"In the province of the mind, what is believed to be true either is true or tends to become true within certain limitations to be determined experientially and experimentally. Those limits are further beliefs to be transcended. In the province of the mind, there are no limits."
~John Lilly
In the age of relativism, our beliefs and expectations create the reality we experience. When opinion and fact carry the same weight, the roles of personal choice and self-knowledge takes on greater importance.
Post-Modern society has engendered many social ills, but it is my contention that many (if not all) of these instances of man's inhumanity to man and the planet can be traced back to what Freud termed neurosis: that is, separation from self. This condition is widespread and strongly encouraged by the cultural traditions and values of the American market economy (as well as most Western traditions). People have ceased to see others and themselves as real beings of great sensitivity and potential. Instead, people become "Human Resources," simply another commodity to be exploited and discarded after its usefulness has ended. This perception permeates all sectors of American life, public and private.
Media advertising convinces us that we are not good enough in our natural state. We must deodorize our natural smells, disguise all signs of aging, wear the right clothes, drive the right car, live in the right neighborhood ad nauseam in order to accept ourselves and gain the acceptance of those who we wish to include us. Our media, our schools, indeed, most of our social institutions teach us that we, just as ourselves, are not enough. We must assume the appropriate social persona and costume if we are to "succeed" in the Rat Race. The Powers That Be want passive workers with credentials to be fit into the great food chain of consumerism with minimal adjustment.
The majority of us at some point conform to the massive pressures placed upon us, both internally and externally as we seek to find our place in the herd. What begins as external cultural values are gradually internalized as we grow older and take up positions within the structure of the established culture. Thoughts of rebellion against the restrictions on selfhood are often repressed as we make greater and greater emotional investments in maintaining our hard-won positions. The child of wonder is frozen within us, and, fed for years on the fear of failure and self-doubt, becoming an inner demon, lurking in the shadows of our forsaken ecstasy, driving us on to more and more acquisition, more consumption, in the vain hope that something outside of ourselves will make us feel OK about ourselves. In our frenzy to fill the void, we devour and destroy each other and the planet without thought of future considerations.
Evidence of this split is everywhere- from urban poverty and violence , to the rise of Fundamentalist religions. Everywhere, people are seeking relief from this existential angst- often unidentified but certainly pervasive. We use power, money, education, religion, drugs, alcohol, sex and anything else we can think of, to anaesthetize ourselves. Both ecstasy and the depths of despair are leveled on the unrippled pond of valium and sitcoms. Passion and eccentricity are reserved for the wealthy (who can afford it) and the rest of us poor working schlocks only get to partake voyeuristically through watching the Movie of the Week and nighttime soaps- brain-pabulum spoon-fed to an audience hypnotized into soul destroying consumerism.
America was nursed on the myths of the rugged individualist. Our heroes and role models are admired for their autonomy and ingenuity. Yet, these qualities are not consistent with social adaptation to actual day to day life. If this archetype was ever an accurate reflection of an American reality, that day has passed for the vast majority of us. The domesticated primates of the late Twentieth century seek mainly security. We want to be left alone in our homes with our "light" beers and "Must See TV." We don't want to know the heights and depths we are capable of, because ecstasy is outside the accepted social boundary. It is frightening because it is uncontrollable and intensely personal. Yet, when we attempt to fit the raw potential of our beings into well-regulated little boxes of social expectation, the psyche rebels, erupting forth from the shadows of the unconscious in strange and twisted ways. We refuse to acknowledge our share of legitimate suffering (as John Bradshaw calls it) and instead enact and re-enact unsatisfying psycho-dramas which relieve only enough of the pressure to enable us to continue in the same old mind-numbing patterns without making any substantial change or improvement. The vast majority of us live lives of passive boredom, punctuated by grandiose performances of poorly-scripted soap-operas that eventually simmer down to a low-grade resentment and depression, which further enhances our passivity and the blanding of our perceptions. We are given bread and circuses, as highly paid professional athletes enact our rage for us, becoming the safety valve to keep us from rebelling against the bonds of our proscribed roles.
Only someone totally oblivious to their own existential pain can look upon the rampant fear and suffering in our nation (and, indeed, the world) without being moved to compassion. Many do feel called to help when faced with the reality of mass suffering, yet, somehow, it just never seems feasible to get down to the homeless shelter or nursing home to do something. The problem seems too huge, too overwhelming for the efforts of just one person to make a difference. So, we ignore the pain of others, because it reminds us of our helplessness (something all good Americans abhor, yet readily accept as reality). Or write an impersonal check to absolve us of our responsibility in prolonging our brother's pain. To acknowledge the suffering of the world in any real way is to accept responsibility for improving it. Since we are culturally taught that we are inherently worthless, we feel we cannot overcome the growing unease of our own lives, much less alleviate the suffering of others... After all, who do we think we are, Mother Theresa? We have rent to make and bills to pay, and pray the car doesn't break down....
