Contrary to the new tribalism overtaking the world, at Disney attractions around the earth, we hear the Disney chorus sing "It's a Small World After All." That is the title of a song written by two of Walt Disney's staff songwriters, Richard Sherman and Robert Sherman. Mr. Disney asked them to give him a happy song that would serve as a musical backdrop to a water-based attraction sponsored by the Pepsi Board of Directors, to be used in the 1964 World's Fair. The attraction and its theme song would celebrate the unity of children around the world, anticipating peace, good-will, and happiness for children (and adults) everywhere. You have heard these lyrics many times:
It's a world of laughter,
A world of tears.
It's a world of hopes
And a world of fears.
There's so much that we share,
That it's time we're aware
It's a small world after all.
There is just one moon
And one golden sun,
And a smile means
Friendship to everyone.
Though the mountains divide,
And the oceans are wide,
It's a small world after all.
It's a small world after all!
It's a small world after all!
It's a small world after all!
It's a small, small world!
But today those words ring hollow in our ears, conditioned by the ideologies of a new native nationalism. We get out our guitars and rhythm instruments, sit on the floor with our kids and sing along. But that promise of world peace and good-will toward all, the delight in forming friendships across international borders, and the warm feelings of safety that come with these ... . They feel like an imposed familiarity, a false happiness, like we are going through the motions but our heart is not in it, and our minds no longer believe it.
We know the words to be true, of course. It is indeed a small world geographically. But the distances seem to lengthen politically, socially, and spiritually. For example, polls taken among adults reveal a rising trend toward people feeling less safe than when the children's song was written for Walt Disney and became a mainstay at Disney Parks around the world. Also, anxiety is appearing in our young people at a rate bewildering to educators, social workers, and the counselors who talk with those kids. The American College Health Association reports 62% of undergraduates describe an overwhelming anxiety; the Education Research Institute lists incoming freshmen reporting their anxiety level in 1985 at 18%, but at 41% in 2010. Finally, the 2017 Pediatric Academic Studies indicates that the number of children and adolescents admitted to hospitals for thoughts of suicide or self-harm, these numbers have doubled in the past decade.
Our children and young people are to us as canaries are to the coal miners. These kids remind us of something we cannot deny as hard as we might try. And try we do, as witnessed by the very diversions taking place on TV screens across the world as I write these lines. As an example, I am referring to the distractions of sports events that fill stadiums with screaming fans, people who in Houston may pay as much as $3,000 for a ticket to the World Series tonight, triumphant followers of pro-football games who will thrill to the gigantic flags unfurled on the playing fields as military jets soar overhead with deafening thunder.
I am not protesting these sports events. However, I am concerned about the extravaganzas we have made of them; the triumphant, militaristic pageantry, the extreme financing of these events as they participate in the deteriorating commercialization of our educational institutions; and the values we demonstrate to our children. But most of all, I deplore the deterioration of our society here at home and abroad, as we sink deeper into the morass of a collectivistic power complex that elevates the tyranny of would-be world saviors such as the one we have elected to the highest office of the land.
Why? Why did we do this? How did we do this? It makes no sense on the surface. That individual is repugnant in every possible sense of the word. Most frightening is the mistrust he sows, the fears he fosters, the demoralizing impact he brings to all our institutions that have guarded the values of human decency, justice,and a better world for our children, knowing after all that it is indeed "a small, small world." But all of that has become fodder for the nationalistic hunger imperiling the world, championed by our own bullying despot who champions the new tribalism, drawing lines across maps of the world, between groups and races, between family members -- lines that break trust and cast out people who do not pay homage to lies proclaimed as the way to "make our country great again."
I come back to the question, how did this happen? And this is what I believe to be at work in our eerie horror show. First, our president is indeed a practiced showman with an uncanny ability to tap into the baser instincts of people and use those forces for his own purpose. Second, his purpose seems to be nothing more than to inflate his own collectivistic power complex -- "collectivistic" because it has no depth and no value except to use people to create power and make money for himself. And, third, with his program of deregulating any protective policies that would, paradoxically, help the very people he is hurting, he fuels the collectivistic power complex that drives the financial markets. Although he came into office when our economy was rebounding, as of this writing the markets are rising to new heights, for which he will gladly take credit.
But there's a fourth and most important dynamic, unseen but surely at work toward constellating these irrational events in our political, social, and spiritual life. This fourth dynamic may be described in the following way. Sometimes a strange "spirit" appears to "infect" a group of people and turn it into a mob. The same thing may happen to a nation or even an association of nations. This "spirit" seems to take possession of a people, and in the New Testament is spoken of as "powers." For example, in his letter to the people of Ephesus, written around 100 C.E., when Paul was imprisoned in Rome, he described the times like this:
For we are not struggling against human enemies, but against principalities,
against powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against
the spiritual hosts of evil in the heavenly places. (6:12) (See Walter Wink's
3-volume study of power in the New Testament.)
Here Paul is revealing what he calls the "inner workings of the mystery kept hidden through all the ages..." . (3:9)
Eighteen hundred years later, Carl Jung took on the task of helping us consider these "inner workings" and what they may mean for us in our periods of darkness when we act as if we are possessed. He reminds us that our blight is ideologies, mouthed by individuals and groups bewitched by the archetypal powers in their psyches:
The gods have become diseases. Zeus no longer rules Olympus but rather
the solar plexus, and produces curious specimens for the doctor's consulting
room, or disorders of the brains of politicians and journalists who
unwittingly let loose psychic epidemics on the world. (Secrets of the Golden
Flower, p. 37)
So it is with the archetypal powers that have erupted in our psyches, leading us into warring tribes, driving us to seek meaning and relief in distractions and opioids, spreading ideologies, raising up autocrats who feel entitled to control the powers of our political, social, and economic life, not knowing they are merely third-rate actors moved about like puppets on the stage of a small, small world, enacting a drama sure to fail them.
