Dark Night of the Soul in a Once Sunny State

 

[Image: Thunderstorm rolls into Palm Beach, Savannah Williams photographer]

This past week I had a long talk with an old friend who, like me, is a multi-generational Floridan. We were discussing what is going on in our state. The political atmosphere is dark, angry, and vicious. We both have friends who have been impacted by the fascist turn in education here, something that grieves both of our hearts as former teachers.

But that is at some level the tip of this iceberg. The war on Disney, LBGTQ people and Black people has begun to impact our tourist-based economy deleteriously. And the steady withdrawal of insurance companies from a state increasingly subject to killer hurricanes threatens many Floridians with losing everything in the event one of those storms comes their way.

 

Those storms arise in a context of global climate change that threatens much more serious consequences to a state whose highest point is just over 300 feet and where the vast majority of its residents live along coasts where sea level rise already requires pumping stations to keep Miami Beach afloat. Acres of sea grasses needed to keep shorelines stable and to provide habitat for a wide range of sea creatures are dying. And, as the water temperatures of the Gulf of Mexico have topped 100F, the setting on most hot tubs, the fragile coral reefs surrounding our state are bleaching, leaving only the white calcified exoskeleton of tiny life forms long since departed. And if that were not enough to keep one up at night, the news that the Gulf Stream could be slowed or halted would impact Florida and much of the planet in incredibly dire ways.

My friend is in his early 80s. As we lamented what has happened to this state we love, he remarked that the only consolation he had was that he would be gone before the worst of it had manifested itself. Consider that. Death will be preferable to living in a Florida that has devolved into a hellscape.

I get what he is saying. I sense that the damage being done to our planet will probably require a massive wakeup call that will prove horrendous before we begin to reconstruct our world from the ruins our current trajectory is likely to produce. And I fear that Florida will have to crash and burn before it comes to its senses. I will be 70 this September. I pray to live long enough to see a new reality emerging before I die.

 

How Did This Happen?

So many fellow Floridians with whom I have lamented about the destructive path our state has taken have asked ourselves, “How did this happen?” We look around ourselves as Florida continues to be the fastest growing state in the country and it appears our fellow Floridians, the vast majority of whom have come from other places, have lost their minds

There may have been a rational motivation – albeit self-focused – for so many to come to Florida in the first place. This is a state with virtually no taxes allowing an increasingly aging population to demand services and while never having to shoulder the burden for paying for them. And while our AC bills may be soaring, we never have to shovel snow.

But that influx has come at the cost of overtaxed infrastructures unable to handle the demands placed upon them. That new reality is graphically depicted daily at the conjunction of Florida’s Turnpike, one of two main highways serving South Florida , with I-75, one of two major North/South interstates. This intersection, or perhaps collision is a better description these days, is located in the center of the state on the site of its largest MacCommunity, The Villages. It’s a housing project for wealthy and virtually all white retirees which has devoured acres of farmland and environmentally sensitive lands under a Field of Dreams mentality – if you build it they will come. 

And come they have. On a given day, the traffic at the conjunction of the Turnpike and I-75 slows to a dead stop in all directions for about 40 miles. And this is replicated from the edge of the Everglades near the Gold Coast urban sprawl to the edge of the rapidly expanding southwest coast undeterred by a major hurricane a mere year ago. Increasingly, the reality in Florida is “you can’t get there from here.”

 

Seized by a Complex

Another long-time friend of mine who is a Jungian analyst and fellow Episcopal priest told me awhile back that Florida has been seized by a complex.

The complex, as Jung postulated, represents a pattern of emotions, memories, experiences, and desires that have become emotionally charged and sequestered from our conscious awareness. These autonomous entities within our psyche possess their own distinct characteristics, acting as independent centers of energy that influence our perceptions, decisions, and interactions with the world.

Jung said that complexes “interfere with the intentions of the will and disturb the conscious performance….Complexes behave like independent beings.”

[Som Dutt, “Carl Jung On Complex,” Medium online]

 

I think that’s what many of us natives observe in this new reality that confronts us. There is a profound mindlessness in this pattern of building with no limits, no tax base to support it and no concern for the Edenic natural world that brought many of the original non-indigenous settlers to this place. It is like a monster with a mind of its own that defies any kind of restraint.

 

Shrouded in Darkness

This week I saw a video from a psychic medium who lives in Texas. I love her candor when she says, “OK, this is 60% spirit and 40% Susan.” No pretentions of perfect insights. But the insights she offered yesterday were both disturbing and comforting.

 

She said her spirit guides had told her there is a decided darkness that has settled over Florida. “I can’t tell you why but I am clear it is there.” A resident of Texas, she said that while she expected Texas to be a worse situation, her spirit guides were saying that Florida was the bottom of a darkness impacting all of the country.

“It is Florida’s Dark Night of the Soul,” she said.

I think that’s a pretty accurate description. This is a time when the preceding reality we once knew in Florida has disintegrated and a chaotic, mean-spirited reality has replaced it. One doesn’t need a psychic to see that. And at some level, knowing how we got this way might prove interesting but at some level is a secondary consideration to how we resist the darkness around us and how we emerge from it.

We should not kid ourselves that this current round of misanthropy and obliviousness to the land and sea that we love is somehow an anomaly. Florida has never been a paragon of enlightenment. We had a brief flirtation with becoming a mature adult society attentive to all our people and the environment during the 1970s and 80s. Leaders like Reuben Askew and Bob Graham gave hope to many of us who came to adulthood in those decades that Florida would finally leave behind its legacy of racism and swindlers and join the first world. But those dreams soon faded as migration and immigration patterns changed and by the 1990s our state was well on its way to becoming a hell hole.

The only good news the woman had for us was that Florida would learn from this dark night of the soul once its infrastructure and tax base fell apart and we find ourselves in need of rebuilding. She said Florida would emerge from the darkness earlier than the rest of the country given the fact it has descended into that darkness earlier than everyone else. The timeline? She said 10-15 years.

So my fellow Floridian long-time friend will likely not live long enough to see the dawn after our Dark Night of the Soul. And I may not either. But it does give me a ray of hope to believe that it could happen.

In the meantime, the only thing I know to do is resist the darkness in any way I can. I am cognizant of Jung’s observation that what we resist persists. But as a student of history, I am also aware of what happens when peoples do not resist the rise of evil in their midst.

That will mean bringing my educational background, my writing and presentation skills, my life experience and my willingness to bear in confronting the destructiveness I see with all I have. And it means hoping others will join me in that effort. To paraphrase the United Negro College Fund, a beautiful state is a terrible thing to waste.

 

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Harry Scott Coverston

Orlando, Florida

frharry@cfl.rr.com

hcoverston.orlando@gmail.com

If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding. Most things worth considering do not come in sound bites.

Those who believe religion and politics aren't connected don't understand either. – Mahatma Gandhi

For what does G-d require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d?  - Micah 6:8, Hebrew Scriptures

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. - Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Wisdom of the Jewish Sages (1993)

   © Harry Coverston, 2023

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