02Mar
Written by RyanDeegan. Posted in Blog, Uncategorized
A New Ethic[1] based on Depth Psychology could bring Peace to the World
By Francesco L. Cottafavi[2]
On a recent trip to Cuba[3] I had the chance to visit the country extensively and in any town, or village, I took a bike-taxi, i.e. a tricycle, with me sitting behind a little man (little in proportion to my size) who bicycled at very slow speed the poorest quarters in town, where I specifically asked to be brought to. The people living there were all smiling at me, warmly, as if they recognised me as one of their own. Actually, I recognised in them the real humankind, which lived for hundreds of thousands of years in, more or less, the same conditions, with a strong bond of solidarity among them, which helped them survive. I admired them because their thinking with the heart was so natural and a strong source of orientation[4].
All over the island, I saw the same people participating passionately in religious ceremonies, mostly Catholic masses, where the most revered image was the Black Madonna. For them, she was Yamaya (a goddess in “La Regla de Ocha[5] ).
The Black Madonna is a very important symbol in many cultures because it “represents a compensatory perspective of the westernised world, especially that world which seems driven to excess by profit margins, religious and political fundamentalism and indifference to the place of human beings in the natural order of life[6].”
An archetypal compensatory perspective is necessary, not only for the Cubans, because “the downfall of the old world orientation and the resultant dethronement of man has lead to a chaotic psychological situation. Modern man now sees himself as a peripheral creature on a tiny planet in a physically dead infinity[7].“
There, in Cuba, I felt a strong cultural anxiety[8] sharing the tension of my original Catholic education with the re-emerging polytheistic belief of human ancestry[9]. I felt that cultural anxiety was a gift to energise my search for a meaning to be shared.
Cultural anxiety is a very common state of mind. We live in an Age of Anxiety were most people understand that there is not only one reality but different alternatives, equally valuables, and they should be taken into consideration. Particularly, if one, or several of those realities, had been lost or repressed into the personal unconscious, this shadow reality should be considered a vital recovery for our consciousness to pursue. Even more important will be this recovery for our living together if the suppressed or repressed values also belong to the collective society in which we live.
“The tension between the opposites which, in the form of dualism, was the distinguishing mark of the old ethic, can by no means be simply abolished and denied…a new ethic has to “accept” the opposites and articulate them with the conscious mind”. Therefore, “It will inevitably be faced with the task of their assimilation.”[10]
In these days we see in several instances the “return of the suppressed or repressed values,” in other words of our collective shadow. I will address two of these events: The Brexit process and the Trump Presidency, with the aim to see how we can get new values out of integrating into our collective consciousness the shadow brought forward by these events.
THE BREXIT PROCESS
The decision taken by the people of the United Kingdom to approve the referendum proposing to leave the European Union surprised everyone: because no-one had taken into consideration the cultural complex[11] existing among the British people.
This complex (a ghost of the cultural past) could be called “Tradition against disruption,”[12] as anything new is perceived as disruptive of a traditional perspective.
Its parts are disconnected, but linked among themselves, as the components of a cubist painting. In this complex co-exist a nativist fear of foreigners, strong determination to be independent, determined will to defend insularity[13], fear of globalisation, a traditionally strong English nationalism, some degrees of British exceptionalism, and nostalgia of imperial powers.[14]Its archetypal core is the “Island Home,” whose passionate defense is very well represented by Winston Churchill famous words:
“We shall defend our Island, whatever the cost might be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender”[15]
The British cultural complex, like all cultural complexes, is “based on repetitive, historical group experiences which have taken root in the cultural unconscious of the group. At any ripe time, these slumbering cultural complexes can be activated in the cultural unconscious and take hold of the collective psyche of the group and the individual/collective psyche of individual members of the group”…”These complexes are a worldwide psychological reality and an integral part of the structure of the psyche.” “Mostly, these group complexes have to do with trauma, discrimination, feeling of oppression and inferiority at the hands of another offending group”…”Group complexes litter the psychic landscape and are as easily detonated as the literal landmines that scatter the globe.”[16]
The decision to hold the referendum detonated the landmine of the cultural complex affecting the British citizens which had remained in a status of political irrelevance, i.e. without receiving adequate attention, for an excessive amount of time.
The cultural complex exploded in England, more than in Wales. While in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Greater London, Brexit was soundly rejected. In England (without Greater London) Brexit won the referendum by a difference of 11%. A triumph of English nationalism, in the countryside.
English nationalism existed for centuries, within the United Kingdom, and dominated a large part of the world, throughout the British Empire. With Brexit, it aims to take back control. Anxieties about sovereignty convinced many voters of the need to re-establish it, in the nativist belief that if you share sovereignty with other countries, you lose it. It seems to be a case of cultural psychopathology that can be overcome, in time, only through taking conscious responsibility for the Imperial shadow of the United Kingdom and, therefore, recuperating genuine autonomy of being.
The process of confronting the imperial shadow of the United Kingdom is taking shape with the vivid international debate on the possible establishment of an “Ethics and Empire” project at the University of Oxford’s Mc Donald Centre[17]. The historians of the “British world” are living, again, in modern times, the bloody events staining the image of the Empire and updating the knowledge of them, with the possible result of assuaging the English nostalgia for the British Empire.
The resurgence of English nationalism has helped other nationalisms to resurface all over Europe: in France, Germany, and Spain (which includes three separate national identities, with their languages: Basque, Galician and Catalan), in Austria, and in the former communist Visegrad countries, where nationalism is perceived as a defense against dissolution in the European Union and Nato, after having spent years dissolved in the embrace of communist ideology.
Nationalism and Nativism threaten the European Union, which was established, mainly, to absorb and dilute the nationalistic impulses that had fueled the cataclysmic destruction of the Continent in two World Wars.
It is meaningful that the former President of the Generalitat de Catalunya, Carles Puigdemont, took refuge in Bruxelles to defend the democratic right of all Catalani to vote for independence and to negotiate a regime of autonomy, against the will of the Spanish Government who wants to impose national unity.
“Tradition against disruption” also exploded in Scotland and Northern Ireland, but against the United Kingdom. Thus creating the conditions for the devolved Government of Scotland to add in a future referendum the missing votes necessary to exit the United Kingdom and to remain in the European Common Market. While in Northern Ireland a resurgence of English nationalism could impede the proper functioning of the “Good Friday Agreement” and ignite the resurgence of the “Troubles”.
The national political vote called by the Prime Minister, Theresa May, entrenched the supporters affected by the cultural complex and reduced their numbers. As a consequence, the Labour party might be able to obtain a new round of political elections and, maybe, lead a new government while fighting with a re-founded conservative party led, perhaps, by Jacob Rees-Mogg, an aristocratic ultra-conservative English nationalist.
Anyway, to neuter the effects of a cultural complex is necessary to know of its existence and its compelling power and, very patiently, to mature all of its components till they reach the level of conscious responsibility in the minds of affected people. This result could be achieved through a constant confrontation of fears, desires and nostalgias with diffused knowledge of more complete and accurate realities. It is a very demanding process of cultural and political education, of expansion of consciousness, but a democratic vote decided that the United Kingdom has to go through it.
All the politicians, journalists, educators, members of the “elite”, who paid insufficient attention to the existence of the cultural complex, have now to put a remedy to it participating actively in the public debate opened on the reasons and possible consequences of the Brexit process.
