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The Sibling Society: An Impassioned Call for the Rediscovery of Adulthood
Where have all the grownups gone? In answering that question with the same freewheeling erudition and intuitive brilliance that made Iron John a national bestseller, poet, storyteller and translator Robert Bly tells us that we live in a "sibling society, " in which adults have regressed into adolescence and adolescents refuse to grow up.
336 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1996
28 people are currently reading
876 people want to read
About the author
Robert Bly
284 books414 followersRobert Bly was an American poet, author, activist and leader of the Mythopoetic Men's Movement.
Robert Bly was born in western Minnesota in 1926 to parents of Norwegian stock. He enlisted in the Navy in 1944 and spent two years there. After one year at St. Olaf College in Minnesota, he transferred to Harvard and thereby joined the famous group of writers who were undergraduates at that time, which included Donald Hall, Adrienne Rich, Kenneth Koch, John Ashbery, Harold Brodky, George Plimpton, and John Hawkes. He graduated in 1950 and spent the next few years in New York living, as they say, hand to mouth.
Beginning in 1954, he took two years at the University of Iowa at the Writers Workshop along with W. D. Snodgrass, Donald Justice, and others. In 1956 he received a Fulbright grant to travel to Norway and translate Norwegian poetry into English. While there he found not only his relatives but the work of a number of major poets whose force was not present in the United States, among them Pablo Neruda, Cesar Vallejo, Gunnar Ekelof, Georg Trakl and Harry Martinson. He determined then to start a literary magazine for poetry translation in the United States and so begin The Fifties and The Sixties and The Seventies, which introduced many of these poets to the writers of his generation, and published as well essays on American poets and insults to those deserving. During this time he lived on a farm in Minnesota with his wife and children.
In 1966 he co-founded American Writers Against the Vietnam War and led much of the opposition among writers to that war. When he won the National Book Award for The Light Around the Body, he contributed the prize money to the Resistance. During the 70s he published eleven books of poetry, essays, and translations, celebrating the power of myth, Indian ecstatic poetry, meditation, and storytelling. During the 80s he published Loving a Woman in Two Worlds, The Wingéd Life: Selected Poems and Prose of Thoreau,The Man in the Black Coat Turns, and A Little Book on the Human Shadow.
His work Iron John: A Book About Men is an international bestseller which has been translated into many languages. He frequently does workshops for men with James Hillman and others, and workshops for men and women with Marion Woodman. He and his wife Ruth, along with the storyteller Gioia Timpanelli, frequently conduct seminars on European fairy tales. In the early 90s, with James Hillman and Michael Meade, he edited The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart, an anthology of poems from the men's work. Since then he has edited The Darkness Around Us Is Deep: Selected Poems of William Stafford, and The Soul Is Here for Its Own Joy, a collection of sacred poetry from many cultures.
Robert Bly was born in western Minnesota in 1926 to parents of Norwegian stock. He enlisted in the Navy in 1944 and spent two years there. After one year at St. Olaf College in Minnesota, he transferred to Harvard and thereby joined the famous group of writers who were undergraduates at that time, which included Donald Hall, Adrienne Rich, Kenneth Koch, John Ashbery, Harold Brodky, George Plimpton, and John Hawkes. He graduated in 1950 and spent the next few years in New York living, as they say, hand to mouth.
Beginning in 1954, he took two years at the University of Iowa at the Writers Workshop along with W. D. Snodgrass, Donald Justice, and others. In 1956 he received a Fulbright grant to travel to Norway and translate Norwegian poetry into English. While there he found not only his relatives but the work of a number of major poets whose force was not present in the United States, among them Pablo Neruda, Cesar Vallejo, Gunnar Ekelof, Georg Trakl and Harry Martinson. He determined then to start a literary magazine for poetry translation in the United States and so begin The Fifties and The Sixties and The Seventies, which introduced many of these poets to the writers of his generation, and published as well essays on American poets and insults to those deserving. During this time he lived on a farm in Minnesota with his wife and children.
In 1966 he co-founded American Writers Against the Vietnam War and led much of the opposition among writers to that war. When he won the National Book Award for The Light Around the Body, he contributed the prize money to the Resistance. During the 70s he published eleven books of poetry, essays, and translations, celebrating the power of myth, Indian ecstatic poetry, meditation, and storytelling. During the 80s he published Loving a Woman in Two Worlds, The Wingéd Life: Selected Poems and Prose of Thoreau,The Man in the Black Coat Turns, and A Little Book on the Human Shadow.
His work Iron John: A Book About Men is an international bestseller which has been translated into many languages. He frequently does workshops for men with James Hillman and others, and workshops for men and women with Marion Woodman. He and his wife Ruth, along with the storyteller Gioia Timpanelli, frequently conduct seminars on European fairy tales. In the early 90s, with James Hillman and Michael Meade, he edited The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart, an anthology of poems from the men's work. Since then he has edited The Darkness Around Us Is Deep: Selected Poems of William Stafford, and The Soul Is Here for Its Own Joy, a collection of sacred poetry from many cultures.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews
April 4, 2009
An astonishingly prescient book that bemoans the leveling of society and the disappearing adult in America. Bly has received a fair share of criticism for his various works and beliefs, but this is a must-read for anyone trying to understand modern American culture.
March 14, 2011
Back in the Clinton years (the first Baby Boomer Presidency), the idea that this and other countries had become "sibling societies" -- cultures dominated by essentially "fatherless" youth who were abandoning all tradition and connection to the past -- was worth exploring. But not by Robert Bly, poseur poet with blow-dried hair, rainbow-colored vest, and eccentric paisley neckwear.
Bly, who seems to decry orderly thinking and exposition as overly "legal" and therefore life-denying, builds his rambling exposition around a motley crew of folk tales and poems. Rather, he twaddles around them, merrily skipping from random thought to random thought, seldom staying with a subject long enough or in a sufficiently focused fashion to make simple sense. Better to sound infinitely wise than to work on the prose and craft clear connectives.
I don't know if Bly delivered an oration on this subject on PBS, but
he should have. The camera could have panned to the audience, where older men and women (much younger than this dinosaur) could have nodded
solemnly, or oohed-and-aahed at his pontifications (while wondering afterwards what exactly they had learned after the cascade of words). If you hear the words but do not have the time to consider what they mean before you are assaulted by the next thought, you may be deluded into thinking you have heard something infinitely wise (and poetic).
I share Bly's belief that our culture has, in ways that previous ones have not, lost too much connection with the equivalent of tribal elders
and inherited tradition, in favor of a society in which the unwise young lead the unwiser young. I too dislike Kevin Costner, Bill Gates and the impact of technology on modern people (including yours truly).
However, the disorganized burblings of Bly on the subject did precious little to enlighten.
As any book report must end, I recommend this book to anyone who would like to read an interesting 1807 version of "Jack and the Beanstalk" and some other neat folk tales, and some nice poems by Pablo Neruda and Emily Dickinson, and who doesn't care whether they really have anything to do with the state of our society in 1996 or 2010 or any other time past or present or future.
Bly, who seems to decry orderly thinking and exposition as overly "legal" and therefore life-denying, builds his rambling exposition around a motley crew of folk tales and poems. Rather, he twaddles around them, merrily skipping from random thought to random thought, seldom staying with a subject long enough or in a sufficiently focused fashion to make simple sense. Better to sound infinitely wise than to work on the prose and craft clear connectives.
I don't know if Bly delivered an oration on this subject on PBS, but
he should have. The camera could have panned to the audience, where older men and women (much younger than this dinosaur) could have nodded
solemnly, or oohed-and-aahed at his pontifications (while wondering afterwards what exactly they had learned after the cascade of words). If you hear the words but do not have the time to consider what they mean before you are assaulted by the next thought, you may be deluded into thinking you have heard something infinitely wise (and poetic).
I share Bly's belief that our culture has, in ways that previous ones have not, lost too much connection with the equivalent of tribal elders
and inherited tradition, in favor of a society in which the unwise young lead the unwiser young. I too dislike Kevin Costner, Bill Gates and the impact of technology on modern people (including yours truly).
