Men Are Called to be Heroes in a Culture That Forgot Heroism?
Shame & Honor for Men - A conversation with Alison Armstrong 2/3
Alison Armstrong says men ache for worthy problems, real brotherhood and the words, “I am enough.”
In a free-flowing conversation on men, heroism and modern culture, Alison Armstrong and Dominic de Souza question if men feel trapped in a civilization they helped build, carrying heroic instincts into a world that often gives them tasks far smaller than their souls.
Alison described men as standing “on the sidelines,” left with just “another piano to dust,” while still carrying the heroic soul of man.
Armstrong said many couples clash because women ask men to “help around the house,” while men are wired for something larger than help.
Women have what Alison calls “diffuse awareness,” the feminine instinct to track what is out of place, ugly, moved or unresolved in an environment. In her telling, the dusty piano is barely about dust. It is about a primitive survival system still scanning the meadow for signs of danger.
“The dust on the piano is screaming at us,” she said, adding that women often walk through their homes registering everything that appears wrong. That’s why they ask men to dust pianos.
Then she told a story about her late husband, a musician who needed the piano open and ready because when inspiration came, he had to “slide in and start playing before that connection was lost.”
“So you know how hard that was for me?” Armstrong chuckled.
Help vs accountability
“We’re at this conflict of the difference between help and accountability,” she said. “Testosterone is the fuel of accountability. And accountability is inherently territorial.”
For Armstrong, that means men often come alive when they own a mission, a result, a domain. The problem, she said, is that modern expectations often ask men to perform feminine strengths rather than bring masculine strengths.
“The expectation of women that is ruling right now is that a man is supposed to be like a woman,” Armstrong said.
She said women often admire competence, sensitivity and awareness in the areas where women already excel, then expect men to match those traits. Men, meanwhile, may be choosing women because of their complementary strengths.
That mismatch, she said, can become painful over decades.
“He’s going to pick a woman that he admires for her strengths,” Armstrong said, “and what he’s gonna need so badly is that she admires him for his strengths which are different than hers.”
Complementary Strengths
Armstrong said both men and women search for strength, but they often recognize and value it differently.
She pointed to the character House from House M.D., calling him “a scoundrel,” yet noting the fierce appeal of his integrity.
“He could be a total jerk,” Armstrong said, “but man, that’s so attractive, that strength.”
She connected that instinct to De Souza’s reference to Robin Hood. “Robin Hood was looking for a strength that he didn’t have,” Armstrong said, “and he wasn’t ashamed of lacking it.”
Her larger point was that men often build teams around purpose. A wife, in that frame, is far more than emotional support. She is a complementary power.
“My gosh, I’ll be so much more able to fulfill my purposes, complimented by who she is,” Armstrong said, describing the masculine instinct.
Then she moved from anthropology into theology.
“The partnership between the complementary strengths of men and women is exquisite,” she said. “Exquisite doesn’t happen by evolution.”
“Tell Him He’s Done Enough”
Armstrong says men carry a deep hunger for reassurance that their labor, sacrifice and existence matter.
She recalled a book she wrote in conversational form, with a guide figure she jokingly described as speaking in the voice of Morgan Freeman. The story involved Adam, Eve and a figure from “research and development” explaining creation, design and human need.
In that imagined exchange, Armstrong said Eve is told what Adam most needs from her.
“What Adam most needs from you,” Armstrong said, “is to tell him that he’s done enough.”
De Souza connected the idea to Avengers: Endgame, describing the moment Pepper Potts kneels near the dying Tony Stark and tells him everyone is safe.
“It’s okay, you can let go now,” De Souza recalled from the scene.
Armstrong added a memory. “I asked a man about a year ago, if you could hear one thing from women, what would it be?” she said. “And he said that I am enough.”
For Armstrong, the phrase became twofold: “I am enough, I do enough.”
Men Need Greater Problems
Armstrong argues that heroic energy still exists, but culture often misdirects it into survival at home.
De Souza asked what becomes of men born with a language of heroism when culture offers them no ‘heroic arena.’ The modern world has created conditions where feminine gifts can flourish. Civilization, she said, allows women’s natural abilities to “blossom” because daily survival pressure has eased.
But the heroic masculine instinct remains.
“Everything that men are translates into the problems we have today,” Armstrong said.
She said men are “compulsive problem solvers,” quoting a man who once told her, “A problem to a man is like a squirrel to a dog. Let me at it, let me at it, let me at it.”
The tragedy, Armstrong said, is that men are often left solving problems such as surviving criticism, loading the dishwasher correctly or making it “through the door with your manhood intact.”
“You all still are the same,” she said, “and we need to give you better problems.”
Those problems, she suggested, could include hunger, poverty and human suffering. She said she has been passionate about ending hunger since childhood, when her mother told her to clean her plate because babies were dying in China.
The line may be familiar to anyone raised with guilt as a seasoning. Armstrong took it seriously.
“We’re never gonna solve the big stuff,” she said, “if we have you guys focused on trying to stay intact while under attack from the people that you need to be nurtured by the most.”
The Hero and the Man
Near the close, De Souza read back one of Armstrong’s lines: “You cannot separate hero and man. They are one and the same. The soul of a man is a hero.”
He linked the idea to brotherhood, saying men who want to be good men need each other.
“Brotherhood is something you don’t fall into,” De Souza said. “It’s something you have to actively cultivate and build up, like a shield wall.”
A man alone on a battlefield, he said, does “survive” poorly.
Armstrong’s closing answer went toward shame. She says men often hold themselves to impossible standards, then collapse under failure.
She used to hear the phrase “I’m only human” as an excuse. Over years of studying men, she came to hear it differently.
“It’s a sad admission on a man’s part,” Armstrong said, “because he holds himself to God-like standards.”
She said men often carry shame when someone is harmed by a failure they believe belongs to them.
“All men experience shame from failing,” Armstrong said. “That shame is actually the biggest indicator of an honorable man.”
In her view, shame does mean a man has honor to recover, receive and restore.
“This is one of the things that I love about Catholicism,” Armstrong said, because a man can confess, receive forgiveness and rise again.
She described the daily rhythm as ownership without excuses: “Yes, I failed at this. I own that. I won’t justify it. I own it.”
Then, she said, comes the deeper truth.
“I forgive myself,” Armstrong said, “and Jesus already forgave me for everything.”
For men left dusting pianos while hungering for battlefields, Armstrong’s challenge is neither nostalgia nor complaint. It is a call to recover the heroic instinct and aim it at worthy problems, with women who bless men’s strengths, brothers who restore one another from shame, and a faith strong enough to let fallen men stand again.