1

The Evolutionary Challenge in Western

Culture: An Archetypal, Existential,
Ecological Perspective
Abstract: There is an explosive, revolutionary, deconstructive theme in the 20th century that has
enacted an existential crisis in Western culture’s sense of identity and reality. Drawing on the
spiritual emergence model, it can be shown that coming to the edge of destruction, as we have,
calls forth the deepest possible potential for spiritual and psychological renewal at an individual,
community and cultural level. We now live within a consumerist global community that is
struggling with issues of social justice, economic equality and the survival of indigenous culture,
driving the planetary ecosystem into an apocalyptic crisis, perpetuated by the 'enemy making'
dualities of linear, reductionist, power driven, rational empiricist Western culture. Archetypal
activism presents a possibility for political action that draws on the archetypal and existential
depth models, highlighting egalitarian, reciprocal cooperation and reflective intentionality. If we
look forward in our cosmology toward renewal and reconnection, we have to look beyond the
core principle of a regulatory, transcendental divine that saves and protects to an existential and
ecological divine that mediates participation. This involves a need to come to terms with
complex diversity and the dark, mysterious intensity of our own unknown depths. Richard Tarnas
speaks of kairos and dynamical systems theory of deep sensitivity to subtle input at a systemic
bifurcation point, where the system is about to go to a new level of existential organization. It
would seem that we are in just such an intense period of change in Western culture, and also
globally. "We live in a networked world" says the Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public
and International Affairs. The theme of the networked periphery influencing the centre is in the
process of being enacted. The network of global interconnections in the archetypal, humanistic,
existential, transpersonal and related depth traditions that emerged from the 1960's is a complex,
systemic manifestation calling for, and enacting, transformational cultural change.

Now is the time. This is the place. We are the people. Let’s do it.

Jim McNamara, ND, Programs Director, Living Institute; President, Human Horizons
Foundation. He has been practicing since 1973 doing individual, couples, group and intensive
retreat work. He is currently working as a practitioner providing holistic life coaching and
existential-integrative spiritual counselling. His background includes psychodynamic
psychotherapy, gestalt, primal and bioenergetics, as well as Jungian, archetypal, existential and
transpersonal psychology, holistic healing and naturopathy, Vajrayana (Tantric) Buddhism,
shamanistic work and Western mysticism. He is the founder of the Holistic Experiential Process
Method (HEP), having trained and certified 12 practitioners since the 1990’s. He was Academic
Dean of the Ontario (now Canadian) College of Naturopathic Medicine in the beginning of its 4
year full time program in the early 80’s, designing the first two versions of the curriculum. He is
the founder and editor of the Archetypal Review of Culture, an on line magazine and journal.
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Introduction

There is an explosive, revolutionary, deconstructive theme in the 20th century that has enacted an
existential crisis in Western culture's sense of identity and reality. Drawing on the existential and
spiritual emergence models, it can be shown that coming to the edge of destruction, as we have,
calls forth the deepest possible potential for spiritual and psychological renewal at an individual,
community and cultural level. We are now entering an archetypally situated, and cosmically
framed, period of revolutionary evolution comparable to the 1960's and to the early Romantic
period of the late 18th/early 19th centuries. Western culture is struggling with having emerged
from the twentieth century, the century that exploded, with a relativized, fragemented, self-
critical identity. We now live within a global community that is struggling with issues of social
justice, economic equality and the survival of indigenous, local culture. Western culture's
20th century industrial capitalism began, and, now, 21st century consumer capitalism
continues, the process of driving the planetary ecosystem into an apocalyptic crisis. Themes of
egalitarian, reciprocal cooperation emerge from the humanistic, psychodynamic, existential,
archetypal and transpersonal traditions that offer possibilities for facilitating a successful
transition through this explosive, evolutionary crisis in the culture.

The 2002 Pacifica Graduate Institute "The World Behind the World – Reflection, Reconciliations
and Renewal" conference asked "What, at this juncture in time and place is life asking of us?
Who, from our deepest sources calls us to respond? How do we embody the wisdom of our
individual psyches, our collective imagination, our cultural mythologies, our living
planet?...Where is our lifeline, our myth, the larger meaning for our time?" At the conference the
theme of 'archetypal activism' emerged – how to be politically and culturally active in this time
from an archetypal point of view. Archetypal activism presents a possibility for political action
that draws on the archetypal, existential and psychodynamic models of human nature,
individuality and culture.