The discussion in the British Parliament should be extensive, continuous, and reported accurately by the media. All details regarding negotiations with the other members of the European Union should be widely diffused and freely discussed, in all of their aspects and possible consequences. The European Union should inform all of his members accurately on the negotiations with the United Kingdom, with the view to allow a complete public assessment of the probable consequences of the Brexit process[18].
After the conclusion of the negotiations, the British people (at that time, adequately informed) should be allowed to vote in a referendum to approve the result, because real democracy requires the best knowledge of the possible consequences of a decision, before adopting it.
The experience will be helpful also to the European Union, which should learn that a Union cannot be built without making space for all differences to breath freely and to harmoniously cooperate.
The Brexit process would be helpful not only to the Europeans but also to the rest of the world, interconnected as it is.
Everyone should be able to learn how to gradually evolve personal and collective consciousness out of a political process, because an increase in the capacity of consciousness to take responsibility for the shadow (the unappreciated unconscious side of ourselves) is needed, to renew our ethical values.
Already Dante met his shadow in a poetical conscious way. The Divina Commedia begins” Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita / mi trovai per una selva oscura, / che la diritta via era smarrita.” Out of this encounter with the shadow, Dante wrote a poem, as an example for all others to follow, maybe through more modest means.
To achieve this renewal: “A process of continuous self-questioning and self-control is required.”… and… “This Ethical duty is carried out by the conscious mind.”[19]
THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY[20]
When Hillary Clinton called “Deplorables” the supporters of Donald Trump, I got worried that she was going to lose the elections, because she thought that the Americans wanted to elect the best, while they merely wanted to choose a candidate reflecting their views.
She was fighting against a narcissist trying to impersonate an archetypal image representing “America.” Some have defined it “The John Wayne archetype.” [21] In all cases, Trump was tapping into the psychic energy of a cultural complex affecting, maybe, a majority of North-Americans (precisely, the “Deplorables”, who were unconsciously encouraged by Hillary Clinton to vote for Trump).
The John Wayne archetype was already acted upon by Ronald Reagan, who carried out openly and neatly, the image of the mythical cowboy, who knows well who are the enemies, shoots them from the hip and carries the task of conquering the frontier. A man faithful to monotheism, to his principles, to his wife and to his peers, who is ready to fight the evil out there with all available means. A real hero of the Old Ethic, willing to promote the projection of the collective shadow on an enemy[22] “to relieve the individual from the sense of guilt caused by the repression, or suppression, of the projected element”.[23]
Donald Trump “Make America Great Again” is a motto with no traditional values in support. It is a good name for a cultural complex. It is an appeal to all narcissistically centred Americans, caring mainly for themselves because they don’t feel about the others. They want their old jobs, lost to globalisation; they want back their social status, reduced by successful immigrants; they want to be men, respected by women; they want to feel that America is still dominating the world.
Theirs, is a lower level of consciousness, in a transitional phase, with limited ethical values, where collective shadow elements have more respect and some space to be enacted.
With the promotion of white supremacy, racism is an essential component of the negative core of this complex and of the North American shadow. Episodes of racism are disseminated everywhere in American history.
If we remember the Charlottesville events,[24]with deadly violence and the defence of white nationalists by President Trump, we can see how many emotions are compressed in the “complex” memory of the Civil War and how quickly they are detonated.
Cleaning out racism in this cultural complex involves much more than the proposed removal of statues of Confederate generals or leaders. Much more than the proposed removal of the statues of Christopher Columbus (for his treatment of native people), Frank Rizzo (former racist mayor of Philadelphia), Italo Balbo (fascist hero, called “il trasvolatore” remembered in Chicago for his record-setting flying from Italy to the United States), or the proposed removal of the plaque commemorating, in New York, Henry Petain (President of the French Government supporting the German occupation of France), and the dismantling of the building called Faneuil Hall, located in Boston (donated to the city in 1743 by the slave trader Peter Faneuil), and the cutting of the foot on the statue of don Juan de Onate (the “conquistador” of New-Mexico, who used to cut feet off rebellious Acoma people), or the “defacing” of the statue of Junipero Serra (the 18th Century Franciscan friar who eradicated indigenous culture in California).
Taking conscious control of racism in North-America requires even more than spreading all over the country historical plaques remembering racist events (In the Yosemite park a plaque might state:” On this spot, in 1851, American militiamen shot Tenaya’s son in the back, let him bleed out in the grass, then dragged the leader of the Ahwahneechee tribe to have a look at his son and enjoyed watching him weep.”).
Cruelty should be accepted as an important component of the American shadow and courage to resist racism should be celebrated.
As an example, the house of Rosa Parks, the black woman who resisted to leave a segregated seat and ignited the civil rights movement in Alabama, should be brought back to the United States. By the way, how did it happened that her house could not remain in Detroit, and not even in America, but had to find refuge in Germany?
The eight border wall prototypes built on the Mexican border, in the Otay Mesa neighbourhood of San Diego, should be preserved for posterity, because they represent, as an image, the racism of President Trump ed all his supporters who believe a physical or juridical wall should be built to separate “themselves” from those coming to “America” from shithole countries. For years to come, many students should be brought to the Otay Mesa neighbourhood of San Diego to visit a symbol of modern racism in America.
“This is a painful, uncomfortable moment. Instead of trying to get past this moment, we should sit with it, wrap ourselves in the sorrow, distress and humiliation of it… No one is coming to save us.”[25]
The Trump Presidency is a transitional phase, where monotheism downgrades to the image of oneself[26], where the Old Ethic rigorism on traditional principles eases its grip on the collective, and the shadow is free to stay with less need to be projected away because people have a lesser sense of guilt. It has the positive power of setting us free from established conventions. It is a collective self-portrait of ourselves. It is a selfie taken by each of us with President Trump. We are somehow very attracted to him because we have an “Inner Trump,” i.e. “the shadow personality of the Barack Obama/Hillary Clinton intellectual progressive consciousness.”[27]
With all his tweets he calls the attention of the “Inner Trump” within us. The shadow of a culture is activated, and all the people in North America (and all the “Trump supporters” in the rest of the world) confront themselves, in an undisciplined, impulsive and adolescent way, with racism, sexism, bullying, narcissism, selfishness, superficial imperialism and the nostalgia of burning fossil fuels.
Trump protects his family, more than his country. He is an entertainer, more than a leader. He does not hide his thoughts and feelings behind polished statements. He merely says what is on his mind and believes it should be law. “He is a Titanic adolescent, undisciplined and impulsive, often comically soo, with grandiose fantasies of himself.”[28]
“Trump manages to be truculently wrong on every existential question facing humanity… he has the integrity of a con man, the temperament of a neighbourhood bully, the breathtaking ignorance of an arrogant know-nothing, the political instincts of a Fuhrer, and the policies of a tribal nationalist…Trump does not qualify for a mental disorder, but he does present with one of the world’s best-documented cases of lifelong failure to mature. He is a boy/man who expects everything to go his way and experiences the world as an extension of himself…Trump fancies himself the nation’s Big Brother, but he is really our neediest Big Baby. Trump is bad, not mad, but we the people are mad for having elected such a terribly flawed person to the most powerful position in the world.”[29]
With such a leader, It is still far away reaching the proper attitude of caring for the collective or personal shadow while consciously controlling it: like peacefully suffering white privilege nostalgia. But the transitional phase represented by the Trump Presidency could be a step in the right direction, if properly handled.
