A Quick Lay Of The Land
It’s natural for guys to be hesitant about checking out this handbook. Relax. This handbook is an experience just like going to the gym, not like going to a therapist. So dive in full force just like you would at a gym.
You’ve never seen anything like this before so please find some quiet time and enjoy this section by yourself. It’s a high-altitude reconnaissance flight over the rest of the handbook.
You’ll see what’s happening here, get oriented, see the innovative way information is handled, and discover why you’re gonna love it. Stop and pick up where you left off at any time.
(This handbook is currently incomplete and its content is being reformatted as fast as possible. At the bottom of every Area page we show the completion status of the handbook.)
What follows below is like walking into a special exhibit and looking at all of the “displays” there like in this photo. The background changes its shade with each station as you move along.
Important Notice
The 21st Century Man Handbook is like the James Webb Space Telescope in that it brings unprecendented clarity to the experience of being a man.
This handbook is designed to be immediately useful and significantly ease the challenges us guys face.
It shows how we can actually have a good time improving ourselves and our circumstances, together with our brothers at our side, from the time we can get a girl pregnant to the day we take our last breath.
It applies rigorous evidence-based guidelines, age old wisdom, and critical thinking. It ditches unworkable language, labels and ideas. It dissolves confusion and helps make it easier to make progress.
It looks directly at reality no matter what it shows. It doesn’t pander and leave stuff out because someone might get upset.
You’re not being asked to believe anyone or anything and instead it shows you how to see things for yourself.
That said, you’ll certainly be surprised by what you’re about to encounter!
So RELAX, notice the immediate benefits and feel connected to your brothers. 😎
We all know about the original Boy Scout Handbook and what’s in it like the one pictured here from the 60’s. Boys learn the skills of pitching a tent, camping, working as a team, first aid, hiking and navigating a map, tying knots and challenging themselves. The 21st Century Man Handbook is what follows the Boy Scout Handbook but for adult men.
Have you ever wondered why something like this for grown up men wasn’t already available? Well, we figured out why no one has attempted it, solved some very hairy problems, and here we are.
Like the Boy Scout Handbook, this is for all humans who identify as a man, feel like they’re a man, feel comfortable in the world of men, and it’s for men only.
We added “21st Century” in the title because the world has seriously changed and we must deal with some harsh realities. We humans are not equipped to handle 21st century complexity and the handbook shows us how to manage it well.
You may already know some or even much of this stuff, but it’s essential to use the handbook to fill in the gaps in your skills and knowledge. Like an internal combustion engine, we have to be firing on all cylinders or it will be a rough ride.
The handbook does not show a guy how to be a man. That approach is obsolete. Instead it shows men how to continuously live a great life as a “unique male-flavored individual” who’s responsible for his own life that’s constantly evolving.
This handbook is THICK like any other handbook is, but we use a clever technique to make it seem light, fun and accessible called “progressive disclosure.”
Even so, it takes time to absorb it all, like months and years, and we have to do the work to get results, together.
For now, all you have to do is this one super simple thing – BE CURIOUS AND INQUISITIVE.
But First, You're Interacting With SuperText
SuperText refers to the custom way we present information in the handbook tailored for us guys whose eyes glaze over when we see lots of text.
Tap this Show/Hide Bar (which appears throughout the handbook).
The main points are highlighted in yellow making it easy to SKIM through the handbook just by reading the highlighted text.
Use the images as landmarks when scrolling through a section. You can pinch and zoom photos or tap/click to enlarge them. Tap the huge photo at the top of every handbook area to go back home.
Words and expressions that have been depricated (made obsolete) appear struck out and dimmed with the preferred expression following it.
Hyperlinks to other websites are in classic underlined blue, like google.com, and open in their own window/tab so you don't lose your place here.
But if you see bright green text then tap it to popup information like a definition, quote or a list. (Try it now).
The floating hamburger menu is for reference. Explore it later and don't let it interrupt your flow right now.
The handbook is designed for a cellphone, and it's even easier to read on a laptop, tablet or computer.
If you’re on a cellphone now, please experience the rest of the handbook with your phone turned sideways, in landscape mode. It’s so much better that way.
Feel free to bounce back and forth, and use it any way you want. Sometimes popup content reads better in portrait mode.
