I spent a delightful week last week at an event called the Minnesota Mens’ Conference. The leader explained at one point that they have the “world’s worst marketing plan”, in the sense that they actively discourage participants from disclosing the details of their experience on social media. They do however post recordings of stories told at the conference, and in the three years which spanned since my first visit the number of participants had quadrupled through no other marketing than sharing small snippets of the most-public aspects of what happens at the conference and allowing people who are genuinely intrigued by these audio recordings to follow their curiosity to sign up for the event themselves.
This past conference was fascinating, and one interesting detail which I believe the hypothetical NDA I signed would allow me to share is that many attendees had become motivated to come specifically to meet with a presenter who was “cancelled” shortly before the conference began.
Although I initially was skeptical of the decisions made by the group’s leaders, I appreciated their merit once I witnessed their outcome. And I feel that I learned a lot from witnessing the dynamics of responding to a “cancellation” from within the context of what I would boldly describe as a “well-functioning” community.
I also believe that it has allowed me to discern a meaningful conclusion, which I will now share.
The Moral of the Story
The Conference was described as “Confronting the Cannibal Self”, and this theme was repeated in its story, whose recording will surely be published shortly on YouTube. One of the best features of its telling, which might not make the cut, was the fact that each of three storytelling sessions began with a recounting of the prior night’s tale in an interactive fashion. I arrived on my first night carrying the weight of 1300 miles of travel, and the combination of the half-heard story on that first night and its summary on the second allowed me to get caught up and to enjoy the rest of the experience without feeling like I’d missed anything because of my initial weariness.
I don’t want to spoil the story here but I want to explain why I think that its moral revealed a mistake currently made by many.
I will share because my privacy is mine to invade the way that I responded to this story, and the way in which it allowed me to perceive a mistake I was making.
My Interpretation of the Moral of the Story
The protagonist encounters a similar situation repeatedly; he is confronted with a woman with an evil sister, whom he defats, after which they enjoy brief marital bliss but no children before he hears the call to adventure and leaves to be connected with another woman. I described this as a manifestation of the man’s worshipful view on woman. The irreconcilable difference between the sexes is that whereas females eventually gain access to the ability to themselves participate in the process which led to their own existence, males eventually gain access to the ability to contribute the starting materials to a process which they will only ever be able to understand via observation and empathy. Or perhaps memory, if one believes in the notion of pre-natal memory.
The protagonist responds to his lack of observation/empathy/prenatal memory by engaging in “splitting”, creating both a female whom he worships and a female whom he hates and fears. The action he takes, killing the “shadow” and marrying her complement, creates temporary bliss, but it does not satisfy his adventurer’s spirit.
The turning point in his journey is when he uses the gift of life himself, restoring to life the victims of another’s violence, and in so doing disproving his perceived inferiority. He then first confronts an echo of the shadow of the woman who brought him closest to his moment of connection with his own life-giving energies, and the end of his feelings of inadequacy which prevent him from developing a cohesive vision of the females in his life. And whereas in their previous encounter he had himself split into a human self and an animal self in the form of a woodpecker in order to win a victory, this time around he demonstrates his own sense of inner cohesion by transforming into a similar animal temporarily in order to outwit his opponent before then transforming back into himself.
His reward for this is that he then finally meets the woman with whom he has children, and his story ends in a peaceful manner, if one whose loose ends allow for a sequel starring his children. Which is in my view the ideal endpoint for the story of a life. A peaceful ending for you, and something for others to build on after you are gone.
In his final confrontation after gaining his power, he does not apologize for what he is doing. In this case he is killing a cannibal woman who is harming other people in order to feed her children, due to her own lack of or unwillingness to nourish them using her own gift of life. This contrasts with the protagonist, whose children are nourished by his animal self even posthumously. The moral of his story was that obtaining that gift and using it for its intended purpose is the pathway towards being rewarded with an end to one’s inner “call to adventure” which often manifests in an inner restlessness, and that although the gift of life which women possess may be more obvious in the value it provides, a good man will be more nourishing than a wicked woman - even an imagined one.