The Evolutionary Challenge in Western Culture: an Archetypal, Existential, Ecological

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The Evolutionary Challenge in Western Culture: An Archetypal, Existential, Ecological Perspective

Abstract: There is an explosive, revolutionary, deconstructive theme in the 20th century that has enacted an existential crisis in Western culture’s sense of identity and reality. Drawing on the spiritual emergence model, it can be shown that coming to the edge of destruction, as we have, calls forth the deepest possible potential for spiritual and psychological renewal at an individual, community and cultural level. We now live within a consumerist global community that is struggling with issues of social justice, economic equality and the survival of indigenous culture, driving the planetary ecosystem into an apocalyptic crisis, perpetuated by the 'enemy making' dualities of linear, reductionist, power driven, rational empiricist Western culture. Archetypal activism presents a possibility for political action that draws on the archetypal and existential depth models, highlighting egalitarian, reciprocal cooperation and reflective intentionality. If we look forward in our cosmology toward renewal and reconnection, we have to look beyond the core principle of a regulatory, transcendental divine that saves and protects to an existential and ecological divine that mediates participation. This involves a need to come to terms with complex diversity and the dark, mysterious intensity of our own unknown depths. Richard Tarnas speaks of kairos and dynamical systems theory of deep sensitivity to subtle input at a systemic bifurcation point, where the system is about to go to a new level of existential organization. It would seem that we are in just such an intense period of change in Western culture, and also globally. "We live in a networked world" says the Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. The theme of the networked periphery influencing the centre is in the process of being enacted. The network of global interconnections in the archetypal, humanistic, existential, transpersonal and related depth traditions that emerged from the 1960's is a complex, systemic manifestation calling for, and enacting, transformational cultural change.

Now is the time. This is the place. We are the people. Let’s do it.

Jim McNamara, ND, Programs Director, Living Institute; President, Human Horizons Foundation. He has been practicing since 1973 doing individual, couples, group and intensive retreat work. He is currently working as a practitioner providing holistic life coaching and existential-integrative spiritual counselling. His background includes psychodynamic psychotherapy, gestalt, primal and bioenergetics, as well as Jungian, archetypal, existential and transpersonal psychology, holistic healing and naturopathy, Vajrayana (Tantric) Buddhism, shamanistic work and Western mysticism. He is the founder of the Holistic Experiential Process Method (HEP), having trained and certified 12 practitioners since the 1990’s. He was Academic Dean of the Ontario (now Canadian) College of Naturopathic Medicine in the beginning of its 4 year full time program in the early 80’s, designing the first two versions of the curriculum. He is the founder and editor of the Archetypal Review of Culture, an on line magazine and journal.

Introduction

There is an explosive, revolutionary, deconstructive theme in the 20th century that has enacted an existential crisis in Western culture's sense of identity and reality. Drawing on the existential and spiritual emergence models, it can be shown that coming to the edge of destruction, as we have, calls forth the deepest possible potential for spiritual and psychological renewal at an individual, community and cultural level. We are now entering an archetypally situated, and cosmically framed, period of revolutionary evolution comparable to the 1960's and to the early Romantic period of the late 18th/early 19th centuries. Western culture is struggling with having emerged from the twentieth century, the century that exploded, with a relativized, fragemented, self-critical identity. We now live within a global community that is struggling with issues of social justice, economic equality and the survival of indigenous, local culture. Western culture's 20th century industrial capitalism began, and, now, 21st century consumer capitalism continues, the process of driving the planetary ecosystem into an apocalyptic crisis. Themes of egalitarian, reciprocal cooperation emerge from the humanistic, psychodynamic, existential, archetypal and transpersonal traditions that offer possibilities for facilitating a successful transition through this explosive, evolutionary crisis in the culture.

The 2002 Pacifica Graduate Institute "The World Behind the World – Reflection, Reconciliations and Renewal" conference asked "What, at this juncture in time and place is life asking of us? Who, from our deepest sources calls us to respond? How do we embody the wisdom of our individual psyches, our collective imagination, our cultural mythologies, our living planet?...Where is our lifeline, our myth, the larger meaning for our time?" At the conference the theme of 'archetypal activism' emerged – how to be politically and culturally active in this time from an archetypal point of view. Archetypal activism presents a possibility for political action that draws on the archetypal, existential and psychodynamic models of human nature, individuality and culture.

