Arnold Toynbee — Civilization on Trial

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

In human terms, how are we to describe… our own Western civilization, or any other of the 10 or 20 civilizations which we can count up on our fingers? In human terms, I should say that each of these civilizations is, while in action, a distinctive attempt at a single great common human experience, or, when it is seen in retrospect, after the action is over, it is a distinctive instance of a single great common human experience. The enterprise or experience is an effort to perform an act of creation. In each of these civilizations, mankind, I think, is trying to rise above mere humanity — above primitive humanity, that is, — toward some higher kind of spiritual life. One cannot depict the goal because it has never been reached, — or, rather, I should say that it has never been reached by any human society. It has, perhaps, been reached by individual men and women. At least, I can think of certain saints and sages…. But if there have been a few transfigured men and women, there has never been such a thing as a civilized society. Civilization, as we know it, is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbor. No known civilization has ever reached the goal of civilization yet. There has never been a communion of saints on earth. In the least uncivilized society at its least uncivilized moment, the vast majority of its members have remained very near indeed to the primitive human level. And no society has ever been secure of holding such ground as it has managed to gain in its spiritual advance.”

Arnold Toynbee, Civilization on Trial

Causes

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

I was going through some old saved messages, and came across this, which seems timely and in fact is probably always timely. I sent it out Feb. 15, 2013 and titled it “Causes.” As far as i can see, nothing has changed.

My friends send me emails and links about various things that concern them. Many of them I agree with but find myself unable to give more than casual assent. I was reading about something or other, realizing that I agreed but couldn’t bring myself to actively care, when I all but heard this:

“Care about what you care about, not what you think you should care about. Leave the things you think you should care about, but can’t, to those who are called by them.”

If we each stick to the things we care about, nothing important will be neglected. We are all specialists in this world.

Robert Clarke on the spiritual significance of Christmas

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

From http://www.thisisstaffordshire.co.uk/news/Absence-carol-singers-evidence-spiritual-malaise/article-586899-detail/article.html

My old friend Robert Clarke, author of five books investigating modern culture in light of Jung’s discoveries, wrote this letter to his local newspaper and sent me a copy. I came across it just now, and i want to share it. Robert was a lovely man, who died that same year.

Absence of carol singers is evidence of spiritual malaise
Tuesday, January 06, 2009, 09:20
Comment on this story

NO carol singers came to my door before or at Christmas, though children wearing monster masks knocked all night at Halloween. Last year, I had two sets of children come at Christmas, first a group of young boys then a group of girls who were a little older. All both groups could sing was We Wish You A Merry Christmas, and when I asked them to sing a carol they replied they didn’t know any.
I could only shake my head in sadness; this was yet another sign of the soul-sickness of our modern so-called culture. Children singing carols at Christmas go together like milk and honey – we certainly loved singing them at school back in the 1940s and ’50s. Watch a street scene at Christmas in any old movie and you will see a group of children carrying a lantern singing carols from door to door.
The absence of religion in many schools today fits in with the prejudice felt against religion generally, which means children do their learning in the street about drugs, drink and sexual perversions their grandparents never dreamt existed.
Yet as the great Swiss psychologist Carl Jung discovered, the human psyche does not consist merely of ego-consciousness. The psyche is actually attached to what the East calls the Self, the Atman, what certain early Christians called the Logos, borrowing the term from the Greek Mysteries. This is the higher immortal to which we are all attached, which disperses itself into mankind and perhaps all of nature, and which ultimately is part of God. An example of the Logos is Christ, with the man Jesus representing the human side. Logos means Word, and Christ is the Word in the Gospel of John.
Jung said myths and religious teachings are not fiction, but rather express archetypal processes of the spirit coming through the collective unconscious to mankind, which is why the symbolism in the world’s myths is often very similar. For example, the Star of Bethlehem appears with Christ, but a star appearing in the heavens heralding the birth of a saviour is actually known worldwide. Horus in ancient Egypt has his star, as does the Chinese Kwan Shai Yin, while at the birth of the Persian Zarathustra a magical star shines over the village for three days and nights. In Polynesia, the god Vatea has his special star, and the Wichita Indians of North America tell of a star that falls to earth to become a human saviour. As I say, the symbolism is known worldwide, connected with the descent of the Self as saviour through the collective unconscious into the soul of a human individual – thus the divine birth.

