“The domination of India under the redoubtable Queen Victoria was the high water mark of the British Empire and it held a place deep in the British psyche. Mountbatten would have grown up and matured with this fact front and centre in his mind, and yet it was down to him to pay the ultimate respect offered by a uniformed officer of the crown to the incoming order. As the last British Viceroy of the dominion of India, he raises his hand to the new flag, signifying both he and the empire he represented acknowledge and respect the new sovereignty and independence of a land they had dominated and controlled only hours before.

He was the man on the spot and this duty fell to him. Like it or not, he delivered.“

Handing on the torch despite the losses. The duty of doing the right thing for all.

“I hear voices identifying bad treatment and unproductive patterns in our society. Forces that marginalise and penalise the people least able to rectify those situations. I don’t want them to shut up and just get on with it anymore. I don’t exhort them to be thankful for what they’ve got, what we’ve given them. I want to understand the grievances, what causes them and what might be done to fix them. I increasingly notice that their grievances could easily be mine, or my children’s too, if the wind changes only slightly.“

What I was taught to fear and loathe.

“Sure enough, early in 1992, the decision was passed into law and homosexuals could serve alongside their straight comrades without fear of official sanction or discrimination, though they would always be ‘nutmen’ to many. The calamitous day had arrived. The dread threat to discipline and national security now legally stalked the very halls of the nation’s defence unfettered and... to coin the old Navy favourite, quick as a flash nothing happened. The nation wasn’t invaded, the defence force didn’t crumble, neither was security breached or discipline threatened any more than it had been prior to the change.

Though neither were the two ADFA girls reinstated.

All that happened was that a small number of gay service personnel came out - they even marched in Mardi Gras, though they were forbidden to wear their uniforms. Most just kept it to themselves, much as they had always done, and got on with their jobs, threatening neither military discipline nor national security but surely breathing a little easier about their own security.”

My first experience up close of LGBTQI+ persecution due to ‘fears’. Spoiler: the fear turns out to be ridiculous.

“I’ve been called a black cunt all my life. I was singled out at school. My brother and I were picked on. If we went into the news agents, he’d follow us around while the fucking white kids were shoplifting right behind his back. If the cops were looking for kids, we’d always get stopped. It gets to you. That’s why I love these guys.

“They’re us.”

I’d already felt a familiar white suburban reflex rise in me that wanted to scoff at yet another black fella having a whinge. As Mo’s calm and deliberate explanation flowed I found I just couldn’t scoff or dismiss. I could only listen. Mo had clearly thought about this stuff. A lot. As he went on to detail numerous anecdotes ranging from casual discrimination to outright race-based hatred and violence, I felt something else rising.

Anger.”

My black mate shows me patience and awakens awareness for me.

“That fucker. How dare he make me feel this way. How dare he invade my life, my peace, my mind like this. I had no idea I was being anything other than a tourist enjoying a stroll. I was sending out no signals. What the fuck gives him the right to think he can behave that way towards anyone? I wasn’t into it, mate. Move on! It’s not your decision to make and you have no fucking right to be bent out of shape by that fact at all. No right to use your physical advantage to change my life just because your desires were aroused and your ego threatened. This single isolated incident had ruined my day, curtailed my planned activities, frightened me, angered me and made me rethink my future travel plans - all because this guy wanted it and I didn’t. This was madness. I wasn’t the one with the fucking problem, he was, but I was impacted by it anyway.

And then it hit me...

Women must feel this way all the time.“

As a young man, I find myself in real fear of my safety and body for the first time.

“We have seen this over and over as the cringeworthy videos wing their way around the interwebs. We haven't seen any UFOs - certainly no more than usual. We haven't seen chemtrail machines, not even secret suppressed proof of wind turbines causing brain damage. We have pretty much only seen behaviours by those with standing and authority, real or imaginary, trying to force others to bend to their will - and they are generally white people of a certain age.

I'm so afraid, so filled with anxiety and dread I have invented a universe of things to fear and loathe.

Personally, I think the zero-sum crowd have fallen for bullshit and I think it’s important to have a system. One that helps you see bullshit early - theirs and yours. Let’s see how that system might look.”

Exploring and finding information in the age of misinformation.

“It wasn’t the last card the segregationists could play, however. In numerous towns and cities, the authorities simply shuttered the pools. Closed them. Let them fall into disrepair. In a few places, they went so far as to fill them back in. To these officials, and the people that voted them in, it was less of an affront to lose the pools altogether than to share them with a reviled group who had just had their rights and status elevated. It was better for everybody to lose than for one group to retain a privilege they already held and another to gain this privilege as well. The white communities stood to lose nothing but an exclusive privilege. Sharing with ‘the other’ - no fucking way.

What the hell was going on here? Why would a group decide to lose something that made their lives better, more comfortable and more fun at small cost simply because they had to share - not lose, just share it with other members of the public?”

The cognitive tools and processes we use to create our picture of the world. Who do I listen to and why?

“Scrub the cops, this guy hates everyone. The retarded masses, the Jesuits, the truthers, the meat puppets - whatever the hell they are - he hates them all. This guy is angry, isolated, anxious, hateful - it oozes from every word.