If we look forward in our culture toward renewal and reconnection, we have to look beyond the core principle of a regulatory, transcendental divine that saves and protects to an existential divine that mediates participation. Rather than saving by lifting us above and protecting us through transcendental regulation, the existential divine invites us into a self-arising, self-organizing, self-regenerating world, where relationship is the basis of protection and authenticity is the saving grace. The existential divine implies an emergent relationship with our own nature, including coming to terms with 'otherness' rather than trying to control or eliminate otherness, whether as unconscious adversity or simply as the 'alien' other. This involves a need to come to terms with complex diversity and the dark, mysterious intensity of our own unknown depths. It also means eschewing the enemy making dualities of the psychopathic, linear, reductionist, power driven, outcome oriented ego ideal of our rational empiricist culture. The existential divine could also be attributed as the ecological divine. This implies an emergent relationship with (rather than control over) nature, both as the wild ground from which we arise, and in which we have our life. The form of social organization for the existential-ecological tradition is an egalitarian confederacy of locally focused, communally organized network of small groups, rather than a religious, legalistic, hierarchical, authoritarian, centralized, bureaucratic mode.

Richard Tarnas speaks of kairos, Malcolm Gladwell of the 'tipping point', and dynamical systems theory of deep sensitivity to subtle input at a systemic bifurcation point, where the system is about to go to a new level of existential organization. It would seem, from many perspectives and on many levels, that we are in just such an intense period of change in Western culture, and, through various translations, also globally. "We live in a networked world" says the Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in the Jan/Feb, 2009 issue of Foreign Affairs. This publication of the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations speaks from the knowledge base of the US power elite, the centre. President Barack Obama, the community organizer who speaks with psychological reflection and approaches problem solving from a relational perspective, is a highly visible, centrally situated manifestation of this. The theme of the networked periphery influencing the centre is also in the process of being enacted. The network of global interconnections in the archetypal, humanistic, existential, transpersonal and related depth traditions that emerged from the 1960's is a complex, systemic manifestation calling for, and enacting, transformational cultural change. What used to be peripheral and counterculture is becoming an influential network of interconnected points of awareness and action. The Canadian Humanistic and Transpersonal Association (CHTA) has begun the creation of a directory of these and related programs, currently listing 150. Visit and follow the 'Web Resources' link to 'Collegial Contacts in the Humanistic, Existential, Somatic, Transpersonal and Related Fields' to explore these extensive, networked global connections.

Now is the time. This is the place. We are the people. Let's do it.

Archetypal Activism

From April 12 – 14, 2002, Pacifica Graduate Institute presented a conference entitled "The World Behind the World – Reflection, Reconciliation and Renewal" as a response to 9/11 and subsequent events, including the War on Terrorism. The conference presented an archetypal/mythological and psychodynamic perspective on the situation. The brochure for the conference presented the theme in this way. "The events of our recent past, still unfolding, have brought us all-individually and collectively-to a solemn turning point. What, at this juncture in time and place is life asking of us? Who, from our deepest sources calls us to respond? How do we embody the wisdom of our individual psyches, our collective imagination, our cultural mythologies, our living planet? From the wells of our soul's deepest desires we yearn to heal our Selves, each Other, and the world. Where is our lifeline, our myth, the larger meaning for our time?"

At the conference the theme of "archetypal activism" emerged – how to be politically and culturally active in this time from an archetypal point of view. Archetypal activism presents a possibility for political action that draws on the archetypal, existential and psychodynamic models of human nature, individuality and culture. The following is an elaboration of material from the conference.

Archetypal Political Distinctions

At the conference, Robert Romanyshyn pointed out a basic contradiction between the archetypal and activist themes. Archetypal implies metaphoric attunement, resonance, reverie, receptivity, reflection, understanding, depth, non-linearity, holism, dialectic complexity, tentativeness, a play of dark and light. Activism is a term used in the field of politics, such as 'political activism'. Politics tends to be strongly solution oriented, definitive, linear, reductionist, forward looking, somewhat unreflective, leader oriented, authority based, legalistic. It idealizes bright, well lit places. It is sound bytes and slogans. The KISS directive (Keep It Simple Stupid) rules. James Carville's "It's the Economy Stupid" got Clinton elected. Politics sees the world in black and white, good guy/bad guy terms. In "The War on Terrorism", fighting "the Axis of Evil", "we will hunt them down and burn them out". What is precisely missing is that complex archetypal reflective quality. Even in the counterculture, which is critical of mainstream politics, activist politics are still political, focalizing around polarization, protest, incidents, causes, idealism, bite size chunks. This linear action orientation is apparently antithetical to the archetypal reflective way of being. How we could make this polarity dialectic is a fundamental theme we must explore.

