“We are watching the terrible clash of the Symplegades, through which the soul must pass—identified with neither side.” (Joseph Campbell) ¹
In the classical story of Jason and the Argonauts, the Symplegades were the clashing rocks they had to steer their ship through without being crushed. Successful passage resulted in Jason’s acquisition of the Golden Fleece. But the mythic sense of Jason’s quest has a universal application which can represent a treacherous passage through opposing forces to attain a desired goal of great value. A previous blog (reference “The Russian American Paradox”) addressed the paradoxical parallelism between two “super” powers” involving hyper capitalism and hyper personalization. But this parallelism also represents the clashing rocks that can destroy societies and their governments, including both autocracies and democracies. Is there any question whether the acquisition of great wealth and the power it bequeaths can and often will entice government policy and investment to benefit the few over the interest of the many. Nor can it be questioned whether autocratic leaders nearly always amass their power primarily to serve their own interest before that of the people they rule. There are too many examples in history that remind us that “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Our contemporary parallelism of Russia and America exemplifies the hazards of those clashing rocks that prohibit passage to the hope and dreams of their citizens. In Russia, wealthy oligarchs exploit Russian labor to enrich themselves, while an obsessive autocrat with unfettered power subverts the dreams of the Russian people with his personal fantasy of imperial power. The fallacy in his fantasy is the presumption that it will benefit average Russians rather than himself. In America, both an economic system that allows an unequal distribution of wealth and a political environment that allows a brutish strongman to transform his political party into his personal tribal chiefdom, taken together, forbode the end of the American Republic and its promise of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” as every citizen’s birthright. Both Russia and America must face their version of the Symlegrades before they can realize the benefits of sovereignty and justice for their people. America’s path through these clashing rocks is at the voting booth and subsequent reform of its system of government to guarantee majority rule and prohibit future Trump-like insurrectionist conspiracies. For Russia, its path seems more hazardous, for it may require a wholly new government that breaks with its authoritarian past. While America struggles to maintain its history of fair elections, Russia may never have experienced a fair election and would have to overcome a long history of imperial/totalitarian/dictatorial rule. Nevertheless, both Americans and Russians must pass through those clashing rocks to attain self-rule and personal freedom—the golden fleece of popular sovereignty.
Russia and America are not alone in their attempt to pass safely through the existential threats of horded wealth and autocratic power. China is another superpower struggling to find safe passage through similar dangers as it struggles to extend its economic expansion during a Covid shutdown and to suppress a shutdown-weary populace while subduing Hong Kong and Taiwan under its superpower umbrella. And each of these great powers impact the welfare of nearly all other countries. The 2008-9 worldwide recession was the result of America’s faulty handling of dubious securities throughout its banking industry. The current global inflation is the result of Russia’s unprovoked and imperialistic war against Ukraine. Meanwhile, China is grappling with their oppressive handling of its Covid crisis, which is impacting industries interconnected with the global economy. How China resolves its internal crisis will affect that global economy. Simply stated, we live in an interconnected world that is too easily impacted by economic competition and territorial disputes—once again the clashing rocks of money and power. As economic hegemony and competition debilitate global attempts to address climate change, territorial disputes and forthright violation of national sovereignty raise the specter of another world war. All citizens of the world will feel the impact of those clashing rocks, unless we unite as a human family to pass together through them. But how is safe passage possible in such a diverse world?
Is there a common view of humanity’s place in the world and, more specifically, in the physical places humans inhabit? Many scholars—historians, scientists, religious leaders—have responded to the question of our relationship with the world we all inhabit. Do we have a common purpose that can bring us together as custodians of a world our children will inherit? Do we then share a common destiny that demands we act in unison? Throughout human history, our forebears have searched for a model that could assure our survival as a species and unite us in its pursuit. Human societies and their communities have learned to mimic animal subsistence on nature, or plant life cycles of growth-decay-reseed, or the apparent eternal cosmic cycles of the stars. Mythic images that welled up from the mind of man have inspired religions, art, and the cultural and social forms that have guided human history through its every peril and hazards. But what path should be taken through the clashing rocks of our time? What is now at risk is more than the fate of democracy in America, the embezzlement and suppression of the Russian people, or the survival of innocents in Ukraine at the hands of a genocidal Russian dictator.
