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Chapter 7
The Vader Voice
The father represents a view of the world outside the family and the mother's hut. To indigenous peoples the father's world was the marketplace of the village. Indigenous people knew that the marketplace was necessary for the survival and entertainment of the people, but only if it was infused with the values and world view learned in the initiatory wilderness beyond the marketplace. Boys in indigenous villages knew that the world of the father was like a half way house and school on the way to initiation. The father shared necessary masculine energy and taught necessary skills that would be needed for initiation. He also showed the son that he no longer needed the nurturing of the mother to survive.
In modern times the father's world is first the world of the school and then today's social and business world. The modern father's world brings us to the so-called patriarchy. The word patriarchy means rule by fathers. In a patriarchy, the father's rules are the last word in manhood. In a patriarchy, the father's world holds the highest values and goals of the culture. Elder values are nonexistent.
We live today in a patriarchy where the cultural fathers' values of marketplace success are paramount. In our modern patriarchy, the highest values reside in the world of business, and power is used to protect commerce. In our patriarchy, there is no world beyond this marketplace world. Manhood success is measured by material success.
From a patriarchal viewpoint the marketplace is where manhood is found. This is the place a man is initiated. From the view of a patriarchal society, the marketplace is the only reality a man should aspire to. In this reality, profit is the 'bottom line' and financial success is the ultimate criteria of manhood. There is no next step. There is no realization that a man must separate from the father, as well as a mother, in order to become a man. In a patriarchal society there is no room for elders and the inner journey into a deeper reality.
Here, the father wound goes even deeper than the wounds from our own fathers. The patriarchy tells us that identifying with this marketplace father is the end of the line, the goal of our manhood. Much of modern society's yardstick for male maturity is based on Freud's Oedipal struggle. Our cultural assumption is that the end of male development results in the son's identity with the father, causing a boy to also identify with the patriarchy, the greater father.
In our cultural scenario, the boy learns to be the good son of a father culture that values the hard work and productivity of a marketplace reality. By the fruits of this productivity, a son moves toward manhood. He becomes a good provider to his family and a good, contributing citizen of his community. In this psychological scenario, the more a man identifies with the rules and mores of the father culture the more mature he is. The more 'productive' he is the more a man he is.
The patriarchy is the real author of the flawed training manual that is our bible. The patriarchy wounded our fathers who unknowingly wounded us. The patriarchy now creates the deeper father wound in all of us, because it takes advantage of our archetypal need for fathering. If the patriarchy fathered us, and then let us go to elders, it would be a blessing. But our patriarchy stops at the village boundaries, refusing to acknowledge the reality of the wilderness, withholding the clues to our deeper manhood.
Patriarchal Reality
Most men see themselves as 'realists'. They don't want to be seen as naive, idealistic, or crazy. For them there is only the one reality, the reality of material success and social well-being. The assumptions of their life go unchallenged. For someone to say that there is another reality, outside the village, is threatening. Going along with the program means staying within the agreed upon reality of the patriarchal culture, within our modern consensus reality.
A consensus reality is a reality that everyone in society unknowingly agrees to. It is a world view or paradigm that goes unquestioned. Questioners are considered heretics or lunatics. Sometimes some questioners are charitably called misguided prophets. Others are uncharitably done away with. An example of consensus reality from another time in history can give perspective on the patriarchal paradigm we now live in.
During Galileo's time the earth was considered the center of the universe. That bottom line reality had all kinds of implications for the reality of everything else. Because the earth was at the center of the universe, mankind was the center and reason for all life. God was up in heaven, above the moon, where unchanging truth resided. The pope, known as Papa as he is today, knew truth better than anyone else because he was intermediary between God and the people. Society was structured on a hierarchical order with God at the top, patriarchal authorities in the middle, and the rest of us looking up to find the truth. The father archetype was paramount because the father was the stepping stone to God.
In Galileo's time, the Bible was true in every word. And it talked about the sun revolving around the earth. As Martin Luther said of Copernicus, "This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth." The people who said that this geocentric universe didn't work were labeled as crazy or evil. These people pointed to another reality that was foreign and uncomfortable to consider. This reality was also a threat to the patriarchal church which controlled the life of the Western world at that time, and patriarchal governments who received their authority from the church. A new astronomy threatened the foundations of their current patriarchal culture. It created the possibility of a different consensus reality, a new mythos that actually held the seeds of our modern, political democratic ideals.
