I think we need to start over. I think everything has become so distorted that we don’t know how to recognize reality anymore, even when it’s staring us in the face. People don’t even fucking believe in reality anymore. I mean, what the hell is the deal with that?
So where do we start to rebuild from? What should be the foundation of the new world we build from amongst the radioactive ash of the old? It might sound kind of basic or maybe somehow ridiculous, but for me, one of the elemental questions I have been asking of myself and of the world is: what does it mean to be a man?
Nobody talks about this. And the people who do rarely have anything of much use to say.
Am I all alone on this here though? Of all the men out there reading this, do you feel me here? Do you feel like the notion of “being a man” has been completely and utterly obliterated within our culture? I feel like there are almost no *real* role models for this kind of thing left around either. I mean, yeah, you can cobble together some elements of what being a man sort of feels like out of various Harrison Ford roles and other movies, television, books and music. But should that be where we have to pull this shit from? I mean, these struggles are so much more basic than that and the real important and densely emotional content involved in the trials of “becoming a man” are never covered in pop culture. They usually cut those scenes out because nobody wants to see an actor (who’s supposed to be all macho and shit) sitting there writhing in agony and confusion and existential angst for hours and days and weeks and months. I mean, that just doesn’t make for good cinema. And it doesn’t make for a good life either. No wonder.
But that seems like all we have now as men: impossible unreal heroes who don’t go through (or at least don’t talk about) the heavy emotional turmoil of getting from here to there. Nevermind the fact that nobody seems to know how to celebrate the simple moments of joy that shine through in all of this. I feel like I have been lucky at least in that regard: being able to find people who can share with me these little moments of joy. But how to make them last, how to make them stronger, how to give them to everyone else and how to take these moments of joy and turn them somehow into the story of what it means to “be a man”?
I don’t know, really. I only have flashes of it occasionally. They usually come from small decisions throughout my day. To do this or to do that. To react this way or to react that way when someone says or does something. I guess part of that boils down to choice then, the ability of a man to choose and to command certain elements of his life.
Though it seems equally important - if not moreso - to recognize that which cannot be commanded and which shouldn’t be. There’s also the struggle (for me anyway) of knowing when to ask and when to act. I guess this is what they focus on in action movies a lot. But I think they tend to err on the side of idiocy and exaggeration.
It’s tempting to look more deeply at pop culture and ask where the men went. Though I don’t agree with all their conclusions, I find myself increasingly able to sympathize with Fundamentalist Christians and other conservatives who see evidence in all corners of some kind of attack on not just the family as a unit, but on each individual role people can take within that and within society. Though I’m not particularly *threatened* by the so-called “Gay Agenda” or by Feminism, etc, I can definitely see how those factors have lead our culture into a state of confusion about gender roles and identity. And sure, be gay, be a feminist. Get something out of it. Find what you’re looking for. There are a million ways home to God. But it seems like it’s become increasingly not okay to just try and be a man. Because noone knows what that even means anymore. Manhood has been reduced to a marketing demographic for a certain segment of society who drinks shit beer, drives four wheelers, has a fourth grade education and allegedly beats their wives.
Or something.
That’s what we’re supposed to believe anyway. Whether it’s an intentional attack on the masculine identity or not, it seems to cause real damage. It causes confusion, distortion, obsession, self-loathing, self-destruction, abuse of all kinds and God only knows what else. And all for what? All so we can be freer or more equal socially? I mean, those are good goals and all and I strive in my life to see them realized. But I continue to wonder if what we are really looking for isn’t really freedom and equality so much as it is meaning and purpose and a sense of belonging? The fundamental turmoil in our culture and within the hearts and minds of all those who take any kind of path regardless of gender or sexual orientation I think is that: the unspoken fight between our cultural goals of freedom and equality and our real inner-driven and largely unspoken goals of just needing to know what the fucking hell we are supposed to be doing in our lives.
Sure its great that we can make our own way. And we absolutely by all means should. My old landlord used to repeat to me a William Blake quote all the time: “I must create my own system or become enslaved by another man’s.” But what kind of system should we even be trying to make in the first place? What and who are the best models and where will they take us? Are we just going to end up enslaved by our own systems, or is there some secret esoteric path which can lead us not just to liberation but also into meaning and purpose, the meaning and purpose of our fathers and their fathers and all men throughout time. I don’t believe the answer is lost, but it would sure be nice having some help finding it.
Fellas, are you with me? Ladies, where you at? Neither of us can do this shit alone, but we seem to be both trying and getting nowhere.
- END -
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36 Comments
I think there is an attack on the masculine identity, whether intentional or not. It could easily be said that there are vested interests in the world that have reason for emasculating (weakening) men (and butchifying women) to the point where we’re all at odds with ourselves, confused, disempowered, displaced from our natural inclinations, both biological or otherwise.