POLITICAL CONTEXT[30]
Politically speaking, the Republican Party floats between the supporters of the Old Ethic, who tend towards the impeachment of President Trump, and all the others which are already in the transitional phase. The Democratic Party could join the Republican supporters of the Old Ethic in an effort to oust President Trump, but it will also have to set the standards of the New Ethic, including space for the shadow in politics (for the “inner Trump”), if it wants to have a leading role in the future.
In the transitional phase, the danger is a progressive lowering of traditional ethical values and, therefore, a higher risk of dogmatic absolutism coupled and supported by the promotion of violence. A lowering of ethical values could set a perilous standard in the behaviour of the administration, with the military capacity of the United States under the command of Donald Trump who could gradually learn how to implement all the powers belonging to the President effectively. The establishment has reinforced and reasserted all check and balances, but the transitional phase could quickly run into a crisis:
Internally, the possibility that the investigations conducted by the Special Prosecutor would be brought to Congress, for impeachment proceedings, could ignite a “firework” response by the President. He might dismiss the Special Prosecutor and the Deputy Attorney General (who is responsible for the Special Prosecutor). But if eventually condemned[31] by the Parliament as guilty of having colluded with Russia[32] to influence the U.S presidential elections and/or having obstructed justice, (while having violated consistently traditional ethical values[33]), he will have no choice but to resign or be impeached. Time will tell, but it seems unlikely that impeachment proceedings could start before midterm elections, unless the Republican “elite” understand the party will significantly lose the midterm elections, if their remain in support of President Trump and his drive to cancel any investigation regarding him.
Internationally, President Trump could start a serious confrontation with North Korea, igniting a war which could cause the loss of tens of thousands of people and expose the U.S. to a serious nuclear risk[34]. He could militarily confront Iran, intervene in Siria, or in any other conflict situation in the Middle East, with the aim of promoting the projection of the American shadow somewhere else, to divert political attention from internal difficulties, such as the beginning of impeachment proceedings or a growing loss of credibility. By the way, all those provocative actions against Muslims, in general, and specifically against “the Rocketman” in North Korea, might motivate terrorist actions against the United States.
President Trump is planning to increase investment in nuclear weapons and to make their use easier, by building new low-yield ones. He is also planning to use nuclear weapons against “significant non-nuclear strategic attacks,” which means using nuclear weapons against cyber, biological and chemical weapons attacks. This policy should be prevented from coming into effect, or should be discontinued before other countries feel justified in emulating it and terrorist organisations find a way to the increased numbers of weapons available to acquire one and send it in a container to the United States.
Investigative Journalism should focus its initiatives on exposing the road to war the Trump administration is following with Iran, in a similar way to the road to war pursued by the Bush administration in Irak. A war with Iran would be disastrous, several times more than the war in Irak.
In his first year as President, Donald Trump has very effectively promoted the decline of American influence in the world, withdrawing into self-centred isolation.[35]The unilateral recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel has contributed to the alienation of the rest of the world well represented, numerically, by the votes expressed in the Security Council and the General Assembly of the United Nations. The foreign minister of Germany, Sigmar Gabriel, has declared that “the most important changes affecting our western world and, indeed, the world as a whole” stem from “the United States current withdrawal under Trump from its role as a reliable guarantor of western-influenced multilateralism”. With a certain irony, the foreign minister of Canada, Chrystia Freeland, has thanked the United States for its seven-decade-long stewardship of the international system.
When President Trump delivered a speech at Davos, he was presented to the elite participating in the “Economic Forum” together with the most incredible “military band” one could conceive. Uniforms with plumes coming, probably, from a Barnum type circus were displayed together with the President of the United States of America, who looked unusually uncomfortable, as he might have understood that he was celebrated as a sort of “clown”.
This also happens because all his tweets and outrages suck the oxygen from all important issues worldwide, causing a global vacuum of moral leadership.
The European Union might try to fill in the power vacuum, with the franco-german engine, while China is blazing a new trail for other developing countries to achieve modernisation. The Chinese President Xi Jinping noted that” China would become the new guarantor of the global trading order.” Also trying to fill the power vacuum are a host of smaller, illiberal powers (Turkey, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia) which are surging forward in their respective regions. The world is evolving, through an evolution in the traditional balance of power.
The “grown-ups” within the Administration will have the task to “mentor” President Trump and to prevent him from causing major damage to the United States and the World, besides bragging that he has a much bigger “nuclear button” than anyone else.
He might accept that control reminding his training in a military school. Although, having military leaders act as “grown-ups” might suggest that civilian leaders lack the capacity to govern by themselves, which is certainly true in the case of President Trump.
ECONOMIC RISKS: DEREGULATION AND PROTECTIONISM
Elevated risks are also present in the management of the economy. Deregulation of the financial system[36] and the pursue of protectionism[37] could quickly derail financial stability and economic growth in the United States and the world.
At the Symposium sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, in Jackson Hole, the Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Janet L. Yellen and the President of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi delivered stern and coordinated statements on these topics.
Yellen underscored to the participants that “From the beginning of 2008 to early 2010, nearly nine million jobs were lost in the United States. Millions of Americans lost their homes, and distress was not limited to the U.S. economy: Global trade and economic activity contracted to the degree that had not been seen since the 1930s.
The economic recovery that followed, despite extraordinary policy actions, was painfully slow.” “A decade after the onset of the most severe financial crisis since the Great depression substantial progress has been made toward maximum employment and price stability, in putting in place a regulatory and supervisory structure that is well designed to achieve a stronger financial system.”
“As a result, any adjustment to the regulatory framework should be modest and preserve the increase in resilience at larger dealers and banks associated with the reforms put in place in recent years.”
Yellen concluded: “ I expect that the evolution of the financial system in response to global economic forces, technology, and, yes regulation, will result sooner or later in the all too familiar risks of excessive optimism, leverage, and maturity transformation reemerging in new ways that require policy responses.”
Draghi strengthened the message stating: ”One of the main reasons why multilateral institutions exist is to create regulatory convergence, and therefore to increase trust between countries. And perhaps the most important area where this applies today is global financial sector regulation.”[38]
Draghi also underscored the historical tendency of “open markets” to dislocate the factors of production and to promote protectionism, as a natural response to the very high economic and human cost of dislocation. Instead of protectionism, promotion of trade is necessary to lift productivity in ageing societies and multilateral cooperation is crucial in safeguarding fairness, safety, equity and, more in general, in protecting people through regulatory convergence from the unwelcome consequences of openness.[39]
The first example of protectionism is the establishment of tariffs on washing machines and solar panels. Measures representing the economics of “dirty old men,” as defined by the Nobel prize winner Paul Krugman, since they will merely increase their cost and not their production in the USA, while reducing the number of workers dedicated to the installation of solar panels. Burning coal, instead of using solar energy, seems to be the policy promoted by “the dirty old men”.
THE POST TRUMP-MATIC STRESS AND OTHER DISORDERS
Most people who did not vote for Trump are gradually recovering from their “Post Trump-matic Stress Disorder” (PTrSD)[40] in which they fell after the elections. Several, with a high sense of social responsibility, are intelligently promoting national ethical standards with sympathy and feelings towards the multitudes who do not share them and are suffering in this transitional phase from the process of assimilating their own shadow.
The deplorables are suffering, because they unconsciously feel a deep extinction anxiety.[41] At this time, their anxiety ”is based on the fear of the loss of white America as they have idealised it, the loss of America’s place in the world as they have known it, and ultimately the destruction of the environment and the world itself.”[42] Many, suffer from the loss of their traditional jobs and, frequently, of their houses, and do not see any policy acted or at least planned by the government really capable of addressing the situation.
