A perfect companion to my last Sunday’s “With Age Comes Wisdom and Respect.” While mine focuses more on our culture’s mistakes in respecting elders through ageism, here is the actual result of what it does in hierarchy when related to generational opportunity in patriarchy.

Modernity has lost the grammar of how an ambitious young man relates to a powerful older one. The script we teach is implicitly corporate and egalitarian — ‘reach out’, ‘network’, find a ‘mentor’ — which strips the interaction of its inherent structure and lacks a logic of honor, when this is precisely the quality that young men should be wielding to their advantage.

One must ask what this means for young women as well, who do not seek the elder successful female’s wisdoms, instead playing into the patriarchal hierarchy’s hand.

Look at these gorgeous images of Brando, certainly reaching to be inculcated by his elders in sponsorship for his role as Mark Anthony.