Why Spirituality, Psychology and Politics?

Because everywhere I look these days, I see signs of disintegration in and of our nation. While I certainly see signs of psychological disorder and disease in individuals with more frequency and severity, as well as across all social strata, even more startling, the institutions of our culture itself are showing signs of breaking down.

Our nation has sunk to really unhealthy levels of dysfunction and that is not possible without serious spiritual disease as well. No, I'm not talking about "demon possession."

When I first became interested in psychology 40 years ago we were in the Dark-Age, as a science, compared to where we are now. Nevertheless, it was an exciting time to get involved because our knowledge of the human brain was just beginning to really take off.

The decades of the 1950s and 1960s would turn out to be a watershed in and for research. New therapeutic tactics and strategies would emerge as a result..

Chemical intervention in psychological disintegration was still primitive by today's standards, but a whole new way of thinking had entered into the process. Many of the practices, which later became the stuff of horror flicks, went the way of pre-frontal lobotomies.Chemical straight-jackets are still around, to some degree, but are used much less frequently and for far fewer disorders and diseases.

I'm sure there are those who would vehemently disagree with me. I certainly understand why they would. Some conditions stubbornly defy real understanding let alone make it easy to chemically, or in any other way, intervene. Chemical intervention, in these cases, often leaves the person crippled by side-effects alone. The fact that long term treatment with some anti-psychotic drugs often leaves patients with tardive dyskensia comes to mind. Chemical intervention in the processes of the brain will always carry risks but we have come a long way.

Psychiatry and the chemical intervention in the mental disease process is not really my topic, here.

New tactics for psychological therapies would emerge based new psychological paradigms. By the mid-1970s it had become extremely obvious to me and to a great many other people that psychology and spirituality could no more be addressed separately than body and mind could be. We had all seen the major shortcomings when western modern medicine had attempted the latter for hundreds of years.

(In defense of those pioneers of modern medicine, given how much there is to learn and put into practice with regard to just the brain alone, it is understandable that there was a time of separation in knowledge and practice. Fortunately that has been changing for sometime now.)

The psychological and spiritual split was going to be a bit difficult to mend but for different reasons. Certainly psychology, both research and clinical, was only recently establishing itself as real science.

It had not been long since the masses thought of both as something to avoid out of fear, shame and/or ignorance. Even worse, both psychologists and psychiatrists were considered just modern day snake-oil salesmen at best.

Let's face it, there is nothing quite so terrifying than the thought of losing control of one's own mind. Anything that reminds us that this possibility exists is often pilloried by society. Among those reminders had always included the noticeably deranged, who were quite frightening. In modern times, this would also include those who attempted to allay the suffering, if not cure disease caused by some sort of imbalance in brain chemistry, for example.

Thankfully, in spite of all the fear and nuttiness, the sciences devoted to the study of the human brain and to finding ways of successfully treating, perhaps healing and, more essentially, allaying the suffering caused by such imbalances have not only survived but have found their connectedness to many other arts and sciences as well, not the least of which is the study of the human spirit.

Things of the spirit were much, much harder to measure in any scientific way back in the "old days." Therefore, psychologists with advanced degrees were understandably reluctant to again enter into a time when psychology would be associated with "weird stuff," but many did, nonetheless.

One thing that came out of the so-called 60s was a new found freedom of religious thought and/or spiritual philosophy. I doubt that America's youth, as well as people from various generations, had ever, in history, been exposed to by so many of these types of influences, from all over the world and history at the same time.

These two major subjects of inquiry, psychology and spirituality,  would come together in some very fascinating ways.

Information and knowledge available to the public was increasing at a phenomenal speed as compared to only 25 years before. From now on, connections would be seen between the disciplines of study and practice like they had never been before in human history

Forty years later still, the sciences of the mind and spirituality have never been more intertwined, far more so than I would have expected than when I first came to the conclusion that the two could not be separated if either was to be applied successfully to the lives of human beings by human beings.

Psychology is defined as the study of the Psyche.

As one can see, the definition of psyche is quite varied. For our purposes, we will define psyche in a psycho-spiritual sense. The psyche is the meeting place of the brain and the mind. It includes both the soul and the personality.

I won't get into an in-depth exploration of the various definitions of the word "psyche" here, as it would not serve my purpose. Suffice it to say, it is clear that not only do human beings have psyches, nations do as well.

As it is with people, nations have personalities and it is the personality we must examine in order to determine the health or disease, integration or disintegration of the nation. It is high time that we do so, as it is clear that our nation has been disintegrating for a long time. We, as a nation, have become quite ill, psychologically and spiritually.

Americans like to see their country at its best. When the U.S.A is at her best, she is self-assured and energetic. We have a can-do-attitude that is backed up with results. American esteem is high with good reason. Our shared values prompt us to set high standards for ourselves and our nation.

America really can be that "shining city on a hill" of which Ronald Reagan spoke, to the degree that we are realistic, honest and purposeful in setting goals for ourselves as a nation. What's more, when we are healthy as a nation we are inner-directed without being isolationist and have a sense of our real potential for good in the world. However, when we become imperial in our thoughts and actions, we have lost our way, usually because we have given in to the greedy interests of corporate America and/or been deceived by a rigid, dangerous political ideology.

