051 - Understanding Men’s Vulnerabilities with Jed Diamond
In our pursuit of a healthier and happier society, it is vital that we recognize the often-overlooked struggles faced by men concerning their emotional well-being. Despite living in a world brimming with technology and constant communication, an alarming number of men silently battle feelings of loneliness and disconnection. It's a subject that deserves our attention, empathy, and understanding.
This week on "On This Walk," my walking partner is Jed Diamond, founder of Men Alive. We discuss men's health and well-being, particularly the issue of male loneliness and the importance of connection.
Jed shares his personal experiences and journey to becoming a hands-on father and promoting healthy fatherhood. We explore the concept of the shadow self, the need for balance between outer success and inner fulfillment, and the historical context of male-female relationships. We also discuss personal responsibility, the role of men's groups in fostering connection, and Jed's work with Men Alive and the Moonshot for Mankind project.
In This Episode
(03:18) Jed’s journey to becoming a hands-on father
(11:18) The dichotomy between success and connection.
(14:14) The historical perspective on male and female roles
(21:33) The tendency to project our own unresolved pain and wounds onto others
(24:05) The need for a new paradigm to understand disconnection, trauma, and healing
(26:05) The importance of personal change and self-reflection in addressing societal issues
(33:28) Recognizing and addressing male loneliness as a fundamental need for connection
(33:28) Reconnecting to aliveness and purpose: Advice for men seeking fulfillment and overcoming loneliness.
(36:28) Men's historical need for connection and the importance of male companionship and support.
(43:13) The concept of a new paradigm shift and its potential impact on creating positive systems for mankind and humanity.
(47:06) Jed's work with Men Alive and the Moonshot for Mankind project
Notable Quote
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“Our sons and our daughters are not saying, ‘Dad, I wish you would be more successful and spend more time away and make more money. They want your presence. And so my journey, what I've been teaching and writing about is to help men and the women who love them, the families that are connected, to find the way to be a full, complete whole man, which for me includes being successful in the outer world and making a good living and doing something that we believe in, but also being able to be a hands-on dad and a hands-on husband and a hands-on mate, and a hands-on person that is present to himself and other people.” – Jed
Our Guest
Jed Diamond is a prominent expert in gender-specific healing and men's health, with 17 books to his name, including bestsellers The Irritable Male Syndrome and Surviving Male Menopause. He holds a Ph.D. in International Health and has practiced psychotherapy for over 50 years. Together with his wife, Carlin, they have five children, 17 grandchildren, and 2 great-grandchildren. For more information, visit http://www.MenAlive.com.
Resources & Links
On This Walk
Jed Diamond
Mentioned
12 Rules for Good Men- https://www.amazon.com/Rules-Good-Men-Jed-Diamond-ebook/dp/B07Z1FBG74
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[00:00:00] Luke: Welcome, welcome, welcome. You are listening to On This Walk the show that helps men rediscover their unique path to true freedom. My name is Luke Iorio. I have spent the last two decades in the human potential industry helping teaching, coaching thousands of people to create a more fulfilling, deeply aligned life.
[00:00:20] It's my mission to reawaken and reconnect men to the joy, purpose, and peace. It will help you become who you aspire to be for yourself, your loved ones, and those you lead. All right, let's get into today's walk because we are going to go on a journey of discovery and a different, even evolutionary, not revolutionary, although it may seem like that in today's time, an evolutionary perspective and call for reconnection with nature's deep partnership.
[00:00:49] Drawing from personal experiences, including his father's breakdown on the birth of his first son. My guest has spent a career focusing on and tackling the pressing issue of men's health and total wellbeing. Did you know that men as a whole and across pretty much all cultures tend to die younger and have higher rates of disease compared to women?
[00:01:09] It's a staggering statistic that my guest, Jed Diamond, the founder of Men Alive, aims to address through his recent project, the Moonshot for Mankind, uniting Individuals and Organizations committed to improving men's health, and let me say total health, because this conversation isn't just about men's or male physical wellbeing, it delves into the concept of the shadow self, the need for connection, the significance of being present in our relationships.
[00:01:37] Jed shares his own journey to becoming a hands-on father in the importance of integrating success in the outer world with fulfillment and aliveness that begins within ourselves.
[00:01:49] Jed: It's time for ending the battles that are so prevalent in our lives and create the true partnership that. We know we need.
[00:01:57] We want and is available to us. It's part of our
[00:02:00] Luke: heritage, and we also explore the profound impact of loneliness, the transformative power of men's groups. The beauty of being truly connected to ourselves and others. Now, just two quick items before we jump in. The first is that I'm going on summer sabbatical, at least for the restless summer.
[00:02:21] So there's gonna be a little gap in episodes before you hear the next one rolling out. And then number two is that I wanna talk to you also about getting aligned. You see part of what gets us out of sorts. Is that we get out of alignment with what matters most in our lives. And so I've put together a workbook from exercises that I've been doing with my private clients for the past decade to support you with a process that brings life back into alignment.
