Kate, Carl and the Culture Wars

Paul Kingsnorth, whose Against The Machine has just been published, is right: the West continues to put civilization ahead of an authentic Christianity, one that honours the words and deeds of its founder.

What is more, using politics, money and power to try to save what has been built, will surely fail. As he points out in First Things, Jesus does not "fight wars other than those that go on in the heart". We already have our orders. Love your neighbour. Love your enemy. Love God. Do not resist evil. Rule by serving.

Of course, an array of politicians, billionaires and podcasting pundits continue with more of the same, it never occurring to them that the culture war could be about their refusal to face this difficult reality. They go on assuming that what man most wishes to know – be that about God, truth, beauty or goodness – is within the grasp of his preferred way of understanding.

For here's the thing: the "inversion" role played by destructive progressivist politics in this "strange, dissolving, increasingly nihilistic moment we are living through" is something Jesus would approve of.

The founders of Western rationalism knew that reason, or logos, isn't able to go "all the way". Socrates was the smartest man in Athens because he embraced his own ignorance. Similarly, sections of his dialogues, notes historian Richard Tarnas, indicate that Plato believed "the imaginative faculty, both poetic and religious, was as useful in the quest for attaining knowledge" as logic or empiricism. Hence his use of the Allegory of the Cave to convey the essence of his influential Theory of Forms.

Love is the same. I could attempt to account for why a particular woman – let's call her Kate – is the one. Her beautiful alabaster skin and delicate hands. The no-fuss, otherworldly elegance. Her kindness. That look she gives me, the one no one else gets to see. When all is said and done, however, a complete explanation eludes me, the mystery only serving to confirm what I already know.

None of this is intended to disparage knowledge or organized progress. It concerns human limits and the enigmatic relationship between interdependent counterparts, a subject dear to the ancient Greeks and touched on by Nick Cave in Faith, Hope and Carnage.

It's not like you have any real control over the creative process. In fact, it's almost the opposite: you have to surrender in a way and really just let yourself be led by the secret demands of the song. In a sense, it's the not-knowing and not being totally in control that is so invigorating.

Now, that said, for that magic thing to happen, there has to be certain things in place. It can't just be a couple of guys who don't know what they are doing, sitting around bashing shit out.

Life is a balancing act. Order and chaos. Head and heart. Logos and mythos.

"Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's," says Jesus in Mark 12:17, "and to God the things that are God's."

Carl Jung had a keen interest in our contra-sexual inner personalities. He referred to the feminine aspect in men as anima. Representing qualities like intuition, emotion and nurturing, it provides a bridge to the unconscious, giving a man the emotional resilience needed for healthy relationships. The Swiss psychologist named the masculine principle in women animus, associating it with conventional male attributes such as critical reasoning, assertiveness and ambition.

Integrating the feminine is difficult for us men, not least because it means accommodating mythical and subjective understandings of life and love that can't really be argued with. Our categorising mind, naturally fond of its either-or dialectic, must leave space for contemplation, a state of not-knowing that allows us to receive direct, spiritual insight. If not, we can lose touch with truth, beauty and goodness, Plato's archetypes that order physical reality yet also stand beyond it.

The upshot: Western man, if he wants to be whole, is obliged to let go of the need to know and allow opposites to harmonise. Moreover, should he not achieve this both-and equilibrium – by putting heart before head, as Jesus advocated – he can expect to be tested, both spiritually and intellectually.

This is happening right now with the culture war. I've also experienced it personally. Though painful and often disorienting, I can nevertheless attest that the ordeal is for our very own good.

On an otherwise dull Tuesday in January 2019, Kate told me, after 11 years together, three of them married, that she was leaving.

To be sure, our situation had been less than ideal for a while, but there was nothing in the sackable offence category, such as adultery. An ugly falling out with my family had left me in a serious rut that then spiralled into acute financial distress at a time when Kate was labouring under the merciless demands of postgraduate study. Others were equally shocked by her decision, especially after she declined to defend it or give me a chance to change her mind. Though conflict and sadness were at times evident, Kate packed up her possessions, handed me the spare keys to our rented townhouse and drove off in her black Toyota hatchback.

I went and stayed with my friend, Dave. We stood around in his kitchen for hours, analysing events, trying to piece together a rational basis for how an incredibly smart woman, who had loved me so completely for so long, could be this ruthless. The late-evening discussions solved nothing, while my texts and calls to Kate went unanswered. Following months of confusion, anger and heartache, I left Australia and took a job in New Zealand.

An old Hollywood movie was instrumental in getting me to the other side of my dark night of the soul.

In An Affair to Remember, Terry (Deborah Kerr) and Nickie (Cary Grant), both in so-so relationships, fall in love on the return leg of a Mediterranean cruise. They agree to rendezvous atop the Empire State Building. If they're both there on July 1^st, Nickie will propose.

