Painting by artist William de Leftwich Dodge (1910) showing Guinevere looking into Narcissus’ Mirror, with Lancelot sniffing at her hand in recognition of her femdom. This image illustrates the taproot of feminism’s concern with maintaining or increasing the power of women, a process facilitated by men’s adherence to medieval chivalry and deference to women.

The following is from the introduction of Sarah K. Balstrup’s thesis To ‘Believe’ in Love – The Religious Significance of the Romantic Love Myth in Western Modernity. In it she explores romantic love as the dominant religious belief system in the Western world today. – PW.

THE STUDY OF LOVE

In 2011, Simon May made the bold claim that “love has increasingly filled the vacuum left by the retreat of Christianity…so that it is now the West’s undeclared religion – and perhaps its only generally accepted religion.”⁴ Although May’s research engages with philosophical debates rather than the more sociological concerns of the scholar of religion, his observations provide an excellent starting point for deeper analysis into this seemingly new religious phenomenon.

What is the significance, for instance, of the fact that May refers to love as ‘the’ religion of the West, and the simultaneous claim that such a widespread belief system can remain unrecognised by its adherents? Moreover, what is meant by ‘love’? This thesis seeks to answer such questions and, in doing so, provide a comprehensive analysis of the socio-cultural changes that have occurred between the mid-nineteenth century and the present day that have fundamentally altered both the significance of love, and the nature of religion itself. As the subject of study, love is defined as a particular social mythology that has achieved religious status due to important epistemological shifts associated with secularisation.⁵

Through the consideration of a number of case studies, including Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (1856), the HBO series Sex and the City (1998-2004), and romantic comedy films, the religious function of love will be investigated. As a social mythology that effectively replaces the Christian symbolic, love will be appraised as a religious position, on the basis that it acts as an ultimate concern for Western individuals.⁶ Most importantly this will involve an analysis of the religious epistemological mode in order to demonstrate why the ‘love religion’ does not involve self-identification.

Typically understood as an emotional state, love has become an important topic of philosophical, religious and psychological investigation throughout Western history. While far from exhaustive, such a history might include examples from the Biblical Scriptures, Plato’s Symposium, Dante’s Commedia, the tradition of courtly love that emerged in eleventh century Europe, along with a host of examples from the Romantic poets,⁷ and humanist philosophers.⁸

As love has acquired a rich symbolic resonance through the influence of such discourse, it has variously been understood to be an aspect of the Christian symbolic system, a state of being associated with truth, sacredness and beauty,⁹ or as an ethical force that is human in origin. To consider the implications of each of these examples within their cultural context is an unwieldy task, yet one that has been tackled by numerous academics in the past thirty years, as well as in earlier studies such as C. S. Lewis’s Allegories of Love (1936)¹⁰ and Denis de Rougemont’s Passion and Society (1956).¹¹ More recent studies of import include Stephen Kern’s The Culture of Love: Victorians to Moderns (1992)¹² and Simon May’s Love: A History (2011),¹³ as well as a host of philosophical¹⁴ and socio-cultural studies.¹⁵

While these texts will inform this thesis, in general, their aim has been to extrapolate the culturally specific nature of the Western understanding of love, where ‘religion,’ in its Judeo-Christian form, is understood to be one of many influences upon the myth. In light of Wittgenstein’s assertion that “the meaning of a word is its use in language,”¹⁶ it becomes apparent that the survival of ‘religious themes’ does not necessarily prove the continuation of religious significance. Rather, in this thesis, the love myth is deemed to be a coherent symbolic system that functions as a type of secular religion, regardless of the origin of ideas that comprise its current form, which may or may not have been religious in their original cultural context.

Despite the depth and breadth of studies on love, and the frequent claim that love is of sacred or religious significance,¹⁷ the definition of love remains vague and the dynamics of this supposed religious connection have yet to be fully explored. Those who have made the strongest claims regarding love’s spiritual significance have done so with disapproval, in the case of de Rougemont,¹⁸ May¹⁹ and others; or an air of tragedy, as can be found in the reflections of Flaubert,²⁰ Michel de Certeau and Roland Barthes.²¹ The former find fault with the love myth, claiming that it puts unrealistic expectations upon human relationships,²² that it is an inferior and adulterated version of a purer religious sentiment,²³ that it is a corrupting influence in society which involves the human attempt to become God,²⁴ or is otherwise responsible for human cruelty.²⁵

In each case, love and relationships are viewed to be separate from the culturally contingent love myth that is being subjected to critique. As a Religious Studies approach does not involve the evaluation of belief systems based on their putative merit, these arguments will not be explored; however, it is important to note the contested nature of the religiosity of love. As a ‘growing trend,’ the sacralisation of love is then identified as an undesirable development that must be studied in order to create a level of reflexivity necessary to stem the flow of its influence.

Although the majority of scholars mentioned thus far simply use the term ‘love,’ and may mention culturally specific sub-categories such as agape, eros, or parental love, the contemporary form of love that is increasingly idealised can be more accurately defined as ‘romantic love.’ As a cultural construct, romantic love has a history that can be most clearly traced to eleventh century Provence, when the love poetry of the troubadours began to depict a noble and divine love between man and woman that stood in contrast to the dry practicalities of arranged marriage.²⁶

Medieval scholars have problematised this reductive claim, and have revealed aspects of the courtly tradition that do not serve to convey the more modern notion of romance, yet, the concept of the birth of romance has remained a useful periodisation tool nonetheless.²⁷ As courtly love was an adulterous, albeit unconsummated love that stood in contrast to the institution of marriage, romantic love is based upon passionate feelings towards an idealised other, involving a self-sacrificing attitude of devotional awe. Tristan and Isolde provides the most iconic example of courtly love, and due to the tragic culmination of this lovers’ tale, there has remained a strong link between romantic sentiment and the concept of being reunited with the beloved through death.

While not always mentioned regarding the origins of romantic love, there is a very close relationship between courtly love poetry and the writings of medieval mystics like Bernard of Clairvaux and Hadewijch of Antwerp.²⁸ Incorporating Biblical material such as the erotically charged “Song of Songs,” Christian mystics have developed strong associations between devotion for the beloved (as lover), and the Beloved (as Christ or the Deity himself).²⁹ This form of romantic worship drew strongly on Platonic philosophy, wherein erotic desire for the beauty that resides within the beloved can lead the lover to purer states of love, and, ultimately, to the contemplation of the Divine. As influential strains of Christian mysticism appropriated this model of sacred relation,³⁰ the concept of ascent via beauty intermingled with Christian concepts of the Divine, and this association has remained salient in Western cultural mythology.

The poetry of the courtly tradition and the writings of Christian mystics are historical antecedents of the idea of romantic love, however, in mid-eighteenth century England, romantic love came to be understood in terms of human relationships. Related to the rise of the middleclass, the birth of the modern novel, and other factors associated with modernisation, romantic love became a driving force of social change as it became increasingly acceptable to marry for love.³¹

Previously constrained by the class system and the social obligation to enter into practical marriages, in the mid-eighteenth century, the law of love became more deeply associated with virtue than the ability to conform to the dictates of the social institution. In this early period the ideal of true love was applied to the dissolution of class-based distinctions, and this deregulatory function has become characteristic of the love myth, so that in the contemporary context, romantic love is employed in the rejection of all forms of social barriers. In the realm of popular culture, the romantic comedy has offered a running commentary on the love myth since the establishment of the genre in Hollywood’s classical era.³²

Depicting strong female leads in the 1930s and ambitious career women in the 1980s, the romantic comedy genre has a history of correlating the overthrow of patriarchal dominance with the negotiation of ‘true’ love.³³ Films from the 1990s onward have extended the use of the romantic love myth to dismantle social barriers relating to race, gender, sexuality, age, and cultural extraction. As such, the love myth has been consistently identified as a force of justice that enables the individual to oppose social sanctions.