This bullshit of equating ‘equality between the genders’ with ‘being the same’ (or reversing the roles, as is so often the case), is a big part - cause or effect, I’m not sure - of the confusion. Men and women are not the same. Yes, we are all both masculine and feminine and beyond gender, at the level of our souls, but we are also in this earth drama playing out roles, and I tend to think those roles are purposeful and not entirely up to ‘us’ (the characters, as opposed to the writers, directors or what have you).
We’re born male or female. Why is that? Why aren’t we just all androgenous? Could it be that being ‘male’ or ‘female’ is an important - archetypal - element in the role we’re each meant to play? I think we’re here to act out the basic dance between the masculine and feminine aspects of God - in infinite ways, yes, but I think we’re best to stay true to the archetypes to as opposed to deviating from them entirely. I hope that doesn’t come off as gay-bashing. I don’t mean it to.
But the role of a male it seems should involve a natural ‘leaning’ towards masculinity, and the role of the female, a leaning towards femininity. This just seems natural to me. Sure, we shouldn’t be defined soley by our genders - we’re so much more than that - but the gender is a part of the role. So many people I know seem to fight against ‘who they are’ in this sense, and it just ‘doesn’t work’ somehow. Something feels wrong about them. Like bad acting, or poor casting.
Another problem I have is with this artificial dichotomy between ‘making your own way’ and ‘conforming’ (to traditional male/female roles, as just one example). There’s this tendency for people to totally accept one and reject the other instead of doing the difficult thing, which is to walk the balance between the two. We aren’t very good at imposing structures on ourselves in this culture/generation/whatever, for all sorts of reasons, but the existing structures are so flawed or rigid, they don’t cut it either. I think because we’ve so focused on the flawed aspects of, say, the family structures of the 50s or earlier, we’ve thrown the baby out with the bathwater (’cept for the Fundamentalist Christians I guess) and now we’re just lost. There are no real traditions or basic male or female wisdom being passed down (from father to son or mother to daughter) as there have been in past times, and in other cultures. I’m not romanticizing anything, but I’m not willing to throw that baby out entirely either, you know?
There has to be at least an acknowledgment that there are these archetypes of masculine and feminine, and at least a certain understanding and respect for them - not blind conformity to them, which makes you just a charicature instead of a real, living, evolving character - but an allowance for them to take their natural place. If that makes any sense. I feel like I’m rambling. Anyway I get where you’re coming from, Tim, and you’re hitting on something that I do feel needs to be hit upon.
Good stuff, though I feel compelled to point out the problems in the fundamentalist view, as the great “right vs left” butcher knife has cut off wisdom from both sides.
The idea of the manly man, the soldier, the conquerer-as-man has left us weak. I see signs of it everywhere. On TV, fathers are showed routinely with daughters, but more and more rarely with sons (young weak males are no longer appropriate objects of a fathers affection) The males role is to watch NASCAR with a perpetual hard-on, (thanks to Viagra) condemning weaklings, never to be a nurturer.
I have seen the most apparent examples in the Seattle gay scene, actually. I had a gay escort friend who told me of his many adventures. The most striking were stories of high powered businessmen and such who didn’t really want to fuck, they just wanted to lay in bed with him and be hugged, and cry. My friend didn’t view these guys as really gay, but as heteros who had been victimized by the male stereotypes of strength and just wanted a moment of escape, so bad they would pay $200 an hour to lay in bed being hugged by a strong man, being nurtured and accepted as vulnerable.
And I’ve seen it myself. I had a male friend who I loved very much, and who loved me. One night at the bar we decided we had to do something about it, we had to make out. We went back to my place, but neither could get it up; we weren’t gay. But we had been so convinced by our society that if two men deeply cared for each other, if they could lay in the grass together looking at the sky and making up poetry, then they had to be homos. Two poetic men loving each other was outside of the possibilities of being a “man” in our society, and we were forced to try to be something that we weren’t.
History tells a different story than our modern ideas, it tells us many stories of men who loved on another. There is a man who David, in the Bible, loved deeply, and it was OK, a part of his story. Also, the relationship between Sam and Frodo in the Lord of the Rings shows a real love you would never between males in a modern story.
The greatest problem in our culture right now is that men have forgotten how to love each other without it being about corn-holing each other. Once we as men can see each other, frail with emotions, experiencing love and vulnerability, and accept that, then we can finally be in a position to see what heroism REALLY MEANS. We can see what the sacrifices of great men REALLY MEAN.
But until that point, we may as well flush it; its going to all be about Viagra and Humvees.
I’m gay, and in my every day life, even online, I rarely express my feelings in regard to this subject. I shouldn’t be so guarded maybe. Let me just try to put frame this in my own way:
If you draw a perfect circle on a piece of paper it is easily recognizable. It has undeniable mathematical properties. It is not an abstract concept. If you draw a perfect square the same is true. But what happens if we draw these things and they begin to collapse? What when a circle or a square is drawn and the lines become shaky, the form becomes looser? What has happened to the perfect mathematical qualities? What if these shapes dissolve further into complete complete chaos?
