Many of these tendencies have been identified in our
culture and studied from a social or psychological perspective. Let
us deepen our understanding of men by adding the biological
perspective. As we understand the core of manhood by means of
biological trends, we will be exploring the effect of these elements
of biology on male life:
Testosterone, the
dominant male hormone, associated with sex and aggression, the
search for social power, ambition, and independence.
Vasopressin, a brain chemical males
have more of than females, associated with territoriality,
hierarchy, competition, and persistence.
Oxytocin, a brain chemical more
dominant in females, associated with maternal nurturance,
verbal-emotive connection, and empathic bonding.
Differences between men and women in the way their brains gather
sensory and
sensual information.
The male brain's greater development of cortical areas for
spatial thinking and
abstract systems.
The role of female hormones, including
estrogen and progesterone.
Biopsychological drives to discover
and express potency that are hardwired into male reproductive
processes.
Men Are On a Quest
Men can be quite confusing - following the rules in
some ways, breaking them in others; giving up their lives to save
their country, but paying little attention to their own families;
searching for self-worth in the long-term accomplishment of goals,
but giving up self-worth that they could gain by being more empathic
every day. What puzzles men are!
Yet given what we've learned about the nature of a
man, there is one thing about men that is not puzzling: Almost every
man you know is on a quest. This quest - the outward manifestation
of his mental and emotional interaction with his external
environment - brings together elements of calling, work, family,
identity, emotional life, and moral character. How he makes his
quest is the man's ultimate marker of self-worth in the world.
Have you noticed how boys already prepare for their
quest from early on in life: testing themselves and each other;
looking for new ways of being and thinking; inventing, building,
climbing into the world? Have you noticed that human societies all
share one primary way of framing and nurturing male development:
through the encouragement of the hero's journey? Much of the history
of male literature involves heroic quest. Even the video games that
companies produce for boys to play are nearly all heroic quests.
Not surprisingly, during the time between puberty
and middle age, when testosterone is high, males experiment with
heroism, trying on many different masks and costumes of the quest.
Always the boy, as he joins the world of men, is looking to fulfill
the duties and dreams of his quest for something ever greater. Boys
are more likely than girls to pursue life as a heroic quest.
Throughout life, men are more likely to test themselves constantly
on the quest, seek status and worth in hierarchies and competition.
Entrepreneurs of business motivation sell the logic, love, and
language of the heroic quest in our competitive business world. "You
can be anything you want to be!" "You can make a million dollars by
the time you're thirty!" "You hold the keys to your own kingdom -
use them!"
When men begin to move through male menopause -
which is biologically caused by the drop of testosterone in the
brain and bloodstream - they become gradually less interested in
constantly testing themselves. But until late middle age (and for
some men, not even then), the experience of the heroic quest is
central to the male journey. Women want to be heroes, certainly.
They are on a quest as well. But even they seem to want men to be
heroes. Studies all over the world indicate that women between
puberty and middle age select, for romantic relationships and
marriage, the men who are on a quest toward achievement and status.
Women want men who aspire to be kings, (even if only at a local
level), warriors (protectors who make them feel safe), magicians
(men who have, even if in a love of gadgets, some magical power that
leads to success), lovers (men who make women part of their quest).
Women don't want stereotype heroes - cardboard video-game action
figures; they want loving, wise, and powerful heroes - men. As
nature seems to have planned things, women's heroic expectations not
only drive men but can actually add to male fragility, especially to
the sense of fragility felt by men who lack physical or mental
prowess.
Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and the many psychologists
studying the human mind in the past acknowledged the archetypal
hero's existence and the hero's quest in our psyches but did not
have the scientific proof that we now have for this statement: The
hero is biologically wired into men's minds. Testosterone,
vasopressin, greater spinal fluid in the brain, less serotonin, less
oxytocin, and the way the male-brain system projects life onto an
abstract and spatial universe, leads men to see the world in terms
of action, heroes, warriors, even lovers who must negotiate
landscapes of challenge.
If you are a woman, you may have noticed that your
boyfriend or husband may talk in the evening about his
accomplishments or inventions or the way he vanquished a business
opponent. He is involved in realigning his sense of self-worth with
what happened that day along the lines of the heroic intentions that
he (or perhaps even you) projected for himself. You may notice it
gives him pleasure and pride to review his accomplishments and
potentials, whereas you may feel less of a need to review your own
with your friends or even with him. As he provides you with details
of his potency - his accomplishment and potential - a beautiful and
mysterious thing is going on: he is bonding with you through the
presentation of himself to you.
If he has done nothing heroic on a given day - or in
a given week - he may well feel like a failure, and he might try to
overcome this feeling by living vicariously through the
accomplishments of his favorite sports star. When a man has a less
than heroic job, he may leave the grind behind and seek an activity
outside his work or family to achieve transcendence of the mediocre.
It will generally involve some kind of competition. Even if he does
this in a poker game or by outdrinking a friend, he'll probably feel
better, feel that he has, after all, overcome a challenge - acted
heroically, with freedom and power.
Perhaps one of the most primal ways men experience
their internal wiring for a heroic journey lies in the mainly
unspoken envy that men have for warriors - soldiers, policeman,
firefighters. It is more obvious in men's love of fantasy
landscapes, knights, TV cops, detectives. Men want to fight the good
fight. They use these landscapes as imaginative mirrors of their own
quest. Boys start from a very young age with the quest and the
search for the duties, loyalties, honors, and challenges it will
entail. Adolescent boys are initiated into the adult world of male
life by healthy family and mentoring systems, and they initiate
themselves toward manhood in sports, on the streets, chess matches,
debate tournaments, or any number of other external challenge
experiences.
The male impulse to be heroic; to be the best; to be
conspicuous even if only in one key area of life; to be the one who
saves the family, neighborhood, community; to win the girl's
attentions; or to conquer the workforce is the impulse not merely to
live everyday life but to project himself onto the faces of the
heroes and success makers of past and present, thus making life into
a risk-filled, success/failure, win/lose quest for worth and power.
Bridge Brains: Exceptions to The Rule
Having explored the hardwiring of the core of
manhood as it appears in most men's lives, it is crucial to take
time to explore the men who are exceptions to the rule:
