We are in 2025 with thousands of years of experience behind us, billions of men have lived out their lives all over the world, and yet everyone seems confused about what men are supposed to be like. And to add further mayhem and insult some of the most ill equipped, ignorant, and backward men on the planet are the biggest media voices explaining what it is to be a man to the latest generation of young men. This, by the way, has always been true through countless generations with just a few exceptions. Now, I am not going to pretend to have all the answers about what it is to be a real man, but having been a one for seventy-seven years this time around I think I am qualified to say a few important things about manhood or a least give a little perspective on the topic. Some of you will undoubtedly disagree strongly or simply write me off as raving mad. You may have a point but then again, I may be accurate about what I say. You decide.

The topic of what it means to be a man is huge and has so many parts that it will be impossible to address everything in this short article. It may require more than one article to even begin to cover the topic and it is a subject that keeps evolving as we speak so we will never get to the end of it.

Let’s get started. We human beings have a dualistic nature. We have these mammal bodies that behave in certain ways and of courses these mammal bodies come with genes, hormones, chemistry, and physical characteristics unique to the male form. These aspects both extend our capacity and restrict us in very obvious ways like height, weight, musculature and sex organs without the corresponding baby making machinery that females have. All these obvious physical differences plus conditioning give us personalities that develop as we grow and all men participate in this reality. In addition, all of us men are aware that we are alive and that awareness is a separate and different reality from the physical aspects. Let me explain. If someone were to ask me if I am alive right now, I would not have to ponder this. Right away I would check and say “Absolutely, yes, I am alive”. You could ask anyone on the planet the same question and they would all respond identically unless perhaps they were psychotic but that is a different story. Notice I said anyone, not men, not women, anyone. What I am saying here is that there is absolutely no difference whatsoever in the response of a man or a woman to that question. Pure awareness of being alive is the same for everyone. It is not influenced by gender or anything else. There is a profound implication here that some of you may have already noticed. If our experience of being aware that we are alive is identical, perhaps there is only one awareness that we are all participating in. Gender is irrelevant and we are one consciousness.

            If I were to ask you something else like, “How does your body feel right now?” the answers would be all over the map and they would often be gender related, impacted by different body chemistry, different hormones, different organs, and so on. You get the idea. So, we are dualistic creatures. One part of us is very influenced by local gender differences and one points to our sameness. We men and women are radically different but the same.

There is no problem whatsoever about our sameness. No problems arise out of it. It is just so. We are the same regarding our awareness of being. And may I go so far as to say we are one big being with eight and a half billion parts called the human race. But what about me as a body and a personality with my local history and identity and narrative about what I’ve done and who I am and where I am going? This is not shared by everyone. It is my unique program and I am the only one having my particular experience of being me.

            I could gather a bunch of men around me and say, “We are all men and we share this and that” and I would be sort of accurate. But if we really dug into that, my experience of being a man is somewhat different from Jack’s experience of being a man, or Ernesto, or Hiro, or Max. Who am I to say what Fred’s experience should be or should not be? I don’t know that. What us men do know is that despite the fact that there are enormous differences among us we share the same sex organs, hormonal drives to be more aggressive, and we share similar expectations of the culture we live in about what a man should be. That’s about it.  

            We share hormones, genes, and chemistry, but have somewhat different imprinting, and familial, social and cultural conditioning, as well as maturity. In other words, the physical stuff – animal characteristics, is what we share. In reality we are proactive high consciousness beings with a universal awareness that we are alive and we are occupying animal bodies that are mostly reactive. Most of the time we go with the animal, the reactive stuff and this leads to eventual dissatisfaction and unhappiness with ourselves and each other and this eventually leads to fear and fighting and completely forgetting about that all important other aspect that we are the same.

