The Sibling Society
By Robert Bly
Addison-Wesley
319 pp.; $25

You find yourself in a sociology class where the instructor passes out a final exam containing a single question: "You have just received a $500,000 advance to write a book that captures the essence of American society at the end of the twentieth century. What did you say in the one-page proposal that sold the publisher on your idea?" What an interesting question! But then, of course, you must answer it.

The solution, as any economist would tell you, lies in modeling. No book can take in the whole multifarious reality of America, but a book can offer a simplified model that makes sense of all manner of previously unsorted experience. If the model is a good one, it will provide satisfying shocks of recognition.

Robert Bly, poet and men's movement guru, essays such a model in The Sibling Society. Bly's earlier book, Iron John, rethought several aspects of being male through imaginative use of a story by the Brothers Grimm. The book hit a nerve, inviting men beleaguered by the women's movement to reclaim their maleness with greater hope. In The Sibling Society, Bly sets out to examine the contemporary American scene by exposing its contradictions. Bly writes, "People don't bother to grow up, and we are all fish swimming in a tank of half-adults." Trying to find our way out of repressive paternalism, we have created a society where giving way to impulse is the rule and regression to childhood reigns supreme.

Half-adults, Bly tells us, are comfortable only with others of their own age. Everyone is a sibling, relating by first names. This is the master-image of Bly's model--the sibling society--and to a degree it rings true. Around the world, Bly writes, half-adults wear the same jeans and T-shirts, listen to the same heavy beat music, and attend only to opinions of their peers. The sibling society disregards elders and demonstrates no concern for children. Half-adults become teachers and professors who inculcate this pattern in another generation, often losing the wisdom and culture of the past. Chronological adults, rather than providing models for maturity, themselves imitate adolescents. Bly concludes that this horizontal thinking has a flattening effect, robbing the "siblings" of meaning and purpose.

I read Bly's introduction with interest. His model suggests connections between issues that might otherwise be considered in isolation: our national romanticizing of adolescence; vicious press attacks on elected officials and general hostility to all leaders; consumerism permeating cultural expectation while offering no real satisfaction; the celebrity replacing the hero; the extreme American desire to be loved.

Bly's associative leaps are grounded in wide reading, ranging from Maclean's brain research to D. W. Winnicott's observations on murderous infant rage. As in Iron John, he includes bits of story and poetry from other countries, some of which he has translated himself. While he criticizes present culture, he does not romanticize the past, recognizing its limitations and dangers. Likewise, he uses a Hindu story at some length, but does not sentimentalize Indian culture, citing current problems. He seems evenhanded and realistic.

My intrigue, however, soon gave way to overload. Bly is more ambitious in The Sibling Society than in Iron John. Instead of using one tale to hold the work together, he uses many. He tells a little of a tale, expounds on U.S. or world culture for a while, and then continues the story. Each time he returned to the tale, I struggled to understand how the issues he raised were related to it.

I became uncomfortable, too, with the broad strokes of Bly's analysis. At one point, for example, speaking of the collective atrocities of World War II, and above all the Holocaust, he proclaims that "the entire world saw in the war the utter defeat of the Enlightenment." That's funny, I thought. It was postwar optimism that gave birth to the Human Potential movement of the 1960s and '70s: a prime example of Enlightenment thinking.

I read with greater caution. Soon Bly, reflecting on the Sufi understanding of the origin and nature of evil, states that Christianity, in contrast, places responsibility for evil and hatred of God on Satan, "wherever Satan is," instead of recognizing it in ourselves. I was shaken. Has this man read the Gospels, where Jesus freely uses the word evil as if it were a natural part of human living? Bly's theology seems to come from newspapers and pop psychology. If he is so unreliable in his account of fundamental Christian beliefs, how many of his other pronouncements are trustworthy?

Later he ties together the ending of male initiation practices in Kenyan villages with an incident in a dormitory in Kenya: a group of male adolescents raped a number of their female peers. As a woman who has traveled in Africa and lived in India, I am acutely aware of attitudes toward women in many countries, and I remember this news story well. While there is no question that breakdown in village social structure and traditional rituals leads to undisciplined behavior, I think Bly missed the social context. The true horror of the Kenya story for me was the dormitory matron's radio statement. She did not understand the fuss. "They didn't want to hurt the girls, only rape."

Bly has identified an issue that deserves national concern: No one wants to grow up. But he criticizes most of contemporary culture without offering any positive direction. This is also a departure from Iron John, where he highlighted mentoring and encouraged many aspects of being male. In The Sibling Society, Bly emerges as a familiar figure: an old man angry at the younger generation for ruining the world. It looks like Enlightenment despair to me: once again humankind has failed by our own hands to create paradise. Though we strive to be as God knowing good and evil, much as Adam and Eve did, the project fails as it always has.

I wondered if Bly were really so different from the "half-adults" he deplores. Although he demeans Christianity with nearly every reference, and in spite of his assertions about the abusive patriarchal past, I detect a longing for the "vertical dimension" and the "strong religious institutions" that this past represents for him. But he is a product of popular psychology: love of self means bolstering one's own good feelings. He is unlikely to surrender control to a Mystery beyond himself. Instead, he tells myths and stories in which we can see ourselves as the hero.

