Wildest Times of the World, 7.17.22

Conundrum, Controversy, Jolts of Surprise

Greetings, and welcome to newShrink this mid-July Sunday.

Quite early in a news-week of widely disparate stories and issues, a one-word connective theme began making dramatic entrances.

The word:Wild.

Here, it’s on projected screen-shots of breathlessly excited pre-Insurrection Tweets from a soon-to-be former President intent on retaining power.

There, intoned by ponderous political pundit intent on retaining relevance and authority, in political landscapes as yet utterly uncharted if not un-chartable.

And now echoed seemingly everywhere, as the highly hyped movie-theater adaptation of a beloved mega-bestseller novel, Where the Crawdads Sing, unearths real-life backstory murkier than marsh, archetypal darknesses deep and old as time.

In the psyche’s wee hours even the week’s musical song-title theme arrived as though on cue: Vonda Shepard’s 1996 Wildest Times of the World. (In a regular lounge-performer role, the pianist-singer-songwriter and her music defined the tone and won multiple TV and music awards for the five-year run of Ally McBeal. The show was a quirky late-90s hit law-firm comedy/drama by prolific and gifted creator — and lawyer! — David Kelley. I’ve enjoyed Shepard’s music as more of a sleeper-favorite ever since.)

wild shadow

Here is a way of looking at wildness from the newShrink perspectives of depth psychology and soul. Fully italicized text portions of this section are taken from my 2012-14 research study on this and related topics (“Tracking the Wild Grownup…”).

The shadow or blind-spot human experience of the wild resides in this deceptively simple word whose meanings include untamed, uncivilized, uncultivated — that is, in opposition to culture. There is a tendency to define, perhaps attempt to contain, wildness by its negative, by what it is not, eg. unspoiled, unrestrained, undisciplined, uncharted… or impure.

This sense of being in opposition to, alienated from, the culture came to mind with a reader’s email comments and conversation in response to last week’s edition about current news alongside historic periods and public figures like Senator Joe McCarthy. (It’s Only Words, 7.10.22, newshrink.substack.com). From her previous thoughts and contributions you may recall my dear friend, depth psychology author and professor Dr. Elizabeth Nelson. She shares this pithy exchange that had a powerful punchline for these times:

Saturday morning I asked a colleague a question that used to be easy and now ties many of us in knots: "How are you?"

His reply was the most succinct and articulate I have heard in years:

"The personal me is doing well. The political me is shattered."

Whew.

Looking also on the collective level or scale:

Other dimensions of the wild include a vast and near-reverential array of cultural references to wildness that abound in music, literature, theatre, and the arts. This might perhaps represent an interesting shadow phenomenon in a contemporary human culture profoundly cut-off from nature, including our own deep-human nature. And the sense of wildness can intensify around the times of archetypal change or turning points [those “tidal shifts”] in our individual or cultural stories…

These are top-of-mind themes to hold and reflect on, especially with such cultural phenomena as this week’s multi-faceted Where the Crawdads Sing news and stories.

The adjoining photo-images in the above illustration correspond to numbered items below and read in three vertical columns. At left are images depicting current news and issues. Center-column items explore archetypal and other depth- and psychological dimensions and questions surfacing currently with Where the Crawdads Sing. And at right are glimpses forward with the imaginal in creative arts and/or happy surprise of serendipity.

The usual navigating details for accessing all links and references on the newShrink website are at the bottom of this post after closing comments.

connecting theme and story

After the first, linked story, Item 1 highlights a selection of current top national stories in politics.

#1. Ex-Oath Keeper outlines dark worldview behind U.S. Capitol attack

(The Washington Post)

Jason Van Tatenhoves' testimony underscored how Donald Trump’s rhetoric about “fighting” political opponents was received as an order to mobilize.

