Returning home the Loxley sword

King Richard’s crusade is returning home, looting its way through the French countryside. Richard’s regal splendor has withered and the blessing of his presence seems to have disappeared. Robin Longstride addresses the probable source of this in one scene: The murder of thousands of innocent muslim civilians made God leave them and King Richard’s Axis Mundi function was thus broken. His honesty (it’s a sign of his integrity that he would speak the truth even if it was to the detriment of a King’s good standing) lands him in the pillory with his friends (though Richard seems to enjoy his forthrightness), from which they escape when chaos erupts in the wake of Richard’s death in battle.

They head for the sea only to encounter an ambush of the English knights who were entrusted with the task of returning the crown home. In the hands of a dying Sir Robert Loxley is a sword he took from his father before leaving for his crusade some ten years ago. This dishonorable act has been weighing on his mind and he wants Robin’s help in returning it home to his aging father. There is the sense here that the sword is a symbol of the male lineage and we understand that Sir Robert can not die in peace lest he knows the sword will return to its rightful lineage.

Robin vows to return home the sword without realizing that in so doing, he is pitting himself in the middle of a sinister plot to usurp the crown from the incompetent man who is about to become the new King.

The Shadow King John

Robin and his friends soon find themselves en route to England under stolen identities and as they approach the other shore, the net starts closing around them. Before they know it, they make their faces known as the unwilling harbringers of gloom; Richard is dead and his arrogant and immature little brother is henceforth known as King John.

Not fit for kingship, John carries none of the good qualities that any strong King must have. The King’s main role archetypally is to live according to the Tao, Dharma or Ma’at, and John does no such thing. His divine transmission is non-existent and he is merely playing out his own inner wounds. The inner landscape of a King soon makes itself known in the physical kingdom he governs. England is a about to enter darkness.

John is more interested in fucking his French lover than being King. We also observe how uncomfortable he feels around his mother. These are signs of a boy who has not yet transitioned into manhood and who is still bound by the feminine. A man who is threatened by his mother tends to be so because he has poor psychological boundaries – he has not travelled his hero’s journey. The Warriors defending his psychic kingdom are weak and he tries to compensate with scheming and paranoia. John’s inner masculine archetypes are in disarray.

John has no integrity, he is not true to his word. He is a conniving man who is inherently untrustable. That is the first thing that struck me about this movie – the way John’s bipolar shadow King (tyrant/weakling) destroys England’s chances of a future and lays her boundaries exposed to attack from surrounding kingdoms.

The lost boys of Sherwood Forest

When Robin finally arrives in Nottingham to the widowed Marion Loxley and Robert’s father Sir Walter Loxley, England’s fate already seems sealed due to the dealings of the shadowy Godfrey (displaying qualities of the Shadow Magician in his manipulation of England’s court). There is much to be said from here on out. We could look at the good qualities of Robin Longstride, his presence and integrity. We could look at how those qualities naturally open up Marion, without needing cheesy pickup lines or the art of seduction. We could also look at how Robin’s mission comes into focus and his inner wounds come healed when it is made clear to him that the father he barely knew was nothing of the cretin that he thought he was, but a great man – a champion of the people.

What I will look at, however, is the boys running around in the forest. They plunder Marion’s stock of grain, much to her dismay. The boys of Sherwood are medieval gang culture. When the fathers disappear from society, boys take to the woods – be they urban or those of Sherwood – to try and find meaning in their lives. But boys cannot initiate each other. The chaos inherent in gang culture is a sign of the lack of the King archetype’s ordering function. They have not been given inner psychological structure because they haven’t received blessing from an elder King.

This truth is embedded into the fabric of the Universe: Only mature men – elders – can initiate boys. And these elders must be strong in the King archetype. When the leader of a nation is weak in the King archetype, the young men he takes to war always suffer horribly. Soon they find themselves in the jungles and trenches of the leader’s unprocessed inner truama. And when they return home with dismembered bodies, they are not honored or grieved, because in so doing, the leader would have to feel his own wounds, which he cannot – for it terrifies him. (See now the importance of self development?!) And when fathers go away – be it on a crusade, to jail, to the ethereal realms of their disembodied intellectual musings or to their sixth day working overtime – boys start taking their destiny into their own hands.

There is  a strange scene in which Lady Marion leads the boys of Sherwood into battle to support what has now become a major battle fighting off the French forces who are trying to win a beachhead on the English shore. No matter how brave her efforts may be, there is something pathetic about it. Watching this scene, I felt it in my bones that a woman cannot lead lost boys. They need a man for that job. It’s as if the boys ride after the Lady only because she knows the way to Robin, the archetypal King for which they yearn. They aren’t really following her lead. This statement has nothing to do with sexism or gender bias – it has to do with submitting to the natural laws which made us. And deep down, we know this is true. (Although the number of people today who seem oblivious to this does concern me).

Conclusion

Robin Hood is a good movie. It’s not of Gladiator calibre, but especially its portrayal of the father-son-relationship and the lack of it, both on a micro- and a macro-level, make it interesting viewing (realize that the archetypes of father and King are closely related). It comes recommended.

Tony Stark is clearly a very troubled, albeit charismatic man. He has a very distracted, boyish consciousness, seen in one scene to be totally put off his balance by a rotating windmill-like desk decoration. He is incapable of listening to others with presence and seems unable to feel deeply into them, being so emotionally armored (for which I see his Iron suit as a perfect metaphor).

The reason for this, as is explained pretty well in one scene, is clearly that he did not have a close relationship with has father. He never felt his dad’s acceptance or love as a child and now he is compensating. When he hits rock bottom during the movie, the revelation through a video clip that his father loved him more than anything else in the world gives him the strength to move on.

Damned shame the dad didn’t just tell him, instead of creating a bloody film roll to be discovered 20 years after his death.

The villain Ivan Vanko’s main problem in life is exactly the same – a difficult relationship with his father, whom is seen to die at the beginning of the movie.

Iron Man 2 is hardly a movie about the father son relationship, and yet both the hero and the villain are characters defined by it. I thought that was noteworthy enough to mention before going to bed.

Inviting my friends for an evening in hell

Last Friday, I invited a group of men friends to catch this movie just before it was taken off. I knew very little about it, but I had the feeling I should see it. Viggo Mortensen is one of the few actors in Hollywood I really respect, but more importantly, there was an article about it in big Norwegian newspaper some weeks previously. It spoke about how movies frequently portray father figures as heroes and that the same thing doesn’t happen with mothers. I don’t agree. There are plenty of heroic mothers in the movies, although they may not be kicking ass and taking names to quite the same extent as the father figures. I think heroism for women and men generally looks very different.

I was blown away by the movie. It is an absolutely horrific tale, a tragic story about humanity’s frailty and stupidity. Husband and wife wake up one morning and it’s the end of the world. Nothing is left. Outside of their bedroom window, nuclear holocaust awaits. The wife shrieks with agony as she gives birth to their first-born in the midst of this soul-devouring limbo. She knows all too well that his will be a cruel and terrible life. There is no hope, nothing she can do to comfort her newborn from the inevitable despair that is his destiny.

There is nothing to eat. Cannibals roam the streets scavenging for flesh to satisfy their hunger. One day she can bear it no longer and she walks into the nuclear fog to die. The man begs her not to, but her will to live has dwindled and disappeared. She doesn’t want to just survive, she tells him. Surviving isn’t enough, she needs more. It’s a cruel world that has a mother’s despair outweigh her motherly instincts.

It made me think of women’s innate talent for and need to celebrate life in all its glory. They do this better than men. We are generally caught in a grid of space and time, trying to make things happen while not being very welcoming with distractions or unplanned for circumstances. We are action oriented and we know it. Women are better at enjoying the moment than us guys. They dance the dance of life, and radiate life force through their glowing skin and beaming smiles. That is, of course, if they are connected to their feminine essence.

This movie made me understand that a post-apocalyptic world where all expressions of nature’s feminine vibrancy are gone would be completely hellish for a woman. Women are as a whole much more connected to nature than men and when nature dies, so does parts of women (and even the feminine in us men).  There would be nothing left to support her radiance. Such a place would be a spiritual wasteland, a place so evil, barren and desolate that the most sensitive women might just shrivel up and die, as is more or less the case here. The husband is left with infinite heart break, ashy tears and the agonizing knowledge that this is the end of the road for humanity. What kind of mission in life can a man adopt to make sense of that scenario?

