Listening in to a hypothetical conversation between a bishop and Iacocca...

 In an opinion piece for CBC today, June 21, 2022, entitled, “Canada is hooked on real estate. It needs a detox’, Toronto lawyer Mark Morris, writes:

“Western economies used to produce products and later on, services. Those products and services created enduring value, jobs and above all, innovation. But we in Canada have not engaged in such projects of late. Instead, we have experienced a lost decade—a decade where a significant amount of available capital and innovation of available capital and innovation has turned to constructing glass buildings in the sky.”

Also, within the last few days, the CEO of a group alphabetized as CTREIT, Kevin Salsberg, was reported to have answered an interviewer’s question about REIT’s role in the Canadian housing shortage and perceived crisis in that medium and low-income Canadians are increasingly unable to acquire affordable housing. He spoke words to this effect:

We are in the business of making profit; you can’t expect us to solve Canada’s social ills.

Sadly, the reporter did not provide a legitimate follow-up question:

While you are in the business of making profit, as we would all agree, do you and your company have or share any responsibility for creating some of Canada’s social ills?

Lawyer Mark Morris articulates a truth about the fixation on real estate, as a generator of profit, without many of the hassles attendant on more complex, and more service-oriented business operations. However, his argument, sadly, is only one highly instrumental aspect of the underlying problem. As far back as 1986, (as recounted earlier in a piece in this space), Lee Iacocca wrote a letter to the presidents of both Yale and Harvard universities, detailing his professional difficulty in attracting their brightest graduates into the auto industry. Both presidents replied to the effect that their schools had been teaching the wrong stuff to their undergraduates. It was clear to the auto executive that Wall Street was like a magnet to these bright minds, immediately following graduation, as “it” and the financial services sector offered the most obvious and most predictable and most efficacious pathway to financial success. The auto industry could not compete.

Derivatives, and a near economic crash and multiple up’s and down’s in the financial markets later by some thirty-plus years later, we note that the pattern of those choices by those “bright” graduates to the “golden ring,” however that ring is conceived by individuals, has overtaken not only many of the brightest graduates on both sides of the 49^th parallel, but in many places around the world. The acquisition of personal wealth, the commodification of everything and the equation that makes all of these gears in the economic/financial machine grind smoothly, transactionalism, itself, an excuse for turning all of us into either or both consumer or seller of both things and services/skills are now impaling at least North American culture, including the universities which have morphed into little more than technical training institutes, fixated on providing graduates with the most efficacious and predictable pathway to financial success, as part of their recruiting foundation, serving the explicit needs of business, corporations and the pursuit of both personal and corporate profit.

As Iacocca noted in his book,“Talking Straight”, when he went into the business world, while profit was an important aspect of the corporation’s raison d’etre, it was not the only goal. The provision of goods and services, the support of workers and their families, and the general contribution to the public interest were also high on the agenda of boards and executives in those corporate suites. I was privileged to have a family dentist for nigh on half a century who, after being invited to join his roommate in college in a dental practice following graduation, turned the invitation down with words to this effect:

I’m sorry, “X”, but it is clear that you are committed to making as much money as you can from your practice, while that is not my primary goal. I do not believe that our visions of a dental practice are compatible. Consequently, I will not be joining you in your offer.

When an ecclesial bishop defines his “charge” to his diocese as “10 percent more people and 15 percent more revenue,” (also previously noted in this space) as his definition of the spiritual goals of his episcopate, in 1998, we already know that the train of social and economic and political balance and sustainability has gone off the track. Conflating the church’s mission with the terms and goals that would be held in high regard at a General Motors Annual General Meeting of Shareholders, is not only suspect of such leadership. It is also a significant signal that even the pursuit of things spiritual and ethical and moral and the very institution that has for centuries been held to count for those balancing influences, under the rubric and the tutelage of pilgrims, scholars, liturgists and pastors has slipped into the ship of state, not only from the perspective of institutional need for funds and social respectability, but also from the perspective of how it measures itself and its ‘success’ both of the career of the bishop and also of the practice of ministry of those hundreds of men and women toiling under such a myopic if not actually blind leadership.

Can we even imagine a conversation between Iacocca and our episcopal bishop?

Iacocca: What do you mean by reducing your episcopate to one of dollars and numbers of seats in pews when, over the centuries, spiritual monks and pilgrims and members of the religious have dedicated their lives to the search for God and not the limited interests of those of us who attempt to steer large for-profit corporations by both providing goods and services while attaining reasonable profits?

Bishop: Well, I was merely attempting to bring a metaphor of common conventional understanding to the discussion of how our church might grow. The metaphor did not exclude the pursuit of a legitimate search for God, in and through the guidance of the holy scriptures, the weekly liturgy, the traditions of the church, and the individual human experience of both the laity and the clergy. It was a very focused metaphor, relying on the premise that regardless of the orientation of both clergy and laity either to a more liberal or a more conservative theology, most people would be able to connect with and resonate with the metaphor.

Iacocca: And yet, can you see what message your metaphor sends to those not in the room when you delivered your charge? It says to many, including me, that the church has fallen prey to the language, and the mind-set, and the attitudes and the processes of the for-profit corporation. Your dependence on benefactors through the collection plate, in terms of dollars, cannot supercede, even and especially from the mouths of church hierarchy, the reliance of the culture, including its economic and its political and intellectual aspects and personnel and practices on the church’s prophetic voice amid the cacophony of the money-changers. Was it not Jesus himself, who angrily turned over the tables in the temple in a white-hot wave of anger, while turning them out of the temple? And, by your words, have you not risked bringing those money-changers right back into your temples of worship, as those effectively in charge? Of course, you may have theologically disciplined clergy, who are attempting to bring the “word of God” into the pulpit and thereby the pews and to the people sitting there. However, your message denotes and connotes a highly sophisticated marketing approach to your operation and leadership. Do you indeed and in fact rank your clergy on the basis of how much money and how many bums are in pews as your criteria for promotions?

Bishop: Well……it is true that we have to have some manner of determining the effectiveness of individual clergy if we are going to find appropriate assignments for their skills and talents, in order to fit them with congregations who might work with them. And one of the ways to discern their effectiveness is by the numbers; you know, the numbers don’t lie. So, that is an integral component of any assessment of clergy value and appropriateness for advancement.

Iacocca: That response is far more frightening than even I would have expected prior to this conversation. I know that fiscal statements of revenue and expenses have to show more black than red, in order for the enterprise to continue to operate. And yet, I also know, from both a spiritual/theological/psychological perspective that optimism and hope, allegedly the two values most valued after agape love, are highly instrumental in generating altruism and unselfishness and beneficience…those values that will determine the dollars that arrive in the church coffers. And those values, far from stemming from and being birthed from a corporate, business and profit-seeking agenda, originate in a perception and a vision of something far more important, higher, if you like, on the scale of what w humans aspire to….I think the colloquial phrase from my church experience is “seeking to be closer to God”…..Politicians use the phrase, “belonging and serving something larger than ourselves”….and if serving God is not part of that, then we are collectively diminishing ourselves and God by setting our sights so low, as percentage increases of people and dollars. Don’t you agree?

Bishop: I never expected to be on the receiving end of a lecture on theology from a corporate tycoon like you. However, your words and your thoughts and your perceptions and values are striking me in a way that I could not and would not have happened if one of my advisors had been speaking. I am aware that there is considerable pressure from many quarters to “prove” myself as bishop of this diocese. There are many members of the laity who have extremely high standards themselves, in their private lives, and extend, perhaps you could say, project those standards onto their bishop and church. It is an establishment church, and the establishment here are very conscious of, and also conscientious about, their own reputation as part of this diocese. I know that my episcopate will last only a few years, and I am determined to leave a legacy of success when I leave. And that kind of focus is instrumental in my decision-making.

Iacocca: I heard from one of the parishioners in your diocese that Jesus was the best salesman in history, as if to honour and pay obeisance to that aspect of His life and reality. And, as I am in the business of “selling” in all of its many intricate, complex and unsavoury aspects, I have spent a considerable time reflecting on that statement. I never actually considered Jesus as a model for the specific act of “selling” all through my training and practice in school and in business. I learned and how to investigate and to interpret what the market wanted. I learned that people do not often tell those intent on digging up public opinion their deepest truth, and that, in order to appeal to their base instincts, anyone has to take into account many variables that do not easily submit to empirical evidence standards. Feelings of consumers, we find, although very hard to approximate, are a driving force in those ready and willing to write cheques for vehicles. And, if I may take a moment of pride here, I would like to say something about the driving forces that resulted in the Ford Company’s design of the original Mustang. We knew that there were many, mostly men, although some women too, who would like to be seen and seated in a driving machine that was different, exciting, somewhat racy, a little futuristic and also, and this was one of the hardest things, affordable. Of course, the results, both initially and over time, have far exceeded our highest projections and, for me and for Ford, that has been a feather in both of our caps. Now, why have I raised this analogy?
It seems to be that the human relationship/connection to the Almighty has some elements that overlap this narrative. The notion of being different, exciting, inspiring, and even a little radical, all features embodied in the Mustang, are symbols of some of the same experiences you and your clergy and laity are seeking, whether or not you give those words to the journey or not. Ford company did not design and produce that vehicle from scarcity; it produced it from a sense of abundance, of talent, of raw materials, of market potential, of artistic and creative imagination and of a need to bring us all to the same page of wonderment and pride.

