Sociological prose can tell you everything, but it can't point out the grief. Robert Bly More Quotes by Robert Bly More Quotes From Robert Bly If we call the young ones, say 10 to 30 years old, 'siblings,' we can see they tend to be naturally ecological. They regard whales and owls as siblings too. That's a great advance. Robert Bly whalessiblingyears There's a quality we could call vertical attention, which is an attention upward toward ancestors, spiritual states, angels, gods. Robert Bly qualityangelspiritual You have an utterly sincere glance when you look around after you are shipwrecked. You weep a long time on an island when you realize what's happened to you. Robert Bly islandslonglooks Some people can't go into church any longer to feel this longing, but they still have the longing, so what do they do? Well, one thing you can do is what people do in prison; they turn to poetry. Robert Bly prisonchurchpeople The models of adulthood are disappearing fast. How can two people have a new marriage if neither of them is an adult? Robert Bly adultstwopeople Hierarchy, as in the Catholic Church, has to do with power, and vertical attention has to do with longing. Robert Bly hierarchycatholicchurch There is no hierarchy in Japanese Buddhist poetry. Robert Bly hierarchybuddhist We know that the adult in a certain sense has an attitude toward life exactly opposite to the attitude of commercials. Commercials say, 'Your longing for 3.2 beer is very important. Your longing for skin that doesn't have any wrinkles in it, that's very, very, very important.' The adult says, 'No, I've got wrinkles, so what?' Robert Bly wrinklesbeerattitude I think more and more people are recognizing how much adults and elders are actually needed. That's a gift of the sibling society. Robert Bly siblingpeoplethinking I wanted to spend all my time writing poetry. But when I had children I couldn't do that anymore. Robert Bly wantedwritingchildren Adolescents believe that the world belongs to the living, or more particularly to living people their age, so they feel within their rights if they destroy the canon or rewrite the fairy stories or act like Red Guards. Robert Bly fairy-storiesrightsbelieve An elder is someone who understands that the world belongs to the dead. Robert Bly eldersworld The ancestors are very much invested in the children, because the children are the ones who are going to continue the world that the ancestors made. Robert Bly madechildrenworld What I am trying to do is bring people into grief in relation to the society we have. Robert Bly grieftryingpeople Sociological prose is generally written without images in an exact form for an academic audience. Robert Bly sociologicalacademicform The distance between the adolescent and the true adult is about five thousand miles, but the distance between the adult and the elder is almost as large. Robert Bly milesdistanceadults Adolescents are in just as much trouble in Native America as they are in the white community. Robert Bly communitywhiteamerica All of those on the left, as I am, have always vastly preferred the democratic society over the hierarchical society and still do, but the democratic culture doesn't exist without highly informed citizens capable of thinking well, and if you have schools in which 40 percent of the people coming out of them cannot make change for a dollar, you don't have a democracy. You have a sibling society. Robert Bly siblingschoolthinking The sibling society is the flattening out of the previously democratic society. Robert Bly democratic-societydemocraticsibling It's good to have poems that begin with tea and end with God. Robert Bly tea