As the history of the love myth does not in itself define the specific types of beliefs involved in its contemporary form, examples will be provided of what romantic love is considered to be within the bounds of this thesis. First and foremost it is believed that true love can be found between two people, and that the connection that they share involves the total person; physical, spiritual, mental. These two individuals are destined to be together and are led into contact with one another through divine aid or coincidence, so that all life events can be understood in relation to the formation of a relationship that was always ‘meant to be.’³⁴

Romantic love requires one to surrender disbelief,³⁵ and have faith in the power of love in order to experience this sacred relationship, and the individual expects to undergo trials of virtue in order to be worthy of such love.³⁶ Super-empirical elements implicit in the romantic myth include a belief in destiny,³⁷ and the ability to connect with the beloved by means of extra-sensory-perception, and a belief in postmortem reunion in the afterlife,³⁸ or in subsequent lives.³⁹ The universe is believed to contain knowledge of the fated union between the individual and their ‘soul mate,’⁴⁰ and one can read ‘signs’ in daily life that may lead them to this person, or reveal their identity. The identity of one’s soul mate is as unique as the individual, so that uniqueness is prized over stereotypical conventions of beauty or personality.⁴¹

One may come up against innumerable practical obstacles; identifying subsequent mates as ‘the One,’ or failing to establish a connection with a person that one believes is their ‘soul mate,’⁴² yet the romantic myth can be manipulated successfully to absorb even the most direct contradictions. This is possible due to a belief in layers of meaning, and an ultimate underlying ‘truth’ related to the concept of the ‘true self.’ This truth can only be verified by emotional cues and personal intuition, so that if these initial feelings of confirmation are seriously tested, the individual can concede that they were fooled by the appearance of truth, and so remain unshaken in their belief that their true love is still out there.

Drawing upon the value of self-determination embedded in the ideal of freely choosing one’s partner, out of love rather than social obligation, love is heralded as a revolutionary force that can usurp institutionalised authority.⁴³ Ultimately, true love removes the scales from one’s eyes, revealing the goodness inherent in all things, and enables one to experience Heaven on earth.⁴⁴ As the mode of relation between the individual and God has been so often expressed in the Judeo-Christian tradition in romantic terms, popular culture reveals that God and the beloved have now become almost interchangeable concepts.⁴⁵

____________________

REFERENCES:

4 May, Love: A History, p. 1.
5 Terms such as ‘myth,’ ‘mythology,’ ‘imaginative,’ and ‘imagination’ are not used in the pejorative sense in this thesis. While Christian polemicists have used these terms to imply a type of belief that is ‘untrue’ and based upon delusory thinking, here they are used to refer to their function. Mythology can be understood analogously to ‘social narrative,’ while imagination involves a type of active mental engagement requiring the suspension of reality.
6 Paul Tillich, ‘Dynamics of Faith,’ in Robert P. Scharlemann (ed.) Paul Tillich: Main Works, Writings on Religion (Walter de Gruyter, 1988) pp. 231–232.
7 John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley and others.
8 For instance, Petrarch and Auguste Comte.
9 Dante Aligheiri, The Paradiso (J. M. Dent and Sons: London, 1941); Charles Williams, Religion and Love in Dante: The Theology of Romantic Love (Kessinger Publishing, 2010); Flaubert, Madame Bovary.
10 C.S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition (Oxford University Press, 1938).
11 Denis de Rougemont, Passion and Society (Faber and Faber, 1956).
12 Stephen Kern, The Culture of Love: Victorians to Moderns (Harvard University Press, 1992).
13 May, Love: A History.
14 For example Vincent Brümmer, The Model of Love: A Study in Philosophical Theology (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1993); Albert James Smith, The Metaphysics of Love: Studies in Renaissance Love Poetry from Dante to Milton (Cambridge University Press, 1985); Richard John White, Love’s Philosophy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2001); Irving Singer, The Pursuit of Love (John Hopkins University Press, 1994).
15 For example Kern, The Culture of Love; May, Love: A History; Ann Swidler, Talk of Love: How Culture Matters (University of Chicago Press, 2001); Aaron Ben-Ze’ev and Ruhama Goussinsky, In the Name of Love: Romantic Ideology and its Victims (Oxford University Press, 2008).
16 Simon Malpas, Jean-François Lyotard (Routledge, 2003) pp. 21–22.
17 All love theorists mentioned in this thesis recognise the classic examples of sacred love enshrined in Biblical, Platonic, mystic, courtly, and Romantic sources. The centrality of love in Western culture is likewise recognised, yet each theorist articulates the ‘sacred’ or ‘religious’ role of love in a different way. Due to limitations of space, May’s claim is singled out for its directness and clarity.

18 de Rougemont, Passion and Society.
19 May, Love: A History.
20 As will be discussed in further detail in the second chapter of this thesis, Flaubert’s views of love are tragic, idealistic, cynical and ironic. Evidence of this can be found in all of his written works, particularly Madame Bovary (1856) and A Sentimental Education (1869) yet also in his extensive collected correspondence. See John Charles Tarver, Gustave Flaubert as seen in his Works and Correspondence (Kessinger Publishing, 2005).
21 Michel de Certeau, The Mystic Fable: Volume One: The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (University of Chicago Press, 1995); Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse. As this thesis merely cites de Certeau and Barthes in order to engage with their personal representations of the love myth, their broader theoretical oeuvres will not be considered. Recognising that French theory has contributed much to the study of love, thinkers like Lacan, Kristeva, De Beauvoir and Foucault have been purposely omitted from this thesis in order to distinguish my methodological position from theirs, and avoid an unintended association with the strong political subtext of their writings.
22 Swidler, Talk of Love; May, Love: A History; Kern, The Culture of Love; Ben-Ze’ev and Goussinsky, In the Name of Love.
23 de Rougemont, Passion and Society.
24 May, Love: A History.
25 Ben-Ze’ev and Goussinsky view the “romantic ideology” of love to be responsible for “wife murders” and violence perpetrated against women in the name of love. Ben-Ze’ev and Goussinsky, In the Name of Love.
26 Swidler, Talk of Love, pp. 112–135.
27 Stephen C. Jaeger, Ennobling Love: In Search of a Lost Sensibility (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999); Lewis, The Allegory of Love.
28 Gordon Rudy, Mystical Language of Sensation in the Later Middle Ages (Routledge, 2002) pp. 68–72.
29 Louise Nelstrop, Kevin Magill, and Bradley B. Onishi, Christian Mysticism: An Introduction to Contemporary Theological Approaches (Ashgate, 2009) pp. 89–90.
30 Nelstrop, Magill, and Onishi, Christian Mysticism, pp. 23–27, 85–91.
31 Colin Campbell, The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism (Blackwell, 1989) p. 27.
32 Claire Mortimer, Romantic Comedy (Taylor & Francis, 2010) p. 10.
33 Chantal Cornut-Gentille, ‘Working Girl: A Case Study of Achievement by Women? New Opportunities, Old Realities’ in Peter William Evans and Celestino Deleyto (eds) Terms of Endearment: Hollywood Romantic Comedy of the 1980s and 1990s (Edinburgh University Press, 1998) pp. 111–128.

