The Veil Has Lifted:
Everthing Has Changed
by
Larry Pesavento
Copyright © 2002
Everything has changed!
Since the September tragedy, it sure seems that way. The American
world seems to have taken on Alice In Wonderland proportions. What
once could be counted on, including the American wonder of the world,
seems to have convulsed and fallen. The wonderland has become the
wander land of confused, frightened, angry but determined folk.
But
has everything changed? Is the world so much different, now, than it
was on 9/10. Surely for those who have lost loved ones, the world will
never be the same. The sudden passing on of a loved one quakes through
one's life to its very foundations. However, for the rest of us, has
everything changed all that much?
Maybe, more likely, the veil has been taken away, the veil of cultural
denial that surrounds our everyday reality. This veil has, more
accurately, been violently ripped open, giving us a view of another
reality that has been there all the time. Maybe we are now seeing the
other side of our world that our culture has not been ready to see and
face. Maybe, we have naively let ourselves feel that we are immune
from the tragedies that other men and women around the world face
every day. Maybe, like the Marine colonel says in A Few Good Men,
we couldn't handle the truth.
This whole situation reminds me so much of the naive boy who is
suddenly ripped from the familiarity of his village hut. This
experience is so similar to what happens when a boy faces initiation.
He is suddenly faced with another world that is dangerous beyond
anything he has seen in the safe village. He is not protected anymore
from seeing the other side of his emerging life as a man. For him
everything has changed. Yet, to the elders, to those who see, the
world is still the same.
I
believe we, as a country, are in the middle of an initiatory crisis. I
believe Robert Bly is right, as far as men in our culture are
concerned. We are an early adolescent, sibling society. That is why
everything feels like it is changing. We have not been initiated, so
we have not been guided, past death, into the other half of our world.
There are no such transformative experiences in our culture to prepare
us for tragedies such as this. I am afraid that when faced with an
involuntary initiatory crisis such as this, we, as American men, can
too easily become angry, impulsive teens, obsessed with our image,
hypervigilant about somehow being dissed, ready to violently prove the
manhood we don't even have. I don't think I am the only one afraid of
this.
I
believe the rest of the world, now, is as much afraid of us, as
compassionate toward us. The rest of the world, especially those whom
we may be too uncomfortable to notice, wonder how we will handle our
initiation. Will we act like narcissistic boys, ready to get even
because our egos, and our bodies, have been bruised. Will we become
bullies, because we can be, in order to anaesthetize our hurt. Will we
use this 'just war' as an excuse to take whatever we want, because
we're strong enough, and righteous enough, to do it. Because we are
uninitiated men, we are dangerous men. The rest of the world, though
it may be mostly uninitiated too, understands the danger. American men
have the most power in the world. Adolescents are naively ready to use
that power in service of their own narrow needs.
But
what if we've attained a critical mass of men who are ready to be
initiated, initiated by this crisis of cultural proportions. And what
if we've reached a critical mass of elders who can guide these
initiates through the wilderness of personal and political feelings
that the crisis forces on us all. Surely, we were all terribly
surprised one morning in September, and taken roughly from the comfort
of the everyday perceptions of our village. Surely, we were forced to
face death, in all its gruesome faces. Surely, we have had to ask
ourselves what our life direction means now, once the veil has been
taken away, and death, as change as well as mortality, can no longer
be ignored.
Initiates from indigenous nations had to face death, death as loss of
a former, carefree lifestyle, death as loss of a sense of protection
from the realities of life outside a safe village. They also had to
face death in the guise of a very uncertain future, a life with no
insurance policy. But it was through facing death, including the death
of their body, that the lessons were found and the transformation
happened. Then everything did change! The adolescent died, the man was
born.
Indigenous elders knew that the same gruesome place that held danger
and death was also the place where their spiritual answers lay. The
other side, beyond the village or the polis, was the place where
deeper, human values could be found, beyond survival in the
marketplace and the need for adolescent adulation. The initiated man
lives with loss and death constantly, so he is ready to face death for
a higher cause, rather than cause death he is not ready to face. The
initiated man lives with no insurance policy, so he can risk insuring
that his community remembers its highest values. The initiated man is
a warrior. The other side has taught him which battles to risk dying
for.
Uncle Sam, and the world, needs several initiated men. Uncle Sam needs
you, if you have grown up. I am compelled to say this to men, since it
is men who have their finger on the various triggers of war. I am
compelled to say this as an older, trying to be an elder.
If
enough men stand up to say that we will not get even, but we will
consider the rest of the world's needs as much as our own, American
men can transform the world. If enough American men say 'no' to a
national narcissism that defends our lifestyle to the detriment of the
rest of the world, then America will have grown up. If enough American
men have compassion enough to suffer relatively little voluntarily,
rather than causing others to suffer terribly a lot, then our cultural
initiation will be accomplished.
The
signs are there. How many men at the WTC faced death, so that others
could live. How many passed into true manhood, as they also passed
over. How many were willing to lose everything, for a higher value.
How many men found their initiation that day?
The
real question is how many of us have learned the lesson of this
cultural initiation, especially from the men who learned their manhood
that day, and will carry them on. And how many, who cannot bear
initiation, have regressed to the potential international bully.
One
thing seems sure. Terrorists are the epitome of the naive adolescent
gone berserk. They are the equivalent of our American street gangs,
with AK 47's and a different bible. They are righteous bullies, and
should be a dark lesson to all of us men. They are where we could be,
substituting M 16's and a more familiar bible, yelling that our fight
is for God and freedom. The rest of the world, I believe, is afraid we
will turn into more sophisticated terrorists. It takes initiated men
to prove them wrong. It takes mature men to show that we have changed,
and can change a world that we see clearly for the first time.
Larry Pesavento ©2002
