The Sibling Society

An interview with Robert Bly

by Øivind H. Solheim

This year — 2018 — is an anniversary. It’s now more than 10 years since I together with my family visited Minnesota and North Dakota. An important part of that journey was our visit to Robert and Ruth Bly in Minneapolis.

In February 2008 I had the fortune to watch the Norwegian giant Henrik Ibsen’s play Peer Gynt — translated by Robert Bly — at the Guthrie Teater, Minneapolis.

ØS: This word — sibling society — it is the title on one of your books?
Robert Bly: Yes, that means there’s no father. We are all brothers and sisters. That’s a kind of society in which everyone is equal, they are all watching television at night, and no one really honours their father, doesn’t really honour the mother. They ignore their grand-fathers and their grand-mothers. That is the Sibling Society.
ØS: — And how long has this been like this?
Robert Bly: — Oh I don’t know — 50 years probably.
ØS: Why has it come like that?
Robert Bly: Because we want to be children. We don’t wanna be adults.
ØS: How come?
Robert Bly: It’s too much work to be an adult, and we don’t want any standards, we don’t want any one to say: You’re acting childishly. We wanna everyone to act childishly. And then we all feel at home. So it could also be called the father killing society.
ØS: You say somewhere that…