The Primal Lack of Manhood

I feel a real need to backtrack a bit today; to talk natural history, the evolution of a species, the dilemmas of sexual differences and what these have meant for us. I have in mind a discussion related to the primal lack experienced by men, by the male of our species. Guys and girls, this primal lack is, in a word, the lack of fertility.

The Earth is fertile; the land is fertile. Woman is fertile; the female is fertile. Man, however, relative to the Earth and Woman alike--the primary, twin manifestations of the Goddess--sees the lack that he has, is constantly reminded of the lack that he is. Both Woman and Earth remind Man of what he is not. They are a constant indicator of the primal lack embodied in Manhood.

So, how has Man dealt with this fact of natural history in the past, and how does Man still tend to deal with this fact of natural history? In other words, how has Man substituted for the primal lack that he embodies?

Perhaps Man turns aggressive and become territorial in response to his lack. Because Man lacks fertility he has to secure that necessary fertility outside of himself. So Man is compelled to become controlling precisely because of the Primal Lack that is the epicenter of his Manhood. This very tendency has been evidenced in War, when and as the victorious Warriors secure for themselves the Earth and the Women of the conquered. Meaning, it is possible to suggest that Man has gone to War and has sought to conquer so frequently in order to attempt to secure what Man lacks. That is, War is but the effort to secure more fertility... increased fertility... the generative capacity of Life itself. Man has to get it by any means necessary, precisely because in and of himself he lacks it.

Colonization. Conquering the land. The intensified effort to control externally. The unchecked aggression. All of it, to my way of undersanding things, is the direct result of lack. What is perceived to be missing is sought after. And because Life issues forth from a hidden well-spring of fertility and generativity Man understands that his connection to Life comes through Woman and Earth. Man, then, fights his own perceived emptiness through attaching himself to a Lady and the Land--either through cunning and stealth, power and aggression, or a genuine heart open to his own vulnerability, and what that vulnerability indicates in terms of his relatedness to Woman and the Earth--the Goddess.