Jan 3, 2013
as i keep getting a little older, and a little stranger, and a little more removed from one society or another, i more starkly notice something: we stopped connecting to our own selves as MAN.
all this debate about feminism and equality and gun control and glass ceilings, mostly done by grown up males who are still children. they don’t understand the things that society taught them to suppress. sure, life makes perfect sense as long as the timed sprinklers come on in the morning, and the mailman delivers the mail, and the high speed internet connection is up, and the cop car patrols the neighborhood. as long as the grocery store is open and the paycheck deposit happens. as long as flipping the switch turns the power on, turning the tap makes water come out.
but then what would all these people become, if those things stopped happening? what is left, making us capable to survive, defend our own, claim stakes, define our future? what in us is man, not connected by the umbilical cord to the corporate mother?
what we have lost, or rather what society has taken away, is the rite of passage.
there is some biological imperative there. some psychological trauma, necessary. boy becomes man. it exists in just about every tribe, every ancient civilization, every pre-current group organization. something is necessary to transpire, to tear the boy from the mother’s teet. only once this happens does he realize that he IS man. that he has the obligation, the facility, the honor of building the skills, abilities, strengths of meeting his own destiny.
without rites of passage, we remain boys all our lives.
society benefits from this. boys are no threat to leadership. boys won’t take over. boys will vote. boys will nod. boys will marry girls who fucked twenty other boys before. boys will bow to police brutality, to court orders, to a balding guy with a gutt, whose cubicle says ‘vp’ on it.
we grow up today, never meeting that existential threshold of the rite of passage. boys play with toys. now, 30 year olds play iphone, ipad, i-whatever games still. they play war games, intellectual games, games-games. this is what boys are supposed to do – emulate and practice what they will have to do, FOR REAL, once they become men. but today, this transition just never happens. grown up boys continue the process of emulating, vs. experiencing. a corporate job is not man’s work. it is a continuation of the perceived safe haven of the parental home. rules are set forth, enough money to live is provided. the childhood father becomes the adulthood senior vp. meanwhile, life continues to be passively absorbed through tv and video games.
we don’t even know what we are, in today’s world. it isn’t but by accident, or by some stubborn genetic predisposition that some of us discover that door. that door cleverly hidden, safely forgotten, by coddled western civilization.
take facebook. a giant parental unit, doling out customized validation. who will validate man? nobody. man doesn’t need validation. man needs to hunt, eat, fuck, growl at neighboring tribes, guard his castle. facebook, social media, twitter, instagram, whatever. it is a virtual-mommy. ”oh, wow, you did so good! you look so good! you have friends, good job little jonny!” whenever you meet a guy of our generation who actually sneers at facebook, you probably just met an actual man. good luck with that, too.
consider jake. jake wasn’t a man well into what our species, under normal circumstances, would consider adulthood. jake too was a whiny little sheeple. still is, for lots of parts.
makes some of us angry. unbalanced. subversive. tattoos, subcultures. it’s those who just can’t emotionally conform to the suck, but have no idea what is missing. there is no tribal leader to say “hey, it’s time for you to smoke this mescaline and go out into the desert for a week.” the rite of passage has become lost.
i still don’t know what it is. did i cross it, yet? sort of. but not really. the rite has to be organized. it has to be clear. it has to be traumatic. it has to be shared by others, before you, with you, after you.
game. game emulates being man. trying to, as much as possible, to appear as the real deal. women are tireless cunts because they have no men. it’s like lord of the flies, the dating scene. no parents. there is no man around to say “SHUT THE FUCK UP, WOMAN”. therefore, we have all the bullshit lamented everywhere. you can’t expect anything to change, if the biological balance of man is not present. the rest of game, as some are slowly uncovering, isn’t about meeting women. it’s about becoming a man.
i have no advice on how to fix this. all the self reliance, independence, living in lawless places, i’m still just sort of drifting from childhood to the other side. missing, is a clear cut ‘you are out of there’ – rite of passage.
Had a couple of experiences which felt like it… sort of. And then, nothing, back to square one.
I heard once that the reason dogs bark is that they don’t realize that they’re adults – barking is puppy behavior. Pet dogs are always cared for like puppies, and never have to hunt for food. Seems adult dogs in the wild don’t bark, viz. wolves etc. Sometimes I think the same is true for men – we bitch about our broadband being down or the price of gas, but that is not adult behavior.
Those old rites of passage had an important element, which was the removal of the boy from the world of women (his mother) to the world of men, where he was expected to perform and be an asset to the tribe, not having other people keeping him fed and alive. As i sip my espresso, I wonder if we realize just how far from our natural state we live these days.
