Holding the Tension

Greetings, this annual fall-back Sunday…

Illustration at bottom center is by Nicholas Konrad of The New Yorker using source-photos from Getty. Other illustrations are open-sourced stock.

… and best wishes for four months of standard time (for any who celebrate)!

With newShrink, as for many this approaching holiday season and closing weeks of ‘23, time and attention-bandwidth for news are particularly limited.

Even so, urgency described in remarkably consistent terms has managed to catch my ear and eye in stories unfolding on both world stage and domestically — in situations too dire for dismissal as hype and rhetorical overreach. Terms such as Rubicons crossed… critical masses reached… arrivals at crossroads and pivotal junctures or turning-points.

Most encompassing is the deadly combination of Hamas-terrorism and trapped Palestinians’ escalating humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. By Hamas’ strategic-design that catastrophe is now perpetuated by Israel defense- and retaliatory efforts as well as by Hamas. Diplomats seasoned in that part of the world describe it as a volatile ploy to undermine perception and support for Israel and America by the world, as well as support for Israel by some Americans.

Many dimensions of the complex situation are reported here in Live Updates from the Israel-Hamas War (from The New York Times.) At posting time Secretary of State Anthony Blinken was in the Middle East. He met in Israel Friday and with Arab leaders in Jordan on Saturday, working toward bilateral humanitarian pauses while continuing to resist the further Hamas aggression that would likely follow a cease-fire. The Arab leaders, and some growing number of Americans, are calling for a unilateral cease-fire. Support for Israel’s military position, and not cease-fire, remains strong in both houses of Congress and among most Americans of both parties according to polls, despite lower approval of the Biden administration in other areas.

This piece in The New Yorker, illustrated above at center, provides a thorough look at the intricate threading-of-political-and constituent-support needles now unfolding:

How Israel Is Splitting the Democrats

The Democratic coalition once seemed united in its staunch, unquestioning support for the country. Today, that consensus seems to be cracking.

Both houses of Congress and the Administration are wrestling most immediately with the need to pass a budget against another threatened government-shutdown. And from the American viewpoint the heat and velocity of the issue’s impacts will likely only escalate by mid-January and continue through what is sure to be a volatile 2024 election year.

turning-points & transcendence, the psyche’s flying leaps

At some point this week I had read and heard the word inflection-point so much, I decided to look it up to make sure I knew what it means. There were useful diagrams, hence the illustrations at left and right above, respectively:

• In mathematics: Inflection is the point of a curve at which a change in the direction of curvature occurs — where concave, presented visually, appears to become convex. The drawing at right presents this idea in human terms.

• In language and speech, it is a shift in emphasis, tone or syntax.

• Societally: In military and legal strategy or in business, economic, political and other trends, inflection point is significant change in the trajectory of a situation, a turning point.

• On individual scale this applies similarly to life-events, creativity and goals, relationships, decision-points and problem-solving.

Along with the many metaphorical images useful for understanding here, from the depth-psychological perspective both terminology and examples point to one of Jung’s core concepts. In his view the unconscious psyche, both collectively and in individuals, has a transcendent function: When we hold the tension, the push-pull, between any two opposites, conscious and unconscious, the energy of this tension enables a transcendent, newly created third thing — a solution, choice, unforeseen outcome — to emerge.

This is an inherently uncomfortable, by definition uncertain, holding of a lot of complex, paradoxical and even some contradictory things under internal and external pressures for solutions, desired action, decisions, choices. It also attends and leaves space for what is unconscious, unknown in the situation to surface and be considered.

This kind of healthy push-pull and negotiation of ideas in the service of governing is how our democratically elected Congress and state legislatures were conceived and designed to work. That increasingly fails and ceases to happen, as individual- and party electability and power-retention replace governing or robust problem-solving as goals.

As with those inflections and turning points described above, transcendent holding isn’t compromise, but more like a necessary precursor.

Nor is it forcing or seesawing from one option to the other in manic attempt to be rid of the painful conflict. (Here, an apt current example might be the election of a largely untested House Speaker with a track record of stances and positions bizarre and unacceptable even to his own party — because he’s the only contender nobody knows well enough to hate yet.) This, and the concave-to-convex curve illustration above, bring to mind another idea that Jung developed from the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus: enantiodromia. Most simply, it means that in the course of life-events, and in the energy patterns of the psyche and consciousness, things taken to their extreme and one-sided limits tend to move toward their opposites.

If transcendent holding the tension sounds unfamiliar, it may be because it’s rarely seen or heard in American life — and more rarely still in politics, punditry and other public spheres.

With that in mind, the following two recent editorials from The Charlotte Observer’s Issac J. Bailey stood out as examples — from one who does it, often and well. I recommend full reads of both. Long introductory portions of each are quoted to provide a sense of Bailey’s careful tracking and weaving of many explosively controversial threads:

College students who dare to defend innocent Palestinians aren’t the problem. Weak leaders are. (The Charlotte Observer/Opinion by Issac J. Bailey)

“College students are being scapegoated, blamed for the sins of national and world leaders who are busy trying to deflect our attention away from their failures and genocidal rhetoric. That’s been true for several years, as conservative legislators and donors have launched a crusade against students for daring to not see the world the way those conservative legislators and donors say they must. It’s been even more true since Hamas committed an act of terrorism in Israel on Oct. 7. The scapegoating has been aimed particularly at students who dare to uplift the humanity of Palestinian citizens who had nothing to do with the terror attack by Hamas.

