Chapter 14 - Part 1
Humility
Last
chapter I talked about death, loss and depression. I talked about
the other side, outside the village. The place beyond the village
boundaries, the wilderness of the ancients, was a mysterious,
terrifying place. The boy had to grow up a great deal even in taking
those first few steps into the wilderness. He had to have great
trust in his elders and great faith in the ultimate benevolence of
the universe. He had to go the greatest part alone and with no clear
direction. He had to face death, a symbol for risking everything.
When he stepped into the world of men he left the childish boy
behind.
Hubris
When
stepping into the wilderness, there was another form of death that
the boy had to face. This death involved suffering humiliation, by
voluntarily allowing himself to be humbled. This suffering had to do
with the death of pride and the loss of supremacy of one's own will.
It had to do with the swagger of the young adolescent and the
arrogance of modern man. It had to do with the dark side of the ego.
The
Greeks had a name for this pride, they called it hubris. They
understood that if a man fell prey to hubris he would start acting
like a god, thinking himself perfect and powerful. The man with
hubris would start to feel above the rules of mere mortals. He would
rise up instead of going down, becoming a legend in his own mind.
The man with hubris would feel no responsibility to anyone higher
than himself. He would reside in the heights, not the depths, safe
from pain and the compassion that pain engenders. He would be cool.
He would be a narcissist.
The
Greeks also understood that uncontrolled violence and passion could
come from hubris. The man with hubris would be an arrogant ronin,
charming but often cruel. This man would be a threat to the web of
community, including gods and men.
The
Greeks believed that any man acting with hubris would eventually
draw the jealousy of the real gods, and dire consequences would
follow. Nemesis, the goddess of righteous anger, would eventually
strike down that man in the name of all the gods, for no mortal had
the right to act like a god. The Greeks understood that a man needed
to be humble in the presence of gods, instead of trying to usurp
their power. They understood that the more a man made himself his
own god the more destructive he would be to himself and the
community. The man of pride needed aidos, the Greek word for
reverence. He also needed humility.
Humility
involves losing our pride, our hubris. It involves reverencing and
submitting our egos to something greater and more wise. It involves
losing adolescent fantasies in favor of manly dreams. Whenever I
hear a man talking about being "the best", I am concerned. This is
often the adolescent talking, trying to be competitive as a way of
bolstering self esteem. His sense of self comes from beating someone
rather than being someone. He is full of the pride that the
adolescent assumes is manly. He is the adolescent, fallen prey to
the Vader voice, who refuses initiation.
Ego
This is
a time to talk more about the ego. For this is the time in a man's
journey when his relationship to ego needs to transform. Here,
again, is the need for change and the loss that change entails. This
is the time when the ego wants to go one way while the initiate must
go another.
I
mentioned ego in previous chapters when I talked of the ego in
relation to warrior energy and the father. The time of the father is
the time of emerging ego. The wise father both bolsters his son's
ego by knowing when to let his son borrow his own ego strength. At
this time in a boy's life his self-esteem has its foundation in ego
functioning. This is a time when making a mark in the marketplace is
good for the man and the community. This is the time of ascent into
life, where success is an asset and it is alright for assets to
measure success.
I also
talked of an ego injury when the ego confronts the unconscious. This
is the beginning of the adolescent's initiation and the genesis of
the older boy's necessary new stance towards his ego. This is the
time of father separation, where the wilderness rather than the
marketplace is the teacher. Depression is a consequence of a humbled
and wounded ego. Ego injury is then the start of the humiliation
that leads to manhood.
But what
is this ego that needs to be humbled, that needs to experience a
death? In lay vocabulary the ego is often interchangeably used with
the word self. The self in 'selfish' or 'self-centered' is often
understood to be the same as the ego in 'egotistical' and
'egocentric'. This interchangeability of self and ego in lay
vocabulary leads to confusion. For example, is self-love good or
bad. Does it relate to self-esteem or selfishness? What is self
control? Should we control the self? Why would it need controlling?
Is becoming selfless a virtue or psychic suicide? What is a healthy
ego? Is it good to have a strong ego? To be egotistical seems bad,
but looking out for number one seems good. Is it good to act like
one has no ego?
For
purposes of this discussion I will use ego to mean our conscious
will and conscious motivations. The ego in psychological terms is
that part of our psyche that we consciously have control over. It is
the 'I' we think of when we make a decision or act on one. The ego
really begins to exercise its strength in adolescence. It is the ego
that starts to build a unique persona. It is the ego which starts to
act more independently, after borrowing strength from the good
father. It is the ego that starts to build a history of choices that
makes us a distinct personality.
Ego
strength has a lot to do with warrior energy. It has a lot to do
with getting things done and keeping to one's goals. We need ego
strength to struggle against regressive addictions, to stop acting
on irrational moods of rage and blame, and to fight the tendency to
give up because of pain. The ego makes the choice to set boundaries
and then sets them.