[00:02:47] And you're gonna get more on that and how to get it at the end of this show. And now let's jump back in and go on this walk with Jed Diamond and let's go from male loneliness to full connection. One of the ways that I like to begin, I've, you know, I've got sort of a big topic that we'll somewhat narrow down to get into today, but before we dive in with that, I'd love to just ask you to share an experience from your background that has shaped a bit of who you are and what you're doing, what your work is in the world right now.
[00:03:18] I guess the
[00:03:19] Jed: thing that stands out for me at the moment is an event that still is resonant in my life happened on November 21st, 1969. My wife and I were getting ready to have our first child, we're in the hospital and I was working with her with Lama's childbirth coaching that we had gotten and helping her get through the, uh, all the process, getting ready for delivery.
[00:03:51] It.
[00:03:57] Well, I think it's time, Mr. A. We're gonna take you into the delivery room and Mr. It's time for you to go to the waiting room and, uh,
[00:04:08] Which was kind of standard procedure back then, and I knew the rules, uh, and was a follower of the rules generally, and started to go out to the waiting room, kissed my wife goodbye, and she went one way. I went the other way, but as I was going out the door to the waiting room, I felt like I couldn't go through the door.
[00:04:28] It felt like there was almost a call, a present, saying, I don't want a waiting room father. Your place is here with us. And it was just a feeling, a sense that I got, but I acted on it. I turned around and, and felt like maybe this was a call from my unborn child. And so I went back, uh, found the delivery room, walked through the doors, and took my place at the head of the table, so to speak.
[00:04:57] And our son, uh, Jamal was born not too long after that, and they handed it to me. Amid tears, my tears, and my wife said I made a promise to him that I would be a different kind of father than my father was able to be for me and to do everything I could to create a world where fathers were fully healthy and engaged with their families throughout their lives.
[00:05:21] And that was really the beginning of, uh, what later became men alive, my window to the world and my way of organizing the work that I've been doing since then to fulfill that promise both to my son now. A little girl who we adopted three years later and my daughter Angela. And so in a way, this work that I've been doing all these many years is to create that world and to help bring about the healing that needs to happen so that men are fully healed and engaged with their families and the communities of life are, are alive and well as we, uh, hopefully continue our work to make the world a better place for my case than I have.
[00:06:03] 15, uh, grandchildren and, uh, two great-grandchildren, and the life continues.
[00:06:11] Luke: Oh, that's extraordinary. I want to go very much into that sense of being fully healed, especially as men. Before we get there, I'm just curious though, as you have, you know, this wonderful experience of becoming a father, your, your firstborn and firstborn son.
[00:06:27] I'm curious before you then recognize you're on this way. To becoming a different kind of father, which leads to the work of men alive. What were you doing presently in your life before you started to traverse this new journey? Well,
[00:06:44] Jed: I was just a, a step backward, uh, in a way. Uh, I had the father that I hoped to be better than to be a different kind of father than my father was able to be for me.
[00:06:57] My own father was a writer and an actor in New York. He came to California shortly after I was born. I was born in New York, came to California and he ran right into that period in our history where people that were liberal or left leaning, uh, People, a progressive, uh, were seen back in a certain time in the fifties as perhaps red leaning or communist potential.
[00:07:30] And that was the whole period in Hollywood where people were blacklisted as writers and, and filmmakers. And my father was, uh, one of those, he was a blacklisted writer, couldn't make a living. He, uh, was literally blacklisted and couldn't work. He became increasingly depressed because, uh, he felt like as a man his job was to take care of his family and to provide, and he couldn't do that.
[00:07:58] Became increasingly depressed and eventually took an overdose of sleeping pills and ended up in a mental hospital. And I grew up then wondering what happened to my father, uh, what had happened to me. And so my response was to become very independent. My mother had to work. I was an only child. I became kind of the super intellectual.
[00:08:21] I will not get emotional like my father, I will be successful. Eventually went off to medical school and I was gonna be a doctor and become a psychiatrist, and decided that wasn't for me, if you can believe it. Medicine back then was even more restrictive than it is now. And so I left and uh, went into social work and became a therapist.
[00:08:44] And before all this happened with my first son, I was a very successful and high achiever, a high income kind of guy, but very unhappy and very miserable at the same time, but feeling that was my role as a man. So that was the context in which then my life literally changed when our son was born and all of a sudden being a father.
[00:09:11] I didn't think at the time I would go on to make this my career. I just felt like, sure, I need to take care of my son and be a good dad. All of
[00:09:21] Luke: that context, man, I can feel, you know, so much of my own journey as well as the journey of many men that I've, I've had the honor of kind of walking with and guiding and coaching through the years as well.
[00:09:32] I, first and foremost, let me just kind of offer this up, is resonate with that path of almost that fierce independence. It takes over. And I'm curious, even in your own work, how often you see that as a very, very common, you know, occurrence among young men? For me, it was a, it was a house fire that my family had when I was only five and a half years old.
[00:09:51] And feeling the, the sense of loss of home and immediately shutting down the emotions and becoming very fiercely self-reliant and kind of heading down on that path. And I recognize many years later for all of the things, maybe I'm, I'm reading into this a bit, but. For all of the benefits that that gave me because to be that independent, to be that self-reliant, that's actually something that gets rewarded very much so by our society.