Keeping the fire burning

The man does what any good man would do: He cares for his son as he takes him towards the South East, hoping better days await them there. The challenges they are faced with are totally gut wrenching. I had tears pouring down my face throughout this movie. Humanity has gone insane and many are eating each other because there is literally no food left. The father tells his son “we are the good guys. We are the ones who keep the fire burning”. And I’m not sure he even believes in it – everything is so bleak. But the son absorbs that. It helps him keep sane. The alchemical transmission between father and son seems to take place even under the worst conditions. Although he misses his mother terribly.

By the time I got out of the cinema, I felt like I had been for a couple of thousand spins in a tumble drier. I felt beaten up inside. We just stood there looking at each other in silence for a long while. My friend Magne finally spoke: “Words are pointless after that”.

He spoke the truth. For the rest of the weekend, I was really down. Boy do we have work to do to prevent something like that from happening! In small ways, each and every one of us carries the destiny of the world on our shoulders. No pressure or anything, but our actions or lack of them may actually be a deciding factor in the big picture of humanity’s survival. Makes you think twice about wasting your time watching reruns of 24, doesn’t it?

Thank you, Terry

Jack is about to be let back out into society after serving his sentence and Terry is the rehabilition worker who is put on the case to make the transition into freedom go as smoothly as possible. In the opening scene, Terry gifts Jack with a pair of Nike Escape trainers. Jack is rendered speechless and with tears in his eyes embraces Terry while expressing a truly heartfelt “thank you”. From this opening scene, we can infer two things: 1: Jack is not the murdering type and 2: Jack has never experienced this level of kindness before.

Jack receives a pair of Nike Escape from Terry.

A strong relationship form between these two from the get-go and Terry refers to him as «my nephew Jack» when he introduces him to Kelly, the woman whose room Jack now moves into. Terry assures him that everything will be okay and ironically a policecar will keep watch over him this first night of freedom. This is not mere nicety from the long arm of the law; as the movie later shows, Philip – the boy Jack was with when they murdered the girl – has already been killed by a lynch mob.

Absent fathers: A recipe for murder

The story is told with intermittent flashbacks to Jack’s childhood, the time when he was still going by the name of Eric Wilson (Jack Burridge is his new identity, taken to protect him from the media and the mobs). We see that his mother is dying of cancer and that his father is not offering much in the way of love to either of them. Although very little is said about him, it is implied that he is a man who is so overwhelmed by the fact that his wife is dying that he has completely shut down.

Eric is a lost and insecure kid. He falters through school, much to the dismay of his female teacher who shames him for not being good enough. When he is out and about, a posse of boys pester and abuse him. And when he finally gets home, it does not present a shelter, for it reeks of death and lost love. Eric has no safe haven in life.

Enter Philip. It is clear that Philip has more of an «evil streak» in him than Eric does. There is something about his eyes, not to mention that he pummels the three kids that have been bothering Eric all by himself. Eric smiles with relief and appreciates that someone is finally standing up for him. A bond between them forms.

On a huge lawn under the blazing sun, Philip out of the blue asks Eric «have you ever been fucked by a guy?» He reveals that he has been raped regularly by his older brother for a long time. At this point, we can conclude that neither of these boys are experiencing a safe childhood, and none of them have had a father figure to look up to. And as research shows, boys with absent fathers, be they emotionally absent or physically absent, are more likely to become criminals. What is soon about to happen is observable in our statistics.

Jack, Chris and the healing properties of the White Whale

Jack is doing well. Terry has set him up with a job for a logistics company where the boyish, but sympathetic Chris fast becomes his closest friend. And then there is the lovely secretary Michelle – «The White Whale». She is a kind and gentle woman and there’s nothing particularly whale-y about her. And when she asks Jack when he’s going to ask her out for a drink, he is left totally dumbfounded. On the other side of some embarassing episodes and challenges and support from his friends, Jack finally does.

What Jack may not be aware of is easy for a trained eye to see: Michelle is a woman with amazing healing qualities. She has an abundance of feminine light, enormous tolerance for others and an incredibly strong nurturing side. She is clearly much more mature than Jack, so why exactly she wants to be with him is a little unclear. I speculate that she awakens in him her mothering instinct. In the deep of her, perhaps she desires to heal him and to be healed in return by the man that will emerge through their love. A good woman knows to appreciate a man with a good heart, and Jack does have a good heart.

I see this dynamic quite clearly for it is not unlike what happened early in my own previous relationship. And just like Jack crumbles in a teary mess on her bosom when he realizes he is loved by her, so once did I (the path to a true and authentic masculinity is often far from macho). The beauty and gifts of the bright side of the feminine are extraordinary (as are those of the dark side, though they require a stronger man than Jack) and they are melting through Jack’s layers of tension.

After Jack and Michelle make love for the first time, Chris and Jack are out on the job, driving some stuff somewhere. Chris teases Jack and seems delighted that Jack got lucky. Then suddenly Jack spots a carwreck on the side of the road. The little girl inside lives, but the man who drove it – I assume it was her father – is dead. The father who is in the driver’s seat is dead. It is quite a symbolic scene.

Chris and Jack are heroes. And while noone knows Jack’s true identity at this point, Jack starts to feel into whether now is the time to come clean, for he has just redeemed himself by saving the life of this girl. He considers speaking out both to Chris and to Michelle, but no songs of childhood mistakes, shattered dreams and lost youth reach their ears. For Terry knows the ways of the world better than Jack and tells him there’s a bounty on his head. Noone must know.

The return of Terry’s lost son

One day, Terry’s son stands on the porch with a small bag in his hand. Terry lost him to his mother when they separated, which we know is relatively normal when couples split up today. The rebellion against the masculine in the last 50 years of our culture has contributed to the idea that mothers are better equipped to raise a child than fathers. Further strengthening the mother’s case in child distribution cases are the emphasis on the idealized beauty of the bond between mother and child as well as the suppressed shadow of the misandric agenda.

And as is well known by those who have studied the evolution of boys, mothers ARE better equipped to raise children – to raise sons – for the first years of his life. But then there comes a time when the mother must take the boy’s hand and lead him to the bridge of adolescence, where the father waits with love and patience, takes his hand, and walks him over to the shore of adulthood. A boy can never become a man without a father, or at least a fatherly figure.

This is little understood by many modern women (I think especially single mothers), which may lead them to energetically feed on their sons and resist with tremendous force their journey into adulthood. It’s natural enough – mothers don’t want to lose their sons – but it’s also selfish and destructive to deny a boy his manhood because you are uncomfortable with it. More destructive still is to use your son as ally, alibi and crutch in the battle against men.

Terry’s son tells him that he doesn’t speak with his mother much. This is a normal reaction when a son has not had a father to take him across that proverbial bridge. The son is still stuck on the wrong shore, struggling to sever the energetic merger with mother he intuits must happen. But he cannot sever it alone, cannot walk across that long and treacherous bridge alone. For the path across is fraught with danger that only a father can fend off, lest the boy run back to his mother every time it gets scary.

So since Terry’s son has not had the chance to take this most essential journey, he has turned into an apathetic and depressed young man. We may do well to understand that the connection with mother is the basis for a boy’s feelings of intimacy and safety, while the connection with father is connected with feelings of value. The son’s feelings of worthlessness are a clear testament to the lacking relationship with his father. Terry is worried.

A monster, dad. A monster over me!

Jack has turned into an object of the fatherly feelings that Terry never got to express with his biological son. He has served as a replacement of sorts after his son’s mother, backed by society, took him from his life. But now, there he is – with mixed emotions: Happy to be with his father and angry that he wasn’t there for him.

There are only losers in this story: A father who didn’t get to see his son because his mother stopped him; a son who is lost in life because his father wasn’t there to guide him safely through adolescence; a mother who has lost contact with her son because he is trying to cut the ties that holds him captive in the prison of his own undeveloped boyhood. This is not mere fiction – for thousands – perhaps millions – it is hard reality.

While having a drinking binge with his son, Terry mutters in a drunken stupor «I love you, Jack. You’re my greatest fucking achievement.» Faced with a father who he feels loves another boy more than himself, the son decides to act. He blows Jack’s cover and everything that Terry has worked for crumbles.

In the scene where Terry confronts his son, some very important dialogue takes place. Terry: «Do you have any idea what this has cost me. Do you have any idea what this has cost that boy?» Son: «And what did he cost me? Him and the others, what did they cost my mum?»

Terry confronts his son after he blows Jack’s cover.

