Men desperately need initiation beyond what secular culture can provide

Older cultural institutions are less and less able to keep up with rapid changes that have come with globalization and plurality. In the absence of cultural containment— of an inherited map for what makes life meaningful— we are left to on our own to work things out. However, we are perpetually being conditioned by prevailing worldviews whether we consent or not. In this process, the menu is bleak. Nihilism pervades our materialist culture, whether or not consciously condone or agree with it.

I don’t think true emotional or mental health is possible if we have a nihilistic view. And in the absence of structures to initiate individuals into another viewpoint, so many of us are left with an implicit pressure to conform to this view.

This may be an explanatory aspect of the draw to go back to previous eras; any conservative movement recognizes the pressures that arise with the degradation of cultural boundaries. The challenge is that sometimes this is accompanied with hostility and even hatred. So why am I discussing initiation for men? Unfortunately, for some folks - especially men - hatred becomes a form of initiation. In the absence of alternatives, hatred binds people together like a glue. It helps them feel powerful in the face of uncertainty. It helps them feel large, when in fact there is a feeling of lack or smallness inside.

There are many problems with hatred, which could be a whole other article. I won’t digress too far except to say that hatred is the opposite of fulfillment.

While I don’t want to create a false dichotomy, perhaps we can think of these as archetypal patterns. Of nihilism-meaninglessness and conservative-bound hatred.

Of course I am not saying things are this simplistic. I am not trying to be political here, but more to talk about underlying thought structures. To be sure, not all people who participate in the religion or culture of their upbringing are hateful. And nihilism can include hate just as much as religiosity or the sense of cultural, racial, or ethnic supremacy. These ideas are just an explanatory device.

The main point is that in the absence of a prevailing worldview, a belief vacuum forms. People can lose a sense of value, purpose and meaning. There is no cohesiveness. In that vacuum, we are vulnerable to manipulation about who we are ‘supposed’ to be. Men are getting trampled by this reality.

The men that are valorized in our society are often cruel, crude, ignorant, violent, powerful, or wealthy. There are quite simply not a lot of other public idols for men. So men suffer.

We suffer by comparing ourselves to others and being compared. We suffer by having our masculinity on trial by other men, by women, by people in general. We suffer by having to suppress or deny our emotions to appear any other way than what we truly are.

If we want the world to change for the better, as men we need to participate in a new masculine identity. We need to know there is a possibility for more value than that of conquest, wealth, fame. We need to understand that appearance is at best misleading and at worst, delusion.

Men don’t need more of this, or more of that. They don’t need to appear more like this, or more like that. Rather, men need initiation into a deeper reality.