Reply #21: The myth that * is some type of brave man is comical [View All]

Really I don't like to get in the way others fantasies, but what one finds about bravery, is that it exists somewhere in a more earlier (or if will, the more primitive part) of the brain. Not that it is not necessary, its just that when people are interviewed after they have performed what others consider brave acts, there seems to be a disconnect with their thinking. They can show the reasoning, but mostly the cognitive is shut down and rote method is employed during the more horrific periods.

It would seem to me that most any body with half a brain could figure it out, especially if there was a few things cut out of the mix. These things that really are not there as issues but are real in the sense that many have been conditioned to think they really are. This is after all just a part of a Achilles heal in a Alpha male.

http://www.users.csbsju.edu/~eknuth/xpxx/malespir.html

"Male Spirituality": A Feminist Evaluation
by Elizabeth T. Knuth
May, 1993

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Background
As in the swelling literature on co-dependency (and, before that, transactional analysis), so too in the mythopoetic movement and in the rationales for male spirituality there is a considerable amount of jargon. There is talk of shadow kings, father-wounds, Zeus energy, Puer culture, and the like. Therefore some information on the underpinnings of "male spirituality" as it is described would seem to be in order.

As Patrick Arnold says, "most of the energy that drives the men's movement comes from the `secular' world of fairy tales and mythology, Jungian psychotherapy, anthropology, and New Age spirituality."<6> Of this mix, the most formative are mythology and Jungian psychology.

Carl Jung considered the unconscious to be the "source of creative power and insight."<7> Furthermore, he posited, on the basis of common motifs in dreams, that each individual has inherited a "collective unconscious" shared by the entire human race. These common motifs are images which have a powerful appeal to the imagination. They "act like spiritual beings with a life of their own" (Kelsey 76), and they are ambivalent, that is, they can be turned to good or evil. Jung calls these psychic images "archetypes." "The archetype must be honored for what it is, an image outside of the self that calls us to growth, change and awareness. In its negative form it can equally call us to evil and destruction."<8>

The way in which the collective unconscious and archetypes would tie in with mythology is apparent. The "mega-myth" or "super-archetype" (for males, at least) is that of the Hero. Arnold (40-41) goes so far as to say, "The activation of the Hero archetype is the single most important factor in the creation of a man's masculine identity." The three phases of the hero's quest are separation, ordeal, and return.

Several masculine archetypes are proposed on the basis of myth, fairy tale, and anthropology. Arnold discusses an even dozen, including the Hero and "the Christ archetype" (181). A few of these are predominant in the literature of the men's movement, however, namely King, Warrior, and Shaman. It should be noted that the Warrior is not a soldier under orders, but a sole combatant, or a leader who calls all the shots. The one archetype most often held up as a model for men in these books is that of the Wild Man. "Totally liberated from the trappings of modern civilization, he still possesses almost magical powers over the forces of nature and his animal brethren" (Arnold 35). The Wild Man is depicted as big, hairy, and naked. The story used by the mythopoetic movement to evoke the archetypal Wild Man is "Iron John" (Eisenhans) from Grimm's Fairy Tales.
(snip)