The archetypal/political polarity extends through a number of different cultural parameters. In terms of ways of understanding, archetypal prefers seeing symbolic connection through pattern and metaphor, drawing on history as depth illumination. Politics prefers factual reasons that provide cause and effect information, through which blame can be attributed, guilt determined, punishment meted out and solutions found. In the archetypal model, taking responsibility means showing understanding – it is self affirming and evolutionary. In politics taking responsibility means either self aggrandizing and glorifying or resignation in disgrace. In politics, emotions are stereotyped as position statements justifying action whereas, in an archetypal context, emotions are subjectively compelling. Politics clings to hope, while archetypalists live with doubt and faith. Politics values definitive action based on reasons, carried out with will power and determination, in which the actors original (usually simplistic) position does not change, but is tenaciously maintained until "he" (sic) prevails. Archetypalists value tentative action arising from non linear metaphoric thinking, feeling, intuition and complex, changing motivation holding the tension of opposites through dialectic attunment. Politics values achievement, success, triumph, attainment based on an idealistic platform. Archetypalists struggle with principles that are characteristic, rather than simplistic direct bases for action – principles of beauty, destiny, participation and connection, respect for failure and loss, holism, surrender, emergent self definition, context driven action. Politics is a legalistic mode of operation whereas archetypalists prefer justice as a principle. While politics promotes legalistic factual finding of guilt and consequent punishment, archetypalists prefer truth and reconciliation that encourages forgiveness.

Archetypalists understand and accept mistaken repetition rather than strive for decisive victory, so that the full details of unrecognized, forgotten identity emerge. Archetypalists understand how repetitious mistakes fully unfold and elaborate depth so that what is not mistaken can be seen, the gifts in the wound realized and the more robust health in the disease manifest. Politicians who wish to remember the past as the basis for creating a perfect future may be creating other problems – such as iatrogenic diseases (from medicine's fascistic desire to control and eliminate disease and to protect against death) and the ecological crisis (from the culture's desire to have an easy, secure world full of cheap fast food and consumerist recreational entertainment, with a nature that is contained and controlled). Archetypalist remembrance of the past takes us into the depths of understanding failure with forgiveness and provides a tendency to include the weak, the diseased, the malformed, the complainant – the alien other as the basis of an evolved, integrated, emergent, more complete sense of self.

These distinctions, of course, are not absolute. They provide an analytic and descriptive way to look at polarities. As archetypal activists we are called to be synthetic (i.e. dialectical) in order to facilitate bringing together the fragmented polarities of the culture in such a way that the existential tension of opposites is maintained while the opposites interact mutually, engaging without definitive dominance. In this way polarities may reflectively energize and activate each other, reflecting through distinction.

Archetypal Activity in the World

What then is an archetypal activity in the world? We must first recognize that the archetype itself is phenomenal – it is in the world, even as it points beyond itself to the world behind the world. What action might we say constellates around archetypal presence in the world?

Deep action, complex action, dialectic action, receptive action, action that affirms polarity and brings polarities into relationship, metaphoric action (action whose genesis is based in metaphoric understanding and whose activity reveals the metaphoric nature of life). In Michael Meade's words archetypal action would speak the unspeakable and mourn openly – not simply as a means of returning to where we were before or as a genesis of vengeful retaliation. Archetypal activism would encourage the acceptance of the breaking in of tragedy, of the collapse into terror at the conflict within the culture, rather than simply enacting a War on Terrorism, out there, as a means of managing this inner conflict. Lionel Corbett focuses also on this deep ambivalence within American culture. Meade goes so far as to suggest America must look for evil within, and in its own actions, as also does Corbett.

Archetypal activism would find ways to bring acceptance of the profoundly changing identity of American (really Western) culture and recognize that "the centre cannot hold" and that to hysterically and rigidly attempt to shore it up by acting out will constellate only more extreme and unmanageable fragmentation and hinder a necessary evolution. Corbett suggests something is dying in North American culture even as the new struggles to be born. Grof's perinatal images echoed this. It seems that the archetypal experience of birth/rebirth is inherently attended by experiences of dying, violence, brutal penetration, crushing, torture, imprisonment, poison and that, to accomplish emergence into a new world, we must accept this.

Meade and Corbett both speak of loss of innocence, specifically of the necessary and inevitable loss of innocence in a young, idealistic and self idealizing culture. Meade points out that the word noxious is the etymological core of innocent i.e. innocence is dialectically noxious.

A central motif of 9/11 is the collapse of the twin towers. Meade points out that the falling towers are a terrible, tragic lifting of the veil between the worlds, profoundly revealing the world behind the world. The fact that this revelation constellates as a terrifying 'end of the world' event, rather than an inner experience of evolutionary terror, reflects the hard core rigidity of military industrial consumerist globalization and the cultural imperialism of the good guy world saviour Logos. Because of the loss of the mediating institutions of the mesocosm in this revelation, we stand raw against the macrocosm. Surely the second coming is at hand.

As Jung and Edinger point out, in Western culture (specifically, perhaps, North American culture), a humanization of God is taking place (has been especially so since the Renaissance, according to Tarnas) with an accompanying reification of the human capacity to create (e.g. the self created human and genetic engineering) and destroy (e.g. the atomic bomb and planetary ecological crisis). This is portentous, but dangerous and explosive. We have expected the end of the world momentarily since World War II – the slow apocalypse is upon us, in Meade's words.