Him and the others. He speaks of men. It is a statement from which we can deduce the following: Terry’s son doesn’t trust men, in all likelihood because he has been poisoned by his mother’s emotional hostility towards them. He now needs a loving father figure to extract the toxin from his veins and to discover his true identity. But since he is so used to identifying with the victimhood of his mother and the bitterness towards his father (and thus all men), he now takes the role of victim himself, rejecting the healing that could be his. Instead of being truly vulnerable, he plays the role as mother’s white knight and the unholy alliance against Dad plays out.

Though it is true – he is in a way a victim, but not of Jack or Terry, but of a society that thinks men are bad and of a mother who refused his connection to the source of true masculine identity by denying him access to father. This is a morally justifiable decision if you can make yourself believe that men are bad, which is essentially what the cultural elite thinks in the Western world. There they go on their white knight missions, destroying and undermining the paths of growth for boys while thinking they are doing them a favour. Make no mistake – they honestly believe that this is a good thing. That is the reality they see. This is why you almost never see a man today who is animating his full masculine potential – society doesn’t want him to (for he will surely end up killing someone or destroying something). This scene is incredibly sad and shakes me up every time I watch it.

Jack is now a fugitive.

Boys: Scum is what you are!

We see the consequence of the anti-male attitude in society in the tragic scene where the girl is murdered. She despises boys, thinks they are scum. She seems to consider girls as inherently better. And since Philip is such a broken boy, he snaps and ends her life, with an unwilling and confused Eric (Jack) as his complicit. It is of course a tragedy that the life of this young girl ends in such a way (and we are watching a piece of fiction), but we must be brave enough to admit that had she not been so aggressive, it would not have happened. She wasn’t quite the beautiful angel she was professed to be in the court proceedings.

Girls often aren’t the beautiful little angels that they are painted out to be. Of course, from nature they can be – they will be – but contemporary society generally has a negative effect on their character, giving them so much special treatment that many end up being self-involved little princesses; narcissistic girls who have mastered the craft of choosing when to be powerful and when to be victim. The suffering they and those around them experience as a consequence is enormous. For this girl, it leads to her death.

It’s not just the girl who thinks the boys are scum. So does the grown ups in the court proceedings. When children who haven’t even hit adolescence are labelled evil, as they are here, we as a society are spreading the disease of irresponsibility. Because it conveniently allows us to sidestep the tough question: Why did it happen?

If we are to move one step closer to truth, we must recognize that human ignorance, fear and woundedness are enormous in our world. We must see that many people don’t have it in them to live life as responsible and ethical human beings and that these people have children. Now we have little people who must find their own way through life, because Mommy and Daddy are not capable of showing them the road. They may be too busy, too shut down or maybe they are simply not that interested.

The result? A generation of lost and/or self-involved boys and girls who try to squeeze happiness out of a world without meaning (thank you, postmodernism). What we’re doing isn’t working. People are hurting.

Conclusion

Boy A is a powerful and beautiful movie. It is also an extraordinarily brave movie, because it shows with such raw vulnerability the extent of the problem that broken father-son-relationships cause individuals and society. And while the armies of the politically correct are not the ones who broke them in the first place (Robert Bly suggests that it was caused by the industrialization of society, where father home for factories), they are supposed to be the ones to set things right. But the politically correct are not out to set things right – they are out to propagate an ideology that places white men as the main culprits of all problems in the history of the world, and women, girls and people of colour as their victims.

That means that, in the worldview of the politically correct cultural elite, as a white man, I am to blame. And if you are a white man, so are you. For all the suffering in the history of humanity. It is crazy and it is untrue. And we gotta speak up about that. For when we don’t, we fail to place the blame where blame is due – the ever-fickle human nature; fear and ignorance in both men and women – and thus we fail to learn from our mistakes. For ourselves and for the Jacks of the world, it is time to learn from our mistakes. And truth be told, even though we may be better off than Jack, perhaps what many of us need is exactly a rehabilitation worker like Terry. A man who can help us find our freedom. Find your freedom.

I started feeling into that and felt how happy the sight of them made me. How great the bodily feeling of sitting right next to the space that surrounded these was. Almost a form of relaxation. And then I realized – I couldn’t remember the last time I saw anything like it. I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen a father provide that kind of space for his son. It struck me as being very strange.

Then as I considered telling them how happy just seeing them made me, I realized that they were speaking French. They weren’t even Norwegian. “Bummer!,” I thought to myself.

Then this gang of Norwegian teenage boys entered. They were around 16-18 years old and drunk. It was very surreal – the father and son sitting to my left, and these confused teenage boys doing their teenage things. As my French heroes left the train, the Norwegian boys sat down next to me, and one of them starting speaking in a loud voice about things you could do to women in bed. He was telling his mates about really crude acts of sexual violence towards women. He told them enthusiastically about the “Angry dragon”, which is when a woman gives you head and you are about to come. Right as you are about to unload, you shove her head brutally down the shaft of your penis, and then you come so hard, the sperm comes out of her nose. Charming, I thought to myself. I’d like to see you try that.

Not to mention the other charmer. He didn’t have a name for it, but the fun part about this one was to have the woman riding you and then, just after you come and she is getting  ready to unmount and snuggle up, you pull her face down as if you are about to kiss her and tell her “I’ve got Aids”. “What the fuck?!,” I thought to myself, and was starting to get real close to giving that kid a wakeup call. But then it was his stop and he was off, and all I was left with was telling his friends “Nice buddy you have there. You should challenge him to do any of those things, and you’ll find that he is all mouth and no balls.” Plus his heart of course wouldn’t allow him to. But I kept that part quiet.

I realize that boys need some room to be crude and uncivilized to form a healthy masculine identity, but this was a level of crude I did not appreciate. It was pretty sickening actually, and I wondered what kind of parenting he was receiving to run around talking shit like that. What sane father would not come down on him real hard for thinking that bullcrap? Same for the fathers of his buddies – who were laughing enthusiastically (while they probably thought he was a big shithead, and the boy himself hated the crap he was spouting).

It was just such a shocking contrast – this wonderful experience of seeing this strong, mature father and his happy and protected son – and then seeing these dumbnuts right after. I really hope this says a lot less about the difference between father-son relationships in France and Norway than it seems.

Your assignment, young Danny, is American History X

After serving three years in prison for killing two black gang members who were busy breaking into his car, Derek Vinyard is let back out on the street. On the same day, Danny is called into the headmaster’s office at Venice Beach High. With Derek behind bars, Danny has been lost for direction and has in his brother’s absence become heavily engaged in the White Power movement that Derek helped build. It is, he believes, what his brother – his only living role model – would have wished.

His essay “Mein Kampf” has now landed his ass in Bob Sweeney’s office. Mr Sweeney is a strong man, directed, compassionate, and with a powerful presence. He is also black, worried, and very unimpressed with the direction this young man is taking. “What’ll it be, Danny?,” he bellows. “What is this crap you’re trying to sell us?” Bob is unwilling to give up on the lost Danny; he sees in him not only the same brilliant mind as in his brother, but also the same dangerous inclinations towards hateful racial stereotypes.

Bob sets up a new history class for the lost boy, a class where Danny is the only attending student. This class is really in ritual space and Bob is his mentor. “We will name the class American History X”. The first assignment in the new class is a paper in which Danny must document and analyze his brother’s actions and the effects they have had on himself and his family. This is the context of the movie, a story on the brilliant Derek’s descent into hatred and murder, and Danny is the voice who tells it.

The shadow king and his red knight

Venice Beach is overrun by black and latino gangs who spread fear among the white population. Cameron Alexander is a hateful, old man who has set up base in his home to coordinate an Aryan crusade against all who aren’t white protestants. Together with Derek, he runs the DOC, a White Power group whose aim is to take back Venice Beach from gangs, “border jumpers”, and foreign business owners. He stays in shadows, “has to be careful”, and lets Derek do the dirty work of recruitment and vandalism. Cameron has positioned himself as the elder, the person who confused and insecure young white boys – kids who are afraid of the world they live in – look up to for guidance and the feeling of belonging. Cameron’s influence reminds us of an important fact; where the harbringers of hate gain power, fathers have strayed from the path of serving with presence, authority, discernment and love. Or they are simply not there.

Derek and Danny’s father disappeared when he was shot by a black drug dealer while fighting a fire in a black neighborhood. The movie shows him as being a loving father in his own way, but we also understand that he was a fearful man who quietly carried a burden of bitterness and anger over the ways he felt white people were suffering at the hands of liberal politics and affirmative black action. His death at the hands of a black man is what cemented Derek’s path into racial hatred and white power ideology. It is also what started his search for another father figure from whom he could receive the essential transmission of knowledge any younger man so desperately wants.