Nickie works to establish himself as an artist. After six months apart, rushing from her taxi to meet him, a still-smitten Terry is in an accident and taken to hospital. Potentially crippled, she decides not to contact Nickie and explain her no-show.

Though hurt and bewildered, Nickie manages to keep his injured ego in check. The former playboy retains his sense of humour, never giving into the impulse to sulk, lash out or renew ties with women who asked very little of his manly soul.

A further six months on and Nickie turns up at her apartment, unannounced, before a planned move overseas.

TERRY: I've often wondered about you, and how you were.

NICKIE (with sarcasm): Did you really?

TERRY: I remember we said that: "If we could make it, we'd be there. And if one of us didn't show up, it would be for a darn good reason."

NICKIE: Did we say that?

TERRY: That's exactly what we said. So, there will be no more questions asked … I hope.

Conditioned to believe not-knowing is anathema, the modern male mind is likely to assume, here, that Cary Grant has been treated poorly. Why the prolonged drama and suffering? Why doesn't this woman relent and spell things out?

In the 1930s, Jung described the psychological changes that occur in midlife. Early on, men incline toward the external, wanting to master their surroundings, both material and social. The emphasis then shifts away from power, prowess and dialectical reasoning. The feminine side comes into play, offering the imaginative faculty an opportunity to explore human spirituality, creativeness and the emotional truth revealed through art, myth and narrative.

The "first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego," writes Jung, "the second half is going inward and letting go of it."

Western man is amidst a severe midlife crisis. Unbridled masculinity – dedicated to building civilization rather than matching the example of Jesus – has enabled much in the way of orderly progress. But the hubris and one-sidedness of our head-before-heart Promethean advance has come at great cost. Forgetful of the original Greek caveat regarding human limits, he refuses to concede, as Cave does, that "the rational, the verifiable, is not the only game in town".

"After centuries of global hegemony," says Kingsnorth, "it is our turn to experience the fear of loss, the fear of decline and fragmentation." This lacks imagination. The caustic element of the culture war is merely leveraging the material trappings of modernity in the name of a Christianity we've yet to experience. Western man is being called to finally muster the courage, now the foundational work is done, to be truly vulnerable, to rule by serving, to relinquish control and be led by the secret demands of life and love.

In Under Saturn's Shadow, Jungian psychologist James Hollis refers to the "necessary wound" incurred by men, a traumatic occurrence that compels us "to move out of the old dispensation into new life".

Intentionally provocative, #MeToo, DEI programs and general wokeism are designed to bring the anima story to its climax. These feminine forces don't want men to disavow, per se, traditional masculinity, reason, progress or hierarchy. Nor do they wish for the anarchy of a society governed solely by raw emotion. This is about the both-and, and the related truth that rules-based institutions, along with science and AI, can't ever render to God the things that are his.

This wounding moment is about Western man finally inverting opposites, taking up the radical challenge laid down by Jesus two millennia ago: "Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it."

That all this goes unsaid is part of the test, a reluctance to spell things out intended to highlight that the activism is not rooted in some right-wrong argument. The final cause of Western exceptionalism is grounded in mythos, not logos. We are being asked to finally take our civilization beyond the empty promises of power and politics. Tarnas concludes The Passion of the Western Mind:

Today we are experiencing something that looks very much like the death of modern man, indeed that looks very much like the death of Western man. Perhaps the end of 'man' himself is at hand. But man is not a goal. Man is something that must be overcome – and fulfilled, in the embrace of the feminine.

Able to unify his thinking and feeling, Nickie Ferrante shows himself, in the end, to be worthy of his suffering. By finally sensing what Terry won't put into words, he locks in their Hollywood ending.

It took me somewhat longer to read between the lines.

March 2020 was the last time I saw or spoke with Kate. I got over emotional after two hours together in a café above the Queen Street mall. I pestered her to join me in New Zealand, which wasn't smart. I've since sent the occasional email. But no reply. I let her know when I'm visiting Australia, proposing a time and location to meet. She's yet to turn up.

Dave and my mates think I'm delusional, that I've been forsaken, that I should move on and find myself a nice Kiwi lass. That's not going to happen.

Kate had a darn good reason for walking out apart from self-preservation. For as long as most people who know me can remember, I have been threatening to write "my book". My lone journey to another country has provided me the chance to get it done and, with that, the possibility of putting in place certain things for a new life with Kate. Though not quite as rousing as the Odyssey, or as theistic as Paul Kingsnorth's conversion, I hope that what I have learnt can add something to man's self-understanding.

Though gut-wrenching in its severity, her leaving and utter silence brought into relief the implications of unconditional love, Jesus' most fundamental instruction. I had to trust in what is eternal between us, a process that made me a better, more balanced man.

No more need to know what I already know in my heart. These days, I am singularly focused on the writing, convinced that each completed page gets me a little closer to my girl.