Large Fierce Mammal

When last we spoke, it was on the subject of Masculinity and Rites of Passage through the personal experience of soloing an airplane. In case the point eluded some of you, the instrument of transformation — the airplane — didn’t actually need to be what it was. It didn’t hurt in teaching a young Man for it to be a thing viewed by the society around him as dashing and dangerous, but for the lesson to be conveyed, I simply needed to surrender myself irretrievably to a set of circumstances from which avoidance of death or disablement rested in my own hands, absent any option for outside assistance. What my Esteemed Friend Steve Kaufman has referred to as, “… singularity and sudden experience of total reliance on one’s own self  ….”

Lest there be confusion in the ranks, let me clarify that what separates a traditional Rite of Passage from the mere fortuitous survival of stupid chances taken by the ignorant is prior absorption of knowledge and experience from one or more Mentors. While undeniably and demonstrably there can, and will, be situations that come unbidden, notwithstanding all best practices at avoidance, and their successful negotiation constitute a valid RoP in retrospect, our focus here today is the orchestrated kind. The overtly Mentored kind. Most importantly, the kind in which the acolyte knows himself to be on a guided journey to an outcome the nature of which, in the end, will rely on him and him alone. A Ritual.

The Power of Ritual: The Rocket Booster of Personal Change, Transformation, and Progress is the final installment to The Art of Manliness series on the nature and power of ritual. It observes, in part:

“One of the primary functions of ritual is to redefine personal and social identity and move individuals from one status to another: boy to man, single to married, childless to parent, life to death, and so on.

“Left to follow their natural course, transitions often become murky, awkward, and protracted. Many life transitions come with certain privileges and responsibilities, but without a ritual that clearly bestows a new status, you feel unsure of when to assume the new role. When you simply slide from one stage of your life into another, you can end up feeling between worlds – not quite one thing but not quite another. This fuzzy state creates a kind of limbo often marked by a lack of motivation and direction; since you don’t know where you are on the map, you don’t know which way to start heading.

“For example, young men who do not undergo a rite of passage into manhood often struggle with still feeling like a boy trapped in a man’s body. They want to feel like a man, but don’t, and figure they’ll start acting like one when they start feeling like one. But this feeling never arrives, and the sense of being in limbo continues.

“Just thinking your way to a new status isn’t very effective: “Okay, now I’m a man.” The thought just pings around inside your head and feels inherently unreal ….”

To be a Man possessed of Masculinity, experiencing the near daily necessity to engage in social intercourse or commerce with the unschooled males abroad in the land today, is to know the reality in the spirit of the other of what, “… feels inherently unreal ….”. To be unsurprised at a society proclaiming the necessity to “redefine” what it means — or more accurately should mean — to be Masculine when those uttering the proclamation never knew what it meant to begin with.

Our next conversation on this subject will highlight the first of two, regrettably not so exceptional, examples of Masculinity lost in the wilderness wherein the blind but well meaning were called upon to lead the blind.