#123: Scared Men, Big Changes
The case for our urgent focus on mentorship in 2025
I often like to think about human history as my whole arm. Millions of years, that my index finger, hand, forearm, bicep and shoulder. My fingernail, that’s what I know about and see — that teeny tiny fart in the grand scale of the human story we call history, a mere 10,000 years.
That scale is helpful for me. It puts my existential anxieties into a manageable perspective. Helps me understand why the world on Instagram is confusing. Or why I don’t like working 9 - 5 in an office without windows. I was made very slowly and things have changed have very fast in the last 5,000 years and the deep parts inside me I don’t understand are confused by all that sudden change.
So my aim today is —
Serve you with that same big perspective to calm your nerves
Show you why fast change without spirituality is very bad
Share with you what to do about it if you care
The way I am going to do that is to use a lens. Lenses are helpful. They bring focus to what we see. Sure, they simplify things too, but this is a blog, simple is all we really have time for. Donald Trump is this essay lens. He’s not the point of the story, just a prop. I want us to point our focus at him and do our best to learn from what is going on around us. But first, we need some context:
The history of power in 5 short paragraphs:
We shared power for a very long time:
300,000 years. That’s how long palaeontologists think homo-sapiens have been running around on Earth. But, we all have about 3% Neanderthal in our DNA so our legacy is not that simple. Millions of years, that’s human history. And all of that time, those 2,191,500,000 days (6 million years), most men and women lived as equals according to Noah Yuval Harari and not much changed for each small community. That is the big perspective. We were made slowly. Really slowly. And the chemicals in our blood have not caught up to the big change that comes below.
A few men take all the power, slowly:
Then came the Agricultural Revolution—about 10,000 years ago. Surplus food led to permanent settlements. Over time, these surpluses allowed the emergence of hierarchical social structures. A few men seized the moment and land, passing it down to their sons creating a social order that laid the foundation for the unequal world we know today. This was the birth of empires, kingdoms, and the oppression of anyone who didn’t fit the ideal. Religion got caught up in the act. In the West, the church monopolised access to God and turned it into a roaring trade. Again, this wasn’t a sudden shift, but a gradual one. A slow tightening of the noose around humans’ necks.
Fast-forward 9,400 years. A spiritual revival sweeps the West. It’s now 16th century and Martin Luther has ripped God out of the hands of the power-hungry church and given Him back to the people. In homes, taverns, and town squares, privileged men are debating the Bible’s meaning with the same passion they bring to their favourite sports teams today. Spirituality makes a big come back and some stuff changes.
Then God dies, but slowly. It’s the 17th century and the winds of change are blowing slowly through Europe. Philosophers like Voltaire and Rousseau are questioning the authority of monarchy and the church, edging their way to equality. The Age of Enlightenment gains momentum. Advances in science, from Newton’s laws of motion to early explorations of biology, ignite curiosity. Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species and just a few years later Friedrich Nietzsche declares openly God’s death in his parable of The Madman. "God is dead. And we have killed him.”
It’s the 19th century now and Abraham Lincoln has just freed slaves in America. There’s a new god on the move and his name is ‘man’. The industrial revolution is setting in. Men are making progress everywhere but inequality is a growing problem. Gone are the days when families would gather to discuss spirituality; now the conversations center on humanist ideals of democracy, capitalism and the greatness of every man. With all this bubbling potential Teddy Roosevelt ushers in the most ‘equal’ time in American history. The white middle-class booms and from there perspective there is much to hope about.
Again all of this change is slow and measured in 100s of years.
The 1st time things changed really:
Then things change fast for the first time in human history. Really fast. Enter Vladimir Lenin. It’s 1917. World War I has torn the democratic dream apart—millions are dead, economies are ruined and men are suffering and scared. Karl Marx inspired by the French Revolution shares a practical vision with world of a way power can be shared equally. Lenin uses that vision to seize power in Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution with a clarion call — ‘Make the worker & soldier great again!’. It’s explosive and sends shockwaves around the world as war-weary, confused men in Germany, Hungary and beyond join the communist brotherhood. Within just five years, communism moves from a fringe ideology to a revolutionary force, challenging democracy and old power structures across Europe and even influencing movements in Asia.
