Experiences versus Rituals

Rite of Passage Experiences, Ideally and Practically

A boy desires to be a man
He’ll do it anyway he can.

Rites of passage—transitions from childhood to adulthood—have been on many of our minds lately. Our culture seems to be lacking them.

What to do about the lack should be of interest to adolescents, children, anyone who has children, anyone who desires to have children, anyone wishes to marry someone’s grown child, or anyone who hopes to live in a society run by adults.

In this transmission, we claim that you should focus on functional rites of passage, not ritual rites of passage. We also address an ideal rite of passage and then descend to the practical.

Rites of Passage

Rites of passage are a human universal. Particularly for boys, nearly every known culture has some kind of step for a boy to become a man.

Mandan initiation

bar mitvah

There are two notable exceptions. Both point in the same direction. The first exception is women. Many cultures have a female rite of passage, but many cultures don’t. The ones that don’t aren’t taking the position that girls can never become women. Instead, they usually see some functional passage from girlhood to womanhood as obviating the need for anything formal. In the majority of the cases, marriage and giving birth. In a minority, menarche.

The other major exception is the modern West, particularly the WIERD countries, particularly the Anglos. But hold on. Until recently, there also appeared to be a functional passage in those places that involved things like getting a car, a job, and a wife.

To set our on your own, and succeed, was to enter manhood.

Huck Finn becomes a man.

The same way Lincoln did

Functional rites of passage can be quite functional.

The social system that allowed those steps to be functional rites of passage has mostly evaporated. The house, car, job, etc., are now less the markers of becoming an adult and more something that those who have already become adults work for. The more institutionalized versions, such as military service or perhaps fraternities, are also not what they once were.

The institution that made me who I am - that taught me how to be a Man, and how to be a Man amongst other Men - no longer exists. The building is there, the letters still hang on the door, but the spirit is gone.

Functional Rites of Passage

We live in the least ritual culture in world history. This does not mean that we cannot have rites of passages that satisfy. It just means they need to be functional. They need to involve doing something.

Initiation Ritual? No. Initiation Experience? Yes.

It's not a ceremony or a rite we should be going for, its a shared experience. It doesn't even have to be literally shared where boys all do it together. It just needs to be the same repeatable type of experience.

But the experience should accomplish something. That’s what separates a pure ritual from a functional rite of passage. In the functional rite you are doing something that feels worth doing.

LDS missions used to be like that, probably still are. You do it when you are 18, 19, like that. You talk to another guy who did one, its an instant bond. Probably because its hard but meaningful.

the "shared experience" idea, as opposed to (potentially empty or hollow or representative) ritual, seems exactly right.

My boys are hungry to be exposed to (and eventually inducted into) healthy adult male bonds and practices. So there's a legit leading edge here.

Ideal

• a real world repeatable experience

• challenging

• is outside of ordinary life

• something fathers and men can do a version of

we are refining the problem. We are seeing that a key criteria is that the activity be potentially attractive to our guys to do. We probably don't have enough boy throughput to create and sustain a tradition with just boys right now. Besides, boys value higher what they see men valuing.

"men, first," seems critical.

• masculine-coded

• inducts them into some high-status model of manhood. Feels aspirational.

• danger is acceptable, even preferred, but no more than say a 1 per 1000 risk of death/serious hospitalization/permanent crippling/prison

• physical

• skill required

• Validates youth education by serving as a capstone in some way.

Yeah, like you learn first aid as a teen and survival skills and then you capstone with a survival trip

People forget that back in the day Boy Scouting was literally training boys to be military scouts. It made so much more sense.

• productive—economic, scientific, cultural, or material value

That's actually a core tenet of the better side of some ideal education theory like Montessorianism. In the ideal (mostly unattainable in modernity), adolescents are doing physical work (farming/husbandry are the ideals) that grounds the individual character and then also connects to community in just the way you describe--kids create a business; sell the product of their work; and so on. There's a virtuous cycle there that mostly is missing and hard to get now

• the experience should be an experience, not a ritual, still it would be ideal if you could intellectually analyze it as a ritual

• coordinated and shared. It’s not just a rite of passage for one boy or one family.

• Some element of actual ritual in the experience

rituals/rites and associated symbols do tend to “seal” experiences deeper in our souls than experiences without any more formal recognition.

Fight night, Sweat lodge, nickname bestowing, getting head shaved, etc.

I just don't want us to kick rites and rituals to the curb because they feel weird.

keep them anchored in the relationship between fathers and sons,

In my own life, rites and rituals have mostly been hollow, superficial holdovers from, presumably, a time when they had stronger and more direct roots. So, we're looking for those roots via concrete, practical activity. My guess is that rites/rituals will arise authentically/organically from that.

Yes. They will, so long as someone is looking for the opportunities to document. The best rituals are just:

Hey we did this last year and it was awesome. Lets do it again but bigger.

• No phones.

5-7 days without a phone is about the minimum for a significant experience based on Catholic missions for teens and YAs

• Failure is possible (or at least feels possible)

• Age range: 15-20

• Real. Any rite of passage in the real world is more ideal than one that exists only on paper

Side note about the theory/human nature side, in my experience kids deeply need and desire the sort of competence and "realness" associated w the activities and training we're talking about here. They don't know how to ask for it (nor should or could they), and, to make matters worse, mass culture creates a fantasy that leads them away from and obscures that natural instinct. This is a white pill, imho, bc, while the headwinds of the most available society/culture (power) are strong and only getting stronger, we're working in alignment w what the kids are in their bones. The trick is to get underneath or around those headwinds. A lot of work on our end, but, once we've got the pathways worked out, the "trick" of it should connect quickly and relatively easily. And, success and connection will only accelerate toward more and greater success and connection. The good and the real offer intrinsic, powerful rewards that will invert the omnipresence of mass culture from everywhere and everything, to flimsy and thin.

Practical

Of those criteria, the most important is real.

So let’s come down from the mountains and start where we are. Here’s the immediate action plan.

(Rome—not built in a day)

1. Look for like-minded people who are doing something cool that could benefit from you--and your sons if you have them, or your brothers or friends--jumping in to help surge it barn-raising style. This could be a building effort, a political campaign, clearing out a pasture, what have you.

2. Innovate (see below for a mountain of ideas), and communicate your efforts so the rest of us can glom on to successful efforts

3. Find successful male-oriented activity groups in your area that might be suitable for participation with boys, and participate.

If you are interested in a wilderness adventure contact us, we have a guy

If you are interested in a rendezvous style athletic competition with fathers and sons and others, contact us.

If you have an opportunity to do a literal barn-building or some other surge-style building renovation with volunteers, contact us, we know a guy who has done it.

4. Find small, frequent ways to connect with your children in a way that models your manhood

my advice is also this with 20/20 hindsight...small, consistent, daily steps may be more impactful than the most incredible ROP. 15-30 minutes a day, playing catch, taking a hike, riding bikes, talking about life...it really is the small, daily investments that make the biggest difference

Due to length, this tranmission is in two parts.

Part two