[00:10:17] And so I also had a tremendous amount of, of success and achievement only to arrive at places that even the midst of purposeful work, as you found yourself in very purposeful work. And yet it was like this, I'm not sure if this is my life. I'm not happy, I'm not fulfilled, I'm not satisfied. How often do
[00:10:35] Jed: you see that?
[00:10:36] Well, it's been, I think, a path that so many men have have walked and there, there are kind of two dichotomies in this and I, my father in a sense, experienced one part of the dichotomy, which is men who, who try to be successful but are not able to, for various reasons. The economics of of life have shifted.
[00:10:57] Uh, being able to work jobs are, are not always easy, even for men that. I wanna be successful. Mm-hmm. So there's, you know, a whole group of men who have been striving but have not been successful. Then there's kind of the super strivers in a sense who say like I did, I will never not be successful. I will do whatever it takes.
[00:11:20] And those two dichotomies really disconnect us from ourselves as total beings. I mean, tore be a really good father, right? Was very clear to me early on. I didn't wanna be a successful absent father. And so there was that pull in me that I think is true for many men between trying to strive to be successful in the outer world and then neglecting sometimes our own inner world.
[00:11:51] Our own child within our own inner self, as well as if we are actual parents or now grandparents, in my case, and great-grandparent, our own real felt experience being with our children. 'cause our sons and our daughters are not saying, dad, I wish you would be more successful and spend more time away and make more money and.
[00:12:15] They want your presence, they want your, and so my journey and, and in a sense, what I've been teaching writing about is to help men and the women who love them, the families that are connected, To find the way to be a full, complete whole man, which for me includes mm-hmm. Being successful in the outer world and you know, making a good living and doing something that we believe in, but also being able to be a hands-on dad and a hands-on husband and a hands-on mate, and a hands on.
[00:12:51] Person that is present. Yeah. To himself and other people.
[00:12:55] Luke: That's interesting 'cause I hear the expression of this dichotomy, not the, not the way that you des you described the dichotomy around success a moment ago, but this feeling among men of how we wish to be very, very successful to kind of make our mark in the world with whatever our mission work, vocation calling happens to be.
[00:13:18] At the same time, we want to be fully present to our relationships with our partners and with our children and with our friends and, you know, with our communities even as well. And it's interesting 'cause I, I've heard from some men recently of how they struggle to figure out when they, it seems like when they put their focus in one area.
[00:13:40] The other area really starts to either wane or collapse on them and they haven't figured out this way of balancing and integrating. I'm kind of curious a little bit about that of from your perspective of what is almost, what is it in us that makes this feel like it's something separate, right? That makes it feel like we've gotta place our focus in different areas and therefore we can't find that balance when in fact, The one place that we will find it is within ourselves and showing up in that capacity in all, all areas.
[00:14:14] We are, I think
[00:14:15] Jed: from my perspective at least, I, I have a fairly broad historical perspective, and it's from, yeah, you know, my own background, my own experience in both evolutionary biology and psychology that I, you know, have been trained in witches. Recognizing the lineage that we have as males and females.
[00:14:37] My most recent book is called 12 Rules for Good Men. And it came about 'cause my wife interestingly, had suggested this, I'd written 15 books up till that point and uh, I thought, well, you know, fifteen's a good number to quit on. It's a lot of work writing books. It takes a lot. So I thought, well, this is a good body of work.
[00:15:00] I wanna do more teaching and training and counseling for the next generation of people that wanna work in this field of what I call gender medicine and men's health. But she said, you have at least one more book that you need to write. You know, with all this conflict between males in females and the left and the right and these, you know, the dichotomies that are.
[00:15:21] So much a part of our modern life said, I think you really need to, to write a book about what's good about men. Mm-hmm. And what males need to be healthy, complete men, not only for themselves, but for women in the world and their families. And I thought, okay, let me think about that. My first question, I, as I decided to write the book, If we're bringing together the essence of maleness and as an evolutionary, uh, psychologist and biologist, my background's in biology, I ask myself, how far back in evolutionary history are there males and females?
[00:16:05] 'cause I knew if you go back to single cell creatures, there was a point at which a single cell creature would divide in two and they would call them two sister cells because the genetics were the same and they were asexual. But there was a certain point in the evolutionary history where, They were male and female cells, that there was the original sperm and egg coming together to create a new creature from a male cell and a female cell.
[00:16:39] I wonder how far back does that go? I mean, we know evolutionary, they're humans or male humans, female humans. Male mammals. Female. Well, how far back does it go? Well, it turns out it goes back a billion years. Mm, a billion years is our evolutionary male history and female history. So part of this big history is for most of human history, we have lived in society, say for 2 million years.
[00:17:10] Where there was more of a balance between males and females. There wasn't this dichotomy of males are better than or worse than. Or we needed to dominate the earth. Mm-hmm. We, we were seen as living in balance with nature. And we know now maybe 6,000 years ago, which is a long time in in human history, but not so long in the whole scheme of evolutionary history that we created this way of looking at the world that went from being a hunter gatherer way of being in balance with nature to.
