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May
The Generative Man: A vision for us
As you read these words, all over planet earth the
forces of death, domination, and despair are led by
males of our species who are immature emotionally,
spiritually, and ethically.
Political and spiritual leaders constantly try
to understand why narcissism, sociopathic behavior,
and political corruption seem to become worse
rather than improving. They have sought almost
everywhere for the answer but have not looked in
the place where it can be found--in the masculine
soul and in our dismal failure to help the boys of
today to become initiated, mature, and responsible
men.
While no traditional culture should be
romanticized or idealized, we must awaken to the
fact that the ancient indigenous cultures of the
planet did a better job than Western colonialist
culture in finding ways to limit a narcissistic,
malignantly aggressive masculinity and to harness
its energies for the community. The challenge now
facing us is to learn from our forebears the
importance of male maturation and that mature,
responsible men are made--and not the result of
chronological aging.
Yet even our ancestors could not see beyond
their tribal visions to imagine the possibilities
of a vision of masculine maturity for our species
as a whole.
If the world is not soon to be ruled by heavily
armed "monster boys" in physically mature bodies,
then we must have an awakening of a new "EarthMan."
This new human man must be one who is conscious,
mature, and wise: one who --
- does not abuse women and children
- stands against tyranny in any form
- can show the way to the stewardship of
masculine power, aggression, wisdom, and love
for a democratic, just, peaceful, and
compassionate future for our grandchildren
throughout the world community--in order to
secure the well-being of the "seventh
generation" into our future.
What does this have to do with you? It
is my belief that men, women, and children of every
ethnic group and nation have suffered greatly
throughout the centuries through the abuse of power
by emotionally and spiritually uninitiated,
immature "monster boys" both foreign and
domestic.
It is my belief that a conscious and wise
response to this experience of domination by
immature males may enable Earth's Spirit Men to
become leaders in a worldwide movement to call for
a new and responsible masculinity at this critical
time in history. Many men around the world are now
beginning to awaken, not just to the enormity of
our challenge but to their immense potential for
spiritual and ethical leadership in the wider
world.
In this critical time I call on you and other
faithful and committed Spirit Men of your tradition
to bring your gifts to a pan-tribal coalition for
transformative leadership in what it means to be a
responsible and mature man in today's
EarthCommunity. It is my hope that you may be the
key vanguard in turning the tide against the reign
of the "monster boys" of Earth--and in the advent
of the mature EarthMan.
I am writing this column to invite your
partnership in visioning and embodying a new and
better Way for the human male. In my work I have
lifted up a comprehensive new vision for the mature
21st century male. We have already embarked on this
part of the Great Work of our time, but we have
barely begun embodying/incarnating this vision in
history. This incarnation will not occur without
your help.
In today¹s column I want to summarize the
vision of the new Generative Man that is actually
possible today. In subsequent columns I will offer
other reflections on achieving Optimal Manhood and
stewarding those powers for the human future.
What is an ideal generative man? Though
the portrait I suggest may have a somewhat
culture-specific coloring, the underlying manhood
structures remain trans-cultural. No man can fully
embody all of these qualities. However,
psychologists often will describe at length what is
wrong with us without providing us with an image of
what it would be like to be healthy and whole.
We’d like to address this imbalance here, for
“without a vision the people perish.”
The generative man, drawing on the
characteristics of the archetypal King, accesses
the Center, Transformer, Procreator, and Structurer
functions in an integrated way.
He is creative himself, and he welcomes
creativity in others. He provides a safe,
containing space where the people around him can
flourish. He offers encouragement by taking care to
really see others. In beholding his fellows he
mirrors and affirms them. He confirms their
individuality and the reality of their suffering
and their joy. He is conscious of and sensitive to
their underlying feelings and motives. He blesses
their lives by sanctifying the fruits of their
inner and outer labors.
Because he is himself secure and centered, the
generative man can allow others to be themselves.
He does not experience them as extensions of
himself, but recognizes when he is confusing his
own motives and values, his own hopes or fears,
with those of others. He is not easily thrown off
balance by others. Even hostile and aggressive
people cannot easily get to him. His integrity is
such that sarcasm, innuendo, accusation, and
confrontation have little effect upon him. He can
manage in most situations to defend his legitimate
personal boundaries firmly, and without hostility.
