“The Rude Guy”
Everyone who is calm and sensible is insane – Rumi

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Male Initiation, turning boys into men

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[Male Initiation, turning boys into men.]

This is Rich Zubaty, [RG voice] The Rude Guy. [/RG voice] Ideology exterminator. Lawnmower of lies. Encyclopedia of authenticity… Welcoming you to the Reality Cult. Welcoming you, BACK to the steady… drip… drip… drip… [add drip sound effect] of your very own conscience.

The results of my questionnaire about what shows to do next, scored a lot a hits for Huey Long, the populist hero, the inventor of FDR’s New Deal. Lots for Huey Long, but no votes at all for male initiation. I couldn’t figure out why, until I realized, NO ONE in our society, has been initiated into masculinity, and therefore NO ONE KNOWS what the hell initiation is, or why it’s important. So that’s what I’m gonna talk about.

Men today are pretty fucked up. Young ones, and old ones. We don’t have any REAL leaders out there… no Martin Luther King’s or Nelson Mandela’s or Huey Long’s. And the reason is simple. Our boys are being raised by women, not by men. Our young men don’t know what healthy masculine values ARE. Our society is being led by a bunch of corrupt sell-outs – Dick Cheney’s and Rush Limbaugh’s – so what are the boys SUPPOSED to conclude, except that the path to success, is to become corrupt sell-outs themselves.

Every society has faced this problem. But the ones that endured, came up with a solution. And, not so amazingly, they came up with the SAME solution, invented over and over again, from Norway, to Kenya, to the jungles of Peru. It’s called male initiation. What it means, is that the old men take the time, and spend the energy, to turn their boys, into men. Real men with real masculine values. Not assholes, who make a lot of money and fuck over everyone else in the process. Real men.

So… I’m gonna read some bits out of Chapter Four of my book, What Men Know That Women Don’t, to give you a taste of male initiation. Just a taste. It would take me five podcasts to cover, only the male initiation material, in that book, and I’m not gonna do that. At least not yet. So, if you want more, you’re best bet is gonna be to ask YOUR friendly librarian, to order the book from amazon.com. What Men Know That Women Don’t

[African drumming]

Page 211
Every enduring culture in the history of the world has offered boys a male initiation ritual – death of the boy, birth of the man. Guess what’s missing in our culture.

Says Robert Bly:
The boys in our culture have a continuing need for initiation into male spirit, but old men generally don’t offer it. The priest sometimes tries. [Sez me: He puts the boy in a dress, and has him recite some platitudes that please his mom.] But, sez Bly, here is what the Hopis and other Native Americans do for their boys. The old men take the boy away from his mom at the age of twelve, and bring him down into the all male area of the kiva. He stays down there for six weeks, and does not see his mother again, for a year and a half…

The fault of the nuclear family isn’t so much, that it is crazy and full of double binds. The fault is that the old men outside the nuclear family, no longer offer an effective way, for the son to break his link with his parents, without doing harm to himself…The ancient societies believed that a boy becomes a man only through ritual and EFFORT – only through the ACTIVE intervention of the older men.

It is becoming clear to us that manhood does not happen by itself… it doesn’t just happen because we eat Wheaties. The active intervention of the older men means, that the older men welcome the younger men into the ancient, mythologized, instinctive, male world…Unquote

Bly says that one of the best stories he’s heard about this kind of welcoming, is the one that takes place each year among the Kikuyu in Africa.

When a boy is old enough for initiation, he is taken away from his mother, and brought to a special place the men have set up, some distance from the village. He fasts for three days. The third night he finds himself sitting in a circle around the fire with the older men. He is hungry, thirsty, alert and terrified. One of the older men takes up a knife, waves it ominously, then opens up a vein in his own arm, and lets a little of his blood flow into a gourd. Each older man in the circle, opens his arm with the same knife, as the gourd goes around, and lets some blood flow in. When the bowl arrives at the young man, he is asked to drink it, to nourish himself from them, the elders.

In this ritual the boy learns a number of things. He learns that nourishment does not come only from his mother, but also from MEN. And he learns that the knife can be used for many purposes, besides wounding others.

He is now welcome among the men, and they begin to teach him the myths, stories, and songs, that embody distinctive male values: not only competitive values, but spiritual ones as well.

Now that the old men don’t consciously, ritually, welcome the boys, what happens? In the nineteenth century grandfathers and uncles still lived in the house, and old men mingled frequently with boys. Through hunting parties and hay baling, and through local sports, older men spent much time with younger men, and brought knowledge of male soul and spirit to them…Much of that chance for incidental mingling has ended. Men’s clubs and societies have steadily disappeared. Grandfathers live in Phoenix, or old people’s homes, and many boys experience only the companionship of other boys their own age, who, from the point of view of the old initiators, know nothing at all.

Now here’s the killer.

Says Bly:
During the sixties some young men drew strength from WOMEN, who in turn had received some of their strength from the women’s movement. One could say that many young men in the sixties, tried to accept initiation from WOMEN. But only men can initiate men, as only women can initiate women. Boys need a second birth. A birth from men. Unquote.

Only men, can turn boys, into men.

All the young men in this country are alienated. Alienated from society. Alienated from themselves. And how has the machine of civilization responded? By creating the “information revolution” – yet another computerized, feminized attempt, to solve the problem, by shoveling on more information. We are inundated with advice about drinking distilled water, or growing your own papayas, or eating Vitamin C, or avoiding fats; meanwhile, our younger men are slashing each other to bits, wallowing in a mindswamp of torment and confusion. And where’s DAD? (more…)