The other day, a friend and I were having a discussion about masculinity in regards to tribalism, and the conflicts that can arise from trying to form a bond of brotherhood and having a family. I’m sure it’s no stranger to anyone that’s tried to create some sort of brotherhood, that the the group can get in the way of family activities, the family can get in the way of group activities, and it’s not always possible to make the two mesh as well as you want them. It’s something members of my own tribe have faced.

While this discussion was happening, the APA released an article about masculinity, and right after that the company Gillette jumped on with the first, but most definitely not the last, bit of merchandise peddling based on the concept of manliness. And while I will eventually write an article on my views on masculinity as a whole, and what we consider ‘toxic’ and ‘non-toxic’ masculinity, that’s not what this article is about. Articles and thinkpieces about the APA study and the Gillette ad have been written by better writers than I, and the conversation I want to add to is far more than just based around those two things. So for now, I will write how I feel about the Wild Man and the Hearth Man.

The Wild Man

The Wild Man as a concept is simple. He exists inside all of us. The Wild Man is the voice inside of you that sees a rock quarry full of water and wants to jump. The Wild Man stands in your mind, pointing towards the woods as you drive past them on your morning commute, shouting, “HEY! FREEDOM IS IN THESE WOODS! IT’S HERE!” The Wild Man is the inner part of a man, the one that sees competition with other men as a calling, something that exists deep inside.

This competition can be fighting. It can be feats of endurance, feats of strength, tests of skill. When I was a young child, my friends and I would do something as simple as sit in a circle and hold our breath, to see who would last the longest. That was the challenge, and whoever won was simply the best. We would throw rocks, sometimes at targets, with the winner being the best shot. Sometimes the thrown rocks were thrown for no other reason than to see who could throw the farthest. Fights would happen, forgotten the next day, the winners only the winners until the next challenge between us. The forest was all around us, and we disappeared into it often, swearing oaths of brotherhood and pretending like we would run away from home and live in the woods, assured of our abilities.

These challenges extended into our teen years, when we wanted to see who could lift the most weight, do the more insane stunts on their four wheeler or dirt bike, something like that. As we drifted apart as friends, the influence of the Wild Man on us as a group also quieted. Some of us shut him out altogether. Before I moved from Kentucky, I ran into an old friend from my childhood, and we had a brief chat. I remember asking him if he ever thought about all of the things that we did as children, and he just shook his head. His words were,

“That was just little kid shit man. We’re grown now, ain’t got time for anything like that.”

I remember thinking to myself, yes, it was the time when we were little kids. But did that mean the wildness had to die? Did the spirit that lead us out into the woods to build forts of tree limbs and branches, patching walls with mud, having fist fights in cleared spaces surrounded by trees, did he abandon us? Or did we abandon him when we gave ourselves over to adulthood?

The Hearth Man

If the Wild Man is the extreme of us that exists in the forest and mountains of the world, desperate for us to let excitement roar from our chests as we explore and go on adventures and all that they entail, then the opposite of that is the Hearth Man. He is the man that stays at home, sitting in front of his hearth and thinking about what all could befall what he has amassed for himself. He thinks of how his work schedule will impact his ability to pay bills, to buy groceries for himself, will he be able to afford to pay the light bill and also put gas in his car this week? On the rare ocassions that the Wild Man breaks through, with calls to adventure and competition, the Hearth Man is the voice of reason.

He is the one that says, ‘How will we work if we are injured?’, he is the one that reminds us that to go camping we must purchase camping supplies, and if we purchase camping supplies, is it worth the money spent? After all, we only go camping two or three times a year.

It’s sounding like I’m putting the Hearth Man down, but he has his place. The Hearth Man thinks what he thinks out of a need to protect, and those desires only grow when you are no longer caring for only yourself. When you have a significant other or children that relies on you, the Hearth Man can go into an overdrive state, where he tamps out any sort of desires of the Wild Man whatsoever. After all, there are people to care for. That is admirable in a man. The Hearth Man wants to care for his family, to make sure that none of his family go hungry. The Hearth Man wants the ability to purchase what his family needs, to make sure that his children or his significant other do not go hungry, that they do not want, because he loves them as a man loves his children and his significant other, and wants them happy.

The Hearth Man is also formed by decades of social norms that say that a good father, a good man, he takes care of his family. He buys them the best things, to keep up with the Joneses. If He goes camping, it is at a well manicured camp ground, so that his children can experience the wilds without being in danger. If he goes fishing, he throws the fish back instead of bringing them home to eat, because they could have something inside of them that make his family sick. He worries about his children because the world tells him to worry, and He was not always so afraid of things. Why was He not always so afraid?

Because He had the Wild Man.

The Complete Man

So many men become Hearth Men too early. Bowed down before they should by the expectations of a world that tells them that they will live a horrible life if they do not act like adults now, they shut the Wild Man out earlier and earlier. At fifteen, they are thinking about their careers, and because society tells them so, they are putting all of their energies and spirit into school work, otherwise they won’t be able to go to college, and get a degree, the sheepskin that marks you as a success for many people. The Trades are barely mentioned, and if they are, they are mentioned with a sort of derision.

“Do you want to be a garbage man? Or a welder? Or a pipefitter? Why would you want to work yourself to death for nothing, when you can go to college?”