Copernicus and Galileo were correct. They had the truth. They were also at odds with the current consensus reality. They were punished for believing in another paradigm. They were seen as disloyal to Church and God and the current father's world. They were seen as sinners.
Today, our consensus reality is still represented by the father. However, the father is no longer the pope, but the free market father, the commercial father of mercantilism and the democratic marketplace. In Galileo's time people were taught not to believe their own eyes. The Church would tell them what they were seeing. They were expected to see the world through the Church's eyes. In our culture, the patriarchal consensus reality tells us what is true. We are taught to see the world through the patriarch's eyes. As Sam Keen points out, "In the secular theology of economic man Work has replaced God as the source from whom all blessings flow."
Modern men are unknowingly affected by a view of manhood that is essentially a view of uninitiated men. This view is just as flawed as the view that the sun revolved around the earth. Thus, society acts as a dark father. This dark father keeps us stuck in the marketplace to bolster its own view of reality and to seek its own gain.
Take a corporation that is extremely competitive and hard-driving. It is probable that the culture of this corporation assumes that an employee gives most of his life to his work. He works long hours, is 'on call', does 'whatever it takes' to get the job done. A man's highest values are expected to coincide with the corporation's highest values. Though words like family values are mouthed as most important, the corporate family still demands the most allegiance.
The patriarchal consensus reality in these corporations is that profit, winning, status, money are the highest values. Other cultural considerations become secondary. William Pfaff, a syndicated columnist, writing in Notre Dame magazine, states: "A change in belief about the responsibilities of corporate management also has taken place. Maximized return on investment capital, the new argument goes, is the sole appropriate criterion for corporate decisions. The notion that 'social return' may be as important as fiscal return in assessing corporate conduct is ruled out." In many corporate cultures one is literally expected to give one's life for these values. In return for unquestioned loyalty, the father corporation guarantees care of the good son for life.
Sam Keen calls this new culture a 'corpoarchy'. The corpoarchy now defines much of our modern consensus reality. The corpoarchy has in many ways replaced the matriarchy and patriarchy in providing every man's social parenting. Anyone who tries to live their life by other values, such as family or a wider spirituality, will be seen as weak, not having the 'right stuff'. To the corporation, this person will be a traitor, or at the least, naive or incompetent.
As we will see, the values that indigenous people lived by were not discovered in the marketplace. Marketplace values were derived from values found in the initiatory wilderness, the other side of the spirit. The marketplace itself had no mystery, no answers to their deepest questions. It wasn't made for that. It was a tool, a vehicle only. Fathers deferred to elders in the realm of values.
In an elderless society, fathers, in the guise of patriarchy, fill the vacuum left by the absence of elders. In many ways, the problem is not the excesses of fathers as the dearth of elders. Elders have not shown us a new reality and haven't taught us how to find our own voices.
The Father Inside
The father, both in indigenous times and today, symbolizes the values of the well-ordered and efficient marketplace. In itself, the values and goals of the marketplace are good and necessary. The father's role in giving a boy the ego strength to negotiate this world of material survival and creative productivity is crucial. Also, the father's masculine energy is vital in leading the boy away from a kind of narcissistic, playboy mentality of the maternal world. The problem is that the marketplace is not where a man traditionally found his maturity. The modern problem is most men are stuck in the father's world, overstaying in a world of incomplete manhood.
Most men stay stuck in the patriarchal world because men hunger for a father's presence and a father's voice. Because sons hunger for masculine energy, a subtle thing happens inside every man. Sons unknowingly incorporate their personal father, as well as their patriarchal father, inside their psyches. These fathers, once inside, survive in the shadows of their mind, speaking to them of life and manhood. This is the origin of the father voice in every man. The father voice is absorbed into every man because we are hardwired to absorb it. Our father's words, influenced by the patriarchy's words, then become like a software program inside our minds, a program that we didn't know we had, running ceaselessly.
All of us have self talk that goes on in our heads most of the time. Unfortunately we rarely think about who is talking. Men who start the inner journey discover an inside male voice early in their journey. These men then start to wonder where those words come from. However, most men just assume this masculine voice is their own, containing their own thoughts and values. The problem is that uninitiated men arrogantly assume all their thoughts are their own. Not being familiar with the inner life they are naive about their inner workings. They rarely question that these voices and these words may come from somewhere else..
