Daily Archives: March 31, 2021

This story was originally published in Undarkand is reproduced here as part of theClimate Deskcollaboration.

Todays conservationistsare taxed with protecting the living embodiments of tens of millions of years of natures creation, and they face unprecedented challenges for doing so from climate change and habitat destruction to pollution and unsustainable wildlife trade. Given that extinction is the price for failure, theres little forgiveness for error. Success requires balancing not just the complexities of species and habitats, but also of people and politics. With an estimated 1 million species now threatened with extinction, conservationists need all the help they can get.

Yet the past a key repository of lessons hard learned through trial and error is all too often forgotten or overlooked by conservation practitioners today. In Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction, journalist Michelle Nijhuis shows that history can help contextualize and guide modern conservation. Indeed, arguably its only in the last 200 years or so that a few scattered individuals began thinking seriously about the need to save species and its only in the last 50 that conservation biology even emerged as a distinct field.

Beloved Beasts reads as a whos who and greatest-moments survey of these developmental decades. Through the eyes and actions of individuals, it portrays the evolution of the surprisingly young field from a pursuit almost solely of the privileged Western elite to a movement that is shaped by many people, many places, and many species.

Its in the gray area of the personal, though, that the book is most fascinating. Even the most celebrated and successful conservationists had human flaws, and Nijhuis does not shy away from these details. As she writes, The story of modern species conservation is full of people who did the wrong things for the right reasons, and the right things for the wrong reasons.

In one chapter, for example, Nijhuis tells the story of William Temple Hornaday, an American taxidermist who served as the first director of what is now the Bronx Zoo, and who is credited with saving the American bison from extinction. By the late 19th century, evidence clearly pointed to the fact that bison, a species that once numbered tens of million, were set to disappear due to wanton overhunting. Yet at the time, most people assumed that species were static and enduring, Nijhuis writes, and those who did catch wind of the fall of the American buffalo mostly responded with a shrug.

Strangely for his time, Hornaday became obsessed with the animals plight. He decided that the only way to preserve the species from extinction was to establish a captive herd to, as he wrote, atone for the national disgrace that attaches to the heartless and senseless extermination of the species in the wild state. With Theodore Roosevelts backing, Hornaday established a small bison herd in the Bronx in 1905, one whose urban descendants became founders of some of the 500,000 bison that survive today. More than just save a species, Hornadays work helped bring public recognition of extinction as a needless tragedy rather than an inevitable cost of expansion, Nijhuis writes.

Yet despite all the good he did for the natural world, Nijhuis points out that Hornadays successes like many conservation gains of the 19th and 20th centuries were built on a foundation of nationalism, sexism and racism. For Hornaday and his allies, the rescue of the bison had nothing to do with the people who had depended on the species and a great deal to do with their own illusions about themselves, Nijhuis writes.

A group of school children in 1899 viewing the first bison at the National Zoological Park.

Bison were slaughtered en masse in the 1800s, not just for their hides but also as a convenient way to control Native Americans who depended on the animals for food, Nijhuis writes. At the same time, white men like Hornaday and Roosevelt began appropriating bison as a symbol of rugged Caucasian masculinity, both for the animals association with a strenuous life and as the target of choice for of wealthy white male hunters. Despite evidence to the contrary, Hornaday placed partial blame for the bisons demise on Native Americans, and his Bronx-raised bison, Nijhuis points out, were released on land seized from the Apache, Comanche and Kiowa. Protecting bison, therefore, meant protecting a perniciously exclusive version of natural progress, Nijhuis writes.

With each subsequent generation, though, the conservation field has gradually improved in terms of its scope and ethics. In his older age, Hornaday, for example, supported and encouraged the activism and ecological education of Rosalie Edge. A bird-loving New York socialite, Edge helped to reform the Audubon Society, which, at the time, supported the eradication of raptors and opposed tightening of hunting restrictions.

A year before the term ecosystem was coined in 1934, Edge discussed with Hornaday a groundbreaking realization she had come to: that species should be protected not only because they are of interest to humans as had motivated Hornaday and the men of his time but because each forms a vital link in a living chain. A decade after Edge and Hornadays conversation, the centrality and fragility of ecological connections would become all the more apparent when Rachel Carson pondered the impacts of the pesticide DDT on raptors at the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in Pennsylvania, a protected area Edge founded.

Ideas and connections continued to build. Around the same time Edge was campaigning for birds, Aldo Leopold popularized the idea that ecosystems, not just species, need to be protected, and that game is a public trust that should be managed by science-based law. This zeitgeist shift resulted in the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation. Leopold believed it was possible to love other species and use them wisely, too, Nijhuis writes.

The conservation movement gained momentum in the wake of World War II, Nijhuis writes, when the word global came into wider use, and the interconnectedness of the world both ecological and human became glaringly apparent. Data compiled by the newly established International Union for Conservation of Nature also revealed just how many species faced extinction, and shifted the movements focus to emergency relief. But as conservation spread to other continents, especially Africa, it continued to work through various growing pains, including racist views about independent Africas inability to manage its own natural resources. Many foreign conservationists saw the African landscape as John Muir had seen Yosemite as an extraordinary place meant to be visited, not lived in, Nijhuis writes.

This so-called fortress conservation approach perpetuated in the 1950s and 1960s a top-down enterprise in which global authorities ultimately inform national and local agendas has since come under fire and has been increasingly replaced by a version of conservation that acknowledges that humans are an inextricable part of the landscape. Additionally, time and time again, conservationists have learned (oftentimes the hard way) that protection of wild places can never succeed without buy-in from the people who live there. To protect biodiversity to provide other species with the resources they needed to adapt, survive, and thrive conservationists, including conservation biologists, had to persuade some of their fellow humans to make some sacrifices, at least in the short term, Nijhuis writes.

