Aspirational Masculinity
On Making Men Whole

By David John Seel Jr.
Published by Whithorn Press

Chapter One: Aspiration

TLDR: In today’s world, the aspirational ideal for men is in flux. Men are less and less sure of what it means to be a man. Masculinity is a composite sense of self that fuses God, self, work, and marriage. This book offers a roadmap for integrating those pieces into a purposeful, seamless life.

The dynamic of masculinity is such that men tend to affirm and define masculinity for one another. But what if identity is more like gravity than lifestyle choice? What if finding your true self means surrendering autonomy for authenticity? That is the promise of aspirational masculinity.

This book is for men seeking coherence in a world of contradiction—a life where spirituality, identity, work, and marriage are not in conflict but working in harmony.

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Identity Dysphoria

All men have been influenced by the men in their lives—either by their presence or absence. I am no different.A shorthand way to introduce yourself to others is to name your male influences: David J. Seel (my father), C. S. Lewis, J. Gresham Machen, Francis Schaeffer, Os Guinness, Dallas Willard, and James Davison Hunter. If you live long enough, these influences both inspire you and disappoint you. I have trouble making male friends because I have been painfully disheartened by some of my closest male friends. Close friendships are perhaps even more influential than aspirational role models. A friend’s betrayal, however, will alter your life and cast a dark shadow over it. I have been both blessed and wounded by my influences. Out of these mixed experiences, I began to wonder who my aspirational influencers should be. I need them. But I also need to choose them carefully.

In today’s world, the aspirational ideal for men is in flux. Men are less and less sure of what it means to be a man. We’re not sure who we should follow or trust with our life aspirations. Anthropologist Margaret Mead observed: “The central problem of every society is to define appropriate roles for men. This behavior, being learned, is fragile and can disappear easily under circumstances that no longer teach it effectively.”i Being less sure of what it means to be a man creates a cascading problem for boys, marriages, families, and society. This ambiguity has led to the rise of a toxic manosphere, the online subculture of incels (a shortened form of the term “involuntary celibate,” which refers to selfidentifying members of an online subculture based around an inability to find a romantic or sexual partner despite desiring one, also described as “inceldom” or “incelibacy”), with documented deaths of despair (suicide, alcohol, and drugs) and a general feeling of confusion and paralysis. Men are in trouble at this deepest level of aspiration because they don’t know how to be men. In general, men are experiencing an identity dysphoria.

I know this from personal experience. When I hit middle age, my wife of eighteen years left me. I was awarded uncontested custody of two young boys, took a 70 percent pay cut, changed professions, and moved to a new city. For years my life was lived in a mixture of depression and the relieving fog of antidepressants. It was as if all my dreams, confidence, and direction were set adrift. My explorations about securing an aspirational male identity stem from this time. I didn’t know who I was or where I was going. Each day was its own all-encompassing battle. But caring for my two boys kept me sane. Coping for each day and only that day was about as far as I could go. I had a great family background, theological training, and a graduate education. None of it, however, provided the resources, perspective, or relief I needed to address my own identity dysphoria.

This book was born then. It is a guide for young men individually after high school or college graduation— between twenty and forty years of age—through the intertwined paths of spirituality, self-discovery, vocation, and marriage. Masculinity is the combined experiential synthesis of an ultimate view of the good life, a personal sense of identity, a defined sense of calling, and its overflow into relationships with friends, family, and marriage. This book is not merely about fulfilling certain traditional functions, such as provider, protector, and procreator, and more about the role of son, husband, and father. Masculinity is a composite sense of self that fuses God, self, work, and marriage. This book seeks to show how these four components can be integrated into a seamless life. As such, the book seeks to provide a road map out of the current crisis of masculinity. I’m aware this is an audacious claim by any author or one book, but nonetheless, I stand by it. There is blood, bourbon, and brokenness woven between the lines of these pages as it is all born of my personal experience.

In the following chapters we will examine the contours of the contemporary crisis of masculinity. This sets the backdrop for our discussion and our shared life experiences as men. Then we will examine why an ecological approach is needed if the crisis is going to be solved. Rather than finding meaning by division, we will look to find meaning by multiplication, seeing how the whole of personhood is united. Finally, we will examine the four aspects of personhood through this ecological lens. The outcome of this journey is a new paradigm and adventure in aspirational masculinity.

Aspirational Ideals

Gary Cooper, John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Tom Cruise, Alexander the Great, Harvey Milk, Frodo Baggins, Luke Skywalker, John Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama, Marcus Aurelius, Mahatma Ghandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Michael Jordan, Lionel Messi, Elon Musk, The Rock, and Jesus. Men need an aspirational ideal. Psychologically they serve as a motivational tool. Philosophically they embody virtues that a society holds in high regard. Practically they impact behavior and decision-making. If a man’s ultimate aspirational ideal is to be a great leader, it will take him in a certain direction. If it is to be a great husband or father, in another way. Aspirational ideals provide direction and motivation for men.

