How ironic that, as the tides of our nation’s identity have taken on a darker hue, those with an interest in living in a society, in communities, neighborhoods, and families where people support each other through mutual aid and needs-meeting practices, find themselves searching for spiritual leaders and rituals that are light-producing, hoping to find relief from the political, social, and economic institutions of darkness that hack away at our communal life, especially the lives of citizens with less, and even more so of those with nothing at all.
The late George Harrison — the singer, songwriter, guitarist, and writer of religious texts — addressed issues of darkness and light nearly 50 years ago in a song — it’s really a sutra — called “Beware of Darkness,” as if he wrote it for the people of the United States today.
Speaking poetically, he names types or categories of people who eat away at human happiness by hacking away at the foundations of convivial community, that is, communities where people have a sense of a common good, a collective identity, where they look out for each other rather than trash-talk those who are different as enemy agents.
The first group to be avoided, Harrison says, are grifters, con men he calls “soft shoe shufflers,” people who skim communally-produced wealth — social and economic capital — for their personal portfolios.
A second group to beware of, Harrison says, are “greedy leaders,” public officials who, like the soft-shoe hustlers, cultivate their personal fortunes rather than nurture and care for the structures and resources that keep communities thriving.
And, when large numbers of happy communities coalesce for a common good, we find a nation that produces happy citizens. There are inventories to measure such things, that is, how well a society or institution fares with respect to meeting the needs of all — they’re essentially a happiness index.
Harrison says watch out for yakers as well, those whose words lack substance so they wind up twisting and confusing the minds of fellow citizens.
They are the seed “The Parable of the Sower” talks about who, when the seed sprouts up, have roots so shallow the sun scorches them; some of the seed gets tangled in briar thorns and, also lacking depth, wither and die as well. Harrison calls them “falling swingers.”
What makes the British songster a man of distinction is that “Beware of Darkness” reminds the community at large that there are some among us who have no idea what “common good” means.
They live lives that prey on the voiceless and filch from the powerless poor, without concern that they are draining communal resources that neighborhoods, families, as well as individuals need to flourish.
And it does seem that those who’ve experienced life in a needs-based arrangement, have a better chance of standing up against the forces of social and political darkness but always aware that dissenters get picked off — like Alexei Navalny — one at a time.
The idea is — when darkness comes — not to get bent out of shape about every neurotic symptom that appears, thus the second stanza of “Beware of Darkness” goes:
Watch out now, take care
Beware of the thoughts that linger
Winding up inside your head
The hopelessness around you
In the dead of night.
From our very first day on Earth, we homo sapiens have devised ways to withstand the forces of darkness — especially during change of seasons — by creating songs and dances to celebrate light and light-bearing institutions that keep people back from the brink of despair.
Celebrations of “winter solstice” — the darkest time of year — say new light can be found inside the womb of winter’s darkness, that a sun god will emerge and dispel worry, the savior called Sol Invictus, the “invincible sun,” the “unconquerable sun.”
Celebrants of a new light emerged when Christians came along and baptized what belonged to the community as a whole, since day one, calling their season of new light “Christmas,” celebrating the birth of, not an invincible sUn but an invincible sOn.
Thus, it’s no surprise how many Christmas carols speak of a light that brings joy to the world while confronting darkness. “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” with roots going back to the Middle Ages, proclaims: “Dispel the shadows of the night, and turn darkness into light.”
And the much-beloved “The First Noel” sings of a star, shining in the east, that gives “the earth … great light/And so it continue[s] . . . day and night.”
Continues day and night? That means the Sol Invictus of Christmas will not leave people and their communities, neighborhoods, and families high and dry; the underlying message is: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”
A powerful claim to be sure but the gospel-writer John ups the ante by having Jesus say, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
However much one is inclined to believe such an assertion, the gospel-writer Luke says it dates back to the very first day of the man on Earth, when his light shone inside a stable; that when angels saw it, they flew into the cold winter night to let everyone know a child had just been born destined to dispel the darkness of humankind; and when shepherds watching their sheep heard the news “the glory of the Lord shone around and they were terrified.”
They felt compelled to go to Bethlehem to see the light for themselves and, after seeing the child, went around spreading “the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them.”
The Christmas message of new light — described as a new testament — is about developing methods, strategies, structures, and institutions designed to enhance the common good through communities that take into account the needs of all through measures of cooperation and mutual aid with violence to no one.
Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis — a method devised to find light within darkness — which he called repression — speaks of the continuing battle between light and darkness in his “Civilization and Its Discontents,” which first appeared in German in 1930.
Herr Doktor, an Austrian Jew, implies he could feel in the unconscious bones of his Jewishness, an emerging darkness called Hitler and Nazi extermination.
Thus, the last paragraph of “Civilization and Its Discontents” reads: “The fateful question for the human species seems to me to be whether and to what extent … [our] cultural development will succeed in mastering the disturbance of … [our] communal life by the human instinct of aggression and self-destruction.”
And because we, “have gained control over the forces of nature … [we] would have no difficulty in exterminating one another to the last man.”
It’s no surprise then that our country suffers from “unrest … unhappiness and … [a] mood of anxiety.”
Freud called the force of light Eros — love — and the force of darkness Thanatos or death.
Trying to predict the outcome of the contest of wills between those two forces in 1930, he hedges his bets; the final words of “Civilization and its Discontents” read therefore: “the other of the two ‘Heavenly Powers,’ eternal Eros, will make an effort to assert himself in the struggle with his equally immortal adversary [death]. But who can foresee with what success and with what result?”
He was not a fortune-teller but we know what took place.
On Christmas day 1863 — as the people of the United States were engaged in war on the opposing sides of light and darkness — the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow penned his famed “Christmas Bells” which I translate as:
I hear bells this Christmas Day
Calling to mind the carols
We sung when we were one
Alive and filled with tenderness
Repeating over and over:
Peace on Earth, everybody!
Peace on Earth to one and all!
Good will to every soul among us!
Hoping each and everyone of us
Will become the light of Christmas.
