As a therapist, my goal is to establish a secure and non-judgmental space where all individuals, including those who may not feel represented by conventional methods, can delve into their mental health in a way that aligns with their personal experiences and viewpoints. Specifically, I am referring to men facing more obstacles than ever before. I believe in being open about my life with my clients, which levels the playing field between us.

This is living the dream, folks. Right here. In the mud.

As a younger man, I thought this life required me to become a renunciant. I’d have to find a place where my personal needs were looked after by a community of like-minded individuals, or I would have to renounce my own will and follow the path that God provided, where my feet were placed. Both of these paths could turn out to be the same—but the point was that it became obvious that I had to give up a sense of control and learn to accept what I had been given and where I was headed.

That was six years ago. I had no idea it meant moving back to the frigid Northeast. I had no idea I'd entirely quit corporate life, and I had no idea what a frost-free hydrant was. They are meant not to freeze or crack. But they do. So you have to dig them out in the mud in winter.

The basis of all suffering is the desire for things to be other than they truly are. That is dualism at work. Accepting things as they are in spite of their duality—is non-dual awareness.

The notion that we can singularly and autonomously learn everything we need has natural limits. Inevitably, when we choose to enter a relationship of any kind, we choose to learn. We enter collaboration at work to learn, we enter parenting to learn, we enter intimacy to learn. Anyone who denies this, or posits that the individual can exist fully and autonomously in a relationship without self-reflection or introspection and sharing is signaling that they do not want to be in a relationship, or worse, that they feel they have nothing to share or learn from another person. There exists a paradox in relationships like everything else, of course. I will tell you that I believe most people choose a relationship for the wrong reasons and do not have a deep one — and so, pent-up anxiety from not having dealt squarely with themselves and resentment for the inability (rightfully so) of the other to help them, is almost inevitable. Too many people live in quiet desperation for their choice — and that choice is derived directly from their failure to have done the needed depth of work on themselves before they entered the relationship.

Reciprocity and warmth in relationships are not only necessary for what all of us need to thrive—men and women—they comprise true, real common humanity and the beginning of mutuality. We should celebrate when we find a mutual transparency that allows for our fragility and frailty. We should be thankful when we find someone who is capable of actually listening and validating our deep, very natural need for affection and warmth. Indeed, we ought to seek out those with whom we can cultivate the natural dignity in ourselves as men—because that is what we really need most.

Collective, not Super Intelligence

Throughout our evolution as a species, humans have managed to collaborate and collectively build technology with tremendous success. The scale of our collaboration (enabled, of course, by our brains) may be the most important factor in human evolutionary success. Considering this, it is far more likely that long before a “superintelligence” emerges, collective intelligence will be scaled via networks of people and systems. When the actions of intelligent systems become more holistically intertwined with personal, social, cultural, political and economic systems, we can say we will have achieved a collective human-machine level of intelligence.