[00:17:47] When we created big cities and started to domesticate animals, and what came into the world was what's called the dominator way of being. And my colleague, Riann Isler wrote a, a book called The Chalice in the Blade in 1987, where she talked about these two. Divergent systems, if you will, one called domination and one partnership system that emerged maybe 6,000 years ago, or with what we call the advent of large civilizations.
[00:18:21] So there's a, a roundabout way of suggesting that, part of this dichotomy of why these separations is the fact that we have been in a conflict. Between a dominator way of being and a partnership way of being that is really relatively new, relatively, when I say 6,000 years is a long time, but in the scheme of both human history and evolutionary history, it's just a blinking of eye, one half of 1%.
[00:18:56] What's being called on for our survival, I think as, as a species, is that we need to let go of this attitude, this belief that it's human's job to dominate the environment, to dominate the natural world. That doesn't work. We separate ourselves from the world and what we do to the world when we try to dominate, we do to ourselves and each other, and I think it's the.
[00:19:28] In a sense, separation, which leads to the disconnection that separates men from women, humans from the natural environment, and creates a kind of loneliness that is endemic, I think, to society. And part of what I think is being called on from all of us and what I've been about for these many years is to reconnect not only the last.
[00:19:57] With this. Very radical separation, but our whole human history, which for most of it has been a pattern of deep partnership, which has now become separate and needs to be drawn back into a wholeness that I think we're all longing
[00:20:15] Luke: for. Number one, I deeply appreciate just as you said, the deep, broad, historical perspective, evolutionary perspective that you put this in the frame of so that we understand that.
[00:20:26] Some of the things we're wrestling with are evolutionarily newer to us, even though it may seem like we've been dealing with it for a long time. And it's interesting to see the way in which these elements of consciousness around partnership, around connection, around balance, I. Are things that are, are coming back around to be restored inside of society.
[00:20:46] And I'm curious, the way that you explained it, and I I'm not sure if this was just the way that I heard it or if I wanna reframe this a bit, was that recognizing the way in which we separate from the world, meaning the way we separate from each other, the way that we separate from nature is then it's kind of like as we have done to others, we do unto ourselves.
[00:21:07] What I'm also curious about, especially because of the depth of your background, especially on the psychology side of things as well, is I've also always seen that as we're doing to the world, what we've already been doing to ourselves, right? Meaning that there is a sense of disconnection that we feel within ourselves, and because we don't either, Know how to explore it, how to be with it, how to relate to it.
[00:21:33] We tend to then cover it up because it's a pain or a wound that we wish not to acknowledge, and in some way that, whatever we wanna call it, the unconscious, the shadow, whatever we wanna call, that then begins to project itself outside of ourselves, right? And we need to direct that energy. We need to either use that blame, use that shame, use that guilt, whatever those, those energies, fears, whatever are.
[00:21:56] We end up projecting it out because then that way we can feel like it's them. It's not us. I can keep myself protected or I can keep myself safe if I do it that way. I'm curious, just maybe to add to that perspective, 'cause I, to me that's, that's what I see is some of the greatest pain in the world right now is, is the pain that we strike upon others because of the pain that we're unwilling to look at within ourselves.
[00:22:18] Jed: Right. Studies over the years and whole theories of psychology of that, that vary edge of what we are unable to accept in ourselves. We project out onto others. You know, some call it the shadow. Uh, some call it the scapegoat. There was in biblical history, an an actual goat. The idea was that you took all the sins of the society, all the bad stuff, and you would then put it into this other being, in this case, an actual goat, and then you would sacrifice the goat and supposedly all of the negative stuff in society then would be cleansed or.
[00:23:05] Taken away. Well, we're still, you know, now metaphorically looking for scapegoats because it's painful to see the woundedness in ourselves. And I think the fear is, and certainly was my fear from my father and his history is there must be something wrong with me. Something inherently bad about me or something broken about me.
[00:23:33] And we have a whole, you know, psychiatric and psychological way of looking at the world that rather than seeing a broken system or a disconnection systemically, we look for who's sick and mm-hmm. Who's crazy and you know, there's a whole industry then that either we will fix. The ill people, which all of us become ill when we're in a sick environment or a dysfunctional environment, right?
[00:24:05] It's in a way, a healthy response to a sick environment is to go, God, this is driving me nuts. So I think we really need a, a new paradigm, a new way of understanding the problem. You know, what went wrong? Where did the disconnection occur? What would healing look like and how do we create the environments and the healing foundations for not only our integration of the parts of ourselves where we recognize there isn't anything wrong with me.
[00:24:42] This is the experience of what happens to you if you grew up in an environment that was traumatic or trauma producing. And we now have all kinds of new research showing that it's these quote, adverse childhood experiences and we might call it also adverse social experiences that go way back, that are part of the dysfunction that shows up.
[00:25:11] In mental illness or mental problems, physical problems, emotional problems, and that as we heal ourselves, we can begin to heal the communities and vice versa as we heal our environments, as we really address global warming and all of the disconnections that we have that. Earth itself is saying you all are out of balance with Yeah, the larger community of life and the fact that it's hot where I am today and in many other parts of the world, and if it isn't hot, it's too rainy or there's too much climate dysfunction.
