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In his phenomenal bestseller, Iron John, Robert Bly
captivated the nation with the wisdom embedded in a thousand-year-old fairy tale,
creating both a cultural movement and publishing history. Now,
in Sibling Society, Bly turns to stories as unexpected as Jack and the
Beanstalk and the Hindu tale of Ganesha to illustrate and illuminate
the troubled soul of our nation itself. What he shows us is a culture where adults
remain children, and where children have no desire to become adults -- a nation
of squabbling siblings. Through his use of poetry
and myth, Bly takes us beyond the sociological statistics and tired psychobabble
to see our dilemma afresh. In this sibling culture that he describes, we tolerate
no one above us and have no concern for anyone below us. Like sullen teenagers
we live in our peer group, glancing side to side, rather than upward, for direction.
We have brought down all forms of hierarchy because hierarchy is based on power,
often abused. Yet with that leveling we have also destroyed any willingness to
look up or down. Without that "vertical gaze," as Bly calls it, we have
no longing for the good, no deep understanding of evil. We shy away from great
triumphs and deep sorrow. We have no elders and no children; no past and no future.
What we are left with is spiritual flatness. The talk show replaces family. Instead
of art we have the Internet. In the place of community we have the mall. By
drawing upon such magnificent spirits as Pablo Neruda, Rumi, Emily Dickinson,
and Ortega y Gassett, Bly manages to show us the beautiful possibilities of human
existence, even as he shows us the harshest truths. Still, his probing is deeper
and more unsettling than the usual cultural criticism. He finds that our economy's
stimulation of adolescent envy and greed has changed us fundamentally. The Superego
that once demanded high standards in our work and in our ethics no longer demands
that we be good but merely "famous," bathed in the warm glow of superficial
attention. Driven by this insatiable need, and with no guidance toward the discipline
required for genuine accomplishment, our young people are defeated before they
begin. It is the young and the disenfranchised who
are most victimized by the sibling culture, our children and our elders and those
marked as "not us" by race and economic circumstance. In a phrase common
to the ancient stories Bly uses to illustrate his themes, it is these people whom
we all too easily "throw out the window," but it is also these disenfranchised
who will be waiting for us on the road ahead to claim their due. A
wake-up call, an inspiration, brilliantly original, The Sibling Society
will capture the imagination and enliven our nation's cultural debate as no other
book in years. Robert Bly is a poet, storyteller,
translator, and worldwide lecturer. His poetry has won many prizes, including
the National Book Award. His first, full-length book of prose, Iron John,
was number one on The New York Times nonfiction bestseller list for ten weeks,
remaining on the list itself for more than a year. With his wife, Ruth, he lives
on a lake in Minnesota. |
