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Chapter 12 (Part 1) - The Elderless Society

In our society, there is no reality beyond the marketplace. There is no recognition of the place, beyond the village, where indigenous peoples found meaning and manhood. A quote from Larry Anderson, a perennial major league relief pitcher, comes to mind: "You are only young once, but you can be immature forever." In our culture it is so easy to be eternally a boy of summer, easy to stay an unguided adolescent. It is so easy to be stuck in the village, when we are meant to face the wilderness. It's too easy to stay a businessboy.

This is the crucial stage of the initiatory journey. The boy, whose inside age is now adolescent, is at the village boundaries, still looking wistfully backward toward security and fearfully ahead toward risk and the unknown. He is like the god, Janus, the god of doorways and transitions. Janus had two heads looking in opposite directions. As William Bridges speaks in his Janus time of looking back, "I could yell for help, in hopes that my mother or the third grade teacher or my scoutmaster will come and find me."

If a man has done his healthy adolescent work, he is ready to look resolutely ahead. Excitement is added to his fears. He is ready for total separation from the village and all that is familiar. He starts being anxious to move on. He finds himself wanting to face the danger of the wilderness. He is drawn to the ordeal.

Sometimes men are compulsively attracted toward danger because of the archetypal need for an ordeal experience. But they get stuck in a series of meaningless risks because there is nobody to guide them toward more important dangers. Youth gangs are like this. Boys face the danger of death or prison in order to be a man in the eyes of the rest of the gang. They are looking for a test that brings out manhood. They instinctively move toward risk and death.

There is also what I call the Evel Knievel syndrome. I remember Evel trying to rocket across the Snake River Canyon. This danger had the drama of initiation but not a great deal of its meaning. Men like Evel usually say they want to feel more "alive" in courting danger, usually in some sport or dare. I believe them. Initiation does make a man feel more alive. Yet it takes something more than facing danger to make initiation work.

Now we are nearing the second big stage of the initiatory process. The ordeal looms ahead. If a man has contacted his adolescent and started the process of fathering him, the man will be prepared for the ordeal. He will be prepared for the coming of the elder in the middle of the night.

This chapter is about the role of the elder in the life of the initiate, and in the life of a man. His is such a crucial role that he needs a good deal of time. His role is so crucial that it is archetypal. As I said about archetypes, they are universal human experiences that we carry in our psyches. Because the elder experience is archetypal, the elder is sleeping within every man, waiting to be awakened. He is also alive in other men who have found him.

The Elder

The elder is the archetype of the senex, or the wise old man. He represents a wisdom and awareness beyond our personal experience, beyond the boy's experience. He represents a viewpoint of life that one finds only beyond the marketplace. He represents a new form of consciousness that holds the key to the boy's manhood. He is like a new coach who, because of his wisdom, turns a program around. He is like a new software program that suddenly brings a connection to the wealth of knowledge on the Internet.

The elder represents a higher level of consciousness. He is usually experienced first as an outside elder, as a wise man we come in contact with, either personally or through reading. Most often we need the exterior experience of an elder before the elder within is awakened. Most archetypes need an external trigger before they can appear internally. Unfortunately, we are an elderless society. This makes it much harder to get the internal elder fully triggered.

The elder represents a totally new view of life, a view that is in opposition to a man's conventional, familiar beliefs. He represents a wisdom beyond personal experience. The indigenous peoples viewed this wisdom as coming from their ancestors, as well as their gods. The ordeal was the time to be introduced to these ancestors and to face their terrifying gods. We can view this archetypal wisdom as slowly being learned over generations and millennia. Jung called this archetype the "2 million year-old man" inside. He saw this wise man archetype residing in the collective unconscious of every man's psyche. The indigenous people viewed this ancient wisdom as residing in their ancestors, who were accessible to them through ordeal and prayer.

In an elder society, the elder appears when the adolescent is nearing readiness. He suddenly becomes prominent in the lives of the boys growing toward initiation. Older boys notice the elders looking at them from a distance trying to tell if they are ready. They test themselves in preparation for their coming ordeal. Boys expect the elder to come and change their lives profoundly. They wonder if they will succeed or even if they will survive. They are often of two minds, wanting their manhood yet fearing their test.

The elder provides a clear path to their manhood. His presence is a daily reminder of their next steps. Boys take some comfort in knowing that they will not be sent to ordeal before the elders' wisdom recognizes their readiness. They also have a deep sense that the elders want them to succeed, and will guide them through the process. They know that the elders will push them beyond their known limits and the limits of the village. They know that the elders know of mysteries beyond the village that holds the secrets to their manhood.

In an elderless society, there are many older men but few elders. When there are no elders there is no witness that there is an essential reality beyond the village boundaries. There is only the illusion that somehow manhood takes place in the marketplace, by young men mimicking older men. There is the illusion that initiation only involves the persona. There are no elders to point to a whole different time and place of transformation. So there are no clear pathways to maturation. Authentic adolescent longings for a special, unique sense of self are crushed, or go unrecognized.

