Long before the DEBACLE (“sudden and violent collapse”) became visible to everyone recently (Helsinki), I and others had been writing furiously about the momentous shifts in “the background”, i.e. the invisible foundations of the present structures of our world. This is the work of depth psychology and art. These tectonic shifts could at that time only be “seen” via dreams and implicitly within the way language was being expressed and used. I took the view that art forms were the best way to bring these shifts in the background to light, along with offering hints of a way through to alternate possible futures—futures that could be shaped by what we each bring to those possibilities, e.g. our love, generosity, and devotion, or indeed our fear, greed, and hate. All my books and essays are about this approach to the unknown future.
Now it is clear that there is no hope of altering our present course towards, well, let’s call it “The DEBACLE”. We have gone past the point where art and its metaphors can make any contribution to the fateful course we are on. Our language is now collectively LITERAL, the rightful linguistic companion to sheer materialism, and we must now pay the price.
Part of my work for years was to notice the ignored “signs” of what was coming, i.e. the “oracles and augurs” that peeked through ordinary events in the news or the mass media: slips of the tongue among politicians; “accidents”; unintended intrusions of something other than intended, carefully crafted photo-ops, for example (hence my blog here, “Cultural Phenomena as Windows to the Unknown Future”); and of course, dreams. I have reported many such incidents on FaceBook, as well as on my blog. Although we no longer collectively pay any attention to such hints of a background movement inserting into our quotidian lives, this may be changing a bit.
Witness this latest “accident”!….
As we all know, the Helsinki disaster has most everyone on edge. It may be finally sinking in what phenomenon is dominating world events now. Many in the mass media are using the words now—chaos! Destruction of the world order! No-one is joking anymore, or speaking metaphorically, as Leonard Cohen once did:
I feel . . . we’re in a very shabby moment, and neither the literary nor the musical experience really has its finger on the pulse of our crisis From my point of view, we’re in the midst of a Flood of biblical proportions. It’s both exterior and interior. At this point it’s more devastating on the interior level, but it’s leakmg into the real world. I see everybody holding on in their individual way to an orange crate, to a piece of wood, and we’re passing each other in this swollen river that has pretty well taken down all the landmarks, and pretty well overturned everything we’ve got.
It is too late to turn this Flood around, as Cohen says—the time of possible transformation in our culture was a time of art and dreams, i.e. a time when we could creatively engage the still fluid medium of psyche and language and bring forth new cultural forms into actuality.
But we can still pay attention to these intrusions of the background, when they occur in the form of “accidents”, in order to simply prepare for what is coming, to lower the panic and to foster love where possible.
So, to the latest “hint” or “accident”!
After Helsinki, Trump was compelled to at least attempt to “clarify” his astounding public betrayals of American institutions such as the US Intelligence agencies. So he went on TV to begin his disordered backtracking. He wanted to change “ I can’t see any reason why it would be Russia (to meddle in the elections)” to “I can’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be Russia.” He then went on praise the Intelligence agencies at which exact point:
Does Donald Trump believe in ominous metaphors? As he affirmed his support for US intelligence agencies, the lights went to black in the White House conference room. Once order was restored, he said he had been in the dark why a storm has swirled around his presidency in the day since his Helsinki summit with Vladimir Putin. It was, he says, because he misspoke. (BBC)
Even in a materialistic world that has long ignored “simple slips of the tongue”, as the BBC journalist later puts it so dismissively, this intrusion of another intentionality was too obvious for anyone to ignore it seems.
My posts on “the storm”, and the light “going out”, for your historical interest, may be found at:
