Calling Men Into Presence: A clip from my conversation with Kevin Young for the June 9 episode of What Is Collective Healing?
“If we don’t recognize and have some degree of intimacy with whatever in us can dehumanize or abuse others, however ‘civilized’ or ‘rational’ its demeanor, we pose a danger not only to ourselves but to others, no matter how nicely we generally behave. What really matters here is not so much the presence of this inner darkness, but the kind of relationship we choose to have with it.” — Robert Augustus Masters in To Be A Man, as quoted by Sean Talbeaux.
When I launched Resonant World four years ago, I never imagined I’d end up writing and speaking so much about the relational fracturing that divides men and women, and exploring pathways towards reconciliation and repair.
As it turns out, the “gender wound” has emerged as a central concern of Resonant World and The Resonant Man, and I’m very happy to share an invitation to a free online event I'm taking part in tomorrow (Wednesday, July 1) that will open a space to explore this territory together.
From the Epstein Files to Inside the Manosphere: Tending to Fractured Gender Relations is a Global Social Witnessing call staged by the Pocket Project at 19:00 London time / 14:00 in New York / 20:00 in Berlin). (The call lasts 90 minutes and you can register and read more details here).
In Global Social Witnessing calls, a facilitator supports participants to come together in community to attend to events in the news. I like to the think of the practice as the exact opposite of doomscrolling — instead of feeling overwhelmed, numbed out and isolated, we form a collective nervous system that allows us to relate to what we’re seeing and hearing with greater depth and nuance than we’re likely to manage alone.
The field of shared awareness we form supports each participant to digest any fragments of the collective trauma theme being witnessed that may be lodged in their individual nervous system. By intentionally turning towards what we may reflexively turn away from, we liberate new energy we didn’t know we possessed. It’s not uncommon to walk away from these calls feeling powerfully energised and refreshed.
In tomorrow’s call, led by Kosha Joubert, I’ll be speaking alongside Sean Talbeaux and Pamela von Sabljar, both friends of Resonant World, who are each deeply engaged in supporting people to cultivate the kinds of capacities we need to engage in conversations on highly charged topics — particularly in relation to gender.
I highly recommend this powerful essay that Sean published a few hours ago, which speaks vividly to our theme (and is the source of the Robert Augustus Masters quote above).
I also had an opportunity to preview the event with J’aime Rothbard in the latest episode of What Is Collective Healing? I hope our dialogue will provide a sense of what to expect in a Global Social Witnessing call for those who may be new to the practice. We also built on some of the themes that surfaced in a previous episode of the podcast with Kevin Young, where we discussed the challenges facing men, and explored new models of masculinity beyond separation and struggle.
I believe that Global Social Witnessing is the kind of social technology that could allow large numbers of people to begin to thaw the frozen collective and inter-generational trauma layers that keep us stuck in the dysfunctional loops we observe operating within and around us, from the personal to the global.
That’s why I have a feeling that this will be a powerful call. Join us!
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