However, the disorganized burblings of Bly on the subject did precious little to enlighten.
As any book report must end, I recommend this book to anyone who would like to read an interesting 1807 version of "Jack and the Beanstalk" and some other neat folk tales, and some nice poems by Pablo Neruda and Emily Dickinson, and who doesn't care whether they really have anything to do with the state of our society in 1996 or 2010 or any other time past or present or future.
July 12, 2008
Robert Bly's "The Sibling Society" has a sound premise and all too much truth lies in this premise: That we live in a society devoid of fathers who discipline, who are avaialble, and who are heroes we can both love and rebel against to find ourselves whether male or female. Understanding the necessity to end tyrannical patriarchal societies, the pendulum has swung so far in the other direction that we live in a society where we remain fixated in adolescence competing with each other like siblings rather than compromising adults. The effects this has had and continues to have on self-discipline, achievement, and the desire to do good for the community at large are all covered. Bly mixes in poetry which helps show how a society without myth and literacy also affects its downfall. The one thing lacking in the book is enough suggestions as to how we might ever get back to a society that favors the growin phases of childhood, adolescence, and the desire to be an adult with all the responsibilities this requires. I don't think one person can answer this, so I suppose I should not expect it of this poet laureate and loving, mature father himself. In the meantime, I couldn't agree more with what he writes and wish I had some answers too. It was a most interesting and informative read.
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April 20, 2011The best book I can't get anyone to read.
September 27, 2011
In 1996, one couild travel the world and find middle-aged men and women wearing the laid back GAP uniform of tee shirts and jeans or khakis, people who were largely like one another, regardless of origin, all sort of melting into one great big GAP army, which was good, right? Wrong saith Robert Bly, who decries the inability of middle-agers to embrace adulthood along with all of it's TRAPpings and responsibilities and even hierarchy. The democrotization of the family, where the kids are left with 'friends' as folks and no real authoritarian figures has left us with some pretty scary statistics concerning teenage pregnancy, adolescent crime and general aimlessness among our youth, says Bly.
Armed with myths over 1,000 years old, Mr. Bly recounts ages gone by when girls and boys were guided by mothers and fathers through the harrowing trials of growing up and becoming Adult, when the strength of the family was found in a present mother, a present father and a stable, economically viable America where the middle class could thrive and the poor were taken care of.
Not so now, says Bly.
Sadly, kids have grown up first in impersonal daycares, then in front of the t.v., and finally on to the computer, where the more imaginative and creative impulses are bypassed and modern marketers are allowed to blaze their ways directly into the middle brain of our most precious, our children.
No more time spent outdoors with dad and mom, no more family picnics, no more real time to connect with Nature at large which is so vital to human (humane) development.
Bly points several fingers at several 'culprits'. Advertisers who appeal to the most base instincts in the most efficient ways possible, large corporations who have demonstrated zero social responsibility or concern for the citizens of their parent Countries, eschewing loyalty for labor (cheap), previous patriarchal systems where men were allowed to revel in some sort of warped sense of masculinity where women and children had no rights or say in how their world should be run, and then, too, feminist groups who have advertised the death of masculinity in virtually any form in reaction to asaid patriarchal systems, and on and on.
Bly points only halfheartedly at some possible solutions, where men and women become present in children's lives and intervene in critical periods throughout an adolescent's and young adult's life to aid them along the road to becoming an adult, and even protecting them from the 'world' at large.
But by the tone of the book, not much Hope is held out, in my view, where this book, initially poking fun and playing games, eventually becomes a sobering account of the State We're In.
Armed with myths over 1,000 years old, Mr. Bly recounts ages gone by when girls and boys were guided by mothers and fathers through the harrowing trials of growing up and becoming Adult, when the strength of the family was found in a present mother, a present father and a stable, economically viable America where the middle class could thrive and the poor were taken care of.
Not so now, says Bly.
Sadly, kids have grown up first in impersonal daycares, then in front of the t.v., and finally on to the computer, where the more imaginative and creative impulses are bypassed and modern marketers are allowed to blaze their ways directly into the middle brain of our most precious, our children.
No more time spent outdoors with dad and mom, no more family picnics, no more real time to connect with Nature at large which is so vital to human (humane) development.
Bly points several fingers at several 'culprits'. Advertisers who appeal to the most base instincts in the most efficient ways possible, large corporations who have demonstrated zero social responsibility or concern for the citizens of their parent Countries, eschewing loyalty for labor (cheap), previous patriarchal systems where men were allowed to revel in some sort of warped sense of masculinity where women and children had no rights or say in how their world should be run, and then, too, feminist groups who have advertised the death of masculinity in virtually any form in reaction to asaid patriarchal systems, and on and on.
Bly points only halfheartedly at some possible solutions, where men and women become present in children's lives and intervene in critical periods throughout an adolescent's and young adult's life to aid them along the road to becoming an adult, and even protecting them from the 'world' at large.
But by the tone of the book, not much Hope is held out, in my view, where this book, initially poking fun and playing games, eventually becomes a sobering account of the State We're In.
March 4, 2023
This is my sixth book for Robert Bly. I’ve read more books for him now than any other writer—more than Marilynne Robinson, for whom I’ve read five novels. In this book, Robert stands by his tendency to permeate his prose with mythological meaning, which is something I love about his writing.
Published in 1996, The Sibling Society is a critique of modern-day America. The title suggests a society populated by siblings with no definite and unique markers. Everything is flat and horizontal and egalitarian. Everyone is the same. The vertical familial hierarchy is gone. Mother and father and elders have been dispossessed and turned into siblings; adolescents disguised as adults. Robert argues that this society is marked by an overwhelming tendency towards acquisitive materialism and an active distrust of all ancestral heritage, and with that goes a flattening of old traditions. Fathers have forsaken their previous role as guardians of the steep demands that tradition necessitated. What adds to the misery is that many American families now have to contend with the challenge of having an absent father.
Following this largescale flattening we are left with a society that is uprooted, with nothing to stand on and nothing to look up towards. Flatness becomes the norm. Even when the father is present, his parenting is flat in the sense that he will not make any steep demands on his children. He is just another sibling, a bigger adolescent who says yes to everything. Herein lies the flatness: with saying yes to everything. Our ancestors used initiation rituals to encourage young men into active participation with the divine, with the vertical realm. They taught the young that such dimension exists, where gods and demons can interfere with our human designs. Robert thinks that the cure to flatness lies in honoring old traditions and re-introducing rituals to initiate the young into maturity.
******************
William Stafford, in his poem, First Grade, reflects the sense of inartistic flatness and unimaginative dullness that pales the sibling society:
******************
Harry Martinson, the Swedish Nobel laureate, vividly captures the flatness in his poem, Hades and Euclid:
Published in 1996, The Sibling Society is a critique of modern-day America. The title suggests a society populated by siblings with no definite and unique markers. Everything is flat and horizontal and egalitarian. Everyone is the same. The vertical familial hierarchy is gone. Mother and father and elders have been dispossessed and turned into siblings; adolescents disguised as adults. Robert argues that this society is marked by an overwhelming tendency towards acquisitive materialism and an active distrust of all ancestral heritage, and with that goes a flattening of old traditions. Fathers have forsaken their previous role as guardians of the steep demands that tradition necessitated. What adds to the misery is that many American families now have to contend with the challenge of having an absent father.
Following this largescale flattening we are left with a society that is uprooted, with nothing to stand on and nothing to look up towards. Flatness becomes the norm. Even when the father is present, his parenting is flat in the sense that he will not make any steep demands on his children. He is just another sibling, a bigger adolescent who says yes to everything. Herein lies the flatness: with saying yes to everything. Our ancestors used initiation rituals to encourage young men into active participation with the divine, with the vertical realm. They taught the young that such dimension exists, where gods and demons can interfere with our human designs. Robert thinks that the cure to flatness lies in honoring old traditions and re-introducing rituals to initiate the young into maturity.
******************
William Stafford, in his poem, First Grade, reflects the sense of inartistic flatness and unimaginative dullness that pales the sibling society:
In the play Amy didn’t want to be
anybody; so she managed the curtain.
