Episode 479 - Living with Emotional Upheaval

Living Myth

Michael Meade

Education, Society & Culture, Philosophy

4.8 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 18 March 2026

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This episode of Living Myth focuses upon the extreme emotions generated by the war in Iran and the many other conflicts and divisions in the current world. Michael Meade addresses the increasing flood of raw emotions that we are all subjected to and what psychologists are now calling "political depression." Although political depression can present the same sense of hopelessness and despair as traditional depression, its source is different. It does not simply come from within; but rather from the violence and upheaval, the corruption and unjustness in the world around us.

According to recent studies, this sense of political depression has affected the psyches of most people, and along with issues of anger and outrage, increasingly appears in the offices of therapists and counselors. The human psyche cannot simply be separated from the conditions of the world. Whereas emotional responses can be eruptive and disruptive, emotions are also "the necessary and mysterious turbulence without which we cannot truly tell if we are alive or not."

Emotions move us because they carry massive amounts of energy that can be used to change life from within. The natural inheritance of the human soul includes an ability to "feel the feelings" and shift raw emotions to being sources of increased vitality and creativity. Ultimately, emotions are intended to connect us to our deeper sense of self and to the world as it is. In that sense, emotions would have us engage life more fully and live life more meaningfully, especially in times of crisis when a transformation of life actually becomes more possible.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Living Myth podcast with Michael Mead, where this shifting, changing world is looked at from a mythic perspective.
0:19.0	This episode focuses upon the extreme emotions generated by the war in Iran
0:24.5	and the many other conflicts and divisions in the current world.
0:28.9	Mead addresses the increasing flood of raw emotions that we're all subjected to
0:33.4	and what psychologists are now calling political depression.
0:38.2	Emotions move us because they carry massive amounts of energy
0:41.0	that can be used to change life from within.
0:44.4	The natural inheritance of the human soul
0:46.6	includes an ability to feel the feelings
0:49.5	and shift raw emotions to being sources of increased vitality and creativity.
0:56.0	Ultimately, emotions are intended to connect us to our deeper sense of self and to the world, I feel like screaming, but instead I'll read a poem.
1:25.5	The title of the poem is Big Dream, Little Dream.
1:29.6	And it goes like this.
1:31.7	The Elgoni people say,
1:33.9	There are big dreams and little dreams.
1:36.5	The little dream is just personal.
1:38.9	You're sitting in a plane that is flying too close to the ground.
1:42.4	There are wires on either side and there's a wall. The big dream feels more significant. The big dream is the kind the president has. He wakes up and tells it to the secretary, and together they tell it to the cabinet, and before you know it, there's a war.
2:02.0	The poem is by Lewis Simpson, the American poet, who was in battle during World War II.
2:09.8	So he had his own firsthand experience of the horrors of war and the effects of it that do not just linger but are passed on to subsequent
2:20.2	generations. The poem begins with the mention of the El Ghanje tribe of East Africa, who were one of the
2:30.1	many, many indigenous tribal groups that understood how important it is that regular people
	...

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