Cameron Alexander, like most shadow kings, feeds on fear and hatred, and Derek is willing prey for his serpentine tongue and toxic mentorship. He is a willing crown prince – a red knight* with kingly qualities and great power, yet his every action takes him further away from the inner freedom which he seeks. That is the nature of shadow initiators: they pretend to have answers, but their initiation only takes people one step closer to hell. And as their desperate students find themselves left with ever fewer things worth living for, all that remains is the glimmer of hope that their mentor will one day come through with the soul food for which he/she hungers for. But shadow initiators never deliver; they are unable to. For they are themselves unfathered and know not their inner truth and goodness.

Nevertheless, Derek feels good that he has found something worth fighting for, and he spreads the gospel of hate with religious enthusiasm and conviction. Cameron is a shadow king who has found his red knight.

The war against white boys

In Spiral Dynamics, we learn that there is a stage (Green) of development that is associated with a watering down of truth as well as structures of power, control and – yes – growth. On this level, we find movements, philosophies and ideologies such as post-modernism, relativism and feminism. This is a stage where feminine values flood society, men are discriminated against in covert ways, and boys suffer terribly. It is a stage where the victim is celebrated and integrity, responsibility, loyalty and service are discarded in favor of emotionality. This mindset is largely what people are referring to when they speak of liberals. What we see in the SD model is that the political ideology that grows out of this mindset is a significantly more evolved state of mind than the one we know as conservativism, but it comes with huge problems.

One of the biggest shadows of Green (where liberalism has its home base) is the huge shame that comes with it. White people on the Green level of development feel shame that their forefathers are responsible for colonialism, the enslavement of the people of Africa, the destruction of the planet. They basically feel guilty for everything that is wrong in the world. And the main bulk of the blame – if not all of it – goes towards white men (men are perpetrators, women victims). Because of this, it is seen as most pressing to eliminate most masculine values from society. Not in a declared and outspoken way, but in the emotionality of the people.

The conservatives, although at a lower level of moral development, are completely right to be wary of this way of thinking. Take a moment to view this clip from the movie:

In this clip, Derek is really arguing that masculine values (such as responsibility, loyalty and integrity) are important and shouldn’t be ignored. He is saying, just because you have an emotion doesn’t mean you must act on it in the spirit of victimhood. The recognition of being shafted by liberal politicians is exactly what pushes him into neo-nazism and it is seemingly also what got his father to harbor thoughts of racism. When people at the Green stage of development are in power, the people who would otherwise prosper if the Masculine were viewed more positively, are polarized into bitterness, fear and racism. For in such a society, people DO take advantage of social welfare, people DO claim victimhood instead of standing responsible for their own life and actions. Not only that, but when society is structured along this line of thinking, women and ethnic minorities are privy to some unfair advantages that have nothing to do with equality. How can we let this happen? Because of the mentioned strong belief that everything that is wrong with the world is because of white men (you can make that “Christian white men”). These initiatives are merely logical extensions of such beliefs. And such beliefs make it a moral imperative to punish white men. Unfortunately, boys are the main victims.

Get this: Liberal politicians are pushing normal people into conservativism, extremism, even neonazism in numbers counting in the millions, because they are not dealing with the problem in a way that is aligned with truth. They claim that they want everyone to be treated equally, but white men are not part of that equality, and they don’t even consider it a problem. AND – they are pissing all over fathers. This is wrong! And it is creating havoc in the world. For white males are still the dominant force of power in the world, and when you willingly sabotage their ways to maturity and manhood, you are short-circuiting the very system that could create real change. Before we restore some sense of rightness about this picture, boys will keep running countries and corporations (just look at Silvio Berlusconi). They are not meant to.

Understand that the reason gangs are born – be they black, latino or neonazi – is the weakening of the father figures of society. Young men cannot initiate each other. In gangs, they desperately try. They want it badly. But they cannot. It is Law. And when we understand that “liberal politicians” are in the business of shaming men and disempowering fathers, we may – if given space to take this thought to its conclusion – see that the shadow side of Green is one of our modern world’s greatest problems. Indeed, the popular idea that the ideologies of Green are at the apex of human development may very well kill us all if we don’t wake up in time. Take your time with this message, for it may be uncomfortably strong. We must free ourselves from this delusion if we are to restore men’s dignity and self worth.

Derek’s redemption

To move ahead in our society, to leave Green behind and to enter 2^nd tier consciousness (the paradigm shift where individuals come to recognize that all levels of development prior to theirs are important and necessary), we must re-embody our appreciation of masculine values. We must resurrect the initiators from the tombs of our forefathers and give young boys a new chance. In American History X, Bob Sweeney embodies this hope (while the teacher Murray is a Green liberal). He is the mentor, the man whose wounds of life finally broke through his ramparts and reached the soft, tender flesh of his beating, loving heart. His is wisdom, power and compassion.

He seeks Derek out after he has been raped by members of a White Power gang in prison. Derek turns his back on them when they turn out to not live up to his high ideals (“They didn’t believe in shit”) and he is in trouble. Having been profoundly humiliated by those he considered kin, his ramparts are starting to come down too. “You gotta start asking the right questions,” Bob tells Derek. (We are pretty much in ritual space here). “What questions?,” Derek replies. “Such as, has anything you have ever done made your life better?” Tears roll down Derek’s cheek. The “strong bull” has been wrestled to the ground.  “You gotta help me,” Derek pleads. Sweeney confirms that he will, but that his help is not unconditional. Bob understands that Derek must confront the karma (effects) of his actions to find true freedom in his heart.

Important though Sweeney’s help may be, it is thanks to his black friend from the laundry room that he gets through Chino in one piece. He is a good guy and opens up in Derek the understanding that being black in the US is not easy. For although the people of Green discriminate against white men, there are plenty of other people on lower levels of development who are doing exactly the opposite. Derek’s eyes are opened to a world that he did not know existed. There is now space around his heart.

Conclusion

Danny’s schoolpaper for headmaster Sweeney is finished with a quote by Abraham Lincoln in the wee hours of the morning. And we could here go on and speak about the confrontation Derek has with Cameron Alexander, his break from the neo-nazi community, the destiny of his family and his brother. But you should watch the movie yourself. What matters is to remind ourselves of the lessons about fathers, initiation and the complexities of racial issues that this film describes. What could the message of this movie mean for you in your life? I suggest it could be to find out where you stand with your father, living or dead. Do you love him? What are his gifts to you? Which burdens of his have you unconsciously adopted? Get to know him. And then find yourself a mentor who can heal you and open in you the final recognition of your true, inherent goodness, so that those adopted beliefs of your father’s can be shed once and for all.

And do remember that boys cannot initiate each other. That means you must be mindful of how you design your social life and network. Look for brotherhood and elders.

*the red knight is a figure from old myths and legends that describe a macho and power driven, yet immature man

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.

It is clear that this is no ordinary teaching and John Keating no ordinary teacher. For Keating then goes on to point out to the boys that they are food for worms, that their death marches imposingly and unstoppably towards them, that they must make the most of what remains before their path comes to an end. They all huddle up around the pictures, looking deeply into the eyes of those long-dead boys, and there is the sense that they are one and the same. They have something to tell you, Keating points out. Lean in closer! Hear it?

Carpe… Carpe Diem. Seize the day boys, make your lives extraordinary.

Carpe Diem

Carpe Diem, memorable words from a movie that has come to define the dreams of many people of its generation. Shown oftentimes in schools to students who at that naïve and immature time perhaps did not understand their significance. Their meaning was nevertheless impressed on the canvas of their subconscious. I still remember this movie.

Carpe Diem is the foundation stone of the initiation given these young men by Keating. Neil Perry, Todd Anderson, Knox Overstreet, Steven Meeks, Richard Cameron, and Gerard Pitts gather regularly in a cave hidden in the woods by the Academy, tapping into the wise minds and hearts of their elders, those Lovers of old – Thoreau, Whitman, Frost – whose words they read aloud in the flickering light of lanterns. They seem to jump right off the page, driven higher and higher by the passion and zest for life that gave them birth. The six young men discover joy there, brotherhood, and their hearts start ripening with the truth of the existential toils of life and death.

