Our neighborhood sparkles with the lights of this holiday season. Windows, doors, shrubs, trees, and roofs! They are all dressed up in preparation for the festive mood that most often lifts our spirits this time of year. But his would-be holiday season is different.

This year the gaity, excitement, and good-will still may be felt, but stronger are the fear and anger that circulate through our neighborhoods, penetrating each level of our society. How then am I to speak of light except in Pollyanna fashion, bolstering a pseudo-optimism, determined to see good in everything? However, this could not be further in my  mind of  what I hope to say about a light in this time of darkness. 

But, first, I want to make clear what I mean by the phrase "a time of darkness." This time in which we are living is marked for the centuries that follow as a time of fear ruled by the tiniest of organisms, the COVID-19 virus. Smaller even than the bacteria in our bodies, they also have a claim to longevity, having occupied space on planet earth for millions of years. Nor do I need to tell you of their power to disrupt life for individuals and societies as they wield the specter of death for 1,000 people each day just within the United States. For this reason alone, I place the COVID-19 coronavirus at the front of the parade of fears at this time.

Along with fear, our time is also marked as a time of pervasive anger. On the one hand, given the fear and sadness of the pandemic that has killed 5 million people around the world, we might expect a bond among all of us to deal with such an unspeakable tragedy. But this is not the case. Even before the pandemic, in a poll conducted by NPR-1BM Watson Health, 84% of the people surveyed said Americans are angrier today than a generation ago. I refer to this poll to note that it is not just the ravages of our pandemic that prompt such anger that we see today. In a poll conducted by cnn.com on September 10, 2021, the headline says it all: "We're all just so damn angry." The hallowed halls of our nation's Capitol are stormed by mobs of angry and violent mobs, pushed on by political leaders who flaunt the highest disrespect not only for the legislators who had gathered to conduct business, but also for the chambers of the House of Representatives and the Senate. The traumatic rage assaulted not only some of the police officers attempting to perform their protective duty; many of us who witnessed on TV the unbelievable event carry the searing memory of what harm hysterical anger can do.

More than we are likely to acknowledge, the fear and anger I have briefly described cannot be erased from our minds. The scenes remain on our video tape but also in the deep chambers of our psyche as people continue to die and political chicanery fans the flames of anti-democratic sensationalism. This is what I have been describing as the gathering darkness.

What then, given such an overbearing weight of darkness, what is left to say about the light? It is this: The darkness itself gives birth to the light. Without the darkness we wouldn't have light. In the shadows of our life we find the nuances of character and learn to touch the moral center of our existence as that which truly makes life worth living.

Consider for example a poem by Derek Mahon, "Everything is Going to be All Right." Written in 1995, and published in his book, Selected Poems by Penguin, this poem by Mahon has probably been the most quoted of any other poems during the pandemic. Listen and you will see why.

       How should I not be glad to contemplate
       the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window
       and the high tide reflected on the ceiling?
       There will be dying, there will be dying,
       but there is no need to go into that.
       The lines flow from the hand unbidden
       and the hidden source is the watchful heart.
       The sun rises in spite of everything
       and the far cities are beautiful and bright.
       I lie here in a riot of sunlight
       watching the day break and the clouds flying.
       Everything is going to be all right.

This is not Pollyanna gibberish. Mahon acknowledges there will be dying, there will be dying, and the beautiful and bright cities are far away. But the sun will rise, and "everything will be all right." 

How does Mahon know this? "The lines flow from the heart unbidden and the hidden source is the watchful heart." Here, in the middle of his remarkable poem, Mahon reveals the secret that makes profound any poem, any work of literature, or for that matter any humane endeavor. I describe this as a secret although it is not. We all know that the most  worthwhile experience we have had, or ever will have, originates in the heart.

But, on the other hand, perhaps it is a "secret" the way "lines flow from the heart unbidden." The heart, or the soul, knows deep things of which the mind is unaware. This is what Carl Jung means when he refers to the "mythopoeic imagination." That word, "mythopoeic," first jumped out at me when I read Memories, Dreams, Reflections (p. 188) the second time. What a strange word, I thought; what could it possibly mean? This is the way New Oxford American Dictionary defines "mythopoeic": the making of a myth or myths.

Remember that "myth" as used here means a special kind of story that accounts for events and beings endowed with significance for understanding human existence. In other words, we human beings seek to connect in meaningful stories all that we experience.

Within the scope of our mythopoeic imagination, these stories or myths float through centuries of time and space. Along the way, just as our clothes pick up lint, so do our myths pick up characters, events, and other stories, as they change, evolve, disappear, and perhaps reappear as archetypes are wont to do.

In this symbiotic dance of darkness and light, we find meaning for our being. C.S. Lewis said it this way:

       If the whole universe has no meaning we should never have found out
       that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and
       therefore no creature with eyes, we should never know it was dark.
       Dark would be without meaning. (Mere Christianity)

Now is the season when we become aware once more of how special the light is. Millions of people around the globe follow their experiences of light, urged on by a refusal that the darkness should define our existence, emboldened by a centuries-old faith that "the light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it."    

Here is the problem: If we do not have anything to do we will do anything. However, it is not the case that we do not have anything to do. Think about that and remember what it was like when we were kids. I had so much to do, and that was even before homework assignments! Remember? The days were not long enough, and our parents would have to call us in against our will.

So, yes, we had things to do because life was just like that. To live was to work because our play was our work. We worked at our play and never had enough time. All too soon, our parents or somebody introduced us to the idea of hobbies, and then the whole, entire edifice of our world began to crumble.

