Deep Thoughts: In praise of the essence of masculinity

The Metaphysics of Masculinity -- by Paul C. Robbins, Ph.D.

Creativity remains one of the more fascinating metaphysical puzzles.

Plato argued that essence precedes existence, that the "idea" of something, anything, pre-exists in a noetic sphere whence originates the material object. The object itself it but a copy of that transcendent idea, that idea existing in the indefinite dyad of material reality. Art, he argued famously (or infamously), is thus "thrice-removed" from the truth–a copy of a copy, an image of an image, the reality of which is apperceived by the mind. Later Christian Platonists placed this ideal reality in the mind of God.

Plato seems to have dismissed the idea that there is an idea of the copy–that there is a realm of being that we simply make up. Art, as in paintings or poems or architecture, is the activity of making up new beings, new creations that do not pre-exist in the mind of God.

Modern science derives more from Democritus and Aristotle than Plato, but even scientists posit something called "data," the plural of the Latin "datum," meaning "given." Data are what we observe, what experiments produce, the world reduced to number and formulae and equations that can be understood as natural laws, our understanding of the way things work based on empirical observations.

The French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre is famous for his observation that existence precedes essence, that there is no essence in either the Platonic or Aristotelian sense, but merely the vagaries of material reality.

And then there's Vladimir Nabokov, who observed that literature doesn't tell the truth–it makes it up.

It is this conflict between the notion of a pre-existing truth--as either Platonic ideal or scientific "givens"–and the indeterminancy of existence that underlies much philosophical debate. The world is and the world becomes. The world constantly changes, and so the only real constant is change.

But the world does not simply change, in some random chaotic way, though it does indeed appear to do that.

No, the mystery of creation is that the world is also shaped, intentionally so, by consciousness.

We humans do not simply observe the world: we shape the world to our purposes.

That is the process of creativity. Give us clay and we shape it into pots. Give us stones and we make a bridge. Gives us electrons and we make a computer.

We do not seek to understand the world just to understand it; we seek to understand the world to change it, to shape it to meet our ideals, our morals, our visions of what can be.

And there are two forms of creation: synthetic and natural.

Natural creation is a natural process–plant a seed and it grows, not into just anything, but into a new avatar of the plant from which the seed was taken. If we plant corn, we get corn. If we plant weed, we get weed.

This process I call the feminine principle of creation. Why? Because the creation of a new life, of life from life, is the process of birth. In higher life forms, that process is carried out by the female of the species. A woman doesn't have to do much to bring about a child except to allow the natural process to occur.

Synthetic creation is the shaping of reality into our ideals, our visions, our blueprints. It is clay shaped into a pot, the stone made into a building, the paint made into a painting, the words made into a story.

This process is the masculine principle of creation. Why? Because the male does not give birth to a new life so much as to a new creation. He takes the inert and makes it into something new through a process of intentionally shaping what is given.

Here is the metaphysics of masculinity: the ability of the human to shape the creative potential of matter and energy.

In this metaphysics is also found the magnificence and mania of the male.

A woman's purpose comes with her at birth, and even those women who reject that purpose still carry that sense of quiet purpose within them, as a fallback meaning to their lives.

A man comes with the purpose of finding a purpose. And so a man's journey is often more tortured, more difficult, more magnificent and more maniacal.

Albert Einstein gave us both E=mc2 and the theory of relativity. He was a genius, universally recognized. And yet his grandson, the direct descendant of his theories, was the atomic bomb dropped on Hirsohima, E=mc2 made weapon.

It has been noted that men are both the greatest villains and the greatest saints. I would argue that is because men are always about the business of creating themselves, of creating purpose and meaning in their lives. Some men find it in God, some in science, some in art, some in war, some in booze, some in destruction.

For a man to be truly creative, of course, it is not enough merely to bring forth what has been brought forth before. He must bring forth what has never been.

He must say "Let there be" to a new world that has not yet been.

It's easy to make what's been made before, much harder to make what's never been made before.

And yet that is the male imperative. And even apparent destruction can be the means of creating. Build a dam and you destroy a valley. Clay shaped into a pot is destroyed as clay by the fire. The pot is no longer clay, no longer the pure plasticity of the earth, but the earth shaped into new being by knowledge and effort.

And yet to create, one must know. To create an atomic bomb, one must know the properties of the atom. To create a house, one must know the properties of wood and what loads it can bear and how it is affected by the weather. To scrape the sky takes thorough knowledge of steel and iron and engineering, not to mention the steel and iron in the men who build it, who sometimes give their lives to build it.

To be a man is to be about the business of shaping the infinite plasticity of the universe.

It is about directing the fire within to direct the fire without.

Women like order because they want a safe place to raise kids.

Men like disorder because with it comes the freedom to shape the world anew, to fulfill their inner purpose of creating a purpose within the world.

And so men seek out new worlds, new challenges, new frontiers, so they can be constantly in the process of creating the world anew.

To change the world they must understand the world. So they devise theorems to understand the power of the atom and they use the power of the atom to light the world. They learn the laws of aerodynamics and use those laws to make planes fly. They learn what causes disease and create the medicines to cure those diseases.

For man is the creator of the synthetic and woman is the creator of the natural. A woman gives birth to a child; a man gives birth to a world.

Of course, a woman can partake of the synthetic principle of creation, as a man can nurture a child.

The natural ability of women to give birth makes them seem closer to the divine, closer to the natural order, closer to the generative mysteries of the universe. They are not; they are simply using the power given them.

As men use the power given them. Men use their power to change, shape, create the world.

And so a man can seem more tortured, more driven, more obsessive, more willing to take risks, for to what he gives birth is something that has not yet been. He exists on the leading edge of creation, constantly shaping the pure potentiality of being and matter into existence, into the new world that has never been before. And by doing so to fulfill his inner purpose.

He also will be more focused, his mind more laser beam than multi-tasking. Edison spent all day working on a single invention, but produced many in his lifetime. He would often spend hours in a chair, thinking and imagining his next invention, as Einstein first imagined relativity as a fly on a train.

It is this will to create, to shape, to change, to master his environment that drives a man. It is not enough to merely have existed, to replace himself. He must, like God himself, forge a new world out of the void by the dream of what could be.

It is both the "Why?" and the "Why not?" that propels the dream. Knowing "Why" converts the dream into "Why not?" Knowledge makes creation possible.

The metaphysics of masculinity makes the desert bloom, renders the clouds landscape for a plane, turns water into electricity and light and warmth.

The metaphysics of masculinity is the power to shape, to create from matter what never was before in answer to a dream that lives within. The vision of what could be is the driving metaphysics of the man.

(Dr. Robbins lives in Colorado, where he likes to fish for trout, hunt for elk, ski the Rockies, and, mostly, spend a lot of time with his daughters, Sarah and Carey. A divorced dad, he has witnessed first hand the injustice of family court. He also has a dream--to open a spiritual retreat in his beloved mountains. You can contact him at probbins12@msn.com)