From watching a bit of this testimony plus an interview with Tatenhoves about his upcoming book, The Propagandist, his background as the Oath Keepers’ former professional PR spokesman shows — in contrast to his current appearance and involvement with the group. His repeated, calmly reasonable talking point, “I just always had a healthy distrust of the government” was unfazed by repeat attempts by adept interviewer to probe more introspection on the group’s initial appeal and allure for him. That’s disappointing, and my head still spins at what that seemingly benign statement could possibly mean in this context and current environment.

Jan. 6 takeaways: Cipollone highlights “unhinged” Trump White House meeting (Bloomberg)

Former Trump Counsel Cipollone corroborates prior Jan. 6 testimony (NBC News)

Cassidy Hutchinson: Why the Jan. 6 Committee Rushed Her Testimony (The New York Times)

Sequestered with family and security, Ms. Hutchinson, 26, has in the process developed an unlikely bond with Representative Liz Cheney, the panel’s vice chairwoman.

Liz Cheney: Trump attempted to contact Jan. 6 witness - (From Associated Press in The Charlotte Observer)

Trump tried to call a member of the White House support staff talking with January 6 committee (CNN)

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For a one-stop thorough discussion of a wide range of the week’s political stories, especially if you only have time and energy bandwidth for one, I highly recommend Heather Cox Richardson’s July 14 Letters from an American. (heathercoxrichardson.substack.com.) Meanwhile....

About this brief HCR excerpt: How does one read or proceed in a nation of laws past the highlighted phrase in bold? (The state attorney general?)

But Republicans are pushing for even greater restrictions over abortion. Today, Texas attorney general Ken Paxton, who was indicted seven years ago for felony securities fraud but has yet to stand trial, sued the Biden administration over that rule, claiming that it is an “attempt to use federal law to transform every emergency room in this country into a walk-in abortion clinic.” 

Also regarding HCR’s July 14 piece, if you haven’t — or even if you have — heard, read or closely followed this week’s story of the 10-year-old pregnant rape victim in Ohio who had to travel to Indiana for an abortion: HCR’s is the clearest, most thorough factual account I have found that vividly illustrates jaw-dropping contortions of logic and damaging utter chaos that are now the norm and worsening in the aftermath of the Roe decision.

Which brings me to recent Supreme Court rulings along another dimension of this and other cases.

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#2. On religious freedom

(New York Times illustration by Danielle Del Plato)

I Don’t Want to See a High School Football Coach Praying at the 50-Yard Line
(NYT Guest Essay by outspoken Christian believer-maverick, novelist and author of nonfiction books including, most recently, Dusk Night Dawn.)

Many of us who believe in a reality beyond the visible realms, who believe in a soul that survives death, and who are hoping for seats in heaven near the dessert table, also recoil from the image of a high school football coach praying at the 50-yard line.

It offends me to see sanctimonious public prayer in any circumstance — but a coach holding his players hostage while an audience watches his piety makes my skin crawl.

We are fighting furiously for women’s rights and the planet, and we mean business. We believers march, rally and agitate, putting feet to our prayers. And in our private lives, we pray…

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Florida's new abortion law violates religious freedom, a synagogue's lawsuit says

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — A new Florida law prohibiting abortion after 15 weeks with some exceptions violates religious freedom rights of Jews in addition to the state constitution's privacy protections, a synagogue claims in a lawsuit.

The lawsuit filed by the Congregation L'Dor Va-Dor of Boynton Beach contends the law that takes effect July 1 violates Jewish teachings, which state abortion "is required if necessary to protect the health, mental or physical well-being of the woman" and for other reasons.

"As such, the act prohibits Jewish women from practicing their faith free of government intrusion and this violates their privacy rights and religious freedom," says the lawsuit, filed Friday in Leon County Circuit Court.

The lawsuit adds that people who "do not share the religious views reflected in the act will suffer" and that it "threatens the Jewish people by imposing the laws of other religions upon Jews"…

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Is there a balm in Gilead? The church in post-Roe America (Baptist News Global)

Opinion piece by progressive Baptist minister Dr. Stephen Shoemaker

The question debated for centuries is being revisited: When does the life begun in a woman’s body become a human person? It is a moral, legal, medical and philosophical question.