Sometimes There's A Blue-Gray Background
Throughout the handbook you’ll see a show/hide button called “Fitness Advantage” under the large photo at the top of each of the 12 areas of the handblook. When you click that show/hide button a special section will appear that has this blue-gray background.
This section is a special kind of summary for those who just want the facts and they don’t care about the details. It’s better to provide something quick rather than having guys stop reading and learning. It’s kind of a “Just The Facts” section.
It summarizes what the advantages are of that area of the handbook to your fitness as a man.
Note that this Start Here section is ALL a must-read section since it’s the facts about the entire handbook and if you skip it you’ll get confused.
Sometimes it’s best to just do what’s being asked of you, right? 😀
Okay, back to the exhibits…
Why Bother With This? Who Cares?
We’ve known for thousands of years that men thrive when they’re in groups together – the military, sports teams, construction, entrepreneurial ventures, fraternities, etc. But in recent times us guys are struggling more and more in our everyday lives in large part because we’re slowly getting separated from each other for a variety of reasons.
When guys return from a military deployment and come back into the civilian world, they’re struck by the disconnection between men (and everyone) and life can become a severe struggle for them, all too often leading to suicide. So, many guys want to get deployed again to get that connection back that feels so essential to their well-being.
It’s because of BROTHERHOOD, a powerful instinct hardwired into us guys for very important reasons that we explain in detail. This handbook rides on this fundamental brotherhood instinct and it’s at the core of the handbook’s design. It’s one of the two pillars of the handbook (the other pillar is dissolving confusion).
One huge way to make our life easier is for each of us to have our own personal band of brothers, if we don’t already, which are guys of our choosing bonded together for life. The handbook’s motto speaks to why we benefit greatly by this…
Men helping men GET FIT in all areas of a man’s life so that the best in life shows up for us as a result.
For instance, ideally we should only start a relationship with a woman with our buddies around us as anchors, sounding boards, unconditional love and support, and regularly keeping our masculinity recharged through activities and play.
This handbook also provides you with a kind of virtual band of brothers who are actually looking after you. This is what it feels like to be looked after by your brothers.
Plus, there’s too much going on in life, especially in the 21st century. The topic of manhood is very broad.
So, we have to continuously put in the effort throughout life, standing on the shoulders of what men have learned, and do our best to avoid repeating the same rookie mistakes over and over again.
We bond with our buddies so we can look after each other because no matter what it is, we can’t do it alone. We need each other. Women just aren’t able to look after us like our brothers can – only men can fulfill this essential role in our lives. (Think about that.)
Simply put, the difference this handbook can make in your life is like the difference between quickly walking on the concrete boardwalk at the beach instead of slogging along slowly in the deep soft sand next to it.
That’s why we bother with this.
I'm Markus Halvorson, Creator And Author of This Handbook
I’m an engineer by trade and back in 2012 my hunt for my next big project began. After a series of great experiences, my next big project FOUND ME – this handbook. I now know this will be the final project of my life because I’ve made the commitment to “go out in a cloud of smoke” bringing the handbook into the world before my body gives out on me.
The handbook is currently in my voice talking to you. Within the next decade it will transition to being the collective voice of all us guys from all the contributions we make to it.
In a sentence, I’m a polymath (large number of skills and areas of knowledge), my body just turned 70, I still lift weights at the gym M-F at 5am, I have 11 epic friends (lifetime brotherhoods) with more “in the oven” and I’m married with no kids. You can find out more about me later using the hamburger menu.
I started my life as an engineer at age 12 and this handbook is a gigantic engineering project! 
This handbook is a proper assembly of information, beautifully architected, strong and sturdy, lovingly human, and it stands on its own and has nothing to do with me personally.
Please take care when referring to what is being said in this handbook. It’s NOT “what Mark thinks or says” but rather “what the handbook says” which reflects reality that goes back 2500 years, stands on the shoulders of the hard-won wisdom of countless human beings and ditches what’s no longer relevant. or is out of integrity.
My Role Here
First, I’m a science communicator like Neil DeGrasse Tyson, David Attenborough, Bill Nye the Science Guy, Derek Muller (Veritasium), etc. And I’ve worked very hard throughout my life to master the Art Of The Explanation as these science communicators also have.
Second, I’m a lifelong inventor and innovator. The handbook is full of original creations and refinements, not to mention the handbook itself. Of course, everything is a remix.