Additionally, men “in transition” (including President Trump) are being exposed, frequently, as sexual harassers and obliged to confront their lack of consideration for women and their use as sexual objects. The age-old patriarchal tendency to consider women “unclean”, because of menstruation, seems to be shared by President Trump, with his continued innuendos aiming at diminishing the value of women who criticise him.
The “Me Too” movement is beginning to address the need to bring the feminine values on the same level of the “patriarchal” values established by men, for themselves. It is a step in the right direction, but feminine values re-vitalization should be at the centre of the process to establish new ethical values. A step in the right direction seems to be the movie “Call me by your name,” where the actors Armie Hammer and Timothée Chalamet interpret a Dionysian masculinity[43] which disregards traditional sexuality and brings love very much alive. Accepting a beautiful representation of love between men, as a value, is new, and promotes the transformation of traditional patriarchal values.
Men, in general, should be abandoning all violent activities, including sports promoting violence. Families should restrain their children from participating in dangerous sports like boxing, football and wrestling, safeguarding our “pledges to the future” from concussions or mild traumatic brain injuries and also preventing them from familiarising with archetypal patterns which will consistently promote violence in their future lives.
To bring the American shadow to consciousness, everyone will have to understand that “The responsibility of man includes collective guilt (in America, the wish for a renewal of supremacy of native North-Americans who are white and men) that should be recognised and accepted. Vicarious suffering ensues and should be taken as part of personal responsibility.”[44]
POPULISM, NATIVISM, NATIONALISM, ISOLATIONISM, AUTHORITARIANISM AND THE WIDENING OF ECONOMIC INEQUALITY
Most people in America and Europe have lost reference to the image of God as the monotheistic centre who integrates and orientates their lives. Moreover, the return of the suppressed or repressed cultural shadow, in the USA and the United Kingdom primarily, but also in the rest of Europe and the World, has set up a cultural fragmentation promoting many centres of reference[45] for the psyches of human beings. A polytheistic imagery would be more apt to reflect this reality[46].
“When we chase multiplicity from our own self-definition, we are condemned to live our fragmentation in society.”[47]
Europe, and even more the rest of the world, are historically and culturally closer to a polytheistic variety of psychic reference points.
The disintegration of societies built on the Old Ethic, with its monotheistic bias, is, therefore, more easily accepted in “less developed societies” and all the people, closer together than before, tend to lower their moral and ethical standards to allow for more shadow carrying and socio-political relieve.
This transitional condition is called in political terms “populism,” because it consists in promoting the projection of the suffering shadow of “the people” on “the elites” who are not solving the problems affecting “the people”. This projection enables the populist leader to transfer the guilt raised from the complaints of the voters to the elites, and to ask for the “the people” to vote for them, primarily as a punishment of the scapegoated “elites,” which must lose their power since they have not exercised it with success.
Therefore, populism[48] is incessantly critical of existing political representation and aims at de-constructing major international economic and political systems perceived as not being attentive to the needs of “the people” who are suffering the consequences of the Great Recession and worldwide globalisation. Those systems are routinely identified with the European Union, the EURO, the international banking system and financial institutions (like the Federal Reserve and the ECB), the IMF, the United Nations, NATO, WTO, and several international trade agreements like NAFTA or the Paris Agreement promoting common actions against climate change.
In the United States, the de-construction of the Federal and State Administrations aims at abandoning progressive taxation and the social benefits it gives to many people in the low-income brackets. In the long run, it aims at ending public education, Social Security, Medicare, minimum wage laws, foreign aid, the Environmental Protection Agency, and at further reducing taxes and regulations to the point where it will oppose spending on almost anything other than the military. This message is promoted by some of the wealthiest families and several corporations allowed to spend significant sums of money, in affirming their views, by the Citizens United decision of the Supreme Court. They ultimately aim at widening American economic inequality in favour of themselves, while diminishing the power of local communities to marshal relief for vulnerable people.
If humankind has the determination to move decisively out of populism, its degenerative tendencies, like Nativism (opposing foreigners and immigrants); Nationalism (opposing international organisations and multilateralism); Authoritarianism (opposing the State of Law), Isolationism (each Nation by itself) and the De-construction of the State (on the behalf of the “deplorables”) will not prevail.
They will not be needed to keep together societies which are falling apart. Titanism will not be called, even more, to patch up the loss of power of monotheism. Meanwhile, the closeness to consciousness of the shadow will allow for its more accurate consideration by all of us in following new ethical values.
THE ESTABLISHMENT OF NEW ETHICAL VALUES
Establishing new values is going to be a long and demanding process, where all the people capable of contributing to the enlargement of collective consciousness will have to make a very determined effort to prevent further disintegration and significant weakening of previous values, while the new values are defined.
“Selfish survival instincts that worked so well fifty thousand years ago now push us to act self destructively in a world that requires cooperative planning. We have conquered our external world; the question now is whether we can conquer our internal impulses.”[49]
“Tertium non-datur,” i.e. the new images emerging from the existing and colliding realities are not known, but they might be intuited and provisionally imagined.
As already stated, the new ethical values will be born from the acceptance of the depths of our personalities and the recognition and conscious control of our individual and collective shadow. In this process of growth, in consciousness, particular attention will have to be given to the archetypal patterns followed in establishing new ethical values[50].
As an example, following only an Athenian-Minerva-Ananke archetypal pattern will imply “normalising” the actual transitional period, making space to contain it and weaving into this space the excessive and the abnormal (including the “inner Trump”).
The weaving of the excessive and the abnormal, the titanism of these days, will have to be promoted by the goddess of wisdom in everyone, especially in politicians capable of the small work necessary to this traditional activity of bringing down to reality what is flying too high, creating damages. Following Athenian-Minerva-Ananke consciousness means being inspired by the traditional feminine values that keep humanity together, making our common living amenable to others.
The ethical norms established, or re-established, with the help of this archetypal pattern will be enforced by both the virtue and the tyranny of judgment of Athenian consciousness.
To reduce tyranny in the implementation of ethical values, other archetypal patterns should also have an essential role in their design and implementation.
Hermes-Mercurius,[51] with the Trickster[52] component well represented by President Trump, could undoubtedly play a role in guiding the process, encouraging negotiations and inhibiting the acquisition of excessive powers, by anyone, even by the United States of America.
The intolerability of President Trump, with endless words that bring nowhere, underscores his Titanic nature lacking forms, images and limits. He unconsciously impersonates well the collective Titanism of these days serving the useful purpose of calling attention to it and encouraging conscious control of the cultural, economic and political processes.
“Maturity in an individual (or a society) requires substituting reasoned thought for wishful thinking and immediate gratification…we can’t expect to change Trump, but we must work to undo the societal delusions that created him.”[53]
Dionysos archetypal pattern[54] could help individuals to stay within themselves, well collected, to avoid the disruption of current societies. They could drink, they could dance, they could enjoy corporeal life, provided that they follow the advice of Winston Churchill to “stay calm and carry on”. Their task is crucial for the survival of humankind, as was the task of British citizens during the Second World War.
Dionysos will offer “a reclaiming of the embodied creative, relational, erotic and passionate masculinity available to men.” His marriage with Ariadne[55] provides the pattern to break through all repressive forms of patriarchy, where men and women will share cooperative empowerment and will enter a new phase of consciousness. Women fighting by all means available to overcome oppressive patriarchy might conquer a new Conscious Femininity and bring men to the sacred marriage, to join the new ethical values born within them. Women, through love, might be able to change the course of our civilisation.
