cell913blog.com #82

 On this first anniversary of the Hamas insurgence, murder, rape, pillage and kidnapping of hostages, many of whom are still enslaved, one is prompted to ‘take sides’ for/against Hamas or Israel. Initiators, as ‘who started the fight in the school yard,’ have their share of responsibility, guilt, shame and accountability. Whomever the bully attacks, also, in open and vigorous response, has their share of responsibility, guilt, shame and accountability. And in this case, The Israelis have a steroidal degree of shame and responsibility, having killed, maimed, destroyed the lives of thousands, devastated Gaza and are now embroiled in a fight against Hezbollah, another of Iran’s sycophants. Let’s not forget, or omit, or turn away from the basic notion that Iran has a stated, unapologetic, unabashed and historic hatred for and serious ambition of eradicating Israel from the planet.

Existential crises, for Israel, for Ukraine, for Taiwan, for Sudan, and likely for others currently or about to be, epitomize another planetary crisis, the heating of the climate, and the devastation that continues to bring, while our headlines are over-stuffed with the daily grind of bombs, deaths, invasions, captures and, today, ceremonies commemorating the October 7^th disaster. And, as in all ‘headlines, the story has ‘legs’ into the future, and ‘roots’ from the past.

Sooner or later, Israel will be confronted, far more seriously and legally than by these words, with the question, “Is Israel conducting a campaign of apartheid?”

Eventually, denial, obfuscation, distraction, political gamesmanship and even the best legal minds will be brought up “straight” with this allegation. It may take decades, and courts that currently do not exist, in international fora that await inception, gestation and execution. But the truth will eventually ‘out’!

Roaring about the elimination of Hamas, by Netanyahu, however, even linked with hundreds of bunker bombs, missiles, drones and hand-to-hand combat will never erase the motive, the ideology and the cast of characters that are Hamas. The current cast, just like the current cast of leaders of Hezbollah may be eliminated; their shared cause, however, and the militants ready to sacrifice life and limb in its pursuit, will never be eliminated. And such a ‘lion’s roar’ from Netanyahu is hollow in its birth, delivery and potential execution.

The roaring, itself, however, is shouting from various ‘lion-wannabe’ throats with varying decibels, cacophonies, and lyrics; Putin from Moscow about eliminating fascists in Ukraine; a more sinister ‘whisper’ from Bejing about the potential invasion of Taiwan; and then there is the faux American lion currently attempting to blast, to shout, to harangue, to detest, to hate, to cry victim his way back into the Oval Office. Some naïve voters even tell pollsters, ‘He’s a thug; and we need a thug of our own to go against the other world thugs!’ Thuggery as a lion’s roar, however, fails to meet the basic ‘smell test’ of authenticity, integrity, resonance and credibility.

James Hillman, archetypal psychologist, writing in A Blue Fire, says:

So, the question of evil, like the question of ugliness, refers primarily to the anesthetized heart, the heart that has no reason to what it faces, thereby turning the variegated sensuous face of the world into monotony, sameness, oneness. The desert of modernity. Surprisingly, this desert is not heartless, because the desert is where the lion lives. There is a long-standing association of desert and lion in the same image, so that if we wish to find the responsive heart again we must go where it seems to be least present. (A Blue Fire, p. 304)

These raging bulls (certainly not lions in Hillman’s connotation, are calling out the authentic lion’s roar, from those who know deeply, profoundly, and intimately the ‘beautiful’ and the ‘good’.