The Team
Most importantly, I’m fortunate to have a great team of brilliant men working with me on the handbook who are all types of men and each expert in a variety of areas. We’re committed to looking after the handbook, and by extension looking after all our brothers everywhere, including you. Hopefully you’ll look after us and the handbook as well.
The 8th Wonder Of The World: YouTube
YouTube can be as stupid or as mind-blowingly amazing as the user wants it to be. We’re very fortunate to have YouTube in the world, now after a couple of decades, because it actually does go unbelievably wide and deep.
Video is what makes the handbook an incredible resource because “a picture is worth a thousand words, and a moving picture a million more.”
After you become familiar with the handbook you’ll see you had no idea there were so many resources for men available on it. But still, they’re disorganized, scattered and largely unfindable. The handbook captures the best and organizes them for you and we let you know what’s inside a video if it’s not obvious.
Later in 2023 the handbook’s own original videos will start arriving and filling in many gaps. It’s pretty exciting because we’ll be producing content you’ve never seen before, of course!
Also, consider treating yourself to YouTube Premium so there are no commercials to ruin the experience.
What Ruins The 8th Wonder Of The World
As a society we’ve become accustomed to there being mass quantities of information on every topic we can imagine everywhere we turn. But only information experts see the elephant in the room – it’s almost always missing FILTERING AND CURATION which renders that information pretty much useless. (I have over half a century of experience in information sciences. It’s my thing and the reason I can manage all the information related to the lives of men).
Most of us just accept the fact that information is always scattered and confusing and don’t realize things could be better.
Turns out that only humans can curate and pull the good stuff out of the noise (not even AI as you’ll see demonstrated shortly) and “finding the gems in the muck” as my buddy Andy says. A person or a team has to do it.
Unfortunately, it’s YouTube’s own algorithm that’s wholly responsible for creating the mess we see on YouTube – the overproduction of videos that exaggerate the often low-quality information – and they won’t tell you what the answer is unless you watch the entire video! 😖 It’s all distorted by being focused on revenue generation. Have you ever seen the “pose down” part of a bodybuilding competition? Like that. A free for all final desperate attempt to outshine the fierce competition.
This handbook filters out the vast amount of bullshit relating to the lives of men, finds the gems in the muck, and shares the good stuff in the structured place where it belongs. Of course, YouTube, online forums and social media are all “gigantic rooms with everyone talking at once about everything” and much of it is purposely confusing.
Notice how the handbook feels in comparison to all that confusion.
Duh! How Did We Miss This?
You’re looking at the first ever Map Of A Man’s Life. We now have a structure we can use to organize the best information and resources for men.
It’s practical, useful, and has withstood rigorous testing. Everything related to a man’s life lands somewhere in this structure.
The main reason our lives have been so challenging is that, even though great knowledge and resources for men are available, it’s scattered all over the place, disorganized and largely unfindable.
Our common experience of becoming a high quality man is haphazard, incomplete, out-of-sequence, and very confused.
This map brings order to chaos.
It’s a happy accident the map can be easier to understand by making an analogy to a truck 
where the orange section is like a six cylinder engine (our functional selves), the four blue bars are like tires where “the rubber meets the road” (our connections with others), red represents the things that stop us from moving forward (confusion), and green is how we can move forward in our daily life so it gets easier and easier. The holographic man in the center is you (and there’s no other man like you).
No Two Men Are Alike
This is another huge reason why no one has attempted a handbook. No one can agree on the question “What is a man?” It’s a fool’s errand to try to answer that question. People have been trying for thousands of years.
But there’s another way!
Long story short, we instead describe ourselves as “male-flavored human beings.”
You see, all us humans share the same set of human characteristics, but some are amplified in men and some are amplified in women, and the rest are in equal measure. But not consistently.
Male-flavored Human Characteristics
Here’s the list of the “chunks” of human attributes almost always amplified in men (discussed in detail throughout the handbook)…
- Brotherhood (multiple, loving, bonded, affectionate, non-sexual, unforced relationships between men that last a lifetime)
- Tribal (deep bonding into pairs, groups, clubs, fraternities, tribes, armies, nations that create the SPACE in which the next three chunks thrive…)
- Explore, Learn, Discover, Solve
- Create, Build, Repair, Improve,
Destroy - Play, Fitness, Compete, Organize, Lead, Control, Fight,
Kill - Logic, Reason, Integrity, Reduced emotion
- Independence, Freedom, Solitude, Quiet
- Provide for others, Protect family, Look after others
- Constant intense horniness, Seek variety, GOMO (get off move on),
Rape
So yeah, in the handbook we must describe ourselves as male-flavored human beings because that male flavoring varies from man to man. Which of these characteristics are amplified in you?