Sharon wanted to be Amy. But Sam
wouldn’t let anybody be anybody else—
he said it was wrong. “All right,” Steve said,
“I’ll be me, but I don 't like it.”
So Amy was Amy, and we didn’t have the play.
And Sharon cried.
******************
Harry Martinson, the Swedish Nobel laureate, vividly captures the flatness in his poem, Hades and Euclid:
When Euclid started out to measure Hades,
he found it had neither depth nor height.
Demons flatter than stingrays
swept above the plains of death,
their barks had no echoes as they ran
along the fire frontiers and the ice frontiers,
along the lines laid down in Hades.
Along the lines that fell apart
and joined again as lines
flock after flock of demons went abreast, in ranks, and parallel through Hades.
There were only waves, no hills, no chasms or valleys.
Only lines, parallel happenings, angles lying prone.
Demons shot along like elliptical plates;
they covered an endless field in Hades as though with moving dragon scales.
On the smoothed-over burial mounds that forgetfulness had destroyed with its flatness,
snakes were crawling—they were merely heavy lines:
lashed, crawled, stung their way
along the flowing lines.
…
The ovens of Hell lay close to the ground
on the flat fields.
There the capriciously damned were burned
in the brick rooms—
near the surface as graves are—
victims of flat evil,
with no comfort from a high place
or support from a low place,
received without dignity,
received without a rising,
received without any of the standards of eternity.
Their cries are met only by mockery
on the flat fields of evil.
And Euclid, the king of measurement, cried
and his cry went looking for Kronus, the god of spheres.
January 8, 2024
The Norwegian story about the six-inch man sleeping in an old hunting horn makes the 240 pages that precede it worth the effort. No joke. Story blew me away.
Other notable takeaways:
The first rule for interpreting fairy stories--the same rule used in interpreting dreams--is that everyone in the story belongs inside one psyche.
Bly's treatment of the tripartite brain--the reptile brain (archicortex), the primitive mammalian brain (mesocortex), and the mammalian brain (neocortex).
Coleman Barks's translation of Rumi's "Listen to this, and hear the mystery inside: / A snake-catcher went into the mountains to find a snake."
[Elvis] died of terminal adolescence.
Boredom in our high schools is rising to unheard-of levels.... Looking at the decline in discipline, inventiveness, persistence, reading abilities, and reasoning abilities of adolescents now compared with adolescents thirty years ago [Bly is writing in 1996, mind], we must now be ready to grasp how much steeper the decline will be thirty years from now. As the se children, who mistake Herbert Hoover for the maker of the vacuum cleaner, become directors of movies, critics of literature, curators of museums, and high school teachers, we will see a drop in coherence across the board.
The six marks of an adult (pages 238-239)
Bly's comments on dismantling the patriarchy and not throwing out the baby with the bathwater, as it were.
Really good book. No Iron John, but really good. I didn't even mention what is one of the largest chunks--the allegorical interpretation of Jack and the Beanstalk. Good stuff. Sad that he's not alive to comment on what is happening today with technology and politics.
Other notable takeaways:
The first rule for interpreting fairy stories--the same rule used in interpreting dreams--is that everyone in the story belongs inside one psyche.
Bly's treatment of the tripartite brain--the reptile brain (archicortex), the primitive mammalian brain (mesocortex), and the mammalian brain (neocortex).
Coleman Barks's translation of Rumi's "Listen to this, and hear the mystery inside: / A snake-catcher went into the mountains to find a snake."
[Elvis] died of terminal adolescence.
Boredom in our high schools is rising to unheard-of levels.... Looking at the decline in discipline, inventiveness, persistence, reading abilities, and reasoning abilities of adolescents now compared with adolescents thirty years ago [Bly is writing in 1996, mind], we must now be ready to grasp how much steeper the decline will be thirty years from now. As the se children, who mistake Herbert Hoover for the maker of the vacuum cleaner, become directors of movies, critics of literature, curators of museums, and high school teachers, we will see a drop in coherence across the board.
The six marks of an adult (pages 238-239)
Bly's comments on dismantling the patriarchy and not throwing out the baby with the bathwater, as it were.
Really good book. No Iron John, but really good. I didn't even mention what is one of the largest chunks--the allegorical interpretation of Jack and the Beanstalk. Good stuff. Sad that he's not alive to comment on what is happening today with technology and politics.
July 26, 2025
In' The Sibling Society', poet and author Robert Bly tells readers that we are navigating from a discredited paternal society to a society in which impulse is left uncontrolled, where intimacy gives way to proximity, and proximity gives way to sameness. Bly calls it a sibling society, and he uses sibling as a metaphor: “Adults regress toward adolescence, and adolescents, seeing that – have no desire to become adults.”
As he did in Iron John, Bly emphasizes the important roles of parents, by describing consequences of absent parenting, particularly the absence of fathers: “As divorce became more common, and custody remained with mothers, the children’s power increased. The father began being permissive when the children visited on weekends, formerly a time when children were required to take on tasks as members of a family. But if the father isn’t in the house, … he can’t require the children to do homework, or any of the tasks they find onerous.”
Bly uses a number of myths, fairy tales, or children’s stories to demonstrate the origin of his themes from diverse cultures. Bly uses myth to gain perspective on the importance of fathers, mentors, and rituals, to help young men separate from their mothers, and then from their fathers, to attain a healthy maturity. The myths are not intended to be taken literally or to emphasize either anger or violence. Metaphors like beheading or wounding are meant to emphasize the degree of difficulty and the amount of change in the transition from childhood to manhood. Bly often tries to make it easier for Westerners to understand by using native American stories of sweat lodges, ritual hunts, and various forms of wounding, to understand both the roles of other adult males or elders, and the challenges of becoming a man.
For example, from the story of Jack and the Beanstalk,
“… whether or not the Giant (in Jack and the Beanstalk) is the nafs (in Muslim and Sufi tradition nafs means soul; Bly uses its contemporary interpretation as greedy soul), the Feeding, Sexuality, and Ferocity (or reptilian) part of the human brain, or the Freudian id (the unconscious source of desires and drives) is not exactly the point. The story offers us a way of grasping that Jack has met an enemy with more power than he has. The fascinating detail is that the human being in our story who faces the large male that wants to kill him is not a Beowulf or Odysseus – that is, one who is armored, initiated, and experienced – but a small human being, a boy named Jack…, a fatherless boy, who represents all men and women who live in a fatherless, and increasingly, motherless society.”
“Many judges, sociologists, and lawmakers… have regarded fathers as insignificant in the family structure throughout the last hundred years (The Sibling Society was published in 1996)… Decisions by judges to award custody to mothers reflect the idea of the unimportance of fathers and deepens it. At the same time, we know that many nineteenth-century fathers abandoned their families to go west, and many contemporary fathers abandon their family emotionally by working fourteen hours a day. For whatever reasons, fathers are becoming scarce…”
“Mary Pipher in Reviving Ophelia, her study of adolescent girls, points out they are not doing well either. Even inside the house, adolescent girls feel unparented. They are often literally unfathered, and they tend to reject their mothers, which sometimes leads to running away. They want to be parented but will not accept the mother’s values. If a young girl experiences rape, she may - amazingly – blame the parents more than the rapist. Such misplaced anger testifies to their deep need for protection. They need it, and deserve it, but many adolescent girls are not receiving it.”
“People of all ages are making decisions to avoid the difficulties of maturity. Freud maintained in Civilization and Its Discontents that human beings feel a deep hate and a deep love for civilization. Civilized behavior demands repression and restraint in the face of which, the instinctual energies know that they will not (always) be satisfied.”
“The person who decides to omit the difficult labors of becoming civilized receives, in return, permission for narcissism, freedom from old discontents, and a ticket to the Omni theater, where fantasies are being run. One could say that the greedy and lazy part of the soul receives permission to do as it wishes.”
“Sons who have a remote or absent father can receive no modeling on how to deal appropriately with male anger, what it looks like, what it feels like, what it smells like, how to honor it, or let it go, or speak it without hurting someone… The son experiences the father only in the world of longing… But with so many fathers absent, millions of males linger passively in a dangerous, frightening, and inarticulate fantasy world. Such a person is not free of aggression; he tends to radiate an aggression that is diffuse, nondirectional, inconsolable.”
