..........

May, 2000

Loyalty is a virtue men do very well. Someone wrote that to me recently. And I think he's right. Men's loyalty feelings are so deep they seem hardwired. Loyalty seems to come with the plumbing.

I've talked about the way men's loyalty is minimized in many family relationships. Men, as fathers, give up a lot to provide for a family. Some things given up are opportunities consciously foregone. Other things foregone are not consciously realized. But modern men have lost that sense of recognition from loved ones for much of what they do because of their loyalty.

The world of the marketplace seems to mirror the world of the family. Even though corporate America has trashed much of the virtue of loyalty, these same corporations could not function without a core of men and women who exhibit a high degree of loyalty. Again, there is much loyalty unrecognized, loyalty from the bottom up, yet not from the top down.

Thinking of corporate America and other institutions of the patriarchy saddens me, when I think of so many loyal men being manipulated by their own virtue. I think of so many loyal men who do not get loyalty in return. I happen to think that most men are good men, trying to do the right thing. Sure, some men will cut moral corners, especially if it will benefit family. But most men do not use greed as a moral compass. Most men are looking for the higher good. Most men learned this from their fathers.

What most men don't realize is that our fathers live inside us our whole lives. And we are loyal to their words and expectations, far more than any of us realize. We resent, sometimes, when our wives tell us we are acting like our fathers, even though we know it's true. We'd like to think we're more independent than that. We'd like to think we've grown up. Yet we often find ourselves defending our fathers in the same sentence, reminding of his strengths while ignoring his weaknesses.

Robert Bly talks of a cellular connection between father and son. In many ways our fathers live in us, as deep as our cells. And deep in our cells is that loyal father teaching us that same virtue, clutching that moral compass.

Patriarchal institutions tend to take advantage of what most men have learned from their fathers. Be honest. Be a good team player. Be loyal. So most men are very loyal, to their fathers and to the institutions they represent. That is what saddens me.

An overused strength can become a weakness. My father always wanted the best for me. He never realized how much his overused loyalty affected me, how I struggled with issues of loyalty, starting with the Vietnam war. My father never learned that in order to mature a man must grow past loyalty to his father and to the patriarchs. He must give up being a son. He must stop using filial loyalty as a moral compass, the loyalty to another man's judgment and vision.

Yet my father was never disloyal to me even when I started to question his patriarchy and his views of loyalty. He was loyal even when I put him in a loyalty bind. He never turned around and put me in that bind.

My personal father was betrayed by so many cultural fathers. It saddens me to think of his spirit being minimized and manipulated by older men demanding loyalty. It saddens me to think of so many sons being loyal to older men who take advantage of their capacity, and their need, for cellular loyalty. These are the older patriarchs of corporations, churches, the military, lodges.

The patriarchy has too many fathers, too many patriarchs, who have betrayed our loyalty. They hurt my father. Through him they have hurt me. I used to be mad at my father for my hurt. But I now realize that in this matter of loyalty and betrayal my father and I are blood brothers with the same wounds. Somehow, that is comforting. Somehow that makes me less sad. Somehow, by his loyalty to me, in spite of his allegiance to the patriarchs, he gave me the strength to realize that loyalty to another's vision must cease being the highest, strongest virtue for a man. I was then able to realize that unless that loyalty is to his own vision first. a boy never becomes a man.