The problem, isnt inattention to human needs, but inattention to human complexity.

The problem, Nijhuis continues, isnt inattention to human needs, but inattention to human complexity. Conservationists too often view humanity the same way they would a population of species that fits into a single ecological niche with set relationships and dependencies, Nijhuis argues, rather than as thinking and technologically endowed beings aware of our place among other species and each other. Nor are we passive players. As the future perfect turns into the present perfect, we can apply ourselves to creating a tolerable present and future for ourselves and for the rest of life, Nijhuis writes.

The decisions we make are often unpredictable, though, informed by a vast array of social, cultural, and individual factors. Conservation biology, in other words, cant be left only to the biologists, Nijhuis writes. Its for this reason that the field has begun to draw upon other realms of expertise outside of pure ecology, including economics, politics, social science, and more. This need for diversity not only in nature but also within human endeavors to protect it is something that Leopold and others recognized decades ago, but has only just started to come to fruition in any practical way.

History is an integral part of that complexity, too. Just as we cannot protect something that we do not know exists, past failures and successes likewise cannot be taken advantage of for future gains if history is forgotten. Beloved Beasts is therefore compelling and necessary reading for anyone interested in the field of conservation. As Nijhuis writes, We can move forward by understanding the story of struggle and survival we already have and seeing the possibilities in what remains to be written.

Rachel Love Nuwer is a science journalist whose writing has appeared in The New York Times, National Geographic, Scientific American, BBC Future, and elsewhere. She is the author of Poached: Inside the Dark World of Wildlife Trafficking.EmailHigh Country Newsat[emailprotected]or submit aletter to the editor.

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Threatened species and how we might save them - High Country News

Masters of Atlantis, the Charles Portis novel first published in 1985 and now a cult favorite beloved by writers, comedians and roughly every other intellectual ironist on Twitter, tells the story of Lamar Jimmerson, a veteran of World War I (serving first with the A.E.F. Balloon Section and then as a telephone switchboard operator) who, while in France, gets hip to a larger truth.

Like many stumbling through history after the traumas of the Great War, Jimmerson falls into a belief system that makes as much sense as anything else. While others drifted or dove head first into Communism, Fascism, Dadaism, Catholicism, flapperism and/or a happy hodgepodge of them all (give or take pretty much any other worldview lying around), Jimmerson is drawn to theosophism: the gnostic pursuit (and finding!) of esoteric knowledge.

Upon his return to the States, he continues the work of revelation in as prosaic a manner as is humanly imaginable. While his protagonists organization is ostensibly concerned with piercing the veil between what is known and what can be revealed, Portis tells the story in his characteristically bone-dry comedic style, laying bare the humdrum realities of Jimmersons life. As with the post-war theosophical organizations that Portis is parodying (?), Jimmersons Gnomon Temples are lousy with infighting, intra-cult maneuvering and the constant threat of encroachment from competing secret societies. Jimmerson may aspire to be Aldous Huxley or a transcendental influencer in the Freemason mold, but hes essentially a door-to-door salesman.

And not a particularly successful one at that.

*****

When I set out to write about contemporary Mens Groups, the seeming zeitgeist of men worldwide being drawn to transformational societies with names like Man Tribe, ManKind Project, EVRYMAN and Sacred Sons, I thought the Portis-derived framing of these organizations as scammy cult-lites for the lost and credulous would be incisive. But as I talked to founders and members of these groups, and others whod been in mens groups since the 90s or were currently in less codified mens groups (e.g., AA), I thought the framing was less accurate, but still cute. Eventually I came to realize that using Masters of Atlantis as a framing device might still be useful, but that I was, in fact, Jimmerson: a dull-souled door-to-door spiritual nudge, consigned to knocking at the door to revelation without the capacity to ever cross the threshold. Or, worse, endowed with the capacity for busting down the doors of perception and just not really wanting to.

Mens groups as we know them not to be confused with the odious Mens Rights Activism (MRA) and all its crybaby antics had their genesis in the feminist awakenings of the 60s and 70s. These female-exclusive gatherings aimed at self-discovery flourished within the larger framework of the equal rights movement and a broad societal appetite for inward journeying that came into fashion following the perceived failures of the outward-focused body politic: Watergate, Altamont, Vietnam, all the other massive bum-outs that are now conveyed with montage and blarings of Fortunate Son. In response to women getting their shit together and everything else falling apart, male therapists and mystics alike drew from the back-to-land movements, First Peoples traditions and a healthy(ish) dose of Erhard Seminars Training to start laying the groundwork half a century before the term would come into vogue as a cipher for male-only assemblies that practice what is best described as non-toxic masculinity.

While there were Mens Groups throughout the 70s and 80s, it wasnt until the poet and essayist Robert Bly published Iron John: A Book About Men in 1990 that the movement gained real visibility. Bly was born in 1926 and grew up on the family farm in Minnesota. He served in the Navy until 1946, then studied under Archibald MacLeish at Harvard and published his first book of poetry, Silence in the Snowy Field, in 1962.

Concurrent with a career of writing evocatively symbolist, Lorca-indebted but accessible Deep Image poetry (and taking the occasional potshot at T.S. Elliot, Pound and the like) and activism against the Vietnam War, Bly, in the 1970s, started to alchemize his worldview with fairytales, mythology, Jungian psychology and how these threads tied into masculinity. While his 1975 book of criticism, Leaping Poetry, is not explicitly about manhood, its rejection of confessional poetry and its call for poets to make associative leaps and return to the (as he called it in an essay from 1969) obscure psychic woods of poets like Blake is indicative of Blys larger dissatisfaction with societys walls closing in. In 1979 he divorced his wife. While its tempting to read some (Jungian? Freudian? xoJane-ian?) unconscious motives in the timing, Bly described his uncoupling thusly: Ruth Counsell entered my life in 1972. Carol Bly and I agreed to divorce in 1979, and Ruth Counsell and I were married the next year. Regardless, it was soon after the divorce that Bly fully branched out into mens work activism.