[00:25:51] All of these things I think, relate. To both. As you point out. What goes on inside also is reflected outside and vice versa.
[00:26:05] Luke: It's at times easy to blame the system, to blame the world, to blame conditions for why we are, how we are, for why we're experiencing life in a certain way. How often have I been asked as well as I have asked myself, how can we change the system? How can we change these prevailing attitudes, such as the stigma of talking about mental health and even sexuality Or how is it that we can change the culture and openly address and discuss in a more conscious and mature way, race, prejudice of all kinds, inequality, and much more?
[00:26:39] I've asked these big questions, and more often than not, when I have been looking outside of myself, when I've been looking out at the systems, more often than not when I have asked these big questions. It's because what I was really asking was how can I get the bigger narratives to agree more with my inner one?
[00:26:59] Ouch. Yeah. More often than not, I wanted my view, my values, my perspectives to be the one that we're prevailing. Well, why am I going here? Because change in the world first begins with change within ourselves, within our hearts, our minds, and within our shadows. Within our consciousness as well as our unconscious too.
[00:27:24] If we aren't happy with what we're seeing out there, we need to find out what it is that's within ourselves that we need to address. So lemme give an example. See, I used to have a big challenge with people who seem to be selfish. I. Boisterous, a bit rigid in their views and really would stick to, this is what I want, this is what I need, this is my view.
[00:27:46] I'd view 'em as egotistical, self-centered, uncaring for others, even narrow-minded. And by view them this way, I mean I judge them. So what was really going on, in fact, whether they were or were not, any of these things was irrelevant. I needed to consider, why was this triggering to me? I needed to consider how individuals that I perceived in this way were triggering my triggers.
[00:28:11] Key point there, the triggers were mine. They were just bringing them to light. What I found was that part of me envied their boldness, envied their ability to speak up for themselves, their views, their determination, even their resoluteness. Part of my old game was to please others. To be overly amiable and to keep the peace and typically at the cost of my own needs and perspectives among many other things.
[00:28:38] The behavior I felt I witnessed was upsetting to me more because it was something that I felt that I lacked. It was something that was going on inside of me more so than anything else that the other person was even doing. Previously encountering a situation like this would bring up stress, judgment, possibly even arguments, trying to speak over each other or prove what was really needed and who was right.
[00:29:02] All the while, no listening, no real understanding, no compassion or new expanded perspectives could be found anywhere in these situations. I needed to heal this within myself so that now I can hold space for individuals who may be coming across this way. I can be patient, I can be compassionate, and then when I engage to ask questions, to pose different perspectives, to pose my own, I can do so without being all charged up, without coming from a place of needing to be right, or at least needing to show them that they're wrong without competing with them, without judgment, without the type of energy that just plane gets in the way of connecting conversation.
[00:29:51] It's one that neither person when they walk away can just blow off because they feel seen. They feel heard. They feel understood. Even if we're not in agreement, if we want to have more powerful conscious conversations that have a hope of changing the state of affairs, we need to begin that within ourselves and put it into practice within our lives, within our relationships.
[00:30:16] In turn, we'll start to get more conscious about what our real needs are and about which shadow needs and even unhealthy ways of fulfilling our needs have actually been getting in the way. Once we're more conscious of those needs, we'll start wanting different things and engaging in more powerful ways.
[00:30:34] Our choices and our actions will then align to this new way of being, and that is what changes systems. You need to change the input. We are both the input as well as the perpetuators of the system change ourselves inside and out and the system will change. All right, let me get off my soapbox. I think you've got the point.
[00:31:01] And let's get back to our chat with Jed, 'cause we've still got more to get into. Let's go.
[00:31:15] I wanna see how much ground we can cover here in the, in the next 20 minutes or so together because you opened up kind of two different paths and I'm gonna start in one direction, which I'll get to in a second because I wanna come back around to that new paradigm and, 'cause I know there's stuff that you're working on that that does fit in that direction.
[00:31:31] So we're gonna come back to that to get to that new paradigm. If you could share a little bit of where does a man kind of begin? Lemme set a little bit of this, this stage, because we actually only loosely mentioned it, but it was one of the original reasons why I wanted to connect with you is there is this topic of loneliness, and specifically male loneliness is beginning to become recognized a lot more.
[00:31:55] There's more studies, there's more research. The, you know, deleterious effects of male loneliness and the different ways that it's showing up, whether it be violence or suicide or health outcomes or any number of other things are becoming more and more documented. I know even part of the new paradigm or the, I should, did the new project work that you're heading down, what is it?
[00:32:12] The, the greatest predictor of an early death is being male, I believe is the way that, uh, the research come out and we'll get to that. But this loneliness effect that is there is beginning to. Be a piece. What I would actually like to offer to a lot of men out there is for it to be a point of recognition.
[00:32:29] Meaning that when you're feeling that, that loneliness, that number one, you're not alone is the irony I guess you could say of that is it's something that's felt by a lot of other men. I know of times that I have been in a room full of friends. People who know me well, people who I've been through a lot of stuff with and felt like the loneliest man on the planet.