And while a car is not a symbol of either God or Heaven, nor even a spiritual life of fulfillment, reflection, serenity and inner peace, nor of personal retreats and silences, of prayer and reading of the most intimate spiritual reflections, for example of people like Hildegard of Bingen, in the 12^th century. Considered a sick child, she was placed in the care of a Benedictine nun at eight years of age, became a Benedictine nun herself and through a strong dedication to the Holy Spirit attracted others and eventually established a new Benedictine House, as she believed, in answer to a divine command. For us Catholics, Bishop, we revere and learn about such examples of Christian devotion to God, to the Holy Spirit and to the attitudes and lifestyle that sustains and supports that devotion. She did not ‘sell’ those others; she simply lived her life, humbly and quietly and reverentially and that example inspired and stirred others to follow in her manner. It is not only the church that is in danger of losing its way in the cacophony and the whirlwind of public adulation for material success. Our company, too, is unable to attract the brightest graduates from the best universities, many of whom are choosing Wall Street and financial success, rather than something less “glitzy” like the auto industry.

So, when you articulate your diocesan goals and objectives in the very terms I have used for our investors and our board of directors, I know that the train we are both travelling is off the track.

I also see that the clock has run overtime scheduled for this conversation. Perhaps, you would reflect on what we have said, and we could return to our conversation.

Bishop: Sounds like a reasonable plan to me.

To be continued……

Reflecting on being a responsible citizen in a suspect public square

 There are times when the welter of the weight of international evidence of war, famine, drought, fires, floods and nuclear tests and threats is simply too much. It is too much for each individual, not to mention too much for any single group or organization. And, in this cultural climate, we all feed dispossessed, emasculated (even females), alienated, ostracised and abused by the sheer weight of the despair and our impotence in attempting or even considering trying to make a difference, even leave a mark on the molasses of that culture.

A report of a shooting in an upscale, coiffed and preened and presumable affluent community just south of Birmingham Alabama, named Vistavia Hills, (Is the name from a Jane Austen novel?), at an Episcopal church, St. Stephens by name, in which two people were killed while engaged in a potluck supper, is, on one hand, just another in a long list of mass shootings that, like a weaponized pandemic, holds the nation hostage to its own rules, regulations and the attitudes and zealotry that clings to those attitudes and rules. From another perspective, it is also another incident that exposes and betrays the seemingly incontrovertible divide between those who ride the ‘highway’ of success, affluence, religious self-righteousness, and pride, and those whose lives confine them, if not to the literal “other side of the tracks”, certainly to a perceptual field of dispossession, alienation, anger and revenge. Are these shooters, mainly male, primarily full of shame at their lives and their persons and their prospects? Are they offended that others have climbed some sort of metaphorical ladder of social approbation, not to mention the insurance “policy” many of those achievers believe they have secured for an afterlife among streets paved with gold. We do not know the motive of this particular shooter; however, racism, and hate fused into a humanoid weapon (body-and-assault-rifle often) tell the story in too many of these shootings.

As a former Episcopal priest, who served in another American church, in a far different neighbourhood, on the western frontier where Smith and Wesson insured the pick-ups, whose rear windows were decorated by weapons on rifle racks, and where, on an especially warm sunny summer day, a former U.S. Marine who had boasted about serving in Viet Nam, without having set foot in that country, taunted his twelve-year-old daughter, asking her to watch as he aimed his rifle, ignoring her weeping and screaming protests, at a single sparrow sitting on a clothesline, and fired.

Whatever the lasting imprint on that girl’s mind and life of that incident, it has burned itself into this memory like a searing wood-burner into oak or pine, indelible and jagged and painful.

Naturally, we all have incidents that have seared themselves into our consciousness, perhaps even into our unconscious, that have shaped much of the manner/lens/expectation/attitude/even belief through which we encounter the world. That rifle shot was not the first, and it certainly is not the last such incident in this scribe’s life. Whether it encapsulated already forming perceptions seems more likely than not. It was another example of the abuse of power explicitly and incorrigibly before my eyes and ears. And that perception of abuse has been a central theme over the eight decades, not always or even predominantly aimed at this scribe, but evidenced in situations in which a far more empathic, compassionate and certainly ethical approach would have stood both the decision-makers and their “subjects” in far better stead.

Such incidents, as the shooting of the sparrow, while heinous and clearly avoidable, are only one kind of abuse of power that is blatant and extreme. Other situations see professionals abandoning their common sense role and responsibility as a way to avoid what appears to be ‘making a mistake’ and leaving the responsibility to the ‘expert’.

For example, a nonchalant recommendation of a home-nurse to have a surgical wound examined by the performing surgeon, only a few days after the surgery, motivated by the urge to ‘cover her/his ass’ in supervision where s/he is certain to be asked ‘did you recommend that the surgical site be seen by the surgeon? Illustrates the point. If that nurse believed s/he was not sure how serious were the symptoms in front of him/her, she could have recommended a visit to the family physician. However, many family physicians have surrendered their role and their responsibility to surgical patients after the specialist has performed the surgery. Decades ago, family physicians were evaluated by patients on their willingness to refer to a specialist, many of them preferring to ‘hold on’ to their patients, while others were open to the referral. Now, it seems the reverse is true: family physicians seem to do more referring to specialists that treating their patients. Those referrals and the welter of filling prescriptions seems, from the outside, to be their full-time job.

This last week we read, in The Star, of a deeply embedded practice in Ontario, centred around something referred to a MCR’s (Medical Condition Reports). In a piece by Robert Cribb and Declan Keogh, entitled, ‘You’re guilty until proven innocent;’ Doctors question Ontario’s automatic licence suspensions for drivers with certain medical conditions’, we read:

Ontario law requires doctors, burse practitioners and optometrists to report patients to the Ministry of Transportation ‘who have certain medical or visual conditions that may make it dangerous to drive’. Those conditions include uncontrolled substance use disorders where patients are non-compliant with treatment recommendations, some psychiatric afflictions, seizure-causing disorders, cognitive impairments, and other ‘hi8gh risk medical conditions.

There is little to no room for medical discretion in Ontario, where doctors could make a judgement, as there apparently is in other provinces such as Alberta. And yet, the “safety” on Ontario roads is not congruent with the tight-assed regulations in this province. Tight-assed regulations, without room for judgement, however, do not provide evidence of additional safety on the roads. Those who have cared for patients and families whose lives have been forever upended by unsafe drivers, for whatever reason, hold to the tight non-discretionary approach. On the other hand, some regard it as “guilty until proven innocent”. And the process of recovering one’s removed driving license is both costly, and clearly not always successful on appeal.

Reporting a rise in depression to the attending emergency room physician by an Ontario nursing student who was providing care for two adults in order to pay for her education, this nursing student was informed by the Ministry of Transportation that her license had been suspended. The student nurse was never told that her licence was about to be suspended, on the order of a doctor. And the reporting psychiatrist who submitted the MCR was not among those who treated her in hospital when she went to the Emergency Room. Working under considerable stress, while attempting to complete her fourth of five years of professional education, the nursing student was aghast, disappointed and despondent. For the ensuing months, prior to her recovery of her licence, she had to rely on others to drive her, including Uber and taxis mounting to a $1000 bill, and there is considerable justification for others to refrain from reporting such a condition as depression, given the way her case played out.

Of course, we all want safer roads, especially those insurance companies, renowned for their legal moat protecting them every which way but Sunday, from coming clean on a claim. And, there are clearly drivers who ought not to be behind the wheel, likely most of whom have never even considered reporting a medical or intellectual condition that might impair their ability to drive.

These black-and-white-tight regulations (Ontario’s MCR’s for example), like minimum sentences for judges, have serious implications for the long-term in our culture. First there is the subservience to the political class who write and pass the most stringent kind of regulation, in their firm belief that such laws will appeal to their most conservative constituents. And then there is the issue of curtailing the professional judgement, discernment of the professionals to whom jurisdiction has been given. More than these implications, ordinary people, once they become familiar with the existence of, and the strait-jacketing regulations that bind them, those Medical Condition Reports, will think twice about disclosing their medical condition, and as a consequence, will refrain from seeking appropriate treatment. And that resistance to disclosure to medical professionals, to social workers, and even to other professional care-givers that leaves many of them operating in the dark, as to the full context of whatever situation they might be facing. The lives of both potential patients/clients and professionals are limited by such an unnecessary and unjustified kind of regime.

