Friday, December 02, 2011

Lifeline Quotes and Poems

There are poems and quotes that I consider to be "lifelines." They are basically words that have at times kept my head above water. Here is one by Robert Bly.

"A clean break from the mother is crucial, but it's simply not happening. This doesn't mean that the women are doing something wrong: I think the problem is more that the older men are not really doing their job.
"The traditional way of raising sons, which lasted for thousands of years, amounted to fathers and sons living in close--murderously close--proximity, while the father taught the son a trade: perhaps farming or carpentry or blacksmithing or tailoring. As I've suggested elsewhere, the love unit most damaged by the Industrial Revolution has been the father-son bond.
"There's no sense in idealizing preindustrial culture, yet we know that today many fathers now work thirty or fifty miles from the house, and by the time they return at night the children are often in bed, and they themselves are too tired to do active fathering.
"The Industrial Revolution, in its need for office and factory workers, pulled fathers away from their sons, moreover, placed the sons in compulsory schools where the teachers are mostly women."--Robert Bly


I like it because it points to the effect the Industrial Revolution has had on men.

2 comments:

vick marks said...

greeting!...from one martian anthropologist to another!

i found myself opening the "door", of experiencing your words through looking up key terms in yahoo. interestingly enough, the key term words i was looking up were..."MARTIAN ANTHROPOLOGIST" lol.
i know none of what i've said has nothing to do with this post. but i felt the need to explain my reason for being here, on your site, wanting to post a comment on THIS particular topic you are discussing (lifeline quotes and poems).
your blog caught my interest because i saw you had discussed topics related to daniel quinn and his books. I's the way you described yourself, your feelings, the experience, and the changes/effects it had on you. guess you could say i found myself relating to your words.
but i also am interested to share information, books, and anything else that could come from this.
Thank you
(btw, i do intend to make a comment relating to the topic lol)

Curt said...

Thank you for your comment, vick. And please don't worry if your comment doesn't relate to the post.

take care,

Curt