PERSPECTIVErnMen Unlimitedrnby Chilton Williamson, Jr.rnThe comic, as Flanncry O’Connor said, is the reverse sidernof the terrible. I suppose the spectacle of 50 to 100 menrnfrom 20 to 70 years of age disguised in Wild Man and Coyoternmasks as they prance in a forest glade, beat drums, eat buffalornchili, and exorcise the demon spirits of their fathers throughrnpoetry and the contemplation of Jungian archetypes could berneither, depending upon your point of view as well as yourrnsense of humor. Betty Freidan finds it “sick,” but she doesn’trnneed a mask.rnUntil recently my idea of a men’s movement was the CommissaryrnCommandos, an association of males from my hometownrnof Kemmerer, Wyoming, that spends the long thirdrnweekend of August annually on four-wheel-drive safari in thernmountains, camping, eating, drinking Jack Daniel’s through arnbugle, playing cards and horse shoes, firing guns, and initiatingrnnew members by an agonizing ritual with which every rangerncow is intimately familiar. Since then I have realized that forrnmy fellow Commandos and me to aspire to kinship with so enlightenedrna brotherhood would be presumptuous. While JackrnDaniel’s, Jim Beam, Fleischmann’s, Boone’s Farm, Coors,rnAnheuser-Busch, and Cutty Sark guarantee absolutely to makerneveryone a King, Warrior, and Wild Man for at least 72 hours,rnnone of us is all that familiar with the Jungian reality underlyingrnthese archetypal characters. Also our many father-and-sonrnpairs show no particular interest in exorcising one another.rnConfronted by the Commissary Commandos in the raw,rnRobert Bly, father of the so-called mythopoetic men’s movement,rnwould surely murmur, echoing T.S. Eliot, “That is notrnChilton Williamson, jr., is senior editor for books atrnChronicles.rnwhat I meant—that is not what I meant, at all.”rnNor is the men’s movement—with the exception of smallrnand uninfluential contingents—what feminists of both sexesrnassume it to be, either a force for counterattacking the politicalrnand judicial tyranny of organized feminism or a neo-Neanderthalrnconspiracy to round up nubile American females, hitrnthem on the head with a club, and drag them by their hair backrnto home and hearth. In fact, it is a transparent ploy aimed atrndenying the necessity for such actions, which the men’s movement,rnas merely another program of consciousness-raising inrnNative American drag, is not manly enough to perform.rnIn a sane and healthy socictv, consciousness-raising, ratherrnthan elevate consciousness, would raise hackles; in a supersanernand disgustingly healthy one, it would raise leveled pistols asrnwell. Healthy societies are unified communities, and unifiedrncommunities produce individuals who are also persons whosernpsyches are intact because their view of the universe and of thernreality behind it is predisposed by the ability to comprehend existencernin the round. But ours is an insane and sick societv thatrnnot onlv refuses to recognize ontological wholeness but deniesrnthe possibility of such a thing. Naturally this refusal makesrnpeople desperate and miserable, causing them to shop forrntherapists and support groups chosen according to whateverrnself-identitv is uppermost in their minds; gay, straight, black,rnwhite, son, daughter, vegetarian, meat-eater, victim, oppressor,rnman, woman. In these matters, the conviction is that selffulfillmentrn—the secular equivalent of personal salvation—rncomes in selecting a dominant or simply preferred aspect ofrnoneself and subjecting it to a single-minded course of rigorousrndevelopment such as might be designed for an Olympic athleternin training to raise the Parthenon with his left foot. In physi-rn12/CHRONICLESrnrnrn