[00:32:49] And I've gone through periods like that. And because it was a disconnection that I felt inside myself and a disconnection to something greater than myself that I also felt like I was missing. And so if that's a point of awareness, when a man finds himself feeling that loneliness set in, feeling that dissatisfaction, that that lack of fulfillment beginning to set in where they feel maybe a little more numb, less excited, less alive.
[00:33:12] Their lives. Where would you advise them to begin the journey? How do they get on a path that potentially reconnects them to that aliveness and showing them another way is still possible more than possible for themselves?
[00:33:28] Jed: The first step is recognizing the issue. The problem. If you recognize that loneliness is.
[00:33:40] Problems that we see in society, and if you understand what loneliness really is, the way I describe it is we all know what hunger is. If you haven't eaten for. A day or two, most of us haven't experienced that kind of hunger. Yeah. Real hunger. Yeah. Most of us have it. If we, you know, it's getting close to lunchtime and you start feeling hungry, or you're thirsty, you haven't, you know it's a hot day and you've forgotten to bring your water bottle with you or whatever, and you're really thirsty.
[00:34:13] Well, we recognize that hunger is a indicator that's telling us there's something that we need that's vital. So it draws us out to start looking for food. Same thing with thirst. If we are thirsty and we haven't had liquids, we're going to go looking for that. Well, loneliness is an indicator of a basic need that is not being met for connection.
[00:34:46] Now, if. All beings, humans just take, go back our evolutionary time. We are embedded in a social network where we are embedded in a family if we're healthy for most of human history, who grew up with a mother and a father that nurtured us, eldest physically, emotionally, who are surrounded themselves by other relatives of aunts and uncles.
[00:35:15] Brothers and sisters and cousins within a community of people who, you know, lived together, interacted together, and now much of that has gotten broken and we are not connected to families. Many of us grew up without dads at home like I did. Many of us are, have broken families. Many of us have lost the connection to friends.
[00:35:43] Our, we move a lot. We don't stay in the same communities where we were born. We don't know our neighbors. All of these things are telling us that there's something missing. So I mentioned my book, 12 Rules for Good Men. The first rule, if you will, or the guidance is I tell people, join a men's group if you're a man.
[00:36:08] And I'd say that for two reasons. One is I've been in a men's group that's been meeting regularly for 43 years now, and it came at a time when I recognized I needed connections to men. Just in the way my, my wife at the time needed connections to women and the whole women's movement. When that was happening, women recognized their need to connect with women.
[00:36:33] Men didn't do that so much. We were independent. We could take care of ourselves. Well, the truth is just like hunger and thirst, not being connected is asking us to pay attention to a need that isn't being met. And so humans and men in particular have always been embedded in a community of males. You know, for most of human histories, males went out hunting.
[00:37:03] That's how we got, you know, the food that, that we survived on, or we know gathered food together. And so we need to feel connected to men once.
[00:37:20] Are. Deeply looking for. So my men's group, as I say, has been meeting for 43 years. My wife will tell you quite honestly that one of the reasons she thinks we have a really successful 42 year marriage is that I've been in a men's group that's. I've been meeting for 43 years and we will hopefully be meeting the rest of our lives.
[00:37:43] So there's many ways that men can be in men's groups. It isn't necessarily a formal men's group where you meet every week and talk. Uh, although that's great. There's a lot of ways to do that, but that hunger for being with other men in some other way than sports, which is another way. Mm-hmm. We've connected or.
[00:38:05] Military and battles and service, but we need to recognize the hunger for other men at the core. That allows us then to have better relationships with women, better relationships with our children, better relationships with our communities. If we get that connection with other
[00:38:26] Luke: guys, what is it that happens when.
[00:38:29] You know, whether it be in a, in a formal group or informal men's group or circle something along those lines. What is it that if you're participating in something like that, what is it that helps you begin to connect to yourself or grow or expand for yourself in that environment that has not been as available to us in other environments?
[00:38:52] Like what's taking place that allows some of that alchemy to, to begin to occur?
[00:38:56] Jed: I think part of it, and if you, you don't know it till you actually experience it, which is the feeling that you have when you are in the company of other men. The poet Robert Bly, who's a good friend of mine, has been over the years and he, in his poetic way, had said that, What is lacking in our relationships.
[00:39:21] He is talked about it, particularly in our having older men be there with sons, and he said that we need as males to hear the sound that males cells sing. And I thought it was such a visceral, profound way, the sound that male cells sing and. I think what that says to me is that one, that there is a vibration, a sound that male cells have.
[00:39:55] There are 10 trillion cells in the human body. This is from my biology background, 10 trillion cells in the human body, and every one is sex specific. Every cell is male and has an XY chromosome. If you're a male. And if you're a female, you have an XX chromosome and every cell has a vibration that makes it all male if you're male or all female, if you're female.
[00:40:27] And we need to be in the company of those vibrations, not exclusively we, you know, we need to be with men to be with women and vice versa and so on. But part of getting to know ourselves. On a cellular level is experienced. I can tell you from 43 years in a men's group with very close male friends who are like even deeper than brothers, is, you can't really get to know yourself of who you are because we don't exist as separate beings.