We live in an era in which human rights have risen to the top of the cultural, language and legal totem poles. And there is considerable justification for that elevation. However, we have to be careful that one set of ‘rights’ (highway safety, for example linked to insurance and police costs as well as political reputations of both individuals and parties) are not stamping on those rights of individuals to seek appropriate health care. 

Here are a few minimal suggestions:

Obviously, no report should be signed and submitted without the full disclosure that such action is being taken.  Also, there needs to be a clause in the MCR regulations that requires a medical professional who signs such a report, to at least have held a clinic visit with the subject patient. Perhaps, too, a second medical professional’s opinion would be warranted, and should the two medical professionals disagree, an ethics committee could have the authority to review the file, before any report is issued.

There is another implication of this kind of evidence of the potential relationship between the state (as in the health care system) and the general public. And it regards the linking of both the over-reporting on MCR’s, without oversight, and the under-engagement of that home-care nurse above, and the general practitioner, both of whom defer to the specialist. If the state is permitted to issue, and then to execute and to enforce the MCR, in such a cavalier manner, including the murky appeal process, then such a model establishes and reinforces that mind-set, now publicly endorsed, and embedded into the culture, that power-down, needs to be exercised in order to prevent potential accidents. And this principle has serious implications if and when it overrides such highly significant and relevant issues that are legitimately included in the phrase “patient care”….

The confidentiality of medical records is a deeply embedded principle with which most are comfortable. The risks to that principle’s erosion have risen with the onset of digital technology, even with the extra care taken by the technology professionals. However, in a period in history in which labels of especially psychiatric labels are thrown around, out of the mouths and pens of persons who have no legitimacy even to use those diagnostic labels, individual human lives are impacted daily by those making judgements about the “suitability” of individuals for specific assignments, based, not on the available evidence of competence, trustworthiness, and ethical standards, but on the glib and free application of a word, an adjective or perhaps a noun of a condition that the candidate does not represent, and the judge has no reason or justification for uttering.

And once uttered, such epithets cannot and will never be retracked, or erased from the ‘ether’ of public opinion. And reclamation of the damage often never ends, prior to the end of the person’s life. Impunity, however, for the person who utters such defamatory ‘judgement’ is both conventionally tolerated and even endorsed.

The task of being a sentient, responsible, collaborative and trusting citizen of the public square is growing not only more tense, and thereby more exhausting and anxiety-inducing; it is also generating a significant demographic of people who are losing, or already have lost, complete confidence that the system (public institutions and the people and the guidelines that pertain and prevail therein) is worthy of our trust and our support.

And, on that street lies danger!

Trying to 'dog-paddle' our way into the waters of archetypal psychology...

 So much of our conversation, that does not focus on the pragmatics of daily chores or public issues, seems to be focused on our emotions. Those “feelings” that seem to be attached to each and every experience, without prompting, thought, or even reflection. I “feel” happy when my dog cocks her head while seeming to listen to my question about her need. I feel sad when I know someone has been disappointed with me over something I either failed to do or something I did in a way that did not meet their expectations. I feel disheartened that the world has seemed to slide/fall/drown in the morass of so many significant crises, none of which, either individually or certainly not collectives, seem to be addressethough everyone knows the modest steps that could and would provide some relief.

I feel invigorated when reflecting on the beauty of the sunrise over the mist blanketing the river. The day even takes on an “aura” of renewed invigorating life….and I deeply regret the many estranged people whom I have been a contributor to their absence, whether for a day or two, or for a lifetime. Are these multiple, often complex and even conflicting emotions “my” identity, and “my” personality, and “my” ego playing out against the landscape of the events and people whose paths cross mine?

Or, is there another way to see these highly ‘infectious’ and even more highly captivating topics of both conversation at the water cooler, in the family and especially in therapy?

What does Willian Blake mean by considering “feelings” to be “divine influxes” (that) accompany, qualify and energize images, as noted by James Hillman, in “Archetypal Psychology a Brief Account” (p. 48). Hillman continues:

They (emotions) are not merely personal but belong to imaginal reality, the reality of the image and help make the image felt as specific value. Feelings elaborate its complexity, and feelings are as complex as the image that contains them. Not images represent feelings, but feelings are inherent in images….(Quoting Patricia Berry, An approach to the Dream, 1974) Hillman writes: They (emotions) adhere or inhere to the image and may not be explicit at all…We cannot entertain any image in dreams, or poetry or painting, without experiencing an emotional quality presented by the image itself.” Hillman then continues: This further implies that any event experienced as an image is at once animated, emotionalized, and placed in the realm of value….The task of therapy is to return personal feelings (anxiety, desire, confusion, boredom, misery) to the specific images which hold them. Therapy attempts to individualize the face of each emotion: the body of desire, the face of fear, the situations of despair. Feelings are imagined into their details. (Hillman, op. cit. p. 480)

Hillman’s thought continues: any emotion not differentiated by a specific image is inchoate, common, and dumb, remaining both sentimentally personal and yet collectively unindividualized. (p.49)

It seems relevant to refer back to the notion of what an image is, from the perspective of Archetypal Psychology (from Hillman, op. cit. p 7)

As ‘not what one sees, but the way in which one sees,’ an image is given by the imagining perspective and can only be perceived by an act of imagining….

First one believes images are hallucinations (things seen); then one recognizes them as acts of subjective imagining; but then, third, come the awareness that images are independent of subjectivity and even of the imagination itself and a mental activity. Images come and go, (as in dreams) at their own will, with their own rhythm, within their one fields of relations, undetermined by personal psychodynamics. In fact, images are the fundamentals which make the movements of psychodynamics possible. They claim reality, that is, authority, objectivity, and certainty. In this third recognition, the mind is in the imagination rather than the imagination in the mind. The noetic* and the imaginal no long.er opposed each other….Corbin attributes this recognition to the awakened heart as locus of imagining, a locus also familiar in the Western tradition of from Michelangelo’s imagine del cuor.# This interdependence of heart and image intimately ties the very basis of archetypal psychology with the phenomena of love. Corbin’s theory of creative imagination of the heart further implies for psychology that, when it bases itself in the image, it must at the same time recognize that imagination Is not merely a human faculty but is an activity of soul to which the human imagination bears witness. It is not we who imagine but we who area imagined. (Hillman, op, cit. p. 7-8)

An archetypal image operates like the original meaning of idea..not only ‘that which’ one sees but also that ‘by means of which’ one sees….An image termed archetypal is immediately valued as universal, trans-historical, basically profound, generative, highly intentional and necessary. (Ibid. p. 12-13)

If all of this reads like a dive into the “weeds” of abstractions, platonic ideals, and the esoteric aspect of the creative imagination, that is because to some extent it is. And a good part of my problem, and possibly others as well, is that we have been, like tea bags, steeped in a culture in which the abstract, the neotic, the poetic and the relationship of person to image has been “brewed” into us. That is, we are separate from, and also to varying degrees alienated from ourselves by having been taught to concentrate on what we were told is “objective reality” as opposed to “subjective reality” when, in fact, there may not be such a separation from a psychological perspective, especially an archetypal psychology perspective.

The fact that in some circles, archetypal psychology has been dismissed as outside the purview of pure science, and even verging into the world of the psychic cult, and then, as a consequence, been ascribed a similar reductionistic “diagnosis” as unable to be studied, or even intellectually considered as a discipline worthy of scholars.

Jung, Hillman and their ‘precursers and ancestors’ in this field are rarely considered appropriate for university curricula, especially Hillman. Just this week, in an email from a highly reputed Canadian scholar who focuses on the radical imagination, I read words and sentiments of “suspicion” about Hillman’s work, as proof of that scholar’s dedication and loyalty to his scholarly research. A couple of years ago, when I approached a faculty of education professor about the study of Hillman, I was dubbed ‘another similar to Jordan Peterson, the psychologist from U. of Toronto, whose writings have both inspired and outraged many around the world.

Trouble with all of this is that while an empirical, sentient and reproducible experimental science, and the frames of mind on which such scholarship is dependent, is eminently useful, honourable, and somewhat predictive of some aspects of our relationship to others, to nature and to anything remotely akin to a deity, or especially multiple deities, that process may not be the extent of either our human imagination, nor the limits of our capacity to envision ourselves in the universe.