According to Physiologus (the traditional lore of animal psychology) the lion’s cubs are stillborn. They must be awakened into life by a roar. That is why the lion has such a roar: to awaken the young lions asleep, as they sleep in our hearts. Evidently, the thought of the heart is not simply given, a native spontaneous reaction, always ready, always there. Rather the heart must be provoked, called forth, which is precisely Marsilio Ficino’s etymology of beauty: kallos, he says, comes from kaleo, ‘provoke.’ ‘The beautiful fathers the good’ (Plato, Hippas Majoy, 297b). Beauty must be raged, or outraged into life, for the lion’s cubs are stillborn, like our lazy political compliance, our meat-eating stupor before the television set, the paralysis for which the lion’s own metal, gold, was the Paracelsian pharmakon. What is passive, immobile, asleep in the heart creates a desert which can only be cured by its own parenting principle that shows its awakening care by roaring. ‘The lion roars at the enraging desert,’ wrote Wallace Stevens. ‘Heart, instinct, principle,;…again Pascal….The more our desert the more we must rage, which rage is love. The passions of the soul make the desert habitable. One inhabits, not a cave of rock, but the heart within the lion. The saints are not dead; they live in the leonine passions of the soul, in the tempting images, the sulfuric fantasies and mirages: love’s road. Our way through the desert of life or any moment in life is the awakening to it as a desert, the awakening of the beast, that vigil of desire, its greedy paw, how and sleepless as the sun, fulminating as sulfur, setting the soul on fire. Like cures like: the desert beast is our guardian in the desert of modern bureaucracy, ugly urbanism, academic trivialities, professional official soullessness, the desert of our ignoble condition…

We fear that rage. We dare not roar. With Auschwitz behind us and the bomb over the horizon, we let the little lions sleep in front of the television, the heart stuffed full of its own coagulated sulfur, now become a beast in a lair readying its attack the next infarct…Psychologically, we subdue our rage with negative euphemistic concepts: aggression, hostility, power complex, terrorism, ambition, the problem of violence. (A Blue Fire, 304-305 excerpted from two lectures, the thought of the heart and the soul of the world 24-33, 41-44)

Hillman was certainly not writing about the current presidential campaign, although his words are prescient, and can be applied, as an instructive, imaginative, creative, and exhorting metaphor to envision two desperately needed outcomes:

first, the identification of the ‘roar’ of the lying, frozen-hearted, callous, self-serving bully-tyrant as a false lion;

second: to awaken the lion’s roar in the hearts of those who see, seek, know, grasp and dream of beauty, the spark of the good.

Liz Cheney, Admiral McChrystal, Dick Cheney, hundreds of former trump-administration officials, lawyers, judges, Magic Johnson…and many others, while supportive and roaring their ‘vote’ for the Harris-Walz ticket, are insufficient.

Wakening the ‘lazy political compliance’ that lies stupefied in front of the television, by the lion’s roar will take a wake-up call commensurate with the desert of our shared time in history.

Recognizing the ‘modern bureaucracy, ugly urbanism, academic trivialities, professional official soullessness, the desert of our ignoble condition’ as the real desert, and not the carnage, crime, rape and infestation of immigrants eating dogs and cats that are hourly spewed from the mouths of both the candidate and his sycophant, might be the first step in peeling opening our eyes to the real desert. Recognizing the potential seduction to the roar of this ‘faux-beast’ could well be a second step. A third could well be the growing consciousness of apathy insouciance, disassociation and disdain for the whole process of democracy, including elections, campaigning and the tidal wave of billions of dollars of advertising.

‘Denial’ is not just a river in Egypt’ as the cliché goes! It is a sometimes willful, often unconscious turning away from the desert on which we all live. Slumber, a few snacks, a tour of binge-watching on Netflix, a few small wagers on the latest pro-sports game, and then back to work, for those who have jobs. For those still seeking gainful employment, the story is even more desperate, debilitating and depressing.

The lion’s roar that lies quiet in the hearts of the millions of ordinary Americans is not only invited, it is urgently required, if the nation is to come to its senses. Discerning the fake lion from the authentic lion in the heart of the millions of Americans who ‘know’ the difference, and then letting that lion roar, without fear, without anxiety, without looking over the shoulder in anticipation of public assassination, may help to turn this ‘ship’ around, from the spectre of another four years of the hollow-man and his cult.