Are We Implicated?--A Depth Psychological and Cultural Take on the Fall of Lance Armstrong
I was out of town for a conference the weekend the two-part Lance Armstrong interview with Oprah broke and missed it entirely, but the fall-out is hard to miss. Normally I am a bit of a media addict, fascinated and equally reactive to what I consider to be a culture in decline, symptomatic even, of impending collapse. Our priorities seem so out of whack; our values in tatters, our goals absurd. I’m speaking for myself as well as the collective of course. Each of us is quite embedded in our values, beliefs, and behaviors--a result of our upbringing, education, religious ties, political views, social status, and so much more that we tend to take for granted. As a whole, we shore up the culture, buying into the “way things are,” enabling practices that are less than generative.
Regarding the “Lance” story, though--as one of my peers in the Depth Psychology Alliance community recently pointed out--nobody does the kind of thing Lance has done in a vacuum. Our fallen heroes are ours in the making. We collectively have a vested interest in creating heroes and putting them on a pedestal--where the only way out is down.
We need our heroes. Who else are we to worship? America is built on a legacy of heroes: gunslingers, pioneers who conquered the wild west, U.S, marshals, militia, inventors, gold diggers and even the Saturday morning cartoons of my childhood in which the Super Friends always came out on top. How are we to dismiss the rugged individuals who actually (Click to read the full post....)