We begin by saying that medicine and philosophy have not determined a “magic moment” when human personhood begins. Some points in the gestation continuum which have been argued are: [bold highlights and bracketed text here are mine]

🔷At conception when the genotype is set.

🔷At the post-twinning moment when twinning happens or not — 4 days.

🔷At implantation, when the fertilized egg is implanted in the womb —14 days.

🔷At eight weeks when the cerebral cortex begins to form and all internal organs are formed. Aristotle, reflecting the major position of Greek philosophy, said the male fetus received a soul, or “ensoulment,” at 40 days and a female fetus at 90 days, which informed the legality of abortion.

🔷At “quickening,” when the mother feels the child move in her womb — 16 to 18 weeks. [The Catholic Church position from the time of St. Thomas Aquinas in the 13th Century until 1869.]

🔷At viability, when an unborn child can survive outside the mother’s body. Today, with the advances of modern medical science, this point is at 20 to 21 weeks. [The previous U.S. government position under Roe v Wade.]

🔷At birth, when the infant draws the first breath. [The position of Judaism.]

This is an ongoing concern on which I would especially value and welcome hearing from you both now and going forward. In future editions I’ll likely revisit and respond to the following New Yorker piece that arrived just at writing time. It touches many themes and chords that continue to be really “up” for me and perhaps you, too.

Is Abortion Sacred? (The New Yorker)

Abortion is often talked about as a grave act. But bringing a new life into the world can feel like the decision that more clearly risks being a moral mistake.

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#3. “Let the wild rumpus start!”

(This quote from beloved Maurice Sendak’s children’s classic, Where the Wild Things Are, is a subhead-epigraph lifted from my above-mentioned 2014 academic-research tome.)

When Sendak died in 2012 I heard an interview from years before, in which he described his intent and motivation in taking children intentionally and creatively into the realms of the unknown and scary. It resonated on both human and psychologist levels, and has stuck with me ever since.

In simplest terms Sendak offers something even young children understand, and need — a way to look at the scary stuff in the daylight, and a safe place to tuck it away until visited again. Used consciously with discernment the scariest themes, characters and plots in fairytales and ghost/monster stories serve similar psychological purpose.

A parallel among adults — which I’ve discovered repeatedly working clinically with people dealing with the endless multiple fears of crippling anxiety — can be an affinity or even passion for such entertainment fare as horror-genre film and literature or the reality TV series Naked and Afraid.

Sendak’s playful wise magic applies equally to our internal or external monsters alike. His work continues to speak to the immense psychological value in our engaging consciously with that which is most wild, uncharted, even scary — both out in the world and culture and in those most undiscovered alien parts of ourselves.

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#4. On politics, polls and punditry

The illustration’s faceless-generic president podium in the NYT photo by T.J. Kirkpatrick, and this small sampling of stories, are part of an upcoming single-topic Shrink-wrap edition to watch for in weeks ahead.

Most Democrats Don’t Want Biden in 2024, New Poll Shows (NYT news story)

Joe Biden Is Too Old to Be President Again (NYT opinion piece by columnist Michelle Goldberg)

In these times, Democrats must stick with Biden (Opinion by Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post, in The Charlotte Observer)

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#5. “Something in us is truly wild and wants to stay that way through our entire life. It is the source of our greatest creativity and freedom.”

The quote from clinical PhD and eco-psychologist Bill Plotkin was the opening Prologue epigraph to my research work on “the wild dimensions of a tame-sounding topic: grownups…” (conscious, initiated ones).

Prompted by this week’s news-scape and “wild” themes to revisit this for the first time in awhile, I made a discovery:

Plotkin and his body of work make him rather the ultimate fantasy guest for my imaginal dining-conversation table to host and engage various thinkers, scholars, news figures.

At today’s table, close to me I would be seating Plotkin… alongside Delia Owens, the PhD conservation-scientist-turned-debut-novelist.