Unfortunately, some inner voices speak the words of others. What uninitiated men don't realize is that, starting as children, we all record in our heads the repeated dialogues from the most important people in our lives. Our brains are like tape recorders, picking up and storing important conversations, especially from fathers and other older men. These other older men could be teachers, coaches, priests, or media heroes we see on TV. These stored conversations, these tapes, are often the sources of the words playing in all men's heads. If these tapes contain the words of initiated men we possess wisdom that will bring us a long way toward manhood. If these tapes are of uninitiated men, carrying the patriarchal voices, these voices bring us very flawed wisdom and a great amount of shame.
This patriarchal voice originates in the deepest parts of our own psyches. This is both the voice of society that tells a boy how to be a man as well as the voice of expectations of a son's own father. Frank Pittman calls this voice the 'male chorus'. The chorus speaks for the masculine consensus reality. In our society it can be a good voice up to a certain point in a man's development. However, this voice invariably turns negative if a man strives to find his own initiatory path, outside the marketplace and outside the consensus reality of our time. Like the engulfing mother the competitive father tries to keep the boy in his domain after the boy is ready to move on. The patriarchal voice warns a man in stern and shameful ways if he strays outside patriarchal reality.
In my work I often deal with dreams as part of therapy. Invariably in the first part of a man's therapy his dreams will contain a dark, shadowy male figure who is trying to hurt him with a knife, gun, stick or other phallic object. Sometimes the dark male presence tries to destroy with an explosive. This male figure is the patriarchal archetype of the dark father that the man carries inside of him. Bombs and guns most often represent the angry words of the father aimed at the boy, negative explosions that destroy a boy's self-esteem and confidence. Knives, spears, and other long thin objects often represent the tongue of the father, using wounding words meant to harm. These dreams are one proof of the dark patriarchal voice, and presence, that resides deep in every man.
The Vader Voice
The father and his patriarchal voice resides in our unconscious. Unless the personal voice of a healthy, initiated father is strong, the patriarchal voice of our culture becomes our de facto father. The voice of a personal, uninitiated father merely strengthens and adds credibility to the voices of the patriarchy. Most of us have powerful patriarchal voices inside because our fathers unreflectively passed them along to us. For most men this patriarchal voice says things like "be in control", "work to take care of the family", "don't let the company down", "don't let them see you sweat", "winning is the only thing", "real men don't make mistakes". The patriarchal voice carries the commandments of the masculine mystique that Frank Pittman and Warren Farrell talk about. As Frank Pittman points out, "when we see men overdoing their masculinity, we can assume that they haven't been raised by men, that they have taken cultural stereotypes literally, and that they are scared they aren't being manly enough."
One of the strongest messages of the patriarchal voice is its incessant command to "be productive". This message plays in most men's minds, including myself, with the monotony of a misbegotten mantra. It seems to speak everywhere, not just at work, but at home or anywhere else where there is any free time. It speaks while trying to relax or be with friends. It starts to speak the moment one awakens and it reminds us if we sleep too late. This mantra creates a great deal of agitation if it is not followed. For in the patriarchy the proof of manhood and self-esteem is in productivity, only in productivity.
After the patriarchal voice gives its commandments it often adds the call words 'asshole', or 'dumbshit', or 'sorry fucker'. The voice acts like a tough drill sergeant with a new recruit. This is why I call it the Vader voice. The voice is usually angry because it comes from the dark father who sees failure as disloyalty. Like Darth Vader, the voice is there for its own dark purposes, the purposes of another Empire. Like Vader it tolerates no disloyalty or failure. There is more to say of Vader later.
The irony for 99.9% of men is we are all ultimately failures in the patriarchy. Few of us ever reach the top. There are few presidents of corporations or generals in the Army. There are even fewer presidents of the United States. I have talked to many successful executives who have thought of themselves as failures because they never made it close enough to the top. Yet the top is the only place the patriarchy really recognizes manhood. In the patriarchy there are thousands of losers to one winner. The winner is a man, king of the hill. The rest of us are still boys, never quite making it.
