Lars: Well, Bianca can help you. She's got nurse's training. Gus: No she doesn't. That's because she's a plastic...thing. Lars: That's amazing. Did you hear that? Bianca said God made her to help people.
Lars: Well, Bianca can help you. She's got nurse's training. Gus: No she doesn't. That's because she's a plastic...thing. Lars: That's amazing. Did you hear that? Bianca said God made her to help people.
Hi everyone! I’d like to introduce “Conversations with men”, an interview series with ordinary men who I’m inspired or intrigued by.
In this first installment, I speak with Damien Bohler. He’s the man behind the user reviews for Blood Diamond, Our Idiot Brother and Garden State. He’s an Australian who recently returned after 7 years in Thailand. Damien is also involved in the international Authentic World network, of which I’m heading the Norwegian division.
The conversation is recorded through Skype and I’m afraid the Norway-Australia connection lead to pretty awful image quality.
In this talk, Damien and I cover a huge range of topics:
What it’s like to be the son of two Buddhist practitioners
The challenges of relating to dad, even when he’s done a 3-year meditation retreat
Generational divides
Damien’s experiences from the New Warrior Training Adventure
Authentic communication
The impact of a men’s circle
Ken Wilbers states and stages, quadrants applied to relationships
As my intention for wrapping up the review of Falling Down this weekend was so strong, I want to give you something. In that discarded review, I inserted a piece on Spiral Dynamics, the preeminent model for the growth of consciousness in the world today. It seemed integral to the message I was conveying. But that message didn’t inspire me in the end, so this may be the only place you’ll find it. I hope you enjoy it. It stands well on its own.
Climbing the spiral
D-fens is a traditional man. In spiral dynamics, the traditional level of consciousness is associated with the color blue. It signifies qualities like loyalty, duty, allegiance to God and country, adherence to rules/laws, a moral code etc. The sphere of people with whom I identify share my ethnic background, values, beliefs and sexual orientation.
After the traditional level of consciousness comes the rational/modern. It’s associated with the color orange and signifies qualities like rationality, striving for success (the American Dream), efficiency, profit and mastery. Science trumps God and skill trumps race. The sphere of people with whom I identify grows to include those who are useful to me (who provide relevant skill), regardless of ethnic, religious background or sexual orientation.
After the rational level comes the pluralistic/postmodern. It’s associated with the color green and signifies qualities like empathy, community, tolerance, egalitarianism. As a member of this stage of consciousness, I now identify with all people in the world, even the totally fucked up ones (which is part of the problem).
These three stages form the last three stages of what is commonly referred to as 1st tier consciousness. When consciousness is said to be of the 1st tier, it means that it’s a stage of consciousness that is incapable of recognizing the contributions and truths of stages of consciousness different to its own. So when a God-fearing nationalist of the traditional level discusses with an atheistic businessman of the rational level, they are 100% incapable of recognizing that the other holds significant truths, essential to the overall health of the spiral.
Before we return to the movie, I need to point out one very important feature of the pluralistic stage. And to do that, I need to tell you that the stage of consciousness below the traditional is egocentric. It’s associated with the color red and is signified by qualities like power, dominance, territorial disputes etc. Think of the urban gang William encounters in one scene.
In its observance of laws, morals, justice etc, traditional people will be happy to e.g. put someone to death for breaking the agreed-upon moral code. Pluralists reject such things as inhumane and insist on rehabilitatation. And while moving from punishment to rehabilitation is an important step, these green meme people don’t recognize that some people cannot and do not want to be rehabilitated.
Their naive attitude tends to turn the more liberal nations of the world into free havens for people at the egocentric stage of development. My home country Norway demonstrates this tendency when it works hard to protect the human rights of terrorists, who tend to have a lot of red meme anger and hatred in them. Recognized terrorists such as Mullah Krekar are free to run terror-networks from Norwegian soil while the judicial system searches indefinitely for ways to address the issue without compromising his human rights.
Conservatives will of course scoff at this overly liberal mentality. And with good reason.
With that said, we should be fully equipped for the next and final lap of unravelling the gold of this movie.
To reiterate: this excerpt is from a movie review I’ve discarded.
I’ll wrap up the rewritten review of Falling Down when I get back from Frankfurt, hopefully with new inspiration and insights.
This was supposed to be the weekend when two important things happened:
I was to finish my movie review for Falling Down
I was to finish my presentation of Masculinity-Movies for the Men’s symposium coming up in Frankfurt next weekend.
It didn’t turn out quite like that. This is a little story about the challenges of writing a movie review.
Finding the soul of a movie
It was earlier this week that I watched Falling Down with a friend in preparation for my movie review. When we watched it, we weren’t that taken by it. I remember having seen it long ago and enjoying it, but this time I struggled to get into it.
