Apocalypse,
or New Age?
The Emerging Perinatal Unconscious
Book
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by Michael Derzak Adzema,
M.A.
PART ONE: SOMETHING'S HAPPENING
Chapter One: Strange Days
Something's Happening
Strange Days
Heads In the Sand
Facing Foursquare
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Chapter One: Strange Days
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SOMETHING'S HAPPENING
"Something’s happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear."
So goes a hugely popular song from the Sixties, sung by Buffalo Springfield.
Meanwhile Jim Morrison of the rock group The Doors sang "Break on through
to the other side." A decade later John Lennon sang "Strange days,
indeed . . . most peculiar, mama!" That was in the late Seventies;
not long afterwards he was murdered. Most recently of all, the group
R.E.M. enjoyed enormous success singing, "It’s the end of the world, as
we know it"; and then, parenthetically singing, "and I feel fine."
My point is that there is something happening here . . . something
unprecedented in the entire history of this planet, as far as we are able
to know. There are powerful factors and influences at work in our
world now that have the capacity to change us and our world in radical
ways . . . for good or ill. My point also is that this unprecedented
situation, like the "break on through to the other side" lyric indicates,
has something to do with birth feelings, birth trauma . . . an emerging
perinatal unconscious.
What I have in mind in this book is to attempt to reawaken
you to the unique character of our times. Then I expect to persuade
you that this unprecedented era in history is rife with the perinatal,
that is, with things having to do with the time around our births.
This contemporary age is permeated by perinatal symbolism, elements, evidence,
behavior, rituals, and situations -- in other words, I expect to show that
the events of these "strange days" are being sculpted by an emerging perinatal
unconscious -- an unconscious that was created out of the trauma of our
entering into this world, our birth trauma. Finally, I intend to
say a few words about what might be the outcome of these emerging perinatal
trends — new age or apocalypse.
STRANGE DAYS
For most people, I would assume that I am not telling you anything new
in pointing out that our times are unique. For that matter, all times
are unique — unlike any other. But what no other time has seen is
the actual — not imagined — possibility, even likelihood,
of the "end of the world," that is to say, of the end of our species and
maybe all life on this planet along with us. Considering just one
scenario, we have the capacity, with only a minuscule amount of our nuclear
weapons, to wipe out all life on this planet. (We all know this.)
I used the phrase, just now, "end of the world," deliberately, for
I expect that it will evoke in some a reaction that what I am going to
say from here on will be a drawn-out verbal version of a familiar cartoon
depicting a bearded and bedraggled man on a street corner, carrying a sign
or wearing a clapboard proclaiming, "The end is near!" and that what I
will say will have just about as much credibility as that man's would.
I take that chance to make my first point . . . which is: The fact
that we can so easily dismiss, ridicule, and smugly deride such ideas of
apocalypse points to our complacency with these strangest and most precarious
of days. In fact, we have lived with this unprecedented situation
— dangling on a thread, as it were, above the abyss of nuclear annihilation,
to name just one of the possible forces of extinction . . . we've lived
with it for so long as for it to seem commonplace — as part of the normal
and familiar furniture of our daily lives.
HEADS IN THE SAND
It has become so much a part of our daily lives, in fact, that we hardly
give it any thought anymore. But, for a moment, let us just imagine
a person from a previous time in history being somehow transported into
this time and being made to understand the impending forces of environmental
collapse, nuclear threat, population explosion, and so on; and — unless
this person was Nostradamus — we can imagine this person would be hugely
alarmed — to say the least — and might well wonder at our nonchalance,
or should we say apathy, in the face of such likely, not just potential,
apocalypse.
So I won’t waste time pointing out the statistics that prove the
premise that the current trends we are following are apocalyptic.
For example: environmentally — with the depletion of the ozone layer; the
rapid deforestation, or, let us say, the ravaging of the lungs of the planet;
globally increasing air pollution; the dying off of the life of the oceans
— the oxygen-producing plankton — and, hence, the basis of all life on
this planet; the greenhouse effect; and so on; nor the nuclear threat,
whether precipitated by terrorists, rogue nations, or accident; the continuing
explosion of the world's population leading to likely famine, wars, diseases,
and so on; the possibility of virulent epidemic that cannot be cured, as
strains of micro-organisms evolve that are immune to our much-touted antibiotics;
the possibility of rogue nations, tyrants, or terrorists employing weapons
of mass destruction, possibly leading to ever-mounting rounds of retaliation
with eventually no one left standing or, instead, the weapons, such as
biological weapons, getting out of control and creating a worldwide epidemic
. . . no, I won’t go into supporting that premise. The evidence and
statistics are there for all to see, published and promulgated by the best
scientists of our time, mixed in with the more mundane messages of our
daily newspapers and nightly newscasts, though we mostly turn our ears
from them. In fact, if you are not already aware of the global crisis
that besets us, I do not think you will get much out of reading further
in this book and would probably better spend your time doing something
else. There will always be those that will have their heads in the
sand and will be cast about like flotsam upon the waters by the events
swirling around them -- impotent in the face of them and dependent upon
other's actions for the result. Assuming you are not one of these
-- a good bet, if you've managed to get to this paragraph -- there is much
to say about the current apocalyptic trends.
FACING FOURSQUARE
But even those of us aware of this crisis hardly think of it.
Of course it is our normal psychic defenses that operate to keep this huge
awareness out of our daily minds; we must do this in order to be
able to function. But perhaps, for some of us, our defenses work
too well -- so much so that we unthinkingly participate in and contribute
to our own demise. This is classic neurotic self-sabotaging, self-destruction
on a macro scale.
However, psychologists, historians, psychohistorians, and
scholars and the educated public claim not to be like that. It is
their job, or their claim, to be looking squarely into the face of these
forces of denial and potential apocalypse and to be seeking to understand
the human condition and human psychology in light of them. It is
their duty then to inform the rest of us about what they see so that we
might have a chance of reversing our self-destructive tendencies.
Whether the educated public and the multitude of scholars actually
are fulfilling their mission in these times is debatable. Regardless,
my thesis is that when we do this, when we look foursquare
into the face of the global crisis and its accompanying denial, we find
that these unprecedented global factors contribute to a unique and unprecedented
human condition and psychology. I have seen a bumper sticker around,
in California where I live, that proclaims, "If you’re not angry, you’re
not paying attention!" It could as easily say, however, "If you’re
not alarmed," fearful, anxious, depressed . . . you name it, "you’re
not paying attention!"
So then let us pay attention. This book is about facing foursquare
into the fantastic circumstances and situation in which we find ourselves,
watching, like a photograph emerging in solution, as the face of these
times slowly comes into view, and then waking up to the meaning of the
message, perhaps the warning, it brings us, so that we might live most
fully and take up our roles consciously amid these unprecedented unfoldings.
What is required of us now, then, having turned to receive the message,
is to look deep into the features of our age. Let us begin.
Copyright © 1999 by Michael Derzak Adzema
Comments? E-mail me by clicking on: mickel@primalspirit.com
Mickel Adzema
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