The vision for this activism was a more progressive version of masculinity based on Jungian archetypes, Grimms fairy tales and the idea that men had lost their way, but not irredeemably so. Seeing untenable circumstances where men were forced to compete unnaturally by market forces and alienated from both fathers and fatherhood by societal warpings of manhood, Iron John argued for Blys mythopoetic (the term for mens activism on the New Age spectrum coined by the professor Shepherd Bliss) solutions to the malaise in which so many men were trapped. If science and technology and an All Mod Con society couldnt (or wouldnt) address it, then Bly in line with his views on poetry argued for a return to a more primal, innate kind of knowledge. Hence the drums, and the hugging. Easy to sneer at, but if chanting has no transformative value, Evangelicals and cheerleaders would be out of a job.

Haters of the time dismissed Iron John as new-age claptrap and loincloth solipsism. But even if the value of the prescription is still debatable, and the question of just what manhood means has gotten foggier, it can be argued that the years have borne out much of Blys diagnoses of (cisgendered) men in crisis. And if Blys mythopoetic framing along with Joseph Campbells concurrent exploration of folklore has seemingly resulted in a nation state of man-children who justify their (and my!) adoration for raunch-coms by calling their buffed-out, neon protagonists our modern myths, thats not really Blys fault.

After its release, Iron John was a NYT bestseller for over a year. At the outset of a deeply cynical decade, one where wallowing in defeat was an aesthetic virtue and blaming others a presidential bo-hunk pastime, Bly put out a call for earnest self-improvement completely at odds with the ironic evasions taking root all around him. As late as 2000, in an interview with Paris Review, Bly said, the most powerful enemies of mens openness are the corporate men. Three or four years ago there were hundreds of posters in New York one spring saying, You dont need to beat a drum or hug a tree to be a man. At the bottom: Dewars Whiskey. The corporate world dares to say to young men, knowing how much young men want to be men, that the only requirement for manhood is to become an alcoholic. Bly correctly saw the enemy not as feminism but instead other men who willfully misunderstood him.

Even if the underpinning of mens groups, then, with all its wolf howls and Jungian hobbitry, was dippy, it wasnt more so than any other organized rowing towards God. In 1989, I was in the YMCA Young Christian Leaders Club. Even though I was Jewish, I ran through the woods, collected beads for swimming across Lake George, praised Jesus out of one side of my mouth and cried when we all sang Sweet Caroline at the end of the week. It made being a 14-year-old boy bearable. As Ben Weasel sang in The Science of Myth, his 1991 song examining these same topics, if it works then it gets the job done. The early 90s truly were a heady time for men with a capacity to disappoint built into their DNA.

While mens groups largely fell off the cultural radar after the mid-90s, the confusion of forces that inspired them did not. The old century ended with the grunting but fatalistic rap-rock misogyny of nu metal spilling into the new. The current transitioned into a mass salivation for firemen that necessarily bordered on necrophilia, and opened wide like an old-fashioned pit of hell with an opioid epidemic that turned all previously held myths of (white male) self-reliance and stoicism on its head. To even touch on video games and online pornography would require a book and then a library.

Suffice to say that, for boys and men and boyish men, the last couple decades were no less complicated than the ones that came before. In the last few years, Manhood in Crisis has been forced to add both incel violence (both online and off, with the very term proudly stolen from an academic exploration of female and non-binary pain) and the seismic reverberations of the Me Too movement to its chart. Because of the old challenges, the new challenges and the old challenges with new names, some men, not content to inhabit their worst instincts, have attempted to rise to them.

Mens groups are abundant. They are worldwide. From the early adopter of Bly and Robert Moores theories (ManKind Project, formed as New Warrior Training in 1984) to Jordan Rahmes Evolved Masculine (which had its first retreat in October of 2019), there is growing consciousness about mens roles in society, their inner lives (or lack thereof) and the lives of their loved ones. Every few months, theres a new article, with GQ and The Guardian (and GQ again) being notable examples. A websearch for mens groups brings up dozens of organizations (and notably few MRA groups). (And, at the risk of engaging in unhealthy male oneupmanship, I will note that this piece was assigned a couple months before that last GQ essay, which interviews some of the same people, appeared. Just, in a wolfen growl, saying.)

Over the last couple months, I spoke to various mens group founders: Adam Jackson of Sacred Sons, Lucas Krump and Owen Marcus of EVRYMAN, Jordan Rahme of Evolved Masculine, Alexander Hill of Man Tribe. I spoke to members of ManKind Project and EVRYMAN who have run their own offshoots for the last couple years. And I spoke to a friend of my mom who has been in mens groups, all untitled, since the early 90s.

There were conspicuous differences between the men with whom I spoke. The friend of my mom, despite having been in groups since the movements initial heyday, was the most anomalous, essentially seeing his groups as an escape from country-life isolation and an alternative to going to a bar. But among the other men, their differences were ones contained within the larger mission of mens work, a wide range of body types, classes, backgrounds and specific early traumas. Adam Jackson was notably the only Black man among them (diversity of membership is an issue that mens groups have historically struggled with). But the common threads in history were notable as well. Krump and Jackson both came out of a Midwest hardcore/straight-edge scene, with Jackson having been the singer of Twelve Tribes, who put out a number of reasonably hella sick metalcore albums on Eulogy Recodings and Ferret Music in the late 90s/early aughts. At least half the men came from deeply Christian families. Most either had or previously had careers in the professional class: tutoring, finance, medicine, real estate. Most had been, by societys standards, successful in both their careers and sex life (if, also notably, not their love lives). And all had events in their lives that revealed just how unhappy they had been, and that set them on a different path.