34 Before Sunrise (1995) tells the story of Jesse and Celine who meet by chance on a train in Europe. They spend one night together, yet their entire lives are rewritten in relation to this event. Failing to reunite in Vienna the following year, in Before Sunset (2004) the couple eventually meet in Paris to find that the nine years that they had spent apart were filled with dissatisfaction and that their chance at happiness depends upon their being together.
35 In romantic comedies, the initial cynicism of the romantic couple is replaced by absolute faith in the reality of love by the film’s conclusion. For example, When Harry Met Sally (1989), The Proposal (2009), Friends with Benefits (2011).
36 In the romantic comedy Joe Versus the Volcano (1990) this test takes the form of a ‘leap of faith’ where the romantic couple express their commitment to each other and to love by jumping into a volcano. Rather than dying together, this act is rewarded by unseen forces as the volcano spits them out and they survive unscathed. In the ‘real life’ context of the reality television show The Bachelor (16:7) Ben takes Kacie, Nicki and Rachel shark-swimming on their group date. Rachel has a shark phobia, yet Ben convinces her that the shark dive is a suitable metaphor for their (potential) future relationship. Despite the danger that Rachel finds herself in, she is able to utilise the psychological skills learnt from romantic narratives in order to act against her natural instinct of fear. Knowing that when one demonstrates their faith in love, they will be rewarded, Rachel puts her life in danger as she wills herself to believe that Ben’s presence will magically protect her from harm.
37 Serendipity (2001).
38 Chris and Annie reunite in What Dreams May Come (1998), while in Ghost (1990) Sam communicates with his partner Molly after his untimely death. When his spirit is about to ascend to Heaven, the couple say goodbye in the temporary sense by saying “see ya,” implying that they will meet again.
39 The Fountain. Similarly, many romantic films involve lovers meeting while one partner is in a different body, yet the true spiritual bond that they share eventually enables the recognition of the disguised beloved. In Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) this trope is played out in a range of bodyswapping scenarios, and in the dual nature of Angel/Angelus. Similarly, in Doctor Who (2005-2009) the Doctor’s ‘true self’ is maintained through subsequent ‘regenerations.’
40 In its popular usage, this term refers to a person’s destined true love, yet is derived from Plato’s story of the original humans who were male and female; two joined together with four arms and four legs, until they were separated by Zeus. In popular culture, the term soul mate is employed to emphasise that love between two individuals is so great that no physical or metaphysical force could destroy it. In fictive form, soul mate partnerships are often depicted overcoming space, time, death, the body, or psychic barriers such as spells or Alzheimer’s disease. For example, in The Notebook (2004), The Fountain (2006), and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004).
41 “For me the other is neither he nor she; the other has only a name of his own, and her own name. The third-person pronoun is a wicked pronoun: it is the pronoun of the non-person, it absents, it annuls. When I realise that common discourse takes possession of my other and restores that other to me in the bloodless form of a universal substitute, applied to all the things which are not here, it is as if I saw my other dead, reduced, shelved in an urn upon the wall of the great mausoleum of language. For me, the other cannot be a referent: you are never anything but you, I do not want the Other to speak of you.” Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse, p. 185.
42 Sliding Doors (1998).
43 In The Adjustment Bureau (2011) the authority to be overcome is that of God himself. In the film, it is revealed that angels monitor human behavior to ensure that all act according to their destiny. David and Elise state their case to the Deity and convince Him that they should be allowed to write their own destinies because they are most truly in love.
44 “In this world we’re just beginning to understand the miracle of living…Ooh, baby, do you know what that’s worth? Ooh, heaven is a place on earth. They say in heaven love comes first. We’ll make heaven a place on earth.” Belinda Carlisle, “Heaven is a Place on Earth.”
45 For example, songs that are generally understood to be about romantic love can also be read as songs about God, for instance, Florence and the Machine (“When food is gone you are my daily need. When friends are gone I know my Saviour’s love is real…You got the love I need to see me through.”) “You Got the Love,” Markita “Love, Thy Will be Done.” Similarly, in Sister Act (1992) a choir of nuns use the love songs “I Will Follow Him” and “My Guy” to refer to the Christian Deity.

 

Excerpt source: To Believe in Love – The Religious Significance of the Romantic Love Myth in Western Modernity, by Sarah K. Balstrup

 

In the following study How Venus Got Her Furs: Courtly Romance as Sadomasochistic Erotica, sadomasochism is shown to characterize the European sexual relations contract in the form of masochistic-chivalry and romantic love. It can also be observed that the same sadomasochistic culture has spawned the rise of gynocentrism, feminism, and the essentially male-led servicing of these same traditions.

Article reprinted here by permission of Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

By Paul Elam

“The modern hero, the modern individual who dares to heed the call and seek the mansion of that presence with whom it is our whole destiny to be atoned, cannot, indeed must not, wait for his community to cast off its slough of pride, fear, rationalized avarice, and sanctified mis-understanding. ‘Live,’ Nietzsche says, ‘as though the day were here.’ It is not society that is to guide and save the creative hero, but precisely the reverse. And so every one of us shares the supreme ordeal––carries the cross of the redeemer––not in the bright moments of his tribe’s great victories, but in the silences of his personal despair.”  

Joseph Campbell ~ The Hero with a Thousand Faces

***

Anyone suggesting that they have ideas that will actually help men, psychologically speaking, has an obligation to place their philosophy, their rationale, front and center for men to see. I also understand that most practitioners don’t really do that, especially in what I loosely define as the “mental health” industry.

Usually what you get is a short and sputtering list of platitudes about “wholeness,” finding your “inner this” or “inner that,” accompanied by an obscure definition of the practitioner’s approach. It is either that or you get nothing but the bill.

Sometimes, often actually, they will inform you that they subscribe to feminist theory, which is an admission of their philosophy, except to the extent that it should be viewed cautiously, regardless of your sex.

This writing is intended to explain what I do in regards to assisting men, specifically in their more modern struggle for identity and an understanding of where they fit in the world. This is particularly important as the lack of those things may well result in some serious problems. Among them are family dysfunction, substance abuse, suicide, violence, anxiety, depression, shame and a lack of self-respect that often crosses the line into self-hatred.

It is not that the current crisis of male identity is the sole cause of these problems. It certainly isn’t. For example, family dysfunction is a self-perpetuating malady passed down from parents to children. In and of itself it has little to do with modern masculinity. Alcoholism is not a “male problem,” nor is violence or other forms of abuse, though those practicing under a feminist shingle may send that very message.

When assessing problems, it can be very difficult to tell the difference between cause and symptom, between a problem and its source. Does family dysfunction cause substance abuse or is substance abuse the cause of the dysfunction? Is violence at the root of relationship problems or do relationship problems fuel and promote the violence? Do communication problems cause hostility or does hostility cause communication problems?

Are all these problems symbiotic, just a teeter-totter interaction of various pathologies feeding each other? If so, can we ameliorate one problem by successfully intervening on another?

I suggest that there may be some truth answering those last two questions in the affirmative. There are, however, workarounds, back doors if you will, to what may well form part of the root structure of an array of problems with no readily visible connection. The good news about that is that you don’t need to see the connection initially in order to do something about it.

The philosophy here is that solutions begin with a recognition that there is indeed a crisis in male identity and male self-respect. It affects all of us, gay or straight, black or white or other race, regardless of religion or socioeconomic status.

Fifty years of gender politics have thrust all men into a new paradigm of sexual politics with no rule book. We are now three generations of men who have been pummeled with messages of who we are, almost all of them wrong, and who we are supposed to be, almost all of them destructive in one way or another. Our mental health industry is one of the prime proponents of these misguided ideas. They are espoused, for profit, at the expense of our men and boys.

The Old School Archetypes

The classic, historical masculine archetypes of Hero, Villain, Ruler, Warrior, Creator, Sage, Rebel and Explorer, all of which either defined what men chose or what they were driven to be. They provided men a model of what they chose not to be as well. They gifted men with a sense of identity and purpose, a rudder for their navigation of life. To a great degree (with some downsides) they worked. Jungian analysts, in the days before the ideological corruption of the field of psychology would likely tell you that these archetypes are rooted in our biology.[1]

It is also important to note that all these archetypes are anthropomorphic projections of the human male experience. They took root in our earliest mythologies because they were already in play in human life. Strangely, “mythology” told the real story of our lives. Every epic battle, great journey, tragedy and triumph of mythical figures mirrored the internal and external experience of real human beings in some way or another.

And so it went from epoch to epoch.

All that has been supplanted with a new and toxic narrative. To simplify it, we now live in a Zeitgeist where all male archetypes have been reduced to that of Villain, with the expectation that they will assume the role of Hero when needed…and directed.  The ongoing expectations of men to protect, provide, sacrifice and endure have not changed. The change in narrative, however, demands that recognition and honoring of those things ceases in favor of persistent demonization.

