Review - The Sibling Society by Robert Bly

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.