Men, Women, and Wisdom

Men, Women, & Wisdom:
Partnership and Parenting in a Wounded Society
an Interview with Robert Bly
by Bert Hoff (Editor, M.E.N. Magazine)

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Robert: ....Men and women have to talk out, and talk through, the pain and anger that
they feel in their ordinary mud-and-water lives before they are ready to talk about wise
women or wise men. Wisdom is only genuine if the anger is worked through, and we have
not yet worked through the anger between men and women.

Bert: When I was having a conversation with a friend the other day, we noted that there
didn't seem to be any wise women or wise men around. Or else they're around and we don't
respect any of the wisdom that comes with age.

Robert: That's right. We're in a sibling society, or a horizontal society, or a flat society, or a
fatherless society, even a motherless society. More accurately, it's a society without elders.
We're just in the process now of realizing just how much we have lost by killing the elders.
We didn't kill them literally, as the young people in Cambodia did. They killed all the
teachers, the journalists, the Ph.D. people, the priests. Cambodia is elderless in a different
way than we are, but theirs and ours have much in common. I think there's a much deeper
rage there, partly because the young ones have a rage against the elders, and then a
subsequent rage and grief about the people who literally killed the elders. But when you're
looking at young gang members, you're looking at people with no elders. So we either
develop elders, or the amount of violence will increase year by year.

Bert: We seem to have a penchant for independence. "I've got to be me. I've got to do my
own thing." This seems to go along with a built-in rebellion against authority.

Robert: There's a book called Habits of the Heart that came out a few years ago. Six
sociologists interviewed a lot of Americans. The habit of the heart that they found was
individualism. Men said, "I don't worry about the community. I focus my main effort into my
career," and so on and so on. Some of the women said, "I don't think we should sacrifice as
much for our children as our parents did. We have to look out for ourselves."

This individualism is not only a male matter. It's a female matter as well. Of course, the
ultimate result is that we leave the children unparented. A man said to me, "Robert, you
talk about the single-parent family a lot. I want to tell you we're on the way to the
zero-parent family." I must say, the rage of the unparented is getting stronger and stronger.
I admire very much the work that Michael Meade, Harris Breiman and Bob Roberts are doing,
working with gang members and men in prison. They're the ones that need the eldering the
most.

Bert: I wonder if this creation of a generation of unmentored, unparented kids isn't
crossing class lines. Dr. Pepper Schwartz of the University of Washington recently came out
with a book about the ideal relationships. An article in our local paper held her and her
husband up as having an ideal relationship. He shares in household duties, and they're both
equally respectful of each other's careers. They spend a lot of time together, for example,
having dinner late after they both have had a long workday. What the article glosses over is
that while they're working late and having dinner over here in Seattle, a nanny is taking
care of their child at home on Bainbridge Island.

Robert: There's that individualism again, disguised as a "new relationship."

Bert: So what's the difference between a healthy individuation and a destructive,
self-centered individualism?

Robert: Don't ask me! I don't know. I do know that as one gets older, one realizes that the
time spent with your children is in many ways the most important time.

Bert: That's a realization that comes too late for many of us.

Robert: But there's still a lot that one can do with children. Children, even in their
twenties and thirties, welcome interest by their parents in their ideas, their careers, their
children. I think the most important task I have right now is to be a grandfather to my first
grandson. I think that his mother knows, from being around others her age, how few
grandparents are really in the picture, and how much a child needs a grandmother and
grandfather.

Bert: There's so much geographic distance. You remember Malidoma Somé saying in
Of Water and the Spirit that the grandparents are the ones who are the closest to the
child.

Robert: Yes, Robert Johnson also says that. The new child has just come from the Other
World, and the grandparents are going to be there soon, so they have a lot in common. The
grandparent says to the child, "What's going on over there?"

Bert: Where do you see the work-conferences like the one here in November and the
videotape series-taking us?

Robert: I don't really know. First of all, it's a question of learning, both for the teachers
and the people there. Marion Woodman asks women in her workshops not to be
unconscious mothers, simply passing on what you got from your mother and your
grandmother. We have to ask men not to be unconscious fathers-not to pass on the
shaming and the violence, or whatever it is, that they took in. There's a chance in this
generation to become conscious mothers and conscious fathers. That's a tremendous
possibility, a tremendous responsibility. For better or for worse, some of the unconscious
matter is releasing its magnetic hold on this generation.

Second, that also means we can try to be a conscious wife or a conscious husband. The
effort is to describe what it would be like to be in a relationship and be conscious, so that
when you suddenly regress to 12 years old, the partner doesn't. When a husband regresses
to be a four-year-old, the wife will usually follow him and become four, too. Then there are
endless arguments that come to nothing. If the wife regresses to 13 years old, the man
automatically, through this entirely unconscious whirlwind of ancient hurricane material,
immediately regresses to be 13 also. That's what usually destroys marriages, the two
13-year-olds. The adults are doing OK. There's a tremendous amount of material to be
learned right there. One can learn to be a conscious partner, whether one is in a gay
relationship or in a straight relationship. The whirlwind stuff works exactly the same.

The third thing, I would think, is to make sure that hope is kept alive. When some young
men and women who are very discouraged about relationships see an adult man and an
adult woman come together and learn from each other, a little more hope comes into them.
Sometimes afterwards, the weary and disappointed feel a little more hope in their
relationships with the other gender.