Life fell apart. On one side was work; on the other side was play, and somewhere in the middle, we "sandwiched" our so-called hobbies. But, then, something else began to slip into the bifurcated world. What was this? It was distractions.

In fact, it was a whole train of distractions and changes in not only the separation of work, play, and hobbies. Oh no! My play group began to be forced to separate. My good friend, Peggy, was simply one of the gang. She could outrun many of the group and could throw, tackle, wrestle, and do all the things that we loved to do. There was never any problem either when we would choose sides. On our make-shift playground when we did not worry about uniforms, we could easily divide the group into two teams: the "shirts" and the "skins." Peggy could fit into either group until she couldn't—to our great puzzlement and dismay.

One day Peggy's mother rushed out on the porch when she saw us peeling off our shirts. She yelled for Peggy to come into the house and told her she would have to play on the team with the shirts! That did not seem right to her or to all of us on the "skins" team who needed Peggy as our fastest running back! She was puzzled and embarrassed, and all of us were left to try to figure why Peggy's mom did not like the skins! She had only told Peggy that she, the mom, would explain later that night. We made Peggy promise she would tell us when she found out. Meanwhile, we might as well go home. Somehow, the game felt strange, as if some mysterious force had fallen on us and distracted us from the innocent, spontaneous, wonder-filled times we had always enjoyed.

Peggy never told us what her mom said. But everything had changed because in a very short time Peggy herself became a distraction—at least for me, when Peggy became my "girlfriend." 

And there we have it. More about Peggy later, but I return to the statement I made earlier. If we do not have anything to do, we will do anything. Why? Because as the title of this writing implies, there is a will to distraction. And now we come to the heart of the matter. Just what are our present distractions? From what are they distracting us? And why does this matter? Why this topic? I am raising this topic with its attendant questions because of the turmoil that clouds the institutions of our country and the bizarre actions, conspiracy theories, and crippled enactment of policies needed to save our planet from its downward spiral toward ruin.

Furthermore, in what sense do we "will" these distractions? Let me state it quite simply:

           A distraction is a thing that prevents someone from giving full attention
           to something else; a diversion or recreation.  (New Oxford American Dictionary)

           Will is a state of mind in which there is an intentional outcome.  (RM)

From this vantage point, considering the nature of distractions and the disturbing tendency to focus our will on the distractions rather than what really matters, we may understand the paralysis that describes this time in which we are living.

What do I mean when I refer to "what really matters?" No doubt you could provide your own list, but I offer the following four concerns that threaten our way of life and the prospects for a world in which our children may live their dreams and reach for the stars.

First, there is the increasingly obvious deterioration of our natural resources. Habitats are disappearing, land masses are shifting, ocean currents are disrupting life not only of sea-dwelling creatures but also the distribution of heat around the globe, a process mediating the temperatures of the cold arctic and the hot tropical regions. 

Second, there remains a great racial divide in our country. The majority of the world's people are people of color. The last days of the "white world" are upon us. It is expected that Caucasions will become a minority within the US by 2045, and that one quarter of the world's population will be African by 2050. New leadership emerges, but racial differences continue to plague our realization of earth's people as one.

However, just as we are divided racially, so also are we divided politically. But unlike the factor of race that can divide people, our political unrest seems to stem from ideological posturing. How much of this is driven by fear and how much is driven by the ages' ongoing drama of power-seeking? Unfortunately, our most powerful religious groupings only serve to perpetuate the divide along power lines between "those who have it" and "those who do not." Most disturbing, however, is the collapse of one political constituency that seems to have abandoned any attempt at all to participate with good faith in a political forum where issues may be debated and compromised solutions presented. Instead, cultural issues are sensationalized for the advantage of political gain.

The fact that this kind of demagoguery can take place in a relatively educated society can be understood only because of what I list as my fourth concern: the politicizing source of pseudo-news within some of our media that is nothing more than propaganda riding the back of entertainment by individuals who thrive within a personality cult obsessed with self-serving aggrandizement. 

These four distractions form the beginning of realities that can survive only when there is "a will to distraction." But this "will" cannot last. Just as the distraction of my first love, Peggy, eventually sank over the horizon of life's many contingencies and adventures, so too will this political moment recede over the horizon. What you and I cannot know now is what may remain when the sun rises over a new day and our present distractions escape the grasp of our will. 

(The phrase "a universal will to distraction" is found in Carl Jung's Collected Works, Vol. 9i, para. 617.)

I suggested in earlier writings about dreams that they may have played some significant role in the evolution of our species and the development of consciousness.

So now I come to the phenomenon of consciousness. I call "consciousness" a phenomenon because a phenomenon is defined as:
          a fact or situation that is observed to exist or happen, especially one
          whose cause or explanation is in question. (New Oxford American Dictionary)

And the reality of consciousness is a question. At least, so it seems in the present moment when much of what goes on in our world strikes me as existing on the "slim-to-none" end of any measuring stick for consciousness. Of course, these are not the best of times. We continue to cope with a pandemic that has killed more than 5,000,000 people world-wide. And our means of coping served to protect us physically—for the most part—while at the same time isolating us behind our masks and social distances. Meanwhile, we watch the fires burn our forests, habitats disappear, and the traumas of racist violence and political stagnation sap our resilience and hope.