Yet when a wrathful response is called for, he is
able to act aggressively. There are situations that
present clear and present dangers. The generative
man, drawing upon his Warrior-King reserves,
responds with vigor in these situations to
neutralize his foes.
A generative man seeks to free himself of envy.
Possessing all the power he needs for his own life,
he can dispense to those who need and deserve it
the affirming energy of admiration. He confers
deserved riches-- symbolic and material--upon
members of his family, his friends, his business
associates, and others. Rather than belittle
others, he supports them in their attempts to
contribute something of value to society.
In a leadership role the generative man
evaluates his subordinates’ ideas and
performances objectively and with compassion. If
others have good ideas, he celebrates them,
implements them, and gives credit where credit is
due.
At home, he lavishes deserved praise upon his
children when they come to him for mirroring;
however, he never exaggerates his praise. He speaks
the truth, and the truth he speaks gives every
member of his family a firm basis for
self-evaluation and self-affirmation. His truthful
words and actions help others feel their own
reality and get a sense of their own authentic
being. He deflates grandiosity and enables others
to discover their realistic greatness.
A generative man may be a mediator between the
archetypal King and his fellow human beings. He may
be further along than others in accessing the King
and the other mature masculine archetypes without
being overwhelmed by them. He is a seasoned veteran
of the dialogue between Ego-consciousness and the
depths of the unconscious. He is familiar with the
inner landscape we all share--its dangers and
pleasures, its angels and demons, its illusions and
truths. With the wisdom of this familiarity, the
generative man can help others in their efforts to
integrate. He can reflect back to others what he
hears their inner adversaries and allies saying,
because at one time or another he’s heard the
same voices himself.
A faithful steward of the creative life-force, a
generative man never engages in wanton destruction.
He is not indifferent to the plight of the
oppressed. He is vitally concerned about the
rights, safety, health, and material prosperity of
all human beings. Beyond this he is interested in
the welfare of the ecosystem as a whole.
Though he may be a master at utilizing the
physical environment for the benefit of his family,
his nation, or all humankind, he honors both
technology and the environment in a balanced way.
He encourages the harmonious interaction between
society and nature. He is neither the enemy of
science and industry nor an irresponsible dumper of
toxic wastes. He seeks a middle path which is
responsible to both immediate and long-range human
needs -- and to his planetary home.
The generative man vigorously pursues the
extension of the created order against the forces
of destruction and death. There are many facets of
these forces--drugs, racism, classism, nationalism,
religionism, poverty, child abuse, spouse abuse,
petty quarreling, ignorance, egoistic
power-grabbing, environmental pollution, political
and economic depression--and all are expressions of
human chaos. Their ultimate effect is always the
destruction of global well-being. A generative man
is concerned with law and order wherever that law
and order contribute to the flourishing of human
beings. He is a protector of the weak and
disempowered. He does what he can in order to
assure justice and equality of opportunity for all
people.
The man who adequately can access the archetypal
King is a reconciler of opposites. He listens for
what truths are spoken on all sides of a dispute.
He looks beneath the surface arguments to the fear
and anguish of the child within. He addresses this
deeper reality when he speaks to each of the
opposing sides. While he prefers diplomatic
solutions, when destructive impulses need subduing,
he acts swiftly and decisively to reestablish order
out of his own sense of integrity. Even though
others grumble about his severity, they know that
he is just. Everyone knows the difference between
men in leadership positions who are firm because
they are genuinely interested in our welfare, and
men who are severe out of their own grandiosity. A
generative man is able to help us subdue our own
self-destructiveness, and for this we deeply
appreciate him.
Self-sacrifice is an inescapable part of world
building, something this man realizes. The
generative man gives his life’s blood for the
people and causes entrusted to him. His hard work
and personal sacrifice both provision others and
advance the generativity of the world. He spends as
much of his life energy as he can to help others
build their worlds. At the same time he is no
martyr or masochist. He cares for his own welfare,
choosing to sacrifice himself only because of his
sense of an abundant and replenishable self-worth.
He volunteers in causes that awaken both his
compassion and his just anger. In these and other
ways a generative man provisions the world.