Where the groups diverge is dependent on what parts of the original mens movement societies they favor: the talking circle or the drum circle.

Michael Eugene Burdick

These pivotal events ranged from those that built over time failed relationships or addiction to events that happened at once, like the losing of a major client, a divorce or, in Alexander Hills case, a literal cardiac event. At 27, working in real estate and generally cruising along in life, he had an arterial fibrillation. I blacked out in the middle of a workout at Equinox Grand Central and came out of my body, he told me. Had an experience of direct spirituality, separating the body and the spirit. And then a couple of minutes later, I came back and then I started to understand a lot of things about life that I was completely blocked from before.

While not all of the men had their severance of spirit and body illustrated so dramatically, they all shared a realization of something vital being grievously absent. In Lucas Krumps case, he had an anxious breakdown in Singapore a month after his father died, close enough to a cardiac event that he also needed to be hospitalized. As opposed to Hills immediate pursuit of gnosis, Krump, while acknowledging the attack as a sign of a disconnect between the head and the heart, continued his unhappy wanderings until I had this epiphany at 37, where I like broke up with my girlfriend after like doing lots of drugs in Montauk. Which led him from therapy to a 12-step to EVRYMAN. Some roads to Damascus are longer than others.

As with the men, the groups theyre part of bear resemblances. They all believe in certain root causes: that, as Krump succinctly puts it, When we moved out of the fields and into the factories, when this industrial complex was created, put men in the workforce, created a hierarchy, motivated us, not necessarily to collaborate, but to achieve. And the result of that is we sort of disregarded our natural tendency to have connection and community. And then we started doing alone, and dude, guys arent good on their own. They all believe that the answer to mans existential disconnect lies among other things in a rigorous honesty, the importance of men holding each other up but also holding each other in account. They believe in spaces where men can speak freely about their pain and anxiety, and cry and hug and scream without shame. They all share the goal of saving men, both from themselves and the expectations society puts on them. They all believe that what is absent in a man is part and parcel of what is absent in culture. They all derive these beliefs from both Robert Blys ideas and their own lived experiences. As would be expected from men whose lived experiences often at least overlapped with business and tech, theyre all really big on keynote speakers.

Where the groups diverge, the previously alluded to among other things, is dependent on what parts of the original mens movement societies they favor: the talking circle or the drum circle (with the important caveat that there are elements of both in all mens groups). On one end of the spectrum is EVRYMAN, focused more on a pragmatic physiological healing, via a form of talk therapy, albeit one no less arduous for its absence of sweatlodges. On the other end is Sacred Sons, which as the name strongly implies, takes Robert Blys drawing from indigenous ceremony to its logical (with no ironic usage of the word intended) conclusion. When I (delicately) asked Adam Jackson about Sacred Sons more LARP-ish aspects the ponchos, the staffs, etc. he took it in stride. When were in the desert we wear ponchos, because it gets cold and we have really cool looking ponchos, he says, laughing. Sometimes those photos look the most epic because were in the desert and we have a professional photographer. We put that forward also as an invitation. Because theres a lot of men who dont want to go sit in some tiled-room office space and sit in a circle and then Does that evoke you to share your deepest fears? To sit in a fucking office building with guys in button-ups? Ill just tell you: it doesnt. But when theres a guy called Bear Heart, who has a big red beard and who looks like Tormund Giantsbane from Game of Thrones and hes holding a staff and he tells you, I got you this weekend and youre with me? You really fucking believe it.

All the founders talked of membership expanding at wildfire rates, and the members spoke of individual lives either transformed or healthily maintained through the groups they were part of. I was privy to a Man Tribe group zoom call where easily a dozen men called in from lockdowns all over, ranging from dimly lit basements in England to beach-swelled backyards in California to men in the Midwest existing within that manliest of geographies: their cars on the open road (or if not open, at least in the spacial drift of running errands). All the men were hungry for connection, and it was a need palpably different from mere loneliness (though loneliness sure as shit came up). As one man, who I wont describe but to say that I no longer subscribe to that easy contempt for men whose avi is them driving in sunglasses, said; It feels like its me against the world. And the world is really strong.

Obviously the crushing weight of existence is not a situation exclusive to those who identify as boys. (From what Ive read, the hassle is fairly universal.) But acknowledging the universality of suffering, individual men with certain shared characteristics (identifying as men) shouldnt be blamed for seeking other men with whom to share, and in sharing, hopefully render diffuse a suffering that either is, or even just feels specific to their make and model. As Man Tribe sells itself: The days of the lone wolf are over.

While watching these recorded Zoom conferences, I felt (besides like a voyeuristic creep) an empathy that shifted between recognition and alienation. Ive been in therapy for a couple years, and should have gone sooner. I wont say why I go to therapy because its not interesting. Hence the empathy. My issues are, I imagine, shared by anyone with parents, a history or a landlord. And its these universal, everyday issues being a decent partner and son, making friends on the schoolyard that are as much the focus of mens group work as dealing with larger societal crises. So these mens discomfort in their own skin and in the world touched a chord. And I appreciated their bravery and self-awareness that attends seeking outside help.

Now, the idea of men as a pack of wolves doesnt exactly allay fears of toxic masculinity. But I know what Man Tribe means: less a pack of wolves that hunt and tear apart their prey, and more a pack of wolves that communally howl and then go home to their loved ones a somewhat less self-loathing, non communicative prick.