If chaos is a lack of order, it is also simultaneously a representation of it. You can’t have chaos without first having order. Abstract art in a modern gallery can be beautiful and touching, because in deviating from these perfect ideas of sacred geometry and proportion, they tell us something about ourselves and the fluctuations of life. I believe in archatypes, yes, but I believe there are maybe more than we acknowledge. Or not necessarily more, but I believe that basic archaetypes interact in different ways that are too complex to easily categorize. Therefore I don’t think you can say that everyone needs to fit into the same kind of box in order to be true to themselves. Yes, we are born male and female (although some are born with defects and actually androgynous — these people serve their purpose as well) but we are also born gay or straight. As a guy with sexual feelings for the same sex, I believe in the bottom of my heart that this is part of who I am and it was how I was made. I am often grateful for this. If not for this genetic so-called “defect” my life up to this point would have been to easy. It has taught me so much I can’t even begin to say.
I believe, also, that relationships of a homosexual nature are not inherently immoral or wrong as long as they are loving and based on trust and care, like any relationship/friendship. All men form strong bonds with each other, but in the case of gay men I think their emotional tendancies and states are conducive to relationships — what I mean is that in any relationship there is a balance, a filling of the missing peices, a union. Because of the way gay people “are” this hole is often best filled by the same sex.
I don’t believe relationships should be based on sex, and I sort of hate the promiscuity and ideas of gay culture which I don’t fit into at all. But I feel that on an emotional level, I am more comfortable with the kind of relationships I’ve had. At the same time, I’ve lately wondered if I’m meant to be with a woman, from a spiritual point of view. I want kids, possibly, you know. I am totally and completely willing to sacrifice any sort of sexual and even emotional feelings for the same sex if I feel it is right for me to be with someone else. In the end I don’t want the choice to have anything to do with anything except what works. In this way I could call myself bisexual, but I have yet to be comfortable enough with a woman in an intimate way. That said, I think all people, gay and straight, need to realize that feelings and relationships are more ambiguous than they think. A gay couple is really no different than two really good straight friends who support each other, there is just a little something extra added and there’s attraction obviously.
With that being said, I do think it’s important for men and women to be true to who they are — they’re bodies, their feelings, their motivations. I think we should not hide that deep motivating part of us, those masculine or feminine urges, whatever they might be. But not all men are the same and not all women are the same, not everyone has the same exact urges despite what anyone feels about archaetypes, which is why it’s near impossible to answer the question “what makes a man?”
I’m rambling, I don’t know if I’ve said what I’m trying to say. But it is a start!
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ll3KO-wtVSY
http://youtube.com/watch?v=pCBotbZTw-U&mode=related&search=
Kipling’s poem ‘If’ might be an interesting place to start.
I think I’ve mentioned here before that I’m beginning to realise that my own role models over the years have been unconscious, repressed even, presumably due to their existing on the fringes of society. They’ve been both male and female, too.
I think Brooke nailed it. We are meant to be confused. The feminist movement was allowed to finally flourish because it told women to be men if they wanted to be full citizens. Well why would someone consciously choose slavery? If everybody is told by the PTB to be a man then the goal of a thinking person is to reject the programming. Now everybody is confused, as was intended, so were told to go shopping to make us feel better and that’s what we do.
Where I used to live, on the South Side of Chicago, if you’re on the bus at night and someone gets too rowdy usually some of the men will wake up and try to talk to the rowdy ones. “They’re’s ladies here, you know, watch the language…etc.” Sometines older women will speak up especially if a man is bothering a younger woman. Since I moved to the North Side, which is supposed to be a safer, “better” side of town, I’ve noticed a huge difference. I can’t imagine the above scene happening. We’re all on our own. It’s a class problem. People are defining themselves by their (purchased) social position, not be who they are internally. If they interfere they are lowering they’re social status. They might become someone like you who gets bothered by weirdos. That’s not gentlemanly but they are no longer defined by manhood but by consumer goods.
The South Side is the poorer side of town and in some cases that is all people have to define themselves by is their behavior. They don’t have a beautiful resume to keep them warm at night or money to buy markers of status with. I’ve been treated very graciously by homeless people and very poorly by people who were well off.
Tim,
I’ve always liked this poem by Rudyard Kipling:
“If
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with wornout tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And - which is more - you’ll be a Man my son!”
I know just what you are talking about. Its something I think about a lot.
I think what it is really, is the continual leveling effect of democracy as it insinuates itself further and further into our culture.
It really is. No one talks like Rudyard Kipling anymore. But really what he is describing is how an educated British gentleman was expected to act. He was holding up a standard.
You go back to his day and there was also stuff about how upper class people were expected to act. No one really talks about that either. No one likes leaders in a democratic society. Everything just becomes more and more middling.
But I think there was some kind of a peak of western civilization when manhood reached its height of cultivation and breeding and, below that is the basic bedrock.
