ELECTION DAY IN AMERICA

Voters in the U.S. go to the polls today.  Never in American history have we faced a clearer choice--continuing slow progress toward consciousness or a dangerous backsliding into darkness.  I personally believe the long arc of history does indeed bend in the direction of peace and justice.  However, just as in the individual, divisive and dangerous tendencies can arise from the unconscious and infect entire nations.  The reminder of Nazi Germany alone is proof.

The tip weight in the critical balance between light and dark is the tiny light of consciousness that each of us carries.  Without the understanding of our own processes of development and memory of our personal history, we can too quickly succumb to energies that, rather than enhance our lives, can damage and even destroy them.  Nations, too, face a parallel danger.

Dr. Jung believed the impetus toward individuation could arise in two different ways, from a crisis in the life of an individual or from a cataclysmic event in the world.  Today there is a clash in the world between light and dark, between order and chaos, between barbaric and civilized behaviors.  We in the U.S. have seen this played out in our national politics and, alarmingly, in our government.

There are people in the U.S. Congress who have abandoned long-standing rules of decorum and duty, whose one goal is winning, who serve the gods of money and power.  Only the spoils of victory will do for these people.  These people and the gods they serve have Donald Trump as their fitting champion.  Hillary Clinton offers a critically important alternative.

Most women and many, many men, because of instinctual energies that protect and preserve their children, energies that serve evolution, have a natural civilizing influence on society and are much more likely to serve a very different god.  In themselves, money and power, though seductive and important, are insufficient to carry, give birth to, and nurture children.  Another god is required, one deeply rooted in reality and generative impulses.  Ambition, conflict, warring, disbelief in evolution--all are inimical to raising children.

Hillary Clinton understands the nature of ALL warring gods well.  She appears to have experienced many of them in her own psyche and has had to come to terms with them--even to have used her consciousness to forge a warring peace among them.  I believe for Secretary Clinton money and power are now in the service of another and higher god, one amenable to tempering by human reason and feeling.

Individuation, according to Jung, is the task of harnessing god-like energies in the unconscious psyche and guiding them toward higher purposes so that they can enhance the lives of individuals and societies.  I count myself lucky to live in a culture that makes room for people like Hillary Clinton and the gifts she brings to all of us.

For these reasons, I am with her.