This episode begins with a news report about a political candidate threatening to “…go into school boards with 20 strong men and give them an option. They can leave or they can be removed." He suggested that forcing school board members to resign over a rule designed to help public safety would “make men men again.” In order to consider the nature and the danger of this kind of behavior, Michael Meade turns to ancient myths of the Titans.

 

“The exaggerated sense of self, the broad insolence and the delusion that men become real men by threatening people and enacting violence made me think of the Titans. The manifestation of faux outrage and false heroics is not an indication of inner power, but more of a revelation of inner hollowness. And that is the nature of the Titans, who appeared in times of chaos that came before civilized culture began and appeared again during periods of cultural upheaval, and collapse.

 

The idea of bringing in powerful strong men to solve the intricacies of public health and the complexities of public education is foolish on its face, but also a dangerous representation of what happens when someone loses their sense of soul, and denies their own vulnerability and insecurity. As with the Titans, an inner emptiness drives the blind sense of excess, which includes breaking boundaries, destroying institutions, and pretending to be all powerful.

 

As the common understandings of society seem to disappear, and the holding institutions no longer hold things together, there is a rise of primal energies and raw emotions from the depths of the unconscious. The less developed a person's sense of self might be, the more available they are to archetypal, un-socialized, uncivilized energies.

 

Titanism describes what happens when humans deny common decency, morality and even mortality, and seek to be seen as gods. Titanism arises where unconsciousness prevails, where people refuse psychological shadings, where a lack of emotional growth passes for genuine passion. The less a person knows about the suffering of other people and the less they admit to their own inner woundedness, the more they become available to become possessed by energies of the unconscious.”

 

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