The Bedrock is kind of rough. The feminists are right in a way. Men have a lot of potentially destructive characteristics. But there has to be this core of masculinity from which to work with and shape.
A lot of white guys, from kind of a middle class educated bourgeois background have become really over socialized. They seem depleted. It could even be genetic. Spent. That’s probably why White Europe is on the way out. New genetic stocks from closer equator is replacing them. Maybe some type of cycle will continue. These Arab muslims, Africans are more manly, tougher, and probably these qualities will become more refined over time.
Guys in gangs and stuff, criminals, people in third world countries like Afganistan. They have the raw material. But really to live in a stable, civilized mass society, you can’t have lots of really bedrock type men, fighting duels, killing and being killed for honor, dominating the women. This is what male dominated societies are like. The Pashtun. Aristocratic classes can have those qualities in a refined cultivated form and then in terms of the rest of the herd you need kind of soft men. There is only room for so many alpha males in civilized society.
This turnover is happening in the US. People used to be a lot tougher. Guys would get pissed off at each other and go outside and settle it with their fists. Nearly all men knew how to box. This was what it was like before WWII. That’s why boxing was popular. That was the heyday, when it was a sport everyone could relate too.
But this poem, I think represents a masculinity that is cultivated, put through the refiners fire. But you need some ore to begin with.
I walked in the park yesterday. I saw white people of different classes, its a college town. I saw some blacks and some mexicans. I saw lots of different expressions of masculinity.
Men are a little uneasy around each other. That’s because rank needs to be sorted out. I think there is a proportion. The more masculine the individual, the more uneasy you are. The only white guys that made me even a little uneasy were the Jocks. They are loud, slightly enebriated, shirtless, muscular. These is where the Bussiness leaders will come from. Guys that will make money being leaders in corporate America. People used to being in charge. Not all of them, but this competitiveness will serve them well.
Most of the white guys, it was like they weren’t even there. I could be around them and barely notice them. Very very safe, being around them.
Its not a racial thing though, like I feel safe but because I am prejuduced against the other groups. Some more rednecky type men that percieved me as an outsider would make me nervous too.
There was a crazy black Guy. Not very big, but rapping out loud with his headphones on. He was definately sending a message. The blacks have their own little corner of the park, they control by the basketball hoops. Black guys always check me out, because I travel alone and am kind of strong. We are on a similar wavelength, somehow, in terms of potential violence.
The mexicans, have very masculine aggressive body language too.
I think this totally illustrates what I am talking about. With white people there is more class stratification, so really there are just a few alpha males needed at the upper eschelons.
The other ethnic groups, its the baseline of masculinity spread more evenly around, but not organized well, because too many alpha males. They can’t all get along.
I would say Asians are similar to white people.
Are you so sure of this? These traditions may have been watered down but their vestiges are still there. Do any of you have children? It is up to you, not society or culture or anyone else to pass on these traditions.
What would be interesting is for you to examine exactly what is your take on what a man is supposed to be, and then transpose it against the ideal archetype. Do the same with women, the further we’ve come away from these roles the more you might want to re-align yourself with the archetypical through contemplation and effort to distill the spirit.
Very well said, we are creating our own living breathing archetypes as we grow and learn and mature, we become living crucibles.
When we internalise the crucible in our souls we picture a vessel within our being which is open, allowing impurities or unwanted facets to pass out or to dissipate away, as well as substances and forces to enter in from the universal spiritual. In this sense the crucible in our souls is a chalice, the lower part of which contains and holds a substance or constellation of forces while its upper part is open to universal spiritual influences. Unwanted energies can be allowed to safely flow out of our crucible and dissolve in the universal flow, and in the other direction energies can be gathered from the spiritual and allowed to descend to the bottom of our interior vessel. This process can be a gentle and slow flowing one, or alternatively one can heat up our inner crucible through generating powerful currents of emotional energy, forcing and pressing for some transformation to occur.
This may be a particularly hermetic way of looking at it, but this symbolism crosses religions and cultures and seems to me to be a simpler way to the framework human development, not just spiritually, but socially and culturally as well, be you straight, gay, male or female.
jmho
Sure. Who are the male role models today? You don’t even have John Wayne or Clint Eastwood any more, let alone any real-life public figures. I have lately (last few months) been asking male friends who their role models are, it’s invariably a family member (usually not father) of previous generations. There are many living women I admire, though.
Ok, I agree there is a link, but I would be careful about attributing causality. It seems to me that the “inversion” of traditional gender roles in certain areas of life is an effect more than a cause. The idea of America (the platonic, mythic America) grew directly from Freemasonic ideas of fraternity, freedom, and individuality. These were not big themes in the world before.
These Ideas of the basic nature of man and reality will (must?) be developed to the end. Every ramification of ‘man as indpendent being’ will be exhausted by our collective exploration of the possibilities inherent in them, these divine names of God: Free, Equal, Righteous, Natural, Brotherly, Builder, Liberator, Light. (We see how the masonic ideas themselves are rooted in Xtian ideas.)
