Robert Bly's principal claim in The Sibling Society is that in contemporary American society (and in those societies that mirror or imitate it) the vertical orientation of the past--"tradition, religion, devotion"--has been replaced by a horizontal orientation in which the only connections that matter are those made in the present between people at the same level of experience (age or maturity level) (Bly viii). Bly says that in today's America adults "regress toward adolescence" and that adolescents, therefore, develop no desire to become adults (viii). He uses the term 'sibling' as a metaphor for this leveling tendency and says that at least a third of Americans have these qualities while everyone else is headed in this direction. Schools and traditions will no longer matter Bly says, "because only people one's own age will be worth listening to" (viii).
While Bly discusses trends in American society that are certainly very alarming and may be perfectly correct about the need for Americans to achieve full, responsible adulthood and a more vertical orientation, he also gives off a very strong feeling of an old man who is very annoyed that no one will listen to him. Before discussing Bly's ideas, however, it is worthwhile to ask whether one should listen to him. Bly places a strong emphasis on education and the continuity it provides (after being suitably altered to be more inclusive of women and minorities). He says, for instance that "colleges and universities are precisely where the gifts of the past are meant to be studied and absorbed, and yet those are the very places where the current damage to the common reservoir is taking place" (47). But Bly himself can be accused of failing to show any respect for the "gifts of the past." This book is so filled with errors of fact that the reader soon begins to question whether anything Bly says should be trusted.
In Chapter 9, for example, Bly wishes to demonstrate how "eco...