I like that .. “the removal of the boy from the world of women (his mother) to the world of men, where he was expected to perform and be an asset to the tribe”.
Could this also be heading in the wrong direction?
Natural does not always mean superior in any form. Maybe there is another state of environment that would be superior and feel more natural us. Something that is not living in the wild, nor living under the corporate mommy’s wing.
From what I understand, it purely comes down to conquest and dominance. There are men today that are living their life as they should, by conquering; whether it’s political leaders or oil oligarchs.
We here may be just scratching the surface of what has been known for decades to a very few men in the top.
You might well be right. I have a few very wealthy, ‘self made’ friends … more than not though, their business brain and dedication got them there. Their entitled, bitchy, old wives still run the rest of their lives. So, I’m not sure, though there is probably a class of men who found some modern alternative to the rituals.
When the wheels come off Western Civilization, the men will be separated from the boys.
Civilization has gotten entirely too safe, and that is what is leading towards it’s own self destruction.
fuck facebook
“the rest of game, as some are slowly uncovering, isn’t about meeting women. it’s about becoming a man” I was thinking something along these lines this morning, Game makes us men, eventually chasing women get old but the lessons we learned, stay with us…
As I read your post, I feel your frustration, confusion and almost desperation to draw a line in the sand, leave the boy behind, disconnect from the mothers in your life and take strong, clear and healthy steps into manhood and the rest of your life.
Increasingly, I see more guys between mid-20′s and mid to late 30′s work out that what’s being offered is not all it’s cracked up to be. I have also witnessed many men go through rites of passage where they ask for cold, hard truth from their loved one’s about what they do in their life which screws them over and makes living with and around them really challenging. Importantly, it is what the boy does with this information will depend on whether he makes steps to his manhood.
Coming to grips with his behaviors (typically boy-like, self-centered, actions without awareness) is a challenging step and one that needs support to handle and accept. Once the boy-man accepts his part in these behaviors, he is able to do something with them.
Write them down, take them out into nature, pour them into your fuel for an endurance event like a marathon and ensure that you efforts are witnessed by close, supportive men.
Most importantly, after completion the challenge, you must ensure that those men that have seen you deal with your “stuff” tell you what they have witnessed in you, which are often qualities like courage, perseverance, honesty, depth, vulnerability and often innocence. Note, these qualities are more about who a person is, rather than what they do for a living!
Finally, given you have made this effort, it is important that you create a vision of how you would like your life to be different and share that with the same men that have witnessed your challenge/rite of passage and charge them with kicking your butt, if you are shirking your responsibility 1,2,3 or 6mths down the track.
I guess that was more than I expected to comment on your post, but you are speaking about important topics and I personally have the felt of such powerful rituals and still do 10yrs after.
Good luck and may you typing this into your computer not be the end of this thread!
Makes sense. I’ll have to consider a challenge worth doing. These days there aren’t many guys around doing anything I aspire to or haven’t done yet. Finding that might be fun anyway.
Red State America is probably the closest in the post-modern West to having rites of passage as Christian baptism and American football can serve as proxies. That said, it’s obviously not near enough. One of my biggest pet peeves is seeing grown men in the U.S. dressing like little boys (their sons) with sweatshirts, jeans, tennis shoes and baseball caps. Ugh! Of course, this same affliction expresses itself differently in other countries. Northern European men are scared of their own balls while F-SU fellows drink until they forget about their families.
Trauma, trauma, trauma. It can’t be said enough. Whatever it takes to get that amygdala steadily pumping cold, hard, logic juice into your beliefs and thoughts.
The whole mess can be traced to the root of trying to avoid suffering, which is not only futile but self-destructive. Going right to the edge of pain and survival is how you find out what and who you are and is what makes you a man. What’s bad is good because, if you survive it, you know your horizon is a little broader and your capabilities a little more than before. Gotta have that toughness, confidence, internal compass and knowledge of exactly where you are in the world.
The only solution is try to recreate your own rites of passage as best you can by pushing yourself to your physical and mental limits. Run for as long and fast as you can — sprints if you normally run distance and for distance if you normally run sprints. Try to do 50 total reps at 80% of your 1rm on deadlift, and don’t stop no matter how bad your hands are bleeding. I wouldn’t recommend starting fights with random guys, but if someone else tries to fight you then that’s a great opportunity.
If you have some free time check out what the Mandan Indian tribe rites of passage from boy to man was.
Holy fuck
http://artofmanliness.com/2010/02/21/male-rites-of-passage-from-around-the-world/
Ok so maybe we’ll skip all of those.