Like the sacred kings of the Far East, the
generative man works toward harmony and order in
his own inner life. He views setting his own house
in order as a prerequisite for helping others order
their own lives. He is relentlessly honest with
himself about his failings. He takes his share of
responsibility when things go badly, but no more
and no less than his share. Out of this empowering
stance he is able to do something positive and
concrete about the problem that confronts him. He
may be involved in some form of psychotherapeutic
process. He knows that where his own integrity is
at stake, one way or another he must work to
develop his own psychological and spiritual life.
He is open to criticisms, for he realizes that they
will usually hold some truths. He is not, however,
a misguided moral perfectionist. Rather he urgently
engages himself in a quest for wholeness and moral
seriousness.
Out of his deep loyalty to himself the
generative man is able to be loyal to others--his
family and friends, his company, any voluntary
organizations he may be fostering, his community
and his nation, and ultimately his world. These
loyalties may at times be at odds with each other
and set up intense conflicts within him. To the
extent, however, that a man can be generative, his
loyalty will be to the greatest good for the
greatest number. His loyalty in the end will be to
a Transpersonal Other that is deeply compatible
with his own sense of self.
Finally, the generative man has achieved a rich
masculine identity both by building his inner
masculine structures and by valuing his inner
feminine characteristics. He has come to know the
mystery that his masculinity is enhanced to the
extent that he is appreciative of his Anima. He has
experienced within himself the sacred marriage of
the King with his Queen. Full generativity, he
realizes, in psychospiritual affairs just as surely
as in biological ones, is possible only where the
masculine and feminine energies are united. He is
almost certainly sexually active and eager for
intimate relationship with a partner as capable of
intimacy as he is. Together they may generate and
nurture children; if not, their energies combine in
more subtle but still tangibly creative ways.
Protector, provider, procreator--the
generative man is a Center for world building, an
axis mundi around which others may rally.
At his Center he is unassailable. He provides
stability to his inner world, and to others who
come to him looking for order in themselves. His
own opposite impulses are reconciled at his Center,
and through his experience of this, he helps others
to do the same.
As a Transformer, he makes usable the creative
life-force he carries within him. Others draw from
him a sense of their own empowerment.
He may be a Procreator in the specific sense of
fathering the children he cares for and teaches.
Certainly he is a Procreator in the broad sense of
initiating creative advance in the world he has
been given to steward.
He is also a Structurer, establishing calm in
the midst of chaos and facilitating order through
determined action. He is committed to the
preservation and the extension of a civilized, yet
vigorously instinctual, way of life. In these ways
he incarnates the potential in the actual, the
sacred in the profane.
He is an image of mature masculinity toward
which all men may strive.
In the columns to come I will talk further about
this image of Optimal Manhood and using its powers
for the human future.
For more of the Generative Man described here,
see the newly released The King Within: Revised and
Expanded Text, Chapter 5.
© 2007, Robert L.
Moore
* * *
Contemporary man has rationalized the myths, but
he has not been able to destroy them. - Octavio
Paz
Dr. Robert
Moore is an internationally recognized Jungian
psychoanalyst and consultant in private practice in
Chicago, Illinois, USA. He is the Distinguished
Service Professor of Psychology, Psychoanalysis and
Spirituality in the Graduate Center of the Chicago
Theological Seminary, where he recently founded and
become director of the new Institute for Advanced
Studies in Spirituality and Wellness. He is a
Training Analyst at the C.G. Jung Institute of
Chicago and Director of Research for the Institute
for the Science of Psychoanalysis. Author and
editor of numerous books in psychology and
spirituality, he lectures internationally on his
formulation of a Neo-Jungian paradigm for
psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. He is the author
of, among other books,
The Warrior
Within,
The Magician
Within, The
Lover Within,
The Within
Quartet: King,
Warrior, Magician,
Lover; The
Archetype of Inintiation: Sacred space, ritual
process and personal
transformation;
The
Magician and the Analyst: The archetype of the
magus in occult spirituality and Jungian
analysis; and
Facing
the Dragon: Confronting Personal and Spiritual
Grandiosity. Also an
audio with Malidoma Some, John Lee and Robert Bly
called Who
Welcomes the Newborn to this World? African and
Western Perspectives.
His most recent book is The
King Within: A revised and expanded
edition Accessing the King in the Male
Psyche.
www.robertmoore-phd.com
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