If we look forward in our culture toward renewal and reconnection, we have to look beyond the
core principle of a regulatory, transcendental divine that saves and protects to an existential
divine that mediates participation. Rather than saving by lifting us above and protecting us
through transcendental regulation, the existential divine invites us into a self-arising, self-
organizing, self-regenerating world, where relationship is the basis of protection and authenticity
is the saving grace. The existential divine implies an emergent relationship with our own nature,
including coming to terms with 'otherness' rather than trying to control or eliminate otherness,
whether as unconscious adversity or simply as the 'alien' other. This involves a need to come to
terms with complex diversity and the dark, mysterious intensity of our own unknown depths. It
also means eschewing the enemy making dualities of the psychopathic, linear, reductionist,
power driven, outcome oriented ego ideal of our rational empiricist culture. The existential
divine could also be attributed as the ecological divine. This implies an emergent relationship
with (rather than control over) nature, both as the wild ground from which we arise, and in which
we have our life. The form of social organization for the existential-ecological tradition is an
egalitarian confederacy of locally focused, communally organized network of small groups,
rather than a religious, legalistic, hierarchical, authoritarian, centralized, bureaucratic mode.
 3

Richard Tarnas speaks of kairos, Malcolm Gladwell of the 'tipping point', and dynamical systems
theory of deep sensitivity to subtle input at a systemic bifurcation point, where the system is
about to go to a new level of existential organization. It would seem, from many perspectives and
on many levels, that we are in just such an intense period of change in Western culture, and,
through various translations, also globally. "We live in a networked world" says the Dean of the
Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in the Jan/Feb, 2009 issue
of Foreign Affairs. This publication of the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations speaks from
the knowledge base of the US power elite, the centre. President Barack Obama, the community
organizer who speaks with psychological reflection and approaches problem solving from a
relational perspective, is a highly visible, centrally situated manifestation of this. The theme of
the networked periphery influencing the centre is also in the process of being enacted. The
network of global interconnections in the archetypal, humanistic, existential, transpersonal and
related depth traditions that emerged from the 1960's is a complex,
systemic manifestation calling for, and enacting, transformational cultural change. What used to
be peripheral and counterculture is becoming an influential network of interconnected points of
awareness and action. The Canadian Humanistic and Transpersonal Association (CHTA) has
begun the creation of a directory of these and related programs, currently listing
150. Visit www.chata.ca and follow the 'Web Resources' link to 'Collegial Contacts in the
Humanistic, Existential, Somatic, Transpersonal and Related Fields' to explore these
extensive, networked global connections.

Now is the time. This is the place. We are the people. Let's do it.

Archetypal Activism

From April 12 – 14, 2002, Pacifica Graduate Institute presented a conference entitled "The World
Behind the World – Reflection, Reconciliation and Renewal" as a response to 9/11 and
subsequent events, including the War on Terrorism. The conference presented an
archetypal/mythological and psychodynamic perspective on the situation. The brochure for the
conference presented the theme in this way. "The events of our recent past, still unfolding, have
brought us all-individually and collectively-to a solemn turning point. What, at this juncture in
time and place is life asking of us? Who, from our deepest sources calls us to respond? How do
we embody the wisdom of our individual psyches, our collective imagination, our cultural
mythologies, our living planet? From the wells of our soul's deepest desires we yearn to heal
our Selves, each Other, and the world. Where is our lifeline, our myth, the larger meaning for
our time?"

At the conference the theme of "archetypal activism" emerged – how to be politically and
culturally active in this time from an archetypal point of view. Archetypal activism presents a
possibility for political action that draws on the archetypal, existential and psychodynamic
models of human nature, individuality and culture. The following is an elaboration of material
from the conference.
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Archetypal Political Distinctions

At the conference, Robert Romanyshyn pointed out a basic contradiction between the archetypal
and activist themes. Archetypal implies metaphoric attunement, resonance, reverie, receptivity,
reflection, understanding, depth, non-linearity, holism, dialectic complexity, tentativeness, a play
of dark and light. Activism is a term used in the field of politics, such as 'political activism'.
Politics tends to be strongly solution oriented, definitive, linear, reductionist, forward looking,
somewhat unreflective, leader oriented, authority based, legalistic. It idealizes bright, well lit
places. It is sound bytes and slogans. The KISS directive (Keep It Simple Stupid) rules. James
Carville's "It's the Economy Stupid" got Clinton elected. Politics sees the world in black and
white, good guy/bad guy terms. In "The War on Terrorism", fighting "the Axis of Evil", "we will
hunt them down and burn them out". What is precisely missing is that complex archetypal
reflective quality. Even in the counterculture, which is critical of mainstream politics, activist
politics are still political, focalizing around polarization, protest, incidents, causes, idealism, bite
size chunks. This linear action orientation is apparently antithetical to the archetypal reflective
way of being. How we could make this polarity dialectic is a fundamental theme we must
explore.

