So what do we have to say about the WILD MAN:
Is Our culture, such as it is, yet ready for men to talk openly about the wild man inside us?Ken Wilber, the integral philosopher of renown, (in my understanding) claims that the basic male drive is to "f*** it or kill it". As far as the basic animal nature of males, adjusted for the "clock of sex" if you will, the variants of dispositions of "maleness" in a male body, this seems to be so. But Wilber also deals more importantly with the transit of ego from infantile self involvement to Transcendent Universal Consciousness. This is a long and arduous arc few manage even half of.
So it covers a LOT of territory. And mainly it has to do with the progress of maturity of individuals and groups. Usually when the "wild man" is being discussed, it is relative to male energy. It is interesting to note here that some have said that "civilization is a battle against testosterone". In a sense, this is so, and it is manifest in our history as patriarchy and the territoriality and desire for power and control that are its motivators in politics, economics, sex, and their various overlaps.
But any useful discussion gets down to the governance and transmutation of that energy, even to the idea of the "nurturing male". That concept is all but missing in Western, and particularly in American public culture, which is still fraught with destructive stereotypes, now that the West in all its aspects has been won, or wrested away from less technical males at enormous cost to both parties.
It is missing both for lacking prototypes and rituals which embody the psychological transmission of culture relevant to the governance of male energy. We're talking of the difference, in a blunt example, between the old and young bulls surveying a herd of cows. The young one wants to dash headlong down the hill and take what he can. The older suggest walking down, thus conserving energy for dealing with the whole lot.
OK for the animal part, but there is the part that goes to the Kama Sutra and the elevation of male and female energy for transformation as a cooperative endeavor. And that is the part that we are sorely missing. Not as an overt sexual happening, but as a refinement in the nature of understanding of our own selves relative to others, all seen as being unique manifestations of a yet common origin, as special cases of human awareness and its develop-mental possibilities. It is the antithesis of the cowboy and cavalier every man for himself and take all you can, that making it rightfully yours, regardless of cost to others and resources, replenishable of not.
It is also different, dangerously so in the eyes of current economic practices, from the Protestant and "conservative" (which is in fact anything but) work ethic. It is resource based, not consumption and ownership based. And it requires MUCH more power and control than the haphazard, arrogant, careless, and destructive attitude which is bringing an end to American society as it could have paradisacly been, with the rich having even more than their small minds in this system can conceive.
But that is why we don't have that. It isn't personally easy, because it takes training, education, and most importantly, transmission from someone who can live the state of inclusiveness necessary for young boys to be given the internal chance to become men of the highest order. That would be Men who have a sense of Unity and who see women's and families' needs as the root of morality, a morality which must also include, respect, and sustain everything that supports the maturation of human individuals in all four areas of their existence.
Most men have experienced the overwhelming surge of energy that can be a vital resource for survival or accomplishment. That is the fundamental reactor. But it can bear much refinement with exponential benefits for the male and all those in his influence. And that is why, lacking a popular societal culture that supports that, we only have small groups or simply individuals who are waking up to some sense of their own possibility of change and changing in the four areas. We must support these and attune them to each other, and reap a reward greater than we can now imagine.