As to any alienation I may have felt watching men striving to better themselves, there lies a question. What, exactly, is my fucking problem? Is it fear? Snobbery? Laziness? The same solipsistic borderline libertarianism that makes me roll my eyes at talks of community in punk spaces? An innate misandry akin to being a pick-me girl in reverse? The most likely answer and thus bearing repeating: Fear? Of embarrassment? Or weakness? Or of just being exposed as a phony, an emotional dilettante who uses the language of trauma to seem more interesting? All good guesses, and who knows! Seems like something Id want to figure out. And look at that; half my open tabs are men willing and talk it out. A buffet of offered help. While all the men I spoke to took pains to make clear that they were not therapists, my inbox has been lousy with therapeutic opportunities. All I had/have to do is be open to them. And pay the membership fees, ranging from the low to high hundreds. But I have government COVID cheese saved up and Im harding spending money in bars. Alexander Hill even floated an offer of bartering membership for a little copy work. I had and have no excuse.

While the question of taking part in these call-ins was wrestled with, the virus lockdown spared me the journalistic imperative of taking part in person. Well, I shouldnt say spared. The aspect of joining intrigued me more than just talking. Other writers, after taking their own agonized pains to make clear that this wasnt their kind of thing gamely went to the desert with Sacred Sons or the struggle-session circle with EVRYMAN and emerged transformed, or at least bound to a tried-and-true narrative arc (mens groups are not the only biz invested in archetypes). While admittedly I would be as terrified of embarrassment in person as I was online (outside of a hardcore show, physical proximity to strangers is not high on my list of favorites and even at hardcore shows, Im usually standing in the back with my arms crossed), I did and do like the idea of joining public-but-with-many-of-the-trappings-of-a-secret society. Which, even if the framing is in many ways inaccurate or unkind, brings us back to the theosophists.

The question of spiritualism in mens groups is complicated. Groups like EVRYMAN are adamantly agnostic and groups like Sacred Son unashamedly (if also with a dash of humor) count self-described wizards amongst their leadership. But regardless of the actual religiosity of the individual organization, the jargon (holding place for each other, speaking intention into reality) is ritualistic, and no less mystical for its origins in therapeutic language. The measure between the therapeutic and the quasi-mystical varied. While EVRYMANs founders accentuate the differences between them and the stereotype of men running around with staffs, Sacred Sons visibly embrace the staffs (while insisting on their practical use), and Man Tribe kind of splits the difference: a fair amount of juju, but no more than believing bottled vitamins work. The fact that all the founders I spoke to held mens works shamanistic origins in a baseline regard helps the movement appear (to me) as an admirably spiritual project (full disclosure: While I dont believe in astrology or Tarot, I do believe in God and am open to the existence of spirits, jinn, etc.). Maybe less than the gnostic sects of the turn of the 20th Century, but at least as much as AA or your average black metal concert.

The men I spoke withs varying degrees of respect for the somewhat Hyborian tendencies of Robert Bly et al. gives the movement an amiably schismatic vibe. (Though, to be clear, the differences expressed to me were far from being as schismatic as the lawsuit that heavy-splintered the original Theosophical Society in the wake of Helena Blavaskys death.) When any of the founders, briefly and with a fair amount of prodding on my end, spoke candidly about other groups methods at all, they were careful to praise in general and not criticize in particular and then do a variation of You know I love her shes one of my best friends. But All of which is understandable. These are men who care deeply about saving other men, and they believe their truth has a chance of doing that. Between that reasoning and my being eager to feel the reverberations of esoteric history, I found what little shit talk I could conjure extremely endearing. To be honest, if the founders of organizations attempting to break patterns of violence and despair that have been dominant for generations upon generations thought all solutions were equal and didnt think their methods were the best, Id find their whole project suspect. Without at least a smidgen of religion, this could all just be fantasy football with more crying. (Or less. Ive never actually played fantasy football.)

While making comparisons to transcendental temples of yore, and accepting that most dont see those temples with the same affection that I do, I need to make clear that none of the men I spoke to seemed like scammers. I liked each and every one of them, found their pricing far less exorbitant than a spa getaway, and perhaps most importantly, didnt feel as though any of the men were overselling what their organizations might offer. Whether out of honesty or liability, they made clear that mens work was not a substitute for therapy or medication (though opinions on those things varied, too), easily copped to and engaged with concerns of cultishness, and uniformly talked of their work as a calling to serve. Like nurses in wartime. In a longish life of discerning phonies from real ones, I am currently batting .500, which makes me a major league level judge of character. For whatever it might be worth, all seemed on the up-and-up. (Bearing in mind that I have not touched a baseball bat, in a sports capacity, in over three decades.)

Conversely, the comparison between the mens movement and societies dedicated to improvement through metaphysics is, when made without malice or mockery, apt. I dont subscribe to any new age/climate denialist/Trumpian flattening of belief, where postmodern relativism is weaponized by evangelicals and flakes to the point where one can say with a straight face, science is just a religion. But I do subscribe to the en vogue idea that speaking an intention into existence is as good a definition of magic as any. More academically, Radcliffe G. Edmonds, in Drawing Down the Moon, defines magic, in part, as a discourse pertaining to non-normative ritualized activity. There are few things less normative in our culture than trying to break free from internalized misogyny and self-destructive patterns of masculinity. Basically, if youre going to engage in alchemical transmutations of the male psyche a series of rituals and repeated phrases (like holding space) with the specific goal of holistic transformation of body and soul while constantly pointing out that not everyone on staff is a licensed therapist, I can be forgiven for calling you a wizard. And if a stultifying and deadly pandemic has rendered nearly everything in a shade of two-decades-late millennialist epoch, a kind of latent, Atlantean Y2K panic, so much the better for a grand awakening.

Whether the men-seeking-self-transformation numbers are exactly there (which is difficult to determine, since the only searchable numbers come from the websites of the mens groups or articles quoting them) or instead writers at GQ and The Guardian are simply eager to provide a counter-narrative to incel spotlight-hogging, its clear that something real is going on. While nearly every man I spoke to talked of the Me Too movement as both a necessary reckoning and a catalyst, they all also made clear that the catalysts were manifold, as much personal as societal, and that what is important is less the naming of the zeitgeist and its exact causes than the fact that a zeitgeist is occurring.