It's a world of laughter,
A world of tears.
It's a world of hopes
And a world of fears.
There's so much that we share,
That it's time we're aware
It's a small world after all.
There is just one moon
And one golden sun,
And a smile means
Friendship to everyone.
Though the mountains divide,
And the oceans are wide,
It's a small world after all.
It's a small world after all!
It's a small world after all!
It's a small world after all!
It's a small, small world!
But today those words ring hollow in our ears, conditioned by the ideologies of a new native nationalism. We get out our guitars and rhythm instruments, sit on the floor with our kids and sing along. But that promise of world peace and good-will toward all, the delight in forming friendships across international borders, and the warm feelings of safety that come with these ... . They feel like an imposed familiarity, a false happiness, like we are going through the motions but our heart is not in it, and our minds no longer believe it.
We know the words to be true, of course. It is indeed a small world geographically. But the distances seem to lengthen politically, socially, and spiritually. For example, polls taken among adults reveal a rising trend toward people feeling less safe than when the children's song was written for Walt Disney and became a mainstay at Disney Parks around the world. Also, anxiety is appearing in our young people at a rate bewildering to educators, social workers, and the counselors who talk with those kids. The American College Health Association reports 62% of undergraduates describe an overwhelming anxiety; the Education Research Institute lists incoming freshmen reporting their anxiety level in 1985 at 18%, but at 41% in 2010. Finally, the 2017 Pediatric Academic Studies indicates that the number of children and adolescents admitted to hospitals for thoughts of suicide or self-harm, these numbers have doubled in the past decade.
Our children and young people are to us as canaries are to the coal miners. These kids remind us of something we cannot deny as hard as we might try. And try we do, as witnessed by the very diversions taking place on TV screens across the world as I write these lines. As an example, I am referring to the distractions of sports events that fill stadiums with screaming fans, people who in Houston may pay as much as $3,000 for a ticket to the World Series tonight, triumphant followers of pro-football games who will thrill to the gigantic flags unfurled on the playing fields as military jets soar overhead with deafening thunder.
I am not protesting these sports events. However, I am concerned about the extravaganzas we have made of them; the triumphant, militaristic pageantry, the extreme financing of these events as they participate in the deteriorating commercialization of our educational institutions; and the values we demonstrate to our children. But most of all, I deplore the deterioration of our society here at home and abroad, as we sink deeper into the morass of a collectivistic power complex that elevates the tyranny of would-be world saviors such as the one we have elected to the highest office of the land.
Why? Why did we do this? How did we do this? It makes no sense on the surface. That individual is repugnant in every possible sense of the word. Most frightening is the mistrust he sows, the fears he fosters, the demoralizing impact he brings to all our institutions that have guarded the values of human decency, justice,and a better world for our children, knowing after all that it is indeed "a small, small world." But all of that has become fodder for the nationalistic hunger imperiling the world, championed by our own bullying despot who champions the new tribalism, drawing lines across maps of the world, between groups and races, between family members -- lines that break trust and cast out people who do not pay homage to lies proclaimed as the way to "make our country great again."
I come back to the question, how did this happen? And this is what I believe to be at work in our eerie horror show. First, our president is indeed a practiced showman with an uncanny ability to tap into the baser instincts of people and use those forces for his own purpose. Second, his purpose seems to be nothing more than to inflate his own collectivistic power complex -- "collectivistic" because it has no depth and no value except to use people to create power and make money for himself. And, third, with his program of deregulating any protective policies that would, paradoxically, help the very people he is hurting, he fuels the collectivistic power complex that drives the financial markets. Although he came into office when our economy was rebounding, as of this writing the markets are rising to new heights, for which he will gladly take credit.
But there's a fourth and most important dynamic, unseen but surely at work toward constellating these irrational events in our political, social, and spiritual life. This fourth dynamic may be described in the following way. Sometimes a strange "spirit" appears to "infect" a group of people and turn it into a mob. The same thing may happen to a nation or even an association of nations. This "spirit" seems to take possession of a people, and in the New Testament is spoken of as "powers." For example, in his letter to the people of Ephesus, written around 100 C.E., when Paul was imprisoned in Rome, he described the times like this:
For we are not struggling against human enemies, but against principalities,
against powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against
the spiritual hosts of evil in the heavenly places. (6:12) (See Walter Wink's
3-volume study of power in the New Testament.)
Here Paul is revealing what he calls the "inner workings of the mystery kept hidden through all the ages..." . (3:9)
Eighteen hundred years later, Carl Jung took on the task of helping us consider these "inner workings" and what they may mean for us in our periods of darkness when we act as if we are possessed. He reminds us that our blight is ideologies, mouthed by individuals and groups bewitched by the archetypal powers in their psyches:
The gods have become diseases. Zeus no longer rules Olympus but rather
the solar plexus, and produces curious specimens for the doctor's consulting
room, or disorders of the brains of politicians and journalists who
unwittingly let loose psychic epidemics on the world. (Secrets of the Golden
Flower, p. 37)
So it is with the archetypal powers that have erupted in our psyches, leading us into warring tribes, driving us to seek meaning and relief in distractions and opioids, spreading ideologies, raising up autocrats who feel entitled to control the powers of our political, social, and economic life, not knowing they are merely third-rate actors moved about like puppets on the stage of a small, small world, enacting a drama sure to fail them.
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