Based on my notes, I then spent hours and hours trying to write a movie review that worked. But I’ve struggled. A lot. I found an approach that seemed to work using integral theory, but in reading and re-reading it – an almost finished movie review – I was a big “no” to releasing it.
In tandem with writing this review, I’ve been developing a presentation on my movie work for a symposium in Frankfurt. This has forced me to zoom out and take a meta-perspective. How do I write my reviews? What is the process? Do I have any clue when I start out what the end result is going to be? Is it all just a big mystery?
In writing this review and asking those questions, I’ve realized one thing: When I read my own movie-reviews, they have to feel good in my body. There’s no other way to say it. When the movie review opens me – when I actually feel my heart open, my skin tingle and my soul deepen as I read – then and only then do I have a review I want to publish.
That is a high standard and many of my old reviews fail to meet it. I’m not going to delete them because of that. But I’m more excited about the ones which do meet that standard. The one I did for American Beauty is one of them. I’m fucking proud of that piece. And people love it. Some so much, in fact, that they say their lives changed because of it. I see how it can be better too, but that’s fine and just a reflection of my own growth.
So here I have this whole review of Falling Down on my hard-drive and I’m not going to publish it. Because while it is fascinating reading, it doesn’t feel good in my body. It doesn’t capture the soul of the movie.
Which leaves the question how do I find that soul? If I were to be dead honest, I don’t really know. The best answer I have is that I throw everything I have at it and see what sticks. I will look for answers in boxes labelled “mythology”, “history”, “integral theory”, “archetypes”, “spirituality”, “men’s work” etc. I will pour the contents of those boxes over the movie and see what happens. Sometimes sparks fly immediately. Sometimes it’s hard work. But in the end, it’s worth it. And intuition guides my hand all along.
The kaleidoscope of a movie
As I realized I couldn’t publish my movie review, I decided to watch the movie again in search for answers. And what resulted was a completely different experience. I realized that my friend had had a major influence on my experience watching it. She wasn’t at all into it and we had been in our own relational space for a while, which also completely altered my experience.
When I watched it on my own just now, William seemed more dangerous to me. I described him as an unlikely hero character of sorts in the review I was about to publish, a defender of traditional values in a world of selfish pricks. Now, I see him differently. But I can’t put words to that yet. But it certainly has to do with how dangerous a man can get when he represses his life force.
The movie was also way funnier to me this time. I laughed out loud when William died squirting his blue water pistol. Very dark humor.
It strikes me now that a movie is a gateway to a whole inner universe, way larger than the creators of it could ever imagine. Depending on what day I might watch it, I will see different things.
This insight opens me not only to the mystery of movies, but to the mystery of life itself. Because movies as I see them are but reflections of our soul. Every day, a different pattern might emerge from the kaleidoscope. A review will thus be an impulse or a thought frozen in time, one of a million possible reviews I could have written.
So really, I don’t have a clue what I’m doing.
The more I grow, the less I know. I like that. Hopefully, you my readers will enjoy that too.
That said, I invite you to read an excerpt on applied spiral dynamics from my discarded review. You may enjoy it. I think it’s pretty good.
When do we know we’ve become men? When is it that we’re no longer boys, but adults who have arrived on the shores of full-blown manhood?
For years now, I’ve been feeling the back and forth between boyhood and manhood inside of me. This entire website has been sourced in my inner search for my adult self. I’ve become so intimate with the changing forms of my inner landscape that I can now feel the difference between being a boy and a man as a totally visceral experience. I have kept shifting between them for years.
Yesterday, I had an experience of sitting in a cafe working on my laptop. I’ve always been a bit ashamed of my hands. I’ve judged them to be quite effeminate and delicate hands. Big worker hands don’t run in the family. Yet yesterday, as I sat in that cafe working, feeling the afternoon sun warm my face through the window, I looked down on my hands. And in that moment, a simple recognition arose in me. I was looking at the hands of a man.
So how do we know that we’ve become men? Some people say “when I became a father”. Others say “when I started living my purpose”. Most say “I don’t know”. I identify with being in that latter group, but it’s a not-knowing filled with wonder and awe. Yet in that simple moment of looking down on my hands, somehow I knew.
And as all things in life, this too will change. Yet, there is something enduring here. Something which is not fleeting. It’s a simple experience. Nothing fancy. And it’s what I’ve been wanting for so long.
Now, over to you. When did you know you were a man? Or do you not yet consider yourself as one? Curious to hear.
Thanks to all of you who participated in my competition for choosing the next movie to be reviewed. The winner is “Falling Down”. Thank you, Moritz Krohn for suggesting it. I will be in touch about the free coaching.
Expect the review as soon as I’m done with it. Sooner rather than later!
I look forward to writing this review! Thanks for your support
Register below and I’ll send you this *powerful* and much loved introduction to the masculine Archetypes (complete with exercises). I think you'll love it! – Eivind
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