Better not to be conscious, some may think. Better to lose ourselves in the distractions of games, and political posturing that seeks to find bogeymen in other lost, isolated souls. In addition, some among us find comfort and hope by escaping into a "metaverse." 

This "metaverse" promises to help us connect and further our personal evolution, even as the "metaverse" itself evolves. So what is the "metaverse?"

           The metaverse is the hypothetical next iteration of the internet, 
           supporting decentralized, persistent online 3-D virtual environments
           through virtual headsets, augmented reality glasses, smartphones, 
           PCs, and game consoles. (Wikipedia)

With your electronic device, you may leave this present world of traumatic ugliness and enter the virtual world engineered by programmers of artificial intelligence and electronic design. This is a world of human avatars, guided by software scientists who create a virtual space in which human imagination engages virtual adventures with themes from the collective unconscious that have brought us to our contemporary moment of consciousness.

Herein is the promise and the threat to human consciousness. For example, where is the moral code located within the metaverse? Who creates beauty, wonder, awe, curiosity, guilt, shame, art, poetry, music, architecture, education, law, responses to suffering, love, falling in love, conflict, the resolution of conflict, justice, despair, life, death, mercy, grace? Who shapes the evolution of consciousness itself, as mysterious as it is?

In short, is the metaverse a world of artificial intelligence which might easily become an "artificial unintelligence?" If consciousness is "an awareness by the mind of itself and the world" (New Oxford American Dictionary), whose mind is minding itself within the
metaverse of artificial intelligence? At what point is the human neural network "engineered" to make social networking, business decisions, war games, and geographical reshaping serve the values and aims of a rogue individual, group, or perhaps a machine? 

Even as I ask this question, I depend upon GOOGLE to provide information that might assist me in considering the relationship between artificial intelligence and the metaverse. Here is the interdependence of humankind and machine, homo-sapien brain and artificial intelligence, human consciousness and virtual technology. 

How strange it is, then, that at this signal moment in time, we face the possible collapse of our democratic world and the defacing of our planet earth, while also glimpsing the potential of virtual reality that offers an advancing step in human consciousness. Perhaps it has always been so in the evolution of our species, although the possible extremes—advancement or catastrophe—appear to me so much greater. 

In any case, I am reminded of another time when civilization faced a collapse at the hands of dictators and war machines that led to World War II. As Jung reflected upon the crisis of his time in 1934, he said:
      
          What else is the meaning of the frightful regressions of our time?
          The tempo of the development of consciousness through science 
          and technology was too rapid and left the unconscious, which 
          could no longer keep up with it, far behind, thereby forcing it into
          a delusional position which expresses itself in a universal will to 
          distraction. The political and social isms of our day preach every
          conceivable ideal, but, under this mask, they pursued the goal of
          lowering the level of our culture by restricting or altogether inhibiting
          the possibility of individual development. They do this partly by
          creating a chaos controlled by terrorism, a primitive state of affairs 
          that affords only the barest necessities of life and surpasses in horror 
          the worst times of the so-called "Dark" Ages. It remains to be seen 
          whether this experience of degradation and slavery will once more 
          raise a cry for greater spiritual freedom.  (C.G.Jung, The Archetypes
          and the Collective Unconscious, Collected Works, Vol. 9i, para.617)

Each of us dreams, and we feel fascinated by them. Sometimes they frighten us; other times they inspire us, and occasionally they bring to mind something we have forgotten or perhaps an idea that moves our life forward. It is just this last thought that led me to consider the role of dreams in the evolution of our species.

How did dreaming begin? When was the first dream? Who was the first dreamer? And, how is it that we dream? This is a great mystery although we have learned a lot about dreams in the past 50-100 years.

In fact, before I move on to say more about the "mystery" of our dreams, allow me to call attention to what scientific studies have unveiled.

For example, with the advent of sleep laboratories in which we study participants' sleep patterns, we have established some base-line information that also tells us a lot about dreams and dreaming. Consider the following:

• Our brain waves while asleep follow a roughly ninety-minute cycle.
• With very sophisticated instruments, we can observe:

         + non-rapid-eye movement (NREM)
         + rapid-eye movement (REM)
         + NREM sleep takes place in 3 stages from lighter to deeper sleep.
            REM sleep follows the third stage of NREM.

• Basically, dreams occur during REM sleep.
• Newborns spend around eight hours a day in REM sleep, which decreases with age.
• Dreams may last from a few seconds to several minutes, in black and white or color.
• Most dreams, if complete, are little dramas. They tell a story with beginning, middle, climax, and conclusion.
• The part of the brain called the pons ("bridge") appears to demonstrate most dream activity. According to more recent studies in evolutionary biology, the pons evolved 505 million years ago.
• Dreams are purposive.

​And the characteristic of dreams as being purposive leads us into the ongoing debates about the nature of their purposiveness. One school of psychology suggests that dreams are "activation-synthetic," the result of random activity initiated in the brainstem. From this perspective, dreams serve no psychological, spiritual, or social purpose. (See J.A.Hobson, The Dreaming Brain.)

Another viewpoint is the threat-simulation theory of dreams in the evolution of the human mind. This perspective considers the role played by environmental threats that lead the brain to develop what might be described as a theatre-of-the-mind in which potential dangers are anticipated and actions rehearsed to avoid those threats. In this explanation, the brain unites the dynamics of cognition, perception, and sensation to create dreams for the person facing threats of various kinds. By rehearsing these simulations in dream-time, the dreamer is enabled to survive environmental dangers. Thus, the "threat-simulation" serves a useful purpose in the evolution of the human mind. (See M.S. Franklin and M.J. Zyphur, online at sage.pub.com, "The Role of Dreams in the Evolution of the Human Mind.")

