There are three reasons we need brotherhoods now more than ever:

Critical Reason #1: We Need Brotherhoods to Become Better Men

Interestingly, men, not women, are the likeliest to form gender-based groups, and have the highest percentage of groups that meet in secret (“secret societies”).

While most of these groups have traditionally had a specific agenda — religious, political, or otherwise — it’s through organized groups that men come together to compete, insult, berate, and grow together.

This is a male-specific form of bonding and growth. Men for thousands of years have come together in intentional groups to sharpen each other in different ways. It’s through challenges from other men that we grow.

Critical Reason #2: Bonding with Other Men Is How We Best Learn

David Deida, author of Way of the Superior Man, eloquently states the defining characteristic of the male sex: “Life as a man is like a constant error correction. Making a mistake, and correcting, then making another mistake and correcting.”

This is distinct from the way women interact and bond with each other. Men tend to be more binary: “This is right and that is wrong, and I learn by discovering what is most right.” Whereas women tend to be more intuitive: “This is how I feel, and I’m going to feel out what I want to do next based on everything I’m taking in.”

As men, we need this kind of feedback and guidance from other men to help us error correct, to help us learn what it means to be a man. We’re not good at feeling our way through it. We need to see “correct” behavior in order to find our own most appropriate path.

Critical Reason #3: Brotherhoods May Be the Antidote for Fatherlessness and Depression

While more women than men attempt suicide overall, men account for 3/4 of all completed suicides. And suicide rates for men overall have been climbing sharply over this past decade; among middle-age men, suicide now accounts for almost 30 out of every 100,000 deaths –3X that of their female peers. Rates of suicide for men in their 50s has increased an astonishing 50%. What accounts for this jump? One of the reasons researchers cite is isolation.

Women are often better at maintaining friendships, seeking out help, and talking about their feelings. Why are men so bad at this? Is it because we’re missing the brotherhood and camaraderie that makes us feel safe to express ourselves as men? Is it the lack of strong male role models that have left us lost in a world where we don’t know how to be strong, sensitive, and courageous men (according to the 2011 US census, 1 out of 3 children grow up in a fatherless home)?

Obviously, we need more men to step up and lead as fathers, but we also need more men to step up and lead other men.