(...) The mythopoetic men's movement aims to liberate men from the constraints of the modern world which keep them from being in touch with their true masculine nature, and is best known for the rituals that take place during their gatherings. (...)
I haven't read the whole thread yet so maybe this has been answered, but I couldn't find anything about these rituals on the Wiki page either, what are they?
I think what's more important to them isn't so much as the rituals themselves but rather more so the
ritual space they intend to create. They use drumming, story telling, do poetry readings, sing songs, tell anecdotes, reveal personal wounds, make masks, dance--sort of thing--all in the company of supportive fellow men.
From what I've read so far it doesn't even seem that tight of a uniform. Maybe not quite as loose-fit as Discordianism, but like many types of self-actualization things, it seems like you can do it for a while, learn some valuable things (about yourself and/or people in general), and then drop it as you discover you reached the bottom of what there is to learn. Maybe I'm being too optimistic, but I think that people who get "stuck" in such a uniform would have gotten stuck in one thing or the next, regardless.
From what I've read/listened to so far, I think Bly might agree with this.
One of the things Robert Moore (the second generation Jungian of whom Bly is an enormous fan) says that younger men should be admired by an older man in a kind of mentor role. So, rather than being stuck in a uniform, it's more about finding fellowship and a path through the previously constricted uniforms in which men find themselves in post-industrial society.
(BTW in all fairness, the above paragraph also holds for the whole PUA thing. At least, 10 years ago when I became interested in it: Learned some very valuable things [actually basic social skills that I had managed never to pick up], noticed how the rest was kinda flawed, and moved on, but an experience richer)
The flaw in this particular movement, from what I've seen so far, is that it makes the assumption that before feminism, all great men were very masculine. And men that weren't, can't have been great men.
I think this might be the narrow view. While it does seem to be related to feminism I don't think it's necessarily a reaction AGAINST feminism. A least from the several lectures and books I've read so far.
Bly takes a mythological standpoint as a foundation to explore into the masculine archetypes. He feels that in our post-industrial culture that men have a lot of less time with their fathers and so boys no longer have that strong masculine role around. They talked a lot about how in the past boys would have a rite of passage where the men would take the boys away from their mother, go through initiation, and then become men. Since our fathers are no longer around as much, boys are more raised by the stronger feminine role rather than the masculine.
I've heard Bly full acknowledge how women are oppressed in the various ways feminism describes but what he is against is the tendency for some feminists to blame all men and put the responsibility on all men for the heinous atrocities some men have done.
Even if this were the case--which it isn't--that would mean the situation is reversed, complain now about how men might feel restricted and held back to "express their masculinity" (lol), means that back then, brilliant men that had a more feminine streak or just didn't care for the whole masculine thing, would feel pressured to behave according to the "manly" expectations of the time.
Bly and Moore have made a distinction between 'being a man' and 'being macho.' I think what you're describing falls under the macho category.
In other words, it's going for the fallacy that there was some mythical period in time when people were still "pure" and "natural" (and organic! and not from concentrate!) when everything was better and we somehow lost this paradise over our lust for progress and we need to get back to this and die from infected toenails at the age of 30 again (oh wait that was the other movement).
The idea here isn't necessarily going back into that 'better time' but to use mythologies and fairy tales to find those core masculine archetypes. See my previous post about the King, Warrior, Magician and Lover. They use a ritual space to do this exploration among fellow men of all ages in order to regain a sense of masculine self that was left off and wounded due to the lack of a masculine role to follow as they grew up.
In my own opinion there are parts that are useful and parts which I don't find particularly valuable.
Let me point out something I did on a more personal level and probably wouldn't otherwise if I hadn't checked this stuff out...
My own father left my mother when I was about five years old and my mother did a pretty amazing job as a single mother. She saved money to buy a plot of land and then build a modest house on it. She raised me while working under a drug abusing, highly unstable boss.
In her own grief and frustration she would pretty harshly put my dad down for what "he had done to us." A lot of my life growing up involved a lot of trying to please mom and help her out. This inevitably resulted in 'nice guy behavior' and found its way into many of my personal relationships. This approval seeking and sometimes manipulative behavior didn't help me very much.
My father just did his thing, but never ever kept me out of his life. Although, for a good number of years (20+) I harbored a lot of unnecessary resentment toward my father that cause a bit of an unspoken strain on our relationship.
So I called him up the other day. I told him that I loved him and that I've been doing some inner work and wanted to let him know that I no longer think of him the way my mom thinks of him (among a few other things, while related, I don't really need to go into here). I told him how my view was colored and that we don't need to continue our relationship like that any more. There was some emotional poison there that's no more..
Granted, I didn't need to go to a retreat in Minnesota for this but I can say, on a personal level, that this sort of work can be useful.