Reflections on Hedges' piece on Trump...borrowing gratefully and liberally from James Hillman

 Reflections on the Hedges' piece:

First with respect to both reverence and shame, these are both responses, emotions and conscious, and the question of whether their absence helps to define soul remains. Indeed, like the difference between kataphatic and apophatic, in expressing first what we know about God and second, what we do not know,respectively,  a similar paradox seems to present itself here in attempting to depict, comprehend and ‘grasp’ soul. Describing something, anything, by what it is not, or by an absence of what would be present if it were to be present, is an exercise somewhat foreign to a literal, empirical epistemology.

Another dimension in the exploration of a subject like ‘soul’ and ‘soul-less’ is that, as in psychopathy, much of what is said and written is at least in part a reaction from persons observing what might be considered such a condition. And, to a large extent, reactions to others with such a descriptor, whether clinical or lay, are generally highly negative and potentially projections. From a psychological perspective, few researchers and therapists are even inclined to begin treatment for psychopaths, given the inherent ‘disagreeable’ and ‘intolerable’ features at the get-go.

Rejecting any ‘splitting of hairs’ whether semantically, cognitively or philosophically, Hedges asserts that the occupant of the Oval Office exceeds, indeed shatters, all conventional perceptions and attitudes of what comprises human normality in many different ways. It is not only that all constitutional guidelines and benchmarks, expectations and law are being thwarted, dismissed, trampled and, likely in the eyes of the man, destroyed forever, providing an open and free field for the aspiring tyrant to grab and to retain power for his life and for his political inheritors who might follow. It is also that all norms of perceptions of reality, physical, numerical, military, sociological, medical, and even pedagogical are no longer adhered to, respected or affirmed. Indeed, they are both literally and metaphorically being trashed, as if they were plastic toys from toys-r-us, subject to smashing by a kid in a malevolent temper tantrum.

To all human sensibilities, this person occupant of the Oval Office exhibits attitudes, perceptions, beliefs, opinions and convictions that defy the considered attitudes, perceptions, beliefs, opinions and convictions of what have been called ‘ordinary people’. Defiance, deliberate, impetuous, impulsive, irrational and what many would term ‘perverted’ or ‘deviant’….are all words that have been and continue to be deployed in describing him. The question of to what degree are such epithets expressions of the darkest and deepest unconscious shadow of those engaged in the depictions is a matter for scholars for at least the balance of this twenty-first century, if not beyond. As journalist/theologian, Hedges doubtless is quite aware of the potential of his own projections.

What is also true is that ‘conventional’ or normal adjectives that include leadership style, ideology, political gamesmanship, decorum, modesty, decorum, and even historic and political tradition and heritage are all also defied, and the resulting dominance of mass media, many argue compellingly, feeds into, and even emboldens, the motivation of dominance that defines the persona of the man.

Of course, there is a biological, human ‘will’ at work, that remains apparently beyond the scope of many of the clinical professionals to ‘diagnose.’ And, many of us would disagree with Schopenhauer’s equation of soul and will. Dostoevsky’s ‘failure to love,’ on the other hand, has a ring of resonance that strikes a note of consensus with many of us.

The word ‘soul’ has the benefit of opening the door to a less clinical, less political, less moral and ethical perspective that seeks to judge, condemn and dismiss. “Soul” has been, for a considerable time, a word associated with one’s faith, one’s religion and one’s relationship with the divine.

The American psychologist, James Hillman, has introduced an innovative and imaginative notion of soul in and through his archetypal psychology. Evoking John Keats, the Romantic poet, Hillman quotes him from a letter the poet wrote to his brother: Call the world if you please, ‘The vale of soul-making.’ Then you will find out the use of the world.

Hillman continues: From this perspective the human adventure is a wandering through the vale of the world for the sake of making soul. Our life is psychological, and the purpose of life is to make psyche of it, to find connections between life and soul. (James Hillman, Re-Visioning Psychology, p.xv)

Almost immediately, he writes:

By soul, I mean first of all, a perspective rather than a substance, a viewpoint toward things rather than a thing itself. This perspective is reflective; it mediates events and makes differences between ourselves and everything that happens. Between us and events, between the doer and the deed, there is a reflective moment-and soul-making means differentiating this middle ground…..Soul appears as a factor independent if the events in which we are immersed. Though I cannot identify soul with anything else, I also can never grasp it by itself apart from other things, perhaps because it is a like a reflection in a flowing mirror, or like the moon which mediates only borrowed light….First, ‘soul’ refers to the deepening of events into experiences; second, the significance soul makes possible, whether in love or in religious concern, derives from its special relation with death. And third, by soul I mean the imaginative possibility in our nature, the experiencing through reflective speculation, dream image and fantasy—that mode which recognizes all realities as primarily symbolic or metaphorical. (Ibid, p. xvi)

From the lay perspective of this scribe, it would appear that no event for the president has any resonance beyond what it might mean to his approval/disapproval ratings, merely another ‘sign’ of his own absolute perfection and invulnerability to being questioned, doubted or certainly challenged. There is, or appears to be, not a single second of reflection, pausing, meditating, pondering, wondering….it is all action all the time, as if only by and through action can he sustain his own ‘need’ for attention, adulation, and pseudo-worship. And as for any relationship or connection to death, that too seems incongruous with all of his public rants, firings, threats, steroidal-lies and bravado, except perhaps as another aspect of his extreme and tragic blindness to his own death, and his adoption of public denial. His diagnosis of the ‘alleged’ attempted assassination, ‘Saved by God!’ could indicate a thespian megalomanic’s posture, as a significant component of the permanent, unidentified mask or persona.