If we were to begin our process from the imagination, the image itself, (as in the cliché ‘we think in pictures and not in words’)….then it may well be that the ‘image’ does indeed have us, for the moment, and the emotions that flow from that moment are just those ‘divine influxes’ (Blake) that provide the enrichment, the clothing, the aromas, the tastes and the fullness of the memory of that image. In other places, Hillman suggests that archetypal psychology begins in the “south” rather than in the “north” as if to say that our premises of our intellect are indeed ‘superceded’ not as more important, but rather as different as a starting place for our discovery both of self and our relationship to the universe.

If the ‘image’ has neither good or bad inherent qualities, but simply is, and if the image ‘has’ us in its ‘hand’ as it were, then we are in some somewhat fantastical way connected to and part of all others who too have been ‘in’ that image. Is that so fanciful as to warrant relegation to the “psychedelic” realm of the absurd, the bizaare, and the occult? Or, perhaps, rather, are those realms so dangerous and outside of our learned frame of reference of logic, and the extrinsic dimension of ourselves and each “other thing/person” that we have succumbed to the dominance of as single way of perceiving ourselves in the world, and the world itself.

If the image is not only an image in our imagination but a ‘way of seeing’ then whatever we are perceiving is also a lens through which we are engaged in that perception. If what we currently see in the world is an existential crisis, then we are also using that existential crisis as the lens through which we are perceiving the world. And if that sympathetic vibration between what we “see/perceive” and the “lens through which we are indeed “seeing/perceiving”, with all of the attendant emotions, and verbiage that comes with the fullness of that experience, are we not then far more intimately and profoundly engaged in a process that is part of the larger world of the creative imagination that has birthed, nurtured, wounded, murdered, caressed, loved, hated and alienated individuals forever.

Is it not then feasible to imagine that in a Christian church, for example, the act of the crucifixion of whatever/whomever is perceived as another ‘mythical savior’ would need to be hanged? And, is it not worth considering that we are all intimately and integrally and inescapably linked to other such archetypal narratives in which we find ourselves? And while the experience of those narratives preys on us as heavy and negative emotions, they also link us to a universe in which such images have been living, breathing vibrating and lashing through human psyches forever.

While this perspective, one in which I am trying to learn to “dog-paddle” (the first swimming stroke one learns), may demand a re-think, and a re-viewing, and a re-conceptualizing of who we are, where we are in the universe of both time and place and also which images are and have been ‘having’ us in their ‘hands’ ‘grip’ or ‘embrace’ much of those different ‘holdings’ in part dependent at least in part in how we perceive that moment, such a demand seems eminently worthy of our attention.

For example, the image of a deity or of multiple deities, as opposed to some anthropomorphism of a deity, is qualitatively different depending on the nature of the image, and its ‘hold’ on each of us. Beyond the boundaries of our logic, our definition of the nature around us, beyond time and place, beyond anything or anyone we might imagine, is it not possible that each of us carries, reconsiders, sets aside, picks up again, re-positions and then “repeats” such a process as the calendar of events, and people and successes and failures unfolds in the spaces where we live?

Next time, let’s take a reflective look as the difference between “spirit” and “soul” as archetypal psychology sees that difference.

 

*states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the s=discursive intellect. They are illuminations, revelations, full of significance and importance, all inarticulate though they remain; and as a rule they carry with them a curious sense of authority (William James) Synonyms: cerebral, inner, intellectual, interior, internal, mental psychological, psychic.

#When the artist Michelangelo was crafting his masterpiece, David, he didn’t see a slab of stone. He chiseled what they call the imagine del cuore which means image of the heart. Michelangelo believed that the masterpiece was already inside of the stone. He just has to remove the excess to reveal it. (MadisonnJackson. wordpress.com)

Can we move from tinkering to transformation of the North American culture?

 Ban assault rifles…implement background checks….impose red-flag laws…limit magazine capacity….???? What about teach your kids to read and to be able to discern the difference between a ‘militia’ that requires defense enabled by a personal weapon and today’s situation where, ironically, and perhaps even predictably, the enemy is the weaponized divide?

The conflation of literalism, fundamentalism, populism and the pursuit of narcissistic addiction to power for its own sake, and not for the betterment of the public good, is a recipe for dissolution, devolution, and perhaps even disintegration. As the most powerfully weaponized nation, the wealthiest nation, the ‘best educated’ nation, in terms of the preponderance of undergraduate and graduate degrees, and the most scientifically advanced nation on earth, the irony of the “sclerosis” (courtesy of Michelle Goldberg, New York Times Columnist, on MSNBC) of American politics is both tragic and models other deep geopolitical divides.

Let’s try to unpack some of the more obvious gaps in the American culture, and possibly in the American zeitgeist and psyche:

§  the macho male archetype that confronts all “impediments” with hard power,

§   the dependence of millions of non-male sycophants who also cling to that model of power,

§  the resort to militarized police and the plethora of law enforcement agencies established as a “defence” against whatever current and perceived threat/enemy that rears its ugly head,

§  the blind hubristic denial that the established “insurance policies” (both literally and metaphorically) are both inadequate and in appropriate for most crises

§  the monetizing and idealization of that goal in profits of each and every human and organizational transaction

§  the reduction of each person to an economic ‘function’ and numerical identity

§  the identification of  human ‘identity’ in superficial, empiric, manipulated and manipulatable digits

§  the dominance of the corporation, the military, the pharmaceutical and the insurance and information machines…over the legitimate needs and aspirations of individual human beings

§  the legal definition of the corporation as a ‘person’ thereby protecting it from multiple legitimate legal actions

§  the out-sourcing of what once were government/public responsibilities to the private sector, to shield the political class from criticisms and electoral defeat

§  the gerry-mandering of districts to the point at which over 90% of all elected officials are returned to office as incumbents

§  the reduction of the education of children to behavioural, measureable responses

§  the erosion of the liberal arts from the majority of universities and colleges

§  the sanctification of the scientific, algorithmic, and the digital as the triumph of the American culture

§  the win-at-all-costs enculturation of all children, in a vain attempt to embody the ‘exceptionalism’ doctrine

§  the blind hubris of the establishment that “exceptionalism” is another ‘marketing’ and ‘selling’ and self-seducing ideal, not a statement of nature

§  the glorification of the heroic in the incidental, whether that incidental is in the science laboratory, the battlefield, the stock portfolio, the entertainment theatre, the athletic field, and even the religious sanctuary

§  the fear of the ‘other’ to the white, male stereotype of successful acquisition of status regardless of how that status is achieved or in whatever field of human endeavour

§  the measurement and definition of ‘support’ for the needy exclusively in dollars, numbers of persons hired and assigned, and the headlines of those superficial decisions

§  transformation of the political theatre into another internal battlefield in which the human lives (biographies, digital comments, tragedies and failures) of all combatants become weapons to be used against all opponents

§  the elevation and sanctification of war and all of the supportive material and personnel on that idol

§  the elevation of the extrinsic to a religious and national dominance within and in relations with the rest of the world

And before any American protests that s/he has no interest in being ‘lectured’ by a Canadian about a political culture, it needs to be said from the north side of the 49^th parallel that we inevitably and incontrovertibly absorb, as if by osmosis, whatever happens to be happening south of that border.

For decades, we have consumed, willingly and even enthusiastically, American television and movie productions as if, somehow, they were also integral to who we might become as Canadians. Many of our popular artists, in order to gain acceptance in Canada, had to rise to public acclaim in the U.S. as if that were the stamp of approval. That dynamic has changed, following the initiative of a “Canadian program requirement on our radio airwaves. Gradually, great Canadian talent emerged, was recognized for its inherent universality and timelessness, and an audience developed for Canadian talent. Ironically, one of America’s rock and roll icons, who chose to make his living in Canada, Ronnie Hawkins, died this weekend at 87. In the 60’s and 70’s he was an obvious exception to the cadre of Canadian talent moving to the U.S.

Always considering our military ‘might and value’ to be considerably inferior to that of the U.S., (not even up to the 2% of GDP that Prime Minister Pearson advocated decades ago, for NATO members), and certainly our economy relied heavily on U.S. trade, innovation, and even considerable financial infrastructure. The U.S. is and has been traditionally less risk-averse that Canadians and also more imaginative and louder in their support of new ideas and projects and the men and women who created them. We in Canada have much less affinity and even comprehension of ‘heroes’ both in the literal and in the metaphoric. We are a more dour people and culture, some would argue whose Scottish influence plays a strong role in our public pursuit of accounting and accountability, as a foundation of ‘good order and government’. We are much less interested in, and committed to, what we see as the American fixation with “freedom” as in freedom of speech (apparently including hate speech, which we collectively and individually abhor), and freedom to carry guns (even including assault rifles, which we have banned).