Similar changes have happened in the lives of women. The Manipulator, the Bitch, the Saboteur, the Queen and the Damsel in Distress have usurped the timeless archetypes of mother (Demeter), daughter (Persephone), lover (Aphrodite), civic life and learning (Athena), etc.. While all these and other female archetypes are on full social display, the spectrum of those archetypes has begun to degrade into a vacillation between two roles based on immediate perception. Women are universally seen as the Queen, unless they are in distress or claim to be in distress. Once the perception of female distress registers, social consciousness reverts them to being the original Damsel in Distress. It is as though they live in a perpetual state of flux between empowered and helpless, depending on which is more advantageous, just as we see play out today across the geopolitical landscape.

That, too, is ultimately heading for a crisis of identity in women, though for the purpose of this discussion we need not explore that further.

The denial of all this, and the assumption that it has not had a tremendous impact on the psyches of men, has left them in an emotional and social wasteland that produces more of the psychosocial problems already identified in this writing.

This leads to an inescapable conclusion. While men do need assistance with specific problems, they are also suffering in a famine of functional archetypes. Failing to recognize this, even if we seek in earnest to help them with problems symptomatic of that deficit, is putting a Band-Aid on potentially mortal wounds.

If we are to help men, it requires us to enable them to nurture a new narrative of themselves and their lives. They need new archetypes that foster a new sense of identity if they are going to thrive in a new age.

So what exactly is an archetype?

The Greek root words are archein, meaning “original or old,” and typos, meaning “Model or type.” Archetype: Original Model. Archetypes are the old, original models on which men, in the unconscious recesses of their biology, shape and mold their lives.

Perhaps in the days when there were payoffs, e.g. honor, appreciation, respect and status, men’s unconscious movement toward one archetype or another made more sense.

We do not live in those times any more, and we haven’t for most or all of your lifetime. What remains for most men in modern life is a world of expectation without reward, burden without honor and service without self.

Most men know on some level that this is true, but many have a very hard time facing it out of fear. Fear of the loss of social approval, the loss of love and the loss of what they imagine is the only space the world grants them.

Some of the fear is at least superficially warranted. Facing these issues means reaching a level of consciousness sufficient to make you a bad fit in the world of the walking blind. It means a new mythology with new archetypes born of a newer and more accurate picture of the world.

The daunting challenge is that men can no longer afford the luxury of allowing biology alone to write their story. Technology and ideology have rendered that too dangerous. The old model makes men far too easy to manipulate and far too willing to comply with the manipulation to their own detriment. You can find this same story throughout classic mythology so it is nothing new. Those, however, were cautionary tales, the moral lesson from which has been erased from the cultural consciousness. Most dare not speak honestly of Hera and Medea in the modern age.

The results of that resembles a modern genocide of the male soul.

Fortunately, that which has been forgotten can be learned again. And that which has been learned in error can be corrected. The fruits of that effort are the restoration and “wholeness” so easily promised and seldom delivered.

The risks of embracing this on a personal level is actually an illusion. Once you walk the newer path you will most probably find you don’t particularly want to return to the old one. The feigned approval of others loses its luster when the vision clears.

Despite appearances, all of this is really not so arcane. It is actually quite simple. You can start with most any problem in life; relationship and family issues are a good start. Map the mythology that got you there, that determined your actions and reactions. Were you playing the role of the Hero? The Warrior? Were you surrendering to the Siren’s Song? Was the Damsel in Distress a façade with something more sinister behind the surface impression?

Did a faulty narrative of your place and worth in this world lead you directly into a painful wall? And if that is true, do you have the fortitude to face it and change the story?

Imagine the consciously constructed mythology that would lead you to a better place with better people. Imagine the story of you being written by your own hand.

The solutions are not always easy, but they are made much more accessible when you make the decision to clear your own path; when you are at the helm, navigating your own way, when the stars in the sky are arranged according to your own dreams and desires.

How many miserable professional men out there can remember a time when they aspired to be artisans, writers or artists, only to watch those dreams buckle beneath the oppressive weight of a story that they did not write?

How many desperate men are clinging to the role of provider and protector, having become automatons in loveless, abusive marriages that have ground their self-respect into the dust?

How many men have stories that end with a bottle of scotch and a handgun because they cannot breathe and do not know where to find free air?

Men need an alternative to the new mythology’s archetypes of Servant, Slave and Scapegoat. The only thing preventing that from happening is being trapped in or clinging to a narrative they did not produce and which has never served them.

We have seen the results of men living in a world that is devoid of any honoring of men’s roles or even of men’s being. How can men cope in this sort of world?  How can therapists or anyone else facilitate a man moving from this restrictive, prison-like consciousness into a more truly masculine path that embraces his well-being, self-interest and happiness?

That is what my work is about. Not just a place for men to tell their stories, but to author and own them with support and encouragement from other men.

[1]Andrew Samuels, Jung and the Post-Jungians ISBN 0415059046, Routledge (1986)

By Elizabeth Hobson & Peter Wright

Stories frequently succeed in arousing strong feelings, like when we read a novel and become moved to tears or anger, or when we see scenes in a movie which make our skin crawl, give goose bumps, or make our hair stand on its proverbial end. Such strong feelings, and the stories that generate them, seem to put a lie to the popular phrase “Facts Don’t Care About Your Feelings”. The reverse seems more likely in evidence, even when we know that a fantasy novel or movie is not factually real – our feelings remain dominant.

This is why old-world mythologies, complete with kooky beliefs, have flourished and sustained large civilizations – civilizations which thrived and expanded under the guiding influence of those same unfactual stories. Even when the stories promote a geocentric universe with a flat earth, or mythical gods requiring human sacrifices, deadly wars or violence over the divinely mandated length of men’s beards, or whether a woman’s mandated head covering is pleasing to the divine powers. You would think these things would cause a civilization to collapse and die out, however it appears that those more rational civilizations who deconstruct myths have birth rates plummeting whilst cultures based in fanciful stories enjoy explosive birth rates.

Perhaps it’s time to consider the painful possibility that feelings don’t always care about our facts. That’s certainly the case in many cultures, and it may indeed be a default setting of human beings generally – we are story creatures, and facts are often seen as an affront that offends both the stories we believe in and feelings associated with them.

Writing in the year 1984,³ professor emeritus of communication Walter R. Fisher explored these two approaches to reality – the approaches of both story and rationality – and named them 1. ‘the narrative paradigm’ and 2. ‘the rational world paradigm.’

Fisher describes the narrative paradigm in much the same way as we are presenting it in this article; as a reflection of the fact that we use stories to communicate with each other, and to provide a shared map of meaning among a group of people.

Stories help by gathering the scattered bric-a-brac of everyday existence and combining it into a coherent whole, or what we might refer to as a template, that we use to orient ourselves and our goals in harmony with the shared orientation and goals of others. In short stories provide us with a shareable world.

As we have seen, religious stories and folk tales can be both benevolent by way of organizing the masses into a harmonious moral unit, or they can be destructive as we see in stories promoting warfare against innocent nations, and even those stories which, today, promote gender wars.

What Fisher refers to alternatively as the ‘rational world paradigm’ consists in five presuppositions, which I can paraphrase as: 1. That humans are essentially rational beings, 2. That human decision-making and communication is a form of argument depending on clear-cut inferential and implicative structure, 3. That the conduct of such argument is ruled by legal, scientific and legislative dictates (etc), 4. That rationality is determined by subject matter knowledge, argumentative ability, and skill in employing the rules of advocacy in given fields, and finally, 5. The world is a set of logical puzzles which can be resolved through logical analysis and application of reason conceived as an argumentative construct.

Fisher notes the frequent failure of the rational world paradigm in the modern context, and goes on to conclude that:

This failure suggests to me that the problem in restoring rationality to everyday argument may be the assumption that the reaffirmation of the rational world paradigm is the only solution. The position I am taking is that another paradigm may offer a better solution, one that will provide substance not only for public moral argument, but also all other forms of argument, for human communication in general. My answer to the second question then, is: “Yes I think so.”