30 years. That’s how long it took to change the world. Nothing that quick had ever happened to humans. Then up to 47 million men and women died in Stalin’s Gulag Camps and Moa’s Great Leap Forward.
Enter Donal Trump:
What is going on behind Trump:
By now we know not having power shucks, Simon Sinek’s Leader Eat Last does a good job of showing why. So it wasn’t just white men who fought to be free of domination. Those who weren’t white, straight men fought like warriors to feel normal inside their own skin and slowly the world changed to include them too. Then in early 2017 things changed very, very fast again. The #MeToo movement sweeps the globe with women sharing their stories of sexual harassment and assault. Men, for the second time in modern history are feeling scared and angry as traditional notions of masculinity are being called into question. As wokism rises, it not only shines a light on the inequalities women face but also amplifies the voices of other marginalized groups. #blacklivesmatter follows hot on the heels of #metoo with wave upon wave of aggressive, militant reform shaking the world to it’s core.
How we first dealt with Trump:
Enter 2022. Donald Trump leaves the white house in a cloud of shame. With a background of the liberal reform above the world agrees this is not who we want to be. On Twitter Elon Musk says it well, "I don't hate the man, but it's time for Trump to hang up his hat & sail into the sunset." Joe Rogan is more aggressive and describes Trump as “an existential threat to democracy” and refuses to have him on his show. It’s a big win for equality, but the reactionary, angry arc of Wokism ignites a brooding revolution among white, conservative men. With all this quick change they’re feeling marginalized and disillusioned. They don’t have the respect their dad’s did. The overly aggressive fight for equal rights ‘robs’ them and no one is explaining why.
Trump leans into this change. Ear to the ground. Listening to their very real pain starts to act predictably.
The big change:
By 2024 Trump has solidified male support in a strategic social media campaign tailored just for them. In a spectacular twist, Elon Musk now donates $132m to Trump's campaign and turns himself and X (Twitter) into a Trump megaphone. Joe Rogan follows suite and acts as a central cog in his election campaign racking up 2.2 million views and massive pro-Trump sentiment along with his personal endorsement. Obviously, it works wonderfully. The trajectory of Kamela Harris as President of America for men is plain to see. A black, woman president just means more of the same, more losses of power for men as a group. Voting day arrives and 6 out of 10 white men vote for Trump along with their white wives which turns the tide and ushers him into the White House for his second term. This ABC article explains it well.
Trump’s re-election is complex but we do know at least 30% of the swing was because focus on hyper-masculinity values and anti-woke, progressive sentiment. And the economic messaging that drew voters, another 30% of the swing, is laced with white, middle-class maleness. So is his populist, rural American, conservative cultural appeal. Red states don’t want progression. They want a balm for their very real pain and confusion at all the change that is hurting their hearts.
So what do we see through our lens:
Remember that the downside of lenses is oversimplification but this is part of the reason for the dangerously fast change above —men are scared and need real help desperately.
The big data in this article I wrote last year shows it well. Anxiety and depression rates in young men are increasing at faster than in young women. So are suicides. For the first time in 10,000 year, women are overtaking men in society (at a school level) and that is causing mass confusion for their male peers. Men are not used to sharing power. They want to go back to the way things are. They’re confused and feel alone and have flocked to Trump’s banner to feel safe in an unsafe world. Trump is not the driver of the seismic upheaval, he’s merely an opportunist passenger riding the way of public sentiment like a pro.
Now what do we do about it?
