"Political Poison & Collective Trauma" by Michael Meade

Following is an article and a link to it by one of my teachers, the Pacific Northwest drummer and storyteller Michael Meade, about our historical moment and trauma.

Political Poison and Collective Trauma

MICHAEL MEADE, Mosaic Voices

POLITICAL POISON AND COLLECTIVE TRAUMA, An essay by Michael Meade

Amidst the speed of changes occurring in both nature and culture it takes very little to tear the skin of civilization and reveal massive and festering emotional wounds full of fear, rage, resentment and vengeance. We are not just in the midst of an unusual election or a surprising political period. We are not simply in the middle of the hottest summer on record. We are in an extended period of the radical churning of the world in which all the toxicities and poisons that are usually held back appear on the stage of life at the same time.

There is growing “collective trauma” as news of tragic shootings, terrorist atrocities and cultural unrest come from all sides and in a rapid succession that allows little time to process, much less integrate the effects of
This is the time in which
“the best lack all conviction,
while the worst are full
of passionate intensity.”
trauma. Amidst all the radical changes and deepening tragedies, anxiety becomes a free-floating collective state. This collective anxiety causes increasing marginalization of those who are most unstable as well as overreactions and divisive rhetoric from those seeking to rise to power upon the waves of chaos and uncertainty.

As archaic fears and hatreds rise to the surface, typical societal containers rattle and crack, becoming less able to contain the flood of extreme ideas, raw energies and dark emotions that surge through the world. Facing intractable problems and lacking internal stability, cultural institutions can fail to contain the unconscious energies arising from the depths and become instead vehicles for acting out the growing insecurities and increasing fears of people.

Seen in the context of an existential crisis, this is not simply a bitter political season; rather this is an extraordinary time that demands that people respond in ways that enhance life, reduce the extremes of hatred and fear and reject the politics of personal grandiosity and cultural division. For, there is an increasing danger of would be leaders as well as emotional flowers being devoured by the huge energies that rise from the depths being churned by the tides of global changes.

The flood of reports depicting horrific terrorism and wide scale tragedies along with environmental disasters cannot be contained by the individual psyche, nor can they be simply dismissed. Feeling helpless in the face of huge and intractable forces, more people become anxious and angry and obsessed with an ideology or a person that promises them salvation in one form or another. Assisted by technologies of isolation and encouraged by the politics of identity and division, people suffer increasing states of dissociation as well as extremes of emotion and fanaticism.

This is the time in which “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” This is the abyss in which the spread of polarization, increasing bitterness and nihilism trigger reactionary attitudes that give rise to greater intolerance and the reckless demonizing of others. It is far easier to turn whoever seems “other” to us into scapegoats than to admit that the issues we face have grown great and that real answers and genuine solutions are hard to find.

Continues here