Manclan Episode 5: Iron John & the Mythopoetic Men’s Movement feat Matt Christman

i’m doing an exercise for class and reading translations of an antonio machado poem. reading one and the translator has made some choices i disagree with… it was robert bly! oh brother this guy stinks

siapple

Wait, is UniLad just British for college bro?

Ryan Dahmer

That is really interesting!!! I'm going to check it out. Thanks!

Brigitte Marie

There is a really good documentary called Reak about ritual trance dancing that teen boys do in parts of Indonesia, by a musician and artist in my city named Arrington Dionisiyo (maybe spelling that wrong). He showed the movie at the local film.society theater and I asked if he thought there was a connectiom between that and the proliferation of extreme metal culture in that country and he said that yes he did think that and people he interviewed and got to know, young and old made the connection explicitly but also some people were aware of the danger because they were replicating that kind of induced group trance but severed from ritual context and guidance/supervision from elders. Pretty interesting stuff.

Sneakaboard

I was really surprised when I learned about this idea from the academy, because it was something I always believed from my time in the punk/hardcore/noise/rave scenes as a young man but in a kind of inchoate way, I watched a lot of the other guys embrace nihilism and reactionary ideas, mysogyny, self-destruction and etc. even if they started from an explicitly 'lefty' radical position and it seemed to me at the time that it was precisely because we had to figure it out on our own and the only kind of older role models were guys that were too stunted to have grown out of the scene, or guys with toxic ideology consciously preying on waywars and vulnerable youth.

Sneakaboard

So there is this really interesting idea that young men (around 13) make their own risk taking and initiation behaviours because we dont have anything as a culture anymore but this is meant to be done with supportive family and community not just to 'make you a man'

Brigitte Marie

I had forgotten how homoerotic this movement was. All the daddies initiating the younger men? It's like a Pornhub category. Sorta hot but also creepy.

I don't think Bly the copywriter and Bly the poet are the same Bly.

There was a English Civil War Q! There was a conspiracy theory that the dog of the Royalist Prince Rupert was actually a demon/woman who he had sex with. It started as a joke from a royalist making fun of how superstitious the Parliamentarians were which seemed to have been believed by some people.

IronNosy

I live in Japan and that passage isn't even internally consistent. Is duty the responsibility of the employee or the bosses? He says that American corporations lack a sense of duty and require unions to fill the gap because the employees have no leaders to look to, but how does that relate to the concept of the shogun? In medieval Japan (and by extension, modern Japanese companies), it is the peasant (salaried employee) who is duty bound to serve the lord, not the other way around. This is also related to Buddhist concepts of caste and the idea that a person's station is life is determined by the behavior of their ancestors or past lives. It's true that in its ideal form, the feudal lord should be wise enough to balance the need for all his people to have enough rice to eat with the need to store some rice in order to survive the coming winter, or provide the people with necessary infrastructure, etc.. But there is never any point where the leader has to *earn* trust. He is born with it. Even if we're talking about the samurai class, an honorable samurai was one who would die for their lord whether or not their lord was deserving or not, because the abstract concept of duty outweighs the material reality. The samurai proves himself better than his master by successfully subjugating his will in a way the master could not. This is the reason that Japanese work culture has the bad reputation you discussed. Because the burden of sacrifice is placed entirely on the bottom, rather than the top.

Brad Plumb

I was involved in the Men's movement in my early 20's and when Jordan Peterson started popping off I instantly thought this just sounds like Robert Bly but for dark manchildren.

calvin kilby

Great episode by the way, thanks.

Riley Bloomer-Ludwig

I haven't read this book but from what I have read Che wasn't in Cuba when they briefly did the silly thing of not calculating inputs and outputs and not allocating resources based on productive capacity and need. Yaffe wrote a book about Che's economic thought and activity in Cuba before leaving. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7000825-che-guevara

Riley Bloomer-Ludwig

I love Julian and everyone on the show. I want to listen to Mark’s history podcast. Are there free ways to listen? I’m not ready to throw down a monthly subscription.

Sara Judge

The huntsman obviously thought the king was a dick and didn't want to come back. Maybe they became Iron John's posse

I was given a copy of Iron John at my Bar Mitzvah in the mid nineties. I never finished it and gave it to a friend, maybe I’m one of the hunters.

Ben Wood