A healthy U.S.A. inspires other nations to adopt many of her ideals by example, as the U.S. already shares many ideals with other liberal democracies around the world. We stand ready to help, yet we are not so convinced of our own superiority in thought, word and deed that we would force others at gun point or by bombing others into submission to our ideals.

The very idea would make no sense to any rational person and would be laughable had we not already tried that a number of times.

PLEASE NOTE: I said that the nation is healthy when it has all the above healthy qualities and is not simply pretending to have them.projecting a false image of having them. It is the pretending that has made our nation deathly ill......psychologically as well as spiritually.

The disintegration of the nation did not begin last year or even 9 years ago.

The United States has become a highly dysfunctional culture; driven, narcissistic and image-oriented. It emphasizes style over substance, symbols over reality and thrives on deception.

Out and out crimes in high places have been covered up over the years and some times with the knowledge and will of the people. Americans have been trained to think about what looks bad and good instead of what actually is in the best interests of the people and the nation.

(What many Americans still do not realize is that the U.S. can project any image it wishes now, but unless we, as a nation, become more authentic, the vast majority of the world's people will see straight through any false image. Many of them know who we are better than we know ourselves. Especially after the last administration, there are few adults outside our borders who do not see clearly what we have become and what we desperately need to do to set right the ship of state. Others, quite frankly, do not hold out much hope for us.)

The pursuit of excellence has been replaced by an irrational celebration of average, of everything artificial and shallow, inflated in value as well as cheap. We have become a throw-away society in which nothing matters but success or at least the appearance of success.

People are highly expendable. Our elderly are often warehoused. There goes the wisdom of a culture. Again and again we hear about children who might as well be warehoused for all the good their parents do raising them. A culture that fails to see the value in the wisdom of the elderly and values success and wealth more than the care, education and guidance of their progeny is, I fear, doomed.

Everything is treated like a commodity; it is packaged, advertised and marketed in ever, increasingly cynical ways including our presidents, senators and representatives. Political campaigns have become games of public relations and spin and the campaigns never end nor do the political wars of today. Candidates, with their carefully calculated positions are sold to a public which can no longer tell a fabricated image from a real person.

Politics has long since given up even a semblance of principle or the use of power for the common good. Wars of choice are sold to the public in even more cynical and dangerous ways than candidates are. Not only is deception used, but it is used to whip up fear and desires for wrath and vengeance among the people.

Fearing failure and humiliation, the nation constantly misrepresents itself, distorting the truth of its accomplishments, its very history. Just in the last 8 years the nation has become extremely unprincipled and willing to do whatever it takes to preserve the illusion of U.S. superiority.

(The last administration was a caricature of the U.S. at its most unhealthy and dangerous: Exploitative and opportunistic, but also deceptive so that their mistakes and wrong-doings would not be exposed, showing at least, a consciousness of guilt,. Admittedly, they failed at that. Many of their wrong doings have been exposed and, I imagine, will continue to be but there has been no accountability as of this writing.)

The communications media, in particular television, is primarily concerned with attracting attention so that the viewer can be sold some product or the other, something they probably don't need, more than likely will fall apart the third time it is used and, most important, cannot really afford. Glitter, glamor, exhibitionism and self-promotion is the norm. Unfortunately, this includes the news media which will happily spend more airtime on Paris Hilton's latest court date than the deteriorating political situation in Pakistan.

For example, just after 9/11, I was really amazed at the number of friends and acquaintances who knew very little about Osama bin Laden or Al Qaeda. None were aware that Osama bin Laden had, in fact, declared war on the U.S. Had the news media been able to focus on anything other than Bill Clinton's sex life, perhaps more people would have been aware of Al Qaeda and that the madman who declared war on the U.S. had several million dollars at his disposal and quite a few very wealthy contributors.

We expect entertainment to be valued by what the people want to see. News, however, should not be dependent on what the people find entertaining. Yet over and over we hear that the news channels are just putting on what the viewers want to see and hear.

The ideal in the U.S.A.is to be a winner - - - to be successful, famous and celebrated, often at any cost. The quest for success and prestige is everywhere.

We have been sold a narcissistic fantasy; one in which we are told that we will be "somebody" if we are like everybody else, only better in some way. More often these days that means more shrewd, more calculating, more deceitful. The better we are at tip-toeing at the very edge of the law and casting ethics and morals to the wind, the more successful we will be, at least as it is defined by the majority.

In fact, the less we can care about human life the better in our culture, even though we hear about people all the time that are willing to kill physicians in order to protect the life of a fetus. Actually, now, I believe it is the existence of a zygote they wish to protect.

These same people, who refer to themselves as pro-life, are, more often than not, pro-death penalty and pro-war, especially if it means killing other highly religious people.

We are not encouraged to acknowledge our hearts very much at all, after all emotions just get in the way of success, wealth and gaining power so matters of the heart are given short shrift.