Adoption of the narrative paradigm, I hasten to repeat, does not mean rejection of all the good work that has been done; it means a rethinking of it and investigating new moves that can be made to enrich our understanding of communicative interaction.¹

The narrative communication paradigm, or more simply the use of stories, has been criticised from a rational perspective when applied to scientific or legal issues, with the charge being that there is no way to make a choice between two equally coherent narratives. This is a valid complaint, but not one that practitioners of the rational world paradigm completely escape – this due to their frequent preferencing of one set of data over another, of placing the accent on one set of findings while neglecting others – a tendency that renders “rationalist” conclusions more subjective than they might like to admit – just like those of the story tellers.

Ultimately the rational and narrative approaches need to work in tandem if we wish to provide strong results, but at present the men’s movement has been wary of narrative approaches due to their tendency to subjectivity and corruption. Unfortunately, storytelling remains the preferred mode of communication and decision-making of the human species, therefore we can’t simply wish it away as irrelevant because that would be to deny the fact that humans have evolved to be narrative creatures – Homo Narrans – who preference communication via stories. It is a biological and evolutionary fact, so it isn’t going away, and hating it will do little to change its biological necessity.

If story is here to stay, then we need to enter the fray. We need to get down into the alphabet soup and wrestle with those destructive narratives perpetuated by feminists and others who would reduce men and boys to a tiny fraction of their lived experience. This can be done by challenging any element of the dominant gender narratives currently circulating – by amending the stories to conclude the male hero is “good” rather than “toxic,” or by crafting new stories altogether that incorporate the positive experiences of men and boys.

That is our challenge to you all today: not to do away with rational or data-based approaches, but to broaden them by offering new endings to the destructive stories currently on offer, re-narrating them, or by telling new stories in ways so compelling and emotionally moving that they displace the destructive ones currently on offer.

Source:

[1] Fisher, W. R. (1984). Narration as a human communication paradigm: The case of public moral argument. Communications Monographs, 51(1), 1-22.

EROS, AGAPE, AMOR

By Joseph Campbell

 

In theological sermons we are used to hearing of a great distinction between fleshly and spiritual love, eros and agape. The contrast and conflict were already recognized and argued by the early Christian Fathers and have been argued ever since. An important point to be recognized, however, is that the ideal of love, amor, of the lovers and poets of the Middle Ages corresponded to neither of these.

In the words, for example, of the troubadour Giraut de Borneil, “Love is born of the eyes and the heart” (Tam cum los oills el cor ama parvenza): the eyes recommend a specific image to the heart, and the heart, “the noble heart,” responds. That is to say, this love is specific, discriminative, personal, and elite. Eros, on the other hand, is indiscriminate, biological: the urge, one might say, of the organs. And agape, too, is indiscriminate: Love thy neighbor (whoever he may be) as thyself. Whereas, here, in the sentiment and experience of amor, we have something altogether new—European—individual. And I know of nothing like it, earlier, anywhere in the world.

The aim in the European “cult” (if we may call it that) of amor was not in any sense ego extinction in a realization of nonduality, but the opposite: ego-ennoblement and -enrichment through an altogether personal experience of love’s poignant pain—“love’s sweet bitterness and bitter sweetness,” to quote Gottfried—in willing affirmation of the irremediable yearning that animates all relationships in this passing world of ephemeral individuation.

It is true that in the doctrine of love represented by the Troubadours marriage was not only of no interest but actually contrary to the whole feeling, and that likewise in India, the highest type of love, from the point of view of the Sahajiya cult, was not of husband and wife, but (to quote one authority), “the love that exists most privately between couples, who are absolutely free in their love from any consideration of loss and gain, who defy society and transgress the law and make love the be-all of life.”

It is almost certainly not by mere coincidence that the greatest Indian poetic celebration of this ideal of adulterous (parakiya) love—namely the Gita Govinda (“Song of the Cowherd”) of the young poet Jayadeva—is of a date exactly contemporary with the flowering in Europe of the Tristan romance (c. A.D. 1175). A moment’s comparison of the two romances, however, immediately sets apart the two worlds of spiritual life. The Indian lover, Krsna, is a god; the European, Tristan, a man.

The Indian work is allegorical of the yearning of flesh (symbolized in Radha) for the spirit and of spirit (symbolized in Krsna) for the flesh, or, in Coomaraswamy’s terms, symbolic of “the ‘mystic union’ of the finite with its infinite ambient”; whereas the European poets, Thomas of Britain (c. 1185), Eilhart von Oberge (c. 1190), Béroul (c. 1200), and Gottfried von Strassburg (c. 1210), the four leading masters of the Tristan cycle, have represented the lovers as human, all too human—overwhelmed by a daemonic power greater than themselves.

In the poems of the first three, the power of the potion, the releaser of the passion, is treated simply as of magic. In Gottfried’s work, on the other hand, a religious dimension opens—heretical and dangerous—when he states, and states again, that the power is of the goddess Minne (Love). And then, moreover, to ensure his point, when the lovers flee to the forest, he brings them to a secret grotto of the goddess, described explicitly as an ancient heathen chapel of love’s purity, and with a bed—a wondrous crystalline bed— in the place of the Christian altar.

___________________________________________________________________________

Excerpt from: Campbell, Joseph., The Flight Of The Wild Gander – 1969

 

VM: Hey Peter, thanks for agreeing to the interview.

VM: You are well known, as far as I can see, within the MRM for your advocacy against gynocentrism. You point out the aspects of society and the cultures of the world, historically and in the present day, that enable and promote gynocentrism in one way or another, and you run Gynocentrism.com which talks extensively on the subject and is basically the go-to source of content exposing gynocentrism. While you may not be the only one that talks critically of gynocentrism, you are among the very few that I can see that calls out that out on the traditionalist as well as the SJW side with the same vigor, and for the right reasons. Can you reflect on your experiences having confronted gynocentrism on both those fronts, and how have you have been received in the MRM for it?

PW: In some ways confronting the feminist version of gynocentrism is easier than confronting its traditional counterpart, because feminists are more likely to admit to their plan of increasing the power of women — female empowerment as they like to call it.

Many traditionalists on the other hand tend to disguise their desire to grant women inflated status, but they work toward securing forms of gynocentric power no less than do feminists. In the traditionalist language that power is referred to as men ‘putting her on a pedestal’ – a phrase known by all, and an aim widely aspired to by traditionalists.

Both progressive and traditional gynocentrism aims to privilege women over men. Both are reliant on the damsel-in-distress narrative to harness chivalric supply, and the only thing that separates them is the typical list of privileges they aim to institute – ie. typically a pampered housewife for the traditionalist, or have-it-all lifestyle for the progressive feminist.

These two gynocentrisms are essentially at war with each other over who deserves priority access to male chivalry, that magic ingredient needed for realizing gynocentric power. To that end, traditional and progressive gynocentrists have cultivated different dog-whistles to provoke chivalric behaviour from males: the traditional woman plays the demure, weak damsel in need of saving by a knight in shining armour, while the feminist plays the same victim role but is far more aggressive in her demand for chivalric redress. We could say that the same ‘white knight’ caters to these two variants of damsel – the demure damsel, and the aggressive damsel respectively.

These two gynocentrisms have their taproots in the codified gender roles of medieval Europe, in which, to quote philosopher Julia Kristeva, “Roles were assigned to woman and man: suzerain and vassal, with the lady offering up a ‘distress’ and the man offering a ‘service.'”

So despite feminism positioning itself as a progressive new movement, its motive is remarkably traditional.

My rejection of gynocentrism as a default path has been met with resentment from both feminists and traditionalists, both of whom have counselled men to embrace more chivalry for the benefit of women. Fortunately, there’s a segment of the men’s movement that reasonably doubts, or outright rejects gynocentrism as a healthy basis for relationships between men and women, and likewise any appeals to chivalry are met with a reasonable scepticism by the same segment of men.