This "threat-simulation" theory is another way of describing Carl Jung's understanding of dreams and dreaming. For Jung, the dream is a symbolic message from the unconscious. The dream comes in the service of compensating the dreamer's conscious attitude. In other words, whenever we face a problem or a threat, our brain is activated to resolve the matter. In this instance, all the systems of the brain contribute to the formation of our dreams and our consciousness. Although the pons is noted as a center of dreaming activity, the brainstem, the limbic system, and the frontal cortex make possible the consciousness of our perceptions and judgements in the service of health, safety, and meaning.

You may be reminded of experiences many of us recall. I am referring here to problems we cannot solve and which, after a strenuous time and effort, we "sleep on it." Then, after a night's sleep, we find we easily solve the problem that had so frustrated us the night before. We may or may not recall a dream, but we understand that some action has taken place in our mind while we slept.

What is this mysterious problem-solving capacity of the "sleeping" brain, and how is that related to the mysterious creations of our dreams? In my consulting office where I work with people's dreams, listening to 20 or 30 dreams each week, I observe repeatedly this dreaming response to the problems of individuals who have come to some impasse in their lives. 

Facing this impasse of tragedies and victories, moral failures, forgotten memories, threats and dangers, dreams appear. These dreams reveal a new way of living, a fresh viewpoint of life, offering insight as to what might yet be.

As an example, I offer one of my own dreams.

                                                 THE EAGLE 

            I am sitting in a circle of 10-12 people, holding some papers in my lap,
            perhaps leading a discussion. We are in a cottage in the 
            mountains, and the fall day is sunny and beautiful with a hint of change
            in the foliage. Slowly I become aware of a sound in the distance—something
            approaching! It sounds like the whirling blades of a helicopter—no, it is
            more like the loud flapping of wings! This seems impossible: the bird would
            have to be a very large one. Suddenly, a very large eagle appears outside
            our closed sliding glass door. The drapes are open, and we can clearly see
            the eagle whose wing tips tap on the glass as if it wants to get inside. 
            Startled, we jump up from our seats and stare at the eagle, afraid to move
            any closer. The eagle slowly backs away from the door and retreats about 
            100 feet from the cottage where it hovers 20 feet or so above the ground. We
            slowly open the door, move outside and stand with our backs to the cottage.
            The eagle's head changes to that of a human. I hear a voice speak: "It's 
            alright. I have come from the other side to tell you it's alright. There is
            more." Then the head changes back to an eagle's head as it turns and flies 
            away over the horizon.
       
To put this dream in context, I can say simply that I had come to the edge of my professional development. I sensed there was something more, but I did not know where to turn. The traditional path of my profession held no interest for me. I felt discouraged and uncertain. Then, in that experience of feeling stuck and as if life held no further direction for me, the eagle appears with the message: "It's alright; there is more." 

To say I was startled by the dream would be a major understatement. One might say that the dream served as an initiation into the deeper meaning and mystery of life.

And so, I conclude as I began by acknowledging that I cannot know when and how dreams appeared in our early beginnings. But I feel certain that  dreaming was a major development, preparing a  pathway in the evolution of consciousness—the wonders, promise, and mystery of which we have only begun to dream.
      

The searing scene from Afghanistan's Kabul airport tears our hearts. People jam the gates of the airport, individuals cling to the planes racing down the exit runways, and the urgency of airlifting US citizens and Afghan colleagues as well as family members creeps into our minds—perhaps forever—along with the scenes of our forces departing Saigon, the last moments of that tragic war. War is hell, indeed, but these scenes of a rush to safety, stranding individuals and the country with little hope left for a better future... . Well, there are no words that can frame the horror, the sadness, the desperation, and the despair.

However, to place that scene in our narrative, I can say simply and agonizingly, the world is not safe. It is not safe in many ways and on so many levels. For example, consider all we are living through at this time: the tragic rush to end the war in Afghanistan; COVID-19; hurricanes, run-away fires, and other natural calamities resulting from the human-induced climate change; the systemic racism that splinters our society; the political exploitation and opportunism that makes moral cowards of our political leaders; and the misinformation funneled from some major news sources that clouds the good will of whole groups of people and jeopardizes our children.

Each of these—COVID, climate change, systemic racism, political cowardice, and misinformation—hangs like a dark and foreboding cloud over our souls. We may try to escape into the 10,000 distractions that entice us, but a the end of the day we know when we wake in the morning we will face a world that is not safe.

We cannot escape these. Where are we to turn in times of a pandemic? As of this writing, worldwide records indicate 218,156,909 cases, including 264,330 new cases, 4,528,323 COVID-related deaths, and 195,117,535 reports of recovery among whom many of the symptoms will continue for some indefinite time.

Then there is the misinformation fiasco associated with this dread disease. The formula for dealing with this virus is relatively simple: Get vaccinated, maintain a safe distance protocol, and wear a mask. If our political leaders had stepped forward, sharing the accurate information, and modeling the actions recommended by medical professionals, we maybe could have avoided the rampaging onslaught of the virus, preventing it from becoming endemic. Perhaps we could have saved some of our small businesses and have prevented the death of so many, and have protected our children, demonstrating to them the support and care of our common good. But we did not.