Just as
importantly the ego allows us to separate from the unconscious world
of the mother complex in order to make more conscious decisions. The
ego has as much to do with the eyes as the will. It needs to see and
gather information of the reality beyond the mother's world. Where
the dark mother tries to blind, the healthy ego looks to other
possibilities.
The ego,
like the healthy adolescent, is an important part of us that we will
need our entire lives. However, like the unguided adolescent, the
ego can make choices that ignore everything but its own regressive
needs. Unless it is fathered and eldered well, the ego can be
preoccupied only with pleasure or power. This ego can be easily
manipulated by the dark patriarchy and become stuck in that
darkness. The dark side of the ego then gives birth to a dark pride.
Indigenous peoples, like the Greeks, knew that a man with an
unhumbled ego was a dangerous man. He would start acting like an
autonomous, renegade god rather than submitting to the harmony of
the world and the community. This is why these people submitted
their young adolescents to initiation so early. Otherwise there
could be chaos and destruction in the village, as the egos of their
young men might submit to nothing besides their own desires.
When I
talked in the last chapter of the death of the ego I was talking of
the movement of the initiate into a space where he is not in
control, and his ego is frustrated. During initiation his ego needs
for pleasure and his ego needs for status and power are ignored. The
adolescent, by moving into the wilderness and away from the
marketplace, is forced to assume a very lowly position. He loses any
semblance of a strong persona. Lacking the status and power that the
marketplace uses to give identity and direction, he is lost and
powerless. He has no clothes signifying power or rank. He is a
nobody, unnoticed by the rest of the village. The elder has
purposely put the boy in a space where he is ritually humiliated. He
has done this to teach him humility.
Indigenous peoples saw this humiliating experience as essential to a
man's growth. They saw that the ego needs to be put in its rightful
place before the man can emerge. Notice that the ego is not meant to
be destroyed or seriously wounded. It is only taken out of the
center of the personality. The ego is no longer an independent
warrior, but is being readied to find a king.
In
psychology we call the over-identification with one's ego a form of
narcissism. A narcissist is the stuck boy who only worries about his
pleasures and his manly image. He is really weak from his father
wound. His only answer to the feeling of weakness is to work on a
persona of strength. He is obsessed with ego needs only because his
ego has all it can do to keep his image together.
When a
man feels a blow to his ego, we call this a narcissistic injury.
This is a boy injury. An uninitiated man will always feel a
narcissistic injury as a dark humiliation. His pride will be hurt.
His ego will feel naked and weak as his persona is punctured. Like a
wounded animal, this is the time he is most dangerous. For example,
a man may not get the promotion he thinks he deserves and has worked
for. Or his children do not treat him with respect, not listening to
his warnings or advice. His wife or lover might make comments that
point to his addictions or weaknesses. His wife or lover may
question his job or his career direction or his work addiction.
Maybe, like Rodney Dangerfield, he will feel he gets no respect at
all from loved ones.
An
uninitiated man will see these injuries as humiliation only and as a
tragic defeat. He will often react with rage or neurotic depression,
his ego out of control. When all a man has is his boy ego protected
by a fragile persona, a narcissistic injury feels fatal. The boy ego
is still in need of protection, especially by wise fathers. The
narcissistic man has unprotected wounds. A narcissistic injury is
only another painful reminder of another defeat.
Ritual and Humility
In
ancient initiation, a boy is purposely and ritually humiliated. His
healthy adolescent boisterousness and cockiness is confronted. He is
shown that the world does not revolve around his pleasure needs, as
in the maternal world, or his power needs as in the paternal world.
He is shown that his true power and identity resides beyond his own
ego control and needs. His natural ego development is pushed to the
next level.
The
humiliation can take many forms. In one form, the boy's clothes are
taken away and he is forced to go around naked. His lack of status
is emphasized by having nothing to hang stripes and medals and a
power tie on. Clothes symbolize our social role. As is said,
"clothes make the man." Clothes communicate our persona. By going
around naked the boy is forced to be only himself without pretense
and without pride and without persona. He is stripped to the
essentials. He doesn't have a preconceived role in this land outside
the village.
Men in
counseling often dream of finding themselves naked in an unusual
situation, feeling embarrassed and humiliated. This type of dream
can be a form of elder warning, telling a man he needs more humility
and less ego. This dream can also tell him he is deeper within an
initiatory experience in his life. It is a benevolent warning from
the elder within that he is on the threshold of inner transformation
and needs to pay attention. He needs to get his ego out of the way.
