ROBERT BLY: When you're looking at a gang, you're looking at young males who have no older man to welcome them into the male world. They're trying desperately to do it themselves.

We really need to bring back initiation rites. The presence of a male role model is essential for guiding boys as they grow into respectful men.

As an adult man, it is your duty to guide young males in a direction that helps them become independent and capable members of… pic.twitter.com/VqwAF6GUCx

— STUNNER (@Cr7Godbrand) March 21, 2026

When the initiators are gone then there's no one to welcome the Young men into the male world, and all young men are angry about that.  When you're looking at a gang, you're looking at young males who have no older man to welcome them into the male world.  They're trying desperately to do it themselves.  They're trying to teach each other what courage is, how much pain you should endure, what a cause is.  They're trying to do it, it doesn't work.  Because young males cannot initiate each other. But they're angry at the absence of the older males who are not doing that.  Well, when this group of older male initiators disappears and everything falls on the father.  The father is supposed to do everything.  And when the young men that I talk to realize that their father could not have done that, then they begin thinking of the things their father did do to try to initiate them. Oftentimes they're touched. They weep when they think of the possibility.  

00:57.  So when the . . . 

00:58.  Our fathers were only intended to keep us through the age of 35 and make sure we didn't get eaten by ants and stuff like that.  He was never intended to initiate us.

1:06.  And when the father is gone as happens so often in America today, often it's just a single mother who is left to do it all the initiation.

1:16.  That's right.  And women try very hard with that.  And I remember I said at that thing in Evans, I said, "You know, a woman can bring the fetus to be a boy, but she cannot move him from a boy to being a man. Only other men can do that."  And some of the women got angry, and another woman said, "I think he's right because when . . . my boy was in high school, I knew that he needed something harder than I could give him.  And if I did that, I'd lose my own femininity."  So it's just to say that women try very hard with this, and it's hopeless. They cannot really guide a boy all the way to being a man.  That's a job for the men to do.  And if a woman is in that situation, then she should recognize that and try to find some older man that she trusts and ask him to hold the boy in his heart. It isn't necessary that he take the boy to the zoo every other day.  But many young men do not know a single older man who encourages them or holds them in their heart.

The above clip is from a 1990 series called A Gathering of Men, interview that Robert Bly did with Bill Moyers.  

I will never forget how annoyed I was with Robert Bly, 1926-1921, back in the early 90s UCI that I could not even given him any time, partly because of all the fawning over him by so many at university and community colleges.  I think it was his resemblance to Timothy Leary, the LSD guru, that bothered me.  To my detriment it turns out, because his insights here are terrific.