Bly tells readers: “People are noticing that the Oedipus story is becoming less and less appropriate in our present society… Not only do young men not want to kill their fathers, many have never met him. Father-longing is beginning to replace father-anger.”
Bly summarizes another tale, the Hindu myth of Shiva, Parvati, and Ganesha. Parvati, the Daughter of the Mountains is married to Shiva, Lord of the Dance. Shiva wants to practice his yoga for extended periods. After Parvati comes home from yoga, and barges in on Parvati’s bath, Parvati decides that she wants a son. Shiva does not want a son. Parvati, being a god, fashions or clones, a son for herself, and calls him Ganesha. Shiva cuts Ganesha’s head off. Parvati is inconsolable (as is the Universe), requiring Shiva to replace the son’s head. Shiva fails to attach it correctly until he finds an elephant head. So Ganesha, with human body and the head of an elephant, becomes the Lord of Obstacles or Lord of Beginnings. Bly tells us that the boy’s body represents the microcosm and the elephant head represents the macrocosm or greater cosmos beyond the moon and stars. “The Ganesha story is not meant to be taken literally. It does not say to fathers, ‘Cut off your son’s head’. It does not mean violence…The story is about working through the father’s competitiveness with his son, and the son’s attachment to the mother, without anyone getting killed and without the affectionate feelings being destroyed. The myth also recognizes that something is cut away, and a new identity or head has to be taken from the unknown world of wild things.”
“The doorkeeper myth gives a place for the mother’s grieving. Every mother wants her son to receive a ‘new head’ and yet so much that was sweet in their past is lost when the new head is placed… the boy… has shifted from the maternal realm to the social world.”
“The son of a single mother receives a task he is too young to perform.”
Bly draws comparisons between several myths: the Hindu myth of Shiva, Parvati, and Ganesha; a Celtic myth of Cernunnos who wears antlers on his head; the Greek story of Dionysius; the Odyssey tale of Odysseus, Penelope, and Telemachus; and even the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost after the cult of Mary was added in the Catholic church. All of these stories include some perspective on the dynamics between father, son, and mother.
“The sibling society has lost so much ability to see mythologically that both sons and daughters wander in a flat landscape, where demons ‘flatter than stingrays’ hurry between their feet. They do not become mature because they do not become lined up with their ancestors. They can’t figure out how to look downward to depth, or upward to the divine.”
Bly addresses some of the difficulties in trying to understand Mythology in the sibling culture:
• “Religious right-wingers do not realize that their literalism is the spiritual twin to the sibling shallowness and hedonism that they rail against… The determined and successful effort the religious right is making to control school materials means that the inability to think metaphorically will increase. Eventually those who try to interpret the Virgin Birth mythologically or metaphorically will be fired and the teachers will drown in the Flood.”
• “It was a dark day for the wild swans when the Protestants under pressure of the Enlightenment or Endarkenment, threw out the Virgin Mary from churches. She was a symbolon…”
• “To read a symbol means to walk along it until you cross into a world where events other than those on earth happen.”
• “The two parallel streams – literal life and mythological life – resemble the contrast between ordinary life and ritual life.”
• “People trained in only literal thinking live in a culture of scarcity so that if a writer writes tenderly of men, he obviously hates women. That interpretation astounded me… Mythology doesn’t deal in either/or but both/and.”
Bly also defines and discusses the relevance of Vertical Thought:
• “Many human activities, writing among them, can be thought of as an attempt to create immortality without the help of immortals.”
• “The Native American view that whenever one makes a decision, one should think of its effect down to the seventh generation, is a vertical thought.”
• “Another instance of vertical thought is the idea that a spiritual twin was born with you.”
• “Vertical thought likes to imagine the vast distances between the stars.”
• “One problem with the sibling society is that, in its intense desire to get away from hierarchy, it unintentionally avoids all vertical longing.”
• “We could say that vertical longing has to do with feeling, and hierarchy has to do with power… When the Catholic Church took over the power hierarchies of the Roman Empire and conflated longing and hierarchy – everything has been confused since.”
A central theme of both Iron John and The Sibling Society is that becoming mature, or adult, is neither quick, nor easy. Both books emphasize the importance of traditions and rituals in shaping values and beliefs. Both books describe through stories and myths, how these things are passed on from one generation to the next. Nearly all of these tales of coming of age, or maturation, emphasize the important roles of both mothers and fathers. The discussion of vertical thinking and traditions of culture make the argument for a role for ancestors – grandparents, great-grandparents and on through generations (what Bly refers to as the Seventh House, from a Norwegian story). In this way, humans develop responsibility, restraint, impulse-control, loyalty, gratitude, and decency. In maturing as individuals, we contribute to the maturation of society and obtain permission from the Universe to develop Civilization.
Through my study of Robert Bly’s 'The Sibling Society', I have come to a broader understanding of metaphor, mythologic thinking, and vertical thought. By learning to read the Ganesha story metaphorically, I have changed my perspective on the Old Testament story of Abraham and Isaac. Perhaps, I will even come to read the Book of Job differently. I believe that I understand more deeply the meaning of the Christian Gospels if I am not trapped into trying to prove their literal origins. I have also gained insight into why in my elderhood, I am increasingly engaged in reading and writing. Vertical thinking is helping me view my parents and grandparents and many of our traditions through a different prism – I am feeling more connection and gratitude.
As he did in Iron John, Bly emphasizes the important roles of parents, by describing consequences of absent parenting, particularly the absence of fathers: “As divorce became more common, and custody remained with mothers, the children’s power increased. The father began being permissive when the children visited on weekends, formerly a time when children were required to take on tasks as members of a family. But if the father isn’t in the house, … he can’t require the children to do homework, or any of the tasks they find onerous.”
Bly uses a number of myths, fairy tales, or children’s stories to demonstrate the origin of his themes from diverse cultures. Bly uses myth to gain perspective on the importance of fathers, mentors, and rituals, to help young men separate from their mothers, and then from their fathers, to attain a healthy maturity. The myths are not intended to be taken literally or to emphasize either anger or violence. Metaphors like beheading or wounding are meant to emphasize the degree of difficulty and the amount of change in the transition from childhood to manhood. Bly often tries to make it easier for Westerners to understand by using native American stories of sweat lodges, ritual hunts, and various forms of wounding, to understand both the roles of other adult males or elders, and the challenges of becoming a man.
For example, from the story of Jack and the Beanstalk,
“… whether or not the Giant (in Jack and the Beanstalk) is the nafs (in Muslim and Sufi tradition nafs means soul; Bly uses its contemporary interpretation as greedy soul), the Feeding, Sexuality, and Ferocity (or reptilian) part of the human brain, or the Freudian id (the unconscious source of desires and drives) is not exactly the point. The story offers us a way of grasping that Jack has met an enemy with more power than he has. The fascinating detail is that the human being in our story who faces the large male that wants to kill him is not a Beowulf or Odysseus – that is, one who is armored, initiated, and experienced – but a small human being, a boy named Jack…, a fatherless boy, who represents all men and women who live in a fatherless, and increasingly, motherless society.”
“Many judges, sociologists, and lawmakers… have regarded fathers as insignificant in the family structure throughout the last hundred years (The Sibling Society was published in 1996)… Decisions by judges to award custody to mothers reflect the idea of the unimportance of fathers and deepens it. At the same time, we know that many nineteenth-century fathers abandoned their families to go west, and many contemporary fathers abandon their family emotionally by working fourteen hours a day. For whatever reasons, fathers are becoming scarce…”
“Mary Pipher in Reviving Ophelia, her study of adolescent girls, points out they are not doing well either. Even inside the house, adolescent girls feel unparented. They are often literally unfathered, and they tend to reject their mothers, which sometimes leads to running away. They want to be parented but will not accept the mother’s values. If a young girl experiences rape, she may - amazingly – blame the parents more than the rapist. Such misplaced anger testifies to their deep need for protection. They need it, and deserve it, but many adolescent girls are not receiving it.”
