Two hours of discussion on the proposition that “psychology” has replaced ancient myth as the anchor of personal identity, a solid ground of membership in a people.  I am unconvinced.  Psychology is a soft science, similar to sociology, that investigation of social structures, institutions.  Dissimilar to chemistry or physics, which are studies of external matter or forces, it is impossible for a mind to study minds without bias.  How does mind get out of it’s own way?

A more serious impediment, science is interested in cause and effect.  The scientific method is a generally agreed upon process for reaching verifiable (reproducible results), a refinement and nothing more of what we’ve always practiced.  Consider the trial and error acquisition of knapping technique, — how to sharpen a piece of flint into a tool or weapon.  Trial and error is a human process, contrived, flawed, learning from one’s mistakes, mundane  — hardly where we’d expect to encounter a divine presence.

Psychology, either the talk-therapy variety, or it’s cornucopia of mind altering drugs are a thin, impossible substitution for a force of transcendence.  Where do you and I encounter the sacred: pure Being, the source of life, in robust manifestation?  God has been routed from the public square in a secular time, the old stone churches, or the contemporary mega-church with a band and the jiving, entertainer-pastor are sad reminders of an absent presence.  Psychology?  What about possessing more stuff?  Or fanaticism for the dark political messiah Trump?  Or along with the majority of Americans, standing to salute the flag, holding to the fraying belief that “everything is going to be Ok?”

---

Surely you do not expect me to offer a simple answer to this conundrum?  I have nothing more to say.  Nothing at all.

But I do have a song, a “divine” lyric that you and I may hold onto…  Does not this lyric illuminate our age of anxiety?

Going To California

By Led Zeppelin

Spent my days with a woman unkind
Smoked my stuff and drank all my wine
Made up my mind to make a new start
Going to California with an aching in my heart
Someone told me there’s a girl out there
With love in her eyes and flowers in her hair

Took my chances on a big jet plane
Never let ’em tell you that they’re all the same
The sea was red and the sky was grey
Wondered how tomorrow could ever follow today
The mountains and the canyons start to tremble and shake
As the children of the sun began to awake (watch out)

Seems that the wrath of the gods
Got a punch on the nose, and it started to flow
I think I might be sinking
Throw me a line, if I reach it in time
I’ll meet you up there where the path runs straight and high

To find a queen without a king
They say she plays guitar and cries and sings
La la la la
Ride a white mare in the footsteps of dawn
Trying to find a woman who’s never, never, never been born
Standing on a hill in my mountain of dreams
Telling myself it’s not as hard, hard, hard as it seems

Lyrics by Jimmy Page, Robert Anthony Plant