America is the great democratic experiment. Although, this is getting on for some 250 years now. This nation is in the grip of the politics of grievance. Partisan politics in America is more about hating the other side than particularly loving the side you are voting for. Americans have been encouraged to focus their attention upon their grievances via decades of negative campaigning and attack ads. Demonizing ‘the other’ is the favoured political pastime in the 21C. Identity politics and social values are the main game these days. Economic issues are now seen through this ideological filter.

Murdoch, Fox & Stirring Grievance In America

Rupert Murdoch and his Fox News are merchants of toxic polarization. This network is spewing out lies and fake news 24/7. Every presentation is top heavy in anti-woke content and a right wing bias. Regular viewers are sucked into a spin cycle of libertarian anti-government GOP grievance stoking. Old white men upset at their changing worlds, where heaven forbid minorities are now getting a say. OMG the sky is going to fall in. In this partisan realm complaints about there being too many coloured faces on TV and LGBTQIA folk making too much noise are legion. Uppity women talking about sexual harassment and such like make their viewer’s blood boil – which is the whole idea for Fox. Getting their audience riled up keeps eyeballs on them and advertising rates going up for their revenue.

Popularizing Poisonous Issues For Political Gain

The politics of grievance is all about popularizing these causes for the benefit of candidates and the party. The party promoting these grievances doesn’t need positive policies. They just bang on about how the other side is to blame for the problem. 

The kitchen is a place of warmth and potential danger. It is packed with sharp implements, in most cases, and home to fire. Our kitchens are all about fuel, with fuel for the body and fuel for the oven and cooktop coming to the fore. Modern kitchens can disguise their function through artifice and interior design but at their heart they are fiery places. What voice is most at home in the kitchen? An imperative one barking instructions is oft required in the heat of the moment and under the duress of cooking up a storm. 

“Happiness is a sharp knife.”

Here in the kitchen you will meet the no bullshit You. The part of you that needs to get the job done, the family fed, and keep the pantry full of food. The subpersonality which monitors and maintains the state of your refrigerator. The You that keeps a tidy kitchen. The Captain in charge of the sink and ensuring the washing up gets done. You may delegate these roles to underlings but keeping everything ship shape is the role of the Captain on deck. Kitchens like ships demand order and constant vigilance, lest they fall into chaotic disrepair. 

Interestingly, Hestia was a virginal goddess and refused the suits of both Apollo and Poseidon. Perhaps this is where we get the separation of the sexual roles of the wife and mother in the home and the focus on providing nurture and hospitality instead. Hestia was seen as the giver of all domestic happiness and good fortune in the home and she was believed to dwell in the inner parts of every home. She was also the first god mentioned at every sacrifice, as she represented the hearth where sacrifices took place – this is the direct link to our kitchens today and the idea of the sacred chef. There are very few temples of Hestia extant and this is thought to be because every home was her temple in the Hellenistic world. I think we can draw some intuition from this in our view of our homes being places of divine inspiration.

The bedroom is home to our inner prince or princess of the underworld. Here we find the nascent and sensitive self who passes back and forth between our states of consciousness. The most famous bedroom princess is Persephone, Demeter’s daughter, who was snaffled by Haides, god of the underworld,  whilst playing in a flowering meadow and taken to his dark kingdom where she ate pomegranate seeds and thus was condemned to remain there for the most part of each year. To eat of the fruit of love with the dark lord and to consume his seed, would be my reading of the situation. Persephone becomes the goddess of spring, as it is then that she is able to return to the world above, and so she brings new life back from the inchoate darkness of the unknown. A very apt metaphor for our own unconscious realms and the role it plays in our own lives and especially in our creative dimensions.
Our bedroom is fundamentally a place, which contains a bed, and where we go to sleep. It is a portal between worlds, of the conscious and the unconscious. It is our temple of sleep, where we go, after our day’s labour and nightly feast, to lie prostrate upon a flat couch and quietly beseech the god of the underworld to come and take us to his realm. It is interesting to examine the bedroom in these terms, to see its function in light of the split between these states of being. I think that we would all agree that we rescind our autonomy when we go to sleep, and our consciousness is removed into the ocean like world of dreams. We no longer have the illusion of being totally in control of our lives and destinies. 
House Therapy - Discover More of you at home?
Robert Sudha Hamilton