“People of all ages are making decisions to avoid the difficulties of maturity. Freud maintained in Civilization and Its Discontents that human beings feel a deep hate and a deep love for civilization. Civilized behavior demands repression and restraint in the face of which, the instinctual energies know that they will not (always) be satisfied.”
“The person who decides to omit the difficult labors of becoming civilized receives, in return, permission for narcissism, freedom from old discontents, and a ticket to the Omni theater, where fantasies are being run. One could say that the greedy and lazy part of the soul receives permission to do as it wishes.”
“Sons who have a remote or absent father can receive no modeling on how to deal appropriately with male anger, what it looks like, what it feels like, what it smells like, how to honor it, or let it go, or speak it without hurting someone… The son experiences the father only in the world of longing… But with so many fathers absent, millions of males linger passively in a dangerous, frightening, and inarticulate fantasy world. Such a person is not free of aggression; he tends to radiate an aggression that is diffuse, nondirectional, inconsolable.”
Bly tells readers: “People are noticing that the Oedipus story is becoming less and less appropriate in our present society… Not only do young men not want to kill their fathers, many have never met him. Father-longing is beginning to replace father-anger.”
Bly summarizes another tale, the Hindu myth of Shiva, Parvati, and Ganesha. Parvati, the Daughter of the Mountains is married to Shiva, Lord of the Dance. Shiva wants to practice his yoga for extended periods. After Parvati comes home from yoga, and barges in on Parvati’s bath, Parvati decides that she wants a son. Shiva does not want a son. Parvati, being a god, fashions or clones, a son for herself, and calls him Ganesha. Shiva cuts Ganesha’s head off. Parvati is inconsolable (as is the Universe), requiring Shiva to replace the son’s head. Shiva fails to attach it correctly until he finds an elephant head. So Ganesha, with human body and the head of an elephant, becomes the Lord of Obstacles or Lord of Beginnings. Bly tells us that the boy’s body represents the microcosm and the elephant head represents the macrocosm or greater cosmos beyond the moon and stars. “The Ganesha story is not meant to be taken literally. It does not say to fathers, ‘Cut off your son’s head’. It does not mean violence…The story is about working through the father’s competitiveness with his son, and the son’s attachment to the mother, without anyone getting killed and without the affectionate feelings being destroyed. The myth also recognizes that something is cut away, and a new identity or head has to be taken from the unknown world of wild things.”
“The doorkeeper myth gives a place for the mother’s grieving. Every mother wants her son to receive a ‘new head’ and yet so much that was sweet in their past is lost when the new head is placed… the boy… has shifted from the maternal realm to the social world.”
“The son of a single mother receives a task he is too young to perform.”
Bly draws comparisons between several myths: the Hindu myth of Shiva, Parvati, and Ganesha; a Celtic myth of Cernunnos who wears antlers on his head; the Greek story of Dionysius; the Odyssey tale of Odysseus, Penelope, and Telemachus; and even the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost after the cult of Mary was added in the Catholic church. All of these stories include some perspective on the dynamics between father, son, and mother.
“The sibling society has lost so much ability to see mythologically that both sons and daughters wander in a flat landscape, where demons ‘flatter than stingrays’ hurry between their feet. They do not become mature because they do not become lined up with their ancestors. They can’t figure out how to look downward to depth, or upward to the divine.”
Bly addresses some of the difficulties in trying to understand Mythology in the sibling culture:
• “Religious right-wingers do not realize that their literalism is the spiritual twin to the sibling shallowness and hedonism that they rail against… The determined and successful effort the religious right is making to control school materials means that the inability to think metaphorically will increase. Eventually those who try to interpret the Virgin Birth mythologically or metaphorically will be fired and the teachers will drown in the Flood.”
• “It was a dark day for the wild swans when the Protestants under pressure of the Enlightenment or Endarkenment, threw out the Virgin Mary from churches. She was a symbolon…”
• “To read a symbol means to walk along it until you cross into a world where events other than those on earth happen.”
• “The two parallel streams – literal life and mythological life – resemble the contrast between ordinary life and ritual life.”
• “People trained in only literal thinking live in a culture of scarcity so that if a writer writes tenderly of men, he obviously hates women. That interpretation astounded me… Mythology doesn’t deal in either/or but both/and.”
Bly also defines and discusses the relevance of Vertical Thought:
• “Many human activities, writing among them, can be thought of as an attempt to create immortality without the help of immortals.”
• “The Native American view that whenever one makes a decision, one should think of its effect down to the seventh generation, is a vertical thought.”
• “Another instance of vertical thought is the idea that a spiritual twin was born with you.”
• “Vertical thought likes to imagine the vast distances between the stars.”
• “One problem with the sibling society is that, in its intense desire to get away from hierarchy, it unintentionally avoids all vertical longing.”
• “We could say that vertical longing has to do with feeling, and hierarchy has to do with power… When the Catholic Church took over the power hierarchies of the Roman Empire and conflated longing and hierarchy – everything has been confused since.”
A central theme of both Iron John and The Sibling Society is that becoming mature, or adult, is neither quick, nor easy. Both books emphasize the importance of traditions and rituals in shaping values and beliefs. Both books describe through stories and myths, how these things are passed on from one generation to the next. Nearly all of these tales of coming of age, or maturation, emphasize the important roles of both mothers and fathers. The discussion of vertical thinking and traditions of culture make the argument for a role for ancestors – grandparents, great-grandparents and on through generations (what Bly refers to as the Seventh House, from a Norwegian story). In this way, humans develop responsibility, restraint, impulse-control, loyalty, gratitude, and decency. In maturing as individuals, we contribute to the maturation of society and obtain permission from the Universe to develop Civilization.
Through my study of Robert Bly’s 'The Sibling Society', I have come to a broader understanding of metaphor, mythologic thinking, and vertical thought. By learning to read the Ganesha story metaphorically, I have changed my perspective on the Old Testament story of Abraham and Isaac. Perhaps, I will even come to read the Book of Job differently. I believe that I understand more deeply the meaning of the Christian Gospels if I am not trapped into trying to prove their literal origins. I have also gained insight into why in my elderhood, I am increasingly engaged in reading and writing. Vertical thinking is helping me view my parents and grandparents and many of our traditions through a different prism – I am feeling more connection and gratitude.
August 23, 2019
I really do think women and feminist men will save the world. I keep seeing these nerd-type guys downtown with T-shirts on that say EVOLVE on them. And many other total weirdos, women and men. Add EVOLVE to NOW.
I was reading Robert Bly’s 1977-1996 The Sibling Society on my three-week train and plane trip to family and friends in the Midwest and South during June, and 35 years ago or more, Bly was hearing Joseph Chilton Pearce and others talk about Evolution’s End: Claiming the Potential of Our Intelligence, and the neuroplasticity of the brain, which could indeed not only abandon the lowest order Reptilian way of savagely reacting, but actually move forward into the midbrain Mammalian (hear, “Women,” “mammaries,” “community,” “cooperative,” “feminist” etc.) and on into the measured Neo-cortex human(e) being self-awareness of the homo supposedly sapiens.
And hope is really part of being human, too.
“All of us who have been angry at the fathers rejoiced at first when the fathers lost authority, but the picture becomes more somber when we realize that the forces that destroyed the father will not be satisfied, and are moving toward the mother. Mothers are discounted everywhere. (“Lock her up!” wc) When mothers and fathers are both dismembered, we will have a society of orphans, or, more exactly, a culture of adolescent orphans.”
Adolescent elders who have not been initiated into adulthood by same-sex elders of a thriving and continuous community, but have been ignored by overwhelmed parents and “educated” into consumerism by cynical, violent, hopeless and shallow images of humanity and “reality” by TV and the consumptive, surveilled and “monetized” social media spawned by the once-idealistic Internet. Impulse control and societal values have been discarded along with the huge, unused potential of the human, emotive, sensate spirit, body and brain working as one with our supportive environment and all the beings and spirits that entails.
We have lost our souls. No one was there in our periods of initiation to accompany and guide us out of bimbohood, narcissism, violence or obsessive drug and alcohol indulgence, random sexuality and into a world where “the eyes of our mothers and fathers…sometimes said that we were worthy.