Neil is strong in the King archetype, and becomes a natural leader for the boys. Todd is the insecure new guy, whose huge gifts always seem just a hair’s breadth away. The two become good friends, and Neil becomes to Todd like an older brother. Neil and Keating form an invisible alliance as they work their magic on Todd. Neil’s capacity to serve has been strengthened in measure due to his own increasing level of initiation at the hands of Keating and those dead poets, but it is Keating himself who pulls Todd’s first liberating exhalation into freedom from him.

Keating is not after mere obedience, he is after growth, and to that end he challenges his students to write a poem of their own. Todd obediently gets to work. But he is terrified; he cannot speak in front of others – he is too afraid of his own voice. Keating makes it very clear to him that he knows his terror well and challenges him on it in front of everyone in the class as he hands out the assignment. This pointing out and challenging of Todd’s inner enemy is a gift particular to the Masculine. We men – those of us who haven’t been totally feminized – love to find the wound in our brother and put our finger in it. To women, this seems cruel. But to men, this is a gift. It is a challenge to own up to your responsibility as a man to take charge of your fear and wrestle it to the ground through tireless dedication. Keating has cast his glove. Todd cannot chicken out now. His masculine soul has been forced online. He must seize the day.

Todd discovers his voice

As the day comes for the delivery of the poems, Todd nevertheless chickens out and fabricates a way out: “I didn’t write a poem”. Keating calls him on his bullshit, knowing very well what is going on.

Mr. Anderson thinks that everything inside of him is worthless and embarrassing. Isn’t that right, Todd? Isn’t that your worst fear? Well, I think you’re wrong. I think you have something inside of you that is worth a great deal.

Again the finger in the wound, immediately followed by a bandage; the masculine gift at its finest (do not rob your friends of this!). But John Keating won’t tolerate that sort of nonsense, so he summons the power of his own elders, his own lineage of poets and introduces Walt Whitman’s barbaric Yawp (a shout) of existence. I want you to give us a demonstration of a barbaric “yawp”.

The appearance of the yawp is symbolic of the awakening of Todd’s inner warriors, his inner wild man. It is clear that Todd has suffered much psycho-emotional trauma at the hands of his parents, for they have made their love and admiration of him conditional, to be earned if is academic achievements make him deserving of it. This is not explicitly named in the movie, but the evidence is clear for all to see. Such a boy will have very weak inner warriors, because he has lived a life of trying to please, forever trying to achieve the holy grail of unconditional love.

Keating forces Todd to look at the picture of Whitman he has hung in reverence high up. What does he remind you of? Don’t think. Answer. Go on. He is summoning the wild man now, pushing him beyond thinking into the the dirt of primal emotion, of intuitive expression. And then – after a round of mentoring that in any modern school would be labelled abuse (because, in all earnesty, Western school systems have been pussywhipped into degenerate, anti-hierarchical nonsense at the hands of cultural creatives holding high ideals of feminism and postmodernism) – Todd appears. And his friends cheer at the marvel of it all.

Some time later, Todd’s birthday arrives and he receives from his parents the same crappy, unloving present he did last year. No thought, no emotion, no deep care from these parents for their lovely, intelligent child. Men’s worker Robert Moore has said that a boy who isn’t admired by an older man is being hurt. Todd has been hurt so very much. But Neil admires him, as does Keating and by extension also Whitman and the dead poets, and as Neil picks him up from his birthday sulk, he is empowered by lineage when he invites Todd to throw the crappy desk set off of the building (the words of William Wallace in Braveheart “Freeeeeedom” spring to mind).

Neil takes on himself the sins of the fathers

Thanks to the good works of Keating on the hearts and minds of the boys, Neil discovers he has a passion for acting. He applies for the role as Puck in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and gets it! But the word reaches the ear of his father – an afraid and emotionally shut down man – and as he happily enters his room at the Academy one day, his heart sinks; his father is waiting for him. What a tragedy, the mere sight of a boy’s father makes his dreams shatter! What has befallen the father-son-relationship? Where did we go wrong? There was supposed to be mentorship and love! But no, Neil must leave the play. Is that clear?! Yes, sir, Neil answers, feeling his life is over.

Yet the next day Neil stands on stage. Whether it is because he has been given permission as he suggests to Keating or if he defied his father, the film doesn’t tell. What it does tell is that Neil is good. Everybody is in unison agreement. His brothers in the Society cheer, and the theatre explodes with the enthusiastic clapping of hands. Neil has never felt more alive; he has found his passion, his calling. At the exit stands his father, waiting to drag him away. The protests of Knox Overstreet – who has by now seized the day and captured his true love – and a concerned Keating are to no avail.

We’re trying very hard to understand why it is that you insist on defying us. Whatever the reason, we’re not gonna let you ruin your life, Neil’s father insists as he confronts his son in his study, with his wife sitting idly by as silent witness. From the scene, we can see that Neil’s parents have agreed on the unholy alliance that many traditional couples do: Mrs. Perry doesn’t speak up when Mr. Perry speaks her name in vain by claiming “we”, when the feelings – the fears – are his alone; and in turn, some semblance of harmony can remain.

But when a man is so afraid as Mr. Perry, he can not love. Love and fear are mutually exclusive. Some people – indeed most in my experience – feel that fearing for others is a form of love. But there can not be love when there is fear. It is Law. A parent’s fear for his or her child is in reality more often an expression of their attachment to the beauty that was brought into the world than it is of love. It is natural, there is nothing wrong with it really, but do not think that fear is ever an expression of love. Shed that illusion once and for all, fathers! Fear can be replaced by trust and the occasional confrontation in love, with nothing being lost, and much being gained.

You don’t understand, Neil. You have opportunities that I never even dreamt of and I am not going to let you waste them. But it is Mr. Perry who doesn’t understand. He wasted his life because of fear and now he wants his son to make up for it.

In my mother tongue, the English concept called original sin is coined as inherited sin. I did a men’s workshop once when the facilitator explained that his take on this concept of inhe was that it is that baggage of fear and unlove that is passed from generation to generation, from father to son. It will forever remain the responsibility of the son to break that chain, as long as the father is too afraid to claim some responsibilities of his own. But Mr. Perry will not let Neil dispel that chain of sin by breaking free into a life of passion, love and honest enthusiasm. Refusing sin’s redemption is the greatest sin of all.

As Mr. and Mrs. Perry go to bed that night, Neil puts on the crown of sticks that he wore as Puck at the apex of his life, just hours previously. That life is now about to end. For that crown is now the crown of Christ, and Neil is the sacrifice made to make good with the gods for the sins of the fathers.

In the black of night, Mr. Perry wakes up. He feels the terror, knows that something awful has happened. In his study lies Neil, his son, dead. Beside him, his own smoking gun.

The breaking apart of the Society

Nobody accepts responsibility for the dead Neil. Not his father, and not the mouldy old men at the Academy. They know not the heart, how could they understand that they themselves are responsible. How could they understand it and go on living? Heads must roll.

All the boys of the Society are forced by their parents, afraid to be humiliated, to confess to lies about Keating. Keating is fired. As he leaves that classroom for the last time, a once-hallowed place of teaching, now sterilized by the arrival of headmaster Nolan, Todd stands up on his desk and lets out his YAWP! He has found his voice now. “Oh captain, my captain!” sounds his calling; it is Whitman’s calling – the poet has been brought back to life. It resonates in the hearts of those friends of his who have found in themselves new meaning in the Dead Poets that Keating brought to life inside of them, and one after the other, they stand up and sound that crescendo of love – “Oh captain, my captain!”.

Such is the gratitude of a young man who has been admired by an older, and who there has found, in that transmission of love, himself.

Conclusion

Dead Poets Society is a magnificent film about the power of initiation at the hands of an elder. It shows the immense value of lineage, and gives us an insight into the power of transmission that travels from generation to generation (lineage is the positive form of that, inherited sin the negative). This is a film about the power of men long gone to affect the inner lives of those of us who now walk the earth. It’s a movie about the immortal cries of life, sounded by brave men through time immemorial as they stand on the edge of oblivion, confronting their own inevitable death. They can still be heard today, but a mentor must be there to make you hear. MTV, Star Trek and computer games don’t make good mentors. There is no love there. No challenge.

