High Stakes in Extraordinary Times

This is from the preface to Cosmos and Psyche, by Richard Tarnas:

"We find ourselves at an extraordinary threshold. One need not be graced with prophetic insight to recognize that we are living in one of those rare ages, like the end of classical antiquity or the beginning of the modern era, that bring forth, through great stress and struggle, a genuinely fundamental transformation in the underlying assumptions and principles of the cultural world view. Amidst the multitude of debates and controversies that fill the intellectual arena, our basic understanding of reality is in contention: the role of the human being in nature and the cosmos, the status of human knowledge, the basis of moral values, the dilemmas of pluralism, relativism, objectivity, the spiritual dimension of life, the direction and meaning -- if any -- of history and evolution. The outcome of this tremendous moment in our civilization's history is deeply uncertain. Something is dying, and something is being born. The stakes are high, for the future of humanity and the future of the Earth."

Things Could Definitely Get Worse

This excerpt from Paul Krugman's article in the paper today is worth repeating. And worth understanding.

"...It's hard to overstate how destructive the economic ideas offered earlier this week by John Boehner, the House minority leader, would be if put into practice. Basically, he proposes two things: large tax cuts for the wealthy that would increase the budget deficit while doing little to support the economy, and sharp spending cuts that would depress the economy while doing little to improve budget prospects. Fewer jobs and bigger deficits--the perfect combination.
     More broadly, if Republicans regain power, they will surely do what they did during the Bush years: they won't seriously try to address the economy's troubles; they'll just use those troubles as an excuse to push their usual agenda, including Social Security privatization. They'll also surely try to repeal health reform, which would be another twofer, reducing economic security even as it increases long-term deficits..."

                                                   --Paul Krugman, New York Times News Service, 9-11-10

2010 Silver Medalist, Young Voices Foundation

This is very merry!

Using Beauty just won a Silver Medal for 2010 from the Young Voices Foundation in the Inspirational/Spiritual category. 

The goal of the Young Voices Foundation is to identify and honor books that inspire, mentor and educate youth.

I don't have the artwork for the medal yet. I'll put it up on the blog and the website as soon as I do.

Two medals. 

Not bad, little book.

Psychopaths in Power

Yesterday a girlfriend mentioned the possibility of Mitch McConnell gaining control of Congress after the mid-term elections. Made me think of this essay by Adolf Guggenbuhl-Craig:

"We can consider aggression as a quantum, something which some individuals possess more of from the time of earliest childhood. And we all know aggressive persons who compensate with a highly differentiated moral code. Put somewhat simplistically, aggression serves these individuals to move from desiring good to living and asserting what is good.

"Psychopaths or compensated psychopaths employ aggression to achieve their own, egoistic goals. A compensated psychopath with a great deal of aggression dominates his classmates, family, or business associates with his harsh and unyielding morality.

"There are certain advantages to being a psychopath or compensated psychopath. Many of them have a relatively easy time adapting to society, unencumbered as they are by moral or neurotic scruples. They replace the lack of love or of true relationship with a love of power, something they can achieve without too much difficulty owing to the absence of moral or Eros-related restraints. Even an compensated psychopath can find room for a justification of unrestrained power-seeking within his rigid morality.

"It is little wonder that psychopaths occupy so many of the top positions in society and rather astonishing that there are not more in such positions.

"Let me put it somewhat differently. One of the major problems of any society, or of any political or large organization in general, is that of preventing unscrupulous, socially adapted psychopaths from gradually taking over the helm."

Adolf Guggenbuhl-Craig, Meeting the Shadow. Tarcher, Los Angeles. Page 225.

Amen.

Homo hostilis, the enemy-making animal

TO CREATE AN ENEMY
by Sam Keen

Start with an empty canvas.
Sketch in broad outline the forms of
men, women and children.

Dip into the unconscious well of your own
disowned darkness
with a wide brush and
stain the strangers with the sinister hue
of the shadow.

Trace onto the face of the enemy the greed,
hatred, carelessness you dare not claim as
your own.

Obscure the sweet individuality of each face.

Erase all hints of the myriad loves, hopes,
fears that play through the kaleidoscope of
every finite heart.