Unlike other reporters who came to mens work with cynical veneers bespoke-built to crumble in the face of revelation and narrative satisfaction, I came to the zeitgeist with an open heart. I love a good zeitgeist, was raised to be openly affectionate with my fellow man (my dad loves his fellow man so much that he married one), am open to therapy and wizardry in equal measure, and, as with all these men, emotionally speaking, I have a lot on my plate. Im worried about work. Im worried about growing old and weak. Im worried about being weak now. Im worried about my social standing. Im worried about starting a family of my own. I am grieving my mothers death, and worrying about how I am or am not processing it. I have some fucked bad material from my past that I absolutely have not dealt with.

And, with all this, I have all these kind and thoughtful men, all of whom I liked immensely, offering to help. Without shame. Without judgment. In this day and age, when selfishness is held as high virtue and the facile is worshiped by leaders and servants alike, there are men offering, blessedly devoid of macho bullying or ironic posturing, comradery and communion. And the only response that I can give meant truly, though not without misgivings, from the bottom of my soul is that I dont think I really feel like it.

I have not a single bad thing to say about mens groups. Well, OK, I think a lot of them kind of idolize the notion of embracing the feminine to a point that, even setting aside questions of gender essentialism, borders on fetishization. But besides that, Im on board. All this ambitious striving towards improvement, this searching for self-awareness, this brave attempting to breach broken tradition and recapture fire from the mountain: I dig it. I also think guys should have lives independent from work and bars. Even the prosaic aspects of mens group goals appeal. I think its noble.

But, end of day, I dont want to be exposed. I like my shell. It protects me from the world. I believe that life is inherently painful and that I deserve to suffer as much as anyone. Not a lot, but a little. Just enough to keep me honest. Or at least a likeable enough liar that writing remains viable while the bars are still closed. Like Lamar Jimmerson, I remain irrevocably bound to a life that stops short of the veil. (Also, while were here, I read Masters of Atlantis twice, just to see what everyone else finds so funny, and I just dont get it.) Point being: I strongly suggest that, if youre a self-identifying man in crisis, you check these mens societies out. Theres so much to be said for, metaphorically or literally, wrestling with manhood. Positive, raw possibility can and should be embraced. The benefits from said grappling might be incalculable. I both hope that anyone who takes part in the project finds transcendence or at least a kind of peace, and, hedging my bets, I do hope the invitation to transcendence and/or peace remains open. But for now, for myself, whether its with the everyday stress caused by everyday hassles, memories of a bad sexual experience inflicted upon me by a couple truckers outside Chicago when I was 19, or with a beefcake sorcerer in waist-length dreads in the desert, at this transformative epochal juncture of these transformative epochal times, I aint wrestling with shit.

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Are Men's-Only Support Groups the Antidote to Toxic Masculinity? - InsideHook

If you want proof of how decisively the climate zeitgeist has begun to shift, you could look to Washington and the transition between the Trump and Biden eras.

But you could also look further west, to Ann Arbor, home to the University of Michigan, which routinely tops the rankings of Americas best public universities. Its a massive institution whose faculty and graduates have collected scores of Nobel, Pulitzer and MacArthur prizes; somewhere on the surface of the moon theres a plaque marking its first extraterrestrial alumni chapter, because all the astronauts on Apollo 15 had studied there. It couldnt be more middle-American, with deep ties to, among other things, the states world-leading automotive industry.

And so, in 2015, it came as no great shock when the universitys president, Mark Schlissel, rejected student calls for divestment from fossil fuel companies. Fossil fuels enable us to operate the university, to conduct research and to provide patient care, he said. At this moment, there is no viable alternative to fossil fuels at the necessary scale. In addition, most of the same companies that extract or use fossil fuels are also investing heavily in a transition to natural gas or renewables, in response to market forces and regulatory activity. I do not believe that a persuasive argument has been made that divestment by the U-M will speed up the necessary transition from coal to renewable or less polluting sources of energy.

His statement was so strong that the Independent Petroleum Producers of America have featured it ever since on the front page of their anti-divestment website.

But students never gave up pushing for change, and to the universitys great credit it kept lines of dialogue open (including with me; I offered my take earlier this year in a meeting with university officials). And this week it announced that it was divesting from fossil fuels not only that, but its committed to achieving net-zero emissions across our entire endowment by 2050; and shifting our natural resources investment focus toward renewable energy investments with an attractive risk-adjusted return profile. The universitys regents voted on Thursday afternoon in favor of $140m in innovative new investments we have been working on related to renewable energy and sustainable energy infrastructure. Taken together, university officials say, we believe these steps are unprecedented among American higher education institutions.

Its not that they brought in new officials at UMichigan; its that the world shifted. Heres how that same Mark Schlissel, still the universitys president, explained it to me: Whats changed for me is my growing appreciation of the long-term financial risks to the university, including our investment portfolio, of the inevitable and necessary transition to a low-carbon economy.

Hes watched as flood after firestorm has racked the country; hes watched as the Biden administration has come to power promising swift climate action; hes watched as the youth climate movement has grown to the point where this is the issue that his potential students care about more than any other; hes watched as the states most important company, General Motors, announced a move to end the internal combustion engine by 2035. Hes watched as his peers at the University of California the other candidate for Americas greatest public higher education system divested, not to mention Oxford, Cambridge, and so many others. And it all sunk in.

And of course, above all, student campaigners never wavered. They werent discouraged by the initial no they redoubled efforts, to the point where 10 were arrested during a 2019 sit-in.