Dead Poets Society is also a film about what happens when an entire generation gives in to fear and walks that wide path, the path that leads to hell with good intentions. But this movie is about the road less travelled, so let’s heed the words of Robert Frost as we end this investigation of Dead Poets Society:

Two roads diverged in the woods
and I took the one less travelled by
And that has made all the difference

Set in the latter part of the 12th century, the movie focuses on the main character Balian–a peasant blacksmith in the south of France. From a life of relative tranquility, his existence is turned upside down when his wife gives birth to a stillborn child, and then proceeds to take her own life, stricken by grief. Soon after these tragic events, a knight of Jerusalem visits Balian, claiming to be Godfrey of Ibelin and Balian’s father. He offers the blacksmith to come with him to Jerusalem, and fight in the Crusades, but Balian–still paralyzed by grief–turns down the offer.

However, as chance would have it, the village priest turns out to be a less than empathetic man, provoking Balian by stating that his wife will burn in hell for killing herself. Overcome by rage, Balian is unable to control his emotions and kills the priest on the spot. Well aware that he will be sentenced to death for this crime, he flees the village on his horse, and joins his father’s party.

Balian is now a man who has hit rock bottom. His wife and child are dead, and he’s a wanted criminal in his native village. Furthermore, he’s proven to be unable to control his emotions and unable to adhere to his own moral code. In this state of internal confusion and emptiness he travels to Jerusalem, in hope of redemption and forgiveness, and perhaps just as importantly: in search of a new purpose in life, a purpose that can also serve as his redemption.

The question of what maketh a man is perhaps just as old as humanity itself. I do not pretend to have anything that even approaches a complete answer, but I think Balian’s story can give us an important hint. What is it that he loses to become a broken man? His wife and his child may be what comes to mind at first, but as tragic as these losses are, they do not necessarily represent our hero losing touch with his manhood or masculinity. Instead, the telltale signs that Balian is out of touch with his own core, is that he acts impulsively (i.e. cannot control his emotions), and that he breaks his own basic moral code. How can he trust himself, or expect the world to trust him, when falling short in these regards?

But even the fact that Balian loses touch with a couple of core masculine qualities, is nothing but the end result of a deeper dynamic. Healthy masculinity is first and foremost associated with a clear direction in life, and the fact that our hero’s family has been wiped out, has likely led to an absence of purpose or direction in his life. This lack of direction can in itself be enough for a man to let go of the other values that he cherishes in his life, such as his moral code and his composure.

Moving on in the story, Godfrey (the father) is lethally wounded in a battle with a group of soldiers that want to capture Balian and have him punished for killing the priest. As sad as this event is, it also represents a much needed turning point for our main character. The impending death of his father, leads Balian to experience something that is rare in our modern times: an initiation from his father. The word-by-word oath goes like this:

Godfrey of Ibelin: Be without fear in the face of your enemies. Be brave and upright that God may love thee. Speak the truth always, even if it leads to your death. Safeguard the helpless and do no wrong. That is your oath. Godfrey of Ibelin: [strikes Balian with the back of his hand] And that’s so you remember it. Hopitalier: Arise a knight and Baron of Ibelin.

Now, not everyone can be turned into a knight in a modern society, but every man could be formally or informally initiated into manhood, as well as have his father pass on some crucial insights or words of inspiration to him. Spiritual traditions have lineages and transmissions, and in many ways I believe that healthy masculinity and manhood are variables that can and should be transmitted from father to son, if at all possible. Needless to say, some fathers are dead, drunk or absent, but in that case a mentor can fill the shoes of the father in this respect.

Once in place in Jerusalem, Balian travels to the Ibelin estate, which turns out to be a less than glamorous remote desert oasis. Instead of cursing his fate, the newly instated Baron starts irrigating and cultivating the lands, side by side with his people. This humility, and this obvious connection to the earth that we all spring from, inform us that Balian is reconnecting to his core, and to a very healthy masculinity. All too often in our modern times do we associate men and men’s projects with a disregard for mother earth and the interconnectedness of all things. However, as far as I’m concerned this is a pathological expression of masculinity, whereas a more constructive expression of manhood wants to serve as a steward of the earth, and as a servant and steward of the feminine principle.

Step by step we thus see Balian coming into his own, and paying off his karmic debt of being a murderer. This personal growth that he goes through, turns out to be crucial in the huge challenge that awaits him.

After the newly crowned King of Jerusalem makes a fatal tactical error and marches his whole army into the desert, only to be overcome by heat and dehydration, and then slaughtered by the muslims–Balian is left with the overwhelming task of defending Jerusalem with few troops and a large civilian population. The reasonable response may seem to be to immediatly surrender, however, that may lead to the slaughtering of every last man, woman and child. Furthermore, Balian has been initiated into manhood, and he now has the opportunity to transmit this initiation to a large group of people.

In one of the strongest scenes in the movie, Balian orders a large group of civilians to kneel before him. He then proceeds to initiate them in a similar fashion to how he was initiated, and then orders them to rise as Knights of Jerusalem. The change in body language and facial expression is palpable in these men, after someone they admire has seen the potential in them, and expressed a conviction that they can be bigger men than they have ever imagined.

Using nothing but intelligent warfare and a small army of civilians, Balian is able to defend Jerusalem until the attackers agree to give all of them safe passage out of Jerusalem, none of which could have been achieved had he not been initiated himself.

If you are interested in a movie about pain, redemption, masculinity, initiation and humility, then I highly recommend you check out Kingdom of Heaven.

I would like to preface this review by telling you that I haven’t read Jon Krakauer’s book and I haven’t done extensive research on Christopher McCandless’ life. But please understand that I approach this review with tremendous respect and humility, for the story that is told involves real people and real fates.

Director Sean Penn spent ten years of his life trying to make this film a reality. He did so with the blessings of Christopher’s family and with a tremendous team of actors and filmmakers working with him for eight months. They set out to treat the story with as much love and care as they could and it is because of this that I trust the film to be an accurate testament to the spirit of the man, his life, and of the character of the people he loved and who loved him. I will write this review in the present tense. I hope it doesn’t offend anyone.

The fears of the fathers

Chris grows up in a dysfunctional family home, where the parents are frequently violent towards each other, and the kids are used as players in a tug-of-war. He has little respect for them and considers them bankrupt human beings. Early on in the film, Chris receives his diploma from Emory university. He launches playfully and somewhat rebelliously onto stage to accept it to the cheers of his fellow students. A disapproving frown spreads on his parents faces.

This scene, together with the dinner scene that follows, holds the key to understanding why Chris sets out on his journey. Chris is extremely resourceful and intelligent, and can function brilliantly within the confines of a highly structured and controlled society. He can play with “the big boys” if he wishes; his grades are good enough to get into Harvard Law school! But he despises the false and fraudulent ways of society, where human beings are forced to deny their basic human nature, their playfulness and shared humanity to operate in “the system” – the collective – without causing a glitch to appear in its matrix.

Say if it were the truth that, like Chris believes, we live in a world that is almost stripped of real love and real truth. If so, we can see in these scenes how Chris itches to free himself from this way of being in the world, and how his parents clench on to it. They are terrified of letting go of structure, formalities, finding solace in money and things, and their own personal stories of pain. Chris’ relationship to his father represents the generation gap that many of us know well. We are the men with a deep need for an emotional and truthful connection with our fathers, but wehave fathers who are too afraid or shut down to open up and provide it. They grew up in a world where survival was the primary goal, and the joy of building emotional connections based on truth was an unnecessary distraction.

Chris is suffocating. He has only been given the chance to express the gifts that are approved by society and his parents. But he is deeper than that. More profound. And he is not free. He is imprisoned by the fear of his parents and society. He himself is afraid of becoming like them. Afraid to become complacent and sucked dry of life force, buying into the illusion of “things, all these things!”. He wants to be free, but lacks the capacity to tear down the walls he has built around his heart. In his mind, he has no choice. He must leave.

Lighting the path

In every man’s growth into maturity, there comes a time when he must break free from the influence of his parents, particularly his father, and go into the world to discover himself. We have to go on walkabout, in some form or another. In early tribal cultures, and still some places in the world today, there is a rite of passage for the boy who is to become a man. This is always a very sacred ritual where the boy plunges the depths of himself as he is faced with ultimate challenge and fear. Through conquering these trials, he comes to realize the nature of his heart and why he is here. This tradition has been lost in our modern world, to our great detriment. Going to college or the army is simply not very powerful compared to facing the vast open abyss of our darkest fears, alone out in the wilderness, with only the protection of the ancestors – those who went before – to light the way.

