The Importance of Retreat and Reflection

We start with Adam Ramsay, ‘Queer Eye’, Jordan Peterson and the Battle for Depressed Men – https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/queer-eye-jordan-peterson-and-the-battle-for-depressed-men/ 

Do we really have to choose between Carl Jung and archetypal psychology on the one side and Antonio Gramsci and the analysis of hegemony on the other side?

We reflect on whether the West Country School of Myth’s visceral, transcendental and universal approach touches on the really deep recognitions we all have for human dilemmas, experiences and patterns of behaviour. And we reference a scene from Ivan and the Grey Wolf

Dougald introduces the latest of John Michael Greer’s weekly essays at his blog Ecosophia – a useful summary of Jung’s theory of synchronicity – including the origins of the theory of archetypes in the study of animal behaviour, and then Jung’s observation working with his patients that, in dealing with these deep patterns, you seem to trigger strings of meaningful coincidences – synchronicities.

We talk about dreams of Scarlet Johansson.

W.B.Yeats described as the sense that ““The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.” 

‘A Farewell to Uncivilisation’ – the synchronicitous downpour in the last moments of the last Dark Mountain festival! 

Huw Lemmey’s newsletter, the self-deprecating title Utopian Drivel and the particular essay Santa Maria de l’Assumpcio

Ed references Philip K. Dick’s quote from his 1981 novel VALIS (Vast Active Living Intelligence System): "The Empire is the institution, the codification of derangement; it is insane and imposes its insanity on us by violence, since its nature is a violent one. To fight the Empire is to be infected by its derangement. This is a paradox; whoever defeats a segment of the Empire becomes the Empire; it proliferates like a virus, imposing its form on its enemies. Thereby it becomes its enemies."

Amitav Ghosh’s ‘Great Derangement’: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2017/07/20/book-review-the-great-derangement-climate-change-and-the-unthinkable-by-amitav-ghosh/ 

Gordon White – Tasmanian chaos magic blogger and podcaster, anarchist and animist and ‘How You Play Is What You Win’ and Carol Sandford introducing a satirical book called Flatland about the residents of a two-dimensional world, who when they look at a sphere can only see a circle, and then they go to a one-dimensional world where it’s even worse, because people there see everything as points

Ed reminds Dougald of his former business partner’s challenge to Dougald to ‘Get down off your Dark Mountain, you’re making things worse!’ 

Dougald references ‘What I Learned (2003-10)’ and ‘Ten Years on a Mountain’

Ed talks about the ‘saving the planet’ trope, which he wrote about in increasingly exasperated terms earlier this year: “The planet does not want to be saved. Or rescued. Or even changed. Our planet wants to be loved.”

Ed describes his most transformative personal experience was a basic 24 hour solo, not a full four day wilderness vigil, in the Pyrenees with my friend Andres Roberts of Way of Nature.  I wrote about this here: https://medium.com/@edgillespie2018/on-the-edge-of-a-cliff-161922fb11d 

And we finish with this Newsweek piece: https://www.newsweek.com/marianne-williamson-americas-karma-opinion-1529724?fbclid=IwAR0f_2eORyII2-rBGsptkiEXzt3XWrx8F0UxZLv8YzQEoIlN5q27R5KIZks 

“America is having a nervous breakdown. A spiritual crisis. A complete disassembling of the personality after which a more authentic self might emerge.” Marianne Williamson

“America is down on its knees this time. But that's not the bad news; it's the good news. That's ultimately not where things end, but where things begin again. It's where we can find grace and humility and forgiveness and love. Until then, we will continue to suffer, just like, as a nation, we have allowed so much suffering to go unnoticed among us and around us. The pain at this moment is the pain of a nation that is laboring toward its own rebirth. We are a good and decent people, but we have failed to take responsibility for some things that have consistently been done in our name. In horror, we must come to realize this, and in contrition, we will be released.”

And that is perhaps where a State of Grace can be found?

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