Once in awhile when I am resting on the weekends I will watch a reality TV show. Unlike many people I find of them interesting to see how people behave in certain stressful situations. Last week, I got caught up in the Naked and Afraid XL season. This latest offering featured 12 people who had already survived for 21 days in the wilderness with a single partner totally naked. So these 12 naked veterans were tasked with surviving in the wilds of the Orinoco river basin in Colombia with two other veterans, who were chosen by the producers. They were only given a knife, a bag, and each person got to chose one survival item: either a water container, a net, a fishing kit, or a fire making kit. So no one person had everything they needed to make it the whole 40 days. They were not given food, or water, or clothes.There were four groups of three. The only group I am going to analyze is the one with a male, who described himself as, “The Alpha Male” and specifically said that he is not “an” alpha male but “The” alpha male. He was matched with two women, one of whom was a vegetarian. Literally within minutes of arriving the alpha male started cutting large trees down and building a massive shelter. The one item he chose to bring along was a bow and arrow. He tried hunting for food but was unsuccessful. In the first few days he expended lots of precious energy doing many tasks. He derided the women for being lazy and hurled other abusive insults at them. The women stood their ground and cautioned him against expending too much energy. At one point he moved into a separate camp, which he had to build himself. After he had completed that and expended even more energy, he realized he had no means of making fire, as the women had the fire starter. So he went back to them asking for the fire starter. He tried to make amends but he was not clear in his intention and could not resolve the conflict he instigated. This decision left him without the means to start a fire, a necessary part of surviving. Needless to say, the women chose a better survival strategy and they made it the full forty days by having a wise understanding of resource conservation and “the” alpha male tapped out early and was sent home.
The reason why I took the time to explain that show is because this is a clear cut example of how Taoist principles can work and how toxic masculinity can lead to one’s downfall. I say Taoist principles, but clearly the women in the show did not say what their philosophy was so I am kind of using their survival strategy as an example of Taoist principles in action. Come to think of it, these woman gave a better demonstration of Taoist principles than some old dude with a man bun posting his lecture on YouTube.
The alpha male in the show was the poster boy for toxic masculinity, with his need to be right, to not listen to “weak” women, and a vegetarian no less. He ignored numerous cautions, at his own peril. As a Tai Chi instructor who has been teaching older adults since 2001, I have seen this play out time and time again. In fact, most older males do not chose Tai Chi as their exercise and would rather drop their wives off to their “dance-like” exercise. Those women being dropped off have taught me many lessons about checking my own masculinity. I have learned that women are more likely to go to the doctor’s and older men who live with their wives go to the doctor more and live longer. Women are open to feedback and listen to others more and they live six and a half years longer than men in the U.S.. Whether by script or by personal choice the women in the show clearly demonstrated the qualities Taoists would characterize as Yin, or soft.
Taoist models of gender account for the fact that feminine qualities are important and even superior to male qualities. Before we go any further, it must be stated that Chinese culture did not bring about a gender revolution by any means and there are numerous accounts of women that have been persecuted. However, it must also be acknowledged that Taoism is unique in that it gave a highly significant placement of women and feminine qualities in its value system, especially when comparing it to other systems of that era like Christianity, and Buddhism etc..
The main symbol for Taoism is the Yin-Yang symbol, or Tai Chi doh, with a Yin half, that is soft, dark, and feminine, and Yang half that is hard, bright, and male. Yes, it is a binary view of the universe but it is important to note that each half has a bit of its other within it. That significant dot means that each has the other within them, meaning there is always a little masculinity in a female, and a little femininity in a male. The most important part of the symbol is that both aspects are intertwined and equal in the creation of the universe.
In chapter 6 of the Taoist classic by Lao Tzu, as translated by Gia Fu-feng and Jane English, he mentions the valley spirit,
Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu - chapter 6
The valley spirit never dies;
It is the woman, primal mother.
Her gateway is the root of heaven and earth.
It is like a veil barely seen.
Use it; it will never fail.
Stand by the door of any Tai Chi class in the world and you will hear talk about using hard force as opposed to soft force. Hard force is usually characterized as a male trait, which is in juxtaposition to the female trait of yielding, that is considered to be the highest level of internalizing the Tao.
The ultimate expression of Yin energy is in Wu-Wei, or non-action. I was always thrown off by that, and many Americans have difficulties grasping it, instead they see it as Jesus-take-the wheel, kind of non-action; totally letting go without any “human” help. I confess it took me a while to understand, but now I have come to understand it as “strategic” or thoughtful non-action. So the women in the alpha male’s group definitely exhibited Wu-Wei. They did it so well that the alpha male called them lazy but they were not lazy at all. Instead of cutting massive trees down they used a sparce shelter, even though they used the shelter the alpha male built, remember they did not ask him to build it, they would have made a simplier shelter. Additionally, while he was out hunting and climbing trees, they wove a fish trap and foraged for fruits and nuts. The vegetarian was practicularly smart in her awareness of her nutrient intake. She rationed her foraged food to make it until the 40 days. They also met up with another group which created a larger team effort. The women were able to work with in another group and therefore increase their chances of surviving.