[00:41:05] The nature of being is that we are in relationship. Somebody said the smallest unit of being is two, that there are no such thing as one and which is when you think about it, it's true. We, yeah, we were conceived in a two. There was a male cell and a female cell that came together and we all have within us what we got from our male ancestors a billion years ago.
[00:41:34] And our female ancestors in all of us. So in some way, that's the essence of what you get. And then there's a whole lot more that's built on top of that, the empathy, the things that only guys know in our bodies of what it means to be male, the problems we have with our wives, our children, all the things that you get to talk about.
[00:41:58] If you're in a group where you feel safe, you feel cared for, you feel held, and you feel like inherently, I'm okay. With all my hangups, with all my challenges. Yeah. Who I'm is. Good.
[00:42:12] Luke: Yeah. It's amazing how much we begin to flourish as well as how much we are willing to step into our own growth, into our own fears, what it is that we're willing to face when we can be in an environment where we feel accepted.
[00:42:30] There is so much that changes when we can feel that again and to feel that acceptance from other males within our lives. I love that poetic way of what it is that begins to sing when we are together again, is a, a beautiful way to, to express that really beautiful way to express that. I wanted to come back because I, I did not want to leave out our time to talk about new paradigm stuff 'cause I, you kind of drop that in of, you know, there's this kind of new paradigm that we can be.
[00:42:56] Ushering in at this point, and to do so to understand, well, what is it that went wrong? Where is we can place our attention now? What are the new systems that we can be creating? I know that part of this certainly is connected to this project that you have literally underway, unfolding. It's actually coming out live as this episode releases called The Moonshot for Mankind and Humanity.
[00:43:19] But I was wondering if you could share. Around this idea of the new paradigm and you know, how much is it that this is a new paradigm that you can see and how much of this is a new paradigm that you can see will be created through the questions that are kind of posing the quest for us to go on?
[00:43:37] Jed: Yeah.
[00:43:37] Well for me again, uh, this started with my own journey with both the birth of my first son and in some way the journey that started when. My father had the breakdown and I wanted to understand what, what happened to him, what had happened to me? Why did it happen to him? And different from what happened to my mother.
[00:44:00] So this quest, I think we all have to answer some questions of who am I? Where do I fit in? What's important in my life? What am I here to do? And in my own work with men alive, that started back then. Uh, about 20 years ago I read a research study by two colleagues that were looking at longevity and lifespan in different cultures throughout the world.
[00:44:31] And what they found was that in every country, they studied that as a group, men died younger and lived sicker, had diseases at higher levels than females as a group. It seemed to be true pretty much everywhere that they studied and we see it in our country, in the United States and in other countries as well.
[00:44:55] Their conclusions though, and their recommendations for me at the time, almost 20 years ago, was a call to action. They said that the number one factor, if you had to look at risk factors for early death and disease, All the things you might think might be implicated. They said the number one risk factor was simply being male.
[00:45:22] If you knew nothing else about a person, you could predict a lot about how early they might die or how well they might live, just on that factor alone. Hmm. And they concluded that if you could simply help men live, as long as women as a group, Be as healthy. I mean, we already know now, which I didn't know back when I was going to school.
[00:45:45] The things that can help us live long, healthy, and positive lives. And the researchers said you would save 375,000 men's lives every year in the United States alone. So think about 375,000. Men, you know, fathers, brothers, sons, grandchildren, friends, neighbors. 375,000 men's lives every year in the United States alone, and you multiply that times every other country in the world.
[00:46:28] Yeah. So I oriented Men alive, my website and the work that I was doing to take into account what I was learning and what others were learning about how we can do that. And about two years ago, I felt that time was running out. We knew enough now. There were enough organizations, individuals in, in the world that I've had some contact with to if we could come together, if we could pool our resources, if we could know what each other is doing, if we could develop, you know, the best practices, we could really make a dent in this moonshot.
[00:47:07] The way I called it a moonshot was, Google has a part of their research labs that that's called Google X, and the idea of what they study in Google X is looking for problems that are major, that if could be solved, could make a huge difference, and the X is, they would hope to make an improvement of multiple times, not a percentage.
[00:47:36] So 10 times better, not just 10% better. And I thought, well, helping men live long and well would be one of those big things. The researchers that I mentioned said, if we could do that, you would do more good in the world than curing cancer. So about a year and a half ago, I invited a number of colleagues to come together to work with me to develop this moonshot for mankind.
[00:48:02] We, as you mentioned, are, are launching now after a year and a half. Our window to the world, uh, it's called Moonshot for mankind.com, will be available for people to connect. We're kicking off, uh, with a series of online workshops over a period of four days. July 25th to the 28th, and we'll be doing other things throughout the year and in coming years really to do just two basic things.
[00:48:29] First thing is to recognize that if we can heal men, if we can be healthier, and there's lots of ways we can do that individually, we can not only help individual guys live healthier, longer lives, but their families. 'cause for every guy that dies too soon, Left a son, a daughter, a wife, a husband, a partner, a friend.