The archetypal/political polarity extends through a number of different cultural parameters. In

terms of ways of understanding, archetypal prefers seeing symbolic connection through pattern
and metaphor, drawing on history as depth illumination. Politics prefers factual reasons that
provide cause and effect information, through which blame can be attributed, guilt determined,
punishment meted out and solutions found. In the archetypal model, taking responsibility means
showing understanding – it is self affirming and evolutionary. In politics taking responsibility
means either self aggrandizing and glorifying or resignation in disgrace. In politics, emotions are
stereotyped as position statements justifying action whereas, in an archetypal context, emotions
are subjectively compelling. Politics clings to hope, while archetypalists live with doubt and
faith. Politics values definitive action based on reasons, carried out with will power and
determination, in which the actors original (usually simplistic) position does not change, but is
tenaciously maintained until "he" (sic) prevails. Archetypalists value tentative action arising
from non linear metaphoric thinking, feeling, intuition and complex, changing motivation
holding the tension of opposites through dialectic attunment. Politics values achievement,
success, triumph, attainment based on an idealistic platform. Archetypalists struggle with
principles that are characteristic, rather than simplistic direct bases for action – principles of
beauty, destiny, participation and connection, respect for failure and loss, holism, surrender,
emergent self definition, context driven action. Politics is a legalistic mode of operation whereas
archetypalists prefer justice as a principle. While politics promotes legalistic factual finding of
guilt and consequent punishment, archetypalists prefer truth and reconciliation that encourages
forgiveness.

Archetypalists understand and accept mistaken repetition rather than strive for decisive victory,
so that the full details of unrecognized, forgotten identity emerge. Archetypalists understand
how repetitious mistakes fully unfold and elaborate depth so that what is not mistaken can be
seen, the gifts in the wound realized and the more robust health in the disease manifest.
Politicians who wish to remember the past as the basis for creating a perfect future may be
creating other problems – such as iatrogenic diseases (from medicine's fascistic desire to control
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and eliminate disease and to protect against death) and the ecological crisis (from the culture's
desire to have an easy, secure world full of cheap fast food and consumerist recreational
entertainment, with a nature that is contained and controlled). Archetypalist remembrance of the
past takes us into the depths of understanding failure with forgiveness and provides a tendency to
include the weak, the diseased, the malformed, the complainant – the alien other as the basis of
an evolved, integrated, emergent, more complete sense of self.

These distinctions, of course, are not absolute. They provide an analytic and descriptive way to
look at polarities. As archetypal activists we are called to be synthetic (i.e. dialectical) in order to
facilitate bringing together the fragmented polarities of the culture in such a way that the
existential tension of opposites is maintained while the opposites interact mutually, engaging
without definitive dominance. In this way polarities may reflectively energize and activate each
other, reflecting through distinction.

Archetypal Activity in the World

What then is an archetypal activity in the world? We must first recognize that the archetype
itself is phenomenal – it is in the world, even as it points beyond itself to the world behind the
world. What action might we say constellates around archetypal presence in the world?

Deep action, complex action, dialectic action, receptive action, action that affirms polarity and
brings polarities into relationship, metaphoric action (action whose genesis is based in
metaphoric understanding and whose activity reveals the metaphoric nature of life). In Michael
Meade's words archetypal action would speak the unspeakable and mourn openly – not simply as
a means of returning to where we were before or as a genesis of vengeful retaliation. Archetypal
activism would encourage the acceptance of the breaking in of tragedy, of the collapse into terror
at the conflict within the culture, rather than simply enacting a War on Terrorism, out there, as a
means of managing this inner conflict. Lionel Corbett focuses also on this deep ambivalence
within American culture. Meade goes so far as to suggest America must look for evil within, and
in its own actions, as also does Corbett.

Archetypal activism would find ways to bring acceptance of the profoundly changing identity of
American (really Western) culture and recognize that "the centre cannot hold" and that to
hysterically and rigidly attempt to shore it up by acting out will constellate only more extreme
and unmanageable fragmentation and hinder a necessary evolution. Corbett suggests something
is dying in North American culture even as the new struggles to be born. Grof's perinatal images
echoed this. It seems that the archetypal experience of birth/rebirth is inherently attended by
experiences of dying, violence, brutal penetration, crushing, torture, imprisonment, poison and
that, to accomplish emergence into a new world, we must accept this.

Meade and Corbett both speak of loss of innocence, specifically of the necessary and inevitable
loss of innocence in a young, idealistic and self idealizing culture. Meade points out that the
word noxious is the etymological core of innocent i.e. innocence is dialectically noxious.