This analysis of archetypal patterns “to be followed” will continue, at a later stage.
PROMOTING GROWTH IN COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS
What is already happening in The United States and the United Kingdom with the continuous and sometimes distressed debate on the Trump Presidency and the Brexit process indicates the way.
The more the partially unknown and emotionally charged subject is discussed, the more it becomes conscious.
The press has a daunting task in bringing all the unconscious material up for discussion[56]. This function should be actively supported by all individuals, particularly psychologists[57], politicians, artists and billionaires who reach an understanding of their crucial role in promoting conscious growth. The debate could be expanded horizontally, i.e. worldwide, as already partially is, and discussed locally, in-depth, and analogically applied to local subjects. The means of communications are television, press, social media (facebook, twitter, etc.) books, films, community meetings.
People should be helped to reach a higher level of consciousness by all organisations having some capacity in
the field[58].
First of all, every religious creed should promote solidarity and growth of knowledge, regardless of belief.
The school systems, worldwide, should enter with the humility of the apprentice the field of allowing the shadow to become a controlled part of consciousness.
The French Government is giving a good example with the decision of President Macron to fight the real “fake news,” i.e. regulating information transmitted through the internet. A new law regulating the internet is already entered into force in Germany.
The universal growth in consciousness and in the capacity to control the shadow should be promoted and helped not only by States, the press, and international organisations but by artists and private donors, as well.
BUILDING UP NEW ETHICAL VALUES
Steven Spielberg in “The Post” sets a rallying cry for optimism in America while telling the story of a Journal publishing the “Pentagon Papers,” the famous documents evidencing the lying of four presidents and their administrations over twenty-three years to conceal plans and actions of mass murder in Viet Nam and Laos. Optimism for a better future is based, in the movie, on journalism fighting for the truth and revealing the American shadow, at the highest levels.
The international refugee crisis calls the attention of humanity on sixty-five million people, around the world, who had been forced from their homes by conflict and persecution. The artist Ai Weiwei represented it, in New York, through the spectacular exhibition entitled “Good Fences Make Good Neighbours.” More than three hundred artworks displayed throughout the five boroughs focused the attention on this “Human Flow” shacking the World. Daniela Ortiz, from Perù, has proposed replacements for monuments to Christopher Columbus in Lima, Madrid and New York, including a ceramic sculpture of a refugee wearing a shirt saying:”The migratory control system is the continuation of colonialism”.
The Welcome App. Sweden connects refugees with a community of locals willing to help them feel at home. Many more apps. perform a social function like helping to find a community willing to share support for your illness or guiding you around town if you are of limited mobility, or helping you through child rearing, etc. etc.. App. development for social purposes is unlimited in its capacity to promote thinking through the heart.
“Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable,” by Damien Hirst, was displayed at Punta della Dogana and Palazzo Grassi, in Venice, to expose what could emerge from the seas, where our cultural past is submerged. The images, sculpted by Damien Hirst, are vivid and sensually modern. They represent mythological images encrusted by coral and shells (since they were forgotten for two thousand years). They represent, beautifully, the re-emergence of polytheism.
Many other artists are trying, like Ai Weiwei and Damien Hirst, to revive the world of images in which we used to live, as pristine human beings. They are following the lead given by W.B. Yeats, at the beginning of last century, with The Second Coming[59].
They see and represent beautifully many images carried forward from the ancient times by the Rough Beast…who… Slouches Towards Bethlehem to be Born.
Innumerable entrepreneurs and App developers take initiatives capable of enlarging the capacity of human beings to live the imagery contained in their archetypal background fully. It is the renaissance of imagery through the development of Applications and the initiatives of artists and entrepreneurs.
Recently, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Dr Priscilla Chan wrote a letter to their newborn daughter, Max, saying that during their lifetime they will give 99% of their Facebook shares to charity.[60]The new “Chen-Zuckerberg initiative” will focus on “personalised learning, curing diseases, connecting people and building strong communities”.
By using a limited liability company, instead of a non-profit organisation, they will be able to go beyond making philanthropic grants. They will invest in companies, lobby for legislation, and seek to influence public policy debates (activities restricted to nonprofits by the tax laws).
The Zuckerbergs signed on the “Breakthrough Energy Coalition” organised by Bill Gates to contribute towards a multi-billion dollars clean energy fund. They also joined “Giving Pledge,” started by Warren E. Buffet to get wealthy families to give away more than half of their worth.
In their letter to Max, the Zuckerbergs wrote that ”having this child has made us think about all the things that should be improved in the world for her whole generation.” “The only way we reach our full human potential is through unlocking the gifts of every person around the world.”
The Zuckerbergs’ letter is a good example of “thinking with the heart”, of consciously using the thinking and feeling functions harmoniously, as our ancestors were capable of doing. It is also a very practical answer to populism, using the freedom of individuals to promote directly, with their own money, the well-being of the others. It will not be the well-fare State. It will be the well-being of individuals supported by other individuals. The promoters will give money because they wish to do so, not because they are taxed.
Many more Billionaires should follow their example if they decide on the intelligent use of their money and the power[61] that comes with it. Unfortunately, at this moment, too many Billionaires use the power that accompanies their money to exert political influence in favour of their business, to reduce taxes and regulations and hire experts to avoid paying their share.
On the other hand, the “elite” at Davos tried to build consensus on the necessity to create a “Shared Future in a Fractured World.” More investments in infrastructures, job training and education, worldwide, coupled with “universal basic income” should make a difference, in their view.
Governments can think through the heart too.
Recently, the German Government proposed a Europe-wide “Marshall Plan for Africa” that would, among other things, shift development-aid funds to underwrite private investment and take the first steps toward lowering trade barriers into Europe. Thus the European Union will be allowed to import products from Africa, instead of workers, and by the reduction of trade barriers, those workers will be enabled to work in their own countries. The European “Marshall Plan for Africa” would also favour those States that embraced reform, giving a strong incentive for the regional leaders to get their act together. Moreover, aid to development will not go to local governments unless they substantially reform in a way to guarantee complete avoidance of corrupt practices.
Maybe it is the time that the other European governments acknowledge the leadership role in building up values acquired by Germany, while taking responsibility for the historical shadow emerged during the Second World War, and let it guide the European unification process.
Merkel and Macron should be able to take substantive leadership in guiding the European Union out of the waters agitated in a confusionary way by English nationalism and many others European nativisms and promote measures aiming at strengthening the Euro System, like debt mutualisation. They should, finally, establish a permanent Security Council seat for the European Union and promote an integrated European defence system and a common foreign policy.
If their political power lasts a sufficient amount of time, they should aim at promoting transparency and harmonising world-wide tax laws and regulations to reduce inequality, since inequality in wealth distribution is the most disruptive factor in political equilibriums, worldwide.
In the meantime, we should take note of the various proposals, or even initiatives, aiming at the universal distribution of a basic income to correct inequality of wealth. The International Monetary Fund published a report on the subject, Finland is giving a try to it, together with Oakland and Stockton, in California, the Province of Ontario and several cities in the Netherlands are experimenting with it. Even nonprofit organisations, like GiveDirectly, proceed with plans to distribute universal cash grants in developing countries.
