The best teachers and mentors (3) are the ones who continually live through you and make you better
Pray for a tough instructor to hear and act and stay within you.
Last night I invited 3 of the young men who I am mentoring to a “whiskey and cigar party” in my newly painted office. Of course, they had no clue.
Most young men these days are so disconnected from the world of men that they have no idea what they are missing, and they can’t even see it when it is presented to them. Most young men these days have only seen fragments—dysfunctional fragments—of dysfunctional men if they have seen anything at all. A police chief once said, “The young men who we arrest not only do not have a responsible male in the house, they have never met one.”
I can guarantee everyone, because I know the family history of each of these young men, that even though they are well into their 30s, the amount of quality time that each of them has spent with a mature developed male is statistically zero. If we formed a ratio of “quality hours with a mature developed male” over “waking hours from age 10 to present” (20 years) it would approximate 0 (zero) over 120,450 hours, or 0/120,450.
The friends I grew up with in my teens in Houston Texas fared no better: none of them had active fathers, if they knew their fathers at all. My best friend had a father in the house, but he was miserably depressed, emotionally absent, passive and thus spent most of his time working, distracted, or not completing anything—but at least he paid the rent and food, even if he did nothing more.
"Whoever does not want to die of thirst among men must learn to drink out of all cups;
and whoever would stay clean among men must know how to wash even with dirty water"
Friedrich Nietzsche in Thus Spoke Zarathustra
I was lucky that I got a few glimpses of good maculinity from my step-father, even less from my biological father, and one or two glimpses from my grandfather before he died early when I was about 6 years old. My uncles were worthless, as was my maternal grandfather. Fortunately, I realized this early, and by the time I was in my early 20s I was actively seeking quality mentors, and by my mid20s I was deep into “men´s work” with groups of men in Portland and then even more powerfully in Seattle. Joining the Mankind Project1 in 1999 and staying with them for the next 14 years was a quantum leap for me, and clearly one of the best and most important decisions of my life.
Truly, my friends, I walk among human beings as among the fragments and limbs of human beings!
This is what is most frightening to my eyes, that I find mankind in ruins and scattered about as if on a battle field or a butcher field.
And if my gaze flees from the now to the past; it always finds the same: fragments and limbs and grisly accidents – but no human beings!
Friedrich Nietzsche in Thus Spoke Zarathustra
The continuum concept
When societies and families were intact, boys and young men had daily contact with their fathers, daily contact with older unrelated men, and regular contact with their uncles and grandfathers. As such, in the process of growning from boys to men, they could instinctively choose from a buffet of the best qualities of the men around them.
These days, in the Sibling Society2, as boys are trying to grow into being men, they commonly have ZERO beneficent male role models, they look to other lost young boy-men for advice and modeling, and—as if things could get worse—these days they are continually distracted by all the social medial platforms that teach little more than junk culture.
The bright side of all these virtual platforms is that one can find an impersonal form of “virtual mentoring” but this requires intention and displine to find it and not be distracted by all the “click bait” of sex and stupidy that surrounds it.
“Core of Masculinity” by Rumi translated by Coleman Barks
The core of masculinity does not derive
from being male, nor friendliness
from those who console.
Your old grandmother says, "Maybe you
shouldn't go to school. You look a little pale."
Run when you hear that.
A father's stern slaps are better.
Your bodily soul wants comforting.
The severe father wants spiritual clarity.He scolds but eventually
leads you into the open.
Pray for a tough instructor
to hear and act and stay within you.We have been busy accumulating solace.
Make us afraid of how we were.
Mentoring (1) benefits the mentor, too!
The video above and others that will follow demonstrate some of the mentoring points that I have had to learn, relearn, and organize over the past few years. As John Bradshaw said, “A teacher is always teaching what he needs to learn the most.”
Mentoring (2) from my grandfather, James Harrison McCardell, on the necessity of losing
The video above and others that will follow demonstrate some of the mentoring points that I have had to learn, relearn, and organize over the past few years. As John Bradshaw said, “A teacher is always teaching what he needs to learn the most.”
https://mankindproject.org/
https://www.amazon.com/Sibling-Society-Impassioned-Rediscovery-Adulthood/dp/0679781285