In Western culture and particularly in the United States, we are in the “in between times.”

Religion as an external organizing principle for internal spirituality and meaning has waned in significance over the last half century (and honestly, for the better*). But we have yet to erect something so potent in its place.

This leaves a lot of people seeking for something they simply cannot find in the external world, because meaning-making is of the spirit, of the soul. And so we begin to project that quest for meaning onto secular institutions and mythologies like capitalism, fascism, science, technology, democracy, relationships, and the role of the state.

It’s why otherwise secular personal choices feel like cults of belief. From veganism to political affiliation to body image to dog food to workout style, we have weaponized aspects of everyday life with our deep longing for a sense of personal purpose and an ache for ancient tribalism. We have lost context.

It’s why social media has been able to create a maddening empire of outrage that propagates irrational content. It’s easy for a person to fall for falsehoods when they are seeking to fill a void by creating inner meaning where none exists.

The void in us is making a mess of things out there in daily life. The feeling of alienation kicks up a combative response that fails to even hear the other person. Behavior does not change through shame and contempt. Nobody is inspired when they feel projected upon by our neediness.  Yet the algorithms are only designed to exacerbate this effect.

The state (and capitalism and societal norms and technology) cannot and will not ever be able to support the individual in finding wholeness. Neither will a diet, a vote, a purchase, a leader, or even modern-day religious institutions.

This crisis of meaning is pervasive in our populace and makes us easily manipulated into factious anger, belligerence and worshipping false idols (presidents, theories, or influencers, for example). And the very platforms we’re addicted to exploit our emptiness and magnify our need for belonging. Collectively we have a deep psychic wound that is perfectly ripe for the worst aspects of data-driven technology, growth-driven capitalism, and autocracy.

What we seek to create beyond us is already within us. The great amnesia of our time is that we have fallen asleep to the handicapping lulls of capitalism and technology and forgotten that we are already whole. Without a serious psycho-spiritual path spelled out in the public sphere, the onus is on all of us to tap into that inner compass by whatever means necessary and available.

Nihilism is not the answer. In fact, it’s how we got here.

As I evolve my private practice to offer more depth coaching, I seek to support the individual toward meaning in hopes that for now, the path of individuation will be our collective salvation. That personal responsibility will once again reign over idolatry and victimhood.

I do believe we can get there, but it will require a rightening of our relationship to the systems upon which we rest our physical lives and a strengthening the bridges that lead back to an inner, unconscious and expansive wisdom.

I’m wishing you and yours a productively contemplative transition into the fall season. There is work to be done.

*most institutions have abandoned universal psycho-spiritual principle in favor of power and oppression.