A few years ago I was in a little bookshop in Camden, Maine, and I saw a table filled with many copies of “Capital” by Thomas Piketty[62]. To my questioning the reason for the exhibition, the owner of the shop answered that the book of 600 pages of economic history was a bestseller, all over the world. After reading it, I understood why: it was the incontrovertible proof that the tendency of returns on capital to exceed the rate of economic growth was the primary driver of economic inequality. After many years, the product is extreme inequality, which stirs discontent and undermines democratic values, because the few become richer, while the most lose the capacity to pay. Inherited wealth matters more than effort and talent.
Leaving private companies alone to manage the revolutionary process of technological growth and globalisation, was evidently equivalent to abandoning the poor and uneducated to a progressive worsening of their situation. International companies optimise globally rather than nationally. They aim to maximise profits across the world, placing investments where it is most beneficial and finding labour where it is cheapest.
How could anyone believe, in his right mind, that millions of poor and uneducated people could behave rationally? They didn’t in America, and they significantly contributed to the election of Trump as President. A proper message to the elites?
The commendable initiatives of private entrepreneurs, like the Zuckerbergs, should not be left alone but accompanied by a major effort of existing International Organisations and States to reduce inequalities effectively.
The European Union could take a leading role in sustaining openness in a dynamic global economy,[63]promote regulatory convergence in the global financial sector (also correcting differing tendencies emerging in the United States), be a clear example of how education, retraining and welfare policies support economic growth and reduce inequalities.
A model, for all, should be the economic and social success of the free movement of people, goods and services within Europe.
Parallel to the implementation of the “Marshall Plan for Africa,” the European principle of free movement of people and goods should be gradually expanded with and within the developing world. The United Nations could help, coordinating more effectively the migratory movement of people worldwide.
Furthermore, the European Union should promote worldwide harmonisation of rules and regulations in accordance with those embedded in the common legal framework.
As already stated, the extreme inequality in which we all live today is the major economic cause of political instability. Therefore, while we are promoting the growth of consciousness to reach a new ethical balance, worldwide, new policies should take into account the dramatic formative process in which we are all living and provide everywhere the fundaments of a stable market economy: education, property rights, the rule of law, reliable tax schemes, a properly working banking sector and truth in advertising.
To finance all of that worldwide will be necessary to establish a progressive global tax on capital[64] coupled with a very high level of international financial transparency.[65] Off-shore governments and law firms should be put under constant scrutiny, reducing their capacity to foster tax avoidance. Deductions should be allowed if taxable wealth is donated. Ultimately, the progressive global tax on capital will contain and overcome the natural tendency of capitalism to promote inequality.
Regarding the banking sector, additional measures to existing regulations have been proposed[66] to reduce the use of derivatives,[67] create an efficient electronic payment mechanism to minimise fees on card transactions, close off the off-shore banking centres and to make Banks more transparent to avoid excessive risk-taking.
Efforts should also be made to create, worldwide, a more progressive income and corporate tax system-with fewer loopholes.
As an example, the United States and the European Union could conclude an international agreement on the taxation of corporate profits establishing that any firm selling goods in the U.S or Europe will be paying taxes there on its global gains, with a deduction for corporate profits taxes paid in other jurisdictions.[68]Many other countries will be encouraged to become part of the agreement seeing their right to tax corporate profits already established but implemented only by the parties to the international agreement.
Consideration should also be given to creating an international estate tax system, to prevent that successive generations inherit estates without any personal contribution to their growth.
Equalizing wealth, in other words, will bring more peace to the world, and more capacity for human beings to cooperate for the common good.
International leadership working consistently to achieve that end will acquire growing political power and respect.
If a coalition of governments and international organisations will be able to equalise wealth gradually, it will also gain the political power needed to promote the establishment of new ethical values.
THE ORIGINS OF ETHICAL VALUES
At the conclusion of Civilization and its Discontents, Freud wrote:”…there is one question I can hardly evade. If the development of civilisation has such…similarity to the development of the individual…may we not be justified in reaching the diagnosis that…some epochs of civilisations… possibly the whole of mankind has become neurotic?[69]
Robert Sardello adds to it:” The individual presented himself in the therapy room of the nineteenth century, and during the twentieth, the patient suffering breakdown is the world itself… The new symptoms are fragmentation, specialization, expertise, depression, inflation, loss of energy, jargoneze, and violence. Our buildings are anorexic, our business paranoid, our technology manic.”
To follow James Hillman:“it is now very difficult to distinguish clearly between neurosis of self and neurosis of the world, psychopathology of self and psychopathology of the world.”…” The world, because of its breakdown, is entering a new moment of consciousness by driving attention to itself.”… So it’s time for… “the examination of culture with a pathological eye”… “the world is inundating me with its unalleviated suffering. After one hundred years of the solitude of psychoanalysis I am more conscious of what I project outward than what is projected onto me by the unconsciousness of the world.”…”we cannot inoculate the individual soul nor isolate it against the illness in the soul of the world.”
“Money holds the soul in the vale of the world, in the poetry of the concrete, in touch with the sea as facts, those hard and slippery facts, so perduring, annoying, and limiting. And ceaselessly involving one in economic necessity.”[70]
Equalizing the capacity of human beings to deal with economic necessity will free their minds and souls to imagine the world in its reality.
To imagine the beauty of nature, with its myriad manifestations of infinite variations of colours and shape.
To imagine the wisdom of animals, who never try to build their egos out of its natural shape, or impose their communities on everyone else, or permanently destroy nature.
The freedom of our minds and souls will allow us to see the Anima Mundi, the Soul of the World, with all its infinite images sensually proposing themselves to our love.
The suffering of our ego for the conscious bearing of our shadow will be rewarded by the capacity to see and live the beauty of Nature. The values emerging from this enlargement of our vision, from the capacity to see the innumerable existing images, will allow our egos to assume a proper dimension within the context of Anima Mundi. The process of letting the archetypes recuperate their space is not going to be magical, but only natural. They will have to design the interiors of our interiority.
The motto for a new morality should be: “ Man, if thou knowest what thou doest, thou art blessed, but if thou knowest not, thou art accursed, and a transgressor of the law.”[71]
Coming to our times, instead of suppressing and repressing the contents of the unconscious the New Ethic accepts their existence, everywhere, and structures a way of living with them within the conscious mind.
To what I have already written about archetypes, to guide us in living and surviving the breakdown of our culture,[72] I should add Aphrodite-Venus. She is the Archetype our collective culture is missing, nowadays, as an image fully present at the conscious level, empowering our capacity to see aesthetically ourselves and the entire world. Our society runs instead after minimal sexual fantasies or pornographic images, reducing her to an intimate performance of pornstar exhibitionism[73].
Virtual reality and robotic technology are even providing a variety of products able to substitute the real experience of our physical sexuality. Reducing Venus to a visual literalization, maybe with robotic qualities, is the equivalent of trying to kill a God, to suppress or repress any experiential value provided by a natural contact with the image.
We have to open our eyes to the beauty of Aphrodite-Venus, in what remains of the natural world, and cherish that sense of beauty, of aesthetic value, to be fully in our souls and enliven our human-made reality. To remain breathless in front of the beauty of nature, is the real life.
Thinking with a hearth full of aesthetic values will enable us to reach a new Renaissance.
“During the European Renaissance the ancient myths were revived, and the Gods and Goddesses restored as dominants of imagination and categories of reflection. This revival gave Renaissance thought immense complexity. Single-mindedness was splintered into a pantheon of possibilities. Meanings proliferated. Yet action during this same period was spectacularly decisive and enduring. Scientific experiment, global exploration, financial innovation and artistic accomplishment were carried out boldly, all the while paradox and subtle innuendo governed thought.”[74]
Illuminated by aesthetic values, we should guide our society in mending the territories on which we live: Re-building our cities and their connecting routes, providing energy to our living and travelling, caring with love and respect for Nature and all living beings.[75] In learning from them how to live within the natural limits of our egos.