Fossil fuel assets will diminish in value, he told me on Thursday, perhaps more quickly than many realize. In addition, to prevent further degradation in our environment, not just fossil fuel companies, but at some point all businesses will be subject to regulations that limit their direct and indirect release of greenhouse gases. Companies that have good plans in place to become carbon neutral will be less risky investments during the energy transition.

The only perspective that matters now is long-term the future of the planet is at stake and so the only actions that matter are short-term

Bottom line: We have to take a long-term perspective on behalf of the university.

Happily, student campaigners are not fully satisfied with the universitys announcement and will fight on: We celebrate this as a hard-won victory, as a crucial step toward toppling the fossil fuel industry, putting to action the kind of urgent harm reduction necessary to protect ourselves from the worst impacts of the climate crisis and move towards climate justice, they said in a press release on Thursday. However, this announcement must serve as a catapult for U-M and other institutions to do more to not only divest from fossil fuels more completely, but divest from all unethical industries and reinvest in a rapid, just transition and community resilience.

And theyre right, of course theyre really taking the long-term perspective, really focusing on the true bottom line. The same bottom line that we need corporate chieftains, bank presidents and politicians taking. The only perspective that matters now is long-term the future of the planet is at stake and so the only actions that matter are short-term. In this case, that means immediate divestment, in an effort to break the power of the fossil fuel industry that still fights for delay. Michigan has made a courageous call it did what wise people are supposed to do, and re-evaluated as new facts presented themselves. The world is changing, and so must we all.

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The University of Michigan divesting from fossil fuels shows that change is here - The Guardian

British author and screenwriter J.K. Rowling poses upon arrival to attend the UK premiere of the film 'Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald' in London on November 13, 2018.

TOLGA AKMEN | AFP | Getty Images

WarnerMedia owns the rights to one of the most powerful franchises in the world, but a series of controversial statements from the woman who created it threatens to tarnish the brand irrevocably.

The Harry Potter books have been a commercial success since they were first published in 1997 and become a key part of the cultural zeitgeist over the last two decades. However, author J.K. Rowling has faced public backlash in recent years for comments about transgender men and women that have been seen as transphobic and oppressive.

These remarks have turned the very people who were once inspired by the Harry Potter novels and films against Rowling, leading to threats of boycotts against future content.

These fans, including members of the LGBTQ community, helped the franchise garner more than $9 billion at the global box office over the course of eight films and led to the sales of more than 500 million copies of Rowling's Harry Potter books worldwide.

There has been speculation for months that WarnerMedia would utilize the franchise to bolster sign-ups for its fledgling streaming service HBO Max. After all, Disney's streaming platform Disney+ has seen great success from transitioning its blockbuster Star Wars and Marvel franchises into digital series.

Rumors have circulated that AT&T-owned HBO Max could launch a TV show based on the books or turn Rowling's co-written stage play "The Cursed Child" into a feature-length film.

However, WarnerMedia in January quickly quashed reports that a show based on the beloved book series was coming to HBO Max.

Still, WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar more recently reiterated the company's support for Potter. "There's this little thing called Harry Potter, which is one of the most beloved franchises," Kilar said earlier this month during the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecommunications Conference in a session that was webcast. "And we're incredibly thankful to be able to partner with J.K. Rowling and so I would argue there's a lot of fun and potential there as well."

Kilar didn't elaborate beyond that, but it stands to reason that WarnerMedia would seek to dive deeper into the Wizarding World. The company has already begun to explore this universe in the decades before Harry Potter's birth in its Fantastic Beasts film series.

Still, there are two things that may stand in the way of these plans Rowling and a 2016 licensing deal that gave NBCUniversal the exclusive TV rights to the Harry Potter films.

Rowling's comments about transgender men and women surfaced in late 2019. The author expressed support for Maya Forstater, who had lost an employment tribunal over comments she had made on social media about transgender people.

Forstater had disagreed with the U.K. government's plans to allow people to self-identify their gender, as she does not believe that it is possible for a person to change sex. Her opinion is that men who undergo reassignment surgery are still men, even if the law recognizes them as women.

"Dress however you please," Rowling wrote in a tweet on Dec. 19, 2019. "Call yourself whatever you like. Sleep with any consenting adult who'll have you. Live your best life in peace and security. But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real?"

For people like Forstater and Rowling, there is a belief that gender identity is separate from biological sex and should not be given priority when it comes to lawmaking and policy. These with similar beliefs often call themselves gender critical feminists, fear that sex is being argued into nonexistence and that it will erode women's rights.

These feminists are often referred to as "trans-exclusionary radical feminists" or TERFs. This is usually used in a negative context.

"Social media, despite inherent flaws, can serve as a mechanism to empower voices that have been traditionally disenfranchised, like trans individuals, and also to demand accountability for those in positions of power whose words may cause harm to groups with historically less power," said Caty Borum Chattoo, executive director of the Center for Media & Social Impact at American University.

Anti-government protesters hold signs calling out J.K. Rowling's transphobic twitter comments as they take part in a Harry Potter themed rally in front of Democracy Monument on August 3, 2020 in Bangkok, Thailand. The pro-democracy protest called for demonstrators to "Cast the Patronus Charm to Protect Democracy". This event was part of a string of protests.

Lauren DeCicca | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Rowling addressed her opinions about sex and gender identity again in June 2020.

"If sex isn't real, there's no same-sex attraction," she wrote in one of several tweets on June 6. "If sex isn't real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn't hate to speak the truth."

A few days later, after facing criticism, Rowling penned a 3,600-word essay on her personal website defending her comments.

"But endlessly unpleasant as its constant targeting of me has been, I refuse to bow down to a movement that I believe is doing demonstrable harm in seeking to erode woman as a political and biological class and offering cover to predators like few before it," Rowling wrote.

