Clueless Bastards, Rootless Wanderer

In It’s Good to Be a Man, I introduced the concept of the clueless bastard. I know it sounds like a cuss word, but it’s not. I was using bastard in the older, technical sense, an illegitimate child. Such a child bears no father’s name and receives none of his discipline. He grows up without the wisdom and patterns that should have been passed from father to son. As a result, he’s clueless about many of the things that mark mature adulthood. In the book, I had men primarily in mind, but the idea clearly extends to women as well.

There’s another category closely related to the clueless bastard, the rootless wanderer. This person grows up disconnected from any particular people, place, or past. He wanders, searching for somewhere to belong. Like the clueless bastard, his condition flows from the breakdown of the family, but it’s deeper and more complex. We’ve also witnessed the collapse of local communities and even of national identity, replaced by a hollow, global way of thinking. The internet, for all its power to connect, also de-locates us. It spreads our attention and affections across vast spaces, making belonging harder than ever.

Now, as many of the old institutions crumble, those that once gave some sense of stability, the rootless wanderers are adrift. They are desperate for something solid and steady. And whatever reminds them of the lies they were told growing up, about spirituality, feminism, and individualism, they now flee from as fast as they can, running instead toward anything that bears the scent of a real foundation.

Painting: Ken Danby