The Renaissance of our culture through Aisthesis will free our societies from all limits put on real and beautiful growth. Nothing will be flat and unidimensional because everything will flourish.
As an example, the initiative of Amazon, Berkshire Hataway, and J.P. Morgan-Chase, to develop a private and efficient health care system, for themselves, could be the beginning of universal health care system for the United States and, later, for everyone, worldwide. Private companies thinking through the heart, might be able to promote a universal and efficient health care valid for all beings.
To see the “fake growth” we are living within, now, let’s go back to Robert Sardello and James Hillman:
“An object bears witness to itself in the image it offers, and its depth lies in the complexities of this image…
Hence, to call a business paranoid means to examine the ways it presents itself in defensive postures, in systematisations and arcane codes, its delusional relations between its product and the speaking about its product, often necessitating gross distortions of the meanings of such words like good, honest, true, healthy, etc.
To call a building catatonic or anorexic means to examine the way it presents itself, its behavioural display in its skinny, tall, rigid, bare-boned structure, trimmed of fat, its glassy front and desexualised coldness and suppressed explosive rage, its hollow atrium interior sectioned by vertical shafts.
To call consumption manic refers to instantaneity of satisfaction, rapid disposal, intolerance for interruption (flow-through consumption), the euphoria of buying without paying (credit cards), and the flight of ideas made visible and concrete in magazine and television advertising.
To call agriculture addictive refers to its obsession with ever higher yields, necessitating ever more chemical energisers (fertilisers) and mass killers (pesticides, herbicides) at the expense of other life forms and to the exhaustion of agriculture’s earthen body.”
Let me conclude with Erich Neumann, who was the first to challenge our culture, calling for a new Ethic just after the end of the Second World War.
“Modern man has lost his way; but the road which brings salvation to him is a road which leads downwards to a reunion with the unconscious, with the instinctual world of nature and with the ancestors, whose messenger is the shadow. He/it is who brings the good news of the treasure hidden in the depths, of the herb of healing which grows in the darkness and whose secret power is able to staunch the Amfortas[76] wound of modern man.”[77]
Modern man should enter his wound with courage and determination, with a leap of faith, because through entering the wound in his psyche he will be able to renew the destiny of humankind[78].
[1] This presentation is based on Depth psychology and a New Ethic, by Erich Neumann (Boston, Shambahala, 1990).
[2] Francesco L. Cottafavi is a former Italian diplomat who served, as a multilateralist, also at the United Nations and for the United Nations, dealing with human rights, international security and disarmament issues. He is working now on a project to center policy planning on cultural complexes and their archetypal determinants.
[3] Organized by the New York Center for Jungian Studies.
[4] “It would be important for the westerners of the twenty-first century to understand how crucial are these comparisons with a mental capacity which seems to be far, in time.” Translated from Psyche, by Luigi Zoja (Torino, It: Bollati Boringhieri, 2015).
[5] La Regla de Ocha (called in Spanish La Santeria) is a polytheism, originally from Africa, worshipped by the Yoruba people, and syncretized with Catholicism by the slaves in Cuba, and in other parts of the Americas, in order to respect the creed of their owners.
[6] Fred Gustavson, The Black Madonna of Einsiedeln ( Einsiedeln, Switzerland: Daimon Verlag, 2012)
[7] Erich Neumann, Depth Psychology and a New Ethic, pp 134.
[8] Rafael Lòpez-Pedraza, Cultural Anxiety (Einsiedeln, Switzerland, Daimon Verlag, 2012).
[9] David L. Miller, The New Polytheism (Dallas, Spring Publications, 1981).
[10] Erich Neumann, Depth Psychology and a New Ethic, p.99
[11] “An emotionally charged aggregate of ideas and images that tend to cluster around an archetypal core and is shared by individuals within an identified collective” Thomas Singer, with Catherine Kaplinsky, “The Cultural Complex,” in Murray Stein, ed., Jungian Analysis: Working in the Spirit of C.G. Jung (Chicago: Open Court Publishing, 2110), pp.23-See also Thomas Singer and Samuel L.Kimbles, eds., The Cultural Complex: Contemporary Jungian Perspectives on Psyche and Society (London: Routledge, 2004).
[12] See: On Art and Psychology, by Rafael Lopez-Pedraza, in Archetypal Psychologies, Stanton Marlon ed. (New Orleans, Spring Journal Books, 2012).
[13] The island had not been conquered for a thousand years. See also: Jules Cashford, Autonomy and Insularity in an Island Race, in Europe’s Many Souls: Exploring Cultural Complexes and Identities (Spring Journal, 2016).
[14] British exceptionalism is also a consequence of having dominated a large part of the world for a long period of time. America has followed suit with the victory in the Second World War and with American exceptionalism. If approved, a manifestation of British exceptionalism might be the “Great Repeal Bill” (repealing the E.U. legislation and setting a mechanism to incorporate it into British Law) because it contains the so called “Henry VIII clauses”, which will allow government ministers and civil servants to decide, without recourse to Parliament, which aspects of E.U. legislation and regulation can be kept, amended or discarded.
[15] Winston Churchill, wireless broadcast, may 7, 1940; speech to the Houses of Parliament, June 4, 1940
[16] Thomas Singer and Samuel L. Kimbles, ibd pp.7.
[17] Read: The Great British Empire Debate, on the New York Review of Books, NYR daily.
[18] Brexit had been defined by Inktank.fi:” The undefined being negotiated by the unprepared in order to get the unspecified for the uninformed.” This amusing and somehow accurate comment went viral (i.e. widely distributed).
[19] Depth Psychology and a New Ethic, pp 123
[20] For a very accurate history of the Trump candidacy and the beginnings of his Presidency read: One Nation After Trump, E.J:Dionne, Norman J. Ornstein, Thomas E. Mann (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 2017).
[21] Steven Buser in A Clear and Present Danger (Chiron publications, Ashville N.C., 2017)
[22] The collective projection of the shadow from North-America is very dangerous, because it “transforms military campaigns into attempts at destroying the North-American shadow: the dark wilderness of the Native American tribes, the darkness that has corrupted many Latin-American regimes, the imperial blackness of international Communism. Ultimately, the two World Wars were wars for the Europeans, but were perceived as a round-up of outlaws by the American Armed Forces.” In: Violent Hearts: America’s Divided Soul, by Luigi Zoja, in Politics and the American Soul (Spring vol. 78).
[23] Erich Neumann, ibid, pag.51
[24] Note-worthy, that Charlottesville ended up covering the statues of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson in black shrouds, as an unconscious way to underscore that their memory had been put back in the collective shadow. The Washington National Cathedral followed suit dismantling stained-glass windows representing the same Confederate generals.
[25] This recommendation to live with our shadow present, at the conscious level, is the excellent suggestion of Roxane Gay, associate professor at Purdue University, published by the New York Times (January 15th 2018). The NYT is beginning to publish articles taking into consideration psychological facts connected with the Trump Presidency.
[26] For a narcissist, God is reflected in the mirror. The cure of narcissism is to go deeper into it, till polytheism is re-discovered. For President Trump and all of his followers it would be diving in the image of self (or, the Inner Trump, for his followers) and to discover all archetypal images.
