The Elderless Society
March 2001

Our society is upside down. It used to be that elders were reverenced and young men were tolerated. Now, we put up with the elderly and reverence the young. We dream of recapturing our youth, while fearing old age. We look with envy on the fame and status, to say nothing of the bank accounts, of young athletes or dot com entrepeneurs. We yearn to have their talent or wisdom. We allow them to define the highest values of our culture, not by word but by example. Liking to be like Mike has to do with young Michael Jordan, not the archangel.

When did elders become merely olders? When did age lose its correspondence with wisdom? Did elders voluntarily give up their role, or was it taken from them? To add a twist to an old folk song, where have all the elders gone?

It seems that what most men worry about, when thinking of getting older, is how big their retirement protfolio will be. They look to the wisdom of younger men to tell them how big they can make it. Retirement has become a refuge from responsibility. Proceeds from an IRA become like an allowance. The dream of not working becomes a reality. Fun and pleasure become a high priority. Sounds like adolescence to me, and not a very admirable one. Sounds like Maynard T. (or is it G.) Krebs to me.

How have olders lost sight of becoming elders?

For thousands of years, elders were the most important part of a society. Elders were responsible for the soul of society. Their wisdom and experience guaranteed that their people did not lose sight of the highest values of their culture. Their long view kept society wise in its use of laws and authority. Elders kept society on a spiritual path. When elders were corrupted, or lost sight of basic values, society fragmented, and harmony was lost.

We are now an elderless society, full of old people. The pseudo elders of our culutre are mostly politicians whose wisdom mostly fragments society. Politicians have more of an interest in interest groups, and their longest view hardly extends beyond the marketplace. They may say they are keepers of the body politic, but they have no idea of its soul. To be sure, there are some true elders who are politicians. But they are like voices crying in the desert.

I speak of this situation, not to lecture, but to call. I am an older, trying to be an elder. I am not ready for retirement, but let's say I started receiving my AARP letters about five years ago. I want to join other men in ressurecting the idea of elderhood. I want to call older men to take up the responsiblity of the elder role, for their own sakes as well as the sake of society. I want to start new rituals where men who have walked the path of initiation, and their own psychospiritual journey, can be identified and recognized and encouraged to caretake the next generations. I am looking for accessible rites of initiation to help elders consciously take on that role.

There is a growing recognition of the need for mentors in our culture. From Colin Powell nationally, to local mentoring initiatives at the high school level, the idea of mentoring is a sign of hope for the return of full eldering. Yet mentoring is more about filling the void of fathering, rather than the work of elders. Fathering is a step toward eldering. But it must be understood that fathering is different from eldering. Fathers need initiation to become elders. Fathers need guidance from elders.

Fathering has to do with a boy's developing ego. A boy needs fathering to find his way in the world and in the marketplace, without being destructive to its principles and values. Fathering has to do with teaching good decision making and good habits, especially to be successful in the world outside the home. Fathering has to do with teaching the rules of a civil society and helping children to understand the importance of those rules. Fathering has to do with civility and self confidence in the web of social relationships, and teaching healthy boundaries, especially in the most intimate ones.

The men's movement has done its best work in recognizing and popularizing the importance of fathering in the lives of the young. This has been an important movement in this country, the movement from father's wrongs to father's rights. Fathering is now at least being given some of its due by the wider society, even though individual fathers are often not given that same respect.

Eldering is still neither recognized nor respected. Even the word is deceiving. Elder is a specific and formal role in pre-modern society. Elder does not describe age but accomplishment. The accomplishment is the facing of the psychospiritual journey and the wisdom that comes from it. The role is the guardian of the values that arise from the journey and the responsiblity to guide others in their own journeys. The role has to do with guiding younger men on the last legs of their journey to manhood.