Hillman references, Ake Hultkranez, whose special field is the Amerindians, (and who) says that soul ‘originates in an image’ and is conceived in the form of an image. Plato in his Myth of Er uses a similar word, paradeigma a basic form encompassing your entire destiny. Though this accompanying image shadowing your life is the bearer of fate and fortune, it is not a moral instructor or to be confused with conscience. (Hillman, The Soul’s Code, p. 9)

For Hillman not only is the ‘soul’ or daimon not a moral instructor, there is also, among human beings what he calls the ‘bad seed’. And as his begins his exploration of the ‘bad seed,’ Hillman gives us a picture of contemporary American culture, closer to home than Hitler from history.

Faceless corporate boards and political administrators make decisions that wreck communities, ruin families, and despoil nature. The successful psychopath pleases the crown and wins elections. The think glass of the TV tube and it chameleon-like versatility in displaying whatever is wanted favors distance, coldness, and the front of charm, as do many of the sleek accoutrements of high station in the political, legal, religious and corporate structures. Anyone who rises in a world that worships success should be suspect, for this is an age of psychopathy. The psychopathy today no longer slinks like  a dirty rat through the dark alleys of black-and-white 1930’a crime films, but parades through the boulevards in a bullet-proof limo on state visits, runs entire nations, and sends delegates to the U.N. Hitler therefore is old style and can divert us from seeing through the mask worm by the demonic today, and tomorrow. The demonic that is timeless nonetheless enters the world disguised in contemporary fashion, dressed to kill. (James Hillman, The Soul’s Code, p.215-216)

And then, after listing the demonstrable traits of Hitler (cold heart, Hell fire, wolf, anality, suicides of women, freaks, humorless Hitler,) Hillman writes a prophetic warning in this book, published in 1996:

Our republic should learn this lesson from Hitler, for we might one day vote into power a hero who wins a giant TV trivia contest and educate children to believe the Information Superhighway is the road to knowledge. If one clue to psychopathy is a trivial mind expressing itself in high-sounding phrases, then an education emphasizing facts rather than thinking, and patriotic, politically or religiously correct ‘values’ rather than critical judgement may produce a nation of achieving high school graduates who are also psychopaths.

The daimon’s transcendence places it outside time, which it enters only by growing down. In order to grasp the biography of the daimon from the chronology of a life, we must ‘read life backward,’  by means of intuition…Intuition sees everything at once, given as a whole. Time strings things out into a chain of successive events leading toward a finishing line. (Ibid, p. 225)

After citing such potential background influences as ‘early traumatic conditioning,  hereditary taint, group mores, a choice mechanism, karma and zeitgeist, Hillman arrives at ‘The Shadow’ in his exploration of the ‘bad seed.’

Apart from biological and environmental factors, the psychological propensity to destroy exists within all human beings. Violence, crime, murder, and cruelty belong to the human soul as its shadow. The Bible gives this shadow due respect by issuing outright, as five of the Ten Commandments, prohibitions against theft, murder, adultery, lying and envy. These universal tendencies, laten in everyone, are the basis for protective societal forms, political organization, and moral constraints. If the human soul had no shadow, who’d need lawyers, criminologists, or confessors? At any moment, the autonomy of the shadow may emerge like Mr. Hyde from Dr. Jekyll, or come slowly to the fore under extreme conditions, as in the novel, Lord of the Flies…..Hitler knew the shadow all too well, indulged it, and was obsessed by it, and strove to purge it; but he could not admit it in himself, seeing only its projected form as Jews, Slavs, intellectual, foreign, weak, and sick. (Ibid, p.233-234)

And then, echoing, with a different perspective than Hedges, Hillman comes to what he calls the Lacuna, as a portion of his depiction of the bad seed.

Lacuna: Something fundamentally human is missing. Your character, your personality inventory has a hole in it. Your crimes are not due to the presence of the shadow (since everyone ins subject to that universal archetype), but rather to a specific absence, the lack of human feeling. Adolf Guggenbuhl-Craig’s theory calls this the missing essential, eros. Catholic theology called the absence privatio boni, deprivation of goodness, as we say colloquially, ‘that boy is no good.’

Other traits may fill in the absence: impulsiveness, (the short fuse), shortsightedness, (immediate gratification outweighs long-term consequences), repetitive rigidities, emotional poverty, stunted intellect, imperviousness to guilt and remorse (the Teflon shrug), projection and denial—all these are noted, but principal and more basic of that erotic lacuna, the cold absence, that inability to feel for and into another loving creature. (Ibid, p. 234)

Finally, Hillman sums up:

The call (the daimon bad seed) offers transcendence, becoming as necessary to a person’s life on earth as performance to (Judy) Garland, battle to Patton, painting to Picasso. As the potential for art and thought were given with the acorn, so is the potential for demonic crime.

Quoting Jack Kaz, Seductions of Crime: Moral and Sensual attractions of Doing Evil, p. 315), Hillman writes:

….people don’t understand….People in the life ain’t looking for no home and grass in the yard and shit like that. We the show people. The glamour people. Come on the set with the finest car, the finest woman, the finest vines. Hear people talking about you. Hear the bar get quiet when you walk in the door. You make something out of nothing. (Ibid, p 235)