Another
form of initiatory humiliation involved the boy being forced to
submit to a painful ritual. This rite taught the boy humility, as
well as the proper place of pain in his life. Even today, in one
tribe, the boy is told to look up while the elder takes a hammer and
chisel and suddenly knocks out a tooth. Later whenever a man feels
the hole in that part of his mouth he is reminded of his new role
and the humility he needs to fulfill it.
In many
tribes, the boy is subjected to ritual circumcision. We all, I'm
sure, can identify with that pain! The elders' circumcision of the
boy symbolizes the submission of the boy's ego needs and sacred life
force to a higher power. It also communicates to the boy the new
sacredness of his sexuality beyond the pleasure principle.
I do not
mean to advocate circumcision today by using this example. Our
circumcision, outside of a religious context, is really a dark,
senseless form of genital mutilation. It has little medical or
social rationale behind it. The ritual circumcision of the Jewish
faith, if seen in its symbolic aspects, certainly has its merit when
done as a conscious form of initiation into their faith. However,
even some Jewish leaders question how thorough a circumcision needs
to be done to satisfy the ritual.
Submission to the elders by accepting these indignities brought a
boy to the threshold of the new experiences and new learning that
will make him a man. Submission precedes mission, as Michael Meade
reminds us. Humility teaches us to submit.
Dark
Humiliation
The
problem with the egotistical older boy, and the narcissistic man, is
that he has not been ritually humiliated by an elder. In other
words, he has not consciously been taught the meaning and importance
of submitting to humiliation. He has not learned the power in his
humility. He has not learned that humility is a most important part
of his journey toward manhood. He has been let down by the older men
in his culture.
We all
have an archetypal need to be humbled by a wise elder. The
archetypal need endures whether it is satisfied or not. Men
constantly, yet unconsciously, look to satisfy this need. In the
wrong hands this need can be a form of humiliation. It can become an
inhuman, demeaning experience that creates a man who demeans and
humiliates others. The modern patriarchy is based on this type of
dark, negative humiliation. This patriarchy can only function by
replicating itself through humiliation and its subsequent shame.
We are
mostly a culture of dark elders who have come up through the ranks,
believing in the inherent motivation of shame. This cultural system
is able to function only through the work of humiliated drones out
to prove themselves as men by humiliating others. Our culture is
based on winners and losers, on dark competition, on domination and
dark humiliation. From being 'a dying cockroach' in boot camps, to
being demeaned as the low man on the corporate totem pole, the idea
is taught that the only good place is to be on top, while 'nice guys
finish last'. The place of pride is always to be first. Even a man
or a team that is a close second is a sorry loser, witness the
Buffalo Bills. The system works on the motivation not to lose, not
to suffer another humiliation.
The need
to be humbled by an older man is hardwired in every man. If a boy's
father is weak or absent he will unconsciously look for someone else
to submit to. If there are no genuine elders around, he will look to
any man who takes an interest and promises him manhood. This could
take the form of the military, a gang, a political party, a
corporation, a religion or cult. It always amazes me how strongly
some men can feel bonded to an institution like the army or a
corporation. Because of hardwired need and dark eldering there is a
short distance between corporation and cult. The cult is just a
starker example of manipulated loyalty through dark humiliation.
In
today's marketplace, the corporation can quickly become corpocentric
and lose its sense of the common good. The bottom line is measured
in dollars and cents, not in the sense of the community. Most
patriarchal institutions will use a man's need for ritual
humiliation to force his loyalty. If I can humiliate I am in
control. If I am in control, the ego rules.
Consider
the humiliation that medical students go through in residency. There
are long hours, little pay, harassment by older doctors, all in the
name of professionalism. No wonder doctors are then seen as arrogant
toward others, and rarely admit to mistakes. Witness the hazing in
many fraternities, the empty ritual of humiliation that creates the
leaders of tomorrow. Witness the humiliation of boot camp, often an
empty initiation into the art of humiliating and intimidating
others.
When a
boy is initiated by an uninitiated man, he is humiliated for no
higher purpose. He then unconsciously takes on the negative values
of his initiator. I have often talked to men who come to an
embarrassing conclusion that they tend to act under stress just like
the father that humiliated them.
One of
the greatest obstacles to a man seeking help from an elder,
including counselor elders, is the feeling that he will go through
another dark humiliation and be shamed. Coupled with this fear is
the lack of respect for an elder who has relatively little social
status. This situation is one of the most vivid tragedies of an
elderless culture. The doorway to manhood is seen as a dead-end. The
counselor, like Yoda, is first seen as irrelevant and powerless. A
man is taught to submit only to those who have more power in the
patriarchy. He is used to this type of humiliation. He is willing to
go through the shame only because he is promised patriarchal power.
Submitting to a man with little patriarchal power is seen as
ludicrous. The counselor, or other wise elder, is considered the
janitor in the basement, while a man looks for manhood in the
executive suites.
Larry Pesavento ©2005