Remember this: these characteristics do not belong to men, they are simply usually amplified in men. Many men and women end up having human characteristics often associated with the other sex amplified in them.
Here Is The Definition Of “Men” And “Masculinity”
Pretty much everyone in the world is currently confused about the meaning of these two words because there’s no common definition that everyone can agree on. It’s like any other oversimplified term. A thousand people will have a thousand different descriptions.
However, in this handbook we have clearly defined these two terms once and for all.
A MAN is a human whose gender identitiy is predominantly male, he feels like a man, he feels comfortable in the world of men, and feels he belongs in the world of men.
MASCULINITY refers to the collection of the nine groups of human characteristics shown above that are clearly amplified in the majority of men, but not consistently. We call this “male flavoring.”
Done! There’s no further debate on the topic. It’s totally obvious. This understanding is not new and not invented here in this handbook, except for the term “male flavoring.”
Of course, the world out there will resist this “final answer” and definition. People would expect that the definition of a man should have characteristics attached to it. And people would expect that the definition of masculinity be simpler. Well, this is the 21st century, and in this handbook we deal with reality. Words and language are a big part of the problem here.
There are lots of men out there who will vehemently disagree with this final definition of these two terms because they think a “man” is someone who is brave, strong, self-reliant, and manly looking and acting. These characteristics are not listed above.
Now think of the Navy SEALs, and you’ll see that in these men, the 9 chunks of masculinity are all lit up! Same with athletes, astronauts, great dads, etc.
Lastly, Navy SEALs can be loving, emotional, and wonderful fathers and husbands too, of course.
Well, all of us guys who are using this handbook will just have to quietly understand this for ourselves – this final definition of what a man and masculinity is – and watch the world around us remain endlessly confused. There’s little we can do about it, except to refer them to the handbook so they can see for themselves.
But Wait, No Two Humans Are Alike Either
There are over 1 quintillion combinations of human beings. In order to cope we oversimplify our perception of the people around us (called “typecasting”) which causes great confusion. Here’s why no two people are alike.
This is why we have a holographic man as our avatar. Picking a realistic form, even a silhouette, would not be representative of the wide landscape of men. Plus, our bodies are only a fraction of what makes us a male-flavored human being. In the handbook we’ll still use the terms “men, guys, dudes, man” but we’re always actually referring to the wide landscape of male-flavored human beings.
But it turns out there’s a very simple way to look at all of this variety – if you FEEL at home here, this is where you belong, with us. We can all recognize most “men,” and recognize “masculinity” in spite of all this insane amount of human variety.
Keep going.
Most Men Will Only Access This Handbook In Private!
Okay, here’s a great story…
During the seven years of developing the handbook up until now (Summer 2023) I discovered something that sideswiped me and had me stumped for years. It turns out that most men will ONLY consume knowledge like this in total privacy, not in front of their buddies, and especially not in front of their wives, girlfriends, moms and dads.
This is another big reason why a handbook for men has never existed before. Dudes won’t want such a book visible on their shelf.
I’ve given countless speeches on the topic with great applause because everyone loves hearing about this stuff. Few men have the guts to talk about men-related topics. (The map of a man’s life was developed while giving all these talks.)
But after each speech the women all smile at me and give me a thumbs up, and the men all disappear and say nothing. I thought men just weren’t interested. It discouraged me because I had spent years working on the handbook and I was terrified no one would care.
On the other hand, the men around me were super curious and gobbled up all this knowledge in private when I talk with them one-on-one. Men will tell me everything, and I mean everything. It’s because I’ve developed the skill to create [ trust + the bond of brotherhood ] in just an hour or two of conversation. And also because they desperately want to share and talk about this stuff!
After a lot of work we now know EXACTLY what causes men to be afraid of learning about themselves and bonding with each other and it’s all explained in the Confusion Area, along with how to make this HESITATION disappear.
