The Generative Man: A Vision - Robert Moore & Douglas Gillette
A generative man, drawing on the characteristics of the archetypal King, accesses the Center, Transformer, Procreator, and Structurer functions in an integrated way.
He is creative himself, and he welcomes creativity in others. He provides a safe, containing space where the people around him can flourish. He offers encouragement by taking care to really see others. In beholding his fellows, he mirrors and affirms them. He confirms their individuality and the reality of their suffering and their joy. He is conscious of and sensitive to their underlying feelings and motives. He blesses their lives by sanctifying the fruits of their inner and outer labors.
Because he is himself secure and centered, a generative man can allow others to be themselves. He does not experience them as extensions of himself, but recognizes when he is confusing his own motives and values, his own hopes or fears, with those of others. He is not easily thrown off balance by others. Even hostile and aggressive people cannot easily get to him. His integrity is such that sarcasm, innuendo, accusation, and confrontation have little effect upon him. He can manage in most situations to defend his legitimate personal boundaries firmly and without hostility. Yet when a wrathful response is called for, he is able to act aggressively. There are situations that involve clear and present dangers. A generative man, drawing upon his Warrior-King reserves, responds with vigor in these situations to neutralize his foes.
A generative man seeks to free himself of envy. Possessing all the power he needs for his own life, he can dispense the affirming energy of admiration to those who need and deserve it. He confers deserved riches—symbolic and material—upon members of his family, his friends, his business associates, and others. Rather than belittle others, he supports them in their attempts to contribute something of value to society.
In a leadership role, a generative man evaluates his subordinates’ ideas and performances objectively and with compassion. If others have good ideas, he celebrates them, implements them, and gives credit where credit is due. At home, he lavishes deserved praise upon his children when they come to him for mirroring; however, he never exaggerates his praise. He speaks the truth, and so gives every member of his family a firm basis for self-evaluation and self-affirmation. His truthful words and actions help others feel their own worth and get a sense of their own authentic being. He deflates grandiosity and enables others to discover their realistic greatness.
A generative man may be a mediator between the archetypal King and his fellow human beings. He may be further along than others in accessing the King and the other mature masculine archetypes without being overwhelmed by them. He is a seasoned veteran of the dialogue between ego-consciousness and the depths of the unconscious. He is familiar with the inner landscape we all share—its dangers and pleasures, its angels and demons, its illusions and truths. With the wisdom of this familiarity, the generative man can help others in their efforts to integrate. He can reflect back to others what he hears their adversaries and allies saying, because, at one time or another, he’s heard the same voices himself.
A faithful steward of the creative life-force, a generative man never engages in wanton destruction. He is not indifferent to the plight of the oppressed. He is vitally concerned about the rights, safety, health, and material prosperity of all human beings. Beyond this, he is interested in the welfare of the ecosystem as a whole.
Although he may be a master at utilizing the physical environment for the benefit of his family, his nation, or all humankind, he honors both technology and the environment in a balanced way. He encourages harmonious interaction between society and nature. He is neither
Like the sacred kings of the Far East, a generative man works toward harmony and order in his own inner life. He views setting his own house in order as a prerequisite for helping others to order their own lives. He is relentlessly honest with himself about his failings. He takes his share of responsibility when things go badly, but no more and no less than his share. Out of this empowering stance, he is able to do something positive and concrete about the problem that confronts him. He may be involved in some form of psychotherapeutic process. He knows that where his own integrity is at stake, one way or another, he must work to develop his own psychological and spiritual life. He is open to criticisms, for he realizes that they will usually hold some truth. He is not, however, a misguided moral perfectionist. Rather, he urgently engages himself in a quest for wholeness and moral seriousness.
Out of his deep loyalty to himself, a generative man is able to be loyal to others—his family and friends, his company, any voluntary organizations he may be fostering, his community and his nation, and, ultimately, his world. These loyalties may at times be at odds with each other and set up intense conflicts within him. To the extent, however, that a man can be generative, his loyalty will be to the greatest good for the greatest number. His loyalty, in the end, will be to a Transpersonal Other that is deeply compatible with his own sense of self.
Finally, a generative man has achieved a rich masculine identity both by building his inner masculine structures and by valuing his inner feminine characteristics. He has come to know the mystery that his masculinity is enhanced to the extent that he is appreciative of his Anima. He has experienced within himself the sacred marriage of the King with his Queen. Full generativity, he realizes—in psychospiritual affairs just as in biological ones—is possible only where the masculine and feminine energies are united. He is almost certainly sexually active and eager for intimate relationship with a partner who is as capable of intimacy as he is. Together they may generate and nurture children; if not, their energies combine in more subtle but still tangibly creative ways.
Protector, provider, procreator—a generative man is a Center for world building, an axis mundi around which others may rally. At his Center, he is unassailable. He provides stability to his inner world and to others who come to him looking for order in themselves. His own opposite impulses are reconciled at his Center, and, through his experience of this, he helps others to do the same. As a Transformer, he makes usable the creative life-force he carries within him. Others draw from him a sense of their own empowerment. He may be a Procreator in the specific sense of fathering the children he cares for and teaches. Certainly, he is a Procreator in the broad sense of initiating creative advance in the world that he has been given to steward. He is also a Structurer, establishing calm in the midst of chaos and facilitating the extension of a civilized, yet vigorously instinctual, way of life. In these ways, he incarnates the potential in the actual, the sacred in the profane. He is an image of mature masculinity toward which all men may strive.
Excerpt from ‘The King Within’ - Dr Robert Moore & Douglas Giltette
