Initiating Men: ManKind Project
3 August 2008
In the mythopoetic wing of the men’s movement liminal spaces were intentionally constructed. My favorite account is of a Robert Bly gathering of men in Los Angeles in which the men were asked to line up around the back of the building and funnel through dark corridors. They walked slowly through the inky blackness, hearing throbbing drums in the distance, then, with the beat louder and louder as the men progress, an opening is reached, and someone tells each of the men to crawl through the folds of a thick curtain and “come out the other side dancing.” They get pushed through the door to find themselves on a stage with dozens of men drumming and dancing, chanting, “Go back back back, go back back back.” If that doesn’t change your frame of mind, I don’t know what will.
The ManKind Project (MKP) has also found ways to brew up heady states of altered consciousness. I was tremendously impressed with how men of all walks of life could come together for a weekend or a training session and be quickly transitioned into a place in which they might express emotion, honesty, grief and longing. On one hand, MKP uses ancient methods to accomplish this: smudging, sweats, storytelling, song and dance. But it ultimately relies on modern psychotherapeutic exercises to draw men into a place of “primal” feeling and reflection. There is a heavy dose of boot camp in some of their activities, something I’m told comes courtesy of Rich Tosi, a former Marines captain. Whether old or new in origin, the activities of MKP help men get away from the normal world in order to see their lives clearly, even, in their words, “take part in the initiation weekend.” The New Warriors Training Adventure Weekend itself struck me as a Christian retreat on amphetamines – which, in my opinion, isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Still, the liminal (or liminoid) spaces of MKP deviate somewhat from the traditional idea of initiation in that men are called upon, ultimately, to be self-initiators. The men have to name their own issues. They give themselves their own name. They dance their own dance and talk about their own unique life mission. Contrary to those who would see MKP as a cult, there is no head-honcho who calls out the shots – indeed, neither are there elders. After some initial commandeering on the weekend, the group of men is astoundingly equalitarian. It’s all about you, about your needs, about your quest in the modern world. And nobody is going to initiate you but yourself.
Let’s acknowledge that initiation has to (and always has had) an element of self in it. It pays for any society to have specialized men, after all. But in the past initiation has meant bringing a male to the next stage of life (usually at pubescence, but there might be later initiations, say, into leadership). These initiations have been a matter of conforming him to the societal standards, training him in the standard ways of the culture. The major was on uniformity, the minor on individuality.
ManKind Project has a different mode of operation. A man has to find his own way. His sages, at best, are therapists helping him on his soul journey. The event in which he participates is an egalitarian initiation, surrounded by brothers, not fathers. Of course, it still feels like liminal space because it is just that. Change is in the air. MKP tones down the sense of authority – and ratchets up the peer pressure. It actually sounds funny from a distance: “Look, we’re all getting dangerously honest with ourselves. You should do the same. Unless you’re a coward, in which case you’ll have to [cue the ominous music] suffer the self-consequences.” So the game plan is Rogerian more than paleo-Jungian; self-styled gestalt therapy rather than a calling upon the “gods in the blood.” (Does anyone know if Bill Kauth was drawing off of James Hillman’s acorn theory?) In the end, it’s an exercise in self-help and self-making.
Isn’t there a certain irony in calling MKP’s ongoing support teams “I-Groups”? The jury is still out for me as to what extent men’s events should be “egocentric” events with fraternal initiation. There are benefits, no doubt. It can work. But such an initiationo smacks of the sibling society against which Bly warned so fervently.
I suppose that MKP is internally consistent. They are new warriors indeed: discontinuity from the old rules the day. There is a sense in which MKP men never give themselves over to the past, to the archetypal stew, to the legends and wisdom of yore. They commodify their religion. But for that reason they are also able to keep things safe – and safely modern. The old ways have shriveled, and appear hopelessly impotent. Have not these men been initiated to meet the demand of a complicated, contemporary existence in their own skin?
My experience with MKP lends itself to possibly damaging at worst to an interesting experience at best. MKP’s NWTA and subsequent training is amateur in its Jungian therapy approach. The leaders of the weekend tend to be relatively intelligent, however usually have no professional training in counseling. There are of course exceptions to this rule. The men who join the group are typically looking for something. Most have ‘failed’ in there life’s pursuits by their own admission. Some have success but still seek something that is missing from their spiritual walk. As a result they make it up. As does MKP, “make it up” as they go. Most religions could be accused of making it up as they go, however MKP steeps itself in a soup of various pagan, druid, and native american belief systems. Interestingly, none of the beliefs represented by the group are Christian in any shape or form. The idea of compassion enters the groups ideals, however there is no mention of the term ’sin’. The ideas of personal ‘integrity’ and accountability’ are of great importance to the group, however the nature of the emotional work done in the group allows for abandoning of any real personal responsibility. Of these idea integrity can mean just about anything, because the group asks all members of the group to “Take care of yourself first”. Thus a group member is out of integrity first with himself if he does not “take care of himself” even if he has responsibilities to others. The Jungian self indulgence is rampant. Men in their 50’s are still exploring the sins of their mother and father against them. I wish that I could say this New Age group was harmless. As for me, I am taking care of myself in the comfort Christ.