We earn our living mostly through meaningless work, devoid of personal content or pride. The constant effort to restrain our passion drains us. We are left too exhausted and emotionally depleted to be concerned with more than what we consider to be the bare essentials of our daily existence. We become drones servicing a cog in the vast faceless machine of capitalism. To perform the roles assigned to us, we must meet certain standards of conspicuous consumption, so that we live to fuel and well as service the machine. Those who can't keep pace in the Rat Race are discarded, discredited and abandoned on the streets or in institutions.
Yet, there has always been a small minority who rejected the cultural values imposed upon them and boldly struck out to explore the full range of human potential. In general, society looks down on these few, calling them insane for rejecting what is deemed to be generally desirable. These few adventurous and desperate souls quest for a pearl of great price not recognized by the herd mentality. These explorers of "the Underground" (as Dr. Timothy Leary termed it) have always searched to heal the rift engendered within themselves through whatever means at their disposal.
Some of these pioneers on the frontiers of human experience and perception report a much wider universe both internally and externally than CNN would have us believe. But we fear these voices crying in the wilderness, for they call us to awaken from the stupor of our repititious little lives. Bold explorers on the farthest reaches of human consciousness record the vision of vast patterns being played out by human actions in history. To others courageous enough to risk stepping out of the herd mentality, the new perspective of the role of the individual throughout recorded history shifts, offering an unfolding progression from primal unconsciousness moving towards ever increasing conscious participation in both our own lives and the life of the planet. According to many, we are now facing a crisis of consciousness and conscience. The old herd mentality rituals are loosing their grip upon our psyches. Increasingly, we are individually being forced to make ethical and value choices once made for us by society and custom. Increasingly, we are being left to our own devices as social restraints and customs break down in the face of multiculturalism and the immediacy of electronic media.
As the evolutionary tide has continued to surge forward towards greater and greater individuation, more people are forced to face the fact that their old ways of doing things no longer serve. Dr. Phil and other talk shows illustrate this daily. The proliferation of self-help and New Age Gurus attest to the growing recognition of this problem. We all seek liberation from banality and fear- but the only way out is through. We cannot sanitize and deodorize our dark sides out of existence. True Freedom cannot be bought at any price, nor can it be granted. It can only be reclaimed, one individual at a time. We must look beyond the culturally imposed ideals of ourselves if we are ever to get to know what our true selves and true freedom are like. To heal the rift in our souls, we must be willing to look at the totality of ourselves and overcome our learned self-hatred, but this is very difficult when we are taught from childhood to fear our own minds and discount the input of our imaginations. We are not encouraged to look within ourselves, for the person who truly knows her/himself can never again be the slave of the Powers That Be. True self-knowledge terrifies the Consumerism machine we collectively create and maintain, for the discovery of personal meaning threatens external control of the individual. But none of this is new. It was the same thing Socrates spoke of in the Fifth Century B.C.E. The old Apollonian admonition to "Know Thyself" attests to the persistence of this "underground" mode of perception.
The myths and legends of our forefathers no longer serve to accurately describe the world we now find ourselves inhabiting. The old stories were never built to accommodate a world which doubles its mass of total information in a matter of hours as opposed to decades, yet they are still alive deep within our collective psyches. The explosion of technology has been paralleled by an explosion in population, and suddenly we find ourselves face to face with cultures from around the world, many which our forebearers never even dreamed existed. We are awash in a sea of differing value systems and traditions. In defense of this, we cling to our corporate/consumer identity to try to preserve some sense of tribal/clan identity. Massive lay-offs and the concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer hands are forcing greater numbers of people to discover and rely on their own resources. Like it or not, we are being forced by circumstances to individuate.
Academics and psychologists, such as Joseph Campbell and Robert Johnson, call upon us to revitalize the myths of our ancestors to help us to understand the archetypes we tend to enact unconsciously. The process of evolution at work here seems to be the growing of conscious participation in and engagement with our total selves and the universe through the use of these psychological structures culturally characterized, but somehow inherently human. All cultures have much more in common mythically than not. We can draw on these stories, give them a personal interpretation as we use the myths as road maps to help us find our way.