And while we notice, and some even adhere to, the glitz of affluence in America, we are nevertheless, more complex in our understanding and pursuit of contentment and peace, rather than the “pursuit of happiness”, which seems to currently obstruct much of what is now considered the American culture. This trait does not make us ‘better’ or ‘worse’ but simply very different. Our federation, unlike the American republic, while seemingly engaged in federal-provincial yin-yang tensions, is less exercised about ‘states rights’ when it comes to the separation of powers between Ottawa and the provincial capitals. Trends, in so many fields, once seeded in the U.S., and then documented in Canada, reflected upon as potential here, are not always adopted, and when we turn away from such initiatives, we are proud of our ‘independence’. One example is the well-known and celebrated refusal of Prime Minister Chretien to join the coalition of the willing to attack Iraq in 2003. Another is our adoption of a woman’s right to choose, in the midst of a strong Roman Catholic demographic.

While both Canada and the U.S. both struggle with minority race relations, our primary minority are the indigenous population in all provinces and territories, whose lives and children have been seriously and blatantly and inexcusably colonized by the white ‘European’ majority. Only recently has our society and culture generally wakened to our shame, culpability and the beginning of a national commitment to begin the process of reconciliation. On the other hand, blacks in America, while a larger percentage of the population that First Nations in Canada, have endured centuries of overt abuse at all levels and to various degrees. That abuse has taken the form of “slaves ownership and selling and trading slaves, lynchings, poll taxes, criminalizing minor offences,….and the list is only beginning. Whether the American treatment of blacks is more heinous and despicable than the Canadian treatment of indigenous seems mute given that on both sides of the 49^th parallel white supremacy reigned and to a considerable extent continues even into the 21^st century

Militarily, Canada has, however, allied with the U.S, in both world wars, in Afghanistan, and now in Ukraine. The perception and the conception of this conflict is one shared by many ‘western’ nations, given the Russian invasion that was allegedly not prompted by any single act of Ukraine. The arguments that the expansion of NATO significantly contributed to the Russian impulse for both aggression and national aggrandizement, (not to exclude the inflation of the personal, historic ego of Putin himself) have received little if any public notice in both the U.S. and Canada, given the empathic impulse in both countries that stirs the heart of many to open their homes and nation to Ukrainian refugees.

And in terms of generosity, the Americans doubtless, far outstrip both the Canadians and much of the rest of the world, given their compassion and their enthusiastic record of coming to the aid of the helpless, especially following a catastrophe, whether man-made, an act of nature or an unjustified military attack. Prevention of these catastrophes, as a cornerstone of public policy and integral to the process of governance, however, has received little attention politically, to some degree in both Canada and the U.S., the arguments against prevention including that it is ‘less sexy’ and ‘less able to be accounted for’ in terms of measurable results. How does the public know that that “$x billions” prevented that storm surge, or that hurricane? And given the cause-effect binary reductionism that lies at the core of most if not all public issues, especially including their diagnosis and proposed remediation, in all western governments, it is no surprise that prevention takes a back seat to crisis management.

Some argue that “hate” is now the core value in the United States. Canadians, on the other hand, would argue that we have not crossed that threshold yet, although hate was a prominent verbal bullet in the recent trucker blockade in Ottawa and on the Peace Bridge that connects Windsor and Detroit. Hatred of pandemic restrictions, government overreach, the tyranny of the “woke” and the rebellion of the “ordinary folk” who have, to some extent on both sides of the border, taken up arms, in proportions that we have not seen before.

The flow of money from the south, the United States, into the truckers’ blockade movement, and the hatred of government, especially the Canadian Prime Minister, has now prompted debate among Canadian security officials and scholars, not merely to take note of the American influence in Canada, but also to prepare for more, and to shore up our defences against further malignant, populist, right-wing, anarchist developments. On-line, social media influencers are on steroids not only to expand sales of consumer products and services; they are also rampant in “radicalizing” those mal-contents on both sides of the border, mostly bored, disengaged, minimally educated young men, who are easily induced into whatever excitement and incitement temps them.

Although religion and the church attendance in both countries has fallen precipitously over the last decades, not without just cause in many cases, a comment from a grandfather of one of the murdered children in Uvalde Texas had a pithy observation that seems to sum up much of the current zeitgeist, at least in the United States, where mass shootings are now the ‘new normal’…

“We used to be a nation under God; now we are a nation under guns!” was his comment. His wisdom, insight and clarity, while not embraced in the halls of power, is, nevertheless, like the insight, clarity and wisdom of the children who survived the latest massacre, prophetic and!

Can we hear the voice of the prophets amid the noise of our

“micro-nano-second-quick-fix-instant-gratification” perspective?

Proactive prevention, demands a transformation of the culture in both Canada and the U.S. as well as elsewhere.

Are we up to that degree of change?

Wrestling with lies, racism, cultural stereotypes and change....

 

Is there some devious and deceptive and dangerous causal relationship between the rampant racism that we are witnessing/experiencing and the prevalence of public lies with impunity?

Do those whose hearts are filled with fear and hate need lies to tolerate their own anger?

Do the lies about fascism in Ukraine, maintained by Putin, cover for an abuse of power so egregious that its legitimate and honourable and authentiuc justification escapes even the man who triggered the invasion?

Does the pathology of lies that has become a malignant tumor on the American political culture and elsewhere demonstrate a perverse camouflage for over-weening white supremacy and other forms of racism?

Are the passions behind the conviction to the lies and the passions of white supremacists coming from the same psychological root, the fear of powerlessness, emasculation, and eradication?

We have all witnessed and most likely experienced the hatred and contempt of some group, or some ideology, or some social class, or some ‘inferior’ cluster, even if it were only a ‘neighbourhood’ where the “riffraff” the “undesirebles,” eke out an existence. Whether through reverse snobbery of the rich, the powerful and the highly educated simply because of their state in the world, or through the contempt many of us have and feel for our authority figures who have abused their power over us, or whether we were tutored in the ‘art’ of subtle disdain for another religion than that of our family, or whether we were somehow steeped in a family belief and perception that only those with money, power, status and ‘success’ are worthy of our acquaintance and admiration….or whether we dreamt of someday mounting the pinnacle of some pedestal of rank and were conditioned, like one of Pavlov’s dogs, to pursue that dream at the expense of everything and everyone else….

Words like cronies, buddies, like-minds, and ‘team-players’ are all incorporated into the lexicon of “belonging” to some group at a very early age. Neighbours, too, and church members, and social and golf and curling club memberships all fit with our attempt to belong to something somewhere somehow sometime. Military enlistments, fraternity/sorority membership, and all the other ‘consumer’ memberships: Aeroplan, Air Miles, Optimum Membership….all designed to deliver more sales and more profits for their originators. Belonging, in both the formal and informal senses, is a pursuit that begins very early in our childhood. Groups of girls and boys tend to “hang-out’ together, unless and until there is a ‘falling out’ ignited by some social slight, bullying, taunt, or even gossip. In classrooms, too, young children vie for the attention of the teacher, in the hope that “being friendly” will enhance their own self-esteem, even if those words have not yet cropped up in their personal lexicon. Dating in adolescence as well as athletic and/or artistic activities offer opportunities for ‘socializing,’ making friends and in the process ‘getting to know what kind of friends we prefer’ and thereby discovering who we are.

And by extension, the question of those individuals/groups with whom we are not familiar or comfortable also begins to be ‘coloured in’ on our mind’s landscape. No longer ‘stick persons’ of merely a pencil outline, these people may even have a higher degree of both recognition and conscious awareness in our “lens” simply because they are ‘different’ from us. Incidents in which we listen to the adults in our world criticize a group, or indicate in some overt or subtle manner, that ‘they’ are undesirable in some way, begin to lay down imprints of either caution signs or ‘red flags’ depending on the nature of the ‘story’.

In small towns, religious affiliation often plays a significant part in our ‘selection process’ of ‘friends and ‘frenemies’….and the distinction may be based on nothing specific, concrete, or even any specific experience. The distinction may be a left-over from our grand-parents’ generation, so deep are the feelings and attitudes of prejudice. And this underground attitudinal ‘current’ may never reach the light or sound of even a facial or a verbal expression. It may lie dormant, even unknown to its carrier, for decades. This kind of familial engendering, acculturation, assimilation and transfer is so deep and so indelible if imperceptible, that it rears its ugly head only upon the evidence of some trigger, a moment, a look, a word, a story or an experience that ‘evokes’ this stream of the unconscious and brings it back into consciousness.

None of us is free from such emotional and attitudinal ‘weeds,’ some of them even toxic and lethal, lying camouflaged in political correctness and professional demeanour, unless and until they erupt. And a good part of the camouflage comprises our willingness and skill in ‘deluding’ both ourselves and the other, by, what else? lying, covering-up, denying, deceiving and dissembling all the while covering those “mask” words with a broad smile.