And like with all the Names, we can go some very dark places in our exploration, as there is a unavoidable tension between the Names in their full expression. The conflicts will be worked out, too, perhaps all the way to apotheosis and eschaton, but who am I to predict?
The Fundies are in the same boat as the rest of us, what public figures do they admire? Dobson, Robertson, Falwell, callow, hypocritical men who claim Christ wants us to bomb and torture(!) Fundie divorce rates are much higher than national averages. The restrictive, materializing (sulphuric) process is beating them up even worse than us, they are living in a completely materialistic version of an Idea that originally was completely, totally liberating. No wonder they are seeing so many other things backwards. They attribute the problems in their own families to the outer world, when no one could have a greater influence on their children than them.
The way I like to think of historical processes these days is like this: Real causes are non-visible and internal to us. We collectively manipulate the sensorium as we explore the ramifications and consequences of the Ideas or Names, which is the same as saying: as the One meditates on the consequences of ‘the many’ (us), the attributes (Names) of the One are progressively realized (made real) and this is history and time.
(’course, that only makes sense if you buy some general variant of ‘the One’ hidden in us, which is of course also a Name)
I liked the comment about the geometric shapes and the archetypes.
I think what you are saying is society had certian shapes and archetypes that are acceptable and maybe people don’t fit them totally, so they get kind of shunted into them?
I think Gay is a social construct. Being gay is a product of late western civilization.
Take the Spartans of ancient Greece. Lots of gay sex going on, mostly pederasty but nothing like what gay people are supposed to be like, by today’s standards.
Plus I think in other cultures, Men are allowed to be beautiful and flamboyant, dramatic, and its not gay. Like Men in New Guinea. Who would dress like that in western culture? They would have to be gay men performing in a cabaret or something. Cirque de solel or whatever.
Exactly Ted, the culture that you grow up in defines what is acceptable for you as a man to be/dress/act like.
In Greece men had wives for the purpose of family and reproduction, while often sex for pleasure was left to the men themselves. Not everyone did it, but it was normal for that culture. I’m not sure if I agree with having multiple partners like that, but at least when it’s out in the open you don’t have that situation where someone like Michelle Williams’ character (heath ledger’s wife in the film) is devastated and disgusted when she realizes what her husband’s secret life entails. I think one of the tragedies of our current culture is that men are often coerced to deceive their wives in this way and that is unacceptable. It’s gross.
As far as Broke back Mountain, I have talked about this with people. my theory and others agreed with me, is that lots of guys would have had sex in that environment all alone together for that long. Two Young Guys like that, hormones raging. I don’t know if it would have started out as violent penetrative anal sex with no lube, though!
But there would have been sexual tension, that probably would have been acted on, eventually. It was probably kind of common, in frontier days, all these red blooded men and no women, and they never had sex?
Its why bussiness men screw their secretaries, even if they love their wives. There is all this ambient sexual tension, when people work in close proximity.
As far as the movie goes, it was a love story and that was a different element, but the sex part, I don’t think was as unusual as people might think.
I think Heath Ledger’s character may not have been gay, just like he said. If he hadn’t had that experience on the Mountain, I don’t think he would have given it a thought. The other guy may have had a homosexual orientation more.
But its a movie that is drawing on elements from the real world, so its hard to speculate, because what’s not in the movie is not in the movie.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/...ily_dish/2007/05/the_politics_of.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/c...ticle/2007/05/08/AR2007050802282.html
I read these yesterday and here comes a need for them.
Great post, Tim and very much vibing on the comments. The destruction of the traditional archetypes of masculinity (and femininity for that matter) seems intentional to me. It’s driven by the folks at the very top of the pecking order and for their own economic (and magickal, cuz it’s all magick) gain–to feed on the one’s below most effectively.
At some point, we stopped having “good fathers” on our sitcoms and major media. Family Guy and Homer Simpson are more the norm–and that’s intentional. Institutional, corporate, mainstream feminism is just a middle-management position. In the days of the rugged and crafty individual male, there was far too much threat of too many men rising to challenge the position of the bluebloods. Easy solution–train them well in emasculation, raise the women up above them, lowering status and testosterone and thus, the threat that thinking men folks of meager means might organize and cause chaos through violent revolution and the like. Infantalize them and allow them to be mothered. Quite a few of my age-range contemporaries who are male I’ve noticed basically in similar situation vis a vis their wives as they were vis a vis their mothers–negatively dependent, certainly not equal and basically drinking and drugging that realization away in front of the T.V. or out back by the barbecue. Meanwhile, the Alpha’s at the very top, those men are still what they’ve always been and more so for the circumstances of much less competition from the lower classes for their spot in the pecking order–and they still remain above even the women who they allow in their circles as mere representations of equality for women and the like (certainly, Condoleeza Rice is “successful” as a woman for herself, but…her being in that role does not thereby confer success and equality upon all the obedient middle-managing women of our current world who are NOT her. Same thing goes for Hillary Clinton).
