John Quincy Adams

James Traub: The Militant Spirit of John Quincy Adams 

 "It was an education where Christian Belief, Roman Example and Patriotic Calling were all fused together in a very intense way."

"I think this feeling of The Garden being blown apart doesn’t happen much to you until you’re 35 or so. The models we were given as men in high school, well, what were they Eisenhower, John Wayne? They only last till you’re maybe 32 or 33. And then you notice that something’s gone wrong in your business, in your private life, in your relationships; these things don’t last. And so around 35, you have to find another image for what a man is, or what your man is. Is that clear, that idea?

So it takes a little bit of courage to come here. There’s lots of men who feel this, and then they won’t act on it. Or those in their 20s say: “I’m doing fine, Jack, I’m fine. It’s true that 14 women have left me, and two beat me up, but I’m doing fine. It’s true I’m bleeding from all my pores, but I’m fine.”

MOYERS: Why “A Gathering of Men?” I mean, that’s really rare, isn’t it, to have a workshop for men only?

BLY: Maybe 20 years ago it would have been rare, but lately the men in various parts of the country have begun to gather. I think that it isn’t a reaction to the women’s movement, really. I think the grief that leads to the men’s movement began maybe 140 years ago, when the Industrial Revolution began, which sends the father out of the house to work.

MOYERS: What impact did that have?

BLY: Well, we receive something from our father by standing close to him.

MOYERS: Physically.

BLY: When we stand physically close to our father, something moves over that can’t be described in material terms, that gives the son a certain confidence, an awareness, a knowledge of what it is to be male, what a man is. And in the ancient times you were always with your father; he taught you how to do things, he taught you how to farm, he taught you whatever it is that he did. You learned from him. But you had this sense of being of receiving a food from him.

MOYERS: Food.

BLY: A food. From your father’s body. Now, when the father went out of the house in the Industrial Revolution, that food ended, and I think the average American father now spends ten minutes a day with a son — I think that’s what The Minneapolis Tribune had — and half of that time is spent in, “Clean up your room!” You know, that’s a favorite phrase of mine, I know it well.

So the Industrial Revolution did not harm the mother and daughter relationship as much as it did the father and son, because the mother and daughter still stand close to each other and have stood close to each other. Maybe that’ll change now when the mother is being sent out to work also, but the daughters then receive some knowledge of what it is to be a woman, or if you prefer to call it the women’s the female mode of feeling. They receive knowledge of the female mode of feeling. And the mother gets that from her grandmother, who got it from her great grandmother, who gets it from her great grandmother, it goes all the way down.

After the Industrial Revolution, the male does not receive any knowledge from his father of what the male mode of feeling is, and the old male initiators that used to work are not working anymore.