We have become professional dissemblers, and our justification is that ‘we have to go along to get along’! So those who truly offend us continue to offend others, and we go blithely about our lives, unscathed by either the consciousness of our own demons or by the ‘hurt’ those demons have caused others.
Canadian poet, Irving Layton wrote that we learn to love by hating. At the first hearing of that notion, I was shocked, and over the decades since, have come to realize that there is an element of clarification in the experience of both anger and hate. There is usually little or no ambiguity in our experience of anger, nor is there of hate. Why we feel those deep emotions, however, may too often escape our reflection, given that the heat of their eruption shoves reflection off our consciousness, and the ‘heat’ subsides, and/or is assuaged and comforted by a friend’s empathy and compassion.
Has there be a significant and perhaps tectonic shift in our culture from ‘covering and masking’ our racism, hate, contempt and our demons by some form of polite social demeanour to now transferring that hate, racism and contempt into some form of perverse distortion of reality that permits any interpretation of anything and everything leaving us free to our worst instincts?

I need to ponder that question…

Have the lies become the ‘mask’ for the worst kind of attitude, including the demonization and the weaponizing of our ‘enemy targets’ including those of a different racial, religious, ethic, or gender group?

Is there an as-yet unplumbed hidden connection between those things we hate and our emotional capacity to deal with them? For example, are we repulsed by something or someone or some institution at a traumatic level that, ever-after we are prone to express contempt or hatred for that X? And are we complicit in carrying forward, either consciously or not, those attitudes that we inherited from our families, when we were too innocent and too young to discern their venality?

This morning I read an obituary of a school friend, then, in the 50’s and 60’s, a devout Roman Catholic in a very devout Roman Catholic family, in a town split along the protestant-catholic divide without the blood-shed of the Belfast of Rev. Iain Paisley, who, after a career in business in the U.S. returned to serve as mayor of our hometown. Today his obit notes his funeral will be in a protestant church, inviting donations to that church. This is not to proselytize for Protestantism over Roman Catholicism; it is rather to say that we all change and yet our perceptions of many of those changes are impeded by our clinging to an original imprint on our consciousness. And we, both individually and collectively, become ‘stuck’ in those modes of both thinking and believing. Some of that ‘stuckness’ rises to the level of racism, or bigotry of any kind, while some of it becomes ‘unstuck’ and moves to transform in ways that we might not have anticipated.

Considerable work is being conducted into both how we deal with trauma, and with how we make moral decisions.
On the issue of how we deal with trauma, especially as it impacts children, recent)
research indicates that healthy, yet open conversations help our children to develop discerning capacities and maturities later that serve them well regardless of the hurdles they have to overcome in their adult years. Protecting them through a sustained silence about the trauma is only a self-protection that places our needs above theirs.
Specifically:
(from Center for Child Trauma Assessment, services and Interventions, cctasi.northwestern.edu/
Remain calm, meet them where they are, let them know it is not their fault, let them know there is no right or wrong way to feel or grieve after a traumatic event, allow the child to ask questions and be honest if you don’t know the answer….listen if s/he wants to talk, but do not force him/her to talk about trauma when s/he is not ready


And, while as parents we may not be conscious of what we are doing, we can learn and change, develop an openness to the new idea of exposing us to the notion that our child has been deeply and profoundly hurt, in and through whatever the family trauma was, and participate in open and voluntary conversations about their experience from their perspective, listening without judgement, to their perceptions and the attitudes that flow from them.

Human judgements many of them made in the flick of an eye, if not more quickly, have a significant impact, not only on the generation of conflict, including racism, and trauma, but also in the manner in which we comprehend and then assess and deal with the impacts. And in that process, as in almost all moments when we are “assessing” any situations, the level and manner of those judgements have a bearing on what happens next.

The question of how and when we make judgements has concerned other researchers. From bigthink.com, in a piece entitled, ‘The four moral judgements you make every day, our brains make snap moral decisions in mere seconds, by Scotty Hendricks, April 5, 2021, referencing an article by Dr. Bertram E. Malle of Brown University, there are four levels of assessments we all make, in sequence:

1.     Evaluations…the simple evaluations we make of things being good or bad, positive or negative…perhaps within a half second

2.     Norm Judgements…deciding is some action or thing is allowed, permissible, taboo or otherwise acceptable….limited to actions and often to future ones. Often invoking abstract notions of virtue and value, can be more deliberative than others.

3.     Wrongness judgements…to identify intentional violations of norms that are considered egregious, again in half a second

4.     Blame judgement…If wrongness judgements combine evaluations and norm judgements in a new way, then blame judgements combine all three. The most complex of the judgement categories, including factors of intentionality and justification…most people blame somebody for accidentally spilling milk less than they’d blame them for intentionally pouring a gallon on the floor. Our brains start to place blame in less than two seconds. Blame is not only a social tool; it can help us understand who did what but can also help regulate our moral behaviour in the future.

Clearly our culture is saturated, if not actually infested with and by “blame judgements” that run counter to simple evaluations, norms,  and wrongness… and leave many wandering in the desert of both accusations that may be misplaced and also others deep in a false security of absoluteness that offers a kind of pseudo-mental stability and security, as if our world is more stable and dependable than it really is.

Blaming all Romans (and Roman Catholics) for the Crucifixion of Christ is one epic blaming.

Blaming all of Germany for the Holocaust is another.

Blaming the Americans for the Ukraine-Russia war is another, useful as propaganda for the Kremlin, but not without some merit.

Blaming all Muslims for 9/11 is another epic and tragic blaming.

Blaming fraud for the presidential election in 2020 is another tragic blaming.

It is as if some are addicted to throwing the flaming spears of “blame” around with impunity as if to indicate an exercise and capability of showing strength that really betrays their weakness and offers nothing to heal their narcissism.

And, right away, I am engaging in the “blaming judgement” that combines an early evaluation, a perception of how a norm pertains to the viability and trust of U.S. elections, a wrongness judgement in that there is nor was evidence of the election being stolen.

These are many other examples of how opinions, especially among close-knit groups or clubs, become norms, that serve as guiding and eventually historic principles, governing the attitudes and behaviours of all those coming withing the borders of those groups. Norms apply also to small neighbourhoods, or even street descriptions that serve those who designate and determine the descriptors. If a shooting occurs in a quiet neighbourhood, it is a shock. If it occurs on the streets of Chicago, it is a norm. Similarly, in a small town, where personal ‘grit’ and determination trump social assistance, as a normative value, then those in need will experience a kind of ghost-like disappearance, whereas, in a region where a norm of programs and committed broad assistance beyond the individual primarily for the feel-good ‘samaritan’ gratification, the real need to be valued and independent will have become subsumed into the community’s need to ‘help’ only minimally, as if that was all the situation required.

And that ‘norm’ snares the community in a mind-set that resists a more open and much more complex acknowledgment of those community needs as well as an even stronger resistance to the notion of exposing the dark side of the community life.

We used to have homeless, but they have moved on. We used to have poverty but it too has subsided and apparently moved on. We used to have some people with disabilities but they too have moved on. What is wrong with this picture?

Moving on, elimination of the gordion knots of human desperation and struggle is not the business of such a community. It is for others to deal with, perhaps even rationalized as ‘lack of resources’ or ‘we do not want that kind here’ or even ‘we tried to deal with that in the past, and found it too burdensome, our taxpayers would not stand for it’….and the list of rationalizations continues…hypothetically.

These community ‘norms’ while mere papier mache, are established principles in the minds and attitudes of those who consider themselves “elites” within the community…and the pattern continues…unless and until there is a reckoning, a truth-telling that helps to shift the ‘public relations-image-building’ motive to a more integrous and authentic and sustainable acknowledgement of what is really going on.

Cultural change is analogous to moving mountains, and need the flow of clear courageous hearts and minds to wear its craggy out-cropping’s down to something more tolerant and tolerable. The glaciers of the Ice Age are melting, so too can the glaciers of human stereotypes along with simplistic, Samaritan* solutions and the culture that sanctifies them.

*A parables professor at St. Michael’s College  once commented, “The Christ Figure in the Good Samaritan story was the Jew taken for dead  in the ditch, not the Samaritan. 

With the debasement of truth, and the rise of hate...where are we going?

  Newsweek today is reporting that Russian state television is advising the Kremlin to deploy nuclear weapons against Sweden and Finland, prompted by their avowed announcement and determination to apply for and pursue NATO membership.

Is this another irrelevant and irresponsible instance of sabre rattling, as a way to fend off these applications? Or, perhaps, is this a sign that the Kremlin is growing impatient with its own failures, with the failures of its military leadership, and of its frustration with the Ukrainian people and military for so courageously and persistently pushing back Russian forces?