God, self, work, and marriage represent the theological components of personhood. They are not gender specific, meaning the same questions can and need to be asked equally of women. They are deeper than the culturally sanctioned characteristics of gender archetypes found in cross-cultural anthropological studies.ii They are deeper than traditional social functions (presence, protector, provider, procreator) or obvious relational roles (son, husband, father, grandfather). God, self, work, and marriage are biblically based components of personhood, which from my perspective makes them a reality-based anthropology. While this can be theologically, philosophically, or anthropologically debated, I will seek to show here that the proof is in the living, not in the arguing. Other approaches to identity formation lead to fragmentation and despair, whereas this approach leads to coherence and potential. The unification of the God, self, work, and marriage approach to personhood is what makes sense of identity, both male and female, as these identities are made in the image of God.

Competing Narratives

The confusion over masculine ideals has led to the rise of a number of male subcultures. There is an assortment of masculinity niches served by social media icons, YouTube channels, podcasters, and fashion alternatives. Confusion is compounded by the many voices available to average young men trying to navigate the way to becoming an adult.

Boomers of my generation tend to follow a good man narrative that is loosely associated with the Judeo-Christian heritage. A good man is associated with honor, duty, integrity, sacrifice, doing the right thing, caring, and standing up for the little guy. Such a life is tied to transcendent virtues to which men aspire. Younger men, however, find this narrative increasingly passé.

Millennials and Gen Zers tend instead to resonate with the ideal of real men. Here authenticity, autonomy, and action reign. Being a real man means being tough, strong, never showing weakness, winning at all costs, sucking it up, playing through pain, being competitive, going fast, getting rich, and getting laid. A real man is inspiring because of his rough edges, not despite them.iii Intuitively, we know what these ideal narrative types represent: John Wayne versus Tom Cruise. Of course, there are far more narratives of masculinity than just these two. You probably have your own. With the fluidity of identity and the widespread acceptance of expressive individualism, everyone is now free to choose their own brand and identity style.

But it is not so simple for men. It’s always more than a personal choice, for a man is not a man until other men tell him that he is a man. The dynamic of masculinity is such that men tend to affirm and define masculinity for other men. We are always listening for the male voice of others. Sociologist Michael Kimmel noted, “Masculinity is ‘homosocial’— meaning it’s other men who judge whether we’re doing it right.”iv This means that what is celebrated socially by other men, particularly in sports, entertainment, or social media, will tend to gain a wider attraction with men. And that is exactly what we see.

Commonly celebrated in today’s world is the narrative of a transgressive real man. He is the man with special skills who is willing to break norms and to rise to the occasion often through timely action, sometimes including violent or aggressive behavior. He is Maverick in Top Gun. He is Harry Callahan in Magnum Force. To be a Boy Scout in today’s world is a pejorative descriptor of a man as it represents being a Goody Two-Shoes. He is certainly not someone you want around or would invite to a party. The edgy hero, on the other hand, always has a posse and finds his picture in men’s cologne advertisements. The world today is made for tougher stuff, the film noir transgressive anti-hero, the celebrated bad boy. It is this version of masculinity that Taylor Swift lauds in her song “Anti-Hero.” This vision of masculinity is the fuel of the manosphere. We can perhaps attribute this shift to the gradual secularization of society, the shift from virtues to values, from community values to self-realization, from selfdenial to self-actualization. We will explore these shifts later when we explore identity formation.

The manosphere has tended to promote extreme versions of masculinity that are promoted via social media and podcasts by the likes of David Goggins, Joe Rogan, Jack Donovan, Andrew Tate, Jocko Willink, and others. There are a multitude of options: the free spirit, the cultured stylist, the gym rat, the lady’s man, the gearhead, the surfer ethos of Salt Life, and the list goes on. You can fill in the blank with your name and shoe and apparel brand. There is a consumerist fragmentation of masculine ideals, but it leaves men with a sense of paralysis. There is a heavy burden to have to constantly invent and reinvent yourself depending on the social group to which you aspire.

Many of these social influencers are celebrating forms of masculinity that appeal because they are controversial. They appeal because they are designed to piss off somebody. Father Richard Rohr warned, “When positive masculine energy is not modeled from father to son, it creates a vacuum in the souls of men, and into which vacuum demons pour.”v We ultimately want to be a man among men. We choose our identity by what we are against as well as what we are for. The specific men we choose as our affirmers are a clear reflection of our heart’s priorities. It is always peer preference before it is peer pressure. Our identities have a crew. Our choice of masculine influencers reveals the orientation of our masculine heart, for their voices will define our aspirations.

In reaction to feminism and the widespread social failures of men against every possible statistical measure, there is a decreasing hope of achieving success. Men are increasingly exhibiting extreme behaviors. They are choosing the most misogynist, primitive, and testosterone-fueled violent aspirations and social media influencers. Consider the influence of Andrew Tate.

Tate was banned from all social media platforms in August 2022 for hate speech. “At the time in which he was banned, he had over 700,000 subscribers and 350 videos on his YouTube channel, 6 million followers on Instagram, and over 11 billion views on TikTok, despite not having an account on the platform. He was also banned from Twitter multiple times. This further boosted his popularity, as he was frequently discussed by many people, particularly podcast hosts.”vi A notorious misogynist and suspected rapist, Tate was recently arrested in Romania for sex trafficking. We should not take it lightly that Tate is one of the most popular influencers among young men today—not all but many. This is the state of masculinity today.