It was at this point that LGBTQ groups like GLAAD and the Human Rights Campaign, and even the actors who brought her work to life, began to speak out against her.

The most notable voices were from the trio of Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint, who portrayed Harry Potter, Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, respectively, in the original films.

Grint reiterated his support for trans people in an interview with Esquire published last Friday.

"I felt like I had [speak out] because I think it was important to," he said. "Just out of kindness, and just respecting people. I think it's a valuable group that I think needs standing up for."

Representatives from Rowling's public relations team declined to comment, directing CNBC to speak with Warner Bros.

Rowling's reputation isn't the only thing taking a hit, particularly, after she posted a number of comments that have been dubbed "anti-trans."

While overall fiction book sales rose 31.4% in June 2020, compared with May, Rowling's titles only saw a 10.9% increase, according to NPD BookScan. A year prior, Rowling's book sales were higher than the industry's 33.2% rise.

Other Harry Potter licensed titles that Rowling did not author also saw a slight drop, with sales increasing only 7.7% last June.

Sales growth of Rowling's books also slowed in July and August, but rebounded in September. An analyst for NPD said the sales slowdown could have been due to Rowling's comments or because of a seasonal shift in book sales.

Ultimately, Rowling's sales were up 16% in 2020, beating the performance of the juvenile fiction segment, which rose 11%, and adult fiction, which was up 6%.

"So if the news had an impact, it was short," the analyst said.

People pose for photgraphers with copies of J.K. Rowlings new book 'Harry Potter and the Cursed Child' during an event to mark the book launch at a mall in Chennai, India on July 31, 2016.

Arun Sankar | AFP | Getty Images

Still, the controversy could come back to haunt AT&T. When it was reported that HBO Max might be making a new Harry Potter series, ardent fans, who traditionally would have clamored for more Wizarding World content were torn. As much as they would like to see additional content, they didn't want to reward Rowling's recent behavior with their wallets.

"I actually talked to students about this particular issue a few months ago, right before I retired," said Garland Waller, former director of the TV graduate program at Boston University. "They are very conflicted. They said things like, 'Harry Potter was such a part of my life, but now I feel guilty if I watch any of the old HP movies.'"

Fans worldwide have been outspoken about the betrayal they have felt from Rowling's comments. Harry Potter is a story that inspired so many to embrace themselves, whether that be through accepting their own sexual orientation or gender identity or sharing their true selves with the people they love. Many have also pointed to the Harry Potter series as a catalyst for them to deal with bullies and grief.

Social media is filled with comments from fans who now feel conflicted about supporting new content that would ultimately benefit Rowling financially.

Aside from Rowling, WarnerMedia also faces a challenge from a deal it struck with NBCUniversal in 2016.

The agreement, worth in the north of $250 million, allows the Comcast-owned NBC to show all of the Harry Potter films on cable until 2025. WarnerMedia had previously had a similar deal with Disney's ABC network.

Because the deal was struck before HBO Max or Comcast's Peacock launched, the two companies negotiated a pact that would allow them to share the digital rights to the films, a representative from WarnerMedia told CNBC.

This allowed HBO Max to launch last May with all of the Harry Potter films in its digital library. Peacock then took over in October.

But there appears to be some confusion about the digital rights going forward. WarnerMedia told CNBC that over the course of the next four years, the two streamers will continue to swap custody of the franchise.

However, a representative from NBCUniversal says NBC solely owns the digital and TV rights to the films through 2025 and that there is no deal in place for shared custody of the digital rights. Instead, WarnerMedia would need to negotiate a new deal to get access to the digital rights of the films.

CNBC has reached out to both companies for clarity on the matter.

Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter in "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone."

Warner Bros.

"No doubt that AT&T's WarnerMedia now regrets its decision to license Harry Potter for streaming by NBCUniversal until 2025 a decision that reflected a short-term, immediate-gain minded 'head in the sand' mentality of streaming-first realities," said Peter Csathy, founder and chairman of digital media consulting firm CreaTV Media.

"WarnerMedia earned the immediate bucks, but gave up the long-term marketing punch for HBO Max that only Harry Potter could have given," he said. "They will not make that same mistake twice. Once NBCU's license is over in 2025, WarnerMedia will never let go of the Harry Potter franchise ever again. Harry Potter will play the leading role in WarnerMedia's overall long-term corporate strategy."

Waller noted that people feel hurt by Rowling's comments and want the author and WarnerMedia to make "an honest effort to do the right thing."

That could be through donations to trans organizations, bringing on a trans showrunner or producer to oversee future content, ensuring that production jobs go to trans individuals as part of diversity initiatives, and having continued and frank discussions about diversity.

"My experience with students these days is that they spot a fake a mile away," Waller said. "They are tired of corporate types blathering on about how open they are and how much they care. If it's a superficial, lame effort, the powers that be will be pilloried. Authenticity is the key."

It is unlikely that Rowling's recent commentary will tarnish the Harry Potter brand for too long, Csathy suggested, calling it a "rare, timeless, enduring" franchise that will ultimately eclipse its creator.

"Yes, some fans understandably will be turned off forever due to J.K. Rowling's rants and tune out forever because of it but the vast majority of Harry Potter fans not only will stick with the franchise," he said. "They will crave more. And Warner Bros. will happily give it to them, inspired by Disney and its burgeoning multichannel vision for Star Wars."

Editor's note: This article has been updated to include a fuller direct quote from Ms. Rowling's June 2020 essay. It also now used the words "slow" or "slowdown" to describe Ms. Rowling's 2020 book sales growth.

Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC. In addition to holding the exclusive TV rights to the Harry Potter films, NBC also operates Harry Potter-theme lands at its amusement parks.

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Harry Potter could make HBO Max a streaming giant, but JK Rowling and a deal with NBC stand in the way - CNBC