These Aren't Political Problems - They're Human Ones
- Written by Mark J. Chironna, PhD.
How do we recover the Soul of our culture without turning into a battlefield? Or is it too late? Iain McGilchrist, in his seminal work The Matter with Things, warns that civilizations begin to collapse not simply when they lose power, but when they lose the capacity to see clearly and meaningfully. He argues that we must reconceive our world in a way that no longer subordinates the intuitive right hemisphere—responsible for context, metaphor, and relational understanding—to the controlling left hemisphere, which focuses on precision, categorization, and mechanistic thinking. Instead, we must restore balance, acknowledging that the right hemisphere alone provides genuine access to the deeper reality beyond ourselves. Only then can we cultivate a world that is "truer, richer," and one in which we can live with greater harmony, peace, and fulfillment.[1] Without this shift, we remain a culture that knows how to produce but not ponder, dominate but not dwell, mistaking fragments for the whole, metrics for wisdom, and soundbites for truth. In so doing, we risk becoming strangers to ourselves.
Others have traced this loss in their own idioms. David Whyte sees in our exhaustion not a need to work harder, but a betrayal of our truest allegiances.[2] James Hollis exposes the fragile modern ego as a mask worn to avoid the soul’s demands.[3] René Girard reveals that much of what we call conviction is merely contagion—desire borrowed from others, rivalry masquerading as righteousness.[4]
The crisis we're facing isn't political; it's human. It's spiritual. Psychological. Existential. Until we find the courage to name what's genuinely at stake, we'll keep fighting phantoms while the soul of our culture slowly fades. Our world is suffering from a catastrophic loss of meaning—we're drowning in information yet starved for significance. Beneath the noise, beneath our distractions, one question quietly torments us: "What is it all for?"
C.G. Jung’s insight—“Meaninglessness inhibits fullness of life and is therefore equivalent to illness”—cuts straight through our confusion.[5] Jung recognized clearly that human beings cannot flourish in a vacuum of purpose. The psyche depends upon mythic frameworks, upon narratives emerging from the cooperation of the conscious and unconscious self, to sustain our sense of significance in the cosmos. Without these narratives—without stories, symbols, and sacred orientation—we fall prey to despair, addiction, and rage without reason. Data alone cannot rescue us. Science will never produce myth, because myth isn't something we create; rather, myth spontaneously reveals itself to us, confronting us like a divine Word that calls forth a response, placing obligations upon us. If we are to heal our cultural soul, we must return to this mythopoetic imagination, embracing stories that anchor us again in something larger, enduring, and genuinely meaningful.
Yet our cultural myths have largely collapsed. We live amidst narratives built on shallow consumerism, technological utopianism, and the relentless pursuit of self-optimization—myths that have proven incapable of satisfying our deeper hunger for meaning. These failing myths leave us restless, disoriented, and disconnected. They offer us commodities but not communion, information but not insight. If we are to overcome our current crisis, we must acknowledge that our stories have betrayed us—and begin the essential work of imagining better ones.
We must come to terms with the pervasive disintegration of the modern Self. In an age fixated on personal branding and perpetual performance, identity becomes a carefully curated project rather than an authentic presence. Yet beneath this polished exterior lies the Shadow—what James Hollis calls those aspects of ourselves "that have a tendency to make us uncomfortable with ourselves."[3] The Shadow isn't simply evil or morally reprehensible; rather, as Jung himself clarifies, the Shadow also "displays a number of good qualities, such as normal instincts, appropriate reactions, realistic insights, creative impulses."[4]
The Shadow unsettles our desired self-image precisely because it represents everything we prefer to disown—our hidden anxieties, contradictions, and repressed energies. Until we consciously face and assimilate these shadow contents, we'll remain susceptible to fragmented identities, toxic projections onto others, and cultural dynamics dominated by collective shadows we fail to recognize.
We need to become familiar with what ails us—the pervasive influence of mimetic desire and the contagion of imitation. René Girard makes clear that we never desire in isolation: “Far from being the most personal emotion there is, our desire comes from others. Nothing could be more social.”[5] Our longings are formed through models provided by society, peers, or admired individuals, whose prestige shapes and directs what we believe we must possess, pursue, or become. Girard warns that imitation, though central to human intelligence and social learning, quickly descends into rivalry when we desire precisely what another desires. This mimetic rivalry traps us in endless competition and comparison, quietly fueling polarization and conflict. Rather than genuine values, we become driven by the crowd’s anxieties, and when rivalry intensifies without resolution, we inevitably seek release through scapegoating; finding catharsis through condemnation and exclusion. Until we recognize the hidden engine of imitation and rivalry behind our cultural divisions, we remain prisoners of conflict, blind to the deeper sources of our spiritual malaise.
