Inferno. Apocalypse. Age of Renewal.

The Los Angeles Fires are Emblematic of Our Era

Some of you have asked me to give reflections for healing, in the face of the unimaginably terrifying fires that have now engulfed Los Angeles and are still spreading across Southern California. Never since the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 or the Great San Francisco Fire of 1906 have we witnessed a whole city go up in flames. I did not have words at the time, except that this is an event that affects us all; California will never be the same, nor will the nation. Yet, there is more to say.

It has already been a frightening time for us all, as someone with dangerous and severe psychopathology at the helm has been taking away every bit of our fragile sense of security. Now, the man who does not possess the fitness for any job, let alone the ability to deal with complex problems—who will be inaugurated for the second time as president of the United States in a little more than a week—is exploiting national suffering for perverse political advantage.

The Los Angeles fires are symbolic of the things that are to come. Cataclysms of unprecedented scale will not only continue but accelerate, and the only way we will be able to rise above it is to be prepared, and to find perspective and space within ourselves to begin another reality. The one we have created is no longer working, or is nearing its end, and humanity will soon find itself at the precipice of destiny.

This, however, is the moment we have been preparing for when we took the time to pause, to build alliances through a common vision, and to learn to tap into that mysterious human potential that is capable simultaneously of immeasurable destructiveness as well as of infinite creativity.

It is now our time to choose.

The first step to accessing our creative—and therefore healing—capacity is to face reality and not to look away. Over the past nine years that I have warned against a dangerously-disordered, archetypal figure that was ushering in a new Zietgeist of destruction and death, people asked if I, as a psychiatrist, should not be helping others to feel less anxious. Unlike some psychiatrists, especially those who might be fronting the pharmaceutical industry, I saw my role as helping people truly to heal at the source—where there is no need to help them “feel” less anxious because we can truly be less anxious. We do not have to deny reality when we can change reality. The first hurdle is to face the truth.

Steven Schmidt, like Heather Cox Richardson, is someone whose newsletters many have forwarded to me as a “kindred spirit.” His entry this week touches me especially, as he powerfully depicts the “biblical”, and ultimately spiritual, meaning of where we are:

Like the Great Fire of London in 1666, the Great Fire of Los Angeles will be recalled for 500 years….

The winds have brought Armageddon, and a brutal judgement upon the genius and arrogance of mankind’s building on a Garden of Eden, tempting the wrath of creation.

This is why I have written about Titanic so often. The lessons are enduring—even if the learnings have been fleeting.

There is an old saw about what starts in California ultimately spreads to every corner of the United States.

There is a lot of truth to the saying.

He identifies a number of foreseeable origins of the indescribable destruction—from a succession of political “mediocrities”, to news media that have long abhorred substance and seriousness, to insurance companies that will give every excuse to deny claims for the 10,000 structures that burned down—as well as the fortitude of faith that we will need to survive into the future.

This level of brutal honesty allows us finally to grieve. Just like the structures along the Palisades or in Pasadena, the World Order is disintegrating. The moment of darkest possibilities is no longer in the distant future or on distant lands—but awakens us with terrifying clarity. Along this course, we will continue to accelerate “natural” disasters of unprecedented scale, skies will blacken with ever-growing wars of dominance and power, and “man’s inhumanity to man” will be the undoing of our civilization. To experience grief is normal, understandable, and a necessary step. To grieve our current predicament is to recognize our current state of hubris, avarice, division, and duplicity. To grieve, therefore, is to embrace self-awareness, and awareness to embrace renewal.

In relation to this, I would like to bring us back to the universal principles outlined in Talking with Angels:

Truth is.

Love grows….

New awareness creates.

Grief gives way to a new awareness of our true task: co-creativity. I therefore quote here again the words of angels right after the first bombings of Budapest in 1944. Houses were lying in ruin, and spectators flocked to stare at the sinister sight.

Why do the people stare at what is below?...

Why does the foot trample rather than stride?

The old decays, the new bud opens.

The force acting in you is united with the Whole….

The song that draws your soul from the earth

is neither sad nor serene, long nor short: it is whole….

Wonder walks among you,

it walks in the circle: Join it!

The circle narrows,…

Eternity draws near….

THE POINT CONTAINS ALL.

Announcement:

Dr. Bandy X. Lee will hold a live session on:

“How to Navigate an Increasingly Dangerous World”

This Friday, January 17, 2025, at 12 noon EST/9 a.m. PST on Zoom. A paid subscription is required to receive a link the morning before. Thank you!

Dr. Lee is a forensic and social psychiatrist who became known to the public through her 2017 Yale conference and book that emphasized the importance of fit leadership. In 2019, she organized a major National Press Club Conference on the theme of, “The Dangerous State of the World and the Need for Fit Leadership.” In 2024, she followed up with another major Conference, “The More Dangerous State of the World and the Need for Fit Leadership.” She published another book on fit leadership, in addition to a volume on how unfitness in a leader spreads, and two critical statements on fit leadership. Dr. Lee authored the internationally-acclaimed textbook, Violence; over 100 peer-reviewed articles and chapters; and 17 scholarly books and journal special issues, in addition to over 300 opinion editorials.