A central motif of 9/11 is the collapse of the twin towers. Meade points out that the falling
towers are a terrible, tragic lifting of the veil between the worlds, profoundly revealing the world
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behind the world. The fact that this revelation constellates as a terrifying 'end of the world'
event, rather than an inner experience of evolutionary terror, reflects the hard core rigidity of
military industrial consumerist globalization and the cultural imperialism of the good guy world
saviour Logos. Because of the loss of the mediating institutions of the mesocosm in this
revelation, we stand raw against the macrocosm. Surely the second coming is at hand.

As Jung and Edinger point out, in Western culture (specifically, perhaps, North American
culture), a humanization of God is taking place (has been especially so since the Renaissance,
according to Tarnas) with an accompanying reification of the human capacity to create (e.g. the
self created human and genetic engineering) and destroy (e.g. the atomic bomb and planetary
ecological crisis). This is portentous, but dangerous and explosive. We have expected the end of
the world momentarily since World War II – the slow apocalypse is upon us, in Meade's words.

Chris Downing spoke of the uncanny – the unfamiliar in its frightening aspect of the return of
something terrible that has been forgotten. This alien other is the very axis of evil, almost by
definition. The uncanny is therefore threatening. But also promising, in that, in Lacan's terms, it
brings a return of the Real – the radically excluded original ground of being that we have
forgotten in order to become who and what we are, in our world of everyday being and action. A
coming home. A homecoming, however, that is also a death threat. In fact, a terrible attack on
our accomplished, successful sense of self. This is of course precisely the homecoming that
Homeland Defense is supposed to defend against, psychologically.

We may reflect on the possibility that as activists, archetypalists are terrorists – not in the manner
of blowing up people and buildings but in the manner of radically and terribly undermining and
deconstructing the cultural ego. Returning us, in Meade's words, to ground zero as a grounding
in zero, with the concomitant grief, sadness, despair, shame, guilt and terror. According to
Corbett the archetypal evolutionary task is to contain these emotions and not act out in
narcissistic, infantile, fragmented and fragmenting rage. To contain the borderline tendency to
moralistic vengeance and, instead, take the hit and collapse inward rather than acting outward.

Downing suggests that instead of asking "Why me?" we might ask, "Why not me?" This might
enable us to reclaim the most profoundly unfamiliarly familiar, that which we are able to repress
most of the time in order to be able to go on – the awareness of death, the precariousness of life,
the mystery of being and non being.

Henrieka de Vries quotes her World War II Resistance mother who explained why she risked her
family's safety to hide a Jewish woman in Holland. "Either we are all safe or not one of us is
safe". She also quoted Margaret Meade: "You can no longer save your family, you tribe, your
nation. You can only save the world ".

She suggests a way to understand the events of 9/11 is through a critique of the patriarchal social
structure in which terrorism would seem to be inevitable in a world based on male sibling rivalry
and treachery (Cain/Abel, Jacob/Esau), and father dominance (of sons, of women and of the
other). She suggests however, that fundamentalists everywhere, East and West, want to reinstall
the absolute dominance of the military industrial clerical father. In a world at war, in the midst
of profound explosive economic and cultural change, the military industrial clerical father and
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his heroic sons "save the day". Archetypally then, could we say that this father/son team are
actually content to be in charge again? They, of course, are saddened and outraged at the tragic
loss of life, the "unprovoked" attack. But now they have a mission and it is clear – at least to
them. It is the age old war between "good" and "evil", and they are the good guys – on both
sides.

I would like to suggest that it is precisely the war between good and evil that is the issue, not evil
per se. What alternative is there to war on evil? A psychological perspective can suggest a self
questioning that deliteralizes the view of evil and questions the location of evil in "the other", in
the enemy.

For now the enemy is no longer the enemy. The enemy now is enmity – non-relational, absolute,
annihilating conflict on a global scale. The enemy now is the war itself. As the twentieth
century has so brutally demonstrated we can no longer afford this dualistic Titanic global battle
between "good" and "evil". In what John Ralston Saul calls the Second Hundred Years War
around 100 million people have died in the twentieth century (Voltaire's Bastards – The Tyranny
of Reason in the West). This war between good and evil threatens to destroy the biosphere – life
as we know it on this planet. A new approach of reconciliation and integration, while
maintaining dialectic differentiation, is called for.