The manosphere has been taken over by the reactionary primitive wing of the men’s movement, which promotes a nostalgic, masculinist vision of animalistic humanity. It’s often toxic masculinity on steroids. The leaders of this movement, according to religion reporter and social commentator Tara Isabella Burton, “yearn for traditionalism, authoritarianism, and established gender roles. Distrustful of the optimism and idealism of the progressive left, and of those they deride as social justice warriors who place feelings and ideology over facts, they find spiritual and moral meaning in primal, masculine images of heroic warriors of ages past.”vii She concluded, “At once nostalgic and nihilistic, this bleak form of atavism [uncivilized primitivism] may be the ultimate religion of the Internet age. A band of brothers who have never met, brought together in the cultic belief in nothing at all.”viii Being a man among men in this context is not leading men in a very good direction for men, marriages, families, or society. This is what the social science findings prove. And yet this atavistic orientation colors everything masculine, including, no doubt, the public perception of this book.

More and more frequently in main street circles, men’s movements, Christian ministries to men, male restrictive activities, or books about men, however positively framed, are generally characterized in these atavistic terms for better or worse depending on your perspective. Traditional men and Christian men’s movements have a significant public relations problem. Misogyny and toxicity are the default public suspicions when masculinity is the dominant subject. They are not immediately seen in a positive light by either women or the general culture.

Against these compelling social trends, most of the solutions offered fall flat. In some communities young men have no present fathers or older male role models. Gangs serve as surrogate families, and gangs are living by the narrative of the real man. The good man narrative is dead on arrival in most circles of contemporary society. It has no cultural support, no familial modeling, and no intrigue or binding address among the coming generation of young men. We are not offering solutions that have traction and can make a difference. Perhaps we need a paradigm shift in approach.

Reality’s Alternative

What if masculinity is not based on personal consumer choice but rather aligning ourselves with the objective nature of reality—an external rather than a subjective feeling? That is, anything that exists as independent of any conscious awareness of it. What if identity is more like dealing with gravity than choosing a lifestyle? What if identity can be experienced in such a way that our lives are seamless, purposeful, and empowered? What if men must lose their autonomy to find their authenticity? This is the promise and possibility of aspirational masculinity. What this means for young men to develop a coherent sense of personhood— integrating spirituality, identity, work, and marriage—is the subject of this book.

This can become one of the greatest adventures in a man’s life. It is radically countercultural, open to all men, deeply fulfilling, and the way to find the greatest potential in our lives.

Aspirational masculinity is not merely a choice of a kind of lifestyle (“I like this podcaster or these shoes”), but rather it is an existential choice to align ourselves with our true nature and with the true nature of reality. It is about aligning ourselves to something outside of ourselves that enables us to then find ourselves and become our best self. Understanding what this means and how it is done is the further burden of this book. The benefits are all upsides, even if the approach is radically counterintuitive and challenging of accepted norms. This is an about-face from the common culturally accepted approaches to masculinity. But it is in keeping with the ancient wisdom that advises we must lose our life to find them.

Aspirational masculinity starts on a spiritual foundation of self-abdication (AA’s step two: Coming to believe that a power greater than us can restore us to sanity). Based on this spiritual dependence, God gives us the ability to tap into the deepest spiritual resources in the universe and subsequently define our identity in terms of these resources. This new identity comes with a personalized assignment or calling. This calling then frames our core relationships, particularly our potential marital partner, who being aligned with our calling enables us to further our ability in fulfilling it. This is a life where our personhood in Christ is unified. The four components of our personhood—spirituality, identity, work, and marriage — are now harmonized and mutually empowering. This is the coherence we all most desire in our lives. This is a life that makes sense.

This is the way to become the best version of ourselves not because of our efforts but because we are now aligning ourselves to that which is true about ourselves and the nature of reality. This is the path toward being a man’s man.

The alternative lead us right into the middle of the contemporary crisis of masculinity. We can, however, play the game on our own terms, assuming the responsibility of figuring out our own life alone, being limited to our own resources or we can play the game on God’s terms, which means aligning our story to the structures of reality, assuring sovereign oversight of our life, and being given a new life, a new identity, and a new calling.

We can play the game our way or God’s way. This is the binary choice of every man.

This book is for those who aspire to become all that a man was created to be and cannot possibly be on his own. It is for the man who aspires to harmonize his spiritual longings with his personal identity, vocational calling and work, and his relational fulfillment and marriage. It is for the man who wants to embark on the spiritual adventure for which he was made and which is uniquely his own.

🧭 Field Guide: Finding Yourself

• Are you struggling with identity? Not sure what it means to be a man or how to improve yourself?
• Who are the men you look up to? How do they shape your identity and how others see you?
• Is your life unified? Are your spiritual goals, personal identity, career, and relationships aligned?
• Ready to step up and embrace a stronger, more authentic masculinity?

📘 Ready to Go Deeper?

Buy the Full Book Here

Join a movement of men pursuing authentic identity, purpose, and spiritual transformation.