We humans have subdued the animal kingdom, used and misused the plant world to serve our needs, and have begun to explore the cosmos, no longer for guidance, but to satisfy our human curiosity. And that curiosity is often characterized in our science fiction as another avenue for human conquest. The common element in these human pursuits is human ego: we mimic nature to control it for personal profit and power, with little or no concern for our survival as a species. But global warming and the threat of world war—even nuclear war—demand more of us humans. Our survival demands every one of us to man the oars before those clashing rocks ahead. Our shared human history has shown us capable of communal action to secure the health and benefit of our species. Has not our ability to work together enabled our species to survive where all other human species have not? But human ego, conversely, is solipsist, serving only itself. It would control nature’s bounty for itself alone, explore the galaxy for profit or conquest, and subjugate other humans just for personal glory. And the glory of one man or one tribe will inevitably be won at the expense of the rest of humanity.
Nobody needs billions of dollars or control over the fate of millions of people. But ego does. Nobody has a right to overthrow the sovereignty of his or another’s free state. But ego does. The problem, of course, is that ego serves nobody but itself, to include its narcistic paranoia. It is the demon within us that bears no responsibility for the general welfare, for world peace, for mitigation of global warming, or for fair distribution of the world’s wealth and produce. And that demon ego is only concerned for itself, even at the expense and suffering of all else.
But how does our modern world pass through these clashing rocks of the Symplegades? Is there a hero, like Jason, to lead us? No, it is every single one of us, acting together with others and inspired by the better angels of our nature, to serve the wellbeing and goals of each other, in the very community where we live, work, and relate. To quote one of the wisest men of the last century, “the modern hero . . . cannot, indeed must not, wait for his community to cast off its slough of pride, fear, rationalized avarice, and sanctified misunderstanding . . . (for) it is not society that is to guide and save the creative hero, but precisely the reverse. And so, every one of us shares the supreme ordeal.” ² Our individual legacy, then, is best expressed in the society we impact, “the totality—the fullness of man—is not the separate member, but in the body of the society as a whole, the individual can only be an organ.” ³ The society that can pass through our contemporary Symplegades, the clashing rocks of power and money, must be composed and led by selfless men and women who decry the lust for excessive wealth, power, and its byproduct, fame, to create and serve the great human society born of our better nature. We all face those clashing rocks and must pass individually and together through them or suffer a dire fate. How else will humanity survive the effects of global warming and the threats of world war or of economic and autocratic suppression? More than the fate of empire or the balance of world power or hegemonic dominance is at stake. It is humanity itself that faces the Symplyglades. Do we have the wherewithal to pass through safely?
Beyond the rise and fall of empires and civilizations, humanity has survived. But have we prospered together as a species, or rather at the expense of other humans. Currently we are at war with nature and with each other. The mythic images and cultural norms that well up from the depths of the human psyche reveal both the angelic and demonic forces that fuel the creative energy of our kind. We are capable of nurturing societies and ergonomically advanced civilizations. And we are equally capable of destroying our planet and of genocidal wars against our own kind. How can we create communities, societies, and governments that coexist peacefully in a mutually supportive structure of shared commerce, art, sports, and intellectual pursuits.? The answer: we can’t unless we begin to do so as individuals. Together, we can rid the world of warmongers, dictators, and economic parasites that thrive on the labor of others. Our task is not achievable in one lifetime or perhaps in many generations. But it will never be achieved unless we begin today.
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¹ Joseph Campbell, “The Hero with a Thousand Faces,” Princeton University Press (third printing, 1973), p. 389
² Ibid. p. 391.
³ Ibid. p. 385.
Footnote:
Whenever I fall back into one of Campbell’s many books, I invariably recall Martin Buber’s poignant statement, “the word ‘I’ remains the shibboleth of humanity” (Martin Buber, “I and Thou,” Charles Scribner’s Sons, c.1970, p.119, a translation by Walter Kaufman of “Icb un Du,” published in March, 1937). That word can refer to the subject of a specific accomplishment without any reference to his/her power to relate. Buber’s hidden message here refers to any failure to reciprocate and respond to another’s life presence—to be open to the “thou” and to the fulness of human relationships. But that openness is the secret door to forming human communities. Without that openness to human relationships, dictators like Napoleon, whom Buber references, can treat their subjects as means to their personal “destiny and accomplishment.” Of course, we can apply Buber’s “I” shibboleth to the dictators of the last hundred years, to include Hitler, Mussolini, Kim Jung-un, and Putin—or wannabe dictators like Trump. Just note how these men affected the welfare of the nations they led. Their “I”-self admits no passage to the “thou” of another, or to the human community consequently violated and suppressed. “Man understood however not as “I” but as “thou”: for the ideals and temporal institutions of no tribe, race, continent, social class or century, can be the measure of the inexhaustible and multifariously wonderful divine existence that is the life in all of us” (Campbell, ibid. p.391). Campbell wrote those words in 1949, after the world wars of the 20th century. They recall Buber’s life work and resonant today in the 21st century on the cusp of potentially greater disasters.