And the same can be said about our climate. We have lost so much time. Based upon the most recent information accumulated and recorded by our National Aeronautics and Space Administration, we can point directly toward the human-influenced changes in our climate.
NASA's report online as of 8/28, indicated the human activities as the "primary driver" in the following:

• global rise in temperature by 2.12 degrees since measurements in the late 19th century;
• oceans warming resulting in tons of ice decreasing in the Greenland and Arctic ice sheets;
• glacial retreat occurring "almost everywhere in the world;"
• decreased snow cover in northern hemisphere and melting earlier;
• rise in sea level about 8 inches in the last century;
• Arctic sea ice declining in extent and thickness;
• ocean acidification increasing by about 30% since the industrial revolution as the result of human emitting more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that culminates in a fallout from which oceans absorb 20%-30% of the total carbon dioxide emissions.

Along with those indicators we can add the incidents of forest fires clouding the skies on the west coast and drifting east, as well as hurricane activity. Hurricane Ida struck the Louisiana coast with the force of a category 4, just short of a category 5. Millions of people are without power, flooding has forced evacuation of some homes, but mercifully the number of deaths remains small, although the death of any one person under the power of natural catastrophes prompted by the human impact on climate change is one too many. We extend our condolences to all who lost property, life, and the stability of their livelihoods.

So, yes, the world is not safe against the threat of the smallest danger (the virus), the largest immediate threat of a hurricane, the more distant threat of an asteroid hurtling through space with the earth in its cross-hairs, and the political chicanery of some elected officials who fail to speak forthrightly and to act honorably. In the face of these threats, we understand what it is to think and feel our vulnerability in this vast universe.

However, you no doubt observed that the title of this piece includes a "but" in response to the statement that the world is not safe. The truth is, "The World is not safe, but we are not powerless either"! The knowledge, compassion, commitment, and heroism of our people are remarkable. Doctors and nurses work long hours in the wards attending COVID patients; drivers and maintenance people, IT technicians, custodians, and others do the hard work even when we do not see them, and scientists scan the skies to intercept dangerous intruders.

The world is not safe, but we are not unaware and unprepared. Life goes on and it seems that our mission in the universe probably has a purpose which we unknowingly are  fulfilling. I believe it is a purpose working out so that we can say, "Yes, the world is not safe in every way at all times, but we are committed to make it a habitat in which we recognize and contend with whatever appears to make our world less safe." 

One of you asked why I did not include "love" as a quality in what I referred to as the "New Humanity." I included "conscience," "compassion," "curiosity," and "coping" but not "love." So, why not "love?"

I wondered myself why I did not include love, and I think the reason was that I consider love to necessitate consideration not as a "quality" of our evolving species but rather as a fundamental construct of being itself.

In other words, our very being rises out of love if we understand love as the power of being. Thus, to love something or someone is "to let be." Perhaps, like conscience, compassion, curiosity, and coping, love may be considered as a quality of the New Humanity, but if so, it stands alone as the very foundation from which everyone and everything arises.

I am aware that this may appear as a philosophical and theological projection, but not so much if you consider the psychological dynamics love plays in our evolutionary consciousness. Consider, for example, the four dynamics of love as they evolved within the European and Christian frames of human bonding: agape, storge, philia, and eros.

Agape is the fundamental, grounding form of love associated with the Christian understanding of Christ. The sacrificial giving of his life stands as a supreme example of love as unconditional acceptance, care, and validation of not only human life but the whole creation. As such, agape stands not so much as the apex of human love but the foundation out of which all love appears. This is to say that the revelation of love, agape, associated with Christ made possible the understanding of human existence in which love holds everything together -- the unifying power of creation which has brought us to the awareness of a relational connection that grants meaning to human existence.

From this basic "ground floor" of life, we experience other expressions of love. Consider storge, for example. Storge is the natural bonding that occurs in families and other groups in which people are thrown together to work, or live, and/or play. The key here is that this form of love is natural. It follows the neural pathways of our brain and central nervous system, weaving together the dynamics of our triune brain: the instincts of our brain stem, the feeling capacity of our mammalian brain, and the rational structure of our frontal cortex. 

Then there is philia, the love of friendship. We feel this dynamic in our native cities, our gatherings for holidays, sports events, our patriotic histories. People live and die for country, for the home team, for institutions that have played a role in our personal history. We may not know a stranger we meet for the first time, but we observe a class ring or some symbolic gesture, piece of clothing, or a song, and then the feeling of philia rushes up within us. We feel connected and share stories about our "history," our experience of some recent or distant commonality. In some instances, the feelings of philia even exceed those of storge for family members. 

But it is eros to which I turn now and which I believe stands at the apex of human love. Eros is: 

      —an energy
      —an archetypal power
      —a deity, in mythological stories
      —a power that enlivens a person, a couple, a group
      —a spirit of communion, togetherness
      —an experience of meaningfulness
      —a sense of desire
      —a sexual excitement
      —an autonomous complex
      —a perceptible closeness and enjoyment of participants in the experience of eros
      —a sense of something eternal and worth dying for
      —an air of contagious infection
      —a desire for union with the other

And yet, this dynamic experience of eros differs from hysteria, mob dynamics, or power- driven patriotic and political rallies. The difference may be subtle to some onlookers, but the key is that eros is life-giving, not life denying; eros brings light and not darkness; eros realizes the positive features of agape, storge, and philia in the uplifting spirit of supporting people to become all that they are, not less; and eros rides the fine line between danger and safety, not accentuating either extreme.