Real adolescent dreams become unrealistic fantasies without the elder's translation and guidance. When the ordeal time gets close in an elderless, modern society, a man is caught totally unawares by his feelings of alienation, aloneness, dissatisfaction. As I have said, this time usually comes when a man is in his late 30's or 40's, sometimes his 50's. This Janus time of midlife comes totally unexpected. The man becomes a victim of the psychological denial of a whole society. He becomes a victim of the denial of the elder.

An unaware man doesn't realize that he is experiencing the awakening of the elder within. Besides experiencing the yearnings of the adolescent for something more, he is experiencing the questioning of the elder. The elder sees the world from a totally different perspective, different from the father or mother. The elder knows of possibilities that are beyond the consensus view of manhood.

Questioning one's life direction and one's priorities is a sure sign the adolescent is ready for something more. Questioning the direction and priorities of society around him is a sure sign the elder is starting to emerge in a man.

Perhaps a man is starting to question his job. Is this job really something I want to do until retirement? Does my work reflect who I am now? Do I have more to give than this job allows? Do I really need the hassle of this job to get that new upscale house? Have I been led in the wrong direction most of my life? There is the elder.

Sometimes the questioning has more to do with relationships. Is my wife the companion I want to live with the rest of my life? What person in my life can I really count on? Can the 'right woman' really make me happy? Has marriage made me feel like I want to feel? There is the elder.

A man may question his faith. What are my bottom line values? Is there a higher power? Are my life goals worth the effort and pain? What does it really mean to act morally? There is the elder.

The elder archetype bears the wisdom that our crisis of alienation and separation is necessary. This internal sense of a different rightness can be viewed as intuition. This intuition can be seen as the voice of the ancient elder within. The elder within gives us the sense that we must go past what we are taught is real. He coaxes us to find reality for ourselves, even if it is dangerous. The elder causes us to question other's views of what is good, even if the vast majority agree. The elder always questions the consensus reality of the marketplace and the village, as he lives in the emerging man.

Yoda

In the Star Wars myth, the elder is primarily represented by Yoda. In Greek myths elders are like the sky gods, bringing rational knowledge of the mysteries, as well as top down wisdom from on high. The patriarchy is primarily based on Greek myth. In Germanic myths there are more trolls and elves and dwarves, gods of the earth and intuition. These elders bring an earthy, nature wisdom of the powers of the wilderness. This wisdom comes from unlikely, overlooked places on the ground, where wisdom has been stored since aboriginal times.

Yoda represents the Germanic myth. Yoda is 900 years old, a true senex and bearer of much ancient wisdom, pre-technical but very strong. Yoda represents prehistoric, pre-Christian wisdom. Especially to modern, Western eyes, Yoda's wisdom is packaged in the unlikeliest, countercultural way. Yoda lives on the other side, and incorporates its wisdom. He knows the Force. He has been taught by the Force. Few in the technological, patriarchal galaxy even know of him, much less reverence his wisdom.

When Luke is just about ready, he is led by his second father to Yoda. Actually, the galactic situation causes Luke to be thrust into his ordeal prematurely. Yet he has an elder, though a very frustrated one, and that makes the difference. There is a Zen saying that holds a truth about elders: "When the student is ready the teacher will come." Sometimes readiness is just a sincere desire to do whatever it takes to become a better person, and the humble action to seek someone with more wisdom.

On first meeting, Luke is at least irritated with Yoda, if not downright scornful of him. Luke says, "I'm looking for a great warrior." He expects a traditional, cultural warrior, like any naive adolescent would. Instead he finds a cross between a dwarf and a troll acting like a little child. Offhandedly the dwarf comments that "war is not what makes one great."

Luke is frustrated, proud, and hopeless. He cannot find his image of a Jedi warrior and master. Luke flunks his first test of humility. He is still filled with childish attitudes and adolescent fantasies. More ominously, he is full of pride. As Obi Wan says, "he has too much of his father in him." He is still an unhealed, fatherless adolescent looking to typical patriarchal symbols of status and power. He is full of fantasy. Yoda says he's only a boy.

At first, Yoda denies his help to Luke. As he says, "The boy has no patience! He is not ready. He is looking for excitement. That is not a Jedi." Just looking for adventure is not the motivation needed for maturity. The Evel Knievel syndrome is a terminal disease in the eyes of an elder. Unbridled passion is a recipe for disaster.

Yoda finally takes Luke as a disciple for the sake of the galaxy. Luke is an orphan, forcefully separated from mother and father, aunt and uncle. He has been separated by unfortunate circumstance, not by an elder. Luke suffers from his father wound and has not had a strong fathering foundation to prepare him for an elder. As Yoda says, speaking of Luke's father wound, "there is much anger in him." Luckily for us, an elder can make up for our lack of preparation once we humble ourselves and drop our patriarchal expectations. Yoda is very tired after 900 years of life. And Luke does not seem ready. Yet there is a crisis in the whole galaxy and Luke seems their only hope, for he is of the family of Skywalker.