The gospel, which Bly has not grasped, offers a framework for rethinking the dilemma he describes. I have begun to realize the immense graciousness of the doctrine of sin. Our nation has run after an idol, and we are once again in trouble. Is there anything new about that? Is there any time, any nation, any group--indeed, any church--that has not also drifted into some idolatry?

The church itself has often embraced this or that list of rules held so tightly that its people stoop under chronic guilt. This was Jesus' complaint against the Pharisees, and in history the Spirit of God raises up prophets--Martin Luther or Saint Francis, for example--to return us to love of God and love of neighbor.

In American culture we need only to watch old movies or to listen to 1940s radio shows to uncover the idolatries of the past. Something besides God becomes the answer to all things. In the 1950s, marriage and motherhood were to fulfill all women; career would fulfill all men. In the 1960s and '70s, women were to have careers, men were to become sweeter, more feminine. Everyone was to become self-actualized. These goals become not only unsatisfying but also oppressive.

As Christians, we cannot expect to escape a problem of which we are also a part. We are promised, for example, that the kingdom of God is with us and is also to come. If our theology becomes permeated with fantasy, and we expect paradise now, we will miss the hopeful signs, the still, small voice.

Bly writes that no one wants to grow up, and that is certainly true. We have romanticized youth and children since the 1950s. Every advertisement capitalizes on youth and beauty. A popular cry of the 1960s proclaimed: "Don't trust anyone over 30." In 1967, Time magazine designated the generation under 25, the baby boomers, as "Man of the Year." This generation would be the most creative, the most peaceful, the most productive of any generation ever born. They would find a cure for cancer and the common cold; under their influence the world would be unified in peace. And are we enraged that they disappointed our expectations? After such hype, who would want to grow up, settle down, change diapers, wear suits, and pay off a mortgage? Reality is a comedown for all of us, or as C. S. Lewis once wrote, "All reality is iconoclastic."

If we reflect on its history, our dilemma emerged quite naturally. U.S. veterans returned victorious from World War II, heroes tired of war. Family became everything: homemaking became a vocation for women; men worked to provide. Communities built schools, libraries, swimming pools to nurture children. They wanted the best. Psychologists set out to guide these enthusiastic parents in creating a race of human beings who would not desire war. Far from having lost confidence in the Enlightenment, the United States blossomed with trust in human perfectibility, and an American Jew, Abraham Maslow, was a central actor in creating a psychological system with no doctrine of evil. If all children's needs are met, they will blossom into fully actualized adults: loving, disciplined, and productive.

Maslow's system, like those of his colleagues in humanistic psychology of the 1960s, fostered narcissism, me first. The movement's clearest spokesman, Frederick Perls, contributed a popular "you do your thing and I'll do mine" philosophy. Wants, even whims, became "needs," and merchandisers moved right in, drumming endlessly to us and our children about what we deserve. This need-psychology was good for business. Can we blame our children for assuming that all their needs should indeed be met, and very quickly too? Indeed, couldn't our country's sales clerks tell us that they have seen this attitude in all of us? "If God really loved me," good Christian folk tell me in counseling sessions, "He would provide me with the love of my life." Or "He would let me find a fulfilling vocation, one that truly actualizes me, enhances my gifts and talents." Or simply "My life wouldn't be so hard."

Ah, but now enters the immense foolishness of our God. While the human heart grabs at immortality, safety, immunity from suffering, our God chooses to become finite and live rejoicing within the bounds of human limitation, and to surrender control, even to death on a cross.

"Come," God says to us through the faithfulness of Jesus, "give up this attempt to be God. Give up your rebellion against your finitude, your desire for a perfectly safe world. Enter fully into life with all its pain, serve others in your jobs and homes with integrity and love. I suffered and so will you. Teach your children that heavy trials are part of every life. Have courage. In the midst of your suffering, remember that you are not alone. I am ever with you. Remember as well that sin is all around. When you recognize your own sin, remember that you are righteous by my grace. Come, love Me and love others. Pray for your enemies. Bring the lost to my table. You will see bright moments to remind you that the kingdom is here." This is hard and joyful advice.

Ben Weir, a Presbyterian missionary, was held hostage in Lebanon for 16 months. During his first interview after release, he was asked how he spent his time. "Counting my blessings," he replied. Trained by the postwar advertising industry, the reporters were speechless. "Blessings?" they ventured. "Yes," Weir responded. "Some days I got to take a shower. Sometimes there were some vegetables in my food. And I could always be thankful for the love of my family." Weir also spoke openly of his terror, his anger, and his boredom. But he did not spend those terrible months pining for a perfect world; rather, he entered into his finitude, experienced his suffering, and was able to catch glimpses of the kingdom.

Not much there for R.E.M. or MTV, nor does Weir's story lend itself to mythic explication. As an antidote to our narcissism, though, a prescription for the sibling society, it would be hard to beat.

-Margaret Gramatky Alter teaches psychology at New College, Berkeley. She is the author of Resurrection Psychology: An Understanding of Human Personality Based on the Life and Teachings of Jesus (Loyola University Press).

Copyright© 1997 by Christianity Today/Books & Culture Magazine.