The lack of such initiation rites is part of the reason why so many men today don’t really grow up. This is described beautifully in the excellent book King, Warrior, Magician, Lover by Roger Moore and Douglas Gillette. But Chris hungers to grow, to be mature and free. He devours books to discover the wisdom of the elders that are non-existent in his immediate surroundings. “He liked Tolstoy, Jack London and Thoreau,” his sister Carine shares with us. “He could summon their words to suit any occasion, and he often would.”

Any man needs men of greater maturity to guide the way for his own emotional, spiritual and psychological growth. It’s extremely unlikely that a man who is unwilling to learn about life from an elder will ever become a powerful force of love in the world. I cannot emphasize this enough, and it’s taken me a long time to really get this myself. So there is definitively an evolutionary path that we men must travel. This masculine evolution is so important that it’s symbolized by five chapters in the movie: Birth, adolescence, manhood, family, and The getting of wisdom. This is a beautiful model of masculine evolution, as true as any other I’ve seen. The problem today is that for most men, the model looks like this: Birth, adolescence, family.

Manhood and wisdom has been all but lost on us. What terrible things to sacrifice for the sake of fitting in and being hip with the times. So what do young men of the next generation do when there are no elders to turn to? Where the men around them are simply older, but not elders?

Into the fire

The masculine’s primary motivation is to be free. The work of David Deida goes into great detail about this. And the degree to which the masculine feels limited is the degree to which it suffers. Christopher is a masculine man, but has not been able to express it with the loving fierceness and freedom he longs for, as his surroundings have been too fragile and confused to receive his full capacity. In my own life, I’ve come to see that, when the rebellion comes, there is often a relationship of intensity between the rebellion and the suffering that triggered it. And the suffering is proportional to the amount to which a genuine capacity for love and truth has been supressed. Which means that a lot of our worst criminals and psychotics are saints in shackles, one initiation away from being servants of humanity.

The rebellion, like an overdue adolescent liberation, is always a strong and often misguided attempt to discover this love and truth. It is expressed in many ways – as abuse of a spouse (Chris’ parents), as infidelity or a life of crime, as becoming part of a subculture (the hippies he meets in Slab City), or withdrawing from society (Chris himself). Hopefully, the rebellion is only temporary, but for many, the rebellion becomes the identity. I’m not sure that’s healthy – identifying with the very thing that separates you from others. Ultimately, the rebelling man is looking for truth, but he may not have found a way that leads to it. What way does work? Christopher alludes to that with words I love:

“…and I also know how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong, but to be feel strong, to measure yourself at least once, to find yourself in the most ancient of human conditions, facing the blind deaf stone alone, with nothing to help you but your hands and your own head.”

Thus, a man finds his own inner truth. In my own life, I spend ten days in the woods every year, all by myself, with only my own mind, fears and desires as company. It’s hardly life-threatening, but it is a challenge. And it has brought up resources I never thought I had. I think a man needs to retreat into solitude regularly to rediscover his direction with only his soul’s longing for truth and freedom to keep him company. The primordial man staring into the fire under the starry sky. It’s a powerful symbol, waiting to be discovered in the midst of modern civilization.

Our shared humanity

When Christopher McCandless goes on his walkabout, and becomes his alter ego Alexander Supertramp, resources sprout in him like crops out of fertile soil. Free from limitations, he meets and befriends a number of people, who become incredibly important in his own growth. Remember, Chris – is quite the cynic, with only limited faith in the goodness of human beings. He sees mainly their folly and weakness. The friends he makes as he travels the country for two years are formative for the growing understanding in him that in every person there is a soft spot, a feeling of shared humanity, and in there – everyone is family. Even his own parents.

When Chris finally arrives in Alaska and settles in his abandoned bus, two years of intense human sharing lies behind him. There is the hippie couple Jan and Rainer – who have a sort of parent quality to him, but on completely the opposite end of the spectrum from Chris’ biological parents. They are very healing for him. There is Tracy, the young girl that adores him and would give anything to be with him. But Chris has a calling. There is Ron, that dear old man who hides away in his garage working on leather to escape the pain life has caused him. He teaches Chris about love and the power of forgiveness. In return, Chris teaches Ron to take risks and start living. There is Wayne, the man’s man with the experience of life that Chris does not yet have, who sees his own youthful idealism in him and warns him not to get too intense, not to “juggle blood and fire all the time”! Chris finds in Wayne a masculine role model that he has never had.

All these people enrich Chris’ heart immeasurably, but his mind and heart are set on other things.

The Wild

It is in the great Wilderness of Alaska that everything comes together for Chris. In the wild, he finds the peace and quiet to process his life’s experiences, and to find the seed of wisdom within. He finds the unspoilt splendour of nature and it touches and opens his heart. There is a wonderful scene in which he happens upon a flock of reindeer. The beauty of the moment is completely unspoilt by human folly. Chris’ face shows elation, and a tear wells up in his wide open eye. The moment is an expression of nature’s perfection. No words can even come close to conveying his heart-opening awe. His ego temporarily gone, at one with all.

This scene is the cue for me to venture into the world of spirituality. The masculine penetrates and the feminine embraces (if this is an abstract notion to you at this point, consider how our genitalia are a manifestation of this energetic principle). Human civilization is largely an attempt to penetrate and control nature. It’s largely masculine in nature, save for specks of the feminine in parks and flower beds. Nature itself is feminine. Its shifting forms and emotions are not ruled by logic, but by the flow of love and life force. The idea that humanity can control nature is a masculine pathology. Similarly, a mature man will never attempt to control his woman. What he will do is channel her energy with his unending integrity and strength of direction. But he will never try to control her.

It is this childish masculine naivete of wanting to control things that so disgusts Chris. We see this theme repeated through the film: The idea that people can own a river (his kayaking experience), that we can slice and dice the land and say this part is yours and this is mine (crossing the Mexican border), that someone will put more emphasis on protecting their property and show muscle than to help another human being (the scene on the train), are all expressions of ideas that the masculine has about the world, that aren’t necessarily aligned with the truth and freedom for which the masculine truly longs. Actually, it represents boy psychology, the fear of not being quite enough. And Chris wants man psychology, which – paraphrasing “King, Warrior, Magician, Lover” – is always nurturing and generative, not wounding and destructive. It’s a completely different ballgame.

Coming home

Because of the masculine pathology that I suggest runs modernity, we have been completely removed from our essential relationship with nature. We think meat comes from the supermarket, and are oblivious to the misery that we cause other species just to perpetuate our own unbalanced lives. In another powerful scene, Chris shoots a moose to feed his growing hunger. He accepts this gift of nature with respect and gratutide. Life travels from life form to life form through natural nutritional chains all the time. There is a type of beauty in this. But when he is incapable of salvaging the meat before the carcass is infested by maggots, he breaks down and refers to it as “one of the greatest tragedies of my life”. How different would life be if we had this type of relationship with our food? How different would the world be?

In the manifest world, the feminine will always be more powerful than the masculine. Because the manifest world is the feminine. The mature man ceases his attempt to control nature, and instead finds his power in his surrender to it. He is but a speck of dust in the unending play of manifestation. Yet he is a vital part, a key piece in this evolution of creation that ripples through an ever-expanding universe. This understanding is all but gone for modern city-dwellers. We look up into the night sky and see nothing but light pollution. We go for a walk outside and see only street signs, ad posters, lamp posts, cars, traffic lights and goal oriented human beings. Severed from nature, we never realize deeply our own insignificance, lost as we are in the trance of getting anywhere but where we are. And without discovering our insignifance, we never discover our endless importance. This realization is a paradox, and the lack of it is what feeds our habitual destruction of the very soil that feeds us.

There is so much to learn here. So much humility. And in the end, Chris finds what he looks for. His cynicism fades, and his spiritual revolution reaches its conclusion as he reads Tolstoy, one of his elders, and understands that he too wanted nothing but the simple joy of living in harmony with nature and the people he loved:

“I have lived through much and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one’s neighbour – such is my idea of happiness. And then, on top of all that, you for a mate, and children, perhaps – what more can the heart of a man desire?”

Chris is ready to re-embrace society. He is ready to open his heart for real.

Free at last

But the river which he crossed on his way into the wilderness has reached summer flood levels, and return is impossible. Chris is afraid. Such begins the final chapter of the film.

And there is one scene here that has me break down in tears every time. The father, once so afraid and emotionally shut down, walks out on the street, as Chris is close to death in Alaska, and breaks down in endless grief, raining sorrow on the tarmac. Chris never contacted his family after he left them. It is one of the great mysteries from this story. One may wonder why. His sister wondered why. But whatever his reasons were, his parents changed because of it. They became real human beings. Sorrow forged them into good people.