VM: You’ve had a few collaborations with Paul Elam – in particular the Chasing the Dragon talk, its follow-up Slaying the Dragon, and you are co-writers of Red Pill Psychology – Psychology for men in a gynocentric world and Chivalry – A Gynocentric Tradition. How did you come to know Paul and what brought about those collaborations?

PW: Paul and I first exchanged in around 2007 while he was working at Men’s News Daily, a popular news site for men, and I was working on expanding International Men’s Day to reach a more global audience. We were discussing collaboration of some kind, but due to our busy schedules we let it slide.

A few years later, I think it was around the beginning of 2010, I joined as a contributor at A Voice for Men and soon after became an editor at the site. During the early years we had many discussions about men’s issues and about the future of the men’s movement, and it was clear then that Paul and I held similar perspectives on many issues – like chivalry, the problem of gynocentrism, and the need to create a new psychology for men. Our first collaborative articles explored those themes and seemed to come effortlessly, so much so that we continued co-writing and proof reading each other’s articles until recent times when we’ve both taken a hiatus from writing generally. This has been a personal highlight in my men’s advocacy work, and I’m pleased to see many of these collaborative pieces now collected in the two volumes you cited, which are proving popular with the red-pill audience.

VM: You and I are non-feminist, or anti-feminist, because we know feminism for what it is – a female supremacy ideology that is but one symptom of gynocentrism, not the be-all end-all of it. There have been some anti-feminists, however, that argue against it for blatantly gynocentric motives of their own that they aren’t even trying to hide, such as something along the lines of: “Before feminism, we had it all and men provided for us like servants, and now we women have to work like men do, woe is me! Let’s go back to the good old days and make things easy for us women!” What do you make of this variety of antifeminists? Is it traditionalism, or is it something different and possibly worse?

PW: It is one kind of traditionalism, yes, but not the only kind. More specifically we might call this one ‘gynocentric traditionalism’ – a designation that acknowledges the existence of a non-gynocentric traditionalism.

The gynocentric traditionalist is at war with feminists because she realizes that chivalry is a finite resource, and if men are pouring out their assistance, protection, finances, pampering, and general deference to feminists, then the traditional gynocentric woman is likely to receive a far smaller serving of the available resource. It’s a jealousy with a valid rationale.

Unlike traditionally unemployed and pedestalized “home-maker” wives, who appeared en-masse after the industrial revolution, I think it’s important to acknowledge there were less gynocentric, or non-gynocentric women in pre-industrial societies throughout global history. Such women were more likely to be family-centered than self-centered, and they would labour alongside men as field workers, brewers, butchers, bakers and candle-stick makers, along with sharing a great deal of the care of children with other family members, including fathers, as contrasted to the more modern practice of mothers keeping children all to themselves, like chattel or bargaining chips, as post-industrial society has succeeded in establishing.

This last point of women’s exaggerated control over children is blamed on contemporary feminist policies, whereas it was, in fact, equally the case for traditional families a century ago in both America and Britain, as we read in the writings of Ernest B. Bax… and I’d like to quote him on this point:

“It has always in England been laid down as a fundamental law based on public policy, that the custody of children and their education is a duty incumbent on the father. It is said to be so fundamental that he is not permitted to waive his exercise of the right by pre-nuptial contract.

Nevertheless, fundamental and necessary as the rule may be, the pro-feminist magistrates and judges of England are bent apparently on ignoring it with a light heart. They have not merely retained the old rule that the custody of infants of tender years remains with the mother until the child attains the age of seven. But they go much further than that. As a matter of course, and without considering in the least the interests of the child, or of society at large, they hand over the custody and education of all the children to the litigant wife, whenever she establishes –an easy thing to do– a flimsy and often farcical case of technical “cruelty.”

The victim husband has the privilege of maintaining the children as well as herself out of his property or earnings, and has the added consolation of knowing that they will brought up to detest him.

Even in the extreme case where a deserting wife takes with her the children of the marriage, there is practically no redress for the husband. The police courts will not interfere. The divorce court, as already stated, is expensive to the point of prohibition. In any case the husband has to face a tribunal already prejudiced in favour of the female, and the attendant scandal of a process will probably have no other result than to injure his children and their future prospects in life. [The Legal Subjection of Men – published 1896].

This quote provides an example of what I mean by gynocentric traditionalism, the widespread practice of the privileging of women and disadvantaging men, which was taking place well before the popular rise of feminism. Advocates of traditionalism, of course, remain silent on these ‘traditional’ abuses of men.

VM: On a similar note, another argument for men’s issues that I see a little too often for my taste is “men’s issues affect women, too!” That’s irked me – as if women and their dear white knights are supposed to respond, “Oh! I haven’t cared about men’s issues before but it affects women?? Now I ought to care!” To me that sounds every bit as gynocentric as anything else out there in the world – do you have any thoughts on that?

PW: I think you hit the nail on the head, this is nothing more than a He-For-She reflex by people unlikely to ever care about the concept of He-For-He. If helping men is not somehow exploitable for the benefit of women, then these same people generally don’t care.

People are more likely to care about men becoming disabled, getting cancer, losing a job, or getting killed at war because these things will affect women – as Hillary Clinton famously quipped when she said that women were “the primary casualties of war.” But if a single, unmarried man becomes disabled, gets cancer, becomes unemployed or dies – then who gives a damn? No one.

Addressing the gender empathy gap is the big issue of our time and it requires all hands on deck, all genuine advocates of human decency, to bring attention to the problem.

VM: MGTOW is a varied umbrella with men whom I’d like to think come from various walks of life and different perspectives on why they are going their own way and what it means to them. Among those permutations, is there a precedent for a man going his own way to have an intimate relationship with a woman (or a man, if they are so inclined)? Also, is there a precedent for a woman going her own way as distinct from the feminist idea of the “independent woman who don’t need no man”, and if yes, what might that look like?

PW: This is a good question, one that gets silenced in some MGTOW communities. I’ve never been good at conformity to orthodoxies however, and prefer to make up my own mind about what MGTOW stands for and to whom it might apply.

In its most basic definition MGTOW means male self-determination, nothing more, and nothing less. I, as a man going his own way, choose what I want to do with my life in preference to having my goals conferred or dictated by others, whether by the State, by women, or anyone else. In this sense MGTOW overlaps with libertarian principles.

Can a man in an intimate relationship with a woman ‘go his own way’? I say yes, he certainly can, and I know many men who have been in relationships with the same woman for decades who’ve consistently done their ‘own thing,’ while being mindful that a relationship is by necessity a dynamic requiring some reasonable compromises on both sides – which these men choose to accept based on their own freewill and on their desire to be in a relationship. These same men would not hesitate to abandon the relationship if their partner’s respect for his self-determination were lacking.

Married and single men can and often do have their self-determination thwarted in a number of ways. For example the married man might have his life upended in divorce court, and the single man might have his life legally upended by a false rape charge. In both cases, self-determination is stolen. So I tend to place some emphasis on the beliefs and convictions of the man in question to determine if he is striving to go his own way, and not only on his relationship status…. though I hasten to add that marriage in the modern age is an extremely risky undertaking.

Can a woman go her own way? Yes of course she can, though it would look different to the phoney “feminist” version you alluded to in your question. Some years ago I researched the phrases “go his own way” and “go her own way” through the last 200 years of literature. There were many instances of men going their own way, and likewise there were many descriptions of women who went their own way without undue reliance on men to make it happen for her. I know some women who fit that picture today, including (for example) Elizabeth Hobson of Justice for Men and Boys, who validly refers to herself as a woman going her own way.

Some MGTOW are possessive of the concept of ‘going your own way,’ claiming that women are trying to usurp a concept created by men. While I completely understand their fear of male initiatives being co-opted, they fail to realize this phrase has been in use for hundreds of years and belongs rather to the English language as a designation referring to anyone displaying self-determined behaviour.

Feminist overtures about women living self-determined lives doesn’t pass the litmus test. Their pretentious displays of independence are too strongly reliant on the support of male labour, male deference and male servitude to provide the agency they crave, whereas true self-determination is more self-reliant in my reading of it.