For example, consider eros as sexual desire. This is a fundamental drive for union with the other, and what is more fulfilling than erotic union with a  partner, with whom there is present also the other dimensions of love: affection, friendship, and unconditional regard? 

This is why the four loves belong together. Love is one; but it has many portals. And each portal leads us deeper into the mystery and meaning of our New Humanity. We are not robots; we are not machines. Neither as we puppets to be manipulated and controlled or used by others. 

Finally, as far as we know, we are the only creatures in the universe who know love in its four dimensions. This is the glory, the excitement, the danger, the fulfillment, and the potential of what it means to be a human in love... 
whose name is eros.




     

The universe is now estimated to be 13.8 billion years old, according to a very prestigious international team of astrophysicists. You can look that up for yourselves, and please don't ask me to explain the basis for that estimate except to say that it is based upon measurements of the oldest light detected in the universe, a kind of "afterglow" following the "Big Bang" when protons and electrons formed atoms. You got that?!

In any case, the universe appears to have been around longer than I can count. And, then, there is the question that follows: How old is humanity? However, the question itself is not that simple because there arises the very problematic question: What do I mean by the word "humanity?"  If I trace human beings back to the appearance of primates from which we appear to have evolved, this would take us back more than 60 million years, and it is estimated that the earliest civilizations arose between 4000 and 3000 BCE, according to the data Google traces to the National Geographic Society.

My point simply put is this: Our universe's age may be measured in billions of years, and civilization in terms of thousands of years. One might say, we are just getting started. Ours is a recent appearance in this parade of life's evolution.

But it does also appear that humanity's evolution hit the fast-forward button, and this is a problem, maybe the problem as to prospects of our survival as a species. For the sake of this paper, I am referring to our place on the evolutionary stage of life as the New Humanity. Why is that important? I believe it is important because we now may see ourselves as co-creators in the future prospects of life.

Further, as co-creators we have been equipped to move forward, providing care not only for humanity's survival, but also for tending the well-being of our planet earth even as we send out tentative probes exploring the far reaches of our solar system.

What do I mean when I say this New Humanity has been equipped as co-creators to provide care for evolutionary life today? There are four qualities in particular that serve our evolving life and perhaps bode well for the future of our planet, its inhabitants, and its natural features. Those qualities are: conscience, curiosity, compassion, and coping. As you will see below, each of these qualities reflects a stage in the evolutionary scale of life, each quality contributing significantly to our survival, and each quality adding a layer of meaning which enhances our experience of evolutionary and planetary life. However, as we shall also see, each quality contains not only positive potential but destructive potential as well. 

I begin my brief exploration of each quality not in terms of most important to least significant but because the first quality is likely to be the one we most readily recognize:

  Conscience.  Conscience is an inner sense of right and wrong. It arises out of the structures of the brain involving cognition and emotion, a developing sense of our common humanity, how one feels when abused and when treated fairly, how one's family and culture teach as well as practice moral principles. All of these add up to create a personal morality that expands to form institutions, laws, religions, and educational systems. The positive contribution of our conscience is a high morality. However, the negative outcome of our conscience may lead to a legalism and obsession with punishment for persons who do not conform to the legalistically imposed laws and puritanical expectations.

   Curiosity.  Next, the second quality of the New Humanity is curiosity. Curiosity is humanity's innate desire to "know" and explore. Curiosity is the name NASA gave its car-sized rover that explores the landscape of Mars, which is successfully taking place as of this writing and has been for nearly a decade. The positive outcome of our curiosity is discovery; the negative outcome is danger. "Curiosity killed the cat," as our old saying goes. But without curiosity we would be locked into a sealed world, a diminishment of interest that would suppress the human spirit. Think of the many discoveries our ancestors brought into human consciousness, consider also the practical applications that have enhanced our lives, not without danger. But most often the benefits of our discoveries outweigh the dangers we face.

    Compassion.  Then, there is the third quality: compassion. Compassion is seated within the limbic system of our brain, where it modulates our rationalizations and our aggressions. Compassion arose in the second major stage of the human brain's development when warm-blooded mammals began to nurse, feed, train, and protect their young. The positive outcome of compassion is empathy by which we take the measure of another person's suffering and reach out to help, to alleviate the suffering. However, compassion's positive outcome of empathy is always at risk of assuming the pain of another. This potential negative outcome is what today we might call co-dependency, a state of enmeshment in which compassion sinks into the suffering  of another and drowns. 

    Coping.  Finally, I come to the fourth quality that I observe in the top echelon of the New Humanity's positive characteristics. This quality is coping. The origin of the word  meant "to meet in battle." Today, we generally employ coping skills several times a day to solve problems, personal and/or interpersonal. Coping is the conscious process of solving problems. The "ten thousand things" come at us from within and from without. We experience this as stress, difficulties that threaten us personally or the larger world in which we live. These difficulties may weigh us down and threaten to defeat us by wrecking our health, our finances, our relationship with others and even our relationship with ourselves. But when we engage a problem, our will, our cognition, and our emotions rally in search of a solution. Out of sight and out of mind, our evolutionary inheritance prepares us not only to solve a problem but to deepen our understanding of how our world and our mind may work together. We employ all we have learned and experienced, all that we are, and our consciousness expands. This is what is involved in the wonderful human quality of coping. Not to do so or not to be able to do so, is despair.