Let me be clear, as I have since this latest eruption of unrest and uncomfortable debate: Hamas committed an obvious evil. There should be no equivocation about that from anyone who has a soul. Jewish lives matter. Israel has a right to defend itself. Palestinian lives matter, too, and a right to self defense does not mean a right to perpetrate evil in response to evil.

But in this country, there has been a growing push to equate Hamas with all Palestinians in a clear attempt to justify the slaughter of Palestinians…”

Here is another holding-the-tension example from Bailey, on a different topic of widespread relevance across today’s news-scape: Weaponizing of faith in today’s political and culture-wars arenas.

In the Trump era, ‘I’m a Christian’ is often a disturbing warning (Also from The Observer.)

“‘As an attorney who is also a Christian.’

Those are the words of Jenna Ellis, a woman who helped former President Donald Trump perpetrate a lie about the 2020 election that has threatened our democracy like little else in modern times. Which begs the question: Does declaring oneself Christian mean much of anything these days? Has it ever?

I was born and raised on the buckle of the Bible Belt, in rural South Carolina. My mom made sure my siblings and I were in church before we even understood what church meant, from Bible study, to the children’s choir and delivering Easter speeches, and listening to the pastor and believing what he — it was almost always a he — said the Bible wanted us to believe.

I’ve been baptized and “born again,” had my kids christened, been a member of an all-Black Holiness church when young and a mostly-white nondenominational evangelical church as an adult, and have visited countless others. I’ve publicly declared Christ as my savior.

When I went off to college, I studied religion from an academic standpoint. When I was a senior, a freshman told me his wavering faith was renewed when he spied me unapologetically saying grace over my food in the cafeteria. If anyone should know what Christian means, I should. But I don’t.

It’s not a superficial question, for in this country, and especially in the South, declaring yourself Christian is essentially a prerequisite for holding public office, with only a sprinkling of exceptions, despite the principle of a separation between church and state. Ask an atheist, Muslim or Jew if you doubt me…”

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To summarize some of these reflections on holding the tension, maybe there’s a simple way to think about these transcendent turning points in both our inner and collective lives: They are when we’re awake and poised for the flying leaps of the psyche.

As for that pesky time change…

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sunrise, sunset

I like this fall-back story’s fresh emphasis on length and times of daylight — helpful for making the most of it — rather than just on clock-time:

It’s time to set back the clocks. What daylight saving time means for sunrise and sunset. (In The News and Observer of Raleigh from source: sunrise-sunset.org/us/charlotte-nc).

(All examples and averages here are in my Eastern Standard time zone at piedmont North Carolina latitude.) Between now and the December Solstice, daylight decreases to 10 hours, then increases to 12 hours by March 10, when Daylight Saving Time begins again.

This “squeezing of daylight at both ends” occurs, no matter what time the clock says. The fall-back to standard time puts more of that squeeze toward sunsets as early as 5 p.m. Until December 1, then Solstice, sunrises here shift later from 6:45 to 7:00 to 7:20 a.m.; sunsets, earlier from 5:20 to 5:10 to 5:00 p.m. — all then shifting direction back toward longer days.

It makes sense to note these shifts, if you’re trying to get outside for some melatonin-regulating daylight and maybe part of your exercise routine outdoors. A newShrink soon will return to planned follow-up, with input from several of you, on the recent Keep Walking theme.

Later this month an edition will also revisit the many health and psychological dimensions of seasonal darkness this time of year. There are important effects of exercise and daylight time outdoors on sleep, mood regulation and a vast range of other physical and psychological factors.

On a personal note, one saving thing about long dark nights of fall and early winter weeks ahead: There’s a lot of new streaming fare to watch and reflect on, from a range of venues. I’ll welcome your thoughts and any recommendations you have. High on list here are new season of Bosch Legacy, World on Fire, The Morning Show, Gilded Age. I may be a rare person on the planet who was lukewarm about the book Lessons in Chemistry, and I like the streaming version better. All the Light We Cannot See was such a luminous treasure that I almost fear watching the streamed re-imagining; am intentionally not revisiting the book.

A current delight has been discovery of both seasons of the Masterpiece UK detective series Annika with Nicola Walker in the title role. She leads a marine homicide unit along coastal Scotland and interior Hebrides locales around Isle of Man, Jura and with occasional touches of the character’s Norwegian heritage.

Walker, the genre and those watery locations coming alive like characters in the story always appeal to me. This one has a rare lure that I first thought may irritate, but it hooked me instead. DI Annika periodically “breaks the 4th wall” to face us through the camera. In low-key asides, she comments only peripherally about the case at hand… instead citing plot lines, situations, characters and metaphors from a vast range of literature and myth. As I recall there have been: Dionysos, Prometheus and Pandora from the Greeks; Shakespeare’s King Lear; Orwell’s 1984; a Norse god or two; and Robert Louis Stevenson. She presents them as though they live just up the road

In early viewing it hit me with a laugh: She is commenting on these events, people and motivations in a very newShrink-y way. And her waxing-forth on connections she sees to obscure literature, characters and archetypes draws annoyed eye rolls, or blank stares, from colleagues and family about as often as mine do! At least her new significant other is a psychologist, who doesn’t seem to mind so far.

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Once again, I’ll leave you today with an annual ritual-share that some may recognize. With original thanks to friend and reader Ann Ahern Allen (and a musical title-nod to Lucinda Williams), it is a favorite comic take on what’s probably my very least favorite post-midnight hour of the year.

right in time

And, that is all I have! Talk to you next week.

🦋💙 tish

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… it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
— William Stafford, “A Ritual to Read to Each Other”