And having no parents in the home to raise the kids perpetuates and exacerbates the situation–so the State becomes the parent and indoctrinates accordingly towards obedience, distrust, fractured identity and negative dependence…not a dependence built upon the reality of love and community and mutal aid, but upon helplessness and fear and the illusions of artificial status-construction; and as the pattern continues, the parents, being more fractured and infantalized themselves, particularly the men, appear even less capable of actually fulfilling the traditional role of parent (with all the responsibilities, sacrifice and dissemination of human truth and wisdom), so it’s even more convenient to trundle off the obedience of employment and push the kids off to the “paid professionals” within the machine.
Quite ramble-ranty, but does this make some sense? And I don’t necessarily believe all of the stuff I just wrote (and why would you? I’m just write conspiracy poetics), but there’s something of truth in it.
Ahh…doing a better job of not just skimming and I see that Ted has made most of these points already in his Kipling post, though from a slightly different angle.
I would totally agree. Probably it’s something like a tree, where you have very basic male/female archetypes stemming out of the root of oneness, and from each of those there is further and further branching out into variations on the themes. Of course I think that’s a too-limited metaphor, too linear. There are infinite variations and combinations possible, but if there’s no awareness of one’s ‘root’ archetypes, like kids raised on Homer Simpson, which to me is so deviated from the Father archetype as to just be well, laughably pathetic, which is just what he is.
Just so we’s clear, I didn’t say we should fit ourselves into these predefined boxes in order to be true to ourselves. Actually somewhere in there, I think I said we shouldn’t, because that would make us just stereotypes instead of artists embodying the archetypes, each in our own unique ways. Something like that.
Also, I wasn’t thinking about gay vs. straight people. I know gay guys who are far more in touch with their masculinity in a natural, healthy way than many of the straight dudes I know who are total pussies, some who almost seem to go out of their way not to be anything like the ’stereotypical male’. The stereotypical male is an exaggerated charicature of the natural male, but the natural male is still in there, if you boil it down to its essential qualities.
Not that doing that will give you the full model for ‘Being a Man’ either though, because being a man isn’t the same as being masculine. Masculinity is more of an energy, as is Femininity. Both men and women possess both these energies - so expressing both is part of being true to who we are.
But in terms of the roles we play with each other, well, we need some kind of sense of what to expect from each other, and from ourselves so we’re not all confused and society isn’t so chaotic. It is (generally) more natural for Men to be more masculine, and for women to be more feminine, and if we were also raised with a sense of how to be each of those things, respectively, in a more… not ‘formalized’.. not ’standardized’… but something less implying of rigidity than that.. I think we could relate to each other better, and relationships would be better.. etc.
Anyway, this is the best discussion of these issues I’ve seen, ever. I’m surprised at the almost-consensus on a lot of things.
it is an attack on the family unit begun several genrations ago to create stressed out consumers.
strong family values promote savings and security. parents who stay together build equity that is passed on from generation to generation.
with the increase in divorce we are dissipating our equity on lawyers and sending a signal to our children that marriage is a thing of the past.
the socialists win.
no nuclear family means rampant consumerism with no care or concern for the future of house and home.
happy self-reliant family members don`t spend money needlessly to pleasure themselves.
our media is a machine designed to create stress and anxiety and then hold out consumer products as the solution.
we than virtually kill ourselves to get them.
there is a scene in terminator two where the robot is playing with the boy and there is a voice over from linda hamilton`s character as she watches them playing………and she says “i realised then that the robot would never leave the boy…….”
that`s what a father does.
men and women have been set amongst eachother.
divide and conquer.
the oldest military strategy in the book.
Christopher,
thanks for your comments, they really struck me. I’m a progressive guy, not a McCarthy type or anything, but I have to say there is some sort of almost Marxist mentality that has done a lot of damage in the realm of sexual identity - this whole idea that its about class dialectics: gay vs strait, male vs female etc. massive conflicting classes, when I think in reality we would be best served by viewing each other as individuals.
To me its like music. If you take the yin and yang of music, dissonance and consonance, and view music through that framework, you will see that the best music has all kinds of degrees of both, and climaxes in various ways with intense but diverse contrast between the two. Yet if you tried to make music so it maximized both, you would find it terrible, going from boring unisons to screeching noise.
Its the same with relationships. I don’t think we SHOULD strive to be absolutely gay or strait or masculine or feminine, at least not all the time. Rather we should learn to accept the more subtle harmonies in our lives that come from being ourselves
well, the politicing wouldn`t work without the dialectics, now would it?
they`d have to find another game to play.
Thanks for your comments, Tears. And Brooke I never meant to disagree with you it just came accross that way.
