Healthy & Unhealthy Shame and Healthy & Unhealthy Masculinity

I wish to follow up on GG’s recent DM on shame, and the lively interaction that followed. 

The topic of shame played a big role in my research on men in my book, The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine. I will share here some of the lessons I learned about shame while writing that book.

A study of murders of young black men, mostly by black men, concluded that much of the aggression was spurred over issues of “shame and respect.” Murder became a symbol of manhood. Both inside and outside prison, a hierarchy is formed where “the meanest rise to the top.” One convict killer said, “respect is money, money is power and power is masculinity. Violence defines you as a man.”

The importance of belonging is key. Shame occurs when one feels one does not belong. What is the medicine for such shame? The study concludes that “the experts—and the killers—say a mentor might have saved them, anyone from the outside who could have shown them another way to be a man.”

Such a mentor may be one who teaches martial arts. Dr. John Congar, a friend, psychologist in the tradition of Reich and Jung, and Episcopal priest, told me that taking his middle school boys to learn Korean martial arts, and then staying himself to learn alongside them, was a big step for him. “My father was more distant, and I wasn’t given a clear picture about how to be male in the world. There wasn’t a lot of room for my aggression and my inner conflict. I grew up avoiding conflict….So I wanted my sons to learn martial arts.” He stayed on and got a black belt in martial arts at 61 years of age.

Like aggression, shame goes back a very long way. Studies of ancient hunter-gathering tribes such as those in New Guinea make it clear that, along with violence, shame was and is a primary way of maintaining control. 

Among tribal peoples, the ultimate shame—and the ultimate punishment—is to be expelled from the tribe. Expulsion from the tribe is tantamount to death by isolation. Shame by this definition, is the equivalent of “not belonging.” Is our DNA hardwired for shame?

I interviewed Mark Nicholson, a forty-five-year-old therapist who grew up in Birmingham, England in the shadow of the First and Second World Wars. He was initiated into the men’s movement in 1994 by Robert Bly and James Hillman, and now conducts men’s workshops himself. He talked about our need to “acknowledge our capacity for evil. Until we acknowledge that in ourselves, we can’t live fully.” An example he gives is South Africa’s public investigations of the crimes during Apartheid.  

He cites the work of Gordon Whelan on shame. “In Gordon’s work, shame is the opposite of belonging. Shame is the experience of not belonging. I would go further. I think there is appropriate shame when you commit harm—we need to regulate our social structures. But the secondary shame is the feeling of not belonging, that who we are is not okay.” In American culture, often status or one’s financial condition dictates belonging or not, but “that is unsustainable as a sense of belonging.”

In our culture, he believes, grief itself is often shamed—especially with men. And so learning to grieve is important for healing shame. When I told him of the role that grief plays in our cosmic masses, he responded: “This is what healthy religion would look like.” 

To be continued.

See Matthew Fox, The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine, pp. 52-59, 285-296.

And Fox, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul & Society.

And Fox, Original Blessing: A Primer on Creation Spirituality.

And Fox, Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth.

And Fox, Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ.

To read the transcript of Matthew Fox’s video meditation, click HERE.

Banner Image: A martial arts class in West Java, Indonesia. Photo by Syaiful Lil M on Unsplash.

Queries for Contemplation

How do you recognize shame playing a role in the spreading of evil? How do you tame shame in yourself? Do you agree that grieving and acknowledging our capacity for evil is part of the medicine for shame?

Related Readings by Matthew Fox

The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine

To awaken what Fox calls “the sacred masculine,” he unearths ten metaphors, or archetypes, ranging from the Green Man, an ancient pagan symbol of our fundamental relationship with nature,  to the Spiritual Warrior….These timeless archetypes can inspire men to pursue their higher calling to connect to their deepest selves and to reinvent the world.
“Every man on this planet should read this book — not to mention every woman who wants to understand the struggles, often unconscious, that shape the men they know.” — Rabbi Michael Lerner, author of The Left Hand of God

Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society

Visionary theologian and best-selling author Matthew Fox offers a new theology of evil that fundamentally changes the traditional perception of good and evil and points the way to a more enlightened treatment of ourselves, one another, and all of nature. In comparing the Eastern tradition of the 7 chakras to the Western tradition of the 7 capital sins, Fox allows us to think creatively about our capacity for personal and institutional evil and what we can do about them. 
“A scholarly masterpiece embodying a better vision and depth of perception far beyond the grasp of any one single science.  A breath-taking analysis.” — Diarmuid O’Murchu, author of Quantum Theology: Spiritual Implications of the New Physics

Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality

Matthew Fox lays out a whole new direction for Christianity—a direction that is in fact very ancient and very grounded in Jewish thinking (the fact that Jesus was a Jew is often neglected by Christian theology): the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality, the Vias Positiva, Negativa, Creativa and Transformativa in an extended and deeply developed way.
“Original Blessing makes available to the Christian world and to the human community a radical cure for all dark and derogatory views of the natural world wherever these may have originated.” –Thomas Berry, author, The Dream of the Earth; The Great Work; co-author, The Universe Story

Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth

Fox’s spirituality weds the healing and liberation found in North American Creation Spirituality and in South American Liberation Theology. Creation Spirituality challenges readers of every religious and political persuasion to unite in a new vision through which we learn to honor the earth and the people who inhabit it as the gift of a good and just Creator.
“A watershed theological work that offers a common ground for religious seekers and activists of all stripes.” — Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice.
“I am reading Liberating Gifts for the People of the Earth by Matt Fox.  He is one that fills my heart and mind for new life in spite of so much that is violent in our world.” ~ Sister Dorothy Stang.

Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election

Matthew Fox tells us that he had always shied away from using the term “Anti-Christ” because it was so often used to spread control and fear. However, given today’s rise of authoritarianism and forces of democracide, ecocide, and christofascism, he turns the tables in this book employing the archetype for the cause of justice, democracy, and a renewed Earth and humanity.
From the Foreword: If there was ever a time, a moment, for examining the archetype of the Antichrist, it is now…Read this book with an open mind. Good and evil are real forces in our world. ~~ Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit and Conversations with the Divine.
For immediate access to Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election, order the e-book with 10 full-color prints from Amazon HERE. 
To get a print-on-demand paperback copy with black & white images, order from Amazon HERE or IUniverse HERE. 
To receive a limited-edition, full-color paperback copy, order from MatthewFox.org HERE.
Order the audiobook HERE for immediate download.