This means moving from a dynamic of mechanistic, linear, controlling, idealistic duality to one
of complex, emergent, pragmatic, dialectic aliveness. This means moving from a formalized,
politicized, legalistic model of social relations to one of personal responsibility, freedom,
negotiation and mediation. This means moving from politics and religion to psychology and
spirituality. This means moving from ruthless competitiveness to cooperative competitiveness,
from a politics of divide and conquer to a politics of differentiated inclusion and empowerment
and from a model of striving for victory at all costs to one of accepting failure and mistakes as
part of an evolution in which we share the gold. This means moving from a culture of moralistic
conformity and oppression to one of liberation and freedom, from a culture of reductionist
mechanism to one of holistic aliveness and from a culture of idealism and excellence to one of
pragmatism and muddling through. This means moving from a military industrial, skill oriented
educational model to a more individualistic, humanistic one oriented toward consciousness and
creativity. This means moving from "living lives of quiet desperation", adaptation and "getting
by" to lives of existential intensity on the cutting edge, where creativity, resourcefulness,
innovation and the Bodhisattva motif of "doing what needs to be done" prevail.

Another fertile area for the application of archetypal activism is in the field of organizational
development. Since the early '90's in this field there has been the beginning of a fundamental
change in values. Various traditions, disciplines, ideas and practices come together in what has
been called 'integral culture'(by Paul H. Ray and others). In general, this involves the traditions
of: chaos theory; dialectic polarity management; paradoxical thinking; trans competition;
holism; dynamic web models; quantum uncertainty models; non-linearity, co-dependent arising
and emergent self organization models; change convergence and "hyperchange" models;
authenticity, responsibility, connectivity and the search for meaning; "servant leaders". These are
all elements of an emerging step toward new forms of organization in business and government
particularly, but also culture in general. Integral culture could also be termed archetypal culture.
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There are many individuals and organizations already working in this field with books, journals
and magazine articles being published.

An Existential-Ecological Perspective

Western culture is struggling with having emerged from the twentieth century, the century that
exploded, with a relativized, fragemented, self-critical identity. This is an identity crisis which
the psychopathic, unreflective part of the mainstream culture has responded to with materialistic
consumerism and a militaristic neoconservative power drive (both fuelling a global ecological
crisis in sustainability), moralistic political correctness and an apocalyptic fundamentalist
religious zeal. We now live within a global community that is struggling with issues of social
justice, economic equality and the survival of indigenous, local culture. Yet, in the emergent post
imperialist model for the regulation of order in the global community, peaceful, self-interested
cooperation is becoming a theme, as exemplified, for example, in the European Union. The
election of US President Barack Obama also enacts a psychological, relational, egalitarian,
multicultural theme. Respect for the multiple meanings of individual human life is becoming
integrated into the multicultural model of social relations. These themes of egalitarian, reciprocal
cooperation are related to the humanistic, psychodynamic, existential and transpersonal traditions
that offer possibilities for facilitating a successful transition through this explosive, evolutionary
crisis in the culture.

These themes have undergone a parallel emergence in the corporate world, where business
negotiations in a progressive, pragmatic environment include not just a competitive striving for
dominance, but also the recognition that the inclusion of mutuality and co-operation, as well as
acknowledgement of unconscious psychodynamic factors, brings more effectiveness and
productivity. In the general area of conflict resolution this psychodynamic theme also shows
itself. Not just striving to defeat 'the enemy' in a militaristic drive for victory over the other, but
recognition of mutual self interest and egalitarian co-operation as being fundamentally more
realistic and productive. In this way, resources can be directly allocated to problem solving rather
than the more immediate and limited goal of achieving dominance, and only then being able to
'fix' things because you are now in charge. The psychodynamic model also highlights the need
for addressing contradictory tensions between positivistic social and organizational intentions
and the more obstructionist, defensive, emotional unconscious factors that come into play when
people try to cooperate.

If we look forward in our own culture toward renewal and reconnection, we have to look beyond
the core principle of a transcendental divine that saves and protects to an existential divine that
mediates participation. Rather than saving by lifting us above and protecting us through
transcendental regulation, the existential divine invites us into a self-arising, self-organizing,
self-regenerating world, where relationship is the basis of protection and authenticity is the
saving grace. Dogmatic religion as a social institution and a militaristic drive for security does
not serve this model. Psychology does, in its psychodynamic, existential, humanistic,
transpersonal and archetypal forms. I will refer to this theme as the existential-humanistic
tradition.
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The fragmentary remnant of the transcendental divine model is consumerism - everyone a little
king or queen, the centre of their own universe, ostensibly able to have whatever they want,
whenever they want and however they want. This is driving our culture into a mad frenzy, where
the watchwords are 'more' and 'faster', fuelling a fatalistic and nihilistic culture of shallow,
narcissistic self satisfaction and self aggrandizement. In an idealistic, success driven culture,
hypocrisy is inevitable - lip service must be paid to ideals while secret pragmaticist do 'whatever
is necessary', spinning the tawdry possibilities of greed and power as the grand achievement of
high ideals.