The Vader voice keeps reminding us of our sorry state and our failures, to shame us into continuing. This voice is so toxic because the losers never realize they are in a no-win situation. The truth is the patriarchy only prepares a man to be a winner. It prepares a man to soar, feeding his flying fantasies all along the way. Yet the system is set up so that most men crash, feeling like failed sons. Most men don't realize that the gaming tables are rigged, until it is too late. The system is set up to shame, and to keep men boys serving someone else's needs.
Fortunately it is never too late. But the answer is very unpatriarchal and paradoxical. As we will see, a man can only become a mature man by facing and integrating loss and separation. Loss is actually the doorway to manhood. Initiation involves learning to form an alliance with loss, in the depths of one's own person. But the patriarchy cannot recognize loss, and despises separation seeing it only as disloyalty. Winning is the only thing. Real manhood is outside its consensus reality. The Vader voice doesn't speak of loss as an opportunity. Loss is only a tragedy and a sign of failure. The image of the winner is the image of manhood.
Just before the stock market collapse in 1929 there were many men who felt briefly like winners. They had more money than they ever dreamed of from speculation in the stock market. When the collapse happened men lost millions. However many wealthy men were not bankrupt. They lost millions, but still held on to enough money to have a comfortable life. Yet there were many of these men, some still technically wealthy, who destroyed themselves through suicide, or lived as broken men, because they were no longer at the top. They couldn't stand the voice that called themselves losers. That voice ultimately destroyed them.
A young man came to counseling who had talent as an artist. He had gone to art school and done quite well. He was now living with friends, away from home, unsure of his next moves. He was a young man in his 20's in that 'tween' time I mentioned earlier. He felt confused and unmotivated. He had taken a job as a busser in a restaurant to get by. He felt discouraged that all his friends were getting married and had good jobs. He didn't want that life, but he couldn't get it out of his head that he should be productive and responsible like his father. He didn't recognize the patriarchal voice that is obsessed with production and social recognition. Neither could he see the falsehood of the patriarchal voice that said he should become a man by having a wife and family. As we will see the patriarchal voice most often talks of pseudo-initiations. In this case marriage, family, and a 'good job' were portrayed as this young man's initiation. His calling as an artist was seriously imperiled by his patriarchal voice and its false message of manhood. His road to manhood was blocked by words, words he thought contained his own rules.
The Dark Father Outside
The patriarchy is the embodiment of the competitive father. If a man also has a competitive father the Vader voice is doubly damaging. Many competitive fathers call their sons losers by word or action, magnifying the patriarchal voice. As Kindlon and Thompson point out, "a father's ultimate psychological weapon is criticism, because most sons remain acutely sensitive to a father's put-downs well into adulthood." However, the corporate patriarchal voice is the Vader voice most men encounter daily. The boss and boss's boss all the way up the ladder are taught to demean in order to control, to sap confidence to insure against separation. The corpoarchy is jealous of its sons because it needs its sons desperately.
I have encountered so many burnt out businessmen who work long hours exhausting themselves for bosses who never get enough. Their confidence is shot. Their self esteem is in shambles. All they want is some sign of approval. The only approval they get is the chance to keep their job in the hopes of getting the father blessing they yearn for. The corpoarchy knows of this archetypal need for a father's blessing and uses it well.
A successful businessman has a boss who is patronizing and demeaning much of the time. Less frequently the boss praises the man, telling him he is indispensable. Though the man knows that he needs to leave the position because of this uneven treatment he stays on for years. He doesn't realize that he has transferred his desperate father need to his boss. He doesn't realize that he lives for a father's approval, even if it is erratic and often followed by criticism. He doesn't realize that his competitive boss is acting like a competitive father. Many of his coworkers do not understand this man's passivity, nor does his wife. They don't realize, as he doesn't, that his father voice, now the voice of his boss, tells him he deserves such treatment as the price for a father's guidance. To everyone else around he is a winner. However, his patriarchal voice, magnified by the dark voice of his boss, doesn't allow this self concept. He continues to feel like a loser who couldn't make it without his boss. In some ways he unconsciously stays a loser so he can still have a father.