There are many such comparative symbols to be found in mythology and religion because experience of the birth of the Self is a universal phenomenon.
Jung tells us that, because the birth of the divine child expresses a definite sacred occurrence, albeit through the unconscious, when consciousness accepts it as an outer event in a religion it still works, because consciousness is coming into harmony with the workings of the unconscious/spirit. When it is entirely rejected, however, then consciousness is going the opposite way to the unconscious/spirit, and this, Jung stresses, means psychic/spiritual dissociation, which in the end causes neurosis.
The Christian version of the birth of the divine child is a particularly beautiful one, and children singing carols to express this means they are in harmony with the sacred workings through the unconscious.
This is not merely the best way to bring up children but really the only true way to bring harmony to the psyches of adults. Christianity is not just a matter of a faith and a creed, it is a healing system, because it heals the split in our psyches. This applies to all genuine religions.
It seems, however, that modern educators see fit to deny children the benefit of religion, and more specifically of Christmas carols, so that not only does neurosis then become a powerful danger to the growing child, but also all the things of chaos rush in to fill the gap in the psyche.
To quote Jung: “Does (man) know that he is on the point of losing the life-preserving myth of the Inner Man that Christianity has treasured up for him? Does he realise what lies in store should this catastrophe ever befall him? Is he even capable of realising that this would in fact be a catastrophe?”
ROBERT CLARKE
Burslem

Where you are

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

I awoke from a dream and realized that its point was, look at your situation analytically. Rather than thinking of your life, or a specific part of your life, as if it were a problem to be fixed (or, worse, a problem that couldn’t be fixed), ask yourself, what does my being placed in just this way make possible?
It’s a small turn, maybe, but it amounts to living life in faith that we are being provided for, regardless how bad things look or feel. It eliminates despair or even fear, and sets the mind to seeing advantages (and hints) that have been there all along, unnoticed or only half-appreciated.
I think creating such a habit of looking at our life that way will transform everything, without having to transform anything.

Huxley on grains of sand

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

This was on Facebook. However, inexplicably enough, nothing in it mentions Obama, the Koch brothers, Cecil the lion, Donald Trump, or Hillary Clinton. Talk about irrelevant, eh?
“I was sitting on the seashore, half listening to a friend arguing violently about something which merely bored me. Unconsciously to myself, I looked at a film, of sand I had picked up on my hand, when I suddenly saw the exquisite beauty of every little grain of it; instead of being dull, I saw that each particle was made up on a perfect geometrical pattern, with sharp angles, from each of which a brilliant shaft of light was reflected, while each tiny crystal shone like a rainbow. . . . The rays crossed and recrossed, making exquisite patterns of such beauty that they left me breathless. … Then, suddenly, my consciousness was lighted up from within and I saw in a vivid way how the whole universe was made up of particles of material which, no matter how dull and lifeless they might seem, were nevertheless filled with this intense and vital beauty. For a second or two the whole world appeared as a blaze of glory. When it died down, it left me with something I have never forgotten and which constantly reminds me of the beauty locked up in every minute speck of material around us.”
–from “Heaven and Hell” (1954)

Memories of JFK

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

I have spent the past few days extensively reading more about JFK, from several books borrowed from the UVA library – among them Jack and Lem (about his lifelong friendship with Lemoyne Billings) and JFK: Reckless Youth (a rather long-winded and badly written but compendious account), and got a copy of Counselor, Ted Sorensen’s memoir / autobiography written in his old age, finished a few years before his death at 82 in 2010.

A few things I copied to my journal:

From a letter to Billings describing seeing the Pope in Rome in 1938, showing JFK’s wonderful needling sense of humor: “The pope didn’t actually mention you by name but he gave me the impression that he was thinking of you.” [quoted in RY but I didn’t note the page.]

Billings, retrospectively, on Kennedy and combat: “I always thought that it was kind of interesting that Jack read Hemingway an awful lot, with all those flawed heroes coming on strong; striving, enduring, spoiling for fights and for opportunities to prove themselves. That was Jack.” [J&L, p. 98]

“A Catholic priest at Buna, New Guinea, wrote home that Jack Kennedy was a `fine, upstanding lad, guts, brains, courage to give away, generous, worshipped by his lads.’” [RY, 623]

Jim Reed: “He claimed to me once that he’d never had an unhappy day in his life.” [RY 629]

Torbert Macdonald, visiting Kennedy in the hospital where he lay incapacitated. “`I feel great,’ he said. `Great?’ I echoed? `Well,’ he smiled, `great considering the shape I’m in.’” [RY 655]

Sorensen on Joe Kennedy: “Ultimately, whatever names might have been hurled at him by his critics – bigot, right-winder, isolationist, ruthless capitalist – the fact remains that Joseph P. Kennedy fathered the most idealistic, open-minded, internationalist president since World War II, and he deserves much credit for his family’s many other remarkable accomplishments.” [C, 261] (I would include Eisenhower as idealistic, open-minded and internationalist, but in general I agree with Sorensen.)

Sorensen quoting his own eulogy for JFK delivered in December, 1963. “`Elders who had scoffed at his youth felt suddenly that they had been orphaned,’ I said. `Youth, who had been impatient with his patience, felt suddenly older and grayer.’” [C, 371

There is much more, but that’s enough. What a privilege it was to be young and have John F. Kennedy’s star blaze across the landscape! The joy and inspiration he provided outlived the grief and darkness that followed. It seems like it is destined to outlive those of us who still remember him, as the memory of Lincoln endured far beyond his own time and seems likely to endure as long as history itself remains.