Young men are hearing this at a younger and younger age. Boys that should be enjoying their time outside with other children in their age group, exploring and discovering what makes them excited and happy for no other reason than the sheer joy of doing it, are being told they need to worry about college. Schools are checking records back further and further after all, so you need just as good grades in middle school as you do in high school. So the Wild Man is completely shut out, and when the boy graduates or enters the working field, the Wild Man is buried too deep. The Hearth Man has been in charge for many years by now.

But The Hearth Man has a problem at this point. He is sick, because he doesn’t know what makes him happy. He buys the most expensive TV, or the nicest truck, or an expensive firearm that he will take out once a month, run a magazine through, and then put away until next time. He drinks shitty beer, ignores his neighbors and male friends that do anything more than play video games and drink shitty beer, and when this man sees other people doing something they love or that makes them happy, or something that he knows he could potentially do and be great at but he has no inner drive inside of him pushing him to do it, the hole inside of him won’t rest until he shits all over it. He does this because he has an emptiness in himself, and since there is nothing inside of him for it to eat away at, he expels it outwards onto others.

This man lashes out not because he hates. This man lashes out because like any animal, and man is an animal, he is hurt and he is cornered in his den, and he wants to make others hurt because he hurts. Living with this kind of emptiness turns someone towards blind cruelty, blind hatred, and constant negativity that only wants to tear down others.

On the other hand, you also have men that never want to become Hearth Men. In some cases, we applaud these men. These travelers, wanderers, they take to the road with nothing but the clothing on their back and a couple dollars in their pocket. We envy them because we have the Hearth Man inside of us, and he stops us from being like them.

Many of these wanderers are fine and upstanding individuals. I’ve read the works of several, and I follow one such man, @wandervogel.official, on instagram. His articles never fail to inspire a desire to take to the roads, to spend time in the woods, to see what I can find if I just throw my luck to the wind and travel. So I want to state here that there are some men that are the Wild Man in the flesh, and they will inspire you to great adventure, if you so let them to do so.

Some men that want to be Wild Men are already tied down to a family. If not a family, they have an interlacing web of connections and responsibilities that stop them from wandering off into the world to see what they can make of it. And sometimes, these men find a group of like-minded men, those seeking the Wild Man, and they form a group. They create a tribe. This is nothing but a good thing, to create a tribe. Sometimes however, the creation of a tribe is cut off from the family that the man has outside of the tribe.

He wants both things, but he wants them separate. This man wants to leave the side of him that is the Hearth Man next to the front door, adopt a Wild Man persona, go out into the woods with his friends and brothers, and cares nothing for what’s waiting for him at home. Then, when the weekend or week or however long the tribe has spent together is over, he leaves his Wild Man self on the front porch, putting on the Hearth Man skin like a coat that doesn’t quite fit right.

Sometimes, these men didn’t have experience with the Wild Man as a child. Their parents pushed them too fast, too quick, towards the Hearth Man and being tied to responsibility, or they didn’t have friends that they could go out into the woods and discover the Wild Man with, or they had no one who would explore the jungles of concrete, steel, and plate glass with them, so they never learned the sense of freedom from the Wild Man. So they want the tribe separate from their families, because the Wild Man is a mask for them. These men are afraid that their families won’t recognize them while they wear the jacket of the forest, that their wives will be embarrassed, or their children will be frightened.

This in turn makes it more and more difficult for them to return home and put on the Hearth Man, because they don’t want to wear him. They resent him. After all, he’s tied to the people that might look upon you as the Wild Man with anything less than agreement or admiration. So his experiences with the Wild Man cause disharmony with those around him that he’s tied to, because he grows more and more uncomfortable with the Hearth Man and starts to test the bonds that are tied to that part of him. Seeing how far they will stretch before they break, because if they are broken, then he can be the Wild Man all the time. He can reclaim that spirit that was lost to him as a young man, without fear and worry about his responsibilities as the Man of the Hearth.

A complete man, in my opinion, should be try to be both men, in equal parts. And this is extremely difficult. I struggle with it. I personally believe that there is no possible way to wake up and be a complete man and that’s it, you’re done trying. You have to try every day, and that still stays true to trying to combine the Hearth Man and the Wild Man. A way to look at the two being combined would be that the Hearth Man cares for his responsibilities and makes sure that the jobs are done before he sits back and puts his feet up so that the Wild Man can sweep us into the woods and into the camps of our brothers. Just the same, the Wild Man steps aside from constant competition and adventure with his brothers to let the Hearth Man take over as host and friend, inviting his brothers and combining both tribal bonds with their family ties.

These men allow their families to become larger groups together, their children friends, their wives taking up friendships, and in turn, building a stronger group, a true tribe. I believe that a tribe of men with families that are also apart of their tribe will always be stronger than a tribe of men who cut their families away from the tribe and they only have themselves. I realize that there are groups out that that have made both work, and I realize that there are groups out that have failed miserably at both. As usual, this is just my belief and what I think in regards to the subject.

In conclusion, a man is a being with two separate parts that are constantly vying for supremacy. The Wild Man, who is calling us to adventure, competition, exploration and wonder. The Hearth Man, that reminds us of our responsibilities, our obligations, and our families, the greater web of tribe that we create and belong to. Both of these parts can take you down a path that doesn’t work, or that creates more problems and weaknesses in your spirit and ability than they help. But finding out how the two work together, melding the two to create a complete man, can help you achieve stronger bonds within your peer groups and families, while still having a sense of competition and adventure, an indulgence of the wilder side of your inter-personal relationships.

Special thanks to Sammie B., the conversation starter that inspired this writing.