VM: You are the one who directly introduced to me with the concept of the Puer archetype in describing my idea of the “inner boy” in a man, that which serves as the core and essence of what makes a man as well as his source of youthful energy and optimism. You’ve helped me distinguish that concept from the “inner child” concept in which one partner assumes the role of the helpless and often petulant child and the other assumes the parent role that becomes self-sacrificial. So, on the Puer – what is your take on the importance of the concept for men (and perhaps the equivalent Puella for women)?

PW: Your own essay on this topic, titled ‘Attitudes Towards the Puer: From Jody Miller to Tomi Lahren,’ provided an excellent analysis of these archetypes, perhaps the best I’ve seen in the manosphere in terms of teasing apart the many definitions and misunderstandings. As you point out, the child archetype is that part of our nature that represents helplessness, vulnerability, innocence and dependency, whereas the puer archetype represents the part of our nature that is youthful, spontaneous, inquisitive, and playful.

That youthful, spontaneous potential is an essential ingredient of human happiness that we carry from cradle to grave, yes even in old men and old women. So it pains me to see this it disparaged in men as “Peter Pan Syndrome” or as a “failure to launch” just because men might like sport, or to play video games or other fun pastimes instead of being chained to the serious business of “growing up” ie. that path of ordered responsibility and of being in service to women and society. If you are not enslaved to serious responsibilities six-and-a-half days per week, say those critics of fun, with perhaps a half day allotted on Saturdays to watching sports on a TV screen, then you are little more than a “pathetic man baby” who needs to “man up” and start providing a lifestyle for a deserving female partner.

If I had the choice to get rid of just one phrase from the discourse about men, even from the most famous men’s advocates, it would be ‘failure to launch.’ Launch into what, into slavery to others? Loss of self, and misery? No thanks. My advice for men and women is to enjoy some youthful spontaneity and playfulness till your dying day, and don’t let wagging fingers and shaming language throw you off. Even in its more extreme forms, a failure to launch might represent a healthy response to an increasingly toxic world.

There are plenty of women showcasing the puella trait, the female-equivalent for the male puer. These are women, flirtatious and playful, who can laugh at themselves and at others, and who generally walk lightly through life with an air of ‘Don’t fence me in.’

But going back to the other archetype, that of the child – the needy, dependent, vulnerable child – I would say that unlike the puer impulse, it deserves to be constrained within adult relationships because it tends to become a drain on the other partner. Who wants to be in an adult relationship with a needy, petulant child? It’s no secret that in marriages one partner often tends to play the needy child, and the other partner plays the responsible parent. And its women who have traditionally been encouraged to play the vulnerable, pampered child more than men – though I hasten to add some men get caught by this archetype too.

Esther Vilar writes masterfully about women’s gravitation toward enacting the child archetype within marriage, a truth for which she became persecuted after daring to articulate it. Her book is titled ‘The Manipulated Man’ – written I think in 1971, and it remains as relevant today as when it was written.

VM: Narcissism is a big subject that comes when one critiques gynocentrism, and rightly so because of the vampiric, parasitic behaviour that is enabled and encouraged by any given gynocentric mindset. You are also strong in defense of the individual, celebrating the differences of masculine expression as well as praising the individualism of men and women. Do you have an idea of what are the key differences between individualism and narcissism?

PW: This is a big subject and I’m no expert on the numerous variations of individualist philosophy. What I have noticed is that critics of the individualist path – whether it’s based for example in libertarian thinking, Objectivism or Nietzschean philosophy – make the charge that individualism is synonymous with narcissism. That’s a false equivalence, but they are correct in the sense that there’s a potential for individualism to degrade into pathological narcissism, or alternatively for pathological narcissism to disguise itself behind an ethic of reasonable individualism.

Gynocentrism is one example pretending to represent individualism. It’s a gendered version of narcissism that lacks respect for the individual sovereignty of others, particularly male others, and sets up its own individualism as exclusive – and it does so by actively excluding the individualism of others.

Narcissism of any kind operates as a social monologue, not a social dialogue. Narcissism lacks empathy for others, its inherently exploitative, and is demonstrated by an unrealistic sense of grandiosity that isn’t based on commensurate achievements or merit. Individualism isn’t necessarily any of those things.

So we can’t claim that individualism and narcissism are equivalent. At best someone might mount an argument that narcissism is a pathological variant of individualism, a claim worthy of exploring. But it will never be correct to represent as ‘narcissists’ the majority of those who follow individualist philosophies.

VM: To what extent can we see gynocentrism mitigated in our human history to come? What would that look like, and is it something we have to constantly be vigilant about lest gynocentrism comes back around again?

PW: There’s obviously a biological component to gynocentrism, but I’ve always maintained that the gynocentric impulse has been wildly exaggerated, supersized by cultural forces that have exploited our biological tendencies. The cultural gynocentrism we have today has vastly overrun whatever evolutionary purposes it may once have had – it’s now a runaway freight train leaving human destruction in its path.

On that basis I think there will be a correction. It has already begun. Based on the extreme gynocentrism we currently see at play, I expect to see an increase in bachelor movements such as those of Japan’s Herbivore men, and more recently in the rise of ‘men going their own way.’ But while these movements ensure men’s safety away from toxic human entanglements, which is an absolutely necessary short-term response, such bachelor and celibacy movements solve little in terms how to enjoy relationships that we humans are hardwired to participate in. What we need are some new ‘maps of meaning,’ as Jordan Peterson would phrase it, at least in the area of forming viable, long-term relationships.

Rather than appeals to traditionalism with its goal to pedestalise women, or on the other hand calls to embrace progressive feminism which also pedestalises women, we might in future discover new relationship models (or perhaps much older, pre-industrial revolution ones) that can lead us out of the impasse.

The certainty is that men and women will continue to form relationships, but they might gravitate more toward equitable relationships as contrasted with the faux equality proposed by feminists. This move would involve equality of value between men and women, based on libertarian-style principles. Those principles emphasize individual choice for each person of the relationship, relative autonomy, voluntary association, individual judgement, free will, self-determination, and negotiated labour-sharing arrangements & agreements between partners. In a nutshell; freedom to choose, instead of conferred roles or duties.

This is precisely what Warren Farrell proposed when he talked of moving away from survival roles of the past, which he referred to as ‘Stage 1’ relationships, and moving instead toward what he called ‘Stage 2’ relationships which entail men and women sharing equal responsibility to earn money, clean house, enjoy time with children and so on, instead of being imprisoned in socially prescribed or conferred roles. It goes without saying that such roles are completely voluntary and the details negotiable. I agree with Farrell on this proposition, which offers a way out of the impasse and out of the destructive gender war that has raged on for too long unchecked.

Human societies are like fragile ecosystems where if one animal or plant becomes too dominant it can send the entire system into chaos and disintegration. Imbalances will always appear in human societies and we can only hope that if the current imbalance of extreme gynocentrism is downsized in the near future, perhaps as a result from men’s withdrawal of chivalry, our vigilance will ensure that it takes a long rest. Humans however are great at forgetting prior lessons, which allows any number of past maladies to come back and terrorise us.

By Vernon Meigs

I want to talk for a brief moment about a song that’s a childhood favorite of mine entitled “He Walks Like a Man” as performed by country music singer Jody Miller. The lyrics, written by Diane Hilderbrand, are what I want to look into in particular. Take a moment and read the lyrics, or better yet, listen to the song if you have access to it, but again pay attention to the lyrics.

These lyrics, which I have heard are written by Hilderbrand for Jody Miller for her husband Monty Brooks (although I have no solid sources on that), are sung from Jody’s perspective about the qualities of her man in the verses, with some descriptions surprisingly flattering and beyond the utilitarian clichés, such as “He schemes like a man and whenever he can, he dreams like a man”. Each of these verses is closed with what can be described as a light chorus: “But it’s the little boy; It’s the little boy in him I love”. A bridge within the song speaks of how there is a little boy in every man, and how the little boy shines through every now and then.