I’ve had this skill to get guys to share everything with me for about half a century so far and it’s what led me to creating the handbook. I now describe myself as an “authority on the lives of men” which sounds odd to most guys. But there are actually thousands of us. This handbook pulls together and organizes all their contributions and makes them available to you.
The Look
Anyway, when I talk to guys and they ask me what I do, I tell them honestly, and I almost always get this reaction shown here (an image from a great short film I saw at the GI Film Festival I attend every year) and it perfectly depicts their state of mind upon hearing about the handbook.
Suddenly they become overwhelmed with questions. But where do they start? What’s okay to talk about? They end up not being able to say anything, especially if someone else is standing there with us.
So I do my Steve Jobs “introducing the iPhone” thing where I do all the talking and say “Isn’t that interesting? Isn’t that cool?” It’s kinda funny now that I know what’s going on.
I give them my card and that’s the last I hear from them. But I know they’ll visit this website privately on their own and gobble it all up, and start the process of letting it take the time that it takes to absorb it all – months and years.
This Handbook Is A New Experience For All Of Us
We’re talking about the handbook’s supportive focus on men toward the benefit of a man and everyone in his life – and, well, it looks like we’re starting with a private experience first.
By the way, it’ll be great when there’s a 21st Century Woman Handbook too, but men won’t be assembling that, of course. And all us guys would want to check it out for sure.
Thankfully the cellphone and laptop came along, a personal device, so men can access this knowledge alone.
If we want to reach the required tipping point of hundreds of millions of men having access to the handbook then we must do what’s necessary so they can have their first encounter with it. Over a billion men have cellphones that can display websites.
So you’re now experiencing the 21st Century Man Handbook on this open website, freely accessible planet-wide, no paywall or login required, no app to download, no ads, no tracking cookies, alone and anonymously (with the browser in incognito mode if you want).
We wouldn’t want a printed handbook anyway. It would go stale the moment it’s printed. On our personal devices we can have video, graphics and interactivity in a “living document” that’s regularly updated, expanded and improved, and eventually available in as many languages as possible.
The handbook is ready for men in the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, UK, Ireland, Caribbean, and English speaking men everywhere. (That’s over 100 million men right there.) Translations will be available in the years to come. One step at a time.
You Are Not Broken. You Are Not Here To Be Fixed.
Here’s the first video playlist of many you’ll encounter throughout the handbook. In any video playlist, tap the tiny left or right arrow in the corner of the playlist (shown at right) to show/hide the list of videos. Scroll and pick a video.
Please don’t get sidetracked watching any of these videos right now. But on every video playlist the first video is the recommended one if you only end up watching one. The first video in this playlist, the guy in the blue shirt, gives an amazing talk and hits the nail right on the head. It’s a must-see because he makes the case for this handbook without knowing it. (Actually, they all do.) He pays a great tribute to his dad too.
The crazy thing is, these are JUST the videos from TED Talks alone (51 videos + 2 more) that complain about how broken masculinity is, and there are many times more on YouTube from other sources, along with documentaries and films. (We learned above why people are confused about the term “masculinity.”)
Every video talks about the huge challenges men have. They all make (often nebulous) calls to action, or a change in the educational system which will never happen, or a one-on-one change which will never reach the needed “tipping point” that we have determined here in the handbook to be 100 million men. (And that’s only about 2.5% of our planet’s male population, btw.)
So when you watch these excellent and remarkable videos, think about how this handbook is the answer to help break the back of all this self-perpetuating confusion!
I asked ChatGPT (AI) “What is “masculinity?” (tap this green text to see its reply) the answer to which is drawn from everything out there written about “masculinity” and ChatGPT also has no clue what masculinity actually is and sidesteps and punts.
We have defined what masculinity is here (above) once and for all. Learn it and share it. Just remember “male flavoring” and start from there – the human characteristics all men and women share but are usually amplified in men.
The Handbook’s Approach – It’s Like Going To The Gym
In this handbook we don’t bitch, moan, complain, challenge or fight. There is no us vs. them. Instead we walk away from the confusion and the nonsense and just get on with it so we can later turn and support the guys around us.
This cliché image of a man (Wolverine) calmly walking away from an explosion is the approach we take with the handbook.
Us guys didn’t cause the explosion, but we also don’t have time to get caught up in the mess that will keep us stuck in place. We instead want to walk away from it and just be the calm, strong, fun and well-put-together man that people will want to have in their life for a lifetime.
