Masculinity, Potentials and the Dichotomous Man

JP | #Intangibl3
Nov 14, 2017
7 min read

I've been thinking about the duality of nature for quite some time now. From the structure of an atom to the philosophies of the Far East, we can see that nature works on a scale that, for purposes of continued survival, must be balanced.

I am of the opinion that in the way that matter is held together by the balance between negative and positive forces, so too are we held together, in a more non-physical sense, by negative and positive energies. If not necessarily "held together," then I think it's safe to say at least that our reality is "managed" by such forces.

I'm really using this blog in this instance as a way to organize my own thoughts to some degree until I'm satisfied that there is a straight line from A to B in my mind. I'm not a professional scientist of any kind, nor am I a professional theologian or philosopher. I have no special knowledge of anything, really. This post is just an attempt to put into words the concepts that are bumping around in my noggin.

I've titled this post as I did because I want to relate these ideas to masculinity, or masculine energy. Those terms are not quite equal, as they could and often do refer to different, yet complementary, concepts, but know that for the purposes of this post I may use them interchangeably, or at the very least when I use one term I may very well be referring to both.

YIN AND YANG

One of the oldest and most well known realizations of the interconnectedness of the opposing energies, call them what you will, is the symbol of the yin and the yang.

This symbol, whose meaning is clearly illustrated in the imagery above, denotes the conflicting independence and interdependence of these two opposing forces:

Yin represents the opposite:

Night
Dark
Negative
Evil
Cold
Femininity

Yang represents the following:

Day
Light
Positive
Good
Warmth
Masculinity

I bring this ancient idea into this post because it is really the most simplified and digestible portrayal of what I'm trying to convey. There are things/ideas/concepts that exist, and there are things/ideas/concepts that sit opposite them. The argument can be made that for each opposing set of things/ideas/concepts there is one, or perhaps many, neutral factors that directly correlate to them, but I'll come back to that in a bit.

In the way that the yin and yang symbol represents the opposition of light with dark, it also represents their complementary natures. Each side of the yin and yang symbol holds a small amount of its opposite; the yin is touched by yang and the yang touched by yin. Not only do the yin and yang meet in the middle, but there exists in each a bit of the other that is separate from that other.

Let's use war as an example. In reality, these two opposing forces could be warring nations. The two nations meet for battle in the middle of the battlefield and there exists in each army elements that are very similar, in some ways even identical, to the other army. Nation and nature are related in this way. One soldier's political or religious worldview, for instance, could be the exact same as that of an opposing soldier, yet they still fight to destroy each other. In most cases, our individual natures win out over commonalities with others.

Correlated with this is that never ending war between the concepts of good and evil, or negative and positive, or masculine and feminine. Of course we know that each the masculine and the feminine war with themselves often enough, but I digress.

The war never ends, though, because regardless of who wins the battle, people change. The influence of the light on the dark and vice versa has profound and lasting effects and nature's preference for equal balance between the two is borne out again and again from the most basic building blocks of physical reality to the very highest conceptualizations of the human consciousness. I think that this is why the yin and yang symbol shows each side with an element of the "enemy." Even in man's earliest philosophical explanations of reality this balance was clear.

When one thinks of it in this way, the distinction between the value of the light versus that of the dark becomes blurred. But most people do not want more evil, right? Most of us want more good in the world and far less evil. I think that this is possible, but we must understand that for "good" to exist there must be the possibility of "evil" as well.

THE DICHOTOMOUS MAN

Those little spots of opposite color on each side of the yin and yang symbol? Yeah, those are potentials. They each represent the possibility for each side to actually become its opposite. And they represent the opportunity for a melding of the two.

Finally we come to the point! The neutral! No, I don't mean neutral like Switzerland, I mean neutral as in not positive and not negative. Actually, I suppose a more accurate representation of what I'm trying to describe would be speaking of this middle line as both positive and negative.

Carl Jung wrote of the "personal shadow," or, all that is within one that one does not wish to associate with one's conscious ego. All of the things that family, friends, church, school, and society in general condition out of us. This is a bit of an oversimplification, but I hope that it works for my purpose here.

I believe, as did Jung and many, many people in this school of thought, that the neutrality described above is not the "nothing," but the "everything," or at the very least the "other half" of everything. It is from here that human wholeness is derived. Jung once said, "I would rather be whole than good." There's a reason for this. People have been denying their own capacity for evil since the dawn of human consciousness, and it was made worse when people were made to think that their thoughts were evil and so repressed their fantasy life, furthering their separation from their individual and collective shadows.

Becoming a whole person doesn't happen by denying half of you, that's preposterous. It requires that you examine all that you are and accept yourself. You are capable of the greatest good and the greatest evil. Such is the existence of us, the beings caught between heaven and hell.

To deny what you're capable of only serves you a superficial safety. We can be pushed to the breaking point easier than many of us think and if you're not prepared for that to happen to you then you will have had your reality destroyed and nothing to show for it.

I prefer to exist as an integrated human being. I know, at least to some extent, my capacity for both good and evil, and this affords me much greater control over my actions, emotions and thoughts.

This also applies to another interpretation of the yin and yang symbol, that of masculinity and femininity. I didn't grow up with a masculine role model. I was basically raised by my mother, which led to me having a lot of feminine behaviors. I never liked being that way, but I didn't know how to be the way that I did want to be.

When I left home, at 15, I didn't know who I was or what I wanted to do with my life. I got married at 17, had my first son at 18, and realized that I was sorely lacking in certain qualities that I saw in other fathers. I began learning about what it was that men did, and I began doing those things. My circumstances had forced my masculine side into the depths of my personal shadow, but once I had a wife and a son of my own I realized that I couldn't continue living the way I'd been living. I was weak; pathetic; a sorry excuse for a man.

It took years before I was finally able to say, "I'm a man" without a nagging feeling in my gut telling me that I was lying. Eventually, though, my masculine nature began to emerge and I grew closer to being whole. I'm still not there, but are any of us ever? I don't know anyone who has completed their journey. I certainly haven't.

I, like many, pushed too hard. All of the coveted masculine traits that I had worked to pull out of myself kicked into overdrive while my feminine traits fought to hold their grasp on me. Instead of two people sitting down for lunch, they were two enemies fighting to the death within me. I was domineering, angry and vengeful, yet also afraid, weak and deceitful. I was wrathful and terrified. The masculine saw everything with clear definition. The feminine saw everything blended together. It was very confusing.

The moment that everything changed was when I decided that I would no longer live by anything that anyone else told me. I couldn't live according to the expectations of others, I had to live only for my own expectations of myself. I said "fuck the world" and that was that. That was one of the best decisions that I have ever made.

I guess what I'm trying to say with all of this is that it is important for each of us to live true to who we are, while being aware that we are quite capable of being something far different without proper care. There are no good or evil people, there are just those who are aware of their capacity for both good and evil, and those who are not.

I, like God in the book of Genesis when viewing his new creation, looked at masculinity and saw that it was good - for me. It is who I am at my core, yet I am working to reach a proper balance in which I am aware of every part of me, including the parts that I don't like.

I believe that you should do this too. When my natural tendency is to deny that I could or would do something I stop and reflect on the possibility that I actually could do that thing, whether "that thing" be good or evil, moral or immoral, masculine or feminine.

Being aware of our capacities gives us greater control in our interactions with the world and the people in it.

If you've made it this far, thanks for reading and please leave your thoughts in the comment section below this post!