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November
Young Men Today – Looking for a Path Forward
in the Long
Emergency
“By Time and Age many things are taught. Time
growing old, Teaches all
things.”--Aeschylus
I get to know a lot of people in Denver and
Boulder at meetings and community events. Although
I am clueless about women, I am a 65 year old man
and have learned a few things about manhood.
I’ve been around men of all classes, races
and ages –at retreats, in personal
friendships, business relationships, and various
spiritual communities, men’s groups, and 12
Step groups. Over the course of six and a half
decades, as a son and a father of two sons,
I’ve learned a few things about how men think,
how they smell, what they like to eat. and what
their unfulfilled emotional and spiritual yearnings
are all about.
My sense is that something has profoundly
changed for young males in the 20-25 age range.
Robert Bly says in his book, “The Sibling
Society”, that adolescent males don’t
really come into their own until they are thirty
years old.
And Bly’s book was written twelve years
before the global economic meltdown. What is
missing for young men according to Bly is
mentorship by older men. I am speaking here not of
technical or professional mentorship, like dental,
medical, legal, corporate or scientific
mentorship.
Rather I am talking about psychic or spiritual
mentorship. Only older men can provide the organic
nutrients younger men yearn for – whether
those young men realize it or not. It’s hard
to go looking for what you need-- if you are
clueless about what you really and truly need.
Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, Robert Bly, James
Hillman, Michael Meade, Robert Moore and others who
have studied masculine psychological structure and
the male archetypes point out that the biological
father can play a significant role. And yet, in the
final analysis, far more is needed by the young man
than a good Dad. The reason is that the father-son
relationship is too intensely rooted in biological
connections and family dynamics. “Psychic
contamination” is the phrase Carl Jung
used.
In the last two years, I’ve encountered
many young men who are adrift. Or at least they
sure seem that way to me. I could be wrong. And
yet, I have a deep feeling that they know at some
level of consciousness why they are drifting.
In their gut they are aware that the Long
Emergency is descending upon them in a very up
close and personal kind of way. “In your
face” is the feel of it for a young man today.
For the context and implications of the Long
Emergency, see the author of the book with that
title, James Howard Kunstler.
With 70 percent of Americans fearful of losing
their jobs, according to recent polls, what is a
young man to make out of the future that is coming
his way at ever-accelerating rate and
intensity?
My observation and reflection from experience
with some of these young men is that the deeper the
consciousness of the young man, the more
disorientation he experiences. In the 60’s,
many young men said a profound “NO!” to
the corporate America way of life. They dropped
out, tuned out mainstream culture and turned on
with drugs.
For young men today, it often comes out as
“holy shit” or “what’s going
on?” Being overwhelmed by economic meltdown,
the response may be to turn off the economic
realities of life and drift. And yet, it is a
subtle kind of drift. Not a full blown depression
-- but a deflation, likes “someone burst my
balloon and I never saw it coming. What
happened?”
It’s like waking up and for a few moments
not knowing where you are. Young men who are well
educated and awake,” get it” that the
foundations are shaking. And what I see is that
“the best and the brightest” young males
are getting pounded by their own depth
consciousness.
Whatever “the American dream” has been
– it is clearly in the process of foundational
deconstruction. I would hasten to add that all of
us are at risk. Therefore, we fervently hope and
pray that reconstruction and transformation are
coming some place down the road.
But the facts are troubling indeed. In one
month, 57 people die in mass murders here in the
USA, all committed by men.
According to the National Institute of Mental
Health statistics, males are four times more likely
than women to take their own lives. And males 20-24
are six times more likely to commit suicide.
If you read Bly’s “The Sibling
Society”, you understand the double bind all
men are in. He characterizes the majority of men in
their thirties and forties as adolescent males in
older bodies-- lacking the full capacities of
mature manhood.
Therefore, our problem is that you can’t
give a younger man what he needs if you don’t
have it yourself. And the lack of capacity within
older men is compounded by the economic meltdown
that Kunstler characterizes as “The Long
Emergency.”
This combination of factors is our “double
bind” and our dilemma.
What then is our way out and our way forward as
men? How do we practically retool emotionally and
spiritually?
One solution I propose is to form small groups
of 8-10 men who live in the same neighborhood or
community. These small men’s groups would meet
at least twice a month. The conveners would be a
man in his 20’s and a man in his
60’s.
The wisdom of the older man borne out of
standing near to death’s doorway cannot be
overemphasized. At the age of 60, most men wake up
to the fact that they are standing in the sunset
time of their lives.
Simple chronology dawns on a man with a rude
awareness when he reaches 60. More of his life has
been lived than is yet to be lived. Some of his
intellectual and physical powers begin to wane.
This can be an epiphany for an older man.
As Robert Kennedy said, quoting The Greek poet
Aeschylus: “And even in our sleep, Pain that
cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the human
heart. And in our own despair, against our will,
Wisdom comes to us by the awful grace of
God.”
The role of the older man is to cool things
down, reassure, and bless the younger man. The role
of the younger man is to fire things up. This is
the alchemy of male soul work and restoring the
inter-generational bond among men that was cut
asunder with the rise of the Industrial
Revolution.
As the famed mythologist and historian of
religion, Marcie Eliade said:
“The fall into modernity has been the
single most catastrophic event to ever afflict the
human spirit.”
What he means is that when we moved off the land
and into urban areas, we lost our sacred connection
to the Earth, animals, plants, and our own
consciousness of being one with the Earth.
The second solution I propose is for national,
regional and local mentorship groups to get gender
specific. The elephant in the room is
“political correctness.”
Yet the biological and psychic facts are that
men and women are hard-wired in fundamentally
different ways. And if we are to strengthen and
deepen mentorship programs across the United
States, we need to own up to and implement a gender
specific context which will have salience and
impact.
There is a fierce urgency to the Now -- for
communities across our country struggling to retool
and realign economic structures and public
services. And there is a fierce urgency for older
men to mentor young men who are seeking a path
forward in The Long Emergency.
©2010, Forrest
Craver
* * *
Man becomes great exactly in the degree to which
he works for the welfare
of his fellow man. - Mahatma Gandhi
Forrest
Craver has been doing men’s work for more than
20 years. He was senior interviewer for Wingspan:
Journal of the Male Spirit for many years. He has
led or co-led more than 40 retreats or workshops
for men including The Mankind Project, Men in
Recovery, and regional clergy retreats for United
Methodist and ELCA denominations. He is a lawyer
and a nationally recognized fundraising consultant
for nonprofit groups. He is the author of a short
book of Spiritual Poetry entitled “This Well
Has No Bottom” and is finishing a book about
intergenerational breakthrough approaches for boys
and men in American culture. His websites are
cravercreativeservices.com/and
transitioncolorado.ning.com/profile/forrestcraver
or eMail.He
lives and works in the Denver metro
area.
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