Naturally!

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#6. Crawdads and other wild things

The center column of images depict: (starting at bottom) both novel cover and movie poster for Where the Crawdads Sing; (at center) 18th Century painting of legendary feral-child founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus — expressions of the archetypal wild or feral child; (center right) another wild child archetypal example, Mowgli from the movie version of Kipling’s The Jungle Book; and (center left) elephant photograph by Frans Lanting, illustration from Jeff Goldberg’s original 2010 New Yorker story about the Zambia murder and the anti-poacher aspect of the Owens’ intense elephant-conservation work.

At the end of this section is a somewhat chronological assortment, including some excellent, news, investigative and artistic commentary pieces about this book, movie opening, and controversial past events with current impacts. Also included are a couple of resources from related depth psychology dimensions evoked by the Crawdads story, notably elements of both wild child and divine child archetypes.

For full disclosure, I have not read the book, seen the movie, or until this week looked closely at its reviews. (I have seen and heard longer interviews and video views with Owens — now twice — during the usual promotional publicity of her book and now the movie.) The book has hovered outside my focused awareness as one I should probably consider, but hasn’t captured my interest enough to do so. My reading history has been so steeped in Southern literature both contemporary and classics that simple satiation could be a factor. And while Owens herself has come across as graciously pleasant, with the kind of Southern accent most charmingly familiar for me, enough things about her have so not quite rung-true or added-up, that I haven’t felt drawn to read her.

I know and respect a lot of people, including a lot of you, who have read, loved, and actively explored the book, and maybe Owens, with book clubs and friends. I’d really like to hear your thoughts and experience of this and the movie if you plan to see it.

Meanwhile, the newShrink interest and focus here are pretty narrowly journalistic — on the book, and Owens, as a mass cultural phenomenon and news figure — and psychological — both the clinical and archetypal. And for the moment I’m a bit stymied, if not totally silenced, by many contrasts here:

🔷between this graciously charming late-life ingenue utterly flummoxed and speechless at mass response to her debut-first-novel (which it, technically, is)… vs decades-long serious cred. as both Phd conservation-scientist and nonfiction author with a mass-market best selling 1983 memoir and several award-winning others under her belt;

🔷between the dangerous naïveté reflected in Owens’ quoted responses regarding the African murder (“We didn’t know or mean any harm, we were just trying to help, we are good people”)… vs not only the facts reported on the ABC documentary tape of the African murder but obviously violent risks and realities of two Americans self-isolating for science, single-handedly taking on power, money and brute force involved in elephant-poaching.

🔷between this author’s book and film story. however romanticized/sanitized, a paean to a triumphant-against-all-odds marsh girl… vs her audience, legions of reading women, many among us who avoid the outdoors if too hot/cold/buggy/smelly/noisy or quiet, won’t allow 10-year-olds to risk using butter knives, or pre-teens a walk from the bus-stop or errand.

🔷and finally, between everything I’ve ever seen, heard or known of the talent, creativity, wisdom and some real societal impacts from actor-producer Reese Witherspoon, who has identified and sponsored the Crawdads novel and Owens from its initial launch… vs the recent Witherspoon quote promoting the movie as “a love letter to growing up in the South.” (However much we may love the book or movie, and in the South or anywhere else, I sincerely hope seeing any child, anywhere growing up this way would prompt a call to DSS and police, not a love letter.)

Perhaps obviously, these are things I’m still exploring. So for time and space reasons — and in hopes you’ll share more informed wisdom — that’s all from me for now.

Here are stories, beginning with Jeff Goldberg’s Atlantic piece this week that revisits and highlights his original 2010 New Yorker investigation.

Where the Crawdads Sing Author Wanted for Questioning in Murder

(The Atlantic, July 2022)

A televised 1990s killing in Zambia has striking similarities to Delia Owens’s best-selling book turned movie.

The Hunted: Did American conservationists in Africa go too far?