The prospect of our "New Humanity" is a readiness for life made possible by our conscience, curiosity, compassion, and coping. These qualities hold us together as we become co-creators of tomorrow. They do not guarantee anything like an inevitable utopia for our future, but they do provide us a light to make our way through the darkness ahead.

Continuing my observations of last month, I return again to consider the spell-binding enchantments of which C.S. Lewis spoke in The Weight of Glory. I repeat the warning Lewis gave us concerning the vulnerability of our human minds to be possessed by an enchantment that overcomes reason, leaving us in the power of the enchantment and the individual or group who casts the spell.

So, you ask, what does that have to do with the idea and image of a merry-go-round? Here is the connection. Go back in your mind to your childhood excitement of riding the merry-go-round. In my experience, the merry-go-round was located in the center of the theme park, and I could hardly wait to pull my folks to that magic place of music, vibrant colors moving and flashing, lively animals bobbing up and down in their circular, never-ending pursuit of one another, the chariots, the mythical creatures I could fantasize in my activated imagination, the excited kids rushing to claim their favorite creature -- mine, the noble white horse who had been waiting for me since our last adventure, weeks, months, or a year ago.

Suspended in space and time, I rode my gallant horse in adventures of my mind while scenes of the old, boring world of familiar people and irrelevant objects floated by my eyes that were trained on mythical far-away places shared by my white horse that could easily outrun Trigger (Roy Rogers), Champion (Gene Autry), and Topper (Hopalong Cassidy). What fun, what excitement, what grand stories raced through my mind as the world whirled by, oblivious to the drama of a heroic call to what was really important in my enchantment. 

And what is really important? Alas, here I return to the idea of enchantment and the warning Lewis extended. I just described how as a small kid I fell into the enchantment of a merry-go-round. But think about that. I believe each of us is vulnerable to enchantment because we long for something big, meaningful, worthwhile, hopeful, deep, ultimate, adventurous -- something around which we want to orient our lives.

What is really important? What demands your attention? Of course, to be clear, sometimes our hobby invites our interest, if not even a goodly amount of our time and our money. Sometimes, it is our religion. But hobbies and religious practices are not necessarily enchantments.

If enchantment means to be under the power of a spell that directs our minds with commanding force, which is the way Lewis and I are using the word, then most hobbies and even our religious practices do not usually hold that level of fascination. They might attain some measure of influence over our lives. The basic distinction is this: I hold an attitude and I direct my behavior toward my hobby and my religious practice, but an enchantment holds me. 

To use the language of depth psychology, an experience of enchantment is commanding in the sense that my ego is under the spell of the enchanting force. My lifestyle, the way I think, the way I use my time, the way I see the world -- all of these are shaped by the enchantment. On the extreme end of such enchantment, we find fanatics, ideologues, fundamentalists. These people are not insane with a mental illness. What is the difference? With enchantment, the spell may be broken; with mental illness, psychotherapeutic care is necessary to restore the sane balance of healthy cognition, emotion, sensations, and behavior.

Here is an example. A young man in his late twenties was referred to me by a political professor in a neighboring university. The young man talked out of turn in class in an obsession with UFOs, unidentified flying objects or unidentified aerial projections. I asked that the young man call my office for an appointment which he did. The reason he gave for wanting to see me was that his professor told him I might be someone he could talk to about UFOs.

As an aside that is important, the professor in his own research had come across a paper by Carl Jung in which Jung reflected on the phenomenon of UFOs. In a little booklet published in English in 1959, under the title, "Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies," Jung explored the psychological enchantment of UFOs. He was 84 years old at the time, only two years before his death in 1961. And yet, Jung's research was true to form and incredibly timely. Presented in his Collected Works, Vol. 10, paragraphs 589-824, the reader will be impressed with the Swiss psychologist's summation of the data, limited as it was at that time.

Here is an excerpt taken from paragraphs 785-787:

      The only thing we know with reliable certainty about UFOs is that they
​      possess a surface which can be seen by the eye and at the same time 
      throw back a radar echo. Everything else is so uncertain that it must
​     remain for the time being an unproven connector, or rumor, until we
     know more about it. ... Their movements indicate volition and psychic
​     relatedness, e.g., evasion and flight, perhaps even aggression and 
     defense. ... We are left with only two hypotheses: that of their weightlessness
     on the one hand and of their psychic nature on the other. This is a 
     question I for one cannot decide.

Then, moving toward his conclusion in paragraph 789, Jung suggests a third possibility:

     ... that UFOs are real material phenomena of an unknown nature,
​     presumably coming from outer space, which perhaps have long been
​     visible to mankind, but otherwise have no recognizable connection with
     the earth or its inhabitants. In recent times, however, and just at the 
     moment when the eyes of mankind are turned towards the heavens, 
     partly on account of their fantasies about possible space-ships, and partly 
     in a figurative sense because their earthly existence is threatened, 
​     unconscious contents have projected themselves on these inexplicable 
     heavenly phenomena and given them a significance they in no way deserve. ...

Then, at this point, Jung makes a profound psychological observation: 

     ... The meaningful connection is the product on the one hand of projection
     and on the other of round and cylindrical forms which embody the 
     projected meaning and have always symbolized the union of opposites.

​In other words, the UFOs appear in colloquial language as "flying saucers," mandala-like objects. And throughout recorded history, in myth, religion, and fairy tales, the saucer-shaped mandala has appeared as a symbol of wholeness. This is a modern-day enchantment. Remember, an enchantment is the experience of being caught up in a fantasy, a marvelous adventure that transcends the grind of daily life. We look up toward the skies and marvel at what we are calling UFOs as possible extensions of our life on planet earth, extensions that animate our fantasies with adventurous meaning. 
     
