The Warrior and American Sniper

I decided to take my 15 year old son to see American Sniper. I don't go to the theatre or watch movies at home very often, so I surprised myself. Movies in general just don't interest me, or maybe it's just I don't feel like I have the time for them. But after listening to a hour long discussion on NPR about the movie, some lines by James Hillman came to me: There is a love and beauty in war that many of us don't want to see. And if we want to oppose war we have to go to war ourselves in our hearts and minds. We must imagine into the hearts of our enemy (All paraphrased).

Then I started second guessing myself, so I thought I'd better consult one of my elders and mentors. I pulled Robert Bly's "Iron John" off the the shelf and opened up to the chapter on Warriorship. This quote sealed it:

"We can all add further details to the account I've given of the decline from warrior to soldier to murderer, but it is important to notice the result. The disciplined warrior, made irrelevant by mechanized war, disdained and abandoned by the high-tech culture, is fading in American men. The fading of the warrior contributes to the collapse of civilized society. A man who cannot defend his own space cannot defend women and children. The poisoned warriors called drug lords prey primarily on kingless, warriorless boys.

"And it all moves so swiftly. The massive butcheries of 1915 [World War I] finish off the disciplined or outward warrior, and then within thirty years, the warriors inside Western men begin to weaken. The double weakening makes us realize how connected the outer world and the inner world are, how serious the events of history are." (Pg. 156, Iron John)

It's an interesting thought that part of the reason civilization is collapsing is because there aren't many warriors around to protect women and children. It brings up the question, at least in our house, what does it mean to be a warrior? I look forward to going to the movie and the discussion afterwards.

 

Still Riding Rilke's Wings

No matter how deeply I go into myself
my God is dark, and like a webbing made
of a hundred roots, that drink in silence.--Rainer Maria Rilke

The Wild Man Then The Witches

"The burning of the Wild Man preceded the burning of the witches by several centuries, and it proceeded from the same fear and anger."-- Robert Bly, pg. 246, Iron John

Neither Patriarchy Nor Matriarchy

"The patriarchy is a complicated structure. Mythologically, it is matriarchal on the inside, and a matriarchy is equally complicated, being patriarchal on the inside. The political structure has to resemble our interior structure. And we know each man has a woman inside him, and each woman has a man inside her.

"The genuine patriarchy brings down the sun through the Sacred King, into every man and woman in the culture; and the genuine matriarchy brings down the moon, through the Sacred Queen, to every woman and every man in the culture. The death of the Sacred King and Queen means that we live now in a system of industrial domination, which is not patriarchy. The system we live in gives no honor to the male mode of feeling nor to the female mode of feeling. The system of industrial domination determines how things go with us in the world of resources, values, and allegiances; what animals live and what animals die; how children are treated. And in the mode of industrial domination there is neither king nor queen." [Robert Bly, pg. 98, Iron John]

A couple of thoughts occurred to me while typing this out:

1. The idea of male and female modes of feeling means that you accept the premise that there are certain masculine and feminine traits that you inherit genetically. In other words, this is the gift of our ancestors. It's a genetic inheritance that is not culturally determined.

2. Daniel Quinn made a genius move by explaining to his readers why the problem of good and evil doesn't exist for him. He simply stated that he has peopled his world with gods that have an equal care from anything from a wood tick to a wildebeest. In other words, if a wolf takes down an old whitetail deer it was good for the wolf and bad for deer. Perhaps when one is in the mode of industrial domination they can't see this. In a sense Quinn has softened the mode of industrial domination. He's made it easier to fall in love with the world.

Highway 53 in '93

Pulling some books off the shelf looking for writing inspiration. I turned to Robert Bly's Iron John this morning. Why? I really like his style. I also think it's because I have a 13 year old son that is well on his way to becoming 14 living in our house.

"We are living at an important and fruitful moment now, for it is clear to men that the images of adult manhood given by the popular culture are worn out; a man can no longer depend on them. By the time a man is thirty-five he knows that the images of the right man, the tough man, the true man which he recieved in high school do not work in life. Such a man is open to new visions of what a man is or could be."--Robert Bly, Iron John

I remember the day this realization hit me. I was driving up highway 53 on a gray, cold, frigid day in February. I was 18 at the time. I was returning to my grandparent's house in northwestern Wisconsin after visiting my parents and high school friends in southern Wisconsin. I was tired, hungover, and on my own. Then the darkness set in. Of course, at the time I didn't know what the hell it was. I still don't know if I have an answer, but I think I have a better idea.

Fathers, Uncles, and Older Men

It's been well over a decade now since Iron John was recommended to me to read. Now, looking back, a few people mentioned it at the time. Author Daniel Quinn was one of them. One day on an internet discussion board I asked him some questions about his current marriage that he talked about in his autobiography titled: Providence. I wanted to know how his current wife was able to deal with his infidelity in a previous marriage. Of course, I also wanted to know if it was possible for a woman to love me given that I'd just lived with my grandparents for five years during what was suppose to be the prime of my life (18 to 23 yrs. old). He answered the question in a way that made logical sense (He's good at that). And in his response he mentioned that I might want to check out Iron John. So, I did.