When our wants are shaped by rivalry, we are always positioning ourselves against someone. When imitation drives identity, we become trapped in endless comparisons. And when we do not know how to mourn, we scapegoat, seeking catharsis through condemnation. Girard helps us see how cultural polarization feeds on unconscious imitation. We become possessed not by values, but by the crowd’s animating anxieties.
Margaret Wheatley describes our moment as an "Age of Threat," a time marked by intensifying "fear and anger," causing us to "flee from one another" and abandon values that once bound us together. Most damagingly, Wheatley notes, we have come to "stop believing in one another," a loss of trust that erodes the very foundations of cultural sanity. She bluntly observes that systems already unraveling due to "decades of denial, ignorance, greed, oppression, and indifference" will not recover easily. We cannot halt the ongoing descent, but instead must face reality honestly and choose a new way of being—a "path of contribution" grounded in clarity and courage.[6]
Who among us is ready to embody this new way of being? It requires nothing less than an essential paradigmatic shift—an ontological transformation rooted not in grand collective movements, which currently appear impossible, but in smaller circles: perhaps something we could refer to as a "circle of intention." This coalition would consist of those courageous enough to name clearly the illusions under which we live, disciplined enough to cultivate interior sanity amidst external chaos, and compassionate enough to remain open-hearted when cynicism would be far easier. Such a shift demands we stop waiting for external systems to heal themselves, and instead begin cultivating wholeness from within. It is here, quietly and urgently, that genuine renewal begins.
We have not only lost our sense of “we” within a culture increasingly defined by the isolated “me,” we have also become unable to embrace a genuinely collective vision. Charles Taylor describes this pervasive individualism as "a centering on the self, which both flattens and narrows our lives, makes them poorer in meaning, and less concerned with others or society."[7] Martin Buber points to a deeper relational fracture at the heart of our malaise, observing, "All real living is meeting,"[8] yet our contemporary society fails repeatedly at genuine meeting, replacing authentic encounter with mere transactional exchanges. Robert Putnam highlights the social dimensions of this fragmentation in stark terms, emphasizing the collapse of the civic connections that once unified communities, noting famously that we are now "bowling alone," increasingly isolated from the shared activities and values that traditionally strengthened civic life.[9] Collectively, these thinkers reveal the consequences of our eroding relational fabric: the shared moral, spiritual, and civic horizons that once anchored us are rapidly vanishing, and in their absence we default inevitably toward control, competition, and self-preservation, a destructive triad whose power continues to grow unchecked.
These aren't merely political problems. They’re human problems.
The solutions won’t be found in shouting matches, nor will they emerge from whoever dominates the news cycle. Real answers come from quieter places—from those courageous enough to pause, reflect, and reckon honestly with what we've lost. They come from people who choose understanding over winning, and community over isolation.
Our most pressing task is to restore the soul of our culture—not through aggression or louder arguments, but through genuine connection, humility, and compassion. The real strength we need now isn’t louder voices, but deeper listening. There’s still time to reclaim who we are. There’s still solid ground beneath our feet. But we must choose clarity over chaos, and do it soon, before the noise overwhelms us all.
Endnotes (Chicago Style)
1. McGilchrist, Iain . The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World (pp. 562-563). (Function). Kindle Edition.
2. David Whyte, Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity (New York: Riverhead Books, 2001), 132.
3. James Hollis, Why Good People Do Bad Things: Understanding Our Darker Selves, Penguin Random House, 2007 pp. 9–10, Kindle Edition.
4. C.G. Jung, Collected Works, Volume 9ii, New York: Bollingen, 1959, para. 423, Kindle Edition.
5. René Girard, The One by Whom Scandal Comes, Michigan State University, 2014, pp. 4–5. Kindle Edition.
6. Margaret J. Wheatley, Who Do We Choose to Be?, Second Edition: Facing Reality, Claiming Leadership, Restoring Sanity, Oakland: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2017, 2023, pp. 8–9, Kindle Edition.
7. Charles Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2018, Kindle Edition.
8. Martin Buber, I and Thou, Translated by Ronald Gregor Smith, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958, p. 17, Kindle Edition.
9. Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, New York: Simon and Shuster, 2000, Introduction, Kindle Edition.
Mark J. Chironna, PhD.
