“Eighty percent of the world’s problems involve old men who are afraid of death and insignificance - and who won’t let go.”
That’s what Barack Obama said recently.
And he’s right - I say this as one of them.
A white man who will turn 59 in a few days.
For many years, I have coached men at the highest executive levels.
And I have coached women on their way into that arena - women who had to navigate the fear-driven attitudes and behaviors of men: the arrogance, the dominance, the silencing, the obsession with control.
Here is what I’ve come to understand:
Neuroscience explains part of it. The male brain, conditioned by status, certainty and competition, carries a strong negativity bias and an aversion to loss. As mortality moves closer, the deepest fear is rarely death itself - it is irrelevance. And so men tighten their grip. They build empires, stamp their names on everything, and confuse domination with legacy.
But it is a fundamental error.
Control does not create safety.
Legacy does not create meaning.
Dominance does not create relevance.
And beneath it all lies a deeper illusion: the belief that we are separate selves who can secure ourselves against death.
We are not.
We belong to one fabric of life - interconnected, indivisible, already part of something far larger than ego. The paradox is this: what we fight most - dissolution - is the very doorway into freedom.
The significance we long for doesn’t come from monuments, titles or power. It comes from presence.
The immortality we chase is already here - in the recognition that we are one.
So the question - to men in power, and to myself - is this:
- Will we continue to let our fear of mortality create suffering for others?
- Or will we finally step into a different kind of leadership - one rooted not in control, but in service to something greater than ourselves?
And if you are a man reading this and feel a sting of recognition:
- Don’t turn away, don’t excuse it, don’t wait.
- Reach out. Confront it. Because our fear has already cost the world enough.