Victor Brauner Totem of the Wounded Subjectivity II, 1948
Because the one, agreed-upon faith in the US, internalized in the belief system of all too many of the nation’s citizenry, is monetary fundamentalism in combination with perpetual (shallow, distraction-inducing) entertainment — there would come to pass the inevitable entrance of the figure of a Reality Television Messiah i.e., the persecuted by the Pharisees of the Deep State and pronounced politically dead yet risen Donald J. Christ.
Inevitably, within the spectrum and attendant actions of a fundamentalist/authoritarian belief system, a witch-hunt, e.g., ICE’s assaults against human decency, will unfold targeting outsiders.
Conversely, on a cultural basis, what is needed is to engage in a dialog that reveals and pays homage to an ecosystem of the mind. Yet the European mindset (that later metamorphosed into American settler-colonialism) regarded the dark forest — literal and psychical — as the dominion of Satan. There is a crackbrained loathing of life itself concomitant to the worldview. Yet vast fortunes could be made by mass exploitation of the “resources” of the “untamed” world (including what has been termed in the culture’s Puritan/Calvinist lexicon as “human resources.” Withal, we wretched human beings exist to be exploited. Our inner selves, our connection to anima mundi, i.e., the soul of the world, must be to serve the whims and agendas of Satan. Hence, the mythos of the beneficiaries of state capitalism is, in essence, as dark as it is self-serving.
The aforementioned ICE thuggery of the present is the psychical stuff of witch-hunts. Yes, an aspect of the dismal situation is about bigotry and about bullying of those perceived, in the contradictory mindset of authoritarians, as both threatening and weak. But what is unfolding is also an extravaganza of dark projections: the soul-rancid slander directed at so-called “illegal” people are projections borne from the oppressors and their enablers interior hellscapes.
The Inquisition Tribunal by Francisco Goya
Authoritarian personality types are prone to confessing the scorn they feel for themselves by directing it at societal outsiders and dissenters.
US capitalist/consumer/war machine culture is a murder/suicide pact with its hapless citizenry. The worst grow grandiose due to the success of their mendacity. All too many are stricken with a sense of futility because they have been induced to believe the treacherous lie: their sense of isolation and powerlessness is due to their own flaws of character, as opposed to the fact they were born into a rigged economic system designed to reward those born with both societal advantage and endowed with a streak of ruthless disregard for advancing the greater good.
The moment the angel enters a life it enters an environment. We are ecological from day one.
— James Hillman, The Soul’s Code
Still, amid it all, an ineffable, abiding force within compels a human being into the midst of life; the life-force insists that one live for a purpose greater than themselves. If not, the force turns on a person and the person spirals into pathos. Their own soul has turned antagonist.
A person must feel as though they, in some manner, matter; otherwise, an inner cyclone, spawned by one’s own repressed life-force – and strengthened to the danger point by the collective pathology of a culture maintained by mass exploitation —threatens to reduce the person’s sense of self to blown shit-dust. Moreover, included in the pummeling misery, is the devastating realization: no one would notice.
Self Portrait in Mirror – Léon Spilliaert
The wounds to the psyche are deep, therefore inflict torment. The ancient Greeks believed the gods placed within the hearts of mortals a life’s purpose. The ancient concept of sin included; not living a life — and being condemned to a form of work — that is not aligned with the purpose an individual was born into this world to serve. Thus we can conclude, this is the defining sin of western economics: The majority have been condemned to become ensnared in a life that does not dovetail with the thoughts of their hearts and the needs of the soul of the world.
After all the commutes, and work commitments, and paydays, and lost sleep, and distractions from the stress and daily grind – the question must be proffered, are you more alive than dead inside? Would it not be insanity to accept the latter? As the truism goes, when you are in hell keep going.
One must resist enclosure within the acceptable madhouse walls of a culture designed for exploitation; one that rewards puerile self-absorption and deems all things in creation fodder for commodification. The remedy is what it has always been: a revision of cultural verities. Not enclosure within the prison of the past — but a seeing through akin to poetic vision. Hence comes: proceeding through the fear and pain of it all as opposed to retreat into nostalgia, mass spectacle and distraction.
