Seminar Review (like a book review, but different)
About a month ago (January 15th actually, but it feels like a month ago), I went to this seminar called "Men Matter: A Quest For the True Self". It was . . . interesting. It was also very annoying, but you have to expect that in a seminar, and take the good with the bad.
Let's start with the good. The seminar was a look at how our culture has pretty much abandoned a 'rite of passage' ritual. This is usually a very significant event in the life of a person where they transition from a child to an adult in the eyes of the community. In all of human history, in every culture, on every continent, as long as there have been people, there has almost universally been some sort of sacred event that 13-17 year olds would go through in order to be fully accepted, and to be shown their responsibilities that go along with their power.
The point of this seminar was this . . . . we don't have one, especially for our men. The closest thing we have to this is getting a driver's license, but that really doesn't cut it as far an initiation to manhood. And when you hand young men the keys to piece of machinery that can go 100 miles per hour, but you haven't taught them about themselves and their responsibilities, that's asking for trouble. The seminar gave a number really good examples from indigenous cultures all over the globe, but the most compelling and brilliant example I heard wasn't about people at all, but African elephants.
About 5 years ago in Africa, some elephants began to act very erratically, and seemed to be going crazy. They started to get aggressive with cars, aggressive with people, and started to push over trees for no reason what-so-ever. Elephants don't usually behave this way. They're huge beasts that don't like to expend energy if they can avoid it, but all of the herds in this specific region seemed to have lost their collective minds. The local governments asked for help and flew in animal biologists and scientists from all over the planet to try and find a cause, which they did almost immediately. The scientists immediately noticed that all of the elder male bulls had been poached for their tusks and hides, and there were none left in this area. They surmised that in this vacuum of structure and example, the rest of the males simply didn't know how to behave appropriately, and suggested some other adult males be imported from other parts of Africa.
They tried this, and the problem immediately ceased. The younger bulls would begin to ram unoffending trees, and an older one would rear it's tusk and wave it's huge ears. The younger bulls would knock it off, and everything went back to normal.
I thought about this, in light of how many people I know come from single parent households, and how many fatherless sons we see in this country trying to learn how to be man today. And I thought it even more appropriate that this example stemmed from Africa, since this scenario has played itself out in the African-American society for over 2 generations now. How much do we lose when boys have to learn to become men without guidance or example? So much of our media bombards us with images and role-models that are "strong" in body, but not so much in mind, and almost none in spirit. How are today's young men supposed to fill in the gaps that they never even know are there? Blah.
This is not to say that our women have it much easier, but there are 2 subtle and significant differences. Women have a biological right of passage forced upon them when they reach puberty. Women also have this very healthy tendency to communicate. This gives females an opportunity (or forces the opportunity upon them) to bond and share common experiences that are critical to the transition process from a 'girl' to a 'woman'. Men . . . . . ummmm . . .. don't communicate quite as easily (partly because they don't want to, and partly because they just never learned how or that it was ok).
The 'rite of passage' rituals were almost always very spiritual in nature, but also very physical, and they almost always included some tutelage at the feet of a mentor to learn why we do what we do, and where we came from, and who we are. These are basic questions that everyone needs. Humans crave some direction in order to establish their identities, the first step in deciding what kind of a person you're going to be.
Anyways, I've gone on too much about that already. The point is that we have entire generations that are missing that first step in establishing their identities, and what are we going to do to help them? THAT was the point of the seminar. The answer they gave was fairly listless. Just reach out to the younger generation, who will then come running to the old-timers like a hungry flock ducks come running to bread crumbs (my favorite type to feed them is hot dog buns). I don't really see that happening. In part because younger generations have forever enjoyed tweaking older generations in the nose, but mostly because the disconnect is so wide, the gap between them so vast, that I'm not sure the two can even communicate effectively.