Now we look into the eyes of television, and the eyes reply almost always that we are unworthy…the soul is not prepared for what it has learned.” (my italics, wc)
But wait --- there are stories of giants and helpers. Of snake-husbands who devoured their brides. Of the wise bride who....... but, you see, you have to read it yourself, or, better yet, be told it by a wonderful elder, like Robert was for so many of us... And now I'm going to go up to Vashon Island to be with a group of cultural creatives and hang out with Michael Meade for a long weekend to open ourselves to THE ARC OF TRANSFORMATION. Trance-formation...
A Retreat for Women, Men, Mentors and Teachers, Artists and Activists
Join mythologist and storyteller Michael Meade for this intensive four-day retreat. Life is change and each life crisis offers adventure or complacency, as we either become a greater vessel for the flow of creation or else shrink from life. Ultimately, the heart of the human drama concerns whether we are moving towards greater life or moving away from it. (my italics wc)
Like a long-lived snake, we are asked to shed old skins of what we thought we were in order to become our genuine self. While each turning away from the call of the soul leaves us less able to contribute love and meaning to the world around us, Each shedding reveals more of who we are at our core. (I reversed clauses in the last sentence wc)
A life fully lived requires that we redeem unwanted and rejected parts of ourselves, as solving the pressing problems in the outer world requires a transformation of the inner world. The deeper the connection to our true self becomes, the deeper and stronger our connection to both nature and the divine can also become.
Join us on this path of discovery made of stories and poems, honest speech and creative imagination, as we take an initiatory approach to the struggles of individual life and to the collective challenge of living through a time of radical disorientation and change. (my italics wc) (external quote from What the Heart Loves:) “The path of discovery will inevitably raise the exact fears that hold the heart captive. An adventure becomes meaningful when it forces us to become ourselves…The problem involves our inability to truly trust what resides within us. Courage is a heart word…the core of one’s deepest feelings and innermost thoughts. For the heart harbors thoughts and dreams as well as feelings and emotions. The heart can be mined for enduring courage and living imagination; yet we must often be driven there by fear or despair or loneliness.” Fate and Destiny
Michael Meade Introduces this 2019 Mosaic Fall Retreat: The Arc of Transformation -- A Retreat for Women, Men, Mentors and Teachers, Artists and Activists “Each soul is ready to shine in its own way…” from What the Heart Loves (FB).
“It’s possible at this point in modern culture that
Most people think that we change world by changing things in the outside world. & Yet,
• Any meaningful change really has to come from the depths of the individual human soul. At least, That’s the principle that Mosaic works on – that when
o (The soul of individual people changes, then eventually those –>
o Changes move into the culture and those changes can also affect –>
o The relationship between culture and nature). & Based on that principle, which involves both
• the idea of Calling and
• idea(l) of Healing. In other words,
o people become most valuable to themselves and to other people, when they‘re responding to the call or the vocation, & of course the call is
o calling on the genius that’s imbedded inside each person, but then in order to be effective, responding to the call,
o then each person has to Be really on a healing path.
• & so Each fall Mosaic …4 day retreat. To which people come together from all areas of life where Mostly people who are working on some kind of Meaningful community projects. So there are Environmentalists, & activists of all kinds but also, healers & therapists. For 4 days we come together. And
o we work on these ideas of How to respond to the Call to one’s soul to
o participate meaningfully in the World, & then
o how to bring Healing along with the efforts to make change in the world, &
o healing both to the individual and to the group, and then
• How to work at the intersection where nature and culture can come together &
• Heal that rift that’s so serious in the modern world.
(Yessssssss.......... wc)
Bly, Robert, (1977 and 1996) The Sibling Society : An Impassioned Call for the Rediscovery of Adulthood. Vintage, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, NY.
Hartman, Joanne and Mary Claire Hill, eds., (2019) She’s Got This! Essays on Standing Strong and Moving On, Write On Mamas publications, ShesGotThisAnthology.com , San Francisco Bay Area, CA.
Lasky, Marjorie Penn, ed., (2018) You’re Doing What? Older Women’s Tales of Achievement and Adventure, Regent Press, Berkeley, CA.
I was reading Robert Bly’s 1977-1996 The Sibling Society on my three-week train and plane trip to family and friends in the Midwest and South during June, and 35 years ago or more, Bly was hearing Joseph Chilton Pearce and others talk about Evolution’s End: Claiming the Potential of Our Intelligence, and the neuroplasticity of the brain, which could indeed not only abandon the lowest order Reptilian way of savagely reacting, but actually move forward into the midbrain Mammalian (hear, “Women,” “mammaries,” “community,” “cooperative,” “feminist” etc.) and on into the measured Neo-cortex human(e) being self-awareness of the homo supposedly sapiens.
And hope is really part of being human, too.
“All of us who have been angry at the fathers rejoiced at first when the fathers lost authority, but the picture becomes more somber when we realize that the forces that destroyed the father will not be satisfied, and are moving toward the mother. Mothers are discounted everywhere. (“Lock her up!” wc) When mothers and fathers are both dismembered, we will have a society of orphans, or, more exactly, a culture of adolescent orphans.”
Adolescent elders who have not been initiated into adulthood by same-sex elders of a thriving and continuous community, but have been ignored by overwhelmed parents and “educated” into consumerism by cynical, violent, hopeless and shallow images of humanity and “reality” by TV and the consumptive, surveilled and “monetized” social media spawned by the once-idealistic Internet. Impulse control and societal values have been discarded along with the huge, unused potential of the human, emotive, sensate spirit, body and brain working as one with our supportive environment and all the beings and spirits that entails.
We have lost our souls. No one was there in our periods of initiation to accompany and guide us out of bimbohood, narcissism, violence or obsessive drug and alcohol indulgence, random sexuality and into a world where “the eyes of our mothers and fathers…sometimes said that we were worthy.
Now we look into the eyes of television, and the eyes reply almost always that we are unworthy…the soul is not prepared for what it has learned.” (my italics, wc)
But wait --- there are stories of giants and helpers. Of snake-husbands who devoured their brides. Of the wise bride who....... but, you see, you have to read it yourself, or, better yet, be told it by a wonderful elder, like Robert was for so many of us... And now I'm going to go up to Vashon Island to be with a group of cultural creatives and hang out with Michael Meade for a long weekend to open ourselves to THE ARC OF TRANSFORMATION. Trance-formation...
A Retreat for Women, Men, Mentors and Teachers, Artists and Activists
Join mythologist and storyteller Michael Meade for this intensive four-day retreat. Life is change and each life crisis offers adventure or complacency, as we either become a greater vessel for the flow of creation or else shrink from life. Ultimately, the heart of the human drama concerns whether we are moving towards greater life or moving away from it. (my italics wc)
Like a long-lived snake, we are asked to shed old skins of what we thought we were in order to become our genuine self. While each turning away from the call of the soul leaves us less able to contribute love and meaning to the world around us, Each shedding reveals more of who we are at our core. (I reversed clauses in the last sentence wc)
A life fully lived requires that we redeem unwanted and rejected parts of ourselves, as solving the pressing problems in the outer world requires a transformation of the inner world. The deeper the connection to our true self becomes, the deeper and stronger our connection to both nature and the divine can also become.
Join us on this path of discovery made of stories and poems, honest speech and creative imagination, as we take an initiatory approach to the struggles of individual life and to the collective challenge of living through a time of radical disorientation and change. (my italics wc) (external quote from What the Heart Loves:) “The path of discovery will inevitably raise the exact fears that hold the heart captive. An adventure becomes meaningful when it forces us to become ourselves…The problem involves our inability to truly trust what resides within us. Courage is a heart word…the core of one’s deepest feelings and innermost thoughts. For the heart harbors thoughts and dreams as well as feelings and emotions. The heart can be mined for enduring courage and living imagination; yet we must often be driven there by fear or despair or loneliness.” Fate and Destiny
Michael Meade Introduces this 2019 Mosaic Fall Retreat: The Arc of Transformation -- A Retreat for Women, Men, Mentors and Teachers, Artists and Activists “Each soul is ready to shine in its own way…” from What the Heart Loves (FB).
