#82 — Michael Ronin on Modern Masculinity

In this episode of Better Thinking, Nesh Nikolic speaks with Michael Ronin about masculinity and the challenges of the modern men. Michael Ronin is an interdisciplinary cultural commentator, pulling together the threads of an unraveling world to provide clarity amidst all the Crazy. If there is a single objective truth, then it is found between many different trains of thought. Therefore, he generates insights that shed light onto that “truth” from diverse angles and viewpoints. He’s spent a large proportion of his adult life trying to see the world as it really is and coming to his own conclusions. Conclusions about everything he’s been told or have learned from others. Most people, especially nowadays through their social media preferences, live in an echo chamber. Strangely, he finds there aren’t enough groups or people out there whose thinking is closely mirrored by his own. He finds himself constantly and intentionally challenging his thinking by reading and reviewing stuff from all over the informational map. He digests as much as possible from as wide an array of rock-solid sources as he can, picking and choosing those that make the most sense to him, and then synthesizing it all into something coherent. As he ingests information and perspectives, he tries to accept and acknowledge his own limited ability to fully understand everything and, instead, embrace a growth mindset, however flawed or imperfect he might be at any moment. He is at war with his level of ignorance. He’s deeply concerned with society and our shared journey together as a species and in particular how it affects men. Even in western cultures, society is “not fit for human consumption.” It in no way works for the benefit of the vast majority of people. He’s both fascinated and disturbed about how the world is screwed up, how it got to be screwed up, how he got to be screwed up, and the parts we all play in creating the best conditions for people and planet. Something seems to have reached a tipping point in our collective consciousness, and people are becoming distressingly polarized and hysterical, if not basket cases. The causal factors for our predicament are, for the most part, available for those who care to look but are largely relegated to the fringe. More than this, he’s speaking out because so many people don’t know they’re being lied to. And they don’t know that they are being manipulated and conditioned in such a way that distracts themfrom realizing their true nature and living harmoniously with each other. Michael feels bereft at the state of the world right now. He feels the cruelty of unconsciousness in this world and the harm it causes. This is the creature from the Black Lagoon that lurks unrecognized by most. He’s also here to speak the truth which, by its very nature, is belligerent— because it stands squarely against a world built on comfortable misperceptions, mild deceptions, and outright lies. The uncomfortable truth stands squarely at the side of the conscious man as his ally in life. Episode link at https://neshnikolic.com/podcast/michael-ronin