We live in a time of tremendous social transformation. As outdated norms unravel and new paradigms emerge, many men find themselves in a strange liminal space—no longer anchored by the old scripts of masculinity, yet also not fully at home in the new ones. From mental health crises and crumbling friendships, to confusion around identity, intimacy, work, and purpose, it is clear that something in the masculine experience is unraveling. And yet, within this tension lies a profound opportunity.So we're going to do a series, as always, peppered in amongst our other outputs, on "Improving the Masculine". Which is not about returning to old, rigid models of manhood—nor is it about dismissing masculinity altogether. It is a call for evolution: to confront what isn’t working, to celebrate what is, and to reimagine what it means to be a good man. Not only as an individual, but as a son, father, husband, uncle, grandfather, and mate or buddy. To speak of improving the masculine is not to launch an attack on men. As you may have noticed, we are one, and very much like being a weight lifting, occasional red meat eating, weapon yielding one with an extremely strong sex drive. But to recognize that masculine identity — as it’s currently modeled, rewarded, and weaponized in certain parts of society—is running outdated software complete with viruses and malware. It’s not that men are “broken,” but that many have inherited a narrow, brittle vision of manhood that cannot meet the challenges of this moment without distorting into something weird.
The imperative for young men to improve — and we don’t mean in the gym or in the economy, but in the psyche, the soul, the story — has never been more urgent. For we are living through a strange and volatile epoch, where the absence of deep meaning has created a vacuum. And into this vacuum, old ghosts are marching again. Because fascism offers what modernity has stripped away: myth, purpose, identity, belonging but as counterfeit relics, as weaponized fantasies. It claims clarity without complexity, purpose without reflection, identity without individuality. It is a mirror for the unexamined mind. And young men, if left unsupported, isolated, and spiritually starved, will stare into that dark mirror. It seduces with structure in a world of chaos. It flatters the wounded ego, giving it a role in a grand cosmic drama — Us versus Them. Order versus decay. The Fatherland versus the Other. Fascism, that hideous relic of the collective shadow, is once more whispering in the ears of the disenchanted, the disenfranchised, the disconnected — and young men, in particular, listen. In the United States, especially in the wake of the questionable 2024 election, we’ve seen how this brittleness can be exploited. Dumb AF Authoritarian and proto-fascist cults offer counterfeit initiation into manhood: they take the raw energies of protection, purpose, and belonging—core masculine drives—and channel them into grievance, domination, and obedience to a strongman whose of course, really an ultra weak man. These movements don’t so much build men up as offer them a place to put their pain and confusion, wrapping it in flags and slogans. Claiming also to offer instant brotherhood and clear roles. And when life inevitably confronts them with powerlessness, economic instability, social change, and the erosion of old hierarchies, they reach for the only models they’ve been given: dominance or withdrawal.
And here’s where the heart of the problem lies. When a young man has not cultivated depth — when he has not improved in the ancient sense of the word, which is to grow closer to the good, the beautiful, and the true — then he becomes porous. He is much more receptive to manipulation. To dogma. To tribalism masquerading as truth. Yet healthy masculinity, like what native American Warrior men had and still have, offers the same—community, mentorship, shared challenge — but more rooted in mutual respect and creative contribution, without submission to a hierarchy of worth. Improvement, then, is not vanity. It is immunization. It is a spiritual hygiene. It means learning to think critically, to feel deeply, to differentiate between the voice of the soul and the voice of propaganda. It means confronting one’s wounds instead of projecting them onto scapegoats. It means cultivating discipline not for domination, but for discernment.
To improve, for the young man today, is not just self-help. It is civilizational maintenance. It is the refusal to become a vessel for someone else’s fear. It is the sacred act of choosing to be whole when Empire profits from men being broken. Improving the masculine means widening its repertoire. It means reclaiming strength not as the ability to overpower, but as the capacity to hold one’s ground without losing one’s humanity. It means giving men the skills to metabolize grief, fear, and failure instead of outsourcing those feelings into scapegoating or violence. And crucially, it means offering belonging without requiring conformity to authoritarian stupidity. In the mythic sense, the masculine archetype is not just the warrior but also the steward, the builder, the protector of the commons. Improving the masculine now means reviving those aspects and integrating them with the relational intelligence that’s been historically undervalued in men. Without this work, the vacuum will keep pulling men toward the counterfeit version of power that fascism sells.
Basically, What’s mainly “not working” is that our culture too often leaves men without real initiation into adult responsibility and emotional sovereignty. We’ve stripped away traditional rites of passage without replacing them with new ones. We’ve trained men to associate vulnerability with weakness, collaboration with loss of status, and care with emasculation. The young man who knows himself — who has faced his shadow, walked into his fears, and come back with insight — is not easy prey for ideology. He does not need to find his worth in an imagined past or in the vilification of others. He does not fantasize about strongmen or purity or submission to the State. He understands that real power is relational, not hierarchical. He seeks to heal, not to conquer. But to reach that point, he must be initiated. Not in some mystical sense, but in the psychological, existential, communal sense. He must be taught to dance with chaos rather than flee from it. He must have mentors — elders who model nuance, not noise. And he must come to know that the world is not black and white, but infinite shades of becoming.