Let me explain what I mean. Communication is by definition the transferring of thoughts to another being. The problem here is that the old and new THINK so differently, that I don't see how they'll be able to transfer those thoughts to each other in a way that the other will understand. People are shaped by their experiences. Older people tend to speak slower, not because they're any less intelligent, but because the pace of every-day-life has dramatically changed in the past 10 years, much less the last 30 (remember when there was no such thing as a microwave or pager?). Younger people have been programmed to think as fast as possible all the time, and to have no attention span (in part from MTV and console games). Test this yourself sometime. Take any grandparent and try to get them to watch music videos for at most 10 minutes. The scenes you see in your field of vision change and shift LITERALLY 2 or 3 times EVERY SECOND! Assuming the grandparent doesn't go into a seizure, they'll have no capacity to process what is going on in the video and couldn't repeat it back to you if they tried.
Now, take a 22 year old or younger, and try to get them to watch Ben Hur, or a Shirley Temple movie, or John Wayne. Watch what happens. Within 5 minutes they will start looking for something else to do, because they're not getting nearly enough input from these movie scenes that can go 20 minutes long. The interesting thing is that if you give them a gameboy at the same time, they'll be happy, and will still be able to tell you what happened in the movie afterwards.
So, that's my ramblings on why it is going to be difficult to communicate rites of passage betwixt these 2 generations. But guess what? There is some hope. Guess what means of communication can convey thoughts regardless of speed? The internet :)
Of course, this medium probably won't be able to reach those who could benefit from it the most, but it is becoming more and more affordable and available every day (over 16 million Americans have blogs now, can you believe that? I'm part of a fad/trendy thing now, which I hate). I have hope that by the time my children have children, everyone in America will have the ability to read and write their own blogs. THEN we'll be able to explain where we came from, and how we do things, and why we do them THIS way, as opposed to THEIR way. That doesn't mean the younger generations will choose to follow their elders, but that's not as important. They will know it, and be able to recall it, and be able to carry their heritage in their hearts as they find their own paths in life.
They'll know that we don't push over trees just because we can, or I'll wave my trunk at them.
Ummm, this entry is long enough. Some other time I'll give the bad part of the seminar, and how they pissed me off. :)
Let's start with the good. The seminar was a look at how our culture has pretty much abandoned a 'rite of passage' ritual. This is usually a very significant event in the life of a person where they transition from a child to an adult in the eyes of the community. In all of human history, in every culture, on every continent, as long as there have been people, there has almost universally been some sort of sacred event that 13-17 year olds would go through in order to be fully accepted, and to be shown their responsibilities that go along with their power.
The point of this seminar was this . . . . we don't have one, especially for our men. The closest thing we have to this is getting a driver's license, but that really doesn't cut it as far an initiation to manhood. And when you hand young men the keys to piece of machinery that can go 100 miles per hour, but you haven't taught them about themselves and their responsibilities, that's asking for trouble. The seminar gave a number really good examples from indigenous cultures all over the globe, but the most compelling and brilliant example I heard wasn't about people at all, but African elephants.
About 5 years ago in Africa, some elephants began to act very erratically, and seemed to be going crazy. They started to get aggressive with cars, aggressive with people, and started to push over trees for no reason what-so-ever. Elephants don't usually behave this way. They're huge beasts that don't like to expend energy if they can avoid it, but all of the herds in this specific region seemed to have lost their collective minds. The local governments asked for help and flew in animal biologists and scientists from all over the planet to try and find a cause, which they did almost immediately. The scientists immediately noticed that all of the elder male bulls had been poached for their tusks and hides, and there were none left in this area. They surmised that in this vacuum of structure and example, the rest of the males simply didn't know how to behave appropriately, and suggested some other adult males be imported from other parts of Africa.
They tried this, and the problem immediately ceased. The younger bulls would begin to ram unoffending trees, and an older one would rear it's tusk and wave it's huge ears. The younger bulls would knock it off, and everything went back to normal.