A man comes into counseling because of work stress. He is burnt out on a job he doesn't like. He is good at his job and is well respected. He makes a very good living for his family. Though he has the skills to move to other work he doesn't take that risk. He is depressed and starting to drink too much. His father worked for the same company for 40 years. His father didn't especially like the work but the pay was good and he supported his family. The son's patriarchal voice told him to stay in one job for the good of the family. The Vader voice said that risk was wrong if it was only for personal meaning. His own traditional father supported this cultural message by telling him that all jobs were for pay and not for "selfish" enjoyment. The patriarchal voice, and his own father's, sapped his hardwired motivation to find the answer to his burnout. Maybe his father gave his son this advice for his own good. Or maybe his father couldn't bear seeing his son making a success of his own dreams of freedom.
Facing The Voice
If the patriarchal voice is not sought out and dealt with, a man will be emasculated by it. He will mistake this voice as the initiating father who will introduce him to manhood. He will then be unconsciously acting from values and attitudes that he doesn't realize are affecting him so profoundly. He will be working from the illusion that he is his own man. He will be like a computer with an undetected virus inside. Or like a government with a mole deep inside the bureaucracy, spying and causing havoc.
The first thing a man must do when wrestling with father separation and his own personal journey is recognize that all the voices in his head are not his own. To a self-sufficient man this idea is ludicrous and threatening. Yet a man must start to realize that the consensus reality that everyone agrees to has shaped him, involuntarily, in ways that rob him of his freedom. He must realize his choices are contaminated and his freedom compromised. To realize this takes humility.
Secondly, a man must realize that the patriarchal voice has no interest in him becoming a mature man. The voice only has an interest in a man being a good son. Like Freud's theory, the patriarchy sees a man's maturity as residing in the patriarchy, no farther. Manhood, according to the patriarchy, resides in the marketplace, not the wilderness. And the son's job is to serve the marketplace.
Thirdly, a man must realize there are other voices, outside the patriarchy, that can give him wisdom about his masculinity. A man must realize that he must take risks and go to unknown territory to find these voices. In risking he must also face the pain of suffering the loss of the guidance of a father's voice.
The emerging men's movement as well as new psychological movements support my belief that identity with the father is not the goal of manhood. Even though many of the values espoused by the father culture are good in themselves, they are not enough. The idea that identification with the patriarchy is enough brings a man to the unfulfilled crisis point that most men come to.
As in the primitive initiation rites a man must separate from the father's world of the marketplace on his road to manhood. The separation moves a man from a state of unconscious obedience to a conscious place of choice. The ordeal brings a man to the first truly free choices in his life. He must leave the marketplace as a son to return to the marketplace as a man.
One of the most important parts of the work I do is to help men recognize the patriarchal voice inside. This is easier said than done. For most men the patriarchal voice and its unspoken marketplace assumptions become an overriding source of direction in life. The voice is their compass and counselor. It is also their prime motivation. The voice becomes a refuge when all else is confusing or threatening. Even when the voice is depreciating, when it is the Vader voice, it is more comforting than the confusion of separation.
I have worked with a number of men who started to question their patriarchal voice and found themselves overwhelmed. One very earnest man came into a session horrified. Without the patriarchal voice he could think of no other voice inside to motivate him or give him direction. Without the voice he felt he would fall part. The shock of how much of his life was ruled by this negative, unconscious voice was frightening to him.
Star Wars
Luckily there are also positive new lessons in our culture, and positive voices to listen to, that speak to the steps that heal the father wound and deal with the Vader voice. One of the great myths of our times, and one that we have all grown up with, is the Star Wars myth. This myth speaks to men struggling with the father wound and the patriarchal voice. I will follow this myth throughout the rest of this book, for it gives many clues to modern men's dilemmas.
Myths and fairy tales carry the psychological and spiritual truths of a culture. Joseph Campbell, our greatest mythologist, studied myth and fairy tale all of his life. He saw them as containing lessons for all of us in living a more human life. He felt that "in myth the problems and solutions shown are directly valid for all mankind." The Star Wars myth surprisingly contains some very strong and healthy psychological truths about fathering, initiation, eldering, and male growth.
