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Home » Opinion » Book review
Industrial society deprives men of rites of passage
By Wan Lixin |
January 10, 2009, Saturday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
POET Robert Bly blames many of today's cultural woes on the absence of fathers, as a result of family disintegration in industrialized societies.
Society suffers because there are no longer older men to initiate boys into the adult male world in some Western countries.
In highly metaphoric language and imagery, Bly helps us gain insight into modern men's psychic drives and struggles in his "Iron John: A Book About Men."
Iron John is the wild-looking, unshaven, red-haired man in a fairytale by the Brothers Grimm, symbolizing the hidden, primal aspects of men's quest to grow up.
Bly borrows the Iron John metaphor to suggest the needs of today's boys to break away from their mother's apron strings to become mature men, or more significantly, to absorb the "radiant energy" that all the "emasculated" men of modern culture must retrieve.
Apron strings are probably no longer an adequate figure of speech for household chores today. In major cities in China at least, apron strings belong to the father as much as to mother, or to neither.
We are living in a society where gender differences are increasingly cast in a suspicious light -- unjust, discriminatory, exploitative, thus atavistic.
That's probably the reason why in real life there is a huge and profitable beauty industry bent on exaggerating the external gender differences.
In traditional families, father and mother had distinct roles, and their interdependence built strong familial affinity.
In traditional Chinese agrarian society, for instance, a man's worth is assessed in terms of his stamina, hardiness, and integrity, thus fathers also serve as mentors to initiate their sons into farming work and other masculine skills.
Today this father-to-son indoctrination has become particularly rare in rural areas. As rural parents migrate to cities for work, their children are left behind struggling for survival.
Furthermore, no sons of peasants-migrants today would deem their fathers, who are likely working at lowly jobs on construction sites, as their role models.
Bly significantly points to the toleration of "wounds," as celebrated in the coming-of-age rituals in many cultures.
Wounds, whether ritual scarring, beatings, abandonment, punishment or shame, according to Bly, allow a man to lead a fully rounded, mature life.
I think it is no accident that some of the best literary works were produced in csarist Russia, and the relatively recent blossoming of Chinese literature occurred in the early 1980s, after decades of political upheavals.
But Western societies today are heading into an Epicurean society, which they hold up to be a higher level of human existence.
In this kind of existence, every kind of discomfort is attended to by professional institutional providers.
No one need be hardened by inclement weather, because they stay in air-conditioned rooms all year round.
Physical suffering due to illness is obsolete, for medical assistance is always ready at hand.
Even war, that ultimate test of human courage, is now a technical exercise. You press a button, and a whole block of residents 1,000 km away are vaporized.
Numerous experts can address your petty concerns ranging from a cluttered desk to money management.
There is no danger of ennui, for the all-pervasive TV screens and myriad other hand-held entertainment providers will keep you occupied anytime, anywhere.
If you still feel unhappy, a psychiatrist is ready to pump you about your traumatic experiences, and shift the blame to your parents, your teachers, or your neighbors.
Unfortunately, this painless state more often induce numbness and insensibility, making it harder for civilized beings to be sympathetic to others' pains.
Some tabloids' coverage of the conflicts in the Gaza strip and Iraq read more like coverage of spectator sports, or military exercises.
We have lost the use for tears.
As Bly remarks, young men must "learn to shudder," feel empathy for the fragility of others.
The author's highly symbolic and poetic language makes it off-putting to concrete thinkers, but the book is not meant to induce complacency and comfort in the first place.
Society suffers because there are no longer older men to initiate boys into the adult male world in some Western countries.
In highly metaphoric language and imagery, Bly helps us gain insight into modern men's psychic drives and struggles in his "Iron John: A Book About Men."
Iron John is the wild-looking, unshaven, red-haired man in a fairytale by the Brothers Grimm, symbolizing the hidden, primal aspects of men's quest to grow up.
Bly borrows the Iron John metaphor to suggest the needs of today's boys to break away from their mother's apron strings to become mature men, or more significantly, to absorb the "radiant energy" that all the "emasculated" men of modern culture must retrieve.
Apron strings are probably no longer an adequate figure of speech for household chores today. In major cities in China at least, apron strings belong to the father as much as to mother, or to neither.
We are living in a society where gender differences are increasingly cast in a suspicious light -- unjust, discriminatory, exploitative, thus atavistic.
That's probably the reason why in real life there is a huge and profitable beauty industry bent on exaggerating the external gender differences.
In traditional families, father and mother had distinct roles, and their interdependence built strong familial affinity.
In traditional Chinese agrarian society, for instance, a man's worth is assessed in terms of his stamina, hardiness, and integrity, thus fathers also serve as mentors to initiate their sons into farming work and other masculine skills.
Today this father-to-son indoctrination has become particularly rare in rural areas. As rural parents migrate to cities for work, their children are left behind struggling for survival.
Furthermore, no sons of peasants-migrants today would deem their fathers, who are likely working at lowly jobs on construction sites, as their role models.
Bly significantly points to the toleration of "wounds," as celebrated in the coming-of-age rituals in many cultures.
Wounds, whether ritual scarring, beatings, abandonment, punishment or shame, according to Bly, allow a man to lead a fully rounded, mature life.
I think it is no accident that some of the best literary works were produced in csarist Russia, and the relatively recent blossoming of Chinese literature occurred in the early 1980s, after decades of political upheavals.
But Western societies today are heading into an Epicurean society, which they hold up to be a higher level of human existence.
In this kind of existence, every kind of discomfort is attended to by professional institutional providers.
No one need be hardened by inclement weather, because they stay in air-conditioned rooms all year round.
Physical suffering due to illness is obsolete, for medical assistance is always ready at hand.
Even war, that ultimate test of human courage, is now a technical exercise. You press a button, and a whole block of residents 1,000 km away are vaporized.
Numerous experts can address your petty concerns ranging from a cluttered desk to money management.
There is no danger of ennui, for the all-pervasive TV screens and myriad other hand-held entertainment providers will keep you occupied anytime, anywhere.
If you still feel unhappy, a psychiatrist is ready to pump you about your traumatic experiences, and shift the blame to your parents, your teachers, or your neighbors.
Unfortunately, this painless state more often induce numbness and insensibility, making it harder for civilized beings to be sympathetic to others' pains.
Some tabloids' coverage of the conflicts in the Gaza strip and Iraq read more like coverage of spectator sports, or military exercises.
We have lost the use for tears.
As Bly remarks, young men must "learn to shudder," feel empathy for the fragility of others.
The author's highly symbolic and poetic language makes it off-putting to concrete thinkers, but the book is not meant to induce complacency and comfort in the first place.
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