If there is one thing we have learned it is that people who cut themselves off from their heart have cut themselves off from their energy supply and will burn-out.

For individuals, a path with no heart leads, inevitably, through the gates of hell, however one defines that state.

We can see the rotten fruits of that narcissistic fantasy all around us.

Of course, I am not saying that everyone in the U.S. has this particular personality type, but it is the personality type that is the most valued and people who have this personality type often rises to the top in the corporate culture, Washington, D.C. culture and the communications media.

What's worse, people with this personality type are rewarded by this dysfunctional culture for their dysfunctional behavior, keeping them dangerously disintegrated for very long periods of time. People with this personality type can survive longer without a complete crack-up for this reason mainly, among others, but when they do finally do hit psycho-land, a bad crack-up is at hand..

The end of this road will be a sort of national crack up, a psychotic break: Think of your favorite psychopath from film or literature or current events. Normal limits of behavior are ignored, cruelty and revenge are the unspoken, if not spoken, rule. Battle-lines are drawn between the narcissistic, now sociopathic nation and its enemies, which are anyone who refuses to play the role of narcissistic supply. There will seem to be no internal brakes on national behavior. (Sound familiar?)

(Bear with me, here. I am not going off on a religious rampage. I doubt I would know how. I define "sin" as error. As we all know, errors can be so grievous as to lead to death; that of someone else or our own.)

It was a Christian hermit, Evagrius Ponticus, who first described 7 evil thoughts in the 4th century. Later, In 590 CE, Pope Gregory I described the 7 cardinal or deadly sins. They are  wrath/anger, pride/vainglory, envy, avarice/greed, gluttony, lust and sloth.

With all due respect to Pope Gregory I, there are two other deadly sins; sins practiced so frequently, we dare not think of them as deadly. One is deceit and the other is fear.

The scriptures of Judaism do recognize the dangers of deceit and from what I understand, Islam condemns it as well. While some forms of Christianity do refer to Satan and/or the anti-Christ as the Great Deceiver, deceit is seen as necessary at times, for the good of Christianity. A recent example of this twisted logic happened right after the invasion of Afghanistan.

Several Christian missionaries went to work for the World Food Project in Afghanistsn. As part of their contract they agreed not to proselytize, just as everone must if they are going to work for the WFP. After all, the focus of the WFP is to feed people in regions of the world where starvation is a real threat, for one reason or another. Anyone with half a brain knows that one cannot have hidden agendas without putting the mission of the WFP in jeopardy.

These folks definitely had hidden agendas and they acted on them. In so doing they almost got themselves killed, put U.S. troops in harms way and almost crippled the WFP. Their story was that some women had asked them about Jesus, so they took a video about Jesus to the house and watched it with these Mulslim women, Needless to say, they were reported to the Taliban. This story gives a whole new meaning to dinner and a movie.

What's more, after this saga was revealed to the American public, I heard a christian missionary on television say that it would be necessary for Christians, who believe it is incumbent upon them to spread what they believe about Jesus, to lie about who they are and their agenda. I can't say I was surprised, but it was a shocking statement for a christian man to be making to a television interviewer.

As a matter of fact, it is the sin of deceit that will be America's downfall.

Deceit is all around us, from advertising to political campaigns to cable news, where talk show hosts throw out a timely topic and two people are asked to comment. One says one thing and the other says quite the opposite. Someone has to be lying because they are each talking about facts, not opinions. Usually both go unchallenged and no fact checking is done. While that may be entertaining to some, much like Teevee wrestling is, does anyone come away from such verbal fisticuffs and dissembling any better informed? I seriously doubt it. As a matter of fact, there is great opportunity for misinformation.

When we look at the mess that is Wall Street, we all think of the sin of greed as being the problem. Of course, greed plays a huge role.

However, any economist will tell us that any economic system that does not take human greed into consideration is bound to fail. American capitalism is no exception as we can plainly see. Nevertheless, we should have learned after the Great Depression that an unregulated financial system will fall victim to the greed inherent in the sociopathic American corporate culture. We must have regulations and oversight. Enforcement must be robust for reasons that are obvious to anyone familiar with the principles of psycho-spirituality.

However, it was deceit that caused the near disaster last year; government and corporate deceit which can be traced back for years. It was in the last two years of the Clinton administration, under a republican congress that advice to regulate hedge fund and other financial activity that some were already seeing as a potential disaster-in-the-making were ignored, with prejudice.

Americans have become way too tolerant of official lying and corporate deception and misbehavior, if not out-right criminality. For the sake of our very sick nation, the people need to take action as it is clear that our government and the corporate culture have become too intertwined for the government too function as it should to protect the people from unethical and immoral decisions and actions that will, inevitably, harm ordinary citizens..

So, what is the cure for the U.S.A.'s mental illness? No, we don't need any more mood-litfers in the water supply.

The answer is simple: We Need To GET REAL.

What we need so desperately in this nation is authenticity.

Our nation's  psycho-spiritual disease is one associated with identity. We seem to have lost ours.

How do we get there: Stay tuned.