Once upon a time there was a wealthy and sophisticated man, Mark the Rich, who prided himself on his possessions and personal refinement. One night he had a dream God himself was coming to dinner, so he jumped up and had his servants prepare a great feast. Others he posted at the doors to prevent the poor and hungry from getting any. The people heard about the feast and arrived to beg alms but were chased away.
A bent old man was hurt in the starving, ragged press and collapsed to the floor. He was helped up by a kind woman who took him home and gave him food and shelter whilst the rich man continued to wait for God…
During the night she had a dream that a divine child was going to be born in the next village and that she should tell Mark the Rich. When she woke she went to his house and told him the dream. He went to the village and under the pretext of giving the child a step up in life took the boy home but on the way buried him in a snow drift and left him to die.
“Lie there and freeze; that’s the way to become master of Mark’s wealth!” but huntsmen came along soon after, found the boy and rescued him.
Years passed and one day Mark the Rich happened upon the divine child by chance whilst out hunting in the woods. He questioned him and learned his story, realizing what must have happened. He gave the boy a letter to take to his wife containing orders to kill the bearer. On the road the boy met a bent old man who introduced himself and asked the boy’s business. He showed him the sealed letter he was to deliver which the old man touched, magically changing the contents to a wedding celebration between him and the rich man’s only daughter.
Mark the Rich was determined to get rid of his new son-in-law and sent him to the distillery having ordered servants to throw him in the cauldron and drown him when he arrived. On the way the boy fell ill and could not go on. Impatient, Mark the Rich went to see what had happened but by that time it was dark, the servants in waiting mistook him for the younger man and tossed him in.
The impact of the Patriarchy on women needs little amplification from me. It’s impact upon men is not as well documented or discussed. Perhaps it seems self indulgent to think about, given the overwhelming calamities women have suffered ever since male gods decided to do without their feminine counterparts.
The ethos of entitlement and privilege enjoyed by that part of the male psyche personified by Mark the Rich is often enough to fool himself he can escape the splash back of persecution perpetrated against women and minorities over the centuries. Yet such a conviction can only be sustained by a split in the psyche which even slaves do not have to suffer.
This split is expressed culturally by the poetic antagonism between Isaac and Ishmael, the sons of monotheism’s progenitor Abraham, doomed to be at each other’s throats for the next four thousand years for the want of mamma’s wooden spoon. Yet the divide has implications for the individual psyche of modern men whatever his allegiances, since the personal shadow is bound to be thickened in direct proportion to the degree of ‘sophistication’ enjoyed by those sold on their own PR who would do well to bear in mind the origin of the word. It comes from the latin ‘sophisticatus’ meaning ‘tampered with’ and from which the word ‘sophist’ or ‘liar’ is also derived.
The sophisticated man is misrepresenting himself and doing so in a very dangerous way. Not only does he have to project his animal nature onto others, for which he then vilifies them, but also his creative spirit which then makes him feel robbed into the bargain by all those inferior folk who some how, despite his best efforts, seem to have everything.
”This creative content of the individual’s inner life acquires its negative status in socially standardized behavior which does not allow any individual unpredictability [or] creative insights [which are] taken as a direct threat to the stagnant social order.” Stanislava A. Bazikyan.
What this means is that we are bound to attribute our better angels to others as well as our devils because having one’s own moral compass is a betrayal of the herd’s collective norms. The seduction of knowing everything already easily prizes the harder yet more creative prospect of individual consciousness from the sticky paw of the aspirant who now trades individuation for being-sophisticated and favored-by-the-Gods.
‘The shadow does not consist of only morally reprehensible tendencies, but also expresses a number of good qualities, such as normal instincts, appropriate reactions, reality based insights, creative impulses, etc.” C. G. Jung.
The consequences of this schism within the male psyche, symbolized by Mark the Rich, is far more serious than mere ignorance or bigotry. It constitutes the untethering of yourself from your own personal destiny and the renunciation of ever being a grown up. It is not only the ‘inferior’ aspects of oneself which are repressed and kept from the door but also the more noble, nurturing, generative aspects of masculinity which must be frozen off to qualify as ‘successful’ in what’s now perceived as a dog eat dog world.
This gives rise to a culture which prides itself on its mediocrity, which is happy to be dumbed down, which wants to be uninformed, and for which every contradiction is fake news. In the process the generative male spirit which cares about the legacy it leaves behind is silenced. The value placed on clean air and water for posterity is nipped in the bud.
If you google ‘traits of being successful’, you will find lists not incomparable with the DSM-5 definition of Narcissistic Personality Disorder.. It’s all about drive, ambition, self belief, self reliance, like being eternally twenty. There’s very little about connection, relatedness or investment in others. Its all first and only.
These greater qualities all seem to have been hived off and projected, either onto women who are then compelled into the role of with-holding harpies, or onto Nature which must then be ransacked for the treasure you just gave away, or onto the material world with all its must have goodies.
Advertisers have an intuitive sense of this and target men by appealing to these compulsions which are in fact rooted in the unconscious desire for wholeness. The depersonalisation and objectification of women contains a secret longing for far more than eternal sexual availability.
The desire to own more than you need derives from a similar attribution to the material world of your own deep spiritual value. This exerts a fascination over us from it’s place of exile, a fact which is easily exploited by those who sense you are as motivated by emptiness and the unconscious longing to be whole as you are by the desire to impress the ladies.
When we freeze off the divine child in ourselves for the sake of maintaining an impressive front built on the definitions of success passed down to us we are bound to fall foul of our own contrivances and instead of distilling spirit, get ourselves self-destructively broiled instead.
The solution is not a premature ‘getting in touch with the feminine’ (which is liable to swallow you up like a vat of 40% proof vodka) but to realize the extent of your own betrayal and incompleteness, the insufficiency of wealth and privilege, the lie of sophistication, the loneliness of waiting for God to come to dinner.