Music is a great example of the balance, it’s a great example of a lot of abstract things. I posted that youtube video of a clip from hedwig and the angry inch cause i think it has a very explicit philosophy about what we’re discussing. The other video relates on a more emotional/abstract level. I remember bjork saying in some interview recently that she always believed in balancing the male/female in music, balancing beats with strings, etc. It’s a viewpoint that’s uncommon but I don’t think it should be because it produces great results when you’re willing to go that deep.
I don’t think Homer Simpson and The Family Guy are really keeping anyone down. I think they are parodies of the reality.
There are lots of new men’s magazines that have cropped up, and they focus on how to look good, how to gain personal power, how get more and better sex, how to make money, fitness things like that. Ceos talk in sports analogies all the time. There are places to look within our culture at what it means to be man.
Certianly Black youth aren’t affected by Homer Simpson and “Friends” version of manhood etc. Hip Hop is ascendant now. Its global. Its all over Africa, all over France, especially with the blacks from Former french colonies in Africa.
Its a kind of in your face base kind of masculinity, often, but its not feminized.
All these macho mexicans are pouring into the country.
Mixed Martial Arts fighting is taking off. There is a baseline of masculinity that is age old that will be there, and spring up again, its just not sublimated or refined.
I also think that Islam is a threat to the Powers that be. Its an organized religion full of masculine energy. Its not a conspiracy. I am moving away from a conspiracy view.
In every civlization there are always barbarians outside the gate, threatening the city. The barbarians eventually overthrow it and establish a new order.
Yesterdays barbarians become tomorrows aristocrats, often the make up of the herd stays the same.
Aristocrats all start out as barbarians. Think about it. What do they do? Hunt, make war, dress with lots of bling, perform occult rituals.
I think the mass manipulation is more to keep the herd in line. The herd has a will to power also. The herd hates the strong, anyone that is exceptional and beautiful and strong, especially classes of such people.
True enough.
Well that’s part of the problem, though, is that it’s so polarized. The options for role models for men seem to be mostly exaggerated - men who basically reject femininity and over-embrace crude forms of masculinity - and then men who reject that model, understandably, but over-react and over-embrace femininity instead. There’s little in the way of role models for how to be a more healthy, well-integrated male. I’m sure there are some that I’m unaware of, since I’m a chick and don’t read men’s magazines, but in terms of the mainstream cultural influences, I’m not seeing any.
I agree with that, but I don’t think the solution is to just pick a side and totally embrace it. I think there are better ways of doing things and we’re supposed to learn and evolve and do better, even if only within our own smaller spheres of influence (for now).
Yeah its cool this generated so much conversation, but I guess… I don’t know. For me, writing it was more of an emotional plea than necessarily an intellectual investigation. It’s certainly a topic worth exploring on all kinds of levels though. And judging by the responses, I’m clearly not the only one feeling the pinch here.
For me, I have been looking really heavily back to the Courtly Love traditions and religious Devotional paths as models and have been getting a lot out of that. But it’s like, you can only take Robin Hood and the Green Man so far. You can’t just sit down with them over a beer and talk about real world shit with them. Or maybe you can and I just haven’t mastered it yet.
Point being, archetypes and symbols can only take you so far. For me they seem best at simply awakening you to a lot of potentialities…
If you could talk to Robin Hood over a beer, what sort of questions would you ask him?
Family Guy and Homer aren’t “threats”, they’re simply degenerate models–degenerate ishts that can lead boys to bad imprints. Definitely the model of masculinity presented in hip hop is a counter-balance and is in ascendency. I figured you’d point that out, Ted, so didn’t feel the need to do so myself.
conspiracies exist however, it’s poetry, not theory. Even the conspirators merely serve a function within the piece, back of all that, there’s the spirit, the rhythm. and i still feel that conspiracy poetics has a place and function as a potential-awakener. but ya just can’t only write and read and think in blank verse, obviously.
There’s tons to gain from bhakti yoga and the very-much related sufic devotional mysticism, which leads eventually to that courtly love ideal.
the biggest conspiracy is that the “group” exists–that’s one of the primary illusions. it’s really you and you and you and you and you and me and I & I–connecting, either in rapport, in harmony or in dischord. the harmony and rapport increase along any given point of connection to the extent that each note (individual) becomes clear, polished, strong and singular (an individual in fact, not just in potential)–where that happens, the notes then arrange themselves consciously and selflessly simultaneously, to be stricken and to sound out where the eternal conceirto needs them to be.
Oh, you know… just bullshit really. Its more about the alcohol than the questions…
Wow.
Who knew a george micheal video could stir some shit up? These are great and well thought out replies. I am truly shocked and pleased at the chord this has struck. I love it here.
I guess I haven’t pondered the assault on masculinity specifically because I find the assault isn’t just on masculinity.
It is on most forms of identity and societal roles, from family to manliness and femininity, etc.. With only seemingly “approved” indentities and roles under little or no assault.