An eloquent and simple song which is to this day a favorite of mine. In recent years however I’ve come to appreciate the fact that lyrically it has a different take on depicting through words a woman’s love for her man. We have had our share of songs from plenty of genres describing a woman’s love for a man one way or another, thematically from how supportive and caring their men are, how lovable they are despite their “flaws”, or even more direct songs about “making love”.

However, I think this 1964 hit has a unique take on it that I can’t quite find offhand on other female-driven songs. Off the top of my head, it is the only song I can think of that is about loving a man for being himself. I’m not talking about the “be yourself” advice given to men that are struggling with social situations which is not nuanced or enough or truly meaningful in itself. What I mean about loving a man for being himself is valuing a man as an individual in himself.

My Introduction to the Puer Concept

One thing I’ve come to realize in recent years is what is intrinsic to an individual, that is, the importance of the inner boy in the man, and likewise the inner girl in the woman. What I mean by inner boy and girl, specifically, is the Jungian concepts of puer and puella. To stay on subject with this article I will place focus on the puer, the inner boy. It should be worth noting that “puer” is, in fact, Latin for “boy”. I want to make an immediate distinction of context here to avoid confusion: the puer concept, at least in the positive context I hope to exposit on, is distinct from what is referred to as the child archetype in human adult relations in which one assumes the role of child, and the other as the adult with hyperagency, resulting in a situation where the adult child parasites off of the one assuming the adult role through vulnerability and victimhood. The puer archetype, usually symbolised as a boy, represents spontaneity; and the child archetype, symbolised as an infant, represents helplessness.

Psychologists directly speaking about the puer also can be rather uncharitable in their exposition of it, especially when they cynically associate it with Peter Pan Syndrome…and dismiss it simply as a “failure to launch”. However, I think there needs to be a focus on puer as a highlight of the inner, unabashed boy that embodies everything that is honest, energetic, pure, innocent and enthusiastic. The childlikeness of earnest joy and uncorrupted excitement, and not the childishness of the petulant brat. The awe-inspiring innocence of wonder, wishes, and curiosity, not the stupid innocence of naiveté and ignorance.

I want to credit Peter Wright of Gynocentrism.com for convincing me of this distinction. Whereas I previously broadly used the “inner child” concept to speak largely of the positive aspects of the child to serve as youthful energy for the kind of grown men that spend time tinkering their automobiles and organizing their various collections, I largely glossed over the destructive aspect of the “inner child” in its manipulative, petulant context. Peter had helped me make more of a contextual distinction between the two and introduced me to the puer and puella concepts.

“He Walks Like a Man”, in my mind, speaks to the puer of Jody Miller’s man. The little boy in him is not an infant that pines for his mother’s care. The little boy in him is not a petulant whiner that goes into a tantrum when he doesn’t get his way. If he was in any way these things, the song’s lyrics of how admirable the man is *as* a man will not ring true. Note that in the bridge she mentions that the little boy comes shining through when his man is “happy or blue”. The little boy is the honest, unsacrificed self of a man, encased in the tough exterior that he’s adopted to function as an adult. When the little boy shines through, it should be a joyful encounter of meeting the honest self of a man with his dreams still intact, his wonder unscathed by cynicism, and a lust for life and all the world has to offer. And dare I even say, far from this being the woman’s maternal type of love for this little boy, perhaps it is the inner girl in the woman, the puella, that responds to and loves the little boy in him, the puer.

Cancelling the Inner Boy

I would have spoken about the following subject way earlier but I had been busy scripting up and recording my ICMI20 talk which needed particular attention, and I needed a break afterwards. So although some time has settled since, let’s talk briefly about that silly Tomi Lahren rant about how men are trash.

In her rant she specifically states in a snide voice that feigns wit: “This is a PSA for all the men out there, and all the boys who think they’re men, but they’re actually boys. This is gonna be the summer of canceling boys.” She proceeds to admonish men at large for not living up to what are no doubt asinine expectations for men that she and “her friends” imply to uphold. Everything about her rant exposes the shifting of blame upon all men where in fact there had been no self-reflection in which she can find blame in herself for anything that goes wrong in her relationships with men. It is greatly ironic that we find this brattish quasi-valley-girl woman-child with big sunglasses on her head talking about how men are not real men but are instead boys.

Everything about Lahren, coming across as petulant as any princess, reveals something most may overlook: this is perhaps not so much about her having an ideal man. Ideal men no doubt have come and gone from her life with her being the dismissing agent. It is my understanding she broke off an engagement that came with an obscenely priced diamond ring. No, her real issue is that she hates the inner boy within the man. It is hinted early on that she claims to berate men who are actually boys, and want to cancel said boys. I know what some might think: “Well, wasn’t Tomi just talking about the petulant sort of men who are irresponsible and giving her and her friends a hard time?” Judging by the fact that men who are “responsible” and relatively “real mannish” to a fault have surrounded and have been rejected by Lahren suggests that no, that is not the sort of boy she is in fact talking about. She can only be talking about the alternative, that is, men with youthful energy and won’t break themselves sacrificially to gynocentric society. Why else would she go on a rant? This whole affair comes across as sour grapes from freaking out over “where have the good men gone!” as if she’d just been dumped.

Tomi Lahren paradoxically assumes both the role of a woman who wants a perfect, ideal man that does everything for her, and also the role of an over-controlling mother treating her man like the very “boy” she wants to cancel. She wants a hulk or drone of a man that can make her life as effortless as possible with his puer, that is, his youthful exuberance and positive childlike qualities completely gutted with sheer contempt. At the same time, she treats men like children with a sadistic maternalism that says “if Mommy ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy”. In her rant, Tomi Lahren assumes roles of both self-victimizing woman-child and authoritarian mother. In both capacities, she mongers war upon the puer.

Lahren doesn’t stand out for this uniquely; really, she is just the latest in the line of women embracing “whataboutmeism”, that gynocentric demand of male altruism, to the point that they can’t bear the existence of the independent puer that wants to pursue his own goals instead of giving his valuable time to the beck and call of entitled women like her. But it should be a wake up call for people who latch onto people like Lahren just for saying they aren’t a feminist. The time is long past to recognize that it is not enough. As long as men are valued for only their utility, disposable or otherwise, and not for their own sake as individuals and what they are deep inside manifested in their puer, this gynocentric disdain on the little boy within men will persist.

Discovering Puer and Puella, and the Case for Embracing Them

Here I spoke about two vast contrasts: One – a song in which Jody Miller expresses a true love and appreciation for the puer, the inner boy inside his man, for it is the essence of this man; Two – a rant in which Tomi Lahren admonishes men at large as “boys” as well as expressing hostility to the very idea of a man being in touch with his inner boy, implicitly waging war against the puer.

The enthusiastic context of inner child is something that I’d appreciated for some time, and is not truly new to me. The puer, as distinct from the child archetype, is however certainly new to me. I think that this can serve as a new proper context for me to discern the things in everyday life, be it in interactions with others to things observable in media, to discern what is in embrace of the puer as well as the puella, and what intends to destroy them.

There is certainly more to discover and write about on my part when it comes to these inner children of wonder within us. All this thus far is but an introduction. But if the puer is the childlike source of unfiltered energy of innocence and dreams, maybe embracing that aspect of oneself is the key to bring them back onto their own two feet if ever they are in a situation that they have to.

Any time you see a man excited about immersing themselves in their chosen activity, be it a car, his art and craft, his study, his stage performance, and even with relationships such as among his brothers or his intimate partner, you’re seeing his puer aspect. You’re seeing the little boy shining through. When a man is broken and his life reduced to drudgery, his puer is either dead or dying. Perhaps a case can be made for embracing our puer, resuscitate it if necessary, and discover that within ourselves and in others we encounter in our lives and value.

[Lyrics referenced in this essay:]

Hildebrand, Diane. “He Walks Like a Man” Queen of the House, by Jody Miller. Capitol Music. 1964