Cutting Through the Noise
a call to the souls of men
Nothing fucking matters.
It’s a common trope that feels true in moments because we mistake information for wisdom. Knowledge strobes out of our phones, making us think we can see through everything while seeing nothing at all.
All the meaning is still there; we’re just exhausted from running on a hamster wheel that spins faster each day as everything around us breaks, so meaning doesn’t have enough space to breathe.
But here's what I know for certain: This world fucking needs you. It needs your breath, your blood, your depth, and whatever it is you create.
The Collapse We're Already In
Let's be brutally honest about where we stand. In collapse theory, experts outline a progression: economic collapse leads to cultural collapse leads to environmental collapse. The hardest iteration for humans is socio-cultural collapse—where our connections with one another crumble and morality dies.
What no one seems willing to say is that this collapse is already happening.
The structures that once held our disagreements and allowed us to coexist have fallen away. We cut people from our lives based on who they voted for. We shame others for expressing opinions that would have been considered progressive a generation ago. The basic rules of the game have disappeared.
We're doing this ourselves. It's easy to blame social media titans for manipulating our brainwaves—and they bear responsibility—but becoming more aware is one of the primary charges of being human.
That’s not to say we need to know more (if anything, the opposite is true: our nervous systems, not being designed to metabolize all of the stories from all of the world all at once, need less stimuli in order to function properly. But we do need to be aware of more, which is to say, more connected to our bodies, our senses, our own experiences.
The Noise That Drowns Us
What's stopping us from hearing what matters?
Disconnection from presence: Social media has severed us from living in the moment, from real discourse, from the risk of revealing ourselves to actual people
Disconnection from our bodies: Notice your breath while scrolling—is it deep and slow? Or shallow, quick, almost imperceptible?
Wasted creative energy: Porn addiction sacrifices sexual energy, which is creative energy—they are the same
Soul-sucking work: Jobs that might suit your family but drain your essence
Caretaking at the expense of self: Knowing how to take care of everyone else while having no idea what YOU want for yourself
Your breath is your life source. Its absence is the quickest way to die. Yet how many of us breathe fully while being bombarded by notifications, horrific news, and the constant hum of anxiety?
The Dragons Within
There are men around you—maybe living in the apartment next door—who are fighting beasts in their minds that rival your own. Men who treat themselves in ways they would never treat another human. Men who repress their knowledge of who they are because they're terrified of becoming the man who hurt them, abandoned them, or hurt their mother.
They cannot face the parts of themselves capable of harm, which makes them deeply untrustable. Because they do not trust themselves.
Who can trust himself who does not know all parts of himself?
This is why we must venture deeper together. To acknowledge not only the fear but also what inspires it within ourselves.
This is not a fun process for most. It is difficult. There be fucking dragons.
Which is exactly the point. We coax the dragons, learn them, and learn to love them.
The Choice Before Us
So here are your options:
You can keep going about your life, hoping to make enough through that exhausting side hustle and that corporate job that gives you just enough perspective to see the harm being done but not the power to change it. You keep hoping cryptocurrency will skyrocket so you can cash out and defect to Ecuador. You go on ignoring the beast in your shadows, watching Netflix, and hoping the sex will be better someday.
And that would be fine. It's likely what most men will choose because it's easy, and we've been conditioned to believe we're entitled to easy.
Or—
You can choose to cut through the noise. To listen deeper. To the awakening of your soul.
What Happens When Power Fades
For the past several decades, white men have been losing status. The strategies by which we gained power in the past no longer work. #MeToo was a wake-up call. The pandemic was a wake-up call. The clown acts of the current administration offers another.
What happens to someone who's been in passive power for a long time? Ethan Hawke's character in Leave the World Behind made that chilling statement: "I am a useless man.”
How many bones of men shook upon watching that?
And what happens at the edge of capitalism, when white men are losing status but haven't quite lost the power? We retaliate. We smash things and people, tear families apart, make stupid demands and expect the world to grovel.
And when I say "we," please do not mistake me or you as separate from them. That's what got us here.
Everything they're acting out is inside each of us.
This is what this time demands of men:
That we wake up to the beasts within us and learn to hold our ground when the motherfuckers test our resolve.
Standing Together in the Dark
Can we come together?
Can we stand with each other in the dark and trust the breath and the stance of our brothers even when the Balrog comes, when empirical armies approach, seeking to stamp us out of existence?
Can we stand beside one another and deeply fucking feel—as no battalion of warriors has ever in history been willing or able to before—what is at stake, what is most important, what holds us together?
Our breath. Our love for our families. Our willingness to not know all the answers. Our resourcefulness. Our ability to stay present, to see what happens, to listen, and to respond in the best way we know how.
Why This Work Matters Now
For the past 40 years, since the days when Michael Meade and Robert Bly sought to turn over the rock of the HERO and teach men how to allow themselves to be ordinary, this work has been optional—chastised, shamed, ignored by the mainstream—by men who have not yet learned how to listen to their souls. By men who think themselves heroes.
Here's the worst part, at least for our egos: This work is vital now, and none of us are heroes, nor will be seen as such, should we engage in deepening our relationship to life itself.
I am not focused on helping men heal. Healing is a byproduct of what I do.
What I do is help men cut through the noise. Cut through the noise and learn to listen deeper. To the awakening of the soul.
Soul Work, Trauma, and Sovereignty
This is soul work. Not the Instagram-friendly version with perfect lighting and curated playlists, but the messy, terrifying journey into the underworld of your psyche. It means:
Facing the choices that you’ve made to this point in your life with acceptance
Reclaiming sovereignty over your attention, your energy, your purpose
Acknowledging the ways you've benefited from and been damaged by systems of power
Learning to hold space for the contradictions within yourself
Listening to that deep, quiet voice that has been waiting a long time to get heard
Trauma isn't just what happened to you—it's what continues to happen within you when you refuse to face what happened. Sovereignty isn't freedom from responsibility—it's the courage to respond with your whole self.
The Ultimate Test
If there is just one thing I know unequivocally, it is this: If we are able to sit with each other through whatever version of collapse is happening, if we are able to stand with one another as everything we've known falls away, we might—just might—create something worth surviving for.
Of course, you CAN choose meaninglessness. You can numb yourself with distraction, rage, or cynicism.
But why would you, when your soul is screaming to be heard?
The world doesn't need more heroes. It needs men who can listen. Men who can feel. Men who can stand together in the dark and not run from what they find there.
Cut through the noise. Listen to your soul. Face your dragons. Stand together.
The rest is just details.