this world, we need less aspiration and more instruction. We need examples of real men, living in the unique texture and topography of today’s world, who show us how to embody timeless values, in a specific time. I look to history (both ancient and recent) for inspiration as much as anyone, but it’s generally not where I find my role models.

So if not history, where else can we look for male role models? I’m still not sure where they are and what to necessarily look for, but I do know who they are not, and where I shouldn’t be looking. First, we shouldn’t look for them amongst the digitally native who’s most prominent feature is an audience or a following. The growth of digital connectivity has created an illusion that equates having an audience with possessing virtue. People with audiences may indeed be virtuous people we could seek to emulate, and shouldn’t be ruled out solely on this basis. But the things that scale online and are easy to project — wealth, notoriety, sex, polarizing views — are not things we should seek in our role models. Attributes we would like our role models to ideally embody — integrity, honesty, equanimity, balance — are almost by definition hard to find online, because they don’t project or scale well.

If at this point you’ve found I’ve asked more questions than suggested answers, then that’s partially the point: I don’t have them. I’m on a journey to find more role models. This piece articulates the thinking propelling me on that journey, and hopefully prods you to think about it too, whether you’re male or female, young or old. We don’t need all men to be great, we just need them to be good, and I want to find those new great ones to get a better map for how to be good.

We live in a world that amplifies things that scale and garner attention (i.e. the performative), at the expense of things that don’t, but more faithfully represent behaviors we should seek to emulate (i.e. the substantive). So as a starting point, my sense is we should look to each other: if you’re blessed to have good or great men in your life, seek them out, engage with their wisdom, and most importantly, find the voice to share what you learn on your journey of becoming a better man. I’m here to listen.

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2. What I’m consuming

Here’s four things I’ve consumed recently that spoke thoughtfully about issues and topics I care about, and why you might be interested in taking a look too.

A. The Man Who Escaped Auschwitz, Episode #291, in The Rest is History

It was International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27. The day (different to Israel’s dedicated day of Yom Hashoah) marks the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau on January 27, 1945. I’m a big fan of The Rest is History Podcast; their guest in early January was Jonathan Freedland, the author of a new book called The Escape Artist, about a young Jewish man who escaped Auschwitz to tell the world of its atrocities, and the challenges he faced in getting the world — Jews and non-Jews alike — to believe him.

You may be interested in listening to this if you’re interested in honoring the day of remembrance by keeping it alive and fresh through engaging with one if its millions of stories, one which happens to be equally thrilling and morally challenging.

B. Heretical thoughts on AI: What if AI changes everything except the economy? by Eli Dourado

Discussions about the growth of artificial intelligence continue to dominate my personal information universe. Thoughtful analysis can be hard to come by, and Eli Dourado is often a source of insightful reading on related topics.

You might be interested in reading this piece if you’re interested in understanding how technology has and hasn’t impacted productivity over the last few decades. It’s also a good reminder of the importance and size of other industries (e.g. transportation, health, energy etc.) that receive less investment and attention, to all of our detriments.

C. The housing theory of everything, by Sam Bowman & John Myers & Ben Southwood, in Works in progress

This is a great piece from two years ago that posits that a housing shortage is one of the biggest challenges facing western democracies, touching everything from “inequality, climate change, low productivity growth, obesity, and even falling fertility rates.” It’s a fascinating piece full of jarring affordability statistics.

You might be interested in reading this piece if you’re Australian (and therefore view real estate as religion), if you’ve benefited from housing’s historic multi-decade run, if you’re an aspiring homeowner, or if you’re simply someone that wants to understand how housing shortages may underpin many challenges we’re currently living through.

D. We’ve always been distracted, by Joe Stadolnik in Aeon

A common line of thinking in today’s popular culture is that modern technology has rendered us distracted and incapable of maintaining attention. I have definitely been a subscriber to this school of thought. But this piece goes back millennium to show how that “fears about attention spans and focus are as old as writing itself.”

You might be interested in reading this piece if you’re interested in learning about how cultures have responded to new information technologies over the last few thousand years. It’s another datapoint that shows that history simply rhymes.

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3. What I’m writing

The book is moving, but it’s hard. I took the opportunity to step back from it last week, and begin reviewing its structure. As I get deeper into this draft, I want to have a good grasp of the book I think I’m actually writing, so I need to zoom out and reacquaint myself with the structure as it exists today. In the meantime, here’s a snippet from the current chapter about identity and community:

Identity is both a function of the story we tell ourselves about who we are, and also a reflection of how we believe those around us — members of our communities — view us. In this characterization of identity, there is a very tight feedback between the version of ourselves we project, and the expectations or perspectives of those we surround ourselves with. Our identity is therefore shaped by the version of ourselves those around us expect us to be. This is where discussing the change in distance becomes important.

In a small world, we are generally familiar with those around us. We know who they are, where they come from, and what makes them the unique individuals they are. We have context. In this smaller world, the inverse is true as well: we know that everyone else around us knows who we are, and that this group of people or community appreciates how the components of our identity — our family background, ethnicity, religion, hobbies, aptitude etc. — combine to form us as unique individuals.

In this smaller world, identity is a collection of different components that we weigh accordingly (e.g. a young man may view his athletic prowess as a greater part of his identity than his Italian heritage). We don’t have to deliberately rank, prioritize and then project each constituent of our identity, because the people we are surrounded by — with the benefit of proximity, context and familiarity — already appreciate how they combine to make us who we are. We don’t have to project our identity, because it’s already a known quantity to those around us. The same cannot be said for more distributed digital communities.

Chipping away, man. Have a wonderful weekend.