[00:48:55] And the second thing we wanna do is to pool our resources. We wanna draw together. The, what we are guessing is a thousand organizations throughout the world that are doing significant work who probably don't know the other organizations or may not be aware of, of all of them, and to draw together individuals, men and women who say, you know what?
[00:49:19] I wanna be part of this. I wanna focus on the health of men, whether for myself as a man, A man in my life, a partner a you feel you know, is touched by an issue with. We know whether it's a mental health issue, a physical health issue, a relational health issue that we could do better. So that's our call.
[00:49:45] Our call to action is to invite you and your listeners and your people that follow and many, many others to join us in what we think is a quest that. Can really, truly make a difference in the world. Uh, it's what I've dedicated my life to and as I, uh, reach my 80th year, which I will be in this year, this is what I hope to, you know, kind of sign off on.
[00:50:13] Not because the work will be finished, but because it will be in process that hopefully my children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren and your children. Yeah, great grandchildren and the rest can carry on so that we can feel proud of being males. We can feel good about what it means to be a man.
[00:50:36] We can feel good about partnership with women and to let go of this idea that. We're in a, a battle of the sexes. Well, we're not. It's time for ending the battles that are so prevalent in our lives and create the true partnership that we know we need, we want and is available to us. It's part of our heritage.
[00:50:58] We've just. Lost connection with it, and it's time to rebalance and reclaim the heritage that is
[00:51:05] Luke: ours. Jed, thank you for that. And you know, for everybody listening and, and Jed add to this, but I, I think some of the avenues that I already saw that you guys are beginning to explore in the summit, which I'm sure will lead to the further resources and conversations I had to do with looking at men's mental health.
[00:51:21] Men's relational health and then health within community as well. Were three, I know at least major avenues that were there. I'm sure there's more to it, but it sounded like those were three of kind of the launching channels, so to speak, of what you're pursuing. Correct.
[00:51:34] Jed: Exactly. And then we have, uh, Six other founding members each doing work they've been doing over many, many years to share, you know, in a sense, best practices, what we've learned to find out what other people are doing so that we can share those with the world and together we can make a
[00:51:52] Luke: difference.
[00:51:54] Excellent. So I would encourage everybody to check out. That was moonshot for mankind.com, right? Yeah, it's
[00:52:00] Jed: not, is that right? It's not available as we're you and I are speaking right now, but we'll be.
[00:52:08] Luke: Exactly, so it's coming soon. Go ahead, check the show notes 'cause we will keep the link there. You'll know, you know that it's gonna be active.
[00:52:14] Certainly you can check out men alive.com to be able to follow Jed's work. You'll see the announcement certainly of of the Moonshot coming out through Jed's website and emails and all those types of things. Jed, I just wanna, I wanna thank you for being here. I wanna thank you for the conversation. I have a sneaking suspicion that this may not be the only conversation that we have here for, for listeners to tune into, and I'm deeply intrigued.
[00:52:36] By where the moonshot and that conversation can lead us because it's something that you and I chatted about offline, so I'll, you know, share it with everybody. It's one of the things I have also felt for a long time is that there are so many wonderful organizations doing great work in the world, but all too often we're doing them in a silo.
[00:52:52] I. We don't get that chance to bring the best practices, to bring the collective conversations together, to bring the communities all together into one community, to be able to share from that standpoint, to be able to move us forward. And this is a very, very important topic when we're talking about men's health.
[00:53:07] It's not, it's not only the physical stuff, this is the emotional stuff, the mental, the relational, communal. This is a very, very broad, dynamic conversation that we need to be having. It is for the good of all. It is truly the good for mankind. I wanna thank you for doing it. I wanna thank you for putting that conversation front and center for us to participate in as well, and I look forward to having you back on the show sometime
[00:53:29] Jed: soon.
[00:53:30] Well, I, I'd love to do it. You're, you're doing the, the work that needs to be done and there's all unique ways we can all do our own thing and also be part of a larger community of doing things together.
[00:53:42] Luke: Absolutely. Absolutely, Jed, thank you so much. So once again, I wanna encourage you to check out Jed Diamond to his work as well as the Moonshot for Mankind Project, which is now underway.
[00:53:56] Their first broadcast with Humanity Rising actually just aired this past week, and so to follow the moonshot. Just go to Moonshot for mankind.com. You can track all the companies that are already involved, as well as find out how to be involved yourself. Also, if you wanna see what's already been broadcast, go to Humanity Rising Solutions and either register for free or navigate to the past episodes.
[00:54:22] Now last I told you that at the top of the show I had a tool for you to download to support you with getting into deep. And greater alignment. So if you wanna get more deeply aligned so that you can tap into more fulfillment and aliveness, then download the Alignment workbook. Previously that was only available to my private clients, but now you can do so to be and live more as the man, husband, father, or leader that you aspire to be in just the next few months.
[00:54:49] When you implement your insights, it creates that type of change. All you've gotta do. Please go to on this walk.com/alignment. That was on this walk.com/alignment. You'll also find the link in the show notes to be able to download that. Once again, I want to thank you for tuning in to on this walk.