Tensions Have to Break

Rapidly approaching a breaking point, humanity must choose our fate.

Israel and Iran exchanged large-scale missile strikes in a region already plagued by instability. Violent clashes erupted between protesters and authorities in Los Angeles, CA. A state representative in Minnesota was assassinated in her home. A 21-year-old killed nine children and a teacher in a school shooting in Austria. Every one of these grave incidents transpired last week.

If we remain under any assumptions that this degree of turmoil is anomalous, we must seriously rework our apprehension of what’s going on. Crises of all manner will only continue to become more widespread, persistent, and urgent as time goes on.

Our world is being drawn apart like limbs roped to opposing stallions. Do we want to discover what happens when these sinews reach their limit? The fabric of society is pulling in every direction. Do we think these seams unrippable?

Tensions are impossibly high right now, and they need to break. If they break the way of the dominator ego in nuclear conflagration, that’s the end of the story. There’s no coming back from such a break. It is literally unthinkable; the mere thought of that break dooms billions.

It is high time to come to our senses. The tension humanity is burdened by will not be abated by the tactics of psycho-cultural war that have created it—ostracism, repression, dehumanization, scapegoating, shaming, vilification, coercion, contempt, and all of the manners of shadow projection that plague interpersonal space. These approaches represent dead ends that it’s long beyond time to abandon.

It is our utter responsibility to ensure that the tension breaks in the direction of peace. That kind of break carries a different tone entirely: the sweet sound of a pressure relief valve whispering catharsis; the deep breath into the culture’s collective diaphragm that calms the nervous system out of overwhelm; the tickle-induced belly laugh that ends the lover’s quarrel mid fight.

So how do we release the tension not with a bang, but a whisper? In a moment of moral lucidity, the protagonist in Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf provides the mapping:

“Now and then I have expressed the opinion that every nation, and every person, would do better, instead of rocking himself to sleep with political catchwords about war-guilt, to ask himself how far his own faults and negligencies and evil tendencies are guilty of the war and all the other wrongs of the world, and that there lies the only possible means of avoiding the next war.”

The only possible means. Make no mistake: Freedom and responsibility share one bed as husband and wife. If we want a world where all of us are free to flourish, each of us must lift our own individual burdens wholeheartedly.

There is no other option than to take responsibility for the role we each play in all of this. This means halting the ongoing whataboutistic finger-pointing carousel that represents the ego’s central tactic for eschewing responsibility, and instead focus on getting our own selves into proper alignment. Lest the earth herself swallow us whole.

In a comment recounted by his close associate Barbara Hannah, Carl Jung expressed what’s at stake if we mishandle the tension that our world is holding:

“I think it depends on how many people can stand the tension of the opposites in themselves. If enough can do so, I think the situation will just hold, and we shall be able to creep around innumerable threats and thus avoid the worst catastrophe of all: the final clash of opposites in an atomic war. But if there are not enough and such a war should break out, I am afraid it would inevitably mean the end of our civilization as so many civilizations have ended in the past but on a smaller scale.”¹

We are the world. What we do is what happens. Every ostensibly minor conflict forces hot wind into the sails of the vessel of annihilation. The countervailing winds of salvation draw breath from the integrity-making of every individual alive. This understanding is the only thing that will keep the human ship from dashing on the rocks, to land us safely in the future’s soft sand.

The world in its current state cannot hold the degree of tension we are experiencing. Our shoddy systems have shown that they are not capable as they are. We need direction, but we are not being led by the adults in the room. In fact, there is no semblance of leadership anywhere the cameras that matter are pointed. 

It is a disgrace. Top to bottom. This self-annihilating anti-human world-loathing system of operating must be stopped in its tracks immediately. Through and through. There is no time to engage in idle diversion when there are very real fingers on very real levers whose activation spells the erasure of everything that is. 

It is a lot to face, but to give up is the easy way out. Melancholia is a saccharine poison. To disassociate oneself from the tremulous enormity of what has lain itself on humanity’s shoulders and whimper, “It’s not my problem,” exacerbates every problem there is. To drift asleep, numbed by the sickly sweet lullaby of “It’s too much,” is to pull everyone you love toward the yawning grave.

It is too much. It is beyond too much to be expected of us to bear. But “I give up” is not an option. There are too many children on this planet with faces of perfect innocence wanting of love and the promise of tomorrow. 

We didn’t ask for this circumstance. But here we are. We are tasked to carry it. That’s the fact of the matter, and we have to accept it.

We can choose to buckle under the weight of our inheritance, crying, “It’s too much!”—and we would have all the right reason to do so.

Or, we can choose to lift the task we’ve been handed upon our steadfast shoulders—tried of life’s misfortunes and wonders. We can do the hard thing of pulling ourselves into integrity, and by doing so carry with fierceness and faith in our hearts the promise of an integrated, wise and humble, guided-by-love human future.

The ship of salvation has not disappeared from the port. Not yet. This is an all-hands-on-deck moment for humanity. Let us rise to the occasion by each integrating ourselves, so that the entire world edifice holds in integrity. If we can do so, what awaits is a brimming world, lively and abounding with love and the spirit of peace—for the billions of children now here and the untold trillions yet to come.

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1. https://jungiancenter.org/jungs-challenge-to-us-holding-the-tension-of-the-opposites/