[27] See the interview with Murray Stein by Robert S. Henderson, available at the Ashville Jung Center website.
[28] See the quoted interview with Murray Stein.
[29] See Allen Frances, twilight of american sanity: a psychiatrist analyzes the age of trump (New York, Harper Collins, 2017).
[30] It is interesting to note that after Trump election Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm, reached the top of Amazon best-seller list.
[31] See Trumplethlnskin, Narcissism and the Will to Power, in A Clear and Present Danger, pp 69-85
[32] Russia’s campaign to influence U.S. elections was a sort of response to the equally successful campaign conducted by the U.S., at its time, to promote democracy in the former Soviet Union.
[33] A growing sector of the Republican Party, inspired by senators John Mc Cain, Bob Corker and Jeff Flake, might move gradually towards the impeachment of president Trump, because of his incapacity to respect traditional conservative values they believe should be the unshakable base of the Republican Party and of political life in the United States.
[34] The Korean War was interrupted on July 27th 1953 with an Armistice. Several experts and some governments believe that beginning negotiations for a peace treaty would diminish the need of the North-Korean Government for nuclear deterrence and that China will be reassured that the United States has no intention of re-unifying the two Koreas, bringing U.S, troops to its border.
[35] See the 29th December 2017 post by Fareed Zakaria: The declining of U.S. influence is the great global story of our age.
[36] See the statement delivered on August 25th by Janet L. Yellen at the symposium sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
[37] See the statement delivered on August 25th by Mario Draghi at the symposium sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
[38] Trust between countries could be jeopardized if President Trump will nominate to chair the board of governors of the Federal Reserve System candidates like John Taylor, or Kevin Warsh, or similar ones estimated as incompetent, for the task, since they supported fears of inflation at the beginning of the Great Recession and never recognized the mistake made at that time. Less dangerous could be the naming of candidates like Jerome H. Powell, although he might be easily tempted to deregulate the control of major financial institutions and Banks. Also “predicting inflation that did not happen” is in the record of the new Board member of the Federal Bank, Marvin Goodfriend.
[39] Protectionism was one of the pillars of Mr. Trump candidacy. He proposed to rip-off existing trade treaties and impose hefty tariffs to protect American workers.
[40] See A Clear and Present Danger, pp.8-9.
[41]“Extinction anxiety is the cultural psyche’s equivalent of the anxiety about death in an individual”. See A Clear and Present Danger, pp.33,34
[42] See the emotional charge emerged with the Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and following ones, and the diffuse disorientation of people who denied climate change and did not consider nature capable of becoming so powerfully destructive. The image of a Hurricane gives well the sense of the terrible vindictiveness of Nature, if it is not properly taken care of. It seems a synchronistic event aiming at raising the screen of lies covering the disastrous effect of human activities on the environment.
[43] See page 28
[44] Erich Neumann, ibid, pp 130
[45] Hillman diagnoses cultural fragmentation as the return of repressed polytheism. See: James Hillman, A Blue Fire (New York, Harper Perennial, 1991).
[46] See David L. Miller, The New Polytheism (Dallas, Spring publications, 1981)
[47] See James Hillman, quoted.
[48] In America, populism coincides with a vast majority of Trump’s supporters. In Italy we have the “Movimento Cinque Stelle,” accompanied, all over Europe, by a resurgence of neo-nazist and neo-fascist parties promoting authoritarianism as the only way to deal with the consequences of the Great Recession and Globalization.
[49] See: Allen Frances, twilight of american sanity, ibd.
[50] James Hillman ed., Facing the Gods (Dallas, Spring publications, 1980) pp.26-32.
[51] “Hermes Mercurious is the spirit of the unconscious, responsible for transformations, border crossings, and guidance across boundaries and into new territories.” Murray Stein, Outside Inside and All Around (Chiron publications, Asheville N.C., 2017).
[52] See: Paul Radin, The Trickster, A Study in American Indian Mythology, with commentaries by Karl Kerenyi and C.G.Jung (Schoken books, New York, 1972).
[53] See: Allen Frances, twilight of american sanity, ibd.
[54] See: Rafael Lopez Pedraza, Dioniso in Esilio, La Repressione del Corpo e delle Emozioni, (Moretti &Vitali, Bergamo, 2000).
[55] See:A. Marina Aguilar, Alchemy of the Hearth, The Sacred Marriage of Dionysos & Ariadne (Chiron publications, Asheville N.C., 2017).
[56] A significant help to the press might be brought by The International Consortium of Investigative Journalism. It might be able to collect massive information on tax evasion and corruption, world- wide, and allow the press to write very interesting and factually documented articles on these subjects.
[57] It should be noted that 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts decided to assess The Dangerous case of Donald Trump (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 2017) warning “that anyone as mentally unstable as Mr. Trump simply should not be entrusted with the life-and-death powers of the Presidency”.
[58] A mention for capacity, determination and meaning, should be made for the analytical work of the Asheville Jung Center in defining the Trump Presidency, also through the publication of the book: A Clear and Present Danger-Narcissism in the Era of President Trump (Chiron, Asheville, N.C., 2017).
[59] “Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer; / Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, / The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere / The ceremony of innocence is drowned; / The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity./ Surely some revelation is at hand; / Surely the Second Coming is at hand. / The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out / When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi / Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand; / A shape with lion body and the head of a man, / A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, / Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it / Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds. / The darkness drops again but now I know / That twenty centuries of stony sleep / Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, / And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
[60] The equivalent of forty-five billion dollars today. A significant amount, for a gift, although a part of it might come from tax avoidance.
[61] See: James Hillman, Kinds of Power, (Doubleday, New York, 1995).
[62] Capital in the Twenty-First Century, by Thomas Piketty (Cambridge, Harvard U.P., 2014), translated from French by Arthur Goldhammer.
[63] See the quoted statement by Mario Draghi, President of the ECB.
[64] See Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, (Cambridge, Harvard U.P., 2014). Pp.516-534.
[65] See the possible future developments in the Report published by the IMF in Digital Revolutions in Public Finance at bookstore.imf.org/drpf.
[66] See Joseph E. Stiglitz, The Great Divide, (New York, Norton&Co., 2012).
[67] So called financial weapons of mass destruction, by Warren Buffett.
[68] See Joseph E. Stiglitz, The Great Divide (New York, Norton&Co., 2012) pp, 277-278.
[69] See James Hillman, The Thought of the Hearth and the Soul of the World (Thompson Conn, Spring Publications, 1992).
[70] See James Hillman, A Contribution to Soul and Money, (Dallas, Spring Publications, 1982) pp.42
[71] See Jung, A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity, C.W.II, p 197
[72] At pages 25-28.
[73] See the photograph of Trump hugging the pornstar he allegedly paid not to reveal they had a sexual relationship. Look in his eyes, and see what remains of Venus.
[74] James Hillman, Kinds of Power, (New York, Doubleday, 1995). Pp.247
[75] I would suggest to see Jane Goodall act and talk like a female chimpanzee trying to seduce her male, in order to feel how much we have to learn to understand the world we live in. (at: www.janegoodall.org).
[76] The breakdown of harmonious cooperation of psychic forces in instinctive life is like an ever open and never healing wound, a veritable Amfortas wound.
[77] Erich Neumann, Depth Psychology and a New Ethic, p.144
[78] To encourage a “Leap of Faith” read: Trolling with the Fisher King, by Paul Pines (Asheville, N.C.Chiron pub., 2017).