I've read it a couple of times since then. And the excerpt below has always stuck with me since the first reading. Why? I'll try to answer part of if below.

"Throughout the ancient hunter societies, which apparently lasted thousands of years--perhaps hundreds of thousands--and throughout the hunter-gatherer societies that followed them, and the subsequent agricultural and craft societies, fathers and sons worked and lived together. As late as 1900 in the United States about ninety percent of fathers were engaged in agriculture. In all these societies the son characteristically saw his father working at all times of the day and all seasons of the year.

'When the son no longer sees that, what happens? After thirty years of working with young German men, as fatherless in their industrial society as young American men today, Alexander Mitscherlich, whom we spoke of in the first chapther, developed a metaphor: a hole appears in the son's psyche. When the son does not see his father's workplace, or what he produces, does he imagine his father to be a hero, a fighter for good, a saint, or white knight? Mitscherlich's answer is sad: demons move into that empty place--demons of suspicion.

'The demons, invisible but talkative, encourage suspicion of all older men. Such suspicion effects a breaking of the community of old and young men. One could feel this distrust deepen in the sixties: 'Never trust anyone over thirty.'"--Pg.95, Iron John

My dad worked at the same factory for 30 years. I never once stepped into that place. I never once saw, felt, or touched what he produced. And, of course, like Bly said in the excerpt, the demons arrived. They're there today.

This is something, I think, we need to think about as we move ahead with this industrial experiment (I remember Derrick Jensen in his book Welcome to the Machine referring to it as Hell). The quote also reminds me of a conversation I had recently with my uncle. I ran into him at the local gas station. And while we were pumping gas we got to talking about the most recent school shooting. He thought maybe it would have helped if the guy had an uncle to take him out in the woods to atleast "plink away at tin cans." Like he used to do with me. And maybe the guy did, I don't know. But it's a perspective I take into consideration. He's my uncle. He's raised three kids. I've fished, hunted, and logged next to him.

Ashes

Woke up this morning feeling like I had to search this poem out:

Well, on the day I was born,
God was sick...
They all know that I'm alive,
that I chew my food...and they don't know
why harsh winds whistle in my poems,
the narrow uneasiness of a coffin,
winds untangled from the sphinx...

On the day I was born,
God was sick,
gravely.--Cesar Vallejo

As I get older I'm trying to accept this state of feeling.

Thank you to Robert Bly for introducing me to this poem.

And It Spoke

I woke up this morning ready to search for an Antonio Machado poem talking about the human shadow, and stumbled across this one instead:

Every man has two
battles which he fights:
he fights with god in his dreams,
and he fights the sea when awake.--Antonio Machado

My interest in Melville and Moby Dick is growing.

Twenty Years Since

This coming Ocotber it will be 20 year since I move from southern Wisconsin to northwestern Wisconsin. Why? Well, the plan was to live with my grandparents and save up some money for tech school. My grandpa was a logger and owned logging machinery. So, I lived with them and logged for about 6 years, never went to tech school, and was fortunate enough to save up some money. But looking back I think that was only part of the reason I moved up north, because before I moved up I also made it clear to myself that I wanted to become a man in the process.

This morning, while watching the fire in the masonry stove burn down, it occured to me that since I was reading Robert Bly's "Iron John" close to 20 years after my explicit desire to become a man that I obviously still have work to do. But, I wonder, if there is ever a final threshold that has to be crossed in this quest to become a man? We'll see, I guess. Onward.

Something Beyond the Busy Life

A few days ago, I got out of bed and wanted to do nothing but sit in the woods. Just sit and listen to the sounds around me, watch for movements, smell and breathe the cold winter air, and feel the cold northwestern Wisconsin wind blow across my uncovered face. But, I didn't. I was busy and had things I needed to do.

Now this feeling has occasionally arisen in me for the past 25 years. It didn't matter if I was at home or at school or heading off to the logging job. Most of the time I've ignored it, but there are times when I don't and I seem never to regret it.

I was paging through Robert Bly's "Iron John" and found this brief passage while looking for another quote I had in mind to include in a post:

"The Wild One in you is that one which is willing to leave the busy life, and able to be called away.

The strong leaves of the box-elder tree,
Plunging in the wind, call us to disappear
Into the wilds of the universe,
Where we shall sit at the foot of a plant,
And live forever, like the dust." [Robert Bly, Pg.223, Iron John]

I've sat with plants in the past, and hope to do more of it in the future. And the few times I have sat with them living forever did cross my mind. I just might be starting to understand why that is. Thank you Mr. Bly.

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.