In the end Chris dies, from eating a plant that is dangerous to his starved body. There is one climactic and very symbolic scene, in which Chris stands completely impoverished, close to death, as a bear approaches and smells him. Chris has no energy to even be afraid, and the bear walks on. The bear, representing the power of nature, of the feminine, lets him live. Nature lets men live. We are not the masters here. We are but humble servants of something we will never understand.

And as the father discovers that the love he has for his son is endless, the son realizes, as his final breath is leaving him, that he loves his father, and indeed his mother, in equal measure. As he looks with eyes of amazement into the sky that all of a sudden seems to stretch into eternity, he seems to be expected.

Conclusion

Into the Wild is an amazing movie. I love it intensely. And I think there is a danger here to think that Chris is somehow special. He is not unique. He tells the story of men everywhere. Of you and me. It is the story of the ages. It is just that some choose to live it, others do not. On what side of history will you be?

The light and dark of Tom and Joey

What I want to know as I stand face to face with Tom Stall is: does he know about Joey? Or did he actually “die” out in the desert as Tom suggests to his wife Edie. Director David Cronenberg suggests the former in the DVD commentary, but Viggo Mortensen’s downplayed portrayal of the personality conflict shows it as being more of an unconscious sliding in and out of two different personalities, oblivious to each other.

If Tom really knew about Joey, he would’ve been playing games of hide and seek with his own and his family’s lives on the line throughout the entire story. This interpretation has him robbing his family of the truth for fear that it may confront him with his past and break the family apart, all the while knowing he is a sinister murderer behind the veils of rural loveliness. The human mind doesn’t work that way. Tom couldn’t be living such a sweet and loving family life if he was constantly totally aware of his past as a gangster and murderer. He could have if he had first accepted society’s, and particularly his family’s, judgment for his actions. But as it is, he would never be in integrity with himself and his role as a family man would be undermined. There is just no way he could look into the eyes of his fragile, darling daughter without fearing his dark side. No way he could serve as an authority figure to his son without being worried that he would tip over into his days of uncontrolled violence. It would create enormous inner conflict in him, and Tom doesn’t seem like a conflicted man.

As I see it, the only sensible interpretation is that Joey is part of Tom, but only subconsciously. Joey is buried deep in his psyche, and is only a faint whisper on the desert winds that he thinks he left behind. We can only wonder what kind of strange magic he must’ve gone through out there for those years. Maybe he went to stay with indians, being healed by shamans, sweat lodging, vision questing etc. Regardless of how total the transformation in the desert was, karma doesn’t forget, and this is a key learning of the movie.

There can be no question that Joey is a wicked DD1 man. Tom, however, is a gentle and loving DD2 man and together with Edie, they have a sweet, sexy, loving relationship. Tom is quite the family man, nurturing and in touch with both his masculine and feminine sides. Edie is strong and directed, yet still very feminine. But the political correctness and reversal of gender roles common for modern relationships seems refreshingly absent, which is probably why they still seem so much in love with each other. So this is a good relationship, perhaps even flirting with great on rare occasions.

There’s an artfully done sex scene where Tom and Edit roleplay teenagers trying to make love without being caught. Edie is quite the goddess, but Tom seems to be holding back just a little bit, not quite ready to take it all the way. And the sinister, unromantic lighting suggests something – or someone – is lurking under the surface. This holding back of Joey is symbolic for what many modern men do. We hold back our fierceness while making love to our partner, and leave her unravished. Satisfied, but not yet completely opened to bliss.

Longing for Cro Magnon

The unveiling of Joey starts when Tom ends up the local hero after defending his diner and the people who work for him from two heartless, fearful outcasts looking for money. Men with no purpose, no conscience and no balls to face up to themselves. Some would describe them as masculine, and they are – but it’s the lowest form of masculine available to mankind, and not the only form which is what feminism seems to think.

It’s very interesting to note that Tom seems pretty ashamed about what he has done. Yet his wife and son Jack are inspired by it: «Are you as sick about hearing about me as I am?,» Tom asks Edie. «In a way, I kind of like it,» she replies, clearly demonstrating that her husband’s capacity to defend her family against bad men is incredibly sexy to her. Jack, on the other hand, feels inspired by the raw power of his father’s masculine capacity to kill in service of those he loves.

Jack and Edie display very primal responses to our Darwinian past, and we must embrace this as part of our humanity lest we suppress it and be controlled by it. There is a darkness in the human psyche that, if harnessed, can be used for much good in the world. Modern men are often characterized by a sort of castration from this power, which makes them less trustworthy in the eyes of both men and women. It is every man’s responsibility to step into the intensity of his own aggressive potential and learn to master it, be it through martial arts, extreme sports, relationship aikido or a skilfully navigated career. No killing necessary! Society’s fear of authentic masculine aggression – which is both grounded, heartfelt and spiritual (a true gift!) – has forced modern men’s authentic self-expression into hiding. From the dark corners of our mind it festers and grows, eating us up from the inside – unless activated in positive and useful ways. We don’t serve anyone by denying our true nature. Psychosis, REAL violence and depression are created in such ways. In fact, I believe it’s a main cause of crime.

The gifts and sins of Joey

As the story develops and mobsters from Joey’s past arrive from Philadelphia, hellbent on setting things straight, Tom starts changing. More and more, we can see Joey come through – by virtue of necessity. Tom can’t defend his family, but Joey can. As Tom yields more and more to Joey, his son Jack starts questioning if he has any idea who his father really is, and becomes extremely conflicted in his perception of him. There is the matter of his identity, perhaps even his soul, to consider. And the safe father who he knew and loved has become someone else – a man who fascinates him deeply, on a primal level, but who also scares him out of his wit. Their developing dynamic has direct implications on Jack’s relationship to high-school bully Bobby who is a pain in Jack’s ass. Bobby is clearly fearful of Jack’s superior intelligence, and when a baseball game fluke has him temporarily outmatch Bobby’s sporting skills as well, Bobby has nothing setting him above Jack in the masculine power-hierarchy anymore – except for the intimidation factor. So he uses that for all that it’s worth. But with Jack’s family now fighting for survival and his father’s evident capacity to splatter people’s brains all over the floor, things are looking a bit different for him. The extreme circumstances free up Jack’s latent masculine power and in the end, he lets Bobby have it and pummels him and his friend. This is obviously not a mature way of dealing with conflict, but given Jack’s situation and Bobby’s character, it gives rise to a very valid question – is it really the worst thing that could happen? This scene gives us the opportunity to pinpoint two key themes of the movie: 1. At what point does violence become a necessity and 2: What amount of violence is within a man’s rights in defense of his honor and his loved ones.

In the first confrontation between Edie and Joey, Edie – having stepped up to protect a family in which Joey rather than Tom is the father of the house – slaps him with all her might and screams “damn you, Joey”. Joey proceeds to assault her, and holds her towards the wall with obvious aggression. It first looks like it’s going to be a rape scene, but it quickly evolves into something much deeper and more nuanced. What becomes clear is that Edie is willing to open up to even the darkness of Joey, and she even likes it. This shames her, but it brings up the question – could any of Joey’s qualities be transformed into gifts, in service of both his family and his wife?

Forgive me Father, for I have sinned

In the end, Tom, who is now equally Joey, returns with his hands tainted by family blood, having whacked both his brother and his useless henchmen back in Philly. The family awaits him, fully aware of their fathers Joey-ness. Tom has resurrected Joey, without losing himself in the process. By whacking all his former mobster compadres, he his fulfilled part of Joey’s karma, and created a truckload new karma for his ever more integrated Tom-Joey identity. He has been found out, the past has caught up with him, and his face reveals he knows the consequences. He has nothing now; no honor, no integrity, no life to speak of. The entire town knows who he is. All that is left is the truth and the faint glimmer of hope that his family won’t reject him.

He enters the kitchen as the alpha man of the flock, but completely broken in every way that matters. The treachery he has committed is so vast that it’s almost inconceivable to his wife. This scene is brilliantly acted out, and has Tom-Joey show extreme vulnerability. Sarah, his precious little daughter steps off her chair, picks up his plate and signals she wants her daddy back.

Conclusion

The History of Violence, the way I’ve chosen to interpret it, is a testament to the importance of integrating our dark side. Tom’s question is how he should integrate Joey in his life and still live as love in the world. By extension, the larger question becomes how we as a society should integrate the dark masculine in our lives, in service of all.