Bud Harris - The Midnight Hour: A Jungian Perspective on Americas Current Pivotal Moment

THE MIDNIGHT HOUR

ALSO BY BUD HARRIS, PHD

Sacred Selfishness: A Guide to Living a Life of Substance

Aging Strong: The Extraordinary Gift of a Longer Life

Becoming Whole: A Jungian Guide to Individuation

Students Under Siege: The Real Reasons Behind Americas Ongoing Mass Shootings
and How to Stop Them

Radical Hope and the Healing Power of Illness: A Jungian Guide to Exploring the Body, Mind, Spirit Connection to Healing

The Search for Self and the Search for God: Three Jungian Lectures and Seminars to Guide the Way

Cracking Open: A Memoir of Struggling, Passages, and Transformation

The Father Quest: Rediscovering an Elemental Force

Resurrecting the Unicorn: Masculinity in the 21st Century

The Fire and the Rose: The Wedding of Spirituality and Sexuality

CO-AUTHORED WITH MASSIMILLA HARRIS, PHD

Into the Heart of the Feminine: Facing the Death Mother Archetype to Reclaim Love, Strength, and Vitality

Like Gold Through Fire: Understanding the Transforming Power of Suffering

The Art of Love: The Craft of Relationships: A Practical Guide for Creating the Loving Relationships We Want

THE MIDNIGHT HOUR

A Jungian Perspective
on Americas Current Pivotal Moment

BUD HARRIS, PHD

Copyright 2020 Bud Harris, Ph.D.

The midnight hour: a jungian perspective on americas current pivotal moment by Bud Harris.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Daphne Publications, 6 Cambridge Road, Asheville, North Carolina 28804

DAPHNE PUBLICATIONS, AN IMPRINT OF SPES, INC.

Harris, Clifton T. Bud

The midnight hour: a jungian perspective on americas current pivotal moment / Bud Harris.

ISBN: 978-0-578-63261-2 Nonfiction

1. Democracy 2.Civics and Citizenship 3. Jungian psychology

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016908974

Spes, Inc, Asheville, NC

Cover and Interior Design: Courtney Tiberio

For my grandsons: Galen and Ben

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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Americas opportunity is at hand. We can lead the world by being a great example, we can prove this nation a living, growing thing with policies that are adequate to new conditions. In a thousand ways this is our hour of test chiefly let our aim be to build up, not to tear down. Our opposition is to the things which once existed, in order that they may never return. We oppose money in politics, we oppose the private control of national finances, we oppose the treating of human beings like commodities, we oppose the salon-bossed cities, we oppose starvation wages, we oppose rule by groups or cliques. In the same way we oppose a mere period of coma in our national life.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

... But history will judge you, and as the years pass, you will ultimately judge yourself on the extent to which you have used your gifts to enrich the lives of your fellow man. In your hands, not with presidents or leaders, is the future of your world and the fulfillment of the best qualities of your own spirit.

Robert F. Kennedy

Author s Note

This is the third edition in which I discuss our countrys current political situation. This unfolding thought process examines the chaotic political period we are experiencing as a nation and how to understand it, the effect our political choices today will have on our future, and how personal and political ideals are tightly bound in American society. Building on my earlier editions, in this volume I seek to create order out of chaos and develop a vision for the future in the crucible of my own understanding.

The 2016 presidential campaign and election were a great shock to me, though not a total surprise. I had been aware of the growing shadow in our society for a long time. But I was reluctant to face the shadow head on as well as the demands with which it was confronting us as citizens in a democracy. Our political chaos has continued as I have continued to write.

It is clear to me that after we emerge from the states of shock, fear, loss, and grief after this pandemic we will be facing personal and collective challenges beyond our imagination. But at the core of these challenges will be our old challenges and attitudes that I explore in this book, as well as the kind of spirit, creativity, and character we need to meet these challenges.

Writing is my process of bringing order out of chaos. It helps me focus on understanding my experiences, my life, what is happening to me and around me. My emotions have been aroused, and as part of this writing project I want to understand why. This awareness is crucial because my emotions tell me when my boundaries have been violated as well as when my life has been turned upside down. Emotions reveal my most profound values and ultimately, no matter how rational I believe I am, they are the power behind my decisions. It is important to include them in this writing process because they make my life real and the process encompasses a great deal more than simply seeking solutions. In addition, the emotions I have failed to face and integrate all too often become the driving force behind my temperament, health and decision making.

Whether you agree with me or not I hope my work helps you clarify your own position, both within and to the chaotic times surrounding us. Above all I hope it helps you create a new vision of the future and a new hope that draws you to commit to it.

Bud Harris

Asheville, North Carolina

Introduction

WELCOME TO THE CHALLENGES OF CHANGE

Change is the process by which the future invades our lives, and it is important to look at it closely, not merely from the grand perspective of history, but also from the vantage point of the living, breathing individuals who experience it.

Alvin Toffler, Future Shock

It always strikes me with awe that whether in nature, in my personal experience, or in our collective experience, life is continuously in a state of becoming. The metaphor for this process in myth and religion is life, death, and rebirth. Plants die and grow again. So do the cells in my body. The seed must die for the plant to break free and begin to sprout. Psychologically, I meet that cycle in my progressing life by going through the emotional challenges and often the pain of dying to my comfortable way of life. This may include giving up my old perspectives or my old expectations, and may require questioning my value system and the obligations it supports. Meanwhile I am caught betwixt and between while the future is invading my life. It can be scary and threatening to be in the process of becoming a new self and creating a new story or narrative that expands me, brings together my disparate parts into a cohesive whole, and gives me a new stake in life.

The reality of always becoming, always facing change hasnt fit in very well with either my ideals or plans for the future, so I have the difficult choice of either living this reality, as the great German poet Goethe wrote:

And so long as you havent experienced this: to die and so to grow,

you are only a troubled guest on the dark earth.

Or rejecting it. However, rejecting it often means rigidifying, denying being fully alive, and at a profound level closing my heart to greater loves and creative potentials.

* * * *

Most of you are well aware that the future will invade our lives with crises or turning points many times. Every significant crisis is a turning point, a moment of truth for us to face. Every such turning point requires us to make personal changes in order to resolve it satisfactorily. Successful outcomes require acceptance of our situation, self-examination, courage, a new creative vision, and action. Our country also has a national character, a social character that faces similar crises and turning points. Because our countrys social character is a combination of the personalities of all of its citizens, each one of us contributes to how the crises develop, how we face and understand them, and how they are resolved. To think otherwise is to abandon the value of our citizenship in this democracy, to become subject to the forces dominating our government. If we abandon the responsibility of our citizenship, whether through frustration or through lethargy, we are abandoning the soul of our nation as it was expressed in our Declaration of Independence.