Let us become Weavers.
My social media feeds are blowing up since Tuesday last. So is my American caseload. Even more surprising, even my non-American caseload is rattling. The irrational fears, the contradictions, the virtue signalling, the catastrophic conclusions are at times, beyond the pale. Democracy is not threatened, it is functioning. The victory of Tuesday last, was decisive, large voter turnout, and while the minority may not like it, the majority spoke. When the tendency is to go horizontal, the deeper healing is in going vertical. Discrediting, discounting, or disparaging the other side is like putting a dam in the river. I think is is infinitely more interesting to explore the results from a psychological perspective rather than from a political one. Politics flows down river from psychology and psychology flows down river from spirituality. The more interesting questions are to ask honestly and humbly, what is at the top of the mountain? What were the signs of the gathering storms that eventually rained down on the valley? What are the values being expressed? Expressed by the majority, to the minority. Expressed by the minority, to the majority. This is how democracy is meant to work. The right side of centre creates the structures and the laws, the left side of centre speaks for the overlooked. It is the far right and the far left that are doing all the screaming. Most of us live centrically.
“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.” With this quotation, Heraclitus reminds us that life is dynamic. Nothing stays the same. Not objective nor subjective reality. When the flow of the river changes, surprises, threatens, swells, once must dive deeper into the current to discern both source and destination. Polarization is never the solution, part of the process perhaps, but never the destination. There is a fun and true quip made in the movie, The Very Best Marigold Hotel. The proprietor of the hotel in the movie assures his disgruntled guests that, “All will be well in the end. If all is not well, it is not the end.” The arc of human history is long and seldom linear. Please let us broaden our lens.
In 1954, Erich Neumann, a student and disciple of C.G. Jung, wrote a book called, Depth Psychology and the New Ethic. It was eventually published in 1969. Jung wrote the Introduction to the publication and some suggest, he tried to soften the impact of the provocative argument. When Neumann first presented this work at the Eranos conference, many analysts are said to have left the room! Yes, even analyst behave badly. Too often. A prophet is seldom recognized in his own land. Neumann’s premise was too radical, too insightful, too true. Even some 70 years later! Sometimes we are not ready for truth. Neumann’s thesis posits that the modern world (post WWII) had witnessed a dramatic breakthrough of the dark, negative forces of human nature. Few would disagree. The old ethic, he argues, which pursued an illusory perfection by repressing the dark side, had lost its power to deal with contemporary problems. Erich Neumann was convinced that the deadliest peril confronting humanity lay in the scapegoat psychology associated with the old ethic. He was prophetic. I would suggest that we are currently in the grip of the dying days of this reflexive old ethic psychology. A ethic that projects our own dark shadow onto an individual or group identified as the enemy. What we see in the enemy is what we have failed to see in ourselves. The only effective alternative to this dangerous shadow projection, this worn out old ethic, is shadow recognition, acknowledgement, and integration into the totality of the Self. Wholeness, not perfection, is the goal of the new ethic. The goal of depth psychology. Diversity and unity in harmony. The dinosaurs of projection must evolve if human life is to continue.
Sometimes a wrecking ball is needed to break down walls. Walls separate, divide, and ‘Other’ our brothers and sisters. Few would embrace or laud or welcome the wrecking ball. However, when the wrecking ball, because of its decisive actions, because of what it reveals, new light dawns, old attitudes crumble, and what was separated by the wall can be reconciled. This is not new. Hadrian's Wall marked the boundary between Roman Britannia and the unconquered Caledonia. In the Christian Syriac legend from late antiquity, Alexander the Great built a wall stretching across a narrow mountain pass in the Caucasus to keep out the peoples of Gog and Magog. The Great Wall of Gorgan is the longest barrier between Central Europe and China. Building walls and breaching walls are inevitable. This is an evolutionary process. When the walls between us crumble, life continues, changed, but it remains continuous. We learn to orient the strange toward the familiar. We grow. We evolve. Eventually. That is if we do not fall into nihilism. Beyond the walls, beyond the entrenched and defended attitudes on both sides, beyond the old ethic of scapegoat psychology, from the rubble of our evolving humanity, even from the bricks we have hurled at one another, if we pause and reflect, we can begin to build anew. On a new horizon. Beyond the threshold of all that was previously known. About ourselves. About our neighbours.
Change is born from the heart. Crisis is born from the solar plexus. Transformation and evolution are the seeds trapped in the belly of the beast. Dragons always hide and hoard the treasure. We need to face the dragons of our own nature. Do not misunderstand me. I am not advocating for the tearing down of the past, the toppling of icons or statues, or the overturning of statutes; rather, I am suggesting that the inner icons, statues, and statutes are often harder to see than the outer ones. If there ever was a time to go vertical, it is now. If we pause and evaluate our own actions, words, and reactions, at the thresholds, we might just get some hint about what is erupting internally. This is the vertical rather than the horizontal perspective. If you have taken to the streets in the past decade, torn down or defaced monuments, transgressed another with word or deed, can you now pause? Can you pause and ask yourself what part of your own inner nature needs to be addressed? What walls have you built? Torn down? Can you stay curious? Open? It is a big ask. But, by asking, maybe we slow the reaction and give way to the possibility that when called to act, what we do or say, will come from the heart rather than the solar plexus place. The heart place is receptive. The solar plexus place is reactive. Even fear and terror can be softened with love. This is not asking for naivety, it is asking for maturity. Maybe the West is reaching toward maturity? I pray we are.
Some say the unconscious has no conscience. It is self regulating and compensatory. If one side of anything has become too one sided, there will be a corrective. Personally. Collectively. Cosmically. The wider the polarity, the greater the correction. Perhaps, the most important question to ask in light of this current political corrective, is one of morality. Do we as human beings create our own morality? Nietzsche asked this question with his life. The New Atheists and scientific rationalists would say yes. I would say, no. I believe there is an ethic deeply woven into the fabric of the human being. And, if Erich Neumann is correct, this ethic is also evolving.
No birth is easy. Evolution is slow. Revolution is messy. But, always, transformation is magical. The labour, the fear, the pain, and the losses of old ways of being are best mediated by the hope and joy of emergence. New understandings. New ethics. Both inside and outside. All weavers know that the centre defines the edge and the edge defines the centre. This relationship between the fringe and the centre defines the fabric of all reality. We need both in our tapestry. So, in light of the events of last week, if on the edge, look kindly toward the centre. If in the centre, reach out heart and hands toward the edge. The creative design of this masterpiece called humanity is woven together by single threads of various colour and texture. The Loom and Weaver may be beyond our current understanding; but, know this, knots either hold or tangle or break threads. We are collectively in a knot. Tangled together. Hold on. Don’t break. Don’t get broken.
“Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so that each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry.” So says the quantum electromagnetic physicist, Richard P. Feynman. And finally, like Feynman, like Neumann, like Jung, “I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned.”