The Yin, feminine trait of yielding allows clarity and opens up the opportunity of using the force of the earth. So in Tai Chi we relax so that we can use the force of the earth (gravity and leverage) more effectively. If we relax (let go) and don't force it, we can increase our impact. If we move with fear and tension Yang or male qualities, then we have to use even more non-Wu Wei force. Thus creating a non-harmonious trajectory. Often Wu-Wei is poo pooed by martial artists and fighters as weakness or fantasy. More on that in a few paragraphs but first I have to address the binary approach.
I can see that feminists might object to this binary approach because Taoism assigns traits to gender. But this is where the Yin-Yang comes into play, a female can have male traits, and a male can have female traits. So in Tai Chi, I consciously cultivate Yin- female traits to temper my Yang- male traits. Sometimes in everyday life, I get frustrated and become aggressive, which leads to as my wife says, me manhandling things. Tai Chi, helps me temper that Yang aggression and bring about a clarity of action and peace of mind. Just because we say that there are male traits and female traits doesn’t mean that gender assignment is rigidly in one group, the Yin-Yang symbolizes fluidity between gender and the transformation of energy from one group to the other.
All this talk of Yin energy does get dicey though, especially when it comes to martial arts, In combative situations things happen fast and there is a time and a place for the use of Yang force or violence. But right now in our time period violence is low but this could change. The alpha males of the world might rise again. This is why I see liberal idealism as too idealistic because it doesn’t acknowledge a world in which there are violent alpha males. All too often, liberals try to explain that behavior as it being socially constructed, where as the Taoist approach understands it is a way in nature, but not the best way, not the way of the Tao.
I grew up in Brooklyn in the late 60s and early 70s. It was not for the faint of heart. Men there were very aggressive, I witnessed my maternal grandfather beat up a guy and his wife after we left a restaurant. They had a disagreement about who had the right away and it came to blows. All this is typical male machismo of that era, but liberals seems to think this behavior is gone for ever. Unfortunately, I believe it is just dormant. I have a Hobbesian view of nature. So if the group from Naked and Afraid XL that I have been discussing were in a Hobbesian world, where there is no governing body, he could have cannibalized one of the women, taken the fire starter and made the other women his wife or in a less dramatic turn of events, the women might have seen him as more of an asset than an ass because of his 6 foot 5 stature and bold nature. So even the alpha male strategy is a viable solution in certain contexts and it is not socially constructed as many social scientists would have you believe. But again, following the Tao leads to a more fruitful relationship and even in a Hobbesian world working as a team with full support is better than cannibalizing each other. My point here is that hyper-masculinity is not socially constructed and it is important to practice martial arts because the Hobbesian world is never far from civilization.
This is why martial arts, especially Asian martial arts, like Tai Chi, Aikido, Judo, Jiu Jitsu, Wing Chun and others preach tempering hyper-masculinity and using one’s mind to leverage the anger in others. Anger creates a loss of balance and a lack of clear vision, and tempering doesn’t only work on Yang energy, it also can bring up Yin qualities. My friend Bishop, who is a university policeman and a Wing Chun instructor, told me that he discusses the balance/blending of Yin and Yang energies to his students all the time. “Too much of one or the other is never a good thing, but when COMBINED in the right way, the result is greater than the two parts.”
My close friends in martial arts, Dave, Larry, and Bishop all work on using Yin traits when dealing with angry male behavior, specifically Dave and Bishop who work directly with that behavior in public settings as a bouncer and a university police officer. I have heard countless stories of how they have used their martial training, specifically leverage and a cool clear head to not engage in the heightened emotion that often happens when young males, who have been drinking alcohol, come in contact with the opportunity for sex. My other friend, Larry teaches younger professional fighters the discipline it takes to check your wildness and throw accurate punches that hit their target with brutal efficacy. Larry and I often discuss the difficulty many of his students, mostly males have with listening and controlling their hyper masculinity. He has said that the ones who do become great are the ones who don’t get trapped by their hyper-masculinity/overly aggressive nature.
Practising martial arts and internalizing the principle of Yin-Yang deepens one’s understanding of themselves. It shows one how to take control of anger and hyper-aggression so that one can think clearly and make better decisions that lead to positive outcomes. Moreover, it also gives us an insight into human nature because you have seen the ugliness become tame.
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