It seems to be a planned and all around attack. I sensed this long ago and quickly abandoned any but my own well thought out and “researched” definitions of role and identity. I suppose it saved me a lot of the heartbreaks listed above.
The concerted effort seems mighty suspicious to me. I would encourage everyone to reject as much as possible and is safe for their psyche and make their own definitions. Then seek others who’s definitions are similar or interest you. Examine your own motivations for seeking these others carefully though.
From there comes happiness AND growth.
Here’s your esoteric mystery, in a nutshell (hermetically unsealed), Tim:
Beautiful summation following as well, Lilith.
In my experience, the suffering, the angst, the search for something to show the way, the yearning to uncover the “secrets” of the ages, to really know what it means to be a human being, much less as defined by sex - all this comprises nuts and bolts of the journey. It is as necessary as sharing the joy. If you’ve got one without the other, head for a mechanic and get an alignment, ’cause there’s an imbalance going on. Otherwise, you’re in a good place, heading down the road.
Somehow, there’s stuff cooking inside and with the passage of time, and as some traditions advocate, if you can, “sitting” with the situation, a cake finally gets baked, and then you’re on to the next stage.
Happens quite naturally, in fact. I used to think I had to force it, find it, discover the answers through brute will and intellectual powers. Nope. One day, I had cake. I learned to relax a bit more for the next stage, watch for signposts, kept digging and searching and wondering, and… one day, I had cupcakes.
As Lilith said, there are techniques to make the next bundt cake take form in 25 minutes instead of an hour, but they aren’t required. Just helpful hints for greasing the wheels, if you have learned the basics of cooking. The techniques come in the flavors of the rainbow, like the million ways to God, but its baking, just the same.
When I was too young, the esoteric looked like gibberish to me, when I was older, I recognized it as the records, rituals and remembrances of others who had been where I had traveled also.
When I recognized the archetypes I already embodied, the rest became old friends. The veils were lifted, the confusion dissipated, simplicity reigned.
I love that you are voicing your journey as I never could, as many never can. It is yours, but has life in mythos and resonance with the universal that I believe you recognize at a deep level. And also at a beer level.
Buddha had a hard time regaining bliss whenever he lost it, and lost it, he did. The work is worth doing. The pain in your ass is the pain in mine too. But from part way down the path, I can see you coming.
The divine is in a pile of shit, a mess of chaos and all the existential angst that can be generated by the Worldwide Non-Confederation of Goths.
Have a beer, dig in the shit with a buddy, and keep on keepin’ on. Something interesting is likely to grow in the shit, so keep your eyes open. And don’t forget to share the cakes.
As I see it, you basically ask “where are all the men at” without defining “man”. And you’d be hard pressed to find such a definition. Only a list of possible components (qualities/archetypes), which require further definitions. And we’ll never settle on those!
I see this problem as trying to fill a void, without realizing that we *are* the void. Once the void stops worrying about what it means to be a man, and begins to develop awareness and dissolve illusions, the experience of thinking and acting as a man naturally comes about. I think.
What do you think of the What Would Jesus Do meme, in respect to these issues?
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
All respect to those who believe they were born gay/straight/bi-sexual. However, I’m willing to bet that a lot of gay males had their first sexually-tinted experience with another male (and/or their own butt). The first sensual/erotic experience (likely a matter of circumstance, not preference), if undergone during the stage of sexual imprint vulnerability (pre-puberty), is forever associated with sexuality from that point on. I see it clearly in my own life.
I guess if you could simply write down a role model it’d just get co-opted to some other beggar’s cause. The future in this age of surveillance is subliminal.
*
Brooke -
After one beer, I’d ask about Richard.
After three, the Sheriff.
After five, Marian ;-D
Come ooon. Family Guy and Simpsons? Part of the problem?
There ya go, no more handwringing and finger pointing, step up define yourself and become a human being.
I love you guys.
And I’m not even drunk yet.
Crap - dont yet have time to read this all, and this hot topic has run away without me … but this is crucial, and another recent eerie example of sychronicity.
Just the day before tim’s post, an online review of a book by some christian author caught my eye (spent all day yest trying to find it again for this post - cant!) He based his theme of the warrior man, on the example of King Davids “Mighty Men” of 2 Samuel 23, and the qualities of character each exhibited.
The reviewer of the book made the point that the church had become feminized, and the manly qualities of Jesus (whatever they were) were now laid aside, and men didnt know what they were supposed to be like, ‘cept ‘meek and mild’ …
important and worth exploring … I’ll be back …
Except for the notion that the Hebreo-Christian God has repeatedly been associated in male terms (Father-Son - - His choice?) - it oftentimes seems like an arbitrary distinction. If you’re grounded in the search for truth, you are what you are. It’s like a zen thing, and nobel qualities like courage, duty, and love know no gender.
OTOH on a social level, anyone getting their cues from the artificial 2-faced media is doomed!
Lillith,
Thanks for the compliment. I was in a very introspective state at the time and I am glad what I wrote made sense.