George Lucas knew Campbell and respected him. He actually used many of Joseph Campbell's insights in writing the trilogy. In doing so he has succeeded in building a modern myth based on ancient truths. One of the ways that gives a clue to a myth is its start. As Michael Meade points out, myths talk about another reality so they often start out "once upon a time" or "in a time different from our time" or "in a place unlike any other place". Myths talk about the other side, the world inside, the inner reality. They talk about psychological truths rather than the truths of the senses. They talk of the world of the spirit rather than the world of matter. Brother David Steindl-Rast says that myths are not real, they are realer than real. The Star Wars myth starts "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away." Now we know we are talking about psychological and spiritual truth. Now we know we're talking about another reality outside our consensus reality.
In the Star Wars myth, the initial protagonist is Luke Skywalker, a great name for a hero who aspires to go beyond the village. He has no father. He is being raised by well-meaning relatives who are both uninitiated. His aunt and uncle continually try to convince him to stay in their compound, where it is safe from the wars raging in the galaxy. Well-meaning, uninitiated relatives will always be in the grip of the unconscious feminine which protects from risk and pain and keeps a man close to the hut.
Luke, however, is in the grip of the initiation archetype. He longs for the challenge of finding his identity by following his initiated father's path, the path of the warrior. His father once modeled positive masculine energy. He was not destructive with his power nor grasping for status and success. A Jedi Warrior had a code of protecting the weak and the altruistic community of the Jedi culture. He was a warrior similar to a samurai. His father's masculine energy was already taking Luke away from the safety of the hearth, represented by the compound, and the wider village, represented by the family business.
In the Star Wars myth Darth Vader turns out to be Luke's father. The word vader means father in German. The obvious play on words renders Darth Vader the Dark Father. Here is the father wound on a cosmic level. Luke's father has not only betrayed him, he has betrayed the civilization that Luke grew up in and the Jedi code of ethics that Luke yearns to follow. The father wound always feels like a betrayal. It always hurts at the core of our manhood.
Darth Vader tries to use his son's power to consolidate his own negative ambitions. He is the competitive father who has no interest in his son's individuality. The betrayal leaves Luke dazed and confused. Darth Vader does feel love for his son which ultimately saves them both. However at the time he has succumbed to the temptation to power in the galactic marketplace. Vader has turned his back on the Force, representing the other side, the place of true spirituality and his own true identity. He in turn is controlled by the Dark Emperor, the archetype of the dark patriarchy.
Darth Vader tries to turn Luke from his path and have Luke serve Darth's own power needs. Darth offers as a reward the power of this side, power in the galactic village. Darth threatens Luke with death if he will not turn. In other words, Darth will take away his support and motivation. He will cause Luke to fall apart, to be a nonentity in the life of the village.
Darth also goes after Luke with a phallic sword and ultimately wounds him by cutting off his right hand, the hand of power and patriarchal productivity. Darth knows if Luke does find his own identity Luke could take away his power and the power of the Empire. Darth knows the threat of the son who is also an individual.
Luke faces a terrible choice. He can be loyal to his father and join the Empire. He can be loyal to his mother and go back to the compound. Or he can risk death or humiliation by finding his own path as a Jedi warrior. One's own path of individuation will most often be seen as a betrayal by the wider society. It will be seen as a great breach of loyalty. The son will necessarily experience a conflict of loyalties. For most men the hardest accusation to endure is the one of being disloyal. Yet a boy has to be "disloyal" if he is to mature and find his own identity. Good old boys make lousy men.
To be a man a boy must ultimately separate from the father and the patriarchy. If he has good, initiated fathering his father will encourage the separation and prepare him for the emergence of the elder. If his father is absent and he relies on the patriarchy for his fathering, the Vader voice will discourage any separation. If he also has a competitive father, separation will be labeled betrayal. A man will then be stuck.
Luke is in great need of an elder who will lead him out of his loyalty dilemma. He will need to distinguish a true elder from the dark father who promises a pseudo-initiation. If he is lucky he will find a second father who can start the healing of the father wound and prepare him for the coming of the elder. Or he will have to face the ordeal, surprised and in crisis.
Many unprepared men are stuck in the world of the father, without an elder, a crisis ready to happen. This is, I believe, the genesis of the mid-life crisis. For many men the stuckness is in the world of work, and the patriarchal voice talks only of work as initiation. The next chapter talks of how men get stuck in the pseudo-initiation of marketplace work as a way of trying to find manhood while staying loyal to a father. This chapter deals with work as addiction.
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