Let’s take a few moments here to make it obvious why each man is different and not at all the same. Men come in all different sizes, shapes, skin colors, hair colors, and temperaments. Some men are observing or aggressive, or passionate, or reserved and others are cautious or powerful or persevering. Some are emotional, others more intellectual and still others more kinesthetic. Some men are idealistic, some skeptics, some stoics, realists, spiritualists, cynics, or pragmatic. Some are very warm and accepting, others discriminating and exacting, ambitious and wanting to learn, some more intense, some domineering and controlling, others more surrendering, and still others just chilling and hanging out. Some are highly creative and inventive, others boisterous and hilarious, still others very inspiring, and some very kind and giving the shirt off their backs for others, while still others are commanding, even tyrannical, and others focused, principled, and loyal, and still others studious and experimental. Some seek freedom while others seek intimacy and companionship, others want to express themselves, some want to exchange and do business with each other, and some would rather compete, defeat others, rise to power, play king of the mountain. Some want to commune and others want stability and order and so it goes on and on and on. Some want to exploit, others one to preserve and sustain, others are animal and plant loving while others are driven by the almighty dollar. Some of us men are very stubborn, some arrogant or proud, some seIf-deprecating, some feeling guilty and some feeling ashamed, some self-destructive, some acting like victims, some highly impatient and so on. Incidentally we could say all this about women as well and it would all be true but it would all be flavored slightly differently. At the end of the day, all these different ways of being are legitimate experiments to be explored, examined, lived and learned from. Who says we have to all be alike?

So, in what way are we as men all alike or at least similar? Now there are so many people in the world that there is room enough for all kinds of exceptions. So, yes, we have many men that are LGBTQ. Do we really all have to be boringly exactly alike? No. Sexually speaking the majority of men are similar in a few respects. If you look around at nature you will find that biologically speaking everything alive is chiefly interested in reproducing and living long enough to do so successfully. So, in the interest of reproducing, everything alive is geared toward staying alive by avoiding annihilation. Now, for the time being we are going to ignore the rest of nature with all its fascinating variations and just concentrate on male humans.

Every man is subconsciously actively scanning the environment for safety. Yes, men are instinctively on the lookout for possible dangers to avoid. They are ready to protect themselves and at times, others, by fighting enemies off or getting out of harm’s way, one way or another. In this way they can survive long enough to mate and keep the species going. So, they are not only scanning for safety but they are biologically scanning for potential mates and once they spot one, they strategize how they are going to actually accomplish this. Now, bear in mind I am speaking strictly of biological imperatives here. Many men are much more sophisticated in their behavior and are also considering love, diplomacy, decency, protectiveness, generosity, kindness, mastery and so on. Also, they are dealing with obstacles like fear of rejection, shyness, inhibitions, avoidance, and not wanting to appear too aggressive or wanting to appear lethal and many other such considerations. This is all to say that much of human activity is actually oriented to prowling and this can clash with the other parts of ourselves that are more interested in spiritual matters or other types of creative endeavors. So, when women react to men with, “Men only want one thing, SEX, they are sort of right in a purely physical sense but sort of wrong at the same time. The right part is that most men are controlled by their chemistry and the biological imperative of all living creatures, keep the race or species going no matter what. So yes, psychological studies show that the average younger man thinks of sex 19 times a day. The wrong part is that when they are not thinking about sex they are focused on many, many other interesting things like their work, hobbies, relationships, challenges, responsibilities, parenting, being healthy, athletic endeavors, sports, spirituality, and so on.

Even if we single out the fairly common element of wanting sex, we find enormous differences in how men approach it, handle it, think about it, want it, are afraid of it, are addicted to it, and all the preferences that go along with it. Men are more likely to be imprinted than women so early childhood experiences tend to focus them on certain parts they find erotic like breasts, ankles, legs, shoulders, midriffs, necks, ears, hair, lips etc. and sometimes things that are peripheral like underwear, bras, hats, and shoes to name a few. There is even one famous case of a man who found streetcars majorly erotic. And then there are the men who are more oriented toward illegal and harmful activities like child molestation, extremes in pornography, and extreme sadomasochistic tendencies. And yes, some men have no sex drive at all and prefer to be celibate. Men are just not all the same by any stretch of the imagination even in their sex lives.

Young men just going through puberty are often confused about what being a man means and they get all kinds of crazy ideas from their friends, parents, and the society they live in, not to mention what their religion has to say about it. When all is said and done, a man is what the man thinks a man is and this is subject to change with maturity and more life experience. In this article we have covered the big picture what makes men exactly the same as women in an essence state and what makes them distinct from women and one another in a physical state. Neither being overly spiritual and denying the physical body or being overly focused on the physical and denying higher awareness works. They are inexorably intertwined and it is our work as men and women to sort that out. There is much more to this fascinating topic that will be addressed in upcoming articles. In the meantime, enjoy what you are because without fail you will be both female and male as the lifetimes whirl by.  Whatever you resist you will become.