I thought about this, in light of how many people I know come from single parent households, and how many fatherless sons we see in this country trying to learn how to be man today. And I thought it even more appropriate that this example stemmed from Africa, since this scenario has played itself out in the African-American society for over 2 generations now. How much do we lose when boys have to learn to become men without guidance or example? So much of our media bombards us with images and role-models that are "strong" in body, but not so much in mind, and almost none in spirit. How are today's young men supposed to fill in the gaps that they never even know are there? Blah.
This is not to say that our women have it much easier, but there are 2 subtle and significant differences. Women have a biological right of passage forced upon them when they reach puberty. Women also have this very healthy tendency to communicate. This gives females an opportunity (or forces the opportunity upon them) to bond and share common experiences that are critical to the transition process from a 'girl' to a 'woman'. Men . . . . . ummmm . . .. don't communicate quite as easily (partly because they don't want to, and partly because they just never learned how or that it was ok).
The 'rite of passage' rituals were almost always very spiritual in nature, but also very physical, and they almost always included some tutelage at the feet of a mentor to learn why we do what we do, and where we came from, and who we are. These are basic questions that everyone needs. Humans crave some direction in order to establish their identities, the first step in deciding what kind of a person you're going to be.
Anyways, I've gone on too much about that already. The point is that we have entire generations that are missing that first step in establishing their identities, and what are we going to do to help them? THAT was the point of the seminar. The answer they gave was fairly listless. Just reach out to the younger generation, who will then come running to the old-timers like a hungry flock ducks come running to bread crumbs (my favorite type to feed them is hot dog buns). I don't really see that happening. In part because younger generations have forever enjoyed tweaking older generations in the nose, but mostly because the disconnect is so wide, the gap between them so vast, that I'm not sure the two can even communicate effectively.
Let me explain what I mean. Communication is by definition the transferring of thoughts to another being. The problem here is that the old and new THINK so differently, that I don't see how they'll be able to transfer those thoughts to each other in a way that the other will understand. People are shaped by their experiences. Older people tend to speak slower, not because they're any less intelligent, but because the pace of every-day-life has dramatically changed in the past 10 years, much less the last 30 (remember when there was no such thing as a microwave or pager?). Younger people have been programmed to think as fast as possible all the time, and to have no attention span (in part from MTV and console games). Test this yourself sometime. Take any grandparent and try to get them to watch music videos for at most 10 minutes. The scenes you see in your field of vision change and shift LITERALLY 2 or 3 times EVERY SECOND! Assuming the grandparent doesn't go into a seizure, they'll have no capacity to process what is going on in the video and couldn't repeat it back to you if they tried.
Now, take a 22 year old or younger, and try to get them to watch Ben Hur, or a Shirley Temple movie, or John Wayne. Watch what happens. Within 5 minutes they will start looking for something else to do, because they're not getting nearly enough input from these movie scenes that can go 20 minutes long. The interesting thing is that if you give them a gameboy at the same time, they'll be happy, and will still be able to tell you what happened in the movie afterwards.
So, that's my ramblings on why it is going to be difficult to communicate rites of passage betwixt these 2 generations. But guess what? There is some hope. Guess what means of communication can convey thoughts regardless of speed? The internet :)
Of course, this medium probably won't be able to reach those who could benefit from it the most, but it is becoming more and more affordable and available every day (over 16 million Americans have blogs now, can you believe that? I'm part of a fad/trendy thing now, which I hate). I have hope that by the time my children have children, everyone in America will have the ability to read and write their own blogs. THEN we'll be able to explain where we came from, and how we do things, and why we do them THIS way, as opposed to THEIR way. That doesn't mean the younger generations will choose to follow their elders, but that's not as important. They will know it, and be able to recall it, and be able to carry their heritage in their hearts as they find their own paths in life.
They'll know that we don't push over trees just because we can, or I'll wave my trunk at them.
Ummm, this entry is long enough. Some other time I'll give the bad part of the seminar, and how they pissed me off. :)
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