“It’s possible at this point in modern culture that
Most people think that we change world by changing things in the outside world. & Yet,
• Any meaningful change really has to come from the depths of the individual human soul. At least, That’s the principle that Mosaic works on – that when
o (The soul of individual people changes, then eventually those –>
o Changes move into the culture and those changes can also affect –>
o The relationship between culture and nature). & Based on that principle, which involves both
• the idea of Calling and
• idea(l) of Healing. In other words,
o people become most valuable to themselves and to other people, when they‘re responding to the call or the vocation, & of course the call is
o calling on the genius that’s imbedded inside each person, but then in order to be effective, responding to the call,
o then each person has to Be really on a healing path.
• & so Each fall Mosaic …4 day retreat. To which people come together from all areas of life where Mostly people who are working on some kind of Meaningful community projects. So there are Environmentalists, & activists of all kinds but also, healers & therapists. For 4 days we come together. And
o we work on these ideas of How to respond to the Call to one’s soul to
o participate meaningfully in the World, & then
o how to bring Healing along with the efforts to make change in the world, &
o healing both to the individual and to the group, and then
• How to work at the intersection where nature and culture can come together &
• Heal that rift that’s so serious in the modern world.
(Yessssssss.......... wc)
Bly, Robert, (1977 and 1996) The Sibling Society : An Impassioned Call for the Rediscovery of Adulthood. Vintage, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, NY.
Hartman, Joanne and Mary Claire Hill, eds., (2019) She’s Got This! Essays on Standing Strong and Moving On, Write On Mamas publications, ShesGotThisAnthology.com , San Francisco Bay Area, CA.
Lasky, Marjorie Penn, ed., (2018) You’re Doing What? Older Women’s Tales of Achievement and Adventure, Regent Press, Berkeley, CA.
August 9, 2020
It's sad how prophetic this book turned out to be. Now that the book is nearly 25 years old, the references are dated. The book was written when most of Generation X was in their twenties and this generation will get the most out of reading it in 2020. Millennials grew up in a very different world, largely thanks to social media. While the path was different, the end result is much the same. For anyone willing to do the hard work of becoming an adult and reconnecting with those older and younger than themselves, this book is an excellent start.
April 28, 2014
Robert Bly is certainly on to something here explaining the ennui of youth in our society. I wasn't a big fan of Robert Bly in the 60s and 70s eventhough I sent a few poems to his literary journal, The Sixties. He'd arrive at a reading with an entourage and a flowing robe--a bit full of himself. He has matured as a thinker, however, and may even have achieved adulthood as defined in this book. He misses respect for the classics and so do I.
March 15, 2021
To generalize greatly, the sibling society is a bad thing. Why that is so is described in great detail. What I failed to pull from the text is what exactly is the alternative? What is not a sibling society?
A society of children, adults, and elders seems to fit the bill. A vertical society rather than a horizontal one. One where you care more about maintaining long standing social structure than peer relations? Ok, but how do you work with that? How do you maintain that within the extreme pressure for cultural change? There is not an easy answer to these questions.
I couldn't help but shake the feeling that the [primary recommendation the author was supplying was simple do as I did. Read these authors, seek guidance from myths, and so on. That may very well be just the thing. It's just not a very convincing argument from my perspective.
I did appreciate that the author puts a lot of weight on individual actions. It's your job to be an adult effective. Seeking that goal and working to maintain that status is something we can work at. That is a clear goal. But what is an effective adult?
In a few sentences through the book and at the very end Bly does include some descriptive text on what it means to be and adult.
An adult:
- does not fall for immediate pleasures
- can organize the emotions and events of their life into a coherent story with meaning
- understand the world is here because of those that came before them
- has maintained their creativity and intensity for life
- work to become an elder that will support the next generation of adults and children.
I can see the value in seeking these character traits.
In the end, the book felt like much more of a critic than a plan. I generally agree with the critic, but that's the easy part to pull together. I'm becoming less and less interested in critics, so the book was ok.
A society of children, adults, and elders seems to fit the bill. A vertical society rather than a horizontal one. One where you care more about maintaining long standing social structure than peer relations? Ok, but how do you work with that? How do you maintain that within the extreme pressure for cultural change? There is not an easy answer to these questions.
I couldn't help but shake the feeling that the [primary recommendation the author was supplying was simple do as I did. Read these authors, seek guidance from myths, and so on. That may very well be just the thing. It's just not a very convincing argument from my perspective.
I did appreciate that the author puts a lot of weight on individual actions. It's your job to be an adult effective. Seeking that goal and working to maintain that status is something we can work at. That is a clear goal. But what is an effective adult?
In a few sentences through the book and at the very end Bly does include some descriptive text on what it means to be and adult.
An adult:
- does not fall for immediate pleasures
- can organize the emotions and events of their life into a coherent story with meaning
- understand the world is here because of those that came before them
- has maintained their creativity and intensity for life
- work to become an elder that will support the next generation of adults and children.
I can see the value in seeking these character traits.
In the end, the book felt like much more of a critic than a plan. I generally agree with the critic, but that's the easy part to pull together. I'm becoming less and less interested in critics, so the book was ok.
June 19, 2023
“How did we move from the optimistic, companionable, food-passing youngsters […] to the self-doubting, dark-hearted, turned-in, death-praising, indifferent, wised-up, deconstructionist audience?” Robert Bly comes up with a lot of inspiring questions about why society is what it is. He refers especially to the North American society at the end of the last century, still, his thoughts and descriptions mirror many parts of the Middle European society as I know it today. I also often feel surrounded by grown-up adolescents that have no desire to become adults, by half-adults that have no serious interest in politics nor in maturing but rather busy themselves with how to look younger or how to achieve some fame or popularity. As Bly writes: “Our Interior Judge has changed its demands from requiring us to be good to requiring us to be famous.” (p xiii) Individualism instead of companionship, consuming instead of helping the week, shallow relationships, if any at all. Bly not only repeatedly calls for staying social or mourns the loss of discipline and nobility, he also delivers highly interesting explanations and references to fairytales, e.g. “Jack and the Beanstalk”, myths of gods from India and other parts of the world, and lyrical texts which I found very appealing. Very often during reading I could identify myself (e.g. “Throughout these last […] decades, mothers have felt increasingly invalued […] – The morale of mothers is low.” (p 37)) and agree with Blys calls, for instance, for “reconnection with nature, reconnection with the feminine, reconnection with the deeper side of masculinity” (p 84). Not all of his points appeared logical or right to me, still, I found it a highly stimulating lecture worth reading, even 30 years later.
July 2, 2019
From time to time, the matter of "masculinity" becomes a public debate. What does it mean to "be a man?" How does a man earn his adulthood? Should society change its demands on men? There will never be an end to this discussion.
In the 1990s, Robert Bly gained enormous attention with his book IRON JOHN, where he tried to give "modern" men a myth, or story, to help them figure out the mental growth and change they needed to develop a mature sense of self.
Bly is a poet, not a social scientist. His approach is that myth, ritual and story are tools to instruct young men on a quasi-unconscious level. There's a whiff of "New Age" thinking about this, but I take his argument seriously: We need these tools.
In the book THE SIBLING SOCIETY, Bly further develops the theme of "reaching mental maturity." He is worried that modern Western society has not only lost the "rites of passage" that instruct young men that they must stop being kids - it's actively encouraging men to never grow up, leading to stunted development and unhappiness.
Note: Bly is not the reactionary you might expect. He clearly accuses commercial interests for denigrating the value of maturity and "infantilizing" men. (For example, he means that Western movies are a prime example of glorifying immature males.)
Recommended as "food for thought" rather than as a cure-all.
In the 1990s, Robert Bly gained enormous attention with his book IRON JOHN, where he tried to give "modern" men a myth, or story, to help them figure out the mental growth and change they needed to develop a mature sense of self.
Bly is a poet, not a social scientist. His approach is that myth, ritual and story are tools to instruct young men on a quasi-unconscious level. There's a whiff of "New Age" thinking about this, but I take his argument seriously: We need these tools.