We may look at the existential-humanistic tradition in Western culture and see it as an

evolutionary tendency that relativizes dogmatic, monotheistic religion and undermines the
prevailing dualism of neo-Victorian moralism and rampant consumerism in liberal, democratic
capitalism. Dogmatic religion as a social institution has become inadequate as a way of
understanding human nature and as an inspirational vehicle for how to live. The existential-
humanistic alternative involves a move away from idealized goals that one works towards with
resolute commitment through skill and means, toward a model of surrender into what is being
called forth at the level of individual humanness, in a cultural and natural context. This surrender
facilitates the evolutionary drive to manifest our full potential, what Jung calls the process of
individuation. While this involves stepping beyond the limitations of received enculturation, it
also calls for a return to altruistic cultural involvement and contribution. What Paul H. Ray calls
'integral culture'.

Dogmatic religion, for many, has become inadequate also as a container for aspirations towards
wholeness, participation, genuine community, and a meaningful cosmology that isn't simplistic.
The mechanistic cosmology of classical science, with its linear cause and effect phenomenology,
provides certainty and predictability, to some extent. This is the basis of its technological
success. But it doesn't meet the richness of actual human experience, which it reduces to biology
and behaviour. Although quantum physics and dynamical systems theory provide more complex
and co-creative models, the scientific tradition remains a limited, albeit magnificent,
achievement in human understanding of humanity, nature and cosmos.

The existential divine implies an emergent relationship with our own nature, including coming to
terms with 'otherness' rather than trying to control or eliminate otherness, whether as
unconscious adversity or simply as the 'alien' other. This involves a need to come to terms with
complex diversity and the dark, mysterious intensity of our own unknown depths. This move has
been marked politically and socially by the change from the militaristic, monotheistic,
imperialistic, divine right of kings model of social-organization to the current neo-liberal,
capitalist democracy. There has not, however, been a concomitant evolution in the religious
cosmological model of human nature. We have begun to pass over, instead, into the existential,
psychodynamic and transpersonal psychological and spiritual model, although this has not yet
received a wide spread integration and socio-political formulation. There are many institutions
engaged in this endeavour – to bring these psychological and spiritual perspectives to bear on the
cultural evolution that is taking place in an unnecessarily dangerous and unconscious manner in
Western culture.
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The existential divine could also be attributed as the ecological divine. This implies an emergent
relationship with (rather than control over) nature, both as the wild ground from which we arise,
and in which we have our life. The Living Institute teaches an archetypal phenomenology of a re-
enchanted postmodern cosmos that is, simultaneously, radically deconstructed and tentatively re-
constructed, revealing the world as a co-creative, personified, existential project of inner/outer
reconciliation. This includes a focus on Thomas Berry's geocentric ecotheology, Emerson's
'community of subjects' and an experiential, process oriented psychological and philosophical
approach to a study of cosmology. In this, the cosmos is seen as a sacred Great Work of
unfolding self organization, in which humans carry a particular role as co-creative, self conscious
earth stewards. James Lovelock, in his book, The Gaia Hypothesis, proposes a scientific
formulation of the earth as a self regulating sentient entity, which this program takes up. This
tradition also draws on the teleological purposefulness implications of the biocosmic, creation
theology model, without subscribing to literalistic creationist fundamentalism.

The form of social organization for the existential-ecological tradition is an egalitarian

confederacy of locally focused, communally organized network of small groups, rather than a
religious, legalistic, hierarchical, authoritarian, centralized, bureaucratic mode. The Obama
campaign's self organizing, egalitarian nature provides an example of this at the macropolitical
level of social organization that is dramatically illustrative, given its widely publicized
contribution to the sweeping success of the campaign, and including its impact on the perceived
style of governing in the Obama presidency. In the existential-ecological tradition, 'truth and
reconciliation' is a psychological model for justice that promises to complexify the powerful, yet
fundamentality dualistic, model of 'determination of guilt and consequent punishment'
characteristic of the militaristic secularization of monotheistic morality in the legal system.
There is a significant focus on embodied experience in the existential-ecological tradition rather
than a prohibitive, regulatory fear of the body with the concomitant priorizing of spiritual and
mental phenomenon at the expense of the body that is characteristic of the transcendental divine.
There is no 'sin' or 'evil' in the existential-ecological tradition. Rather there is a concern for
holism and reconciliation to otherness, and an appreciation of the evolutionary function of
adversity and alterity. The model is one of education and healing – providing complex care for
restoring the wholeness of the subject, both individually and communally.