The mythopoetic movement has rediscovered this role, not invented it. The role has existed for thousands of years in indigenous cultures. The role was and is the foundation of these cultures. Instead of a culture like ours that is based on the young adolescent values of status, power, and dark competitive individualism, an elder culture is based on the spiritual values of teamwork, cooperation, service, and the whole community's good. Our adolescent culture extols those who rise to the top. An elder culture cares more about anyone left behind. An elder sees the top as a place of leadership and responsibility, not a place of reward and entitlement.

An elder is like a holy sociopath. He has moved to a place beyond the world of the father. He has traveled to a place beyond the cultural rules, to a place where the rules originated. He has found the reason for the rules and the place the rules are leading. He sees both sides.

Because of his paradoxical views, he is sometimes referred to as a world walker. He sees the value of rules and the need to sometimes move beyond them. He is concerned with the spirit of rules and the rules of the spirit. He witnesses to the reality of a world beyond the marketplace while seeing the importance of the market. He sees the importance of sometimes moving beyond civility, while being civil himself. He is old, but he never retires.

Without elders and initiation, a man's natural need for questioning and moving beyond the village rules, into a spiritual realm, is thwarted. Fathers become lost. Adolescents are left to become merely sociopaths. Gangs are examples of adolescents who go beyond the rules with no guidance. Male violence, in spite of what some feminists say about lack of mothering, is due to lack of male eldering as well as lack of fathering.

Sooner or later a man will need an elder. Sooner or later he will come to a place that is painful and he feels powerless. He will not realize that he is on the cusp of transformation, the point of deep initiation into manhood. Without guidance, most men will work manfully to dull the pain, and will whitewash the feeling of powerlessness with bravado. Addiction dulls pain, especally work addiction. Anger creates a false feeling of power. These are the answers of the dark patriarchy.

A man in this position is in the grip of a paradox. The feeling of powerlessness can be a sign of the readiness for the elder. A man in this position is in the place where the elder dwells, at the crossroads of two different worlds. The father world is about power and self confidence, and in many ways it should be. The other road is about powerlessness and humility. Someone needs to help a man understand that his tragedy is really opportunity, that the other road leads to his manhood.

It takes an elder to help a man negotiate this paradoxical transformation. I find myself having to elder most men who come into my office. I have to help them find a new stance toward pain, and develop new habits of dealing with feelings of powerlessness. I have to provide a space where a man can find answers beyond the rules, beyond the patriarchy. I have to introduce him to another side of himself, the inside. I have to introduce him to the place of the elder.

Many times,when a man first comes I have to initially play the role of father to help a man with his self confidence about career and relationship. I have to support and help strengthen his ego. The dark patriarchy can be devastating to a man's ego, especially when he is of lesser economic use. Downsizing can be used to describe a man's ego as much as his lost job. If it is not career that has dealt his ego a blow, it is then relationsip. I have often talked of how relationships, especially romantic ones, can be devastating to a man's ego when it is culturally assumed that women are the experts and rulemakers.

If a man will stick with the process of moving beyond the father's world and his portfolio, by seeing this process as his life mission, he is on the way to finding his identity beyond his ego. He will move from his persona to the personal to a whole person. He will not only learn the tools of the elder, he will start the process of becoming an elder.

I call men to consider becoming elders. I call men to move beyond the patriarchy, both dark and light, and find a life whose rewards have more substance than adolescent retirement. I call men to image their lives changing course beyond the natural trajectory of the marketplace.

The bibliography on my web page lists the names of many elders who are taking their role seriously. They have the messages that teach about elderhood. I suggest reading their words. I also believe there are many men out there who know what I'm talking about once I have named it. Many of these men have been touched by the supposedly dead men's movement. I urge them to take up the elder role formally and seriously, while keeping a 'dead' movement alive.

There are no modern rituals to bless this elder role. Right now the evolving ritual is one elder recognizing another. Maybe that is enough for now. Like the men's movement, itself, change may continue to happen deeply and quietly, like elders have always done. As long as men keep this tradition up, one at a time, there is hope. As long as older men don't retire, there is hope.

Larry Pesavento, Copyright © 1999 - 2001  

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