Note that the handbook itself internally knows every last detail about every issue men have faced from all sources over millennia. But you don’t need to know much of it because it’s all incorporated behind the scenes. Therefore, us guys just need to focus on dissolving confusion and moving forward.
The perfect analogy for the handbook’s approach is like going to the gym. First, when you join a gym they don’t yell at you and make you examine why it’s taken you so long to sign up. You just dive in, move forward and feel better, stronger and more confident over time.
Second, the equipment incorporates everything we’ve learned about the best ways to work our muscles, or isolate them, or provide equal resistance along a movement (the red arrow in photo points to a part that does this), and how to safely use the machine as Scott Herman shows us in his YouTube video.
In addition, you look around you and copy what the trainers show you in real life or in YouTube videos. You stand on the shoulders of what was learned without having to be sidetracked by it.
In particular, we don’t complain about masculinity, stop to understand what it’s problems are and learn how to fix it. Instead, you just follow along in the the handbook and what masculinity actually is becomes surprisingly obvious. You’ll understand it completely without needing to be able eloquently describe it to others.
There Are No Second Class Men
All men are included, loved and spoken to here and all have equal status, regardless of whether you get your best boners with women, men or both. Or maybe you were born with a vagina or a mixture of the two, or you don’t move, speak or look like a lumberjack.
It doesn’t matter if you’re paired up with a woman, a man or no one. It doesn’t matter if you’re a clueless college kid suffering from the hubris of youth, or an older wiser man who’s unsure of what to do next in life.
Again, if you identify as a man, feel like a man, feel comfortable in the world of men, and feel you BELONG in the world of men, you are our brother, and we want you to move forward in your life with us at your side.
Dissolving Confusion Like An Arctic Icebreaker Ship
Years ago I created the ClearThinkingCampaign.org website. (Click/tap the link right now to open it in another window to chack out later).
The content was originally intended for the Head Area of this handbook to help guys enhance their skill at sorting out anything confusing that comes their way. It works really well. The resulting skill is the ability to “SEE” CLEARLY, not so much the mechanics of thinking clearly. That’s an important distinction. To see through the constant BS.
But this resource is also beneficial to women and children so I peeled it out and made it independent of the handbook. And it’s also fully integrated into this handbook as you will discover. This resource is a big deal and it’s impact can’t be overestimated.
It’s purpose is to bring 2,500 year-old clear thinking skills “the last mile” into everyone’s daily life using a set of a dozen Confusion Buster Cards™. Don’t let the images fool you into thinking this is for kids, the images are designed to be easy to remember.
I just wanted to quickly mention this essential resource because dissolving confusion is the second of the two great pillars of the handbook, along with brotherhood.
Integrity Is Everything
Without full integrity we would not have super safe airline travel, spacecraft and satellites, reliable internet, power and water supplies, safe food supply, medical procedures and medicines, and cellphones that work while driving in a metal car flying down the freeway, just to name a few.
The Confusion Buster Cards™ help ensure we’ve done our very best, whether it’s with the integrity of the handbook itself (on our part) or in our own personal lives. Making shit up and believing whatever we want is unworkable.
Note that the first and last cards are bigger and they’re kinda like bookends. The first explains what confusion is and how it’s used on us all day long to try and manipulate us. The last card takes us “Behind The Scenes” to the entire world of clear thinking that underlies the other 11 cards.
This resource lets everyone know we’re not screwing around here and we’ve set a very high standard for ourselves.
A Bold Claim
The handbook makes the bold claim that…
CONFUSION is a man’s only adversary, there is no other.
…and the claim that all confusion can be “busted” and dissolved, usually right on the spot. We teach you that skill.
One of the fun things I like to do is challenge guys to think of something that’s a bigger adversary in their life other than confusion. I’m still waiting for an answer. When someone comes up with a good alternative (that doesn’t have confusion at its root), we will change our claim!
Most people will not give this clear thinking resource the respect it deserves even though 2,500 years of thought have gone into it. Most people are unfortunately in “victim mode” feeling powerless and just wish someone would do something. So, it’s up to us “non-hesitaters” to do that “something” together.
The answer is to raise all boats, on the scale of hundreds of millions of men. The beneficial results will follow. We’ll have men everywhere rising to the occasion in millions of different areas helping to make the world a better place.