Is the deployment of nuclear weapons actually on the table in this conflict? And if so, is it a serious indication that the “power of the nuke” is now the bargaining chip in all significant international negotiations? India is certainly using their nuclear ‘chip’ to bargain for not opposing the Russian invasion and for negotiating a lowered price for Russian fossil fuels. Has India signalled the next chapters in geo-politics, given the spike in growth of her economy, making her now the second largest economy in the world, after China’s economic slowdown?

Some are arguing that the world will split, geopolitically, into a block that includes China and Russia and India and Venezuela and Possibly Brazil, with Europe and the U.S. and Canada, Australia and New Zealand forming another block. Kissinger warns that the United States has to be careful not to alienate both China and Russia simultaneously. He also reports that Putin will have to end this war in Ukraine when he ‘sees’ that Russia’s power and status on the world stage is dissipating.

Reports of Putin’s ‘blood cancer’ along with reports of his having undergone back surgery related to his blood cancer, continue to be denied by Russian reports. However, there are also reports today that a bonafide coup movement is underway inside Russia to remove Putin from power. Whether these reports, like those of the potential deployment of nuclear weapons against Sweden and Finland, have any merit, and warrant serious consideration is so uncertain as to render them ‘speculative’ at best, and worrisome at worst. The Associated Press reports May 13, 2022, in a piece entitled, “Russian soldier on trial in first Ukraine war-crimes case” by Oleksandr Stashevski and Richar Lardner:

“A 21-year-old Russian soldier went on trial Friday in Kyiv for the killing of an unarmed Ukrainian civilian, marking the first war crime prosecution of a member of the Russian military from 11 weeks of bloodshed in Ukraine. The Soldier, a captured member of a tank unit is accused of shooting a 62-year-old Ukrainian man in the head through an open car window in the northeastern village of Chupakhivka during the first days of the war.

This trial is being conducted on the basis of Ukrainian criminal law, by Ukrainian prosecutors. So, the Ukrainians are fighting on the battlefield, in the air, in the bunkers and streets and now in the courts.

The rest of the world is watching and trying, without the benefit of intelligence initiatives, except those making their way into the public media, to sort out what is going on, what is about to go on, the implications of what has already taken place and any glimmer of hope that this serious slaughter might be brought to an end, without having to face the spectre of opening the Pandora’s Box of the nuclear threat.

The matter of the loss of trust seems to pervade the background of this conflict. Established as a ‘defensive alliance’ to protect members from any military incursion or invasion by Russia. NATO has itself now been morphed into an ‘offensive monster’ by the Russian wannabe czar as justification of his own war against Ukraine. It was Ukraine that was promised security by Russia, the UK and the US when it destroyed its nuclear weapons in 1994 and joined the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty (NPT).

Here is a glimpse of the wording of that treaty:

Confirm the following:

1.     The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance  with the principles of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, to respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine.

2.     The Russian Federation, The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America reaffirm their obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, and that none of their weapons will ever be used against Ukraine except in self-defence or otherwise in accordance with theCharter of the United Nations.

4.     (not a typo) The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America reaffirm their commitment to seek immediate United Nations Security Council action to provide assistance t Ukraine, as a non-nuclear-weapon State party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, if Ukraine should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used.

Why would anyone of us not be confused, frustrated, and utterly in contempt of the hypocrisy, at least, and the undermining and sabotaging of their own words in initiating this act of war against Ukraine?

And, who would not also be in contempt of much of the language of public discourse that has devolved into little more than a papier mache verbosity that seeks to provide the quickest and most facile escape from the truth on the part of too many political actors. At the heart of that fabrication, that ‘front’ of cosmetics in which too many aspiring political leaders have been schooled, lies a foundational cornerstone of hate….whether it be of ‘fascists’ (as Putin falsely alleges in Ukraine) or blacks as white supremacists falsely allege in the U.S. or Jews also the target of white supremacists, or Asians, also a target of white supremacists….

Racial hatred, and the fear of ‘replacement’ by people whose skin is not white, is a phenomenon unrestricted by national boundaries, a fire fueled by social media also without jurisdictional constraints, in a world in which the people of good faith and good will seem to have faded in both numbers and volume. In another life, a political cliché that bounced around a northern Ontario town in a counter-offensive to what was perceived by many as the likelihood of a less-than-honourable candidate would win electoral victory ran something like this: ‘If the good people leave the field, then the less savoury will be free to take it over.’

Millions of ordinary people struggle not only with spiking inflation at the gas pump, in the grocery store, and the vagaries of an invisible virus but also with a conviction that those in charge will tell us what they think and believe we want to hear, that is what they believe will succeed in securing and maintaining public confidence and trust. And all the while, that confidence and trust has been so eroded, not by all political actors, but by enough of the really heinous and shameless ones who seem to have a way of seeking and grabbing the largest microphones. Loud noises, trumpeting lies that even the prevaricators know to be false, have thundered through the television and computer screens for decades, leaving in their wake a tidal wave of unresolved existential threats and a citizenry many of whom have lost hope that any real progress will or even can be made in this kind of ethos.

If the ethos and the actors responsible for that ethos are committed to their own self-denial, their own self-sabotage and the self-sabotage of the public interest, and all of this continues without a hint of remorse, and certainly no sign of a change, and the capacity to generate more ‘coverage’ from the media that is co-dependent on the ratings that come from violent rhetoric and lies, it is not only toxic gases, and nuclear missiles that we have to worry about.

We have to worry about the abject failure of many of those in positions of public influence, (think many Republicans and Tucker Carlson and Fox News, an  oxymoron itself, Lepine, and Renaud Camus)

France24.com 08/11/2021, (reports): It was in his (Renaud Camus’) book ‘Le Grand Remplacement’ that he first coined the term ‘the great replacement’ which became a rallying cry for the far right worldwide….Rooted in racist nationalist views, the great replacement theory purports that an elitist group is colluding against  white French and European people to eventually  replace them with non-Europeans from Africa and the Middle East, the majority of whom are Muslim. Renaud Camus often refers to this as ‘genocide by substitution’.

Support for the healthy exchange of ideas, as well as the healthy address of serious social and political issues like food shortage, environmental degradation, a global pandemic, become highly problematic, if not inexorably complex and perhaps even meaningless where there is no basis for a common set of facts, and where the rot of human decay in hatred and contempt for the other, regardless of whom that ‘other’ might be dominates.

Descending to our most base instincts, like rabid animals starved in a drought-stricken desert, where our mere survival becomes our only goal and thereby our own feasible option, renders us all at the mercy of that survival motive. It may well not be a case of the survival of a civilization over another, but rather the survival of the whole of humanity that might be at risk, in spite of the plethora of platinum innovations in so many fields of public health, restorative justice, instant and accurate and accessible communications and the ingenuity of millions of brilliant scientists and thinkers dedicated to the ‘public good’ and the well-being of each of us.

We read and write about daily occurrences like the war crime trial, the Putin health reports, the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and the latest COVID numbers…and yet, we all know that much of that is only drivel if we are unable and unwilling to tackle the existential crises that exceed all national boundaries and cultures, all religions and atheism, all political ideologies and caste systems.

The Romans had a phrase that might be appropriate in these times:

Quo Vadis? Where are you marching or whither goest thou?

And we might ponder, “Wherever it is, will it be a road girded with truth, courage and collaborative hope or NOT?”

Men need male support anecdotally, daily to shape our transformation....not just new programs

The Globe and Mail is running a series about the need to design and deliver ‘programs’ to and for men, to cope with the violent behaviour of men primarily in relationships with women.

Two things stood out from that reading:

1) The preponderance of public funds that are being poured into addressing domestic violence is supporting both facilities and programs for women victims. The argument from those quarters is that any new funding for facilities and programs for men will drain off the funds they are already receiving.

2)    2) The current situation, in this as in most public policy decisions, is tilted firmly in the direction of “crisis management” and not prevention.

Of course, both of these points are directly related, in that “prevention” of violence perpetrated by men against women requires not only to address the needs of those victims, but also to seek to prevent further abuse,

So, what is it about “crisis” management that is far more appealing and even seductive to decision-makers in the political arena, as well as in the policy arena, than prevention?

How do we measure the impact of any dollars spent on “preventing” men from imposing violent acts and emotions on women? How many men “have not” committed domestic violence as a result of this program? Who knows?

On the other hand, a woman in distress, as a victim of violence, absolutely needs support, counsel and a continuing circle of advocacy to attempt to re-build her life, whether or not she brings young children into the shelter. And those ‘outcomes’ are and will continue to be measured, in terms of number of women served, number of women who re-built their lives and numbers of children who successfully survived the family trauma. Politically, then, the sheer force of e empirical reality in terms of measurable results favours the “crisis management”.