So, after that extended quote by Jung, I return to the merry-go-round. By this point you yourself may well have put together this enchanting connection of the theme park's "merry-go-round" and the enchantment of saucers flying through our skies in some strange process  where we psychically extend our search for wholeness. This comes at a time of dark despair when the unity of humankind is threatened by political ideologies, and our planet itself is threatened by human destructive acts.

In his book, The Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis offered this evocative defense of his writings on the themes of mythology, theology, and adventures into the realms of the creative imagination:

       "Do you think I am trying to weave a spell? Perhaps I am; but remember your
       fairy tales. Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as for inducing
       them. And you and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake
       us from the evil enchantment of worldliness which has been laid upon us for
       nearly a hundred years. Almost our whole education has been directed to 
       silencing this shy, persistent, inner voice; almost all our modern philosophies
       have been devised to convince us that the good of man is to be found on earth."

Lewis wrote to confront his generation lost under the spell of MATERIALISM that Lewis calls "evil." Now, today, our generation is also materialistic, only worse. Materialism continues to enchant us with the 10,000 distractions that money can buy and the human soul can absorb until we become bloated with the ugliness of physical corpulence.

Materialism fuels the engine of our cherished free market system. We enjoy our toys, our comforts, our novelties, our costumes, our conveniences. We have come a long way in the relatively short time between the laborious squeaking of our wagons plodding westward and our rocket ships propelling to the moon, to Mars, and beyond. Nor has it been only a venture of self-serving greed. Much good has been accomplished in the development of the materials of our life. But materialism becomes bad when it possesses our souls and we fall under the spell of its enchantments.

Materialism, however, would likely be named by Lewis as only one of our enchantments that beguile us today. I suspect he would also include EMPIRICISM, RATIONALISM, and LIBERTARIANISM. 

Consider the enchantment of EMPERICISM. Not only do we love our toys. We love to measure things; we love order, predictability, a sense of control, a capacity to master things, to explain them, make them "work." We love to be able to demonstrate results so that we can justify our requests for large grants that will enable us to measure more things large and small, things cosmic in scope and infinite in depth. It is the way of science that formulates hypotheses, sets up experiments to test the hypotheses, monitors and measures the parts and pieces of the experiment and draws conclusions that make possible newer inventions, developments, and even medicines that come to our aid in times of pandemics that threaten our existence. Empiricism serves many worthy ends by which we understand nature and our place in nature; but empiricism slides off the rails when it reduces humanity to objects in an experimental lab.

And the same is true of another enchantment, RATIONALISM. Unlike empiricism that measures experiences, rationalism begins with the structures of reason and thought. Looking at the nature of mind and the way our thoughts proceed within the contours of reason, rationality may be considered a safeguard against "emotional reasoning." In this sense, rationalism has challenged the swamps of superstition, age-old prejudices of race and gender, witchcraft, and fundamentalist views of creation. Not only can we think, we can think about the ways in which we think and come to conclusions. Arising in the 17th century as part of the advent of mathematical reckoning, rationalism helped not only to explore the outer world but also the contours of human consciousness. However, when rational decision making and problem solving fail to take feelings into account, rationality ceases to be humane.

But it is the "enchantment" of LIBERTARIANISM that threatens us more directly today and may be seen as the underlying dynamic of the attack on our nation's Capitol on January 6. Of course, who does not love liberty? "My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty," we sing. Liberty is indeed sweet, and precious lives have been lost defending the liberty we enjoy. However, in thinking about what liberty means, I find two very interesting definitions (from The Oxford English Dictionary): 

       1. "the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed
           by authority on one's way of life, behavior, or political views." 
       2. "the power or scope to act as one pleases." 

And libertarianism is defined as: 

          "a political philosophy that advocates only minimal state intervention in
           the free market and the private lives of citizens."

If we tease out the key element between the idea of liberty and libertarianism, it would be the question of "oppressive restrictions at the hands of the state or authoritarian individuals." The matter thus becomes: When does my expression of liberty conflict with your expression of liberty? When two automobiles rush from opposite directions toward a busy intersection where there are also pedestrians trying to move through the intersection, not everyone may act as he/she pleases if a major disaster is to be avoided. 

Obviously, in this simplistic example, someone has to yield. And for that to occur, some "authority" will have to determine the process and ensure it is followed. One does not have the liberty "to act as one pleases" within human community. Always, the concern for the common good shapes the laws and ethical behavior of a nation, just as human personality is shaped by the nurturing care of parents who teach their children to share and to live by the norms of justice and mercy for all.

In the extremes of libertarianism, however, a very regressive attitude misleads individuals and groups, losing sight of liberty in the service of a common good with justice and mercy for all. Individuals who live under such a spell, the enchantment of an authoritarian libertarianism serve their own needs without respect for others.

This is the evil of which Lewis warns us, the danger of falling under the spell of enchantment that blinds us to the evils of materialism, empiricism, rationalism, and libertarianism. Like all "isms," materialism, empiricism, rationalism, and libertarianism are indeed "spells," "enchantments," that dominate the human mind. And, as Lewis said, the power of such spells to control human thought, emotions, sensations, and behavior can be overcome only by an enchantment that is more powerful, an enchantment in the service of a higher power. What that might be is my topic for the next blog.