Obama Drama


The most dangerous part of losing sight of our own darkness is that it moves as a rejected ghost into the night, and gathers with other rejected ghosts. In the night it stirs the dreams with dread and in the daytime it gives rise to the same dread, but pushed away with the force of the ordinariness of routine. Sometimes this darkness gets so strong it rises up and takes the ego position, and our goodness goes into the shadow, appearing there as a black man of unusual talents.

Today I read in the news that Obama, speaking before the national conference of the United Church of Christ, pointed out that the religious right has used faith divisively, to split the country apart. "There was a time when the Christian Coalition determined that its number one legislative priority was tax cuts for the rich," he said. "I don't know what Bible they're reading, but it doesn't jibe with my version."

Of course the rightists came back accusing the left wing of pulling the country apart.

And as I thought about Obama, and how much I like him, I realized it's because he says the things that I would like to say, but have no spokesperson who will say them. I have to admit that I like that he is a black man who is outside American black culture, because that exposes black culture as being as optional for black people as mainstream white culture is for white people. With the proliferation of media, there is less need for large blocks of people hooked in to a central source of culture. There is a lot more opportunity for individualism, for picking and choosing elements that will serve the individual's self-creation, rather than his or her being inducted into an existing form.

Obama is a black man and he is not. He does not fit neatly into any existing container. Because we have suffered for so long under the rule of men who can't even see out of their cultural container, much less evolve with any consciousness into new combinations, there is a hunger for breaking back out into a polycultural inclusiveness, in which we can work together as members of the same family. We can't do that under the control of the right wing theocrats for a simple reason.

They think the rest of us know what's right in the eyes of God and simply refuse to comply. And how on earth can I tell them that they are exactly right, but that I am doing it because my own faith demands it? Can they understand that? I know exactly how to be perfect in the eyes of God because like everyone else I have what Freud called a superego. If I could become one with it my Self would accept the parental complex as being my ego, and I would be one with the complex.

I don't think I want to do that. It does not allow for breaking existing structures when new ones are demanded, and thus is an evolutionary dead end in times of rapid change.

The oldest creation story is the one in which father sky was right down on top of mother earth, because he loved her so much. But there was no room for new life there, and so a hero had to come, who braced his feet against mother earth and his hands against father sky, and he forced them apart. Then there was room between them for new life. And when the dew would fall, it was father sky crying because he missed mother earth so much.

What to some right wing Christian is behaving just like God wants, is, to me, a prescription for mental problems, and specifically for schizophrenic episodes involving the eruption of id material as there is no stable ego to integrate it into consciousness. When the hero cannot separate the sky father from the earth mother, there is no stable ego. There is a tony morality that imagines itself doing what the superego demands, and an unconscious id, running loose exactly like Mr. Hyde.

I could care less if anybody else thinks this way. It's my job to keep myself relatively sane, not set my faith to shining with the reflected glory of a bunch of people dreaming the same dream together. And so when Obama says the right wing evangelical leaders have divided the country, I think not just that he is right, but that I appreciate his not talking around the issue to avoid controversy.

The perspective from my personal faith is that we are living in a dark time because we have paranoid people in power. We are suffering the consequences of installing into office the man who got the fewer votes, while the man who was legitimately elected shows us what we could have been. We did not have to go down into this dark place. By not practicing democracy, we are losing it. We are roughly in the same position as Aladdin, when he lost the lamp and ended up working for Jafar.

But now that we are here, our shadow side has become our goodness, our belief in human dignity, in democracy, and in being a good neighbor in the world. All of those things have gone unconscious in us as our darker nature predominates on the surface. And of course the main casualty has been the truth. It's hard to believe these are the people who were impeaching Clinton because he didn't admit to a sexual dalliance. They don't even know what truth is, other than preselected justifications which balance precariously atop selective evidence.

In a dream, the black man is the shadow, and for a black man the shadow is a blacker man. I like Obama because he carries the qualities we have lost, and if we want them back again, he gives us a place to reflect them. He has the capacity to heal the division between black and white.

Unlike someone who is identified with black culture, or with white culture, he cannot be fully included or excluded from either. He reminds me of a teacher I once had who was initiated as a tribal shaman, and later earned PhD's from Brandeis and the Sorbonne. He said that there are two realities, and the people in one can't see the other. We are like that in America, except there are more than two. There are many cultures, and the only thing that holds us together is our belief in a dream larger than any particular cultural container.

Messrs. Bush, Cheney, and their gangs believe that their container is the best one, and that they have an obligation to us to force us into it, even if it requires some hammering and breakage. This is always the case when narrow and polarizing people get into power. Maybe we had to get our fill of it before we demanded somebody in power who is willing to lead from an inclusive and democratic position.

I know Obama's not perfect and I don't want him to be. I just want him to speak the plain truth, and not pay too much attention to the political handlers telling him how to strategize everything he says. There's a sound to that, and we're beginning to be familiar with it. It goes from the extreme of the echo chamber, where everybody has their talking points and repeats them, to an avoidance of speaking plainly and decisively about anything controversial, or against policies supported by, for example, the NRA and the AIPAC.

I think Obama can do that, and if he gets the nomination, I'll vote for him. He spoke plainly against this stupid war by calling it a stupid war that would be a mistake. And he was right. He speaks out against right wing radicals using religion as a club, whether it's in America or Iran or Israel. I like that. Negativity isn't just complaining, it's one-sidedness. Anything one sided splits the issue into black and white, good and evil, superego (superman) and id (inferiors) with no strong ego to negotiate a compromise position.

The center is the only place from where there can be effective governing of all the people, and Obama seems to me to be somebody who sees both sides of an issue, and who doesn't decide what he believes first, and then select evidence to support it. He looks at the evidence and from that, determines a position.

What a refreshing change that would be.

Posted: Sun - June 24, 2007 at 03:01 PM