Cultural Leadership in the Networked Revolution

There is an explosive, revolutionary, deconstructive theme in the 20th century that has enacted an
existential crisis in Western culture's sense of identity and reality. Drawing on the existential and
spiritual emergence models, it can be shown that coming to the edge of destruction, as we have,
calls forth the deepest possible potential for spiritual and psychological renewal at an individual,
community and cultural level. As Rick Tarnas spoke of at the Living Institute's Transforming the
Modern World conference (April 18 – 20, 2008), and writes about in Cosmos and Psyche, we are
now entering an archetypally situated, and cosmically framed, period of revolutionary evolution
comparable to the 1960's and to the early Romantic period of the late 18th/early 19th centuries.
There is a need to educate people in how to harmonically amplify and constructively engage
these explosive change energies, so that it isn't just deconstructive, but, in a complex, dialectic
sense, reconstructive. A re-enchantment of the alienated, post-Enlightenment world, as Morris
Berman has spoken of in The Re-enchantment of the World, and Charlene Spretnak has echoed
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in The Resurgence of the Real: Body, Nature, and Place in a Hypermodern World, which
develops 'ecological postmodernism' as a re-grounding of the human project in the dynamic
processes of the Earth community.

Aftab Omer, founder and president of the Institute of Imaginal Studies (a San Francisco graduate
school and research centre that draws on the archetypal psychology tradition, now Meridian
University, where he remains as a core faculty), focuses his work in this area on "assisting
organizations and learning communities in tapping the creative potential of diversity, conflict,
chaos". He has this to say about our current situation in his "The Spacious Center: Leadership
and the Creative Transformation of Culture" paper. (www.meridianuniversity.edu)

The center and periphery of a culture interact differently during steady-state periods and periods of
change. During steady-state periods, the center of a culture is conventional—dense with rules, norms,
taboos, and consensual notions of the 'truth'—while the periphery is marginalized and remains
disenfranchised, disempowered, and often scapegoated. In contrast, during periods of instability and
conflict, the periphery is in dynamic interaction with a culture's center. During such times, the center is
more responsive to the different and the unknown. By engaging and recognizing differences that were
previously denied, suppressed, and trivialized, a culture's web of habits transforms as it responds to the
perspectives and practices found at the periphery. The dynamic interaction between a culture's center and
its periphery keeps the culture vital and adaptive, providing cultural leaders with opportunities for
creative cultural transformation. Cultural leaders choreograph this interaction in ways that are creative
and transformative. In this way, cultural leadership is distinct from political and administrative leadership.
While political leaders primarily make rules and administrative leaders primarily enforce rules, cultural
leaders like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Mother Teresa, find principled and imaginative ways
to transgress those rules that inhibit the emergence of cultural sovereignty and creativity. Their actions
engender new and unexpected meanings. The recognition and creative transgression of rules and norms is
at the heart of cultural leadership. Cultural leadership entails an ability to surrender through creative
action to the necessities, meanings, and possibilities inherent in the present moment. Cultural leaders are
able to transmute how they are personally affected by the culture into creative action that midwives the
future.

In the 20th century, revolutionary, romantic counterculture became a pervasive, defining theme
in cultural evolution, focused through areas such as the arts, philosophy, psychology,
spirituality. Drawing on culture studies, postmodernism, existential depth psychology, and the
archetypal tradition, it can be shown that these initially peripheral, revolutionary countercultures,
enacted in a timely, community activist manner, have challenged and rejuvenated the main
stream culture of the centre on many levels, including attitudes and social mores (concerning, for
example, body, sex, emotion, spirituality, nature, work, civil society), ideology, practical politics
and related themes.

Some of these traditions that started as small, underground, elitist, radical, fringe movements
evolved into traditions of significant, centralized, cultural influence and leadership.
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Specific traditions include:

 depth psychology, the paradigmatic model of success in this sense, with its pervasive and
profound cultural and political impact, not only in the mental health field, but also in
areas such as child rearing, education, religious studies, anthropology, culture studies,
epistemology, and the social service orientation of the welfare state that developed in the
30's;
 the Frankfurt School, with its elaboration into critical theory and culture studies, and its
influence on 1960's socio-political activism and late 20th century knowledge traditions, is
also a model for complex, successful integration with the mainstream;
 early 20th century Bohemian Paris, with its impact on lifestyle and cultural attitudes
through the deconstructive, existential modernism of its art and literature, including
Dada, Surrealism, absurdist existentialism and their late 20th century postmodern
descendants, which have infiltrated so much of Western culture's mediated sense of self
and reality;
 Ascona's early 20th century communal, revolutionary romanticism, which seeded the
place of the Eranos Conference, so important to the cross-cultural, archetypal traditions
of Jung, Campbell, Eliade, Corbin, continuing up into the present;
 the various 1960's counterculture, liberation themes some of which were elaborated into
movements, graduate schools and institutions in the 1970's and beyond – including
traditions such as feminism, gender activism, civil rights, antiracism, egalitarian
multiculturalism, environmentalism, eco-spirituality, creation and liberation theology,
Eastern spiritual traditions (such as Buddhism, yoga, meditation), complex holism,
humanistic and transpersonal psychology, and the network of archetypal/imaginal
institutions and publications.