In the book THE SIBLING SOCIETY, Bly further develops the theme of "reaching mental maturity." He is worried that modern Western society has not only lost the "rites of passage" that instruct young men that they must stop being kids - it's actively encouraging men to never grow up, leading to stunted development and unhappiness.
Note: Bly is not the reactionary you might expect. He clearly accuses commercial interests for denigrating the value of maturity and "infantilizing" men. (For example, he means that Western movies are a prime example of glorifying immature males.)
Recommended as "food for thought" rather than as a cure-all.
July 23, 2025
As with Iron John, Mr. Bly mixes the mythological with the poignant, the poetic with the proficient, and falls into a trap of his own brilliance.
The first half provides resounding insight into the immaturity of the modern world, the way people of his age (70s through the 90s) were more interested in the opinion of their 'siblings' than the nobility of their ancestors. A level of insight worthy of the culture to ingest, which left me slackjawed and astounded on multiple occasions.
Yet the neurotic review of myths, which altogether are not inaccurate, I could do without. The final chapters were more poem than prose, which, while enriching, felt like his analysis was either unfinished or unable to be finished.
The first half provides resounding insight into the immaturity of the modern world, the way people of his age (70s through the 90s) were more interested in the opinion of their 'siblings' than the nobility of their ancestors. A level of insight worthy of the culture to ingest, which left me slackjawed and astounded on multiple occasions.
Yet the neurotic review of myths, which altogether are not inaccurate, I could do without. The final chapters were more poem than prose, which, while enriching, felt like his analysis was either unfinished or unable to be finished.
July 12, 2022
A fascinating analysis of the world and the ways in which modern society has divorced purpose from each and every one of us. This book is unfriendly to those with rigid concepts from liberal ideologies and to those stuck in conservative and antiquated ways of thinking. This book really does call us to rethink and reanalyze what it actually means to be a human and to “mature” alongside our experiences and growth in knowledge.
March 7, 2018
This is an important book and an important lens. Once you have an eye for the sibling society you will see it everywhere, in yourself, in your family (if you have family), in your peers and in the culture. The intro and Part 1 are enough to get a sense of it.
December 30, 2021
Bly is a poet, and he puts a poet's sensibilities and ear for language to work in this volume that asks a pointed question: Who will children look up to if today's adults refuse to grow up? The result is a society of siblings with no direction and no mentorship.
September 17, 2022
At times, Bly is capable of 5-star insight of astonishing prescience. At other times, his 1-star rants sounds like the ravings of a man found sitting on a park bench drinking from brown paper bag. I'll split the difference and call it 3 stars, but the book is, overall, certainly worth reading.
September 4, 2022
I really enjoyed this book, from the fairy tales to the social analysis. Great food for thought!
June 23, 2025
It's the original David Brent handbook.
February 28, 2024
Lots of good points, I agree with a lot of what he had to say. Do not think there needed to be so much poetry interpretation but some of it was interesting
August 26, 2013
At church today, a conversation in our Bible Study about the importance of reverence reminded me of this book that I read years ago. It articulated feelings I groped with and couldn't express, of the differences in values and society that I missed from growing up in the 50's. My dad always corrected me in portraying that and former times with nostalgia since there was aspects that were not so great and hidden under illusion and denial, but there was a maturity and respect that I saw in adults that seemed missing in my generation as we entered adulthood.
The most fascinating idea that Bly entertains is concerning the idea that reverence was a development in man's development that was accompanied by a development in the brain ... That the cathedrals of the Renaissance were built to express the sense of awe of the creation and of The Creator and so also of a value of our humanity as being formed in the image and likeness of this Creator, with potentials and aspirations to great inventions and genius.
Bly says in this book that the growing lack of reverence could be a development to revert to the "lizard" brain, which is expressed by siblings with out proper and respected values and adult leadership.
Courageous and brilliant questions to think about ... In certain ways our generation's tendency to question authority was a good thing, and our challenge to elected leaders to be perfect... and one can argue whether having certain values and not living by them was better than a time of seeming valuelessness or when any value can be debated...
May 19, 2008
I must begin by saying I didn’t finish this book. I checked it out of the library because the idea seemed interesting, but in actuality, Bly never sat down and defined or explained what he meant by a “sibling society.” I believe he meant that people are beginning to feel that the only people who are worthy of their time and effort are those who are their same age, and that people are generally showing a decline in moral values because of this, but I’m not too sure. I finished 2 chapters and started a third, but became highly annoyed with Bly’s highly opinionated statements (which he stated as fact that shouldn’t be refuted) and his biological underpinnings that seemed more to be added “after the fact” than important to the discussion at hand or the route he was currently going with. He blames many of society’s ills on the disintegration of the family unit and the changes in parenting styles over the years. Some of his conservative views are extremely fitting in Texas, and perhaps that is why the library got this book. But I for one refused to continue dealing with it.
September 14, 2013
Um livro para pensar, concordo com o autor quando afirma que os adultos estão a regredir, quase todos querem ser/parecer mais jovens, ter uma vida de adolescente quanto menos responsabilidades tiverem melhor e isso claro que vai ter consequências nos nossos jovens que assistem a esse comportamento e pensam "se eles (os adultos) querem ser eternamente adolescentes para quê nós (os jovens) havemos de querer crescer"
Gostei muito da linha de pensamento mas achei que nunca nenhum ponto de vista foi devidamente aprofundado e tendo caminho e assunto para isso, saltando de tema constantemente e rapidamente.
Houve ali uma altura em que o autor perdeu-se um pouco em mitogias e simbologias o que fez quebrar um pouco o ritmo.
Para os mais vanguardistas esta será uma leitura claramente conservadora.
Eu gostei.
Gostei muito da linha de pensamento mas achei que nunca nenhum ponto de vista foi devidamente aprofundado e tendo caminho e assunto para isso, saltando de tema constantemente e rapidamente.
Houve ali uma altura em que o autor perdeu-se um pouco em mitogias e simbologias o que fez quebrar um pouco o ritmo.
Para os mais vanguardistas esta será uma leitura claramente conservadora.
Eu gostei.
April 13, 2009
A poet as social commentator, drawing on the mythopoetic to illustrate his argument. Part of my ongoing expedition into the territory in which my romantic rebel meets my rationalist, and my hippie reassesses the unintended consequences of his values. Sometimes the book makes me squirm. In my objection I see a wish not to face difficult truths. So, call it challenging, the core that we have lost our "verticality" - our connection with tradition and spirit. Our siblings, particularly as men, are like frat brothers - with whom we bond horizontally, but through whom we lose the ability to discern.
April 26, 2008
Piercing insights into American brainwaves & how the inflation of immaturity/entitlement/apathy continues to flourish under the radar & unchallenged.
Bly is gifted at offering us nuggets of insight, often in verse, from a vast collection of great minds on the matter. Sometimes he takes liberties making swooping generalizations in the same style as Michael Moore, but overall he is very good at substantiating his points.
I keep an heavily highlighted copy on a shelf next to The Joseph Campbell Companion, Collapse, Man's Search for Meaning, and the like.
Bly is gifted at offering us nuggets of insight, often in verse, from a vast collection of great minds on the matter. Sometimes he takes liberties making swooping generalizations in the same style as Michael Moore, but overall he is very good at substantiating his points.
I keep an heavily highlighted copy on a shelf next to The Joseph Campbell Companion, Collapse, Man's Search for Meaning, and the like.
January 10, 2010
Very good questions and the same dependence fairy tales and their wisdom. Of course, further pointing out our backward times where Science threw down all interpretations as childish ...
The main premise is stated when he quotes Alexander Mitscherlich: "Mass society, with its demand for work without responsibility, creates a gigantic army of rival siblings."
The main premise is stated when he quotes Alexander Mitscherlich: "Mass society, with its demand for work without responsibility, creates a gigantic army of rival siblings."
December 31, 2007
My brother recommended this read on cultural criticism. Society once demanded high standards for success in art, writing and ethics, now requires success at 20 or 21, more perfectionistism than ever and not enough fame or popularity to satisfy it.
September 28, 2007
I had to read this growing up with an older brother and younger sister. Answered a coupple of nagging questions.
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