The cliché’s that come from the men who have perpetrated family violence, and then sought help, abound, and are highly predictable:

We’re told from a very young age, that we must not show our emotions.

We’re told to ‘suck it up’ if and when we are injured or bullied.

We’re told to ‘answer back’ in order to stop the bullying.

We’ re told that “emotions are for girls” and not for boys,

We’re told that emotions will get in the way of a successful career.

And then, when we are in relationship with a woman, we bring all of that baggage into the home and we are completely without preparation for what kind of communications are necessary in order to grow and to sustain the relationship. Not only that, our women partners have been engaging in the expression of their emotions from their early years. So not only are they more in touch with their emotions, they also are much more comfortable in naming, acknowledging and expressing them. So, then, we are in a double bind and we are scared silly (read shitless!)

This stereotypical and reductionistic concept of masculinity is playing out on the battlefield in Ukraine, as well as in other ‘hot spots’ around the globe. Men who absolutely believe they need power over others, in order to satisfy their fundamental needs as men, are perverting both masculinity and their people, including, in Ukraine, the slaughter of thousands, and the displacement of millions.

And while the war cannot be attributed exclusively to the perversion of healthy masculinity, that is certainly one of the root impulses, whether it will ever be uttered in any peace negotiation room.

So, how does an enlightened culture, a wealthy and relatively educated culture address the question of educating boys and young men in the attributes and the benefits of androgyny, of honouring their true feelings, and of discerning the difference between ‘self-pity’ and authentic injury or emotional wounding. Our mothers were quite good at ‘fixing’ our “owie’s” when we fell off our bikes and skinned our knees, when we were seven. And yet our hockey coach was not so considerate if we were pummeled to the ice by an opponent as we attempted to pass or to score. Our fathers, too, in many cases, were determined to have a “successful” trophy as a son (not unlike many who ‘had’ a trophy wife), whose career, in many cases would never devolve into something as frivolous as music, dance, or the arts. Those sons were indoctrinated in the gospel of heroes like doctors, lawyers, accountants, engineers, dentists and surveyors or business tycoons.  Masculinity, too, never was to include being gay, because, in other days, that too was abominable, especially for fathers. Indeed, boys who were proficient in the arts were often considered effeminate again by their embarrassed fathers, while they mothers were more likely secretly proud of their sensitivity and their accomplishments.

So…..what to do in a world in which several generations of men and women have grown and bee/.\n nurtured in such poppy-cock while emerging generations will have no ‘truck’ with that crap?

I cannot speak or write about other ecclesial organizations; however, I have some deep and painful experiences in the Anglican/Episcopal church in both Canada and the U.S. And the culmination of a collision of masculinities occurred one spring day in 2000, when I uttered these words, to a bishop in the U.S. and his sycophant, in his office. His response continues to ring loudly in my ears and in my body.
“It is time for men to learn what their emotions are, to own them and to become comfortable with and in them!” were the words I uttered, almost defiantly, and certainly impolitically and perhaps even impertinently.

He lept from his desk chair and screamed, “That’s far too dangerous! That is not allowed!” At which point his sycophant muttered, “And there are far too many emotions in this room now; I have to leave!”

While I have documented this scene in other places in this space, I recount it here to begin to take note of the responsibility of the Anglican/Episcopal church for having repressed human emotions, especially those of men for decades if not centuries. Analogous to improper sexuality, in the church’s eyes, mind and canons, emotions are relegated to the private lives of those engaged in the business of the church. And there are several implications of that impulse.

Emotions then become a sign of something ‘evil’ when in reality they are an integral and inescapable aspect of human nature.

And, that is not to say that emotions cannot become a serious issue in the dynamic of human interactions. Former U.S. Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, on CNN, in a program to air tomorrow night, “On the Mind of Vladimir Putin”…when asked about his impression of the Russian leader whom he has met several times, “He has a fervour!” A modest interpretation of that phrase would be “he is intensely emotional almost demonic in his pursuit of his agenda”. Contrast that with the George W. Bush exclamation shortly after the 9/11 attack, “I don’t do nuance!” as if, from his Texan perspective, anything modest, moderate or subtle is, by his own definition of his perspective, out of bounds. What is the emotional “content” of the Bush epithet? Another free transliteration might read, “In this moment, anything less than a full-out war will not be even contemplated by me!”

While men do not “do” emotions, too often their emotions “do” them, without their being conscious of that dynamic, and certainly without their having to take responsibility for their emotions.

And while we are agree that men do not, generally, manage, or even have a deep awareness of how they are experiencing, their feelings at any moment, and will withdraw in “embarrassment” and a feeling of inadequacy if they/we are asked to tell someone ‘how they are feeling’…..we all know that many social and political situations, if not all, are rooted in the feelings of the participants. Sometimes those feelings are honourable, trustworthy, legitimate and sometimes they are not.

It is also the discernment of which situation is active and relevant at a given moment that also seems to escape the purview of many men. However, if ignorance and insensibility have pervaded the male relationship with his/our emotions, irrespective of the cultural, historic, psychological or even ethical justification for that detachment, for centuries, that situation is, inevitably and predictably, changing, perhaps, in the view of many observers, at a pace analogous to the pace at which grass grows. Aroused emotion of anger, frustration, disempowerment and embarrassment, especially for men, is a red flag. And it ought not be only our female partners and co-workers’ job to caution us against a flare-up that could sabotage not only ourselves, but a far larger situation as well.

Nevertheless, programmed into the cultural development of many North American women is the concept of, first, managing through identification and sharing of their own emotions, and second, helping their male colleagues and partners to “hold them under wraps” if and when there is a real danger of eruption. And it is eruption of emotions, mostly by men, that frequently lies at the heart of so many domestic disputes and abuse. There is also a high co-relation between those men who drive themselves very hard, and who have an extremely high set of expectations and standards for themselves and their families, especially their sons, and the eruption of negative, highly critical emotional outbursts if and when the child appears in any way inadequate. It is almost as if the reputation of the ‘father’ is transferred to the performance of the son, and, disappointing the father, resulting in deep and unforgettable emotional wounding of the son.

Clearly, it is not only our sons or our life partners who suffer the imposition of unleashed and clearly not understood or even tolerated and acknowledged emotions from the men in their lives. Workplaces, too, and organizations and corporations, experience considerable impact of conflict that, in many cases, can be traced back to some male “power-figure” being upset at the exposure of negative information, especially of the kind that demonstrates what he believes to indicate the ‘nature of the character of the offender’ in his mind.

And there is another more subtle and almost imperceptible implication of “power” over that pervades small and large organizations, especially among those who have been there, and perhaps previously held leadership positions. And this is especially evident among men, who themselves, have almost imperceptibly been supported and even cheer-led by the women in the organization, (in order to keep the peace) and have a blind eye and a deaf ear to their own abuse of power over, for example, new comers to the organization, the church, or the town. Leadership positions, while requiring and expecting ‘performance’ from those in office, also carry the burden of living examples of how human interactions occur within the group.

For example, just because a male group member is hosting a guest speaker from another organization does not give him the right to usurp the female executive of the hosting organization from the head table, in order to take that place himself and then justify such a move on the basis of having to introduce his guest to the group. I have personally watched that little scene play out and everyone, including the displaced executive member, remained silent thereby permitting the ensuing impunity to shield the offending male.

It is not because Canadians are especially polite and deferential that such situations play out frequently. It is also because women have deferred for centuries to the bad behaviour of men, without the men uttering a word either of self-criticism or of transformation of their expectations of themselves or their female colleagues. And, for their part, the women “know” that keeping the peace is preferable to raising an issue of ‘offense’, because they know that if they were to take every situation of disrespect seriously, they could be in conflict at least weekly.

Male assumption of power over others is not and cannot be justified by superior competence, nor superior muscle strength, and certainly not by a higher emotional intelligence. Indeed, the evidence of a higher emotional intelligence among women far outstrips that of most men. And that, in itself, is another nail in the coffin of male ego’s, already enduring a verbal lashing from the predominance of domestic violence cases by men against women.

And while training programs, and counselling and coaching and codes of conduct in organizations, including signs in retail outlets (I shockingly read on the door of a retail outlet this week “We will not tolerate abusive behaviour, anger or threats in our store”), will spread red flags ubiquitously, they will not transform the deep-seated fear and insecurity in many males. They/we too often believe that these changes toward equality, equity, respect and dignity for all is just another attempt to denigrate the way things were, when, many men believed they were just fine before.

Men, ourselves, in quite moments, among friends and family, having noted and embraced changes in attitude and deportment, have the obligation of leading our fellow males in a direction that can only bode well for our partners, our children and our grandchildren.

It is not only the environment’s suffocation from toxic gases that we have to address. Toxic words and attitudes from men are also polluting our shared environments.