So why am I talking about this guy here? He’s an extremist, an outlier. Why am I bringing him into this discussion? Every issue this guy has comes from his bad take on being a man. For most of the issues I have discussed in this book, this guy is a highly concentrated barrel of it all. Dilute him down slightly and I think you have a place that many men, younger and older, find themselves. Not as acute, not as embittered and aggressive, but similar in lesser ways. I believe those elements which drive many men to feel isolated, angry and resentful, this guy is the mother lode. That this one guy was so open and forthright about the space he occupied before he became a mass murderer at least allows a glimpse into that place. It is a bleak place, based on assumed superiority, backed by flawed thinking and destructive to all around. Like a Jenny Craig before/after pic, this guy is the image on the left. The seemingly hopeless case. There will never be a miracle transformation on the right.”

Tilting at cultural windmills how bullshit became a media business model.

“In most social species, that snarling, aggressive alpha only appears in one environment - captivity. Taking the behaviour of captive animals as your guide to what they were like in the wild is deeply stupid. It’s like aliens coming to Earth to research human behaviour but only studying the humans in maximum security. These creatures are out of their natural environments, they are usually isolated and have been raised with no natural socialisation. They are surrounded by strange humans with strange behaviour. They usually have one common element - fear. That snarling alpha is not the result of the power of nature, he is the product of disruption, isolation and terror.

What sets humans apart is intelligence, adaptability, teamwork, invention. If it were all down to our physical strength we would have fallen off the evolutionary trees a long time ago. The need for physical strength to get through life is a myth born of fear and loathing.

We need human alphas like we need lead in our water.”

Bad models of masculinity. What are we passing to the young men who will take over from us, marry our daughters, and make the new world?

“The wall also gets breached regularly - but in the opposite direction. Israel finds itself regularly conducting operations, incursions and attacks outside their wall in the name of their own security. The problems still fester, the hatred and resentment goes nowhere, lives are still lost. The wall holds for now but that can change very quickly.

For all walls, you only need one ‘intruder’ on the wrong side of that wall, like an ‘illegal’, a drug shipment, or a virus, and the whole thing starts to seem pretty silly. You get a regular series of them and the wall becomes an embarrassing white elephant that seems to inhibit those within more than those outside.

Most importantly, the peace of mind of those who were convinced of the power of the wall soon fails as dramatically as did their barrier against the nasty world. Paranoid and isolated, the proponents retreat further into a prison of their own making thinking “God dammit! Everything would be great if everybody else would just RESPECT MY WALL!”

They won’t. What possible reason do they have to do so?”

The cost to our society of worsening isolation and division driven by toxic masculinity.

“I can’t say why you had to go through all that, I’m not sure there are any good reasons. I know none of it was necessary and it did you untold damage but you were strong enough to get through it and have a good life. The only reason that happened is because you are a strong, smart, resilient kid with a sense of humour that allows you step outside the chaos to see the absurdity and vulnerability. You have the same gift as the kid in the Emperor's New Clothes, you know hubris and folly when you see them and you know the harm they can cause. That you started avoiding them so early is a credit to your nature.

Thanks. Your strengths still help me cope to this day.

By writing this to myself I realised one thing. That voice, that judgemental limiting voice. He's too green. He's not smart. I wsa the only one still using it. I was the only one still treating that poor kid like shit. I was the only one limiting him with words and thoughts. Ooh sure, many others did in the past bit they had moved on and were being shitty in whole new ways to whole new people these days. It was only me left perpetuating the whole thing.”

Learning to come to terms with the WHOLE slate of human emotions. Using ALL of the human toolkit.

“I’d like to see a reality where people are aware of their differences, their varying experiences of being human - that what has been the reality for me is definitely not the reality of others, even though they may be very close to us day to day. To do so is to appreciate that what might be easy for me is extremely difficult for others, often through no fault of their own. Likewise, things that are difficult for me are very easy for some others.

If this is the norm, the expectation of everyone, then it would be almost automatic to want to help. Moreso, it would be automatic to expect help. I didn’t say ‘feel entitled’ to help, I said ‘expect’ assistance - in the same way you go to a bus stop and expect a bus (this may be a bad example, but let’s move on).”

What are we actually trying to achieve? What does healthy masculinity look like?

“I am nobody's idea of a poster child for the enlightened man but I have made much hard-won progress on that path. My thinking has changed in a lot of ways about a lot of things. I have tried to put together a list of some of the things that have changed for me that I think might point to some growth and meaningful change.

You don’t feel any real sense of ownership - of anything or anyone, only a kind of stewardship. You're here to protect, nurture and grow, not accumulate and hoard.

You stop celebrating achievements and identities you had no part in creating. Things like the ANZACs, white skin, nationality, your bloody star sign… These are all part of your identity and being, but they aren’t an achievement, a status symbol. You truly celebrate what is uniquely you, what you have brought to the table. You admire this trait in others too.”

Some ideas on what changes as you grow out of toxic masculinity.

“While there is little doubt different groups had good cause to be put out by the actions of these individuals, the social media pile-ons for simple insensitive or off-colour inputs are proportionally massive. They are also generally filled with outrage and ridicule. They are often the catalyst for employment loss and social isolation for the targets. On one side, humiliation and devastation, on the other side the promotion of a stance and attitude - often not without genuine cause.

Both sides then retreat into cultural or demographic camps fortified by outrage and indignation, resulting only in more polarisation, defensiveness and anger. But another thing also generally happens in these digital free-for-alls that often gets missed.

Nobody changes their mind. Usually, it results in quite the opposite.”

Rewriting your relationship with the evolving world.