What kind of relationship do you have with your father?
Your real father. It's often ambivalent,
because there's an element of him that encouraged you, hopefully,
because without that encouragement, man,
the world is a dismal place.
It's very difficult to be a courageous person,
unless you have your father, in body and spirit, behind you.
It's very demoralising.
It really kills people not to have their mother.
They just don't recover from that.
I think people can recover from a fragmented father-relationship,
but it's the next worst thing.
Because if your father rejects you, or doesn't form a relationship with you,
it's as if the spirit of civilisation has left you outside the walls,
as of little worth, it's very difficult to recover from that.
So the father should be an encouraging force,
but can also be a tyrannical and crushing force,
and so that's a very difficult thing to get right,
partly because if you're my son,
then I should impose on you the highest standards of behaviour.
And I should always be judging what you're doing.
I should be judging you to make the best of you come forward,
But getting that balance exactly right is very difficult.
And so it's easy for a father to swing too much into judgement,
Of course mothers can play this role too, to swing too far into judgement,
and to be too harsh,
to the degree that the father has his own pathologies,
he's going to do that imperfectly.
He might be someone who's the father who devours his son,
because he's jealous of the new possibility,
the new potential,
the struggle for attention and love from the mother or the other children,
there's all sorts of things that can go terribly wrong.
So that's the father as Wise King,
and that's another symbol that's been lost, I would say,
to a massive degree in modern universities.
All we're taught is to tear that down,
and to not even notice that it manifests itself everywhere,
especially in the universities,
which are as close to an ideal environment
as human beings have ever been able to create.
It's as simple as that.
And if you can't be grateful for the structure of the university,
with all its imperfections,
then you're completely blind to this element of the archetype.
And that's the opposite of it,
that's the king who devours his own son.
That's a tyrant.
That's like the mother who's too over-protective,
it's the male version of that.
That kind of mother says:
"I'll never let anything happen to you".
Huh, well, maybe you actually want something to happen to you.
It's a bit of an all-inclusive statement.
"No, I'm going to make you strong so any number of things can happen to you.
When you need some care, I'll be there,
but otherwise, out into the world with you!".
That's the right attitude.
And for the father, it's like:
"Get your bloody act together! But I'm on your side,
it's not because I want to destroy you,
or demean you, or push you down the dominance hierarchy,
because I want the best in you to emerge!".
So you need standards. "What are you doing, wasting your life?
There's way more than that to you. Get your act together,
and bring it out!".
That's a message that people really want to hear,
if they have any sense at all.
Generally they do want to hear it.
I've been talking to a lot of people recently, as perhaps you know,
I was talking to one of the leaders of the Conservatives this morning.
And they were asking me about Bill C-16,
but more specifically about talking to young people,
because the Conservative leadership struggle is going on right now,
I've been talking to a bunch of them.
I said: "something you could do for young people
that no one's doing is to talk to them about responsibility".
Everyone talks to them about rights.
"We need our rights!". Oh God! How many rights do you need?
Really! You have more privileges than any people who've ever lived anywhere.
Well it's so dull to hear this, it's so dull,
it's so pathetic, and so...demeaning,
that you have to be protected and have your rights.
There's a huge marketplace for responsibility,
that's what to talk to young people about.
"Get your act together and do something worthwhile with your life!".
For the first time in my entire adult life,
the Conservatives actually have something to sell young people.
They can sell them responsibility.
Well, why? Because that's where life has meaning,
with responsibility.
The more responsibility you take on, the more meaning your life has.
The higher the degree of responsibility that you agree voluntarily to try to bear,
the richer your life will be.
And no one's ever told that. It's the case.
You have four kids, say. That's plenty of responsibility.
You're going to have meaning. It's going to be rough,
because it's complicated. You have a complicated job,
and you try to help the careers of the people around you,
and you try to solve tough problems, aid suffering, and do all of that,
it's weight. It's responsibility.
But there's glory in it, there's real glory in it.
There's deep meaning in it.
Young people are starving for that, because no one ever tells them that!
"You're way more than you think. Stand up! Do something difficult.
Do something difficult and heroic!
Burst out of your bonds!".
That's a good message.
That's a necessary message.
Because we have to be more than we are.
If we aren't, we're not going to survive.