Of course, women are part of the solution too. But the reality is (and we have to look directly at reality) that in most cases it’s men who are the originators of the confusion, or they let the legacy confusion stand to maintain power. It’s clearly up to all of us men to take some responsibility for this. We’re in the most powerful position to make things better don’t you think?
What You'll Get Out Of The Handbook
- The first complete sex education for guys, without any pandering or inhibitions.
- How to easily bust up and dissolve the confusion being thrown at you, like an icebreaker ship in the Arctic Circle.
- Why BROTHERHOOD and SEEING CLEARLY are the two fundamental pillars of the handbook and your life.
- Understanding “relationships” with women, your brothers and the rest of the humans around you.
- Understanding your particular male flavoring.
- Understanding “typecasting” which is one of the primary causes of everyone’s confusion.
- Staying centered by connecting with nature, music, movement, play, and the things that are amplified in men like creating / building / repairing / improving.
- How to optimally walk the “emotional shoreline.”
- How to communicate well, be a great listener, and avoid words and phrases that screw everything up the instant they’re used.
- Healing your wounds.
- Continuously improving your body so that everything falls into place and energy and self-confidence goes way up.
- Forming new habits that make it easier to walk away from old habits.
- How to be constantly curious and inquisitive.
Did we forget anything?
Wow! I Did Not Know That!
This is what we hope you’ll be saying a lot as you start exploring the handbook. It’s time to dive in! Are you excited?
Proceed down and check out the CONFUSION Area next, which is the most fun, where we look at, and laugh at all the things that try to confuse us guys. Simply being aware of them helps to disable them, often right on the spot. It also sets you up for understanding how the handbook walks away from these confusers of men and just gets on with it.
You’ll truly feel a lot of freedom afterwards. That’s one feeling us men really love – freedom. Get those rocks and bolders out of our way!
After the Confusion Area, you’re free to poke around and explore. The handbook is designed to be used this way. Whip out your phone and spend a few minutes while you’re waiting in a line (queue) or sitting on the can. 
This [ handbook + built-in band of brothers ] is your sidekick and constant companion, always in your pocket, for the rest of your life.
There’s a lot here, so take your time and take it easy.
Have a blast, discuss it with your friends, and please use the hamburger menu to talk to us here at the handbook, when you’re ready. We really want to hear from you, and get your contributions too!
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Again, this handbook is currently incomplete and being reformatted as fast as possible. At the bottom of every Area page we show the completion status of the handbook.
Next, visit the Brotherhood area. It is finished, fun, amazing, immediately useful to you, and a great example of what the rest of the handbook will be like!
- Warning - you are about to experience something surprising and amazing. 😳
- This is like the Boy Scout Handbook but for grown up men.
- It's designed for guys - interactive, fun and made to be consumed in chunks over months, years and decades.
- Brotherhood is the first pillar of the handbook.
- About Markus and the team behind the handbook.
- The Map of a Man's Life brings order to chaos. Traction!
- What is a man, actually?
- This is made to be a private experience for now because men took a shit in each other's heads starting on the elementary school playground (explained in the Confusion Area).
- We take an approach similar to going to the gym. We skip thinking too much about how the world is messed up and focus instead on being a high quality man fit in all areas of life. Everything falls neatly into place this way.
- Thinking clearly, dissolving confusion and building our functional integrity is the second pillar of the handbook.
- Let's continue our long term journey together with our lifelong brothers, buddies, family, friends and community at our side.
- Go big TOGETHER or go home.
- Call of the Wild: Character Building & the Boy Scout Handbook
- All images are original, in the public domain or licensed from Dreamstime, StoryBlocks, Adobe, etc, except as noted.
- Boy Scouts of America Handbook image taken from Amazon product page here.
- Image from short film Shell Shocked taken from San Diego GI Film Festival 2022 website. Watch the trailer here. This is a great film about PTSD and this guy's particular issue with stuttering and his ultimate recovery. I get choked up just thinking about it. I attend this film festival every year because it's mostly about men, brotherhood, and the chunks of male-flavoring that come into play in the military.
- The incredible photo at the top are crewmen on an aircraft carrier and most are color coded by their role on the flight deck as explained here.
© 2018-2023 Markus Halvorson
All Rights Reserved
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