(Original New Yorker piece by Jeffrey Goldberg, March 29, 2010)

What to know about the controversy about Delia Owens’ Where the Crawdads Sing (Time)

Here’s an assortment of reviews, most tepid at best, of the movie so far. It opened in theaters Wednesday.

When a Troubling Book Gets a Hollywood Makeover (The Atlantic)

A slick movie adaptation of Where the Crawdads Sing doesn’t just sanitize the story; it obfuscates the questionable morality at the novel’s center.

‘Where the Crawdads Sing’ Review: A Wild Heroine, a Soothing Tale (NYT)

Daisy Edgar-Jones stars as an orphaned girl in the marshes of North Carolina in this tame adaptation of Delia Owens’s popular novel.

Kya’s outsider status — bolstered by the presence of David Strathairn as her Atticus Finch-like defense attorney — gives the movie a notion of social concern. Equally faint is the hint of Southern Gothic that sometimes perfumes the swampy air. But for a story about sex, murder, family secrets and class resentments, the temperature is awfully mild, as if a Tennessee Williams play had been sent to Nicholas Sparks for a rewrite.

Other reviews refer to Disney-esque sanitizing of both the novel’s stark marsh-shack setting and its issues with stereotypical Black characters and white-savior colonial tone.

‘Where the Crawdads Sing’ is the latest literary sensation turned ho-hum movie (LA Times)

If you’re interested in more on any of the above — or on the symbolic and archetypal dimensions here — please email me. And here are a couple of resources for the latter.

Archetype of the divine child source, Jungian analyst Brian Collinson

ARAS (Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism) Book of Symbols — on Feral or Wild Child archetype and marsh symbolism.

Now to the right column images with, some hopeful news of a creative sort with a home-town twist.

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#7. Ada Limón Is Named the Next Poet Laureate

(NYT and photo by Carla Ciuffo for The New York Times.)

Poetry, she said, can help the nation “become whole again” in a fraught, divided moment.

In a poem called ‘Dead Stars,’ she encourages her readers to lean into their strength fully embodied:

Look, we are not unspectacular things. We’ve come this far, survived this much. What

would happen if we decided to survive more? To love harder?

What if we stood up with our synapses and flesh and said, No.

Limón, 46, who is originally from California, lives in Lexington, Ky., with her husband, Lucas Marquardt, their pug, Lily Bean, and an exceptionally old cat named Olive. She hosts a poetry podcast called “The Slowdown” — which was started by Ms. Smith during her time as poet laureate — and is on the faculty in the M.F.A. program at Queens University of Charlotte, NC. She has been awarded a Guggenheim fellowship and a National Book Critics Circle Award, and has been a finalist for the National Book Award.

And finally, apropos of nothing in content or theme, just a delicious morsel of reading pleasure that arrived in my in-box as release from way-way too much time in swamps!

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#8. A Wild Card: “Love, Kindness, and the Song of the Universe With Jack Kerouac”

The bottom-right drawings above illustrate this seemingly matter-of-fact, though sweet, little first-person vignette about the iconic Beat writer from some 60 years ago, as told to Maria Popova of Marginalian (formerly Brain Pickings.)

It’s one of those short snippets of story too beautifully written to spoil by summarizing. For me more rare and treasured, it has one of those near-physical little gasp-moments of exquisite surprise that hit like some sparkly thing lobbed over the transom.

It’s by unusual chance that I happened to open the abbreviated update I often overlook as they arrive at busy midweek.

Even more with this wild card: an image like the above pictured drawing of Kerouac, male figure trudging across bright space with baggage on his back, had appeared in a 7.7.22 dream… inexplicably.

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Now I’ll leave you with a message in visual and text:

#9.“Quite the sunset tonight after the storms, including a rainbow. Promises to come…”

(Shared via stunning photo-eye talent of friend and reader Myra Clontz Lau of Northern Virginia.)

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

🦋💙 tish

•🌀🔵🔷🦋💙

… 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”

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