Male Success Pathways
In researching neuroscience and working with men in my practice, it’s become clear that men possess two primary pathways for transcending their circumstances and reaching their highest possible level of success. Broadly speaking, these are action-skill focus and cognitive restructuring by suffering, perhaps initial brilliance or cultivated insight—growth. The reasons appear to be both cultural and neurological, distinct yet intertwined.
Men are unlikely to adjust the rules of a hierarchy they also struggle in. Ian McGilchrist, The Master & His Emissary, ties these elements to the brain and emphasizes their biological nature, while Nassim Taleb‘s concepts of “robust” and “antifragile” describe the action frameworks. These pathways are applicable to women but the cultural, global responses pose complications. While many hierarchies are toxic and need reform, demanding companies make allowances for less talented or less assertive people is an entitled view which impedes women who want success they have earned, one of the central themes of Mad Men. When a woman is expected to be more agreeable and less intelligent than she feels she is, read Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office, and try 1: building proof of competency, 2: challenging congenitally, carefully and habitually, 3: taking nothing personally, 4: and changing or diversifying the community.
The Paths of Success
The first pathway we will term action-skill focus. This is the honing of a skill through persistent, dedicated perseverance driven by a naturally high level of self-directed interest. This is the skill of knowledge and/or action and may be the product of ongoing success or relentless personality metrics such as industriousness. These men are power players, executives or entrepreneurs, high in conscientiousness, finding great success but struggling to maintain personal balance or peace with the group.
The second pathway is the reorganization of the brain through suffering, failure, and diverse experience; it is the skill of wisdom, which we will define as information-seeking focus. These men are often advisors, consultants, sages, monks, writers, and philosophers. They are early failures or casualties of hierarchical violence and struggle with confidence. They are not wholly different from the first pathway, which can ascend to wisdom later in life following sufficient challenge, but these men inversely acquire honed skill and action later in life, after exploring, diversifying, and growing their understanding of the world.
The Brain
Why is reorganization of the brain necessary for the second path and not the first?
Consider the original, beginning state. The right hemisphere manages the unknown through exploration and has a tendency to look for threats. The left hemisphere manages the known order, and has a tendency to look for prey. Neuroscience hypothesizes the left hemisphere developed to regulate the right hemisphere. The left hemisphere is paired with speech, writing, logic, and functions that are performed by focused regulation. Therefore, the more the hemispheres communicate, the more creative endeavors are regulated and the more actions become nuanced. This limits failure, but also success.
Speaking in broad generalizations of data averages, female brains tend to be more communicative across hemispheres, more self-referential, and more socially perceptive. Female Art is often more oriented to life context or given up for the greater good, such as child-rearing or self-love. Aggression is likewise reduced because women are biologically smaller and have suffered the common long term repercussions of aggression. For this reason, women typically populate the middle of research study averages, whereas men populate the extremes.
Conversely, the male brain is less communicative across hemispheres, causing the gender to be more extreme across many research data. Art and music tends to be more distinct from other aspects of life or fantastical, while aggression for short-term gratification is more common.
How the Brain Manages Good Outcomes
In the first pathway, success by action or interest leads to social dominance by power elevation or specialization. The hemispheres remain less integrated because success often depends on unrestrained hard labor, making it beneficial for hemispheres to be more isolated to support their functional drivers while ignoring restraining forces such as pain or family pressures. They might remain this way for life, unless significant failure jumpstarts a brain reorganization and the individual is willing to learn (has maintained neuroplasticity). Alternatively, they might receive a convergence of information leading to an epiphany, a singularity, assuming the failure doesn’t lead to total irrevocable collapse.
In the second pathway, interest is thwarted early on and action often leads to failure, rejection, or limitations. As a result, hemispheres communicate more frequently in effort to find successful pathways for forward motion, resulting in a sustained information-seeking focus—a state of exploration. Knowledge (not to be confused with intellect but increasing the IQ) grows, along with self-regulation. Agreeableness (compassion/politeness) and neuroticism (volatility/withdrawal) may increase with stress, and may drown the individual in self-loathing, nihilism, and anger The influx of knowledge and understanding, of character and presence, elevates the individual until they begin to succeed and action-skill focus can be integrated.
Failure: Fools become Heroes
In both cases, failure may result. Ancient heroic archetypes recognized that a “dark night of the soul” was the litmus test of the hero. In modern times, this can be the hard, sacrificial, grinding of action-skill focus or risk-taking failure leading to growth. One may experience the depression from uncapitalized potential or abdicated responsibility, fear, stagnation, or limited social interactions. The dark night is the willingness to suffer loss or be perceived as foolish for a greater goal. we do not trust leaders who have never been tested and found resilient. We do name our heroes and their stories to honor their suffering or sacrifices (Batman and the film The Dark Knight, a play on words, for example).
The action-skill focus may be relentless (paired with disagreeability and industriousness) until others incarcerate or defeat the individual. Many older men who have had a life-long success or secure status cannot pivot and never recover from latent collapse, informational change, or loss to a competitor (consider the cautionary tale of Harvey Dent).
Likewise, the early failure which can produce explosive growth in information-seeking can also firmly entrench powerful or intelligent men at the bottom of the social hierarchy with untapped potential. Interests may be illegal or lead to neurotic, self-imposed isolation. Suffering may destroy an individual. Gained knowledge may never be put to use.
(For more on male challenges, see Why Highly Liberal Open Disagreeable Men Have the Worst Life Outcomes)
Summation: Temperament & Growth
In both cases, temperament and the willingness to grow are the keys to forward motion. One path towards growth is action-skill focus while the other is information-seeking focus. One is a builder, king, director. One is a curator, sage, advisor. Both require a willingness to grow and result in massive success. Both require action and knowledge, a temperament of industriousness and openness. Both can gain from or become the other.
What about those who have been crushed and lack a will to grow or the appropriate temperament? Remember that action is a skill. Temperament can be managed. Isolation is damning. And growth only seems impossible because of our thoughts. Our thoughts can be changed, and so can our future.