Yet, because of the repressive, kitsch-rancid and shallow nature of authoritarian-ruled society, relief is not delivered. Thwarted libido rises as anger therefore must be directed away from the state. As noted above, the easiest targets for rage displacement are cultural outsiders. Witch-hunts ensue.
“Salem Witch Trials,” illustration from Pioneers in the Settlement of America, William A. Crafts ca. 1876.
A demagogue tells his idolatry-crazed followers how to view the world — while the soul insists we live into the truth of one’s being. The demagogue needs for his followers to remain in a state of child-like dependency. The soul demands, we participate in the creation and re-creation of culture.
To follow one’s vision, as related by the soul-lucid thoughts of the heart, is to be guided by a lodestar. The choice to do so is imperative. Following the guidance of the lodestar-heart makes one more human, thus a sense of alone-ness is diminished by growing affinities with others. There is a powerful sense of coming home.
In order not to go mad, the human animal must direct its inner essences outward, to share and be in dialog with others. If repressed, the polis of the self becomes a madhouse. On a personal basis, the endeavor of writing regarding cultural/political matters must not involve the construction of comfort zones but about positing honest observations and attendant declarations regarding the nature of unfolding and preventable folly, even as I feel powerless before the rush of events. I must surrender to forces other — and greater — than the unfolding collective insanity of the times:
What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights with us is so great.
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.
When we win it’s with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.
– Rainer Maria Rilke, excerpt, The Man Watching
(Rilke dormant sur un petit sofa à Muzot), 1921; watercolor portrait of Rainer Maria Rilke by his lover Klossowska
Caution is advised in regard to what we fight against, for even in victory we may be rendered small within. Am I fighting in defense of my vanity or is my soul under siege? Is there lasting remedy for the so-called human condition e.g., folly, fueled by self-serving lies, careening into tragedy? Only the noxiously naive would insist there is a panacea for all human pathos.
But the first step involves, venturing into one’s inner darkness, sending back dispatches to the self from the dismal scene within thereby lessening a compulsion to project hidden-from-oneself drives and desires upon others.
Loving the shadow may begin with carrying it, but even that is not enough. At one moment something else must break through, that laughing insight at the paradox of one’s own folly which is also everyman’s. Then may come the joyful acceptance of the rejected and inferior, a going with it and even a partial living of it. This love may even lead to an identification with and acting-out of the shadow, falling into its fascination. Therefore the moral dimension can never be abandoned. Thus cure is a paradox requiring two incommensurables: the moral recognition that these parts of me are burdensome and intolerable and must change, and the loving laughing acceptance which takes them just as they are, joyfully, forever.
— James Hillman, from Insearch, “Inner Darkness: The Unconscious as a Moral Problem”
Enter the fray evincing sorrow or joy. But do not fight simply to ease the discomfort attendant to lacking a sense of control. Risk asking questions that assail citadels of smug contentment and shallow verities, both within yourself and displayed by your adversaries. In the scheme of things, we can act to humanize dehumanizing conditions. I’m compelled to ask, what are the conditions of the souls of those who act as apologists for ICE or defend the ethnic cleansing of Gaza?
On a constant basis, the demand is made of writers/artists that we deliver “solutions” when we posit cultural/political observations. I must have missed wherein it was mandated that artists were required to arrive with ready remedies for the unease that is, at times, evoked by our creative labors. Conversely, the obligation of artists is to explore mystery and create a viable lexicon of the unspoken — not to work as architects and general contractors of comfort zones.
You, the reader, carry the solution within yourself. The meaning of it all broods within you like a dreaming seed. Your unease is the cracking of the seed’s shell; the process is the painful sublime of birth.
Therefore, I would never presume to deprive you of the phenomenon’s monstrous glory by providing you with mere solutions.
Gustave Doré, Jacob Wrestling with the Angel (1855)