#1: Let’s acknowledge that unbroken men are dangerous:
From the Agricultural Revolution to Alexander the Great and beyond is a trail of men including Donald Trump who hunger for power. Men are powerful, that is our great gift and it is both wonderful and very dangerous. In wiser times young aboriginal men were not allowed to use axes before they were inducted into their power. The walk-about journey was designed by older men to humble them slowly. To teach them that they were reliant on a whole that included women, animals and their environment. Joseph Cambell and Richard Rohr show convincingly that this same journey was almost entirely consistent with all pre-modern communities. Men were responsible for taking care of men because they knew if they didn’t the power of men would become a danger to themselves, their community and the harmony they shared with their environment
#2: Let’s acknowledge that young men are at risk more than ever before:
Donald Trump’s dad lost his father when he was 8. Fredrick Trump, Donald’s dad, moved to America at 16 and started scrapping in the free market and by 20 built the foundation of an empire. He had two sons, he preferred the first, Fred Jr until he became an alcoholic and then he turned his tough love attention to Donald. Is this why Trump pursues attention and power manically? Is this why all power-hungry men before him chose this path as well?
Fathering is a crisis because men are powerful and need that power to be contextualised to be constructive to those around us. And only fathers can do that well. We need to be shown not told. We need to be initiated into our power so it is used for service and not self because that is better for us based on the chemicals in our bodies. But that is not why young men are at risk. For the last 10,000 years, there have been power-hungry men preying on the power of the young.
The danger is the weapons in men’s hands in 2025 and their mindset. Older Aboriginal men in stable communities knew an axe in an uninitiated man’s hands was dangerous. But we are not living in stable times. We’re living in times when men are feeling scared. Alienated. Attacked even. Existential angst fills men. Without a great god, we’re forced to look only at each other and it robs us of meaning and beauty. We’re at sea and sinking. Drowning in a lack of meaning and purpose.
Now think about the weapons Donald Trump is holding in that context — billions of $ of fellow men who want to maintain empires, AI, super-bots, AI policy (the biggest issue of 2025), carbon production of the second biggest nation on earth etc. Now use our lens to see the weapons in young men’s hands — unrestricted information with no accountability, endless pleasure with no cost, historic power with no context or real community.
#3: Let’s be decisive and agree wise men need to rise to this crisis: Despite the resistance of white men the world has worked it way slowly back to equality which has served us all well. Anyone with half a brain can see money doesn’t buy happiness. And that harmony is better than hierarchy. Let’s be generous and call that wisdom. But despite this obvious epiphany most white men have sadly chosen to be complacent, or scared, or selfish over the last few thousand years because it was comfortable and that needs to change
So now what do we do:
So what? I think 2025 is the year of repentance for wise men. It is time to change. We must shed complacency and fear and take our place in society as stewards of harmony. We must take responsibility for our power and use it to champion equality within our sphere of influence. We must become mentors with shaking knees who take seriously our mantle of initiating the next generation into service that is entirely self-serving (according to the chemicals in our bloodstream). We must find our way back to a spirituality that locates men under a Great God who is real and powerful and loves us and our power.
I am glad that I have been ‘a wise man’ all my adult life. I am glad that most of my waking efforts have been spent on this cause. But I am committed to doing more. This year I will write a manual for young men. It is brewing in my soul. That is my commitment to this community. What is yours? What simple thing will you decide to do today that serves anxious, young, powerful men armed with some of the most powerful weapons in human history to find meaning and God in 2025?
Decided today and then let’s do it together.
PS. The essay lumps men into a big, ugly, oversimplified group. That is not fair, sorry. But like the intro says, when we point a lens at Donald Trump and some of the men around him it could be argued that is a part of what you see
PSS. If you are reading this to the PS’s it is unlikely you are someone who wants to dominate others. It’s probably true you are kind and aspire to love that is costly and pure. Our challenge together is to work within our groups and all their uglies to make things slightly better with one human we love at a time
PSSS. I really, really hope the tone of the article catches men’s real fear and real challenges. This stuff is big and complex and links to things like not having food on our kids’ tables and the stories our parents shared which we believed. It is in no way my intention to accuse anyone of fear but instead create a case for where and how that fear can correctly be dealt with
PSSSS. In case you missed I believe that looks like the bad ideas that cause us pain being wrung out of us by loving men and women who know better and the term I use to describe this slow, intentional process is mentorship
PSSSSS. The reason I made Donald Trump a prop and not the point of this article is because he is interesting and I know very, very little about him really