Twist the smile until it forms the downward
arc of cruelty.

Strip flesh from bone until only the
abstract skeleton of death remains.

Exaggerate each feature until man is
metamorphasized into beast, vermin, insect.

Fill in the background with malignant
figures from ancient nightmares--devils,
demons, myrmidons of evil.

When your icon of the enemy is complete
you will be able to kill without guilt,
slaughter without shame.

The thing you destroy will have become
merely an enemy of God, an impediment
to the sacred dialectic of history.

The problem seems not to lie in our reason or our technology, but in the hardness of our hearts. Generation after generation, we find excuses to hate and dehumanize each other, and we always justify ourselves with the most mature-sounding political rhetoric. And we refuse to admit the obvious. We human beings are Homo hostilis, the hostile species, the enemy-making animal. We are driven to fabricate an enemy as a scapegoat to bear the burden of our denied enmity. From the unconscious residue of our hostility, we create a target; from our private demons, we conjure a public enemy. And, perhaps, more than anything else, the wars we engage in are compulsive rituals, shadow dramas in which we continually try to kill those parts of ourselves we deny and despise. --Sam Keen, "The Enemy Maker"

from Meeting the Shadow, Edited by Zweig & Agbrams. Los Angeles, Tarcher. 197-8.

You need to get this book. It's full of great essays by everybody from Sam Keen to Susan Griffin, the historian with heart.

The Shadow in Politics

Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana is a conservative politician who staunchly opposes the interference of "big government." You might recall him saying, during the Republican party's response to President Obama's State of the Union speech in 2009 that "The strength of America is to be found in the compassionate hearts and the enterprising spirit of our citizens."

What a difference a disaster makes! Now -- post the BP environmental catastrophe -- Governor Jindal is saying that big government isn't doing enough interfering in his state. "It is clear we don't have the resources we need to protect our coast. The disjointed effort to date has often meant too little, too late."

I guess when the shit hits the fan, compassionate hearts get covered in it, too.

AS E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post said, "'Deregulation' is wonderful until we discover what happens when regulations aren't issued or enforced. Everyone is a capitalist until a private company blunders. Then everyone starts talking like a socialist, presuming that the government can put things right because they see it as being just as big and powerful as its tea party critics claim. But the truth is that we have disempowered government and handed vast responsibilities over to a private sector that will never see protecting the public interest as its primary task. The sludge in the Gulf is, finally, the product of our own contradictions."

Well said.

The Dangers of Innocence

Here's what Rollo May has to say about the intersection of shadow material and morality in his essay entitled "The Dangers of Innocence":

The ethic of Christianity in our time became allied with the individualism which emerged in the Renaissance. This increasingly became the ethics of the isolated individual, standing bravely in his lonely situation of self-enclosed integrity... Ethics and religion became largely a matter of Sunday, the weekdays being relegated to making money--which one always did in ways that kept one's own character impeccable. We had then the curious situation of the man of impeccable character directing a factory that unconscionably exploited its thousands of employees. It is interesting that fundamentalism, that form of Protestantism which puts most emphasis on the individualistic habits of character, tends to be also the most nationalistic and war-minded of the sects, and the most rabid against any form of international understanding with other countries.

We need not--indeed, we must not--surrender our concern with integrity and our valuing of the individual. I am proposing that our individualistic gains since the Renaissance be set in balance with our new solidarity, our willingly assumed responsibility for our fellow men and women. In these days of mass communication, we can no longer be oblivious to their needs; and to ignore then is to express our hatred. Understanding, in contrast to ideal love, is a human possibility--understanding for our enemies as well as our friends.

...our capacity for evil hinges on breaking through our pseudoinnocence. So long as we preserve our one-dimensional thinking, we can cover up deeds by pleading innocent. This antediluvian escape from conscience is no longer possible. We are responsible for the effect of our actions, and we are also responsible for becoming as aware as we can of these effects.

...Life consists of achieving good not apart from evil but in spite of it.

--Rollo May, "The Dangers of Innocence," in
Meeting the Shadow, Tarcher & St. Martin's Press, pgs.174-5.