Fritjof Capra, in his “the hidden connections” refers to anthropologist, David Gilmore, who studied images of men, or male “ideologies” in many cultures around the world. He found interesting, consistent themes.
Gilmore found that in culture after culture, ‘real’ men have traditionally been those who produce more than they consume. The author emphasises the ancient association of manhood with material production meant production on behalf of the community. ‘Again and again we find that “real” men are those who give more than they take; they serve others. Real men are generous, even to a fault.
I think that is striking – producing more than you consume for the benefit of the community sounds an excellent ‘manhood’ quality to aspire to. He goes on to say that over time this image has changed, so that now it is common to see the ‘big man’ as the one with the greatest personal wealth and most power over others. Sadly, I guess that’s the image we are more familiar with these days.
So here’s what I’m wondering…….how did that change? And why? How did the image of manhood change from one who serves and provides to one who hogs the most for himself and exerts power over others?
Those questions, naturally, lead me to wonder what we can do (if anything) to reclaim the ancient images of ‘real’ men, and to encourage boys to become such ‘real’ men…….
Heroes Not Zombies 
given the current crop of political role models (who preach austerity for the masses but are self serving greedy accumulators)’ real men’ are seen to be ‘weaker’ people in the background . We are certainly in a culture of greed and self serving individualism . I think its been a feature of the political narrative for about 30-40 years thats one answer but probably not a very good one!