These leadership and change themes have been, and continue to be, brought into many programs
in graduate schools, growth centres and diverse organizations around the world that derive from
or relate to the archetypal, humanistic, existential, somatic, transpersonal and related traditions
that emerged from the 1960's. What used to be peripheral and counterculture is becoming an
influential network of interconnected points of awareness and action. "We live in a networked
world" says the Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in the
Jan/Feb, 2009 issue of Foreign Affairs. This publication of the prestigious Council on Foreign
Relations speaks from the knowledge base of the US power elite, the centre. The theme of the
networked periphery influencing the centre is also in the process of being enacted. The California
Institute of Integral Studies (where Rick Tarnas teaches), Naropa University, Saybrook Graduate
School and Research Center and JFK University are examples of grad schools in the humanistic,
transpersonal, existential and somatic depth traditions that have transformative leadership degree
programs focusing on cultural evolution, through areas such as politics, community, social
justice, environmentalism, sustainability, organizational development, business, administration,
education, clinical issues. Hollyhock Leadership Institute, a successful, non-grad
school, Canadian version, is a part of this work, having graduated 3000 trainees and served 200
organizations since 1997, as is Parker Palmer's Center for Courage and Renewal, having trained
160 facilitators in 35 states and 50 cities. Esalen Institute continues to offer programs in this
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tradition. The Institute for Imaginal Studies (with Aftab Olmer) is also part of this, as is the
newly formed Meridian University's Center for Social Healing, based in the archetypal 'imaginal'
psychology tradition, "dedicated to research, education, and consultation that engages the
schisms and enemy making dynamics of our time". Toronto's Centre for Social Innovation is a
"social enterprise, catalyzing social innovation … for social entrepreneurs, in the social mission
field", with 100 social mission groups sharing desk space for the purpose of creating "original
action in a participatory culture" through "diversity, interconnections, discovery, serendipity".
The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, part of the University of Toronto, also has a focus
on personal and social transformation, with a holistic creativity theme, in their Transformative
Learning Centre, as well as their Adult Education and Community Development Program, and
the Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning.

There are many others. The Canadian Humanistic and Transpersonal Association (CHTA) has
begun the creation of a directory of these and related programs, currently listing 150. Many in
turn list others, such as Paul Hawken's WiserEarth website (www.wiserearth.org), which serves
people who are concerned with transforming the world as a community directory and
networking forum that maps and connects global non-governmental organizations, businesses,
governments and individuals addressing the "central issues of our day (climate change, poverty,
the environment, peace, water, hunger, social justice, conservation, human rights and more)".
This is connected to Hawken's, Blessed Unrest, which chronicles and lists in book form the tens
of thousands of individuals and organizations around the world addressing these issues. The
websites of the Association for Humanistic Psychology (www.ahpweb.org), Association for
Transpersonal Psychology (www.atpweb.org) and International Transpersonal Association
(www.transpersonalassociation.org) provide similar global linkups. Visit www.chata.ca and
follow the 'Web Resources' link to 'Collegial Contacts in the Humanistic, Existential, Somatic,
Transpersonal and Related Fields' to explore these extensive networked global connections.

The Living Institute Leadership Program's (LILP) cultural activism focus is on transforming our
"culture's web of habits", in Aftab Omer's terms, much in the same way that psychotherapy
transforms an individual's complex web of habits. The LILP educates cultural leaders who can
function, in a sense, as cultural therapists, focused through particular fields of cultural concern
(such as sustainability, multiculturalism, social justice, organizational change), and also, in an
archetypal, depth manner, complexly interacting with the cultural ground and zeitgeist. Richard
Tarnas speaks of kairos, Malcolm Gladwell of the 'tipping point', and dynamical systems theory
of deep sensitivity to subtle input at a systemic bifurcation point, where the system is about to go
to a new level of existential organization. It would seem, from many perspectives and on many
levels, that we are in just such an intense period of change in Western culture, and, through
various translations, also globally. President Barack Obama, the community organizer who
speaks with psychological reflection and approaches problem solving from a relational
perspective, is a highly visible, centrally situated manifestation of this. The network of global
interconnections in the archetypal, humanistic, existential, transpersonal and related depth
traditions is a complex, systemic manifestation of the same thing, calling for, and enacting,
transformational cultural change.

Now is the time. This is the place. We are the people. Let's do it.
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