Luke symbolizes the next adolescent generation, the next generation that needs the elder's guidance in order to eventually rule wisely. Elders are always concerned about the following generations. Yoda represents a thousand generations of Jedi warriors still concerned about the future of the galaxy. They are concerned "with peace and justice", the values of the other side. They represent Erik Erikson's ideal of mature men. They are 'generative' men who also represent the best of warrior energy.

Elders do not fight the battles. They prepare young men to battle for what is right, based on values beyond self-aggrandizement. Elders are like grandfathers who are no longer concerned with the trappings of manliness, yet have a great concern about their grandsons. They are not like patriarchal generals who send men to company wars to retain their own status. Elders often end up suffering greatly to show their novices the way of wisdom.

What Yoda tries to do with Luke is what all elders do. He talks of the Force and its values. He tries to teach Luke of unseen, transcendent power that can work through Luke himself. He tries to give Luke a sense of the call within himself. He witnesses to another reality that gives meaning to all that is happening in the galaxy. He gives Luke the greatest gift one man can give another: the possibility of a new and truer sense of self.

Elders Today?

So where are the elders in our modern society? How do we get the eldering we need to kick us in the pants, while at the same time giving us the clear message that we are called to something more.

The Catholic Church gives this eldering job to the saints, who portray the Church's institutional wisdom. Saints are similar to the ancestors of the indigenous peoples. Buddhists talk of bodhisattvas who hold this wisdom for mankind to learn. Traditional Christians look to Christ himself as this wisdom figure. Many Eastern religions still venerate ancestors as wisdom figures.

Many look to organized religion for guidance about the other side, for this is their explicit and formal domain. In the West, Judaism, Christianity and Islam originally showed people another side that their society did not recognize. They were steps forward in history by recognizing a more important reality beyond the village marketplace. They also showed men and women the importance of their inner lives and their personal relationship to a higher power.

Today, organized religion usually takes us to the village boundaries spiritually, and to that extent is quite healthy. It teaches rules and ethics that encourages the marketplace and family to function well. Religion seems to have a good place in keeping a well-ordered, civil village. Religion can also provide good fathering when it give a man support in learning to sacrifice for family and the common good. For a man, it also teaches him some ethical marketplace ropes, although the marketplace honors these rules inconsistently. This type of fathering can lay the foundation for his ordeal.

However, most organized religions stop at the point when the elder in most needed, the point of being pulled into the ordeal. Fr. Richard Rohr, in talking of spirituality and the other side, has written a profound book on masculine spirituality called The Wild Man's Journey. In it he says, "Although we like to think that the Catholic Church fostered spiritual development in the past, this is not entirely true. The Church promoted spirituality only for that small percentage of Catholics who were priests or members of religious orders. The spirituality of the laity (if we might dignify it with such a title) was quite simply: Pray, pay, and obey." Obedience was to a patriarchal institution. Priests, who were exposed to spiritual eldering, were not encouraged to elder the vast majority of the Church. Ministers of most religions, today, still do not understand eldering.

The laity in many religions were and are told to ignore the inner life and to model exterior standards. Spiritual eldering has become merely moral education. Spirituality has become the art of following supposedly spiritual rules. Most of the controversy between religions, or between religion and society, is disagreement over moral rules. The eldering of the inner life, and the nurturing of an other worldly call, has been lost. If organized religion does not do the work of introducing a man to the other side, as Yoda did, then it becomes merely patriarchal. It becomes a tool of the patriarchy to enable a well-ordered village and marketplace.

Patriarchal religion does not bring a man to the higher power and his true self. Instead, it provides a man with the tools to build his persona. Maybe eldering is not the job of organized religion. Maybe we ask too much of organized religion. Maybe organized religion is meant to bring us in a healthy way to a certain point, just like a second father.

I do know that there are strong and wise elders in each of these religious traditions who see the ancient wisdom and translate it to the next generation. However, they are either hidden or heretic. They are usually not the famous ones that draw large congregations. They are the unlikely Yoda's who work humbly in spiritual direction or teaching. They draw on the immense wisdom of their religious tradition, usually in ways that put off the majority of their peers and church members. They rarely talk of the rules. They often seem to be breaking them. Sometimes they are vilified by the very church they are trying to serve.

Sometimes they are famous, like a Martin Luther King or a Mahatma Gandhi, and they are killed because they have pushed a society beyond its capacity to hear the message. Some famous leaders find themselves forced into a wider elderhood after they reach importance, like the Dalai Lama. The famous ones are often the heretics of their times, becoming heroes later, after they are dead and less of a threat.

Elders are there within every strong religious tradition. But, like Yoda, they are often hidden away in some swamp place. They have to be sought after, with a strong motivation and much humility.

The encounter with the elder is often through books, other times in person. A man can usually spot an elder for his carelessness about fame or status or even about affecting his students. His concern is much deeper than that. When a man finds an elder, he has to be ready for the unexpected. He will not hear what